So, wow. After the Obama faux State of the Union last night, there was of course the obligatory Republican response. This year it was performed by one of the Republicans' last, best hopes for the 2012 election, or so it seemed before the speech, Bobby Jindal. Jindal has been the governor of Louisiana for about a year and a half now.
Among is claims to fame recently has been his refusal of unemployment funds from the federal government to his state to boost the failing budget in Louisiana. This portion of the stimulus contribution was approximately 2.6% of the whole thing - Jindal accepted the vast majority of the funds but refused to accept the portion specifically for unemployment insurance for his state. Genius.
Anyway, the speech last night had me in stitches. First of all, I watched the response on MSNBC after Maddow, Olbermann and Matthews had a shot at analyzing the Obama speech. When Jindal walked out, he was welcomed on that network with this great moment:
Yep, that's Chris Matthews uttering an 'oh god' as Jindal awkwardly strolled out to the podium.
The speech itself had me laughing the entire time thanks to his Kenneth the Page cadence in speaking. He read the words from the prompter like he was reading a storybook to kindergartners rather than making an actual speech to adults. The only way for me to describe it is surreal, since I was literally laughing out loud for the entire first half of the speech.
Among is claims to fame recently has been his refusal of unemployment funds from the federal government to his state to boost the failing budget in Louisiana. This portion of the stimulus contribution was approximately 2.6% of the whole thing - Jindal accepted the vast majority of the funds but refused to accept the portion specifically for unemployment insurance for his state. Genius.
Anyway, the speech last night had me in stitches. First of all, I watched the response on MSNBC after Maddow, Olbermann and Matthews had a shot at analyzing the Obama speech. When Jindal walked out, he was welcomed on that network with this great moment:
Yep, that's Chris Matthews uttering an 'oh god' as Jindal awkwardly strolled out to the podium.
The speech itself had me laughing the entire time thanks to his Kenneth the Page cadence in speaking. He read the words from the prompter like he was reading a storybook to kindergartners rather than making an actual speech to adults. The only way for me to describe it is surreal, since I was literally laughing out loud for the entire first half of the speech.
Anyway, he mentioned a couple things, such as a fictitious LA-Vegas rail plan and revealing his apparent undying hatred of volcano researchers. He specifically mentioned "$140 million for something called volcano monitoring" in the stimulus bill, citing it for being a wasteful stimulus item. What this item actually entails is seismic research by scientists attempting to better learn how to predict catastrophic eruptions. Obviously, money going to research generally helps create jobs or at least retain researcher positions rather than laying people off to keep important natural disaster research going.
The funniest portion of the speech had to have been Jindal's inexplicable citing of Katrina, one of the most oft-brought up examples of the last administration's failures.
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