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The Top 10 Conservative Idiots
(No. 211)
August 22, 2005
Cross Crushing Edition
 With
gas prices reaching record highs conservatives are looking for a
new way to fuel their vehicles, and they seem to have settled on
pure vitriol. Larry Northern (1) demonstrated his support for the
troops, Rush Limbaugh (4) appears to be letting the OxyContin get
the better of him, and Ken Mehlman (7) delved into his bag of campaign
chestnuts. Elsewhere, Bob Taft (2) is in deep doo-doo, Bill Frist
(3) is pro-ignorance, and George W. Bush (5,8) is enjoying his vacation.
Don't forget the key!
 Larry
Northern 
This week we're going to learn some very important lessons about
the new conservative mindset. Here's how it works. When you or I
see this:
...we see a respectful roadside memorial to the almost 1900 American
troops who have died so far in Iraq. But when a conservative idiot
like this guy sees it:
...he decides to memorialize the troops by doing this:
Last week Larry Northern (pictured above) was charged
with criminal mischief after he drove to Camp Casey in the middle
of the night, attached a pipe and chains to the back of his pickup
truck, and drove through the Arlington West memorial, mowing down
crosses in his wake. How about that for supporting the troops?
Larry Northern appears to be typical of this new conservative movement:
they know the war was a mistake; they know that Bush screwed it
up big time - but they just can't admit it. And so they have to
try to tear down anyone who chips away at the denial they've built
up so strongly in their peanut-brains. If that means they have to
drive over a memorial to American troops who have died in Iraq,
so be it.
So for all the lurking conservatives out there, let's run through
this one more time so you guys can understand:
RESPECTING THE TROOPS
With me so far?
DISRESPECTING THE TROOPS
Make sense?
GIANT ASSHOLE
Got it? Good.
 Bob
Taft 
Ah, remember the good old days when Republicans were so keen
to clean up government corruption? Something must have gone terribly
wrong, because now they're being charged with criminal conduct.
Last week, according
to the CBC, Gov. Bob Taft of Ohio was charged with "failing
to report 52 gifts, including dinners, golf games and professional
hockey tickets over four years. The gifts were worth about $5,800,
prosecutors said. Taft had earlier disclosed that he failed to report
some outings but said the omissions were accidental."
This is the first time ever that an Ohio governor has been charged
with a crime while in office. Fortunately though, Taft has decided
that despite the charges, he's not going anywhere. "I want
to make it very clear that I will continue to do the job for which
I have been elected by the people of the state of Ohio," he
said
last week.
The people of the state of Ohio, eh? I wouldn't count too much
on their support. Perhaps somone should remind Bob that his approval
rating is now below
20%. Oh yes - and most county Republican Party chairmen across
Ohio want
his resignation.
Incidentally, Wikipedia says
that Bob Taft can pardon himself unconditionally if he is convicted.
But surely the grand conservative ethics of integrity and personal
responsibiliy would prevent him from ever considering that option.
Yeah right!
 Bill
Frist 
Ladies and gentelemen, step right up! You all know Senator Doctor
Bill First as the man who once said that he didn't
know if you could contract HIV from sweat. You're familiar with
his "she certainly seems to respond to visual stimuli"
diagnosis of Terri Schiavo, when it was later revealed that Schiavo
was completely blind (see Idiots 202).
Sen. Frist recently announced his support for stem-cell research,
which made a lot of radical right-wingers very annoyed
- poor Bill was even snubbed
by Justice Sunday II. I guess he's since realized that if he want
to run for president in 2008 he's going to have put in some serious
time appeasing the wackos - so the good doctor has decided to take
his scientific expertise into the classroom.
Yes, last week Frist became the latest in a string of right-wing
nutjobs to support the idea that so-called "Intelligent Design"
should be taught alongside evolution in science classes. "I
think today a pluralistic society should have access to a broad
range of fact, of science, including faith," he
said. Hey Bill, I've got a fact for you - you're an idiot.
I must say, with Frist's quackery, Bush's lame-duck status, and
the pig-ignorant suggestion that "Intelligent Design"
should be taught in science classes, Washington D.C. is starting
to look like a damn barnyard.
 Rush
Limbaugh 
Two weeks ago I suggested that Rush Limbaugh should start taking
drugs again because he was "much more listenable when he was
high as a kite on 30 Oxycontins a day." (See Idiots 209.)
Well there's some good news! It appears that Rush has taken my advice
and is back on the hillbilly heroin.
On Wednesday last week Rush was shocked and outraged to discover
that people were accusing him of - gasp - lying. Here
he is going straight into victimization mode:
LIMBAUGH: ...apparently there is something that is out
there misreporting what I have said. And of course, these people
are reading that rather than listening to this program and choosing
to believe it.
Apparently, what's out there is that I said that Cindy Sheehan
is no different than Bill Burkett, that Bill Burkett lied and
Cindy Sheehan lied. They're actually out there, people saying
that I am accusing Cindy Sheehan of making up the fact that she
had a son and making up the fact that her son died in Iraq. And
of course, I've never said this.
Hmm. Perhaps Rush needs his memory refreshing. Here's what he said
48
hours earlier, on Monday of last week:
LIMBAUGH: I mean, Cindy Sheehan is just Bill Burkett.
Her story is nothing more than forged documents. There's nothing
about it that's real, including the mainstream media's glomming
onto it. It's not real. It's nothing more than an attempt. It's
the latest effort made by the coordinated left.
Wheee! Come on now - the guