When Republican wunderkind, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal gave his party’s response to President Obama’s speech before a joint session of Congress, he decried Democrats for passing a spending bill “larded with wasteful spending,” including…
… $140 million for something called “volcano monitoring.” Instead of monitoring volcanoes, what Congress should be monitoring is the eruption of spending in Washington, D.C.
Of course, Jindal was roundly ridiculed at the time for this absolutely boneheaded comment. Jindal is the governer of a state dependent on tens of billions of federal dollars to predict, prepare for and recover from natural disasters, and however exotic “volcano monitoring” may sound to his fellow bayou residents, he’s in no position to criticize disaster preparedness expenditures elsewhere.
But in light of today’s eruption of Alaska’s Mt. Redoubt, I’d say another round of ridicule is called for.
Alaska’s Mount Redoubt volcano erupted four times overnight, sending an ash plume more than 9 miles high into the air, but the state’s largest city has likely been spared from any ashfall.
[…] Using radar and satellite technology, the National Weather Service is predicting ash to start falling later Monday morning.
Dave Stricklan, a hydrometeorogical technician with the National Weather Service, expected very fine ash. … “The heavier stuff drops out very quickly, and then the other stuff filters out. There’s going to be a very fine amount of it that’s going to be suspended in the atmosphere for quite some time, but nothing to really affect anything such as aviation travel. The heavier stuff will filter out,” he said.
Still, Alaska Airlines on Monday canceled 19 flights in and out of the Anchorage international airport because of the ash.
Because ash intake can damage jet engines, causing planes to, you know, crash. But I guess, as long as they’re not crashing in the bayou, it’s no big problem.
And Jindal is a guy Republicans tout as one of their rising stars?
A couple of the big Democratic stars in our state seem hell bent on tanking the economy of Klickitat County, so maybe we shouldn’t be shoutin’ so loud about Bobby J.
Crooked Senator Patty Murray and Congressman Norm Dicks is a volcano!
Read today’s Times Article–
http://seattletimes.nwsource.c.....pma23.html
Murtha’s left-hand man’s crooked lobbying firm pma!!
Mr. C’s post must be as putrid as broken sewer lines in NOLA, because trying to open this thread crashed my AOL program 10 times in a row this morning before I finally got in.
Anyway, back to the business at hand. It’s hard to tell who’s dumber, Jindal, or Alaska’s idiot governor, who just turned down federal stimulus money for education. Apparently she prefers to keep ’em barefoot and illiterate in her state.
The stock market is up 320 points this morning on news the Obama administration plans to buy a trillion dollars of toxic assets from banks. Hey, I’m not complaining, I’ve made $3,500 today, and I didn’t have to fight traffic, pay for parking, slick back my fur, or kiss a boss’s ass! Plus, I get a 2/3rds discount on my taxes. Sure beats working for a living! But I was just thinking, didn’t Bush already give the banks $750 billion for their toxic assets? But the banks didn’t use the $750B for that; instead, they gave some of it to foreign banks, and some of it to themselves. So, I’m thinking, maybe the banks should pay that first $750B back? Or, at the very least, our troll friends should stop complaining about our president because their president threw away $750B of our money and, you know, that makes them hypocrites. I’m talking about you, Cynical, among others.
@2
The FBI is looking into all 516 lawmakers that the PMA gave money to.
All this excessive spending by Obama and his merry band of KLOWNS reminds me of a famous quote by Margaret Thatcher:
@6 It doesn’t matter, because Obama is spending the money Bush sent to China, and we hate the Chinese anyway.
@6
Quick, change the subject!!!
And you trolls that complain about us amen HA’ers that never say anything bad about the Democrats (not true!) might note that I’m dissing on them in comment #1.
But since Mr. C has raised the question, perhaps we ought to discuss who should foot the bill for the $1.75 trillion that Bush and Obama have spent to save the banking system. Who should pay? The obvious answer is, the people who got the money in the first place, when Wingnut Whack-O-Nomics ran riot across the land. Namely, the wingnuts! So much money was looted from the U.S. economy during 2001 – 2008 that it shouldn’t be very difficult to extract $1.75 trillion from, say, the richest 2% of the U.S. population. That will still leave them with a hefty profit from their crimes against the working class.
At least we taxpayers will get some toxic assets to show for the $1 trillion that Obama is spending. The $750B that Bush spent simply vanished — we didn’t even get worthless paper for it. Obama wouldn’t have to spend this trillion bucks if Bush had supervised what the banks did with the $750B he shoveled into their vaults.
Wow the “socialists” on Wall Street are sure enjoying what Obama and Geithner are serving up.
Cry wingnuts. Wingnuts cry.
@12 The Bush market rally taking place during the Obama recession appears to have legs.
@9
Oops, that should say @7
That was not just Jindal’s sorry speech – it was the official republik(c)an reply to Obama so it was, presumably, vetted by most of the prominent republicans before Jindal massacred it.
