Readers no doubt recall that in his televised address last month, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal singled out for ridicule stimulus dollars slated for "volcano monitoring." If you must, you may consider these subsequent developments to be coincidences:
- Scant weeks later, Alaska's Mount Redoubt has erupted for the first time in two decades, sending an ash plume 9 miles into the sky;
- TPM has confirmed that a portion of the stimulus funding Jindal mocked is intended to "shore up" monitoring of Mount Redoubt;
- Mount Redoubt is, by my own measure, a mere 135 miles from Governor Sarah Palin's home in Wasilla.
One can almost hear the diabolical laughter of the boyish Jindal pealing off the walls of the gubernatorial rotunda: That one was only a warning, Sarah. Mount Spurr is next.
--Christopher Orr