The Top 10 Conservative Idiots, No. 277

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The Top 10 Conservative Idiots, No. 277

Edited on Mon Feb-05-07 11:11 AM by EarlG

The Top 10 Conservative Idiots, No. 277

February 5, 2007
The Very Angry Caterpillar Edition

Welcome to the 277th edition of the Top 10 Conservative Idiots. This week, George W. Bush (1) tries to kill the press corps, Paul Wolfowitz (2) sums up the current state of American diplomacy, Cully Stimson (4) channels Joe McCarthy, and Mike Gallagher (10) has lost his mind. Enjoy, and don't forget the key!

George W. Bush

The latest in a long line of moronic/sadistic public appearances took George W. Bush to a Caterpillar factory in Peoria, Illinois last week, where he proceeded to almost murder the press corps. According to Newsweek:

Touring a Caterpillar factory in Peoria, Ill., the Commander in Chief got behind the wheel of a giant tractor and played chicken with a few wayward reporters. Wearing a pair of stylish safety glasses - at least more stylish than most safety glasses - Bush got a mini-tour of the factory before delivering remarks on the economy. "I would suggest moving back," Bush said as he climbed into the cab of a massive D-10 tractor. "I'm about to crank this sucker up." As the engine roared to life, White House staffers tried to steer the press corps to safety, but when the tractor lurched forward, they too were forced to scramble for safety." Get out of the way!" a news photographer yelled. "I think he might run us over!" said another.

(snip)

Watching the chaos below, Bush looked out the tractor's window and laughed, steering the massive machine into the spot where most of the press corps had been positioned. The episode lasted about a minute, and Bush was still laughing when he pulled to a stop.

It's the perfect metaphor for his presidency really: he gets behind the wheel, has no idea what he's doing, lurches forward into crowd of panicked onlookers, and then laughs at the bedlam unfolding around him. No wonder that 58% of Americans in a recent poll said they wished the man-child president would take a hike already.

But being president isn't all about having fun and trying to run down reporters in a big tractor. Poor George had to go to the House Democratic Issues Conference in Virginia over the weekend, and you can see from this picture how much he enjoyed himself.

Heh heh :)

Paul Wolfowitz

See if you can spot what's wrong with this recent picture of World Bank president and Iraq war booster Paul Wolfowitz during his official visit to the Ottoman era Selimiye mosque in Edirne, Turkey:

Yeah. Still, I suppose it could have been worse...

That man is just class in a glass.

The Bush Administration

Hey, remember that terrible plan to escalate the war in Iraq by sending 21,500 more of our troops over there? Surprise! The Bush administration is actually going to send 50,000 troops.

According to the Army Times:

A new congressional report says the increase of 21,500 combat troops for Iraq proposed by the Bush administration could result in up to 50,000 troops actually being deployed to the region.

The report from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office bases that projection on the fact that the Bush plan is unclear about whether the 21,500 troops needed to quell violence are all combat troops or if that number already includes support forces.

Meanwhile, you'll be glad to learn that the cost of this almost universally derided maneuver is a mere $100 billion. Hey, conservatives, what do you say? Just throw another IOU on the pile and let your grandchildren pick up the tab? Now that's what I call fiscal responsibility.

Cully Stimson

Who? The Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Detainee Affairs, that's who! A few weeks ago, Charles "Cully" Stimson caused a stir when, during a radio interview, he "stated the names of a dozen law firms that volunteer their services to represent detainees (at Guantanamo Bay), and he suggested that the chief executives of the firms' corporate clients would make the lawyers 'choose between representing terrorists or representing reputable firms,'" according to the Boston Globe.

Ah, there's nothing like a spot of blacklisting to make us all yearn for the good old days of Joe McCarthy. So how's Cully Stimson's strategy of shame working out? Not too well, apparently...

Two weeks after a senior Pentagon official suggested that corporations should pressure their law firms to stop assisting detainees at Guantanamo Bay, major companies have turned the tables on the Pentagon and issued statements supporting the law firms' work on behalf of terrorism suspects.

The corporate support for the lawyers comes as law associations and members of Congress have expressed outrage at the remarks of Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Detainee Affairs Charles D. "Cully" Stimson on Jan. 11.

(snip)

The episode has become an embarrassing chapter in the Pentagon's long-running battle with the detainees' lawyers and appears to have spurred public support for the legal rights of the detainees, nearly 400 of whom just marked the start of their sixth year of incarceration at the base.

Come on, Cully - you're a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, for goodness sake! Can't you just make a few phone calls and have these law firms bombed or something?

UPDATE: instead of following my advice and bombing the law firms, it appears that Cully Stimson has chosen to resign instead. Tsk. What a loser.