All the republican leaders should be forced to explain why volcano monitoring is not important – starting with Palin – who doesn’t want to take the “stimulus” money for her state.
They should be forced to explain why the safety of US residents is not important – unless it is a terrorist threat.
Floods, hurricanes, volcanoes – so what – say the republican leaders. Give us an old-fashioned terrorist threat and we will waste over 1 trillion dollars destroying a country that had nothing to do with the threat, while alienating almost all of our allies in the world.
@11
The original TARP program was for $700 billion, several hundred billion of which remained when Obama moved in. The plan offered up today will rely on up to $100 billion of the original TARP funding.
@15
What he said was dumping more money than needed is wasteful. To say Republicans have no feels about Americans is to say Republicans want all of us to drink bad water ad breath bad air.
Your HA teams official wacko
@12
They should be joyful for a day or two until the boss read the fine print.
Jindal’s political base in LA probably isn’t aware the government monitors anything. Not earthquakes, storms or volcanos. In fact, Jindal’s political base probably isn’t aware of much at all. Outside of NASCAR, Pro Wrestling & the NFL, that is….
The problem isn’t the TARP money, that is a relative drop in the bucket.
What worries me is all of the money the Federal Reserve has given away with no oversight or debate. Something on the order of $3 TRILLION as I recall. Then there is the $6 TRILLION or so of guarantees the Fed has passed out.
People who are whining about TARP and the budget need to take a all the money quietly going out the back door via the Fed.
“The problem with Socialism is you eventually run out of other people’s money.”
And under conservatism, you run out of people who have jobs. Which is better?
Why monitor volcanoes? They’re big and they’re right out there in plain sight. We can see what Mt. Redoubt is doing.
Mr. Jindal perhaps should have been clearer for the sake of drunkard and drug-addled Americans. This was in the context of the economic stimulus, and all he was saying was that volcano monitoring is not going to thaw the credit markets, boost the Dow, etc.
If Jindal is serious about a presidential run, he has to learn that Democrats will target him on account of his race. He has to choose his words more carefully than if he were a garden variety white prez contender.
@ 23
And as a Republican, that is his base.
Jobs, and reduction of catastrophic infrastructure/life loss sure ain’t going to hurt the DOW.
Write an email to the first black President (a Democrat, IIRC) about your concerns of Democratic racism.
zdip, your post is riddled with laughable irrationality and non sequiturs. I can only assume you were drunk and or drug addled when you posted it.
Not only should Volcano monitoring be upgraded, places like the CVO and the Alaska Volcanic Observatory should have the ability to work closely with the FAA, so air traffic can be diverted as soon as possible. The best time to divert air traffic passing near a volcano, is at the slightest sign of an eruption, because when it turns into a big disaster, we may have situations like British Airways Flight 9 and KLM 867. On February 15, 1989, KLM 867, a brand new 747-400 had to make an emergency landing at Anchorage International Airport after damage had been done caused by volcanic ash, including a flame-out on all engines. They got 2 of the engines to re-fire. The cause of the Volcanic Ash in the case KLM867? Mt. Redoubt. The irony ways, the Soviet Authorities(remember, this was 1989) had given KLM permission to use their airspace to avoid ash clouds if necessary, but the FAA had considered it safe to transit the area, but Redoubt has a habit of erupting, then stopping, and then erupting again. Not like Mt. St. Helens.
Thankfully crews of BA Flight 9 and KLM 867 managed to make safe emergency landings, future incidents many not be so lucky.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B.....s_Flight_9
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KLM_Flight_867
@23 zdp: Moron said:
Jindal wasn’t targeted becuase of his race – he was targeted because of his stupidity and his lousy delivery.
Actually, he made fun of volcano monitoring as not being worth the money. He was trying to poke fun at volcano monitoring as not being worth spending money on.
This coming from soemone from LA who should know that preparations for disasters are ALWAYS worth the money. Idiot.
@17 John: Maybe you should actually re-read the transcript:
He made fun of spending money for volcano warning and tried to make it seem as if it was wasteful. He is a fool. So are you if you don’t even know what he said.
Knowing when a Volcano erupts will help prevent an air disaster for sure. Jets need air to breathe, they ingest ash, the engine will flame-out, same as if it were a birdstrike. Unlike Cactus(US AIRWAYS) 1549, a 747-400(like KLM 867) carries much, much more. As I said, Alaska has a lot of International Air Traffic passing over it, as one of the routes airliners take is over the pole.
What’s the big deal? Sit and watch a volcano long enough, it’s gonna erupt … right?
It happened once already. A 747 flew through an ash plume from Redoubt about 20 years ago and had ALL FOUR engines fail. Fortunately the crew managed to get them started again and made an emergency landing. The airplane suffered significant damage beyond just the engines (which had to be replaced).