The Top Ten Conservative Idiots (No. 54)
February 11, 2002
Kill the Traitorous Liberals Edition

Even though we're in the middle of another DU fund drive, we're still giving away a ten-pack of Conservative Idiots ABSOLUTELY FREE! In the number one slot, Ann Coulter (who can't possibly believe the stuff that comes out of her own mouth) turns up the hateful conservative rhetoric. Paul O'Neill (2) gets weepy. Enron (3) is caught in yet another lie. Meanwhile, Charles Pickering (6) gives us a lesson in compassionate conservative bigotry, and Antonin Scalia (8) shows a little compassionate conservative megalomania. Bringing up the rear, Rush (10) takes on the liberal New England Patriots. (Here's what the icons mean.)

Ann Coulter
It's been a few weeks since we had a good Coulterism, so here's her latest in a long line of laughable tirades. At the Conservative Political Action Conference last week, Ann said "When contemplating college liberals, you really regret once again that John Walker is not getting the death penalty. We need to execute people like John Walker in order to physically intimidate liberals, by making them realize that they can be killed too. Otherwise they will turn out to be outright traitors." You know, she could be on to something here - I mean, take that 15-year-old who crashed his plane into the Bank of America building in Tampa. Obviously a classic example of liberal parenting. Or perhaps not. But anyway, poor Ann has now reached a point where she is simply using John Walker Lindh to advocate death to liberals. Well, it is one of America's founding principals, isn't it? Intimidate and/or kill those who disagree with you. I'm sure it says so right there in the Constitution.

Paul O'Neill
Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill used to be known for his multi-million dollar fortune. Now he's known for crying like a little girl in the middle of Senate Budget Committee hearings. Poor Paul had his ass handed to him by Senator Robert Byrd last week, when Byrd spent 15 minutes haranguing O'Neill over his new budget document. According to the Washington Post, "O'Neill, 66, paused about 20 seconds before answering, his eyes appearing to glisten. His voice cracked. He took deep breaths between sentences, repeatedly clenching his hands, seemingly trying to collect his thoughts and hold his temper." There, there, Paul. Don't let the nasty man upset you. Afterwards, when O'Neill was asked if there were tears in his eyes, he replied, "That was fire." Bullshit, Paulie! That was you sobbing for your mommy in the middle of an important government meeting. Boo hoo!

Enron
George W. Bush said that he was going to run this country like a business. We strongly suspect that the business he was referring to was Enron. But in amongst all the book-cooking and paper-shredding, it appears that Enron also managed to partake in some good old-fashioned farce. Some employees have recently come forward to spill the beans on a little bait-and-switch activity which took place in 1998 so that Enron could impress Wall Street analysts. Apparently Enron rushed around 75 employees - including secretaries and sales representatives - to an empty trading floor at Enron's Houston headquarters, and made them act as if they were selling energy contracts. Computers and phones were brought in, and the employees were instructed to pretend to type or talk on the phone while the Wall Street analysts were ushered through. This fraudulent activity apparently only took ten minutes, which was enough to convince the visiting analysts that Enron was going places in a hurry. One former employee said, "They told us it was very important for us to make a good impression and if the analysts saw that the operation was disorganized, they wouldn't give the company a good [credit] rating." An analyst who was shown around that day remembers that, "The trading floor looked fully staffed. There was a presentation in a little auditorium right where EES was operating. It looked like people were very busy. We didn't interact with any of the employees on the floor." What a beautiful example of unrestrained corporate capitalism. Doesn't this kind of activity make you wonder why there are still fools out there calling for stricter corporate oversight? They just don't understand that this is the way big business should work.

The Office of National Drug Control Policy
Does anyone have any idea why the Bush administration spent $3.5 million on anti-drug commercials during the Super Bowl? It sure as hell wasn't to encourage people to stop taking drugs. The commercials, which preached that American drug users are funding terrorists, were designed solely to further demonize drug use (illegal, of course - not state-approved narcotics such as Oxycontin or, um, Xanax) among non-drug users. Interestingly, the commercials made no mention of what kind of drugs are funding terrorists. Does this mean that if you grow your own weed for personal consumption you're giving money to terrorists? Of course it does, you fool. Yes, the administration is using these commercials to make people believe that if you fire up a blunt, then you might as well have flown those planes into the World Trade Center yourself. "It's so important for Americans to know that the traffic in drugs finances the work of terror, sustaining terrorists, that terrorists use drug profits to fund their cells to commit acts of murder. If you quit drugs, you join the fight against terror in America," said Dubya himself. But wait a second - while we're on the subject of where terrorists get their money and weapons, shouldn't we perhaps mention that it was Ronald Reagan and Poppy Bush who supplied advanced weaponry to the Afghan regime? And if my memory serves me correctly, I believe they also sold weapons to Iran (a member of the "axis of evil" if I'm not mistaken) in order to fund right-wing militants in Central America. Remind me again who's helping terrorists? However, in retrospect I think that these ads have a point. That's why from now on I'll only be buying Afghan heroin, so I can help rebuild their economy and show my support for the new government.

