Toward a New Idiotocracy

Catching up a bit, and ran across this coda to the story about Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal and his remarks about "wasteful" spending -- like monitoring volcanoes. From Joe Connelley in SeattlePI:

Thanks to "something called volcano monitoring," to use the denigrating language of Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, passenger jets did not fly into ash clouds when Alaska's Mount Redoubt erupted earlier this week.

Volcanic ash creates conditions akin to flying into a sand blaster. A KLM flight lost power in all four engines after it flew into the cloud created by a 1989 eruption of Redoubt.

The plane dropped by more than two vertical miles before its crew could restart the engines and land in Anchorage. No wonder Alaska Airlines canceled 19 in-state flights on Monday week after Redoubt sent an ash plume 60,000 feet into the sky.

The eruptions of Redoubt carry a lesson that Jindal did not learn back when he was a Rhodes Scholar: Don't sneer at science. . . .

Jindal's remarks give pause, not only about this would-be president but the Republican Party to which he tossed red meat in response to President Obama's address to Congress. "Instead of monitoring volcanoes, what Congress should be monitoring is the eruption of spending in Washington, D.C.," said the governor.

The official Republican hostility toward science is a direct function of the religious fundamentalist takeover of the party, that much should be obvious: it is overwhelmingly Republicans who oppose stem-cell research, teaching evolution in science classes, HIV research and education (and sex education in general), and who have come up with their own brand of pseudo-psychology in the "ex-gay" farce.

There is also the marked element of crass political opportunism -- Jindal's remarks, like those of Sarah Palin scoffing at funding for research using fruit flies -- are indicative of nothing so much as an appeal to the most ignorant and reactionary parts of the Republican party. Like the Dobson Gang, congressional Republican leaders (and let's not forget that stellar performance by the Republican budget team), Palin and Jindal are deliberately tailoring their appeal to the idiots in the base.

And we can easily see where common sense -- not to mention public safety -- reside on this one.

Jindal for president? Please -- do it. Maybe with Sarah "No Money for Fruit Flies" Palin as his VP choice?