Evidence that the move from protractors to supercomputers has imbued the scientific community with untoward hubris manifested in Prague last week, when a conclave of thuggish astronomers knocked the scrawniest planet out of our solar system. In a matter of nanoseconds, Pluto was dispatched as if sucked into a black hole. Shock waves were felt as far away as Hollywood where Paramount Studios declared that Tom Cruise is no longer a star. Pluto’s swift demise gave third grade teachers mere days to rip offending pages out science books before their students returned from summer vacation. Of course if the Bush administration had its way, our kids wouldn’t have any science books to begin with. The White House believes that thinking and knowledge are the Devil’s handmaidens and instead relies on gut instincts and profiteering when deciding what The Decider will decide. Needless to say, this methodology hasn’t played out so well in places like Baghdad or New Orleans. Nevertheless, the President, by under-funding his own education program, seems to be saying, “Who needs all that learnin’ stuff when our great nation can bask in the glory of unwanted pregnancies and potentially curable diseases?”
Our exalted administration, via the puppetry of Fox News, reminds us hourly of the threats posed by Middle Eastern religious fanatics, pausing only catch its breath and to foment equally pernicious religious fanaticism here at home. It was bad enough that these School Prayer-Terri Schiavo-Ten Commandment-Mt. Soledad Cross-loving zealots attacked gay marriage, evolution, stem cell research and reproductive rights but now, now they have gone way too fucking far. A coalition of 13 conservative groups – the Family Research Council and Concerned Women for America among them – are petitioning the FBI and Justice Department to remove adult movies from hotels’ pay-per-view menus. Jesus Christ, do you think businessmen want to burn their expense accounts on little bottles of shampoo and lice-ridden linens? Hell, no. It’s all about the porn. Which by the way brings the lodging industry several hundred million dollars a year in high-margin revenue. For Phil Burress, leader of Citizens for Community Values and recovering (so he claims) sex addict, copious sums of money fail to outweigh the hazards of a single Marriot with Jenna Jameson lurking on channel 69: “We’re going to have sexual abuse cases coming out of these hotels… [they] are just as dangerous as environments around strip joints and porn stores.”
What’s next – banning thong underwear or do we move directly to forcing women to wear burqas in public? It’s guys like Phil and recently captured polygamist Warren Jeffs who lend credence to the otherwise ironic notion that a Bible thumper is far more likely than a sex-trade habitué to regard a woman as little more than that bit of wrinkled skin surrounding a vagina. Consider Watertown, N.Y. First Baptist Church Pastor Tim LaBouf who fired an 81-year old female Sunday school teacher, citing First Timothy Two, 11-14:
A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man, she must be silent.
So imagine the consternation among White House born-agains when U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor ruled that Bush’s domestic spying program is unconstitutional and must be shut down. While the Vice President stomped away mumbling something through clenched teeth about Al Qaeda and stupid cunts, official spokesman Tony Snow took the podium and stiffly told reporters the administration “couldn’t disagree more with this ruling.” Which is probably what Scott Peterson said when convicted of chopping up his wife and dumping her body in the San Francisco Bay. The good news, however, for Dick Cheney and his merchants of doom is that shortly before the CIA was required to unplug their eavesdropping equipment they overheard John Mark Karr confess to the 1996 murder of JonBenet Ramsey. American authorities were thus able to locate and arrest Mr. Karr in Thailand, during his final chapter as a pedophile prior to upcoming sexual reassignment surgery. In other words, he wanted to reenact Rush Limbaugh’s underage prostitute soirée one last time before his frank and beans wound up in a dumpster.
Even though crime scene DNA (love spunk?) exonerated Mr. Karr, the sordid episode shows – in sharp contrast to the military debacle in Iraq – that catching bad guys is a function best left to law enforcement. To wit: U.K. authorities arrested 25 suspects who (allegedly) conspired to simultaneously blow up several transatlantic airliners. Needless to say, if our intelligence services were half this competent, 9/11 would have never occurred. Imagine, then, the National Guard actually available to evacuate victims of hurricane Katrina, or Halliburton without all those no-bid government contracts. Oliver Stone might rather be talking about his new flop, Snakes on a Plane. But no. What we have instead are even longer lines at the airport, as security agents have been ordered, after x-raying our shoes, to confiscate all our liquids. But not everyone has embraced the new carry-on fluid ban: As if to say, hey, infidels, we refuse to be confined to solids and gases, the Iranians heedlessly fired up a heavy water reactor and defiantly threatened to bring several bottles of the stuff on board. Thankfully, the Japanese were impeccably complicit. Immediately after the new regulations took effect, a Mitsui Lines tanker heading out from Saudi Arabia dropped anchor and obediently dumped 4,500 tons of crude oil into the Indian Ocean before completing its journey.
In the wake of the British arrests, a tsunami of hypervigilance overtook the aviation industry. United Flight 923 en route from Heathrow to Washington Dulles was redirected by two fighter jets to Boston following “an altercation with at least one female passenger.” Early reports indicated that the woman was carrying matches, Vaseline and a screwdriver, though no mention was made of her access to in-flight porn. Days later, two “rather swarthy chaps” were forcibly removed from a Monarch Airlines flight bound for Manchester “because they were acting suspiciously.” Not to be outdone, the Dutch scrambled a couple of F-16s to head off a Northwest Airlines flight destined for Bombay when 12 men unfastened their seatbelts and began passing cell phones around, activity deemed by the flight crew to be “behavior of concern.” Understandably, Bombay authorities have a penchant for caution given July’s train bombing which killed 200 commuters. Yet one observer took umbrage at the manner in which the dirty dozen were taken into custody. Upon the plane’s return to Amsterdam, he railed, law enforcement engaged in an “offensive against Arabic people.” He continued indignantly: “The way they got arrested inside the plane with everybody seeing how they got treated, I thought it was inhumane… they were treated like dogs. They did not hit them (the suspects) but they pushed them. They let them feel that they have no power, that the people who arrested them had all the power.” Well, yes, Abdul, that would be the point.
So with a keen eye, TSA screeners set out to ensure our safety; passengers can no longer travel with beverages, toiletries or towels on their head. Not even NASA is immune to the new restrictions. The August 27 launch of the space shuttle Atlantis was scrubbed when Commander Brent Jett was apprehended trying to smuggle mouthwash through a security checkpoint. Unfortunately for ComAir flight 5191, and the rest of the traveling public, one thing that cannot be filtered out is stupidity. In an effort to save a few bucks, the FAA purposely understaffed the Lexington control tower and turned off the airfield lights. When the copilot then attempted to takeoff on the wrong runway – far too short at 3,500 feet for the Bombardier CRJ-100 – the results were tragic.
The White House spends billions of dollars in Iraq, ostensibly to make Americans safer. In reality, the attendant budgetary cutbacks at home only leave us more vulnerable. I don’t think family members who lost loved ones in Kentucky this week take any solace in the fact that the crash was not caused by terrorists, but rather by Republicans.
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