What do you think of the fact that AFTER Bobby Jindal criticized the desicion to monitor volcanoes, SIX of them have erupted in Alaska?

Horrifying coincidence… or was it??

Bobby Jinal is already known to be a former lobbyist for Big Volcano.

Plain and simple, typical.

Hahaha I completely forgot about him saying that. Good eye!

@elijahsuicide Seriously, the Repubs don’t have ANY ideas, all they do is criticize the people who are trying to clean up the shitstorm that they created.

Alaska already has funding for this.

I have yet to see good reason why additional money for volcano monitoring is necessary and exactly what additional benefit it will provide over our current volcano monitoring programs.

@Sners Have you ever heard of Mount St. Helens?

Have you ever heard of selective hearing? I am not denying it is important. Does volcano monitoring money belong in a stimulus package meant to stimulate and create jobs, raising taxes?

We’ll find out if it is coincidental when Sarah Palin demands cuts in Caribbean storm watch programs.

Or maybe the Republicans are praying to the gods to destroy their competition for 2012?

Didn’t I hear somewhere that Bobby Jindal and some of his bible friends held down a volcano and performed an exorcism on it?

@Sners , you obviously aren’t familiar with the stim if you think it raises taxes.

@AstroChuck yah, it was as successful as her abstinence based sex program was on her own kid.

Conservatives are quick to criticize, but not so quick to offer alternative approaches to the problems. I think we should sacrifice Jindall, or Limbaugh, or even Ann Coulter to the volcano gods, to appease their anger. It’s a win/win situation, even if it doesn’t work right away.

@evelyns_pet_zebra I am liking you more and more!

Republicans clearly do not understand science.

@Sners You don’t think additional money for the US geological service (which is really what Governor Jindal was referring to when he snidely dismissed the idea of ‘volcano monitoring’) would create jobs? Really? Who builds the instruments used to monitor volcanoes? And who places those instruments? And who actually monitors and analyzes the data that comes from those instruments? And furthermore, where do those people, who go out the hundreds of active volcanoes in north America, stay at night and where do they eat during the day?

Just because you think that something sounds silly, doesn’t mean it doesn’t create jobs. The point of the stimulus package was to drive resources into as many sectors of the economy as quickly as possible. A geologist job is a job. An volcano analyst job is a job. Having more of these people, with paying jobs, who travel around the country spending money wherever they go, also creates jobs.

And The_unconservative_one is right. The stimulus bill also included what amounts to the largest single tax cut in American history.

Six did not erupt. One erupted, six times.

@Les OK.

There is a tax increase, just not on most of us. The marginal tax rate on the highest 5% of incomes is going back to what it was 25 years ago. Actually the Republicans should be supporting this because they love the “golden” age of Reagonomics. Now the tax rates will wind back to 1982. The richest will pay more and the rest of us will pay less.

@galileogirl I am aware of this. Sners and I have had this conversation before and he has admitted that he doesn’t make over 250K, which is the delineation point.

@galileogirl Not quite correct. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act does not include any tax increases at all.

What I think you are referring to is the fact that the tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 (commonly referred to as the Bush tax cuts) have sunset provisions. That means that they are scheduled to expire after next year unless Congress reauthorizes them. Congress will likely extend most of those cuts, but allow the cuts for the top tax bracket to expire. If that happens, the tax rate for those making over about $200,000 ($250,000 for married couples, filing jointly) would return to 1990’s levels. The top tax rate in the 1990’s was 39.6% (it’s 35% now). Twenty five years ago it was 50%.

Actually I was referring to deductions on charitable donations and other deductions per President Obama last night.

Also not in the stimulus package. Those proposals are included in President Obama’s 2010 budget request, which is many steps away from becoming law.