The Top 10 Conservative Idiots, No. 285

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The Top 10 Conservative Idiots, No. 285

The Top 10 Conservative Idiots, No. 285

April 2, 2007
April Showers Edition

Welcome to the 285th edition of the Top 10 Conservative Idiots. We have bumper crop of Idiots this week - Alberto Gonzales (1) is still hanging in there, but all these scandals seem to be driving Karl Rove (2) crazy. Meanwhile George W. Bush (3,4,7) is getting a run for his money from John McCain (5,6) in the race to see who can be the least credible politician in America. Enjoy, and don't forget the key!

Alberto Gonzales

The attorney general's tenuous hold on his job was weakened further last week by testimony from his former chief-of-staff Kyle Sampson. To quickly recap, Alberto Gonzales's previous position on the firing of eight U.S. attorneys looked something like this:

I never saw a document ... We never had a discussion about where things stood. What I knew was there was an ongoing effort that was led by Mr. Sampson ... to ascertain where we could make improvements in U.S. attorney performance throughout the country.

But when Mr. Sampson appeared before Congress last week, he had a different story to tell:

Gonzales has sought to portray himself as detached from the details of the firings, saying on March 13 that Sampson was in charge. Gonzales also said he "was not involved in any discussions about what was going on" in the process. The attorney general sought to clarify that statement in a television interview Monday, acknowledging more frequent contact with Sampson.

But Sampson provided new detail of Gonzales's involvement, testifying in response to questioning that he had at least five discussions with his boss about the project after Gonzales first approved the idea in early 2005 and that the attorney general was aware which prosecutors were under consideration for dismissal.

"I don't think the attorney general's statement that he was not involved in any discussions of U.S. attorney removals was accurate," Sampson said. "I remember discussing with him this process of asking certain U.S. attorneys to resign."

Sampson added later that "the decision makers in this case were the attorney general and the counsel to the president" - (Harriet) Miers.

Funny how stories tend to change when you get people under oath, isn't it?

Meanwhile, the Boston Globe put the scandal in perspective with an editorial which began:

The suspicion that partisan politics motivated at least some of the Bush administration's firings of eight US attorneys sharpened this week. Former Justice Department aide Kyle Sampson told the Senate Judiciary Committee Thursday that "the distinction between political and performance-related reasons for removing a US attorney is, in my view, largely artificial."

If senators accept this state of affairs, they should close down their inquiry into the purge and accept a new reality: that US attorneys are not objective enforcers of the laws but part of a president's political machine - 93 Karl Roves with prosecutorial powers.

Good lord, 93 Karl Roves? One is more than enough, thank you very much...

Karl Rove

Last week politicians and press people slow-danced the night away at the Radio and Television Correspondents Association dinner in Washington DC. You may recall that this annual schmoozefest was last in the news when George W. Bush used the occasion to screen a hilarious slide show of himself pretending to look for weapons of mass destruction underneath pieces of furniture in the White House.

More than 2,400 American soldiers have died in Iraq since then, so the organizers obviously thought that it might not be a bad idea to keep the "Wasn't it hilarious when I sent the nation to war on false pretenses?" jokes to a minimum this year. Instead they decided to get serious and give folks a taste of what's it like to be tortured at Guantanamo Bay.

First, Brad Sherwood (one of the comedians hosting the event) brought Karl Rove up onto the stage for a "spontaneous" bit of tomfoolery. Here's the actual transcript:

SHERWOOD: Er, just for the heck of it, what's your name sir?

ROVE: (robotically) Peter... Fitzgerald.

SHERWOOD: Alright!

(laughter)

SHERWOOD: Thank you Mr. Rove.

ROVE: (grabbing Sherwood's mic) Patrick Fitzgerald.

SHERWOOD: (slightly confused) Patrick Fitzgerald, alright.

And there was plenty more comedy gold where that came from.

SHERWOOD: Well, ah, we just want to ask you some questions about, er... we...

