Bobby Jindal Wants To Kill Sarah Palin

Otherwise, why would he advocate cutting volcano monitoring?

Mt. Redoubt, not far from Anchorage, Alaska, is the greatest current volcano danger in the U.S. An eruption there could occur with little warning, and volcanic ash clouds would pose an immediate, direct threat to aviation. Many people in Alaska travel by air to overcome the great distances there, and someone like Governor Sarah Palin, in particular, travels a lot by air, especially to and from Alaska's largest city. By cutting volcanic monitoring, Jindal could menace, or perhaps dispatch, his greatest rival for the 2012 Republican nomination.

Some people are more generous, however, such as Paul Krugman, who merely describes Jindal as stupid:

For example, knowing when a volcano is likely to erupt can save many lives; but there’s no private incentive to spend money on monitoring, since even people who didn’t contribute to maintaining the monitoring system can still benefit from the warning. So that’s the sort of activity that should be undertaken by government.

So what did Bobby Jindal choose to ridicule in this response to Obama last night? Volcano monitoring, of course.

And leaving aside the chutzpah of casting the failure of his own party’s governance as proof that government can’t work, does he really think that the response to natural disasters like Katrina is best undertaken by uncoordinated private action? Hey, why bother having an army? Let’s just rely on self-defense by armed citizens.

The intellectual incoherence is stunning. Basically, the political philosophy of the GOP right now seems to consist of snickering at stuff that they think sounds funny. The party of ideas has become the party of Beavis and Butthead.