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LABOR DAYS
9/9/2005
For those of us lucky enough not to live in New Orleans or Biloxi, ordinary life, the bulk of which passes unremarkably, simply goes on. Labor Day has fallen away like a desiccated leaf, and that means America’s children are grudgingly shuffling back to school. So it is timely then, that Ohio’s Timken High is making headlines, though not, sadly enough, for its football prowess or academic superiority. Timken’s singular distinction is the fact that 64 of its fresh-faced students are pregnant. Expecting. Knocked up. Taking Home Ec with a bun in the oven. School principal Kim Redmond moaned, “[The situation] has gotten to horrible proportions.” Shockingly, Timken’s 13% “hit ratio” is actually in line with nationwide statistics. Apodictically, the $32 million spent on abstinence education in Ohio is having little effect. “Obviously,” stated one grandmother-to-be, “[it’s] not working. It’s time to take the blinders off… and just give them condoms.” This semester, co-eds might want to sport the new South African “rapex” prophylactic, which impales the penis with a series of barbs upon insertion. Theoretically, the metal hooks, which require surgical removal, should stop the action long before ejaculation. Rapex inventor Sonette Ehlers explains: “I promise you he is going to be too sore. He will go straight to hospital.”

When one sees that technology (like the Plan B contraceptive) can effectively salve society’s ills, it becomes all the more maddening that knowledge, in its applied form, remains heretical to the administration. Hell bent on removing any science from science class (evolution, reproductive education, stem cell research, etc.), President Bush unwaveringly invokes Nancy Reagan’s “Just Say No” policy when confronted with the reality of premarital sex. When prodded again about the failure of abstinence, he had this to say: “Don’t buy gas if you don’t need it.”

He then added, after a harrowing round of golf in which two members of his foursome were swept away when a water hazard overtook the 16th fairway, “I don’t think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees.” “The scenario of a major hurricane hitting New Orleans was well anticipated, predicted and drilled,” rebutted Clare Rubin of the Institute for Crisis, Disaster and Risk Management. In 2002, LSU developed computer models of the flood path and the Times Picayune devoted a lengthy series to the subject. In fact, only last year, Mr. Bush discussed the topic with then Senator John Breaux while 40 federal, state and volunteer organizations conducted joint exercises for a simulated storm that destroyed hundreds of thousands of buildings and forced the submerged city’s evacuation.

The fourth anniversary of the World Trade Center’s obliteration is disturbing enough without the jarring realization that the current episode of ineptitude (and resultant carnage) is eerily reminiscent of Bush’s reaction to the events of 9/11. Shortly after the attacks, the President told a stunned nation, “None of us could have envisioned the barbaric acts of these terrorists.” Sound familiar? It is decidedly old news that the August 6, 2001 memo entitled “Bin Laden determined to attack inside the U.S.” asserted that Al Qaeda was domestically operative and contemplating ways to hijack airliners, and that, as of that fateful September, the FBI was conducting over 70 terrorist-related investigations, involving, among other suspicious activities, flight students who showed no interest in takeoffs or landings. But now comes something new: the disquieting revelation that a secret defense intelligence program, code named Able Danger, had already identified “Mohammad Atta to be a member of an Al Qaeda cell located in Brooklyn.” At first, the Pentagon tried to refute the claims of Army Lt. Col. Anthony Schaffer but quickly surrendered after Navy Captain Scott Phillpott corroborated the story: “Atta was identified by Able Danger by January-February of 2000.”

So where does that leave us? Well, in terms of American casualties, it is unclear whether our own government poses a greater threat than Al Qaeda, especially given the debate whether George Bush or Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi should claim responsibility for U.S. military losses in Iraq (perhaps each should get half a kill). What is crystal clear is that, last week, as thousands were dying, FEMA refused help from countless municipalities and aid agencies, turned away a Coast Guard vessel laden with diesel fuel, blockaded a convoy of Wal-Mart trucks filled with bottled water and purposefully severed the Jefferson Parish emergency communications line. Admittedly, Wal-Mart has wiped out more family businesses than all our natural disasters put together, but the company still deserves its chance at redemption. The real danger, moreover, is that Iraq and New Orleans are mere appoggiaturas to our ultimate demise and that, as a nation, we have become inured to a regime run by retards and cronies. And that crippled by disaster and numbed by repeated doses of Fox news and methamphetamines, we abdicate our obligation to throw the bastards out of office.