The
Top Ten Conservative Idiots (No. 146)
March
8, 2004
Vote For Bush Or You're All Going To Die!!!!!
Edition
The
Bush administration appear to have a cunning plan for this
year's election. First they're going to scare the shit out
of you, then they're going to tell you they're the only people
that can keep you safe. I guess they realized this tactic
works pretty well for wife-beaters, so it's a good fit for
the Republican party. Take Dubya's new ads (1,2) which feature
stirring imagery of 9/11 and tout his "strong leadership."
Then compare this to Bush's bizarre aversion (3) to the 9/11
Commission . Are you scared that without Bush to stop them,
terrorists will drop anthrax down your chimneys? Dick Morris
(4) thinks you should be, and Tom Cole (5) thinks you really
should be. But if this doesn't work, Republicans have a plan
B - the RNC (6) is just going to bully TV stations into refusing
to air anti-Bush ads. There's plenty more on the list this
week, so enjoy, and as usual, don't forget the key!
George
W. Bush
Back in January 2002, George W. Bush told
leaders of both parties that when it comes to 9/11, "I
have no ambition whatsoever to use this as a political issue."
I guess this was another one of his famous flubs; what he
actually meant to say was "I have no amibtion
whatsoever. Let's use this as a political issue." Relatives
of the 9/11 victims and members of the International Association
of Fire Fighters - not to mention everybody else with a sense
of decency - were shocked last week when Bush's first election
campaign ads rolled out. Knight-Ridder described
the ads as featuring "the smoldering wreckage of the
twin towers of the World Trade Center, with a flag flying
in the rubble. Another ad shows firefighters carrying a flag-draped
stretcher." Said one relative of a 9/11
victim, "Using my dead friends and my dead brother for
political expediency is dead wrong... It's wrong, it's bad
taste and an insult to the 3,000 people who died on Sept.
11." The weird thing is, the Bush campaign is trying
to play this off like it makes Bush look better. The
general theme of the ads is "steady leadership in time
of change," which is pretty fucking bizarre if you consider
the fact that we were doing okay until President Dunce feel
asleep at the wheel.
George
W. Bush
Speaking of images of flag-draped stretchers, you've got to
admire the way Bush rolls out corpses whenever it's convenient.
You may have noticed that there's been no media coverage of
the bodies of American servicepeople returning from Iraq -
that's because back in December of 2003, the Pentagon told
the families of troops who had been killed in action that
"We're going to do everything in our power to ensure
reverence for their fallen loved one." Fair enough, but
they
probably should have added, "...if it's politically expedient
to do so, of course. On the other hand, if a flag-draped stretcher
can be used in a way that will make George Bush look like
a hero instead of a warmongering buffoon, then we're all for
it." So what does firefighter Tommy Fee of Rescue Squad
270 in Queens think
about Bush's World Trade Center campaign ads? "It's
as sick as people who stole things out of the place,"
he said. Sorry, George, but I think I'm with Tommy on this
one.
George
W. Bush
And if you needed more evidence of Bush's two-faced approach
to 9/11, ask yourself this: why would Bush want to glorify
his 9/11 "achievements" in order to prop up his
claims of "strong and steady leadership," and then
attempt to hamstring the panel which is investigating what
really happened on that dreadful day? According
to the New York Times, the 9/11 Commission "is
refusing to accept strict conditions from the White House
for interviews with President Bush and Vice President Dick
Cheney." Bush and Dick were insisting that they should
only be interviewed for one hour, and only by two members
of the panel. So what the hell is going on here? On the one
hand you've got an ad campaign which uses 9/11 to tout Our
Great Leader's Strong Steady Leadership, and on the other
hand you've got Our Great Leader doing everything he can to
make sure the 9/11 Commission doesn't find out what it needs
to know. This idiot is supposed to be making our country safer?
Oh, and by the way, it's worth noting that Bill Clinton and
Al Gore have already scheduled
meetings with the full panel, without time constraints. Just
a reminder of what real strong, steady leadership looks
like.
Dick
Morris
Some conservative shills are actually coming right out and
saying what the Bush administration doesn't want to admit
- that the only way for them to retain the White House this
year is through terrorizing the voters. In a recent
column, Dick Morris lays out what Bush needs to do to
beat Kerry. The economy? Forget it. Positive ads? Ha! What
Bush needs to do, according to Morris, is "make Americans
understand that the war on terror is still atop our national
agenda. He needs to elevate the sense of threat so
that his advantage as a war president begins to count"
(emphasis added). Yup, if Bush wants to win, he's going to
have to do a better job of frightening the American people
into submission. Is that a series of Orange Alerts I see on
the horizon?
Tom
Cole
And if it still isn't clear that the Republicans are focusing
on scaring people into voting for them because they have nothing
else to run on this year, here's another example:
At a speech to the Canadian County Republican Convention last
week, Republican congressman Tom Cole said, "I promise
you this, if George Bush loses the election, Osama bin Laden
wins the election, it's that simple. It will be interpreted
that way by enemies of the United States around the world...