ROVE: (grabbing Sherwood's mic) Lots of people want to ask me questions.

SHERWOOD: And none of these have to be under oath. These questions are just... like, what do you like to do for fun, when you're not working? When you... do you have any hobbies? Do you have any hobbies?

ROVE: I like to go home... er, get a drink... generally of a non-alcoholic nature since I don't drink... and, um... (pauses) then tear the tops off of small animals.

SHERWOOD: Tear the tops off small animals? That's... yeah, they're so better (sic) when they're topless aren't they? Yeah, okay...

(Rove motions with his hands)

SHERWOOD: (floundering now) Headless? Okay, so you like to rip the heads off of... this is like Silence of the Lambs, isn't it?

But the lowlight of the evening surely had to be Sherwood persuading Rove to join him for a bit of freestyle rap. Pure genius, because as everyone knows, there's simply nothing funnier than flabby old white men parodying rappers. Here's Karl putting his hands in the air like he just doesn't care. (In case you were wondering, he actually does not care.)

Hey Karl, don't give up your day job. Wait, what am I saying? Give up your day job!

If you have a really strong stomach, check out the video. But be warned. Prolonged exposure to these images may have unpleasant side effects such as blindness, kidney failure, explosive diarrhea, or death. Or worse.

George W. Bush

Last week, both the House and the Senate approved spending measures which would provide almost $100 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Unfortunately for Our Great Leader and his Great Unending War, the measures also included deadlines for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq. The president immediately pissed in his pants.

"Here's the bottom line," he ranted. "The House and Senate bills have too much pork, too many conditions on our commanders and an artificial timetable for withdrawal. And I have made it clear for weeks if either version comes to my desk, I'm going to veto it."

Well don't you have a big sack, Mr. President? I must say, vetoing a bill that provides $100 billion for the troops and contains a plan to get out of Iraq - which the majority of the nation wants - is very bold of you. Sorry, did I say bold? I meant politically suicidal.

Bush continued:

Now, some of them believe that by delaying funding for our troops, they can force me to accept restrictions on our commanders that I believe would make withdrawal and defeat more likely ... That's not going to happen. If Congress fails to pass a bill to fund our troops on the front lines, the American people will know who to hold responsible ... We stand united in saying loud and clear that when we've got a troop in harm's way, we expect that troop to be fully funded.

Which is odd, considering that Congress just gave him $100 billion to do exactly that. Plus, they actually have a plan to get the troops out of harm's way, so we don't have to keep spending hundreds of billions of dollars - and losing our soldiers - for an indefinite period of time.

But that doesn't seem to be the point. Instead, Bush is essentially saying this to the Congress: "You will give me exactly what I want, or else I won't fund the troops." The only problem with this approach is that we had an election a few months ago - which Bush seems to have forgotten about - in which the American people decided to firmly reject the Republican policies of endless war, and let the Democrats have a go at fixing the mess that Bush and Co. have made.

Yet Our Great Leader still seems to be under the impression that Congress is supposed to act as his own personal rubber stamp. Sorry pal, those days are gone. So what's it to be? Because honestly, I don't think the nation is going to be very impressed when you decide to veto $100 billion for the troops just because you can't get your own way. Unless you give me everything I want, I'm not going to fund the troops. So nyah nyah to you.

Very mature.

He can kick and scream all he wants but the bottom line is straightforward: by vetoing this bill, George W. Bush is putting his pride first and the welfare of our troops second.

George W. Bush

Speaking of the welfare of our troops, George W. Bush showed up at Walter Reed Army Hospital last week for a quick photo-op. Phew! Just in the nick of time.

Just six short weeks after we learned that wounded American soldiers are being housed in moldy, rodent infested quarters at Walter Reed's Building 18, Our Great Leader decided to grace the troops with his presence.

"It is not right to have someone volunteer to wear the uniform and not get the best possible care," he said. "I apologize for what they went through and we're going to fix the problem."

