I just watched some video of Jindal's response and it's pretty cringe-worthy.

Looks like we're supposed to get 6-9 inches of snow tomorrow night. Freezing rain today. This means I really need to get to the grocery TODAY.

Bree Walker was the name of the woman with the hand deformity. [link]

I think this is a pretty good summary of Jindal's response.

"You know, I think Bobby Jindal is a very promising politician, and I oppose the stimulus because I thought it was poorly drafted. But to come up at this moment in history with a stale 'government is the problem,' 'we can't trust the federal government' -- it's just a disaster for the Republican Party. The country is in a panic right now. They may not like the way the Democrats have passed the stimulus bill, but that idea that we're just gonna -- that government is going to have no role, the federal government has no role in this, that -- in a moment when only the federal government is actually big enough to do stuff, to just ignore all that and just say 'government is the problem, corruption, earmarks, wasteful spending,' it's just a form of nihilism. It's just not where the country is, it's not where the future of the country is. There's an intra-Republican debate. Some people say the Republican Party lost its way because they got too moderate. Some people say they got too weird or too conservative. He thinks they got too moderate, and so he's making that case. I think it's insane, and I just think it's a disaster for the party."

[link]

And that's from David Brooks.

Personally, I don't think anyone looks good in these response speeches regardless of party and this one didn't break the trend.

I thought Rachel Maddow's reaction to Jindal's response was priceless--Olbermann threw it over to her for her analysis, and she just sat there, dumbfounded, saying, "Uh, uh, well, to be blunt, I'm speechless. I cannot believe that he just stood there and used Katrina as an example of why government should stay out of people's lives!!"

Have people been following the controversy over the F-22? It's an incredibly awesome plane that's very expensive and just not needed.

Aerial Combat

The Air Force tries to save a fighter plane that's never seen battle.

It was designed for air superiority in the event of a war in Europe with the Soviet Union, against advanced Soviet fighters that were never built due to the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The nation had already bought 187 of them, at a total cost of $65 billion (nearly $350 million apiece), and that was more than enough.

...

Mark Bowden, the author of Black Hawk Down, has a very interesting article in the March 2009 issue of the Atlantic, making the case for buying more F-22s. It's the most sophisticated argument I've read, but even he evades the main issues. He ignores the F-15's AESA radar. He says nothing about the F-35, a lower-cost stealth fighter about to enter production. (It has problems, too, but if someone thinks more stealth planes are needed, the F-35 has about 75 percent of the F-22's capabilities for about half the price.) Finally, in response to one blogger's critique of his article, Bowden admits that, even in a war against a more sophisticated foe, we would still establish aerial dominance "with the current fleet of F-15s backed by a few F-22s"—187 F-22s are "a few"?—but that "we will likely lose more planes and pilots" while doing so. He adds, "While this is academic for you and I, it is not for the men and women in the cockpits of those planes."

Let's examine that last bit of logic (ignoring for a moment the surprising fact that Bowden doesn't know basic grammar). He's saying that if some country develops a large, sophisticated, well-trained air force; and if we go to war with that country; and if air-to-air combat becomes an integral element of that war; then without more F-22s, we'll probably still attain air supremacy but at a cost of more casualties among pilots.

Each of those three ifs is pretty unlikely; multiply them by one another, and the probabilities are remote in the extreme. With all due respect to those pilots (and they deserve a great deal), is the tiny probability of their deaths, in some hypothetical future air duels, worth the tens of billions of dollars it will cost to buy more F-22s now? And in a world of limited resources, is it worth more to spend the money on that contingency than on any number of tangible needs and desires, military or otherwise?

Heh. From a reader's email to Sullivan:

Obama And Jindal

Talking to a witty, politically tuned-in co-worker this morning about the speech and response last night. His summation:

"That was like watching Will Smith vs. Urkle ... Who do you think the American people are going to listen to?"

From Nate Silver:

Obama Joint Session (and Jindal Reply) Liveblog

If it sounds like Jindal is targeting his speech to a room full of fourth graders, that's because he is. They might be the next people to actually vote for Republicans again.

Is the text of Obama's speech online anywhere?

Have people been following the controversy over the F-22?

I think the F-22 is tough to let go of mostly out of pride. The F-15 has been in service for 35 years and has been surpassed by the latest Russian fighters and arguably by the latest French and Swedish fighters. Yeah, the air combat record of the F-15 is something like 100 victories vs. 0 losses, but it dates back to disco.

Financially the F-15 should really be replaced by the F-35, but it's like replacing your big old muscle car with a sporty compact. Sure the sporty compact does everything you need it too and costs a lot less, but it isn't nearly as cool.

For Emily.