BY KAREN WEBB

I just listened to President Obama’s speech and Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal’s response on line. Jindal sounds like he is telling a story to a four-year-old.

Please pay attention while daddy Bobby puts you to sleep with his monotone voice and those same old tired GOP talking points.

Please, Daddy, tell me a new story; I can quote that one in my sleep.

Volcano monitoring is like hurricane monitoring except it is harder to do with accuracy and when it blows you don’t have time to bring in buses or the National Guard.

If you replace the wind and rain of a hurricane with explosions of fire and ash and the surge involves hot molten rock that is called lava, then you have a volcano. Oh, and if you have one at the bottom of the ocean it causes huge tidal waves that wipe out places like India and Indonesia.

What a doofus.

I have to think all the way back to the GOP response to one of Bill Clinton’s State of the Union addresses, given by Oklahoma’s own Steve Largent. Steve’s was also like a campaign speech with more about his football career and his ex-cheerleader wife. It was like an autobiography of Steve.

There were a couple of surprises in Jindal’s speech:

1. Like the one about the U.S. defeating the Soviet menace [a prolonged presence of their military in Afghanistan was what I remember as defeating the Soviet menace, and the longer we stay there, the closer we come to that same fate];

2. That we [Republicans] realize the mistakes we made in the last eight years, but please let us do that again – let us just cut revenue to the bone, give tax breaks to people who move jobs overseas;

[Please don’t try to put the idea over that the GOP didn’t pass some of the most egregious assaults on our civil liberties by rewriting them overnight and not allowing time for reading].

3. We [Republicans] want you and your doctors to decide your care and not Washington bureaucrats [That is a good one from the party that wants to butt in on my OB/GYN examinations and decisions, the same party that pushes the idea that if you keep gays single everything will be fine].

I don’t mean to be insensitive, but talking to me in a tone that gives the impression that I am five years old isn’t comforting.

I am beginning to wish Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin had done the response. At least she sounds like she has a little backbone, even if she is meaner than a badger with a toothache.

I’ll bet Sarah knows more about volcanoes.

– Karen Webb lies in Moore, OK and is a regular contributor to The Oklahoma Observer