Yeah, sure you are. You're a real good problem-fixer, aintcha?

"We're helping to rebuild Iraq, where the dictator built palaces for himself, instead of hospitals and schools." -- Bush on Iraq, 2003

"We are defeating terrorists. Najaf, Samarra, Mosul, (and) Basra are all live examples that a lot of progress has been made.... And this is all because of the determination of the Iraqi people, the light that they are seeing at the end." -- Bush on Iraq, 2004

"We're clearing out areas controlled by the terrorists and Saddam loyalists, leaving Iraqi forces to hold territory taken from the enemy, and following up with targeted reconstruction to help Iraqis rebuild their lives." -- Bush on Iraq, 2005

"The Bush administration has scaled back its ambitions to rebuild Iraq from the devastation wrought by war and dictatorship and does not intend to seek new funds for reconstruction, it emerged yesterday." -- The Guardian, 2006

And lest we forget...

"...it's hard for some to see it now -- that out of this chaos is going to come a fantastic Gulf Coast, like it was before." -- Bush in Alabama, 2005

John McCain

Two weeks ago, in Idiots 283, Sen. John McCain managed to nab not one but two spots on the list. And this week he's done it again.

First, McCain HQ was up in arms when the senator's MySpace page was - gasp - hacked by evil hackers! At least, that's the way the media reported it (because let's face it, they don't know their ass from a series of tubes in the ground).

Here's what actually happened. McCain's, er, savvy Internet team decided that they liked the look of some other dude's MySpace layout, so they simply stole it. This other dude, Mike Davidson, is actually well known in the MySpace community because his page is so pretty. (MySpace pages are notoriously difficult to customize.) Davidson's layout code is freely available to anyone who wants it, but he asks that people give him credit if they use it. Guess what? McCain's team didn't give him credit.

Not only that, but they made the rookie mistake of using Davidson's images as well as his code, thus stealing his valuable bandwidth. Every time anyone visited McCain's MySpace page, they would be pulling an image from Davidson's server. I think they teach you not to do that in, like, fourth grade these days.

Anyway, once Davidson figured out that Team McCain was stealing his bandwidth, he decided to have a little fun by replacing the image they were linking to with a new one:

Which made McCain's MySpace page look like this:

Which is another reason why you should never to link directly to images on other people's websites. Suckers!

John McCain

McCain's second screw-up came when he appeared on Bill Bennett's radio show last week and announced that the situation in Iraq is getting rosier and rosier. Later that day, Wolf Blitzer challenged the senator's assesment on CNN's afternoon yukfest "The Situation Room," and McCain gave the world a taste of the kind of reality-based thinking that he would, if elected, bring to the presidency:

BLITZER: Here's what you told Bill Bennett on his radio show on Monday.

MCCAIN: Yes.

BLITZER: "There are neighborhoods in Baghdad where you and I could walk through those neighborhoods today."

MCCAIN: Yes.

BLITZER: "The U.S. is beginning to succeed in Iraq." You know, everything we hear, that if you leave the so-called green zone, the international zone, and you go outside of that secure area, relatively speaking, you're in trouble if you're an American.

MCCAIN: You know, that's why you ought to catch up on things, Wolf. General Petraeus goes out there almost every day in an unarmed Humvee. You want to -- I think you ought to catch up. You see, you are giving the old line of three months ago. I understand it. We certainly don't get it through the filter of some of the media.

I know what you're thinking - the only possible explanation is that McCain's staffers accidentally replaced his Centrum Silver with LSD. And you might be right. Here's CNN's Baghdad correspondent Michael Ware - who has been living in Baghdad for the past four years - talking to Blitzer about an hour later:

BLITZER: CNN's Michael Ware is standing by -- Michael, you've been there, what, for four years. You're walking around Baghdad on a daily basis. Has there been this improvement that Senator McCain is speaking about?