The Bush Administration

And now, a fanfare.

Tan-ta-raaaa!

Yes folks, that's right - last week the Bush administration finally acknowledged that global warming is real.

Tan-ta-raaaa!

The human role in climate change is no longer debatable, U.S. Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said today, and he defended the president's policy of addressing the issue without mandatory greenhouse gas limits.

Bodman and other Bush administration officials were responding to a United Nations panel that concluded it is more than 90 percent certain the Earth is warming because of carbon dioxide released by burning fossil fuels. The group's report, released today in Paris, predicted rising sea levels, increased storms and more droughts and floods.

"Human activity is contributing to changes in the Earth's climate," Bodman said at a press conference in Washington. "That issue is no longer up for debate."

Astute readers will have noticed the fudge phrase in the above excerpt: "defended the president's policy of addressing the issue without mandatory greenhouse gas limits." Because while the issue of global warming is "no longer up for debate," the Bush administration is certainly debating what to do about it. You won't be surprised to learn that the answer they've come up with is: nothing.

Despite a strongly worded global warming report from the world's top climate scientists, the Bush administration expressed continued opposition Friday to mandatory reductions in heat-trapping "greenhouse" gases.

Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman warned against "unintended consequences" - including job losses - that he said might result if the government requires economy-wide caps on carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels.

Job losses? Say it ain't so. I'm sure this total unwillingness to do anything to attempt to reduce the impact of climate change is welcome news to everyone living near the coast, who will now be able to keep their jobs right up until their houses fall into the sea.

The Oil Barons

But let's be reasonable about this. If the Bush administration imposed mandatory reductions on carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels, the nation's struggling oil companies could face financial ruin. Take Exxon-Mobil, for example, which last week posted an annual profit of just $39.5 billion.

Now, you might say to yourself, "Hey, isn't that the largest profit ever posted by any company in the history of the world?" And you'd be right. But think about it. First, it's nice to know that last year's record gas prices didn't go to waste. And second, Exxon-Mobil's profit is still less than half of what George W. Bush wants to spend on sending more troops to Iraq. So it's not that much money really. And if Exxon Mobil had to settle for an annual profit of, say, $20 billion, well then where would we be? I'll tell you where - Commie Town.

No, it's quite simple. Climate change is already here, we didn't do anything about it until it was too late, and now it is too late, well, why bother? I mean, talk about closing the stable door after the horse has bolted. Sheesh.

So we might as well just enjoy the time we have left by giving our hard-earned taxes to George W. Bush so that he can keep sending troops to Iraq so that we can protect the interests of the Oil Barons who bring that sweet, sweet crude back to the homeland. Then we can jump in our Hummers and crawl through rush hour to work so that we can give more money to George W. Bush so he can send more troops to Iraq, and so on. It's the circle of life, my friends.

The American Enterprise Institute

There's another reason to feel sorry for the Oil Barons - it's tough to make a living when you constantly have to fight against such pesky things as "facts" and "the truth." Fortunately the Oil Barons have got a lot of friends in high places, like the good people at the American Enterprise Institute, a right-wing think tank which is partly funded by Exxon-Mobil.

Last week it was revealed that the AEI "is offering 10,000 dollars to scientists and economists to dispute a climate change report set to be released by the UN's top scientific panel," according to AFP.

The American Enterprise Institute (AEI), which receives funding from oil giant ExxonMobil according to the Guardian, sent letters to scientists in the United States, Britain and elsewhere offering the payments in exchange for articles emphasising the shortcoming of the UN's report.

AEI also reportedly offered additional payments, and to reimburse travel expenses.

Well you know what they say - if you can't beat them, pay someone a bunch of money to undermine them. Although given Exxon-Mobil's aforementioned record profits, don't you think $10,000 is a little stingy? Come on AEI, make it a cool million and I bet you'll have plenty of "expert" testimony to put those environmentalist wackos in their place.

Joshua Sparling

Losing your leg while fighting for your country doesn't make you a conservative idiot. But making up lies about anti-war protesters and spreading them all over the place does. Meet Cpl. Joshua Sparling, the Iraq war veteran who appears to have been tragically afflicted with Phil Parlock Disease (see Idiots 171).

According to Media Matters, "in a January 28 article, The New York Times' Ian Urbina reported that a protestor spit 'at the ground near' Cpl. Joshua Sparling, a wounded Iraq war veteran, during the January 27 anti-Iraq war protest in Washington, D.C. ... the Times reported that 'one of the antiwar protestors spit at the ground near Mr. Sparling; he spit back.' ... As Media Matters noted, Urbina did not cite Sparling as his source on the incident and simply asserted that it occurred, suggesting that he had witnessed it."

