Louisiana Gov. watch-out-Palin Bobby Jindal gave the GOP's response to Obama's congressional address Tuesday night. No matter what you think of Palin, you gotta admit she gives a better speech than Jindal. It was expected that in the speech he wouldn't have much good to say about the stimulus package. But the specific items in that package he chose to highlight as examples of particularly egregious waste were head-scratching: $300 million to buy new government cars, $8 billion for high-speed rail projects and $140 million "for something called volcano monitoring. Instead of monitoring volcanoes, what Congress should be monitoring is the eruption of spending in Washington," he said.
Surely he could have done better than this. What's so wrong with high-speed rail projects, or even government cars when we're trying to prop up our car industry? But what's really puzzling is his hostility to our own Alaska Volcano Observatory, which Republican Ted Stevens worked hard to get for us. You know, the one that's staffed by earnest USGS scientists who provide really cools photos and daily updates of Mount Redoubt, and the one that will warn us when and if there she finally blows. Maybe someone should explain it like this: It's kind of like a regional NOAA, except it monitors volcanoes instead of hurricanes.