WARE: Well, I'd certainly like to bring Senator McCain up to speed, if he ever gives me the opportunity. And if I have any difficulty hearing you right now, Wolf, that's because of the helicopter circling overhead and the gun battle that is blazing just a few blocks down the road. Is Baghdad any safer? Sectarian violence -- one particular type of violence -- is down. But none of the American generals here on the ground have anything like Senator McCain's confidence. I mean, Senator McCain's credibility now on Iraq, which has been so solid to this point, has now been left out hanging to dry.

To suggest that there's any neighborhood in this city where an American can walk freely is beyond ludicrous. I'd love Senator McCain to tell me where that neighborhood is and he and I can go for a stroll. And to think that General David Petraeus travels this city in an unarmed Humvee. I mean in the hour since Senator McCain has said this, I've spoken to some military sources and there was laughter down the line. I mean, certainly, the general travels in a Humvee. There's multiple Humvees around it, heavily armed. There's attack helicopters, predator drones, sniper teams, all sorts of layers of protection.

So, no, Senator McCain is way off base on this one -- Wolf.

(snip)

BLITZER: Michael, when Senator McCain says that there are at least some areas of Baghdad where people can walk around and -- whether it's General Petraeus, the U.S. military commander, or others, are there at least some areas where you could emerge outside of the Green Zone, the international zone, where people can go out, go to a coffee shop, go to a restaurant, and simply take a stroll?

WARE: I can answer this very quickly, Wolf. No. No way on earth can a westerner, particularly an American, stroll any street of this capital of more than five million people. I mean, if al Qaeda doesn't get wind of you, or if one of the Sunni insurgent groups don't descend upon you, or if someone doesn't tip off a Shia militia, then the nearest criminal gang is just going to see dollar signs and scoop you up. Honestly, Wolf, you'd barely last 20 minutes out there. I don't know what part of Neverland Senator McCain is talking about when he says we can go strolling in Baghdad.

Now that's what I call "straight talk."

George W. Bush

Of course, John McCain isn't the only person living in Happytown, Iraq. Last week Our Great Leader announced that things really are going swimmingly over there and cited as proof the work of, er, two Iraqi bloggers. That's right, folks - George is suddenly all aflutter about those "rumors on the Internets." According to the Associated Press:

"They have bloggers in Baghdad, just like we've got here," Bush told the National Cattlemen's Beef Association.

Then he began to quote: "Displaced families are returning home, marketplaces are seeing more activity, stores that were long shuttered are now reopening. We feel safer about moving in the city now. Our people want to see this effort succeed."

George didn't actually mention who these anonymous bloggers were, but later that day the White House revealed that they are Mohammed and Omar Fadhil, two brothers from Baghdad, who run the blog IraqTheModel.

The Fadhil's blog has been massively pro-invasion since the war began, which is probably why, in 2004, they got to meet Bush in the Oval Office. It's probably also why they get published on the op-ed page of the Wall Street Journal, which, incidentally, is where Bush got his quotes from.

So, does the Fadhils' optimism match that of other Iraqi bloggers? Er, hardly. Will Bunch of the Philadelphia Daily News randomly sampled several Iraqi blogs last week and discovered the following:

"It takes a lot to get the energy and resolution to blog lately. I guess it's mainly because just thinking about the state of Iraq leaves me drained and depressed." -- Baghdad Burning

"Iraq is destroyed. People are displaced. No more schools are open. No more jobs offered. Markets are no longer welcoming customers. Barbers are killed. There is no longer water and electricity. There is no safety. People sleep with guns next to their pillows. Is that what people were dreaming of?" -- Treasure of Baghdad

"It was another turning point to our group when D was kidnapped from his house. Thankfully he was returned back safely because at that time, a year ago, kidnapped people were delivered safely after receiving the ransom money. Nowadays they take the money and throw the body in Tigris." -- Baghdad Chronicles

"...the situation is always getting worse. one day ago, we heard about 2 big explosions each hour. We didn't even fix the kitchen's window that broke last month. because every day we heard an explosion which is big enough to break the window over again." -- hnk's blog

I guess these bloggers won't be expecting invites to the White House any time soon.

