Duct Tape Nation

Louisiana GOP Rep. Vance McAllister might have inadvertently hit the nail on the head when he defended the use of Duct Tape and trash bags to repair a leaking oil pipe line a wildlife preserve in Louisiana. "That's what America is!", he blustered when confronted at a hearing of of the House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Fisheries, Wildlife, Oceans and Insular Affairs,  by Noah Matson, vice president of Defenders of Wildlife, who said that existing one-paragraph regulations were inadequate for protecting the National Wildlife Refuge System. To make his point, he presented a slideshow, including photos of oil pipes that had been covered with duct take and garbage bags at refuges in Louisiana. What makes the point even more relative, Matson pointed out that the makeshift, dangerous emergency repair had been left in place for over a year. When I was a kid, living in Detroit, my dad was the king of duct tape. It was the miracle magic solution to almost any life threatening household problem. We had a furnace with the aging heat pipes duct taped together. Plumbing? No problem! Hole in the wall? Duct tape it over and then put a coat of plaster over it and prime it! We moved into an apartment before the house started to actually fall apart from his fix it and forget it approach to home improvement. This was guy who swore by Vicks Vap-O-Rub as the ultimate cure all health product...sure, just mix some in hot water and drink it! This basically the Republican approach to fixing America. Stop bitching, drink your Vicks like a man and get out the duct tape.

Duct Tape Nation, a fitting analogy created by a Republican to defend shoddy make shift repairs to the infra structure of America. They wastefully spend billions on the Pentagon to earn their defense industry lobbyist kickbacks, but deny lunches to inner city school kids.  They wage a war on the unemployed, the poor and our Veterans and refuse to upgrade America's transportation system and crumbling infrastructure. They bitch about it, then oppose any real effort to address the issue by duct taping over it and blaming it on Obama.
Here’s Huffington Post’s account of the hearing, before the House Subcommittee on Fisheries, Wildlife, Oceans, and Insular Affairs:
The GOP members seemed more concerned with the activities of the regulators and environmental groups than the drillers.
“I see those pictures, and understand how a picture is worth a thousand words,” said McAllister, who worked in the oil technology and pipeline business before he won a special election to Congress last year.
“You took a picture of someone who was innovative, and rather than leaving the fluid to drip on the ground, repaired it with duct tape and a garbage bag, and yet you seem to be very upset about that,” McAllister told [Matson].
“We’re damned if we do and damned if we don’t,” McAllister added. “We take a garbage bag and fix it and keep it from leaking and yet you’re still not happy, and come to Washington and testify before Congress and want to throw fits because some guy took initiative.”

Duct tape Mt. Rushmore!

I mean, some of those plastic-bag repair jobs had been in place for as long as a year, so there’s clearly nothing to worry about. They probably used Glad, not those crappy off-brand garbage bags. Oh dear God, did someone make sure they used Glad?
McAllister, who is resigning after a video of him embracing a staffer went public, recently told Politico he might run again. Presumably,after his wife figures out how to do a little creative duct taping, he will be distributing bumper stickers with the slogan, “If you can’t duck it, fuck it,” and a picture of a national park. Maybe we could hire McAlister here in France to advise the SNCF on how to use Duct tape to fix their little 50 billion Euro error...see the new trains are the wrong size for most of the stations here....just a few silly centimeters...any suggestions, Vance?