The
Top Ten Conservative Idiots (No. 141)
February
2, 2004
Weapons of Mass... Oh, Forget It Edition
Weapons
of Mass Destruction? Don't blame us. At the top of
the list we've got the Bush Administration, which was proven
wrong once again on the whole Iraq WMD thing. But of course
they're more than happy to foist the blame on the CIA or anywhere
else but themselves. But even after the truth came out, there
was Dick Cheney (2) once again trying to claim against all
reason that the WMDs still exist. Further down the list, Georgia
school superintendent Kathy Cox (3) wants to keep her students
ignorant. David Duke (6) wants to take another shot at elected
office. And don't miss The Traditional Values Coalition (10)
who have a complaint about this very website! As usual,
don't forget the key!
The
Bush Administration
So the cat is finally out of the bag. America's chief weapons
inspector, David Kay, quit his job and returned from Iraq
last week, bringing with him the news that - guess what? -
there are no
weapons of mass destruction. Despite this devastating
news for the Bush administration, Kay managed to get a bit
of bootlicking in and blamed the CIA for misleading everybody.
Let the backtracking
begin! Funny how seven months before 9/11, George Tenet testified
before Congress that Iraq posed no
immediate threat to the United States, and during a visit
to Cairo around the same time, Colin Powell stated:
"He [Saddam Hussein] has not developed any significant
capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He
is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors."
So, what - between the start of 2001 and the end of 2002 the
CIA suddenly freaked out and convinced the Bush administration
that Iraq did, in fact, have tons and tons of weapons of mass
destruction which they'd previously overlooked? Of course,
it only takes a quick look back through the Idiot archive
to find multiple examples of members of the Bush administration
playing with intelligence data and pushing the intelligence
community into drawing conclusions that the administration
wanted to hear. Like when Condoleezza Rice ignored George
Tenet's warning that the "uranium from Africa" claim
was false (Idiots 119), or when
Dick Cheney made sure that the lie went into the State of
the Union Address (Idiots 117),
not to mention all those times that Cheney visited the CIA
and "created an environment in which some analysts felt
they were being pressured to make their assessments on Iraq
fit with Bush Administration policy objectives," (Idiots
113). Yup, if only the CIA hadn't fooled everyone with
their phony intelligence, you can bet that Bush would have
done everything in his power to ensure that we didn't
rush to invade. But sadly, they were all completely hoodwinked.
Of course the fact that Bush's cronies have been planning
the invasion of Iraq since the end of the last Gulf War has
nothing to do with it.
Dick
Cheney
Speaking of Halliburton, somebody needs to send a memo to
yellow-belly boy. Hey Dick! There aren't any weapons of
mass destruction in Iraq, got it? Despite all the evidence
to the contrary, Vice President Crashcart has been out and
about merrily spreading the lie that Saddam Hussein was about
to sneak onto America's rooftops and drop VX stink bombs down
our chimneys. Appearing on NPR recently, Dick claimed that,
"In terms of the question what is there now, we know
prior to our going in, that he spent time and effort acquiring
mobile biological weapons labs." For goodness sake, can somebody
please bring this man up to speed? He's only the vice president
of the United States after all. I guess it's easy to lose
track of time down in the bunker (when you're not out shooting
ducks with the Supreme Court Justice who's about to hear
your case that is).
Kathy
Cox
If Kathy Cox has her way, science education in Georgia schools
could soon be going the way of the dinosaurs - if you're dumb
enough to believe in dinosaurs that is. Ms. Cox, the state
schools superintendent, wants Georgia schools to remove
all references to "evolution" and replace them
with the phrase "biological changes over time."
The purpose of this is, of course, to undermine the concept
of evolution and promote creationism. Tell you what, while
we're at it why don't we just reintroduce the concept of bleeding
as a legitimate medical procedure? Or perhaps we could wave
flowers around to protect ourselves from the 'flu while we're
on our way to the local witch-burning. I dunno, if this keeps
up pretty soon we'll be back to the educational level of cavemen.