Lurita Doan And Friends

Last week the White House began to give off a decidedly eggy odor as yet another scandal was revealed by the Washington Post. The Post reported that "The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee sought more information yesterday about a presentation by a White House aide given to political appointees at the General Services Administration that discussed targeting 20 Democratic congressional candidates in the next election."

The General Services Administration is - or at least was - a strictly independent, non-partisan government agency whose mission is to help federal agencies "better serve the public by offering, at best value, superior workplaces, expert solutions, acquisition services, and management policies." But of course, Karl Rove never met a government agency he couldn't politicize, so in January Rove's deputy, J. Scott Jennings, held a videoconference with GSA employees, which, according to the Post, "included 2006 election results and listed the names of Democratic candidates considered beatable and Republican lawmakers thought to need help."

Just one problem - the 1939 Hatch Act makes it illegal for federal employees to engage in partisan political activity. So when Waxman's commitee questioned GSA chief Lurita Doan at a hearing last week, you probably won't be surprised to learn that she "said at least 10 times that she does not recall asking employees to help the GOP or does not recall details about the presentation," although she does remember that they had cookies at the meeting. Think Progress has the video.

Here are some choice shots from Jennings' presentation:

Believe it or not, Doan actually said at the hearing that she didn't want to "speculate on what was intended by Mr. Jennings" in these slides. Er, did she think they were just for entertainment purposes? I guess she must have been disappointed when Jennings didn't put up the pictures of his family vacation to Disneyland.

The Pentagon

The Associated Press reported last week that the Pentagon was fully aware of the circumstances surrounding Pat Tillman's death but decided it would be a public relations disaster if the truth got out, so they covered it up instead. Great idea. Because now that the truth has come out, it's a real public relations coup, isn't it?

Just seven days after Pat Tillman's death, a top general warned there were strong indications that the NFL star-turned-soldier did not die in an ambush in Afghanistan, according to a memo obtained by The Associated Press. But it was not until a month afterward that the Pentagon told the public and grieving family members the truth - that Tillman was mistakenly killed in Afghanistan by his comrades.

The memo reinforces suspicions that the Pentagon was more concerned with sparing officials from embarrassment than with leveling with Tillman's family.

Believe it or not, the Pentagon originally said that Tillman's family was not told the truth for five weeks because of "procedural errors." Procedural errors?

Let me get this straight. The top brass knew that Tillman had died in a "friendly fire" incident, they even warned the president to avoid specifically mentioning the manner of his death, they showed up at his nationally televised funeral and allowed the charade to continue, and they didn't admit the truth to his family until a month later. And that's a "procedural error," is it?

Seriously, is there anything this administration won't lie about?

John Boehner

And finally, last week the White House honored the Tuskegee Airmen, the all-black fighter-pilot unit who fought so courageously during World War II, at a special event in the U.S. Capitol building. All went well until House Minority John Boehner took to the stage and demonstrated his great respect for the airmen by repeatedly mispronouncing the word "Tuskegee" (he pronounced it "Tuskejee").

According to the Washington Times:

During his short speech to those in attendance, Boehner six times mispronounced the group's name as the "Tusk-E-gee," eliciting audible groans from the front to the back of the Capitol Rotunda. One woman standing in front of me leaned to her companion and whispered, "This is so embarrassing, and he's from my state."

Perhaps making matters worse, almost all of Boehner's speech focused on the general accomplishments of American forces in World War II, paying little direct respect to those in the room.

As if to remove any doubt about the verbal kerfuffle, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell took the stage and began his speech by pronouncing the group's name correctly, while making a clear, if passing, glance in Boehner's direction. Immediately afterward, the entire crowd broke into applause at the correction.

Nice work, Boner. Oh, sorry, did I pronounce your name wrong?

See you next week!

-- EarlG