|
The Top 10 Conservative Idiots
(No. 236)
March 13, 2006
Grand Theft Allen Edition
 Why
did Claude Allen (1) resign from his position as Assistant to the
President for Domestic Policy in February? If you guessed, "Because
the evil liberals didn't like him," guess again. Elsewhere,
The Bush Administration (2) discovers that Dubya has spent the last
penny of his political capital, Ken Mehlman (4) gets increasingly
whiny, and Robert Travis (6) teaches us a lesson on racism. Bringing
up the rear we find Rush Limbaugh (9) laughing himself stupid, and
Bill Frist (10) who, if we're all really lucky, might just run for
president. Enjoy, and don't forget the key!
 Claude
Allen 
Back in 2003, George W. Bush nominated
the number two official in the Health and Human Services Department,
Claude Allen, to the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. The nomination
went to the Senate in 2004 but never received a vote. Not a man
to let a such a talented
individual get away, George W. Bush appointed
Allen Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy in 2005.
"Claude Allen has been a valuable member of my Administration
since 2001, helping to improve the health and welfare of all Americans,"
said George. "He is a dedicated public servant and a tireless
advocate for those in need. I look forward to his continued service
in this new role as my domestic policy advisor."
But Allen suddenly resigned in February, purportedly to "spend
more time with his family." This sparked some speculation,
particularly among members of Free Republic, who of course blamed
the Democrats:
"I wonder if he and his family were getting threats."
"The libs forced Miguel Estrada to withdraw, Carolyn Kuhl
to withdraw and Charles Pickering to resign after a recess appointment.
It's a disgrace."
"Sick! These people are sick. Such a brilliant mind - what
a shame."
Yes, curse you liberals for forcing this dedicated and tireless
public servant from his job! Except it turns out that Allen was
apparently dedicated and tireless at something else: shoplifting.
He was arrested
last week for 25 alleged thefts from Target and Hecht's stores
in Gaithersburg, Maryland.
Prosecutors say that Allen would buy items from a store, then return
to the store empty-handed, pick the same items and take them to
the return desk, using the receipt for the original items to get
credit.
This is known in shoplifting parlance as "refund fraud."
Or, if you prefer, "fucking stupid."
 The
Bush Administration 
Last week, Dubai threatened the United States with economic
retaliation if Congress blocked its takeover of U.S. ports. According
to The Hill:
Retaliation from the emirate could come against lucrative deals
with aircraft maker Boeing and by curtailing the docking of hundreds
of American ships, including U.S. Navy ships, each year at its
port in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the source added.
It seems that George W. Bush thinks it's a good idea to do business
with people who threaten you if they don't get the deal they want.
But unfortunately for Our Great Leader, his political capital has
all been spent - Congress decided to block the deal anyway (or at
least, they would have if it hadn't collapsed
at the last minute).
Okay, two things about this deal. First, George W. Bush has been
going around saying that if we don't sell our port operations to
Dubai, we'll risk offending the Arab world - and let's face it,
we wouldn't want to do that. Shock & Awe, Guantanamo Bay, Abu
Ghraib, and the shrugging
off of 30,000 dead Iraqis - hey, we were just playing. But look
out - not selling our port operations to Dubai might really
make them mad.
Second, George W. Bush called the United Arab Emirates "a
valued and strategic partner" last week. That's odd - here's
what Dick Cheney had
to say about the U.A.E. in 2000:
Q: If Iraq's President Saddam Hussein were found to be
developing weapons of mass destruction, Governor Bush has said
he would "take him out." Would you agree with such a
deadly policy?
DICK: We might have no other choice. We'll have to see
if that happens. The thing about Iraq, of course, was at the end
of the war we had pretty well decimated their military. We had
put them back in a box, so to speak. We had a strong international
coalition raid against them, effective economic sanctions and
a very robust inspection regime that was in place. So that the
inspection regime under U.N. auspices was able to do a good job
of stripping out the capacity to build weapons of mass destruction
- the work that he'd been doing that had not been destroyed during
the war on biological, chemical agents as well as a nuclear program.
Unfortunately, now we find ourselves in a situation where that's
started to fray on us, where the coalition now no longer is tied
tightly together.
Recently the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, two Gulf states,
have reopened diplomatic relations with Baghdad. The Russians
and the French now are flying commercial airliners back into Baghdad
and sort of thumbing their nose, if you will, at the international
sanctions regime. And of course the U.N. inspectors have been
kicked out. And there's been absolutely no response.
That's right. Just five years ago, Dick Cheney was citing the U.A.E.'s
diplomatic relations with Baghdad as a reason for invading Iraq,
yet now they're our best friends. Uh, when they're not threatening
us with economic sanctions, that is.
 Bill
Napoli 
As I'm sure you're aware, South Dakota recently passed a bill
banning abortion which contains no exceptions for cases involving
rape, incest, or threats to a woman's health.