George W. Bush
Funny how during Bush's election campaign he claimed time after time that he would be the complete opposite of Bill Clinton (and in some ways he was right - recession, war, deficits, etc, etc.) And yet one of the Bush administration's staple defenses in the Enron case is, "well, what we did was no different from what the Clinton administration did." Oh really? But I thought that everything Clinton ever did was wrong? And something tells me that if Clinton was president right now there would be special prosecutors digging through his trash cans as we speak. But of course, special prosecutors are not warranted in this case. Why? Because Bush says so. "This is a business problem. And my Justice Department is going to investigate, and if there's wrongdoing, we'll hold them accountable for mistreatment of employees and shareholders," he said last week. Well that's nice. We're sure that "his" Justice Department (that would be the one headed by John Ashcroft, who had to recuse himself because of his dealings with Enron) will be able to root out corruption all the way to the highest level. In fact, the Justice Department has already said that a special prosecutor is not warranted, so we can all rest easy knowing that this "business problem" will soon be sorted out, and the "wrongdoers" will be "held accountable." Yeah, right.

Charles Pickering
Want some idea of what Bush's nominees to the U.S. Supreme Court are going to be like? Consider Bush's pick for the U.S. Court of Appeals, who seems to think cross-burning and shooting at people are both A-OK. Back in 1994, U.S. District Judge Charles Pickering presided over the trial of Daniel Swan. According to the LA Times, Mr. Swan "drove his pickup to the home of a mixed-race couple and joined two other men in burning an 8-foot-tall cross. The men also shouted racial epithets and fired shots into the house. One of the bullets narrowly missed the couple's baby." Pickering felt that Swan's seven year sentence (the sentence called-for by the federal sentencing guidelines) was too harsh, so he took the unusual and unethical action of privately meeting with prosecutors and threatening to order a new trial unless they agreed to a lesser sentence. We all know that Republicans are the law-and-order party; But I guess I didn't realize that the lock-em-up-and-throw-away-the-key rhetoric was only for minorities. If you're a drunk, white racist with a gun and a burning cross, you can expect to receive a little conservative compassion.

Dennis Hastert
In a surprise revelation last week, Dennis Hastert actually told the truth about Campaign Finance Reform. It seems that all the reasons Republicans have given for not passing a CFR bill are mere chicken-feed compared to this whopper: according to the Associated Press, "Hastert privately cautioned Republicans on Wednesday that passage of campaign finance legislation could doom the GOP's grip on power in the House." Yup, that's right. None of this crap about diminishing individual rights or compromising constitutional freedoms - this is about power, baby, and the GOP are afraid that if they can't buy their way to the top by performing favors in exchange for massive corporate donations, then the people are going to finally wake up and vote them out. And what a shame that would be.

Antonin Scalia
Poor Antonin Scalia. It seems he is not satisfied simply being able to decide who gets to be president of the United States. Now he also wants to decide who gets to be a judge. It was revealed last week that Antonin thinks judges who oppose the death penalty should resign. Apparently holding an opinion that is out of step with Justice Scalia is proof enough that one is incapable of deciding cases in a fair and balanced manner. Of course, we all know that Nino Supremo knows a thing or two about deciding cases in a fair and balanced manner; Just ask Al Gore. Scalia went on to say he figures that the Pope has got it all wrong on the death penalty, too. Good thing John Paul II isn't a federal judge. Or a candidate for president…

George W. Bush (again)
Back in Idiots 43 we noted that Georgie-boy was starting to waver on the $20 billion he'd promised New York after September 11th. Well now it seems that George really isn't a man of his word after all. New Yorkers were disgusted to learn last week that Bush has effectively slashed $5 billion from the promised $20 billion, by means of a pathetic accounting trick. It was revealed last week that the administration would simply steal $5 billion from the victims' compensation fund, so that federal funding would only need to provide $15 billion. Unfortunately New Yorkers had been led to believe every step of the way that the two funds would be kept separate. "It was repeatedly made clear that these dollars were not to be included as part of the $20 billion - and we're not going to let that happen," vowed Sen. Chuck Schumer. "This verges on a breach of faith." It's also interesting to note that despite this emergency federal funding, the Bush budget will include a series of cuts to important New York programs, "ranging from Head Start and Drug Free Schools grants to community-development block grants," according to the New York Post. And let's not forget Bush's plan for the near-elimination of the COPS program, which has allowed the hiring of 7,000 new police officers over the years. Just something to think about next time you see anyone connected with the administration wearing an NYPD cap. But still, never mind. We're sure that the missing $5 billion will go towards something useful, like getting rid of the Estate Tax, or giving big corporations a retroactive ten-year tax refund. You know, something useful.

Rush Limbaugh
And finally: The award for dumbest post-Super Bowl sore-losering has got to go to Rush Limbaugh. While the rest of the country was congratulating the Patriots on their stunning victory, The Most Spherical Man in Show Business was accusing them of advancing a "socialist agenda" with their "silly notion of being introduced as a team prior to football games." Is there no limit to conservative paranoia and victimhood? Now it would seem that even teamwork is an example of creeping socialism. Those dastardly liberals have infected the New England Patriots with their cancerous agenda of so-called "teamwork!" Next thing you know they will be nationalizing Microsoft and moving us into collective farms and gulags. For the Love of God, give Tom Brady an individual introduction before the Bolsheviks storm the White House! See you next week!