Oh, I'm sorry - cavemen didn't exist. My bad.
Dennis
Miller
In Idiots 140 that CNBC have given
Dennis Miller a show, and that Miller has promised that the
show, "however political, will not be partisan." Funny that,
because last week Dennis announced
that he won't be making any jokes about George W. Bush. "I
like him," Miller said. "I'm going to give him a pass. I take
care of my friends." All right Dennis, cut the brown-nosing.
So you're going to have a political, nonpartisan show, without
mentioning the president of the United States, eh? That should
be interesting. Gee, I can't wait for yet another cable news
TV show that spends an hour a night shitting on Democrats
and ass-kissing Republicans. God damn liberal media.
Peter
Shoomaker
Believe it or not, there's actually some good news coming
out of Iraq. According
to General Peter Shoomaker, the head of the US Army, "There
is a huge silver lining in this cloud." Oh yeah? Yeah. Apparently
the fact that the Army is actually at war is a "tremendous
focus" for those in the military. "There's got to be a certain
appetite for what the hell we exist for," said Shoomaker.
Uh, okay. See, according to Shoomaker, "War is a tremendous
focus... Now we have this focusing opportunity, and we have
the fact that [terrorists] have actually attacked our homeland,
which gives it some oomph." Oomph? Oomph? Well I'm glad somebody's
enjoying this. I do hope the families of the 500+ dead American
soldiers are just as happy that their sons and daughters gave
their lives for General Shoomakers ultra-realistic training
exercise. Oomph, indeed.
David
Duke
David Duke wants to run for office again - just as soon as
he gets out of federal prison for mail and tax fraud. The
former Ku Klux Klan leader is considering
running for the seat of Republican Rep. David Vitter, and
presumably stands a great chance considering he's a convicted
felon and the former leader of one of the world's most famous
hate organizations. Uh... but seriously, what is David Duke
thinking? Does he seriously believe that a man who was sent
to prison for bilking his supporters the last time he ran
for office, not to mention a man who headed a group which
is most closely associated with lynching black people, can
really win a seat in the House representing Louisiana? Ah,
wait a minute...
Billy
Tauzin
Would you like to earn $1 million dollars a year? Sound tempting?
Well that's what Billy Tauzin will be making if he accepts
a job offered to him recently by the Pharmaceutical Research
and Manufacturing Association, one of Washington's most powerful
lobbying organizations. The PhRMA wants Tauzin as their new
boss, and they clearly have impeccable
timing. See, Tauzin is currently chairman of the House
Energy and Commerce Committee which oversees the Food and
Drug Administration and the pharmaceutical industry. And funnily
enough, he just had a major hand in the very recent Medicare
bill which only just scraped through Congress after Democrats
complained that it would seriously damage Medicare and provide
massive handouts to pharmaceutical companies. And now the
bill has passed, the biggest pharmaceutical lobbyists in Washington
want to give him a million dollars a year to be their new
boss. Kinda makes you wonder when they started hashing out
the details of this job offer, doesn't it?
Halliburton
You've probably all seen it by now - the gag-inducing Halliburton
commercial
in which a soldier on the telephone bravely fights back tears
before jumping up and announcing "It's a girl!"
(And just think - if he weren't stuck in Iraq guarding Halliburton's
newly-acquired oilfields the poor bastard might have been
at home when his baby was born.) Halliburton's new push to
promote themselves as the loving, caring benefactors of our
troops in the field somewhat flies in the face of previous
reports that Halliburton subsidiary KB&R provided
"blood all over the floor" of kitchens, "dirty pans,"
"dirty grills," "dirty salad bars" and "rotting meats ...
and vegetables" in some military messes they operated. But
it doesn't matter because Halliburton may soon be out of this
world - you'll be absolutely astonished to discover
that George W. Bush's plan to put a man on Mars will benefit
Dick Cheney's former company enormously. Here's what "veteran
Halliburton scientific adviser" Steve Streich had to
say in Oil & Gas Journal back in 2000 - "[Mars
exploration is] an unprecedented opportunity for both investigating
the possibility of life on Mars and for improving our abilities
to support oil and gas demands on Earth." Yup, it's yet
another taxpayer-funded multi-billion-dollar handout for the
vice president's favorite former company. Oh, and by the way,
according to the Washington Post, "Administration
officials scoffed at the idea that Halliburton had anything
to do with the development of the space policy." Got
that? Scoffed.
