I love Paul Krugman

I love Paul Krugman. Well, not in a "he's on my top 10 celebrities I'd sleep with list" but you know, more of a sometimes he makes me say "right on!" and stuff. Anyway, this is a long way around the point of he wrote an article on his blog today that hit the nail on the head about Jindal's rebuttal to the SOTU address last night. Read it all here.

I've heard of Jindal, in all his Indian American glory, but I'd never heard him speak until last night. He sounded like he was doing an impersonation of Carl Sagan. It was so strange. And like Krugman, I was totally perplexed by his picking on volcanic monitoring...especially since his state of Louisiana was rendered impotent by a different sort of natural disaster, but a natural disaster nonetheless. It's almost like saying, we don't believe in monitoring potential threats to the population, even though we (more than anyone) should know the danger in ignoring them.

Anyway, Krugman had my heart going pitty-pat with this little bit of magic:

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.

He said Butt. Hnn.Hnn.Hnn.

Thoughts on the State of the Union

Just some thoughts I had as I listened to the SOTU address.

Reinvest in auto makers? Why are we continuing to invest in automobiles? Why aren't we reducing our commitment to a dinosaur on its way to extinction? I'd rather see big ideas on how to get Americans to drive less.

The education portion of the SOTU seemed to focus solely on a college education. Having stood in front of a college classroom, as many of you have, I know that most of those kids who show up aren't prepared to be there. If we are going to increase college graduation rates, we are going to have to address these problems. Which means, investing in public education. Maybe, just maybe....(are you listening Liv?)...we should consider teaching in high schools for some portion of our careers.

Health care. I didn't hear any ideas. Handy being president. You can just tell Congress to send you legislation when you don't know what to do. Hee.

Check's in the mail? Every family making under $250K gets a check back? Did I hear that right? Too many Mardi Gras pancakes, I think.

I hope he means what he says about taking care of veterans. They've had to struggle for too long to get what should have been given to them in gratitude.

Guantanamo Bay is closing! Did you guys hear that the "terrorist" from Britain was returned there and released after being detained briefly by British authorities today?

Sorry, not much more than that tonight. I have a bit of a headache.