Not original to me, but too amusing not to play with
Back in February, Governor Bobby Jindal ridiculed something called 'volcano monitoring, singling it out as an example of government waste. "Instead of monitoring volcanoes, what Congress should be monitoring is the eruption of spending in Washington, D.C.," this rising Republican star said. Roughly a month later, Mount Redoubt erupted. When Mount Redoubt erupted in 1989, an airliner unexpectedly caught in the ash plume had all four engines choked off at once; while they managed to restart them, the plane had lost literally two miles of altitude before they would restart. Thanks to volcano monitoring, Alaska Airlines was able to cancel every flight that might have been in danger of a repeat.
Also in February, Senator Susan Collins (R-Maine) expressed concern about a number of spending provisions, including $780 million for pandemic-flu preparedness. I presume you've noticed the current maybe-almost pandemic, which at this time appears to be about 16 times as lethal as the average flu.
Governor Mark Sanford fought to reject South Carolina's "stimulus package" funding for unemployment funding, at the very time that South Carolina had the fastest-growing unemployment rate in the nation.
But this isn't just a recent set of coincidences. Back in 2004, political appointees at NASA decided to get rid of the satellite that's done more than anything else to improve hurricane forecasts. As a remarkable coincidence, we had a record-breaking hurricane season in 2005.
Plus assorted other fun stuff, like Congress scrapping funds for the railway system in February 2004, and then hurriedly stuffing it back in after the Madrid railway bombing that March. Or the attempt to cut off funding for the research into bee colony collapses. Who can forget "The fundamentals of our economy are sound" while Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy?
Now, for the fun stuff. If there is, as Republican orthodoxy insists, an all-powerful God, who cares deeply about the policies of the United States government, do you suppose He might be trying to get their attention? ;)
Also in February, Senator Susan Collins (R-Maine) expressed concern about a number of spending provisions, including $780 million for pandemic-flu preparedness. I presume you've noticed the current maybe-almost pandemic, which at this time appears to be about 16 times as lethal as the average flu.
Governor Mark Sanford fought to reject South Carolina's "stimulus package" funding for unemployment funding, at the very time that South Carolina had the fastest-growing unemployment rate in the nation.
But this isn't just a recent set of coincidences. Back in 2004, political appointees at NASA decided to get rid of the satellite that's done more than anything else to improve hurricane forecasts. As a remarkable coincidence, we had a record-breaking hurricane season in 2005.
Plus assorted other fun stuff, like Congress scrapping funds for the railway system in February 2004, and then hurriedly stuffing it back in after the Madrid railway bombing that March. Or the attempt to cut off funding for the research into bee colony collapses. Who can forget "The fundamentals of our economy are sound" while Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy?
Now, for the fun stuff. If there is, as Republican orthodoxy insists, an all-powerful God, who cares deeply about the policies of the United States government, do you suppose He might be trying to get their attention? ;)