Pre-Emptive Apocalypse

A couple of headlines jumped off the front page of Christmas Island's newspaper of record this morning. One headline said, "Fiscal train wreck feared - experts say lurking U.S. crisis may spur market plunge, pension losses, lower standard of living."

Well good Lord! That doesn't sound good for the country at all. Certainly the government is mobilizing all its considerable resources to forestall this oncoming fiscal disaster, aren't they? You know, some kind of a “pre-emptive” strike like they're so fond of where the President's Daddy Issues and big oil resources hang in the balance?

As it turns out, no. According to this morning's other notable headline, Mr. Bush has instead opted to allocate his administration's pre-emptive strike resources to rejecting over-the-counter sales of the morning-after birth control pill before the scientists studying its safety have even filed their report.

Shock! Awe!

According to the non-partisan Government Accountability Office, the heckuva-job-Brownies selected by Mr. Bush to head the Food and Drug Administration had decided months before the pill's scientific review was completed to reject making it available over the counter.

The economy is in the toilet and getting worse, but that's okay.

The war in Iraq was launched on faked evidence and American boys and girls are dying over there every day, but that's okay.

Iran is just thiiiiis close to having its own nuclear bomb and North Korea already has a handful, but that's all okay too.

What's not okay is allowing little Mary Jane Rottencrotch to sober up in the morning and make her own pre-emptive strike against an unwanted pregnancy. Dunno why - too low a body-count maybe?

This is just the latest example of this administration's actual top priority - the codifying of Christian conservative morality into the law of the land. And look where it's led us, five years in. How many Horseman of the Apocalypse has Mr. Bush already let loose upon the land?

In retrospect, maybe it was a mistake to take someone whose peculiar religious beliefs not only encompass, but encourage the end of the world as we know it, and place him in a position to bring it about.