Bobby - we barely knew ye.

As one of only eight, Yellowstone National Park is the largest super-volcano on the planet. Six hundred thousand years ago, the park erupted, burying the geography easterly all the way to Des Moines in deadly ash. The geologic record notes that it blows its deadly top on the average of once every 600,000 years. (Pop Quiz for the governor: How many years has it been since Yellowstone erupted?) Additionally, and I really don’t like piling on, the average number of detectable earthquakes striking Yellowstone are 1,000 to 2,000. In 1985 there were 3,000. Furthermore, the upward push cause by magma buildup raised the floor eight inches between the summer of 2004 to 2008. By his comments, I know Governor Jindal doesn’t care about those sorts of calamities, and that he doesn’t think the government should either.

I was standing in the middle of a parade field at Fort Lewis when the 1964 quake devastated Alaska. That far away, I saw barracks sway like Hula dancers’ skirts, and I felt the tremors. In 1989, I was living in San José, getting ready to have dinner and watch a World Series game. Maybe the governor wasn’t watching television that evening, but I saw what that quake did to the Bay area . . . after the heaving earth quieted and I’d returned inside. So, while some folks don’t think monitoring seismic activity, keeping track of topography-altering volcanoes, is a worthy use of federal dollars, I bet that many others do. (And once again, what’s the percentage, $140 million divided by $797 BILLION?)

Jindal also scolded the Democrats and President Obama for a package that would add to the national debt. He said that borrowing from future generations was “wrong.” That was when he took us out of Alice in Wonderland, and rocketed all the way into The Twilight Zone, well beyond anything Stephen Spielberg and ILM (Industrial Light and Magic) could have managed. Ronald Reagan TRIPLED the national debt. While composing a budget in 1993 that secured not a single Republican vote, Bill Clinton added 22 million jobs and set the country on a course that would have paid off the debt entirely! And then we got George Bush and a Republican Senate and House, and the GOP DOUBLED again what Reagan had tripled, all the while adding not a single net job through the entire eight years. By the way . . . I seem to recall it was Dick Cheney who gleefully claimed how “Reagan proved — Deficits don’t matter!” Tell me once more, was Richard B. Cheney a Republican, or was he one of those godless, free-spending Democrats?    

Jindal's last point was to education, and touted Louisiana's. Just a show of hands, please. However poorly you may judge the system where you live, how many would voluntarily swap it, would rather have your kids going to school in Louisiana? 

Yeah, thought so: a handful in Alabama, and a few in West Virginia.   

Oh Bobby — we barely knew ye. But we do now. Thanks for the introduction. And for reminding the country, as if any reminding was at all necessary, why the GOP was kicked out of the House, the Senate, and the Oval Office. But tell you what, I think we’re pretty well satisfied, and won’t be needing anything more from you, at least in the foreseeable future.         

— Ed Tubbs

 1  |  2