During an interview with PBS last week, State Senator Bill Napoli,
who strongly backed the bill, was asked if he could think of a real-life
scenario in which an exception may be made. Here's what he had
to say:
A real-life description to me would be a rape victim, brutally
raped, savaged. The girl was a virgin. She was religious. She
planned on saving her virginity until she was married. She was
brutalized and raped, sodomized as bad as you can possibly make
it, and is impregnated. I mean, that girl could be so messed up,
physically and psychologically, that carrying that child could
very well threaten her life.
So let me get this straight: Bill Napoli would still prohibit a
woman from getting an abortion if she was a) raped but not brutally
so - you know, by a kind, gentle rapist who is attentive to her
needs, b) brutally raped, but not a virgin, c) brutally raped, but
not religious, or d) not sodomized during the rape.
Yes folks, that is as screwed up as you think it is.
 Ken
Mehlman 
It's an election year, and the GOP is increasingly desperate
to deflect attention from the long, long, long list of Republican
screw-ups, scandals, failures and flops which will be hung round
their necks come November. So RNC chairman Ken Mehlman has decided
on a bold course of action - he's going to wet his pants like a
kindergartner. According
to the Associated Press:
In an address to the Southern Republican Leadership Conference
in Tennessee, Ken Mehlman singled out party leaders and two potential
2008 presidential candidates - Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and
John Kerry - for criticism on a range of issues, from national
security to the economy to judicial nominees.
"Not only can they not settle on an agenda, they can't even
agree on a slogan," Mehlman said in remarks prepared for
delivery. He then offered some suggestions, albeit critical ones.
"If they really want the American people to know what they
are going to do, then how about, 'Together, Americans can pay
more in taxes,'" he said. "Or, 'Together, we can retreat
from the central front in the war on terror.'"
Ken's remarks clearly demonstrate that the most important thing
to Republicans these days is having a good slogan. Forget
the Gulf Coast, forget Iraq, forget the United Arab Emirates; forget
Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, illegal wiretapping, the outing of covert
CIA agents; forget health care, outsourcing, poverty, Medicare,
Social Security, education - forget all that.
The Republican party may be flushing this country down the toilet,
but hey, at least they've got good slogans.
 Netscape
News
In a related story, let's take a quick look at the way the
media framed Mehlman's cryfest. Bear in mind that this "story"
was nothing more than the head of the RNC saying something dumb
about Democrats - not exactly an unusual occurrence.
But you wouldn't know that if you saw the front page of Netscape
News (or the Netscape section on CNN's website) last week - check
this
out:
Oh my God, Hillary Clinton and John Kerry have been indicted! Uh,
not really. It turns out that the "indictment" Netscape
News was trumpeting
was actually Ken Mehlman "launching a broad indictment of the
Democratic Party."
Now obviously that's a bit different from, say, Rep. Tom DeLay
being indicted for conspiracy
and money laundering, or Rep. Duke Cunningham being indicted
for bribery
and corruption, or Chief of Staff to the Vice President Lewis
"Scooter" Libby being indicted for perjury
and obstruction of justice, or "Bush Pioneer" Tom
Noe being indicted for theft
and forgery, or Republican super-lobbyist Jack Abramoff being
indicted for conspiracy
and wire fraud, or... well, you get the picture.
Nice job at muddying the waters though, Netscape News.
 Robert
Travis 
"Is there racism in Brownsville?" That was the pressing
question posed recently by the Brownsville Times of Oregon
when Brownsville resident Robert Travis placed
a sign on his front door which read, "We must protect our
borders." The sign has an arrow underneath the text which points
at the Hispanic family next door.
So is there racism in Brownsville? Robert Travis insists there
is not. I am not a racist," he said in an interview with the
Eugene Register Guard. "I have Mexican friends, Puerto
Rican friends, black friends. Some of my best friends are Mexicans."
Indeed. So is there racism in Brownsville? "After 9/11, you
had all these raghead guys and Afghanis and people putting on bumper
stickers about securing our borders," says Travis. "I'm
just doing what our country did when it was attacked. That doesn't
make me a racist."
A compelling argument. So is there racism in Brownsville? "Beer
bottles. Kids' toys. Yeah, I've run over them with my lawn mower.
I mean business. Go back to Tijuana if you're going to live that
way," says Mr. Travis, who has already threatened to report
the family to the Immigration and Naturalization service. Never
mind the fact that they're naturalized U.S. citizens: "I can
tell by looking which ones are illegals," he says.
So is there racism in Brownsville? Gee, I just can't quite figure
it out.
 Jim
Welker
While we're on the subject of racism, let's take a peek at
the recent antics of Colorado State Representative Jim Welker (R-Obviously)
who previously made the Top 10 back in April 2005 for suggesting
that gay marriage would lead to bestiality (see Idiots 192).
Last week Welker was "blasted by his colleagues for e-mailing
an essay written by someone else that accused 'welfare-pampered
blacks' of waiting for the government to save them from Hurricane
Katrina," according
to the Rocky Mountain News.
Welker later said he didn't agree with everything in the essay,
although he didn't make any mention of that when he forwarded it,
adding no comments. The essay contained a passage which read "President
Bush is not to blame for the rampant immorality of blacks."
When he realized that his racist email had caused an uproar in
the Colorado General Assembly, Welker came up with the lame excuse
that he forwarded the email "because of its message about society
victimizing people by making them dependent on government programs."
