Morristown

For those of you who were able to make it through Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal’s entire rebuttal to President Obama’s flawless (any other kind from this guy) speech last nite, my sympathies. Now, I only managed to endure a nanosecond of story time with little Bobby and even that was more that what mind five and older can endure. He sounded like an episode of lamb chops and looked like a hall monitor in his daddy's suit.

The Republicans probably figured that because the movie “Slumdog Millionaire” was such a collosal hit at the box office and at last sunday's academy awards, Jindal who is of an Indian background would also have definitely been a “box office draw” and the “winner” of the evening, and they couldn’t lose. Well, it turns out they put all their money on Frost/Nixon. Jindal's sub par oratory clearly demonstarted that he is one big futile attempt on the republicans part to exploit identity politics so as to find a nominee ethnic enough to compete with Obama in 2012. And being Indian is basically black by Republican standards.

The knee-jerk, desperate thinking of the GOP never ceases to amaze. I mean, they tried this with Sarah Palin in the hopes that her uterus– a hyperactive one– would put her on par with Hillary Clinton and thus bring in all of her supporters. If you haven’t been living under a barack the past 3 months, you will see that the strategy failed miserably.

It seems as though the Republican party will be a lost cause for at least a decade, perhaps much longer.
While the notion of a GOP that’s deader than its members brings me a outpouring of ebullience and elation only rivaled by a premium lapdance, I firmly believe in divided government and the free exchange of intelligent and reasonable ideas among different parties. I tend to think that the impuissance of the Republican party will be great for a few years, I fear it may eventually lead to gross excesses by the Democrats. It is in this prediction why it is so important for the emergence of a viable third party that goes beyond making a few speeches and longshot presidential runs.

In the meantime, I look forward to watching the current Republican party shoot itself in the foot until its left with a stub.

Despite stiff opposition (or is it opposition from stiffs) from Senate and House Republicans, the $787bn stimulus package passed and was just signed by President Obama (love writing that) earlier today. Now, the entire GOP vehemently opposed this package on grounds that it was loaded with unnecessary spending on pet projects, resulting in many changes to accommodate them. I will readily admit that there were some expensive and unnecessary spending provisions in the original bill. But I would be criminally insane to believe republicans posturing when they ordered vast amounts of spending on pork back in 2005.

With a little research and a lot of red bull, I was able to find some unrelated details on then House majority leader Tom Delay and his fellow Republicans history of diverting federal monies to ridiculous special projects in order to ensure re-election.

$25,000 to study Mariachi music in Nevada (To be fair, Mariachi is known to improve a golf swing.)

$1.5 million for an Alaskan bus stop with heated sidewalks and electronic signs(To pick up a guy and his caribou?)

$75,000 set aside for the Paper Industry International Hall of Fame in Appleton, Wisconsin( that's 75,000 dollars for something that ulitmtaely winds up in Dick Cheney's shredder.)

$100,000 for a film festival in Rochester, New York.(Since when does a Republican appropriate money for something of aesthetic value?)

$50 million for an indoor rainforest in Iowa.(I guess they figured "we already slashed the original one..." )

$18,000 for a smoking booth at a private New Jersey airport.(Okay, this one actually makes sense [insert smoker's cough].)

$200,000 for a peanut festival in Alabama.(for all those herds of elephants in Alabama, perhaps?)

$200 million to build a bridge from Ketchikan, Alaska to a nearby island with 50 inhabitants better known as "the bridge to nowhere".(Apparently, constructing a bridge that connects RNC Headquarters to the Cayman Islands proved to be too costly.)