What
do you think Hitler would have thought if Roosevelt would've
lost the election in 1944? He would have thought American
resolve was [weakening]." Cole defended the comments
on his website,
saying, "I never said and do not believe that a vote
against President Bush is equivalent to a vote for Adolf Hitler."
Oh, okay, fair enough. So you only compared John Kerry
to Osama bin Laden then. Well, I guess that's just dandy.
Is this really the best the Republicans can do? I guess
running on Bush's record on the economy, Iraq, education,
jobs and the environment are all out... yup, better stick
with the fearmongering instead. Although when it comes to
national security, I think I'd rather take a genuine war hero
over an incoherent AWOL chickenhawk who didn't stop drinking
till he was forty years old. Just my personal opinion.
The
RNC
While the Republicans will be running on fear this year, the
Democrats will be running on... well, you won't find out,
if the RNC gets
its way. The Republican party is currently in the process
of pressuring the FEC into creating new regulations which
will severely curtail the fundraising and spending activities
of anti-Bush organizations. But the lack of any decision by
the FEC so far hasn't stopped the RNC from sending
letters to around 250 TV stations urging them not to run
the ads by MoveOn. The letters say in part that the stations
have a "responsibility to the viewing public, and to
your licensing agency, to refrain from complicity in any illegal
activity" - never mind that the FEC hasn't yet given
in to RNC pressure to come up with new regulations. So while
Team Bush will be free to spend $200 million this year saturating
the airwaves with tall tales of Bush's "strong, steady
leadership" - oh, and don't forget, vote Republican or
you're all going to die - people who don't support Bush are
in danger of finding themselves hard-pressed to respond, all
because of the strongarm tactics of the Republican National
Committee. Let's recap... scaring the shit out of the American
people - check. Hobbling the investigation into 9/11 - check.
Comparing John Kerry to Osama bin Laden - check. Making back-door
deals to ensure that a Democratic response is regulated out
of existence - check. Trying to silence MoveOn by telling
TV stations that their ads are illegal - check. Now I'm just
waiting for the Republicans to tell me that Democrats will
do anything to win.
Dick
Cheney
Dick Cheney has been echoing the sentiments of Our Great Leader
recently, adding his support to a Constitutional amendment
banning gay marriage. One might think that since Cheney's
own daughter is gay, it would be fair to ask him what she
thinks of his decision. Said
he, "One of the most unpleasant aspects of this business
is the extent of which private lives are intruded upon when
these kinds of issues come up." Oh, aha! Well, indeed.
How inconvenient it is for people when their private lives
are intruded upon, by, say, folks who want to, I dunno, change
the frickin' Constitution to discriminate againt them.
Way to go, Dick. You know, I'm sure living in an old nuclear
bunker gives Vice President Crashcart the illusion that this
is still 1953, but perhaps if he stuck his head out a bit
more often he'd realize that the rest of America is living
in the twenty-first century.
The
Bush Administration
Jobs watch: We noted back in Idiots 143
that the Bush adminstration have big plans to create 2.6 million
jobs this year - that's about 220,000 new jobs a month. They
got off to roaring start in January, creating, uh, 112,000
jobs, and it looks like February has been a real barn-burner
of a month, with, um, 21,000 new jobs created. I guess those
tax cuts for the rich are really kicking in now! Especially
when you consider that not a single one of those 21,000 jobs
created in February are private sector jobs. That's right
- they're all a result of government hiring. So, that's no
new private sector jobs in February, and the government's
getting bigger. You just can't beat Bush's strong, steady
leadership.
Diebold
et al
"Computer glitches plague US voters," reported
the UK Guardian last week. "Frozen screens and
malfunctioning computers plagued some voters who tried to
cast electronic ballots in yesterday's 'Super Tuesday' contests
to win the Democratic nomination for this year's US presidential
elections." Yup, 21st century voting caused all kinds
of problems from San Diego to Maryland last week as the machines
rioted. Some people even had to leave and go to different
polling places where they cast their ballots on paper. Ugh,
paper, how undignified. So as we leave the nightmare of hanging
chads behind, rest assured that in 2004 our new system of
electronic machines which freeze, fail to boot, show the wrong
candidates on the screen, don't produce a paper trail, and
are easily susceptible to foul play, will be so much better.
Ted
Olson
And finally, it looks like US Solicitor General Ted Olson
has just figured out what most of the rest of America figured
out long, long ago - there's porn on the Internet. Amusingly,
Olson realized what was going on after he typed "free
porn" into a search engine and got 6 million hits. And
now he wants to - you guessed it - crack
down. The only problem is that according to the ACLU,
the law under which Olson wants to rid the world of pornography
also "criminalizes a depiction or description of nudity,
or even a description of the female breast." But, but,
says Olson, porn is "as easily available to children
as a television remote." So... perhaps parents should
pay the same attention to what their children are looking
at on the Internet as what they're watching on television,
I dunno. After all, if you wouldn't plop your kids down unattended
in front of the Spice Channel for a few hours on a Saturday
night, why would you hand them the keys to the world's biggest
and most discreet dirty bookstore? On an interesting side
note, this report also officially marks Ted Olson as the last
man in America to type "free porn" into an Internet
search engine. See you next week!
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