Yeah, sure he did.
 Tony
Phyrillas 
It appears that the increasing unpopularity of George W. Bush
is seriously threatening the mental well-being of his few remaining
die-hard fans. Take Tony Phyrillas, columnist for the Pottstown
Mercury, "a Pulitzer Prize-Winning Newspaper" according
to the banner on its website.
Last week Mr. Phyrillas penned
what at first glance appears to be a pretty typical right-wing rant.
For example, he mentions the Democrats' "allies in the mainstream
media" and "far-left billionaires" in the first couple
of paragraphs, and talks about how "The reason 9/11 happened
was that Bill Clinton failed to respond to a half-dozen terrorist
attacks going back to the first bombing of the World Trade Center
in 1993." (Well, sure, if you ignore the inconvenient fact
that the people responsible for the 1993 bombing were captured,
convicted, and sentenced to life imprisonment, of course.)
But read on and you'll find out what passes for conservative thinking
these days. After asking us to "Follow through with this nightmare
scenario," Mr. Phyrillas really gets into his groove:
...one thing Democrats will push is the impeachment of George
W. Bush (and Dick Cheney, too). If there's one thing that gives
Democrats nightmares, it’s the prospect of Dick Cheney as
president. They can't very well impeach Bush if Cheney is his
successor. So the Democrats will impeach Bush and Cheney.
Meanwhile, Osama bin Laden will emerge from his cave and lead
an even bigger assault on U.S. interests. The war will spread
to the oil-rich Gulf states. Militant Muslims will attempt to
destroy Israel.
Where does that leave us? With oil cut off and Israel forced
to use nuclear weapons to defend its existence, President Nancy
Pelosi will have no choice but commit the U.S. to an even bigger
war in the Middle East. Over the objections of Secretary of State
Cindy Sheehan and Secretary of Defense Michael Moore, Pelosi will
have U.N. Ambassador Jimmy Carter ask for a Security Council resolution
to begin an all-out bombing of at least a half-dozen countries
in the Middle East. The U.N. will turn us down, of course, with
the Islamic Republic of France joining with other members to reject
intervention in the Iran-led final solution of the Israeli problem.
Pelosi and her war council - Ted Kennedy, Hillary Clinton, Dick
Durban (sic), Barbara Boxer, George Clooney and Sean Penn - will
come to the conclusion that the U.S. will have to go it alone
in the war. This time, our enemies will be a true axis of evil:
Iran, al-Qaida, Hamas, Syria, Iraq under the reinstated dictator
Saddam Hussein and Afghanistan, back in the hands of the Taliban.
World War III? You betcha. And our casualties won't be 2,500.
Multiply that by hundreds of thousands. Maybe millions.
If you think Nov. 7 is an opportunity to kick George Bush around
some more, think twice. A weakened United States at home and abroad
will have deadly consequences for all of us. That's what's at
stake if Democrats regain control of Congress in November.
Look out - I think I spy another Pulitzer Prize heading in the
Pottstown Mercury's direction!
 Rush
Limbaugh
Peace activist Tom Fox was executed
in Iraq by his kidnappers last week, which must have filled Rush
Limbaugh with a great deal of glee. Why would this news make Rush
so cheerful? Because when news of the kidnapping broke last November,
here's what he had
to say on his radio show:
You've met the bad guys, and you tried your technique on them,
and now you're blindfolded in a room with guns pointed at you
and knives at your throat. I don't like that. But any time a bunch
of people that walk around with the head in the sand practicing
a bunch of irresponsible, idiotic theory confront reality, I'm
kind of happy about it, because I'm eager for people to see reality,
change their minds, if necessary, and have things sized up.
Rush continued:
As warped as these people are, you know they're going to blame
Bush for this. ... They wouldn't have been kidnapped because they
wouldn't have been there in the first place if Bush hadn't gone
and caused the war and created all these terrorists. I mean, these
people are liberals, they're warped. Well, I mean, that's why
there's - I'm telling you, folks, there's a part of me that likes
this.
If Rush liked the fact that Tom Fox was kidnapped, he must be positively
giddy now that his body has turned up "at a rubbish dump in
western Baghdad, bound, shot and showing signs of torture."
 Bill
Frist 
And finally: exciting news from last week's Republican Leadership
Conference - Bill Frist placed first in a straw
poll designed to predict the GOP's presidential front runner
for 2008.
Bill Frist as the Republican party's 2008 nominee? That would be
an interesting race. It's not often that you get the chance to run
against an ethicist who is under investigation for insider
trading, a moralist who refused
to criticize the vice president for telling a Senator to "go
fuck yourself," a doctor who doesn't know if you can get HIV
from sweat and who can diagnose a persistent vegetative state
by watching
a videotape, a philanthropist whose AIDS charity gave half
a million dollars to his own political consultants, and a compassionate
conservative who, while larking around in the tsunami-hit region
of Sri Lanka, told a photographer to "get
some devastation in the back."
Bill Frist in '08? It could happen... if we're lucky. See you next
week!
Nominate a Conservative
for Next Week's List
|