Welfare
Republicans
This is interesting: according
to a recent op-ed in the New York Times, "Each
year, the Tax Foundation, a nonprofit research group, crunches
numbers from the Census Bureau to produce an intriguing figure:
how much each state receives in federal spending for every
dollar it pays in federal taxes." These states are then
classified as "Giver" or "Taker" states.
If on average a state's population pays more in federal taxes
than it receives in federal spending, it's a "Giver"
state. If the opposite is true, it's a "Taker" state
(for example, for every dollar the average North Dakotan paid
in federal taxes last year, he received $2.07 in federal benefits
- North Dakota is a "Taker" state. The average Minnesotan,
on the other hand, received 77c for every dollar he spent
- so Minnesota is a "Giver" state). But here's the
kicker: the vast majority of "Taker" states are
- you guessed it - states that went for George W. Bush in
2000. (Bush got 78% of his electoral votes from "Taker"
states.) And the vast majority of "Giver" states
went for Al Gore. (Gore got 76% of his electoral votes from
"Giver" states.) So what does this mean? Well, it
means that despite what Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Bill
O'Reilly and the rest of the right-wing spin machine tells
you, Republicans are not constantly under attack from the
federal government which wants to take their money and distribute
it to lazy shiftless liberals. In fact the opposite is true
- the constituents of the red states are living off the tax
dollars of those who live in the blue states. But since the
Republican Congress decides where all that tax money goes,
there's not much we can do about it. Bummer eh?
Traditional
Values Coalition
And finally: ha ha, we annoyed the nutjobs! Meet the Traditional
Values Coalition, who are either a) too cheap to hire a proper
polling company or b) too scared that if they DO hire a proper
polling company they won't get the results they want. So instead
they made the foolish mistake of resorting to the thoroughly
unreliable online poll method, only to be surprised when their
poll was horrendously skewed against them. But guess what
- Democratic Underground is to blame! According
to the TVC, "Radical Democrats are bragging on the DemocraticUnderground.com
web site that they've been skewing the results of TVC's marriage
poll by voting more than once." Hilariously, the TVC's
poll "Would you vote for a presidential candidate who
supports same-sex marriage or civil unions?" ended up
with a "Yes" vote of 34,537 and a "No"
vote of 26,550. According to the TVC, this means that DUers
have a "disturbing, flexible morality" (of course,
holding a poll which you know beforehand is going to produce
a particular result in your favor is entirely moral behavior).
Hypocrisy also appears to be a "Traditional Value"
- despite accusing us of a "rather paranoid view of the
world," the TVC is apparently worried that messing with
their stupid online poll is comparable to voting in a real
election, suggesting that "it appears that we can expect
widespread voter fraud this November from Clintonoid activists."
Man, these guys are dumb. Mind you, while we're on the subject
of paranoia, bear in mind that the Traditional Values Coalition
are also responsible for the Homosexual
Urban Legends series. So I guess bigotry and hate are
"Traditional Values" too! (Incidentally the TVC
also says that "One would hope that individuals voting
in an online poll would have the personal integrity to vote
only once - not multiple times." Well gee, I dunno -
they should ask the experts.)
See you next week!
The Top Ten Conservative Idiots is now on the radio!
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roots went down and deep early when my father hosted a Minnesota
state DFL rally in 1961. Ever since I have had a keen interest
in politics and the Democratic philosophy and history."
You can drop him a line at DeanRandall1@aol.com
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