No further evidence has surfaced to indicate that this scene actually occurred, but of course it plays nicely into the widespread-but-mysteriously-never-documented stories of anti-war protesters spitting on Vietnam veterans in the '60s and '70s. So Josh Sparling happily visited Hannity & Colmes that night to confirm that indeed, he had been spit upon by a protester, and - contrary to the Times report - he did not spit back.

SPARLING: What we were doing, actually, was doing the anti-protest protest, and we were there with our flags, and all that happened was a fella saw me wearing my 82nd Airborne sweater, and I noticed he also had an 82nd patch on his own sleeve, and he said I was a disgrace, basically, and that I was -- that I had blood on my hands and that I had no right wearing the uniform, and he spit at me.

ALAN COLMES: And you spit back?

SPARLING: Of course I did not.

The thing is, there's plenty of video of the peace march on YouTube, and if you check it out you can clearly see that Sparling and Co. are some distance from the anti-war protesters. Yet curiously, despite all the video and photographs which were taken at the event, there is no evidence of anyone actually spitting in the direction of Sparling. But you can take his word for it, can't you? After all, why would he lie?

As it turns out, Joshua seems to be remarkably "unlucky" when it comes to anti-war protesters. In December 2005 he was allegedly sent a threatening Christmas card while recovering at Walter Reed hospital. Michelle Malkin noted that this was "the only Christmas card he received." That sucks.

Funny though - his dad, Mike seems like a decent guy (despite the fact that according to Malkin he couldn't be bothered to send his wounded son a Christmas card). Check out this heartfelt letter where Mike claims that in early 2006 Josh was harangued at an airport by a woman who allegedly said he deserved to have his leg blown off. Because, you know, you see that all the time, right, people having a go at wounded veterans? I mean, when was the last time you walked through an airport concourse and didn't see people lining up to berate travelling soldiers?

So that's an abusive Christmas card, hassled in an airport, and spit upon by protesters. This guy is super unlucky. And if you think that's bad, wait till you see what Joshua had to say about the protesters during an appearance on "Fox & Friends":

STEVE DOOCY: Joshua, after having been to that peace rally, what's your impression of those people?

SPARLING: Well, you know, obviously I'm not going to judge all of them, because it wasn't everybody, and there was a couple of peaceful people that actually just walked by. But for the most part, there was just people lining the fence just screaming and jumping over it trying to get at us. A couple of folks actually were waiting for clubs to meet with me after it was over with, and the police had to stop them from bull-rushing us on the sidewalk.

Okay, now you're just being silly.

Joe Lieberman

Big news! According to the notoriously crap NewsMax.com, Joe Lieberman may support a Republican for president in 2008!

LIEBERMAN: I'm going to do what most independents and a lot of Democrats and Republicans in America do, which is to take a look at all the candidates and then in the end, regardless of party, decide who I

You know, I don't think I can be bothered to finish the rest of that quote.

Mike Gallagher

And finally, after learning that Jane Fonda had appeared at the anti-war march in Washington DC, right-wing radio host Mike Gallagher was moved to vomit. "I have been paid to express my opinion for 29 years," he wrote on his website. "Never before have I been driven to the bathroom, becoming violently ill, over something somebody said. Not until now."

Good lord, what on earth could she have said? Unfortunately Gallagher doesn't mention that in his piece. But, er, it must have been pretty awful.

How long will it be before people are burning American flags again? How soon before freaks are standing in America's airports in order to spit in the faces of returning soldiers from Iraq, like they did to returning soldiers from Viet Nam?

Gee Mike, catch up - they're already doing it! Going after them with clubs as well, I heard.

Unless we speak out against the Jane Fondas and Tim Robbins and Sean "Spiccoli" Penn of the world, we will deserve them. Until we drown their pitiful, leftist voices out with shouts of patriotism and support, this will be our fault.

You go, Gallagher! Drown out those pitiful leftist voices with your shouts of patriotism and support. But how? They're so loud and obnoxious. How can their voices be drowned out? What can put a stop to this onslaught of leftist peacemongering?

Seeing Jane Fonda Saturday was enough to make me wish the unthinkable: it will take another terror attack on American soil in order to render these left-leaning crazies irrelevant again. Remember how quiet they were after 9/11? No one dared take them seriously.

Yeah, that's the ticket! Another massive terrorist attack on American soil will shut those liberal monsters up. Hopefully even more people will die this time, eh Mike? That way you'll be twice as relevant.

So come on, conservatives - raise those voices with shouts of support..... for the terrorists to commit another mass murder of American citizens so you can feel smug and superior. Does it get any more patriotic than this?

See you next week!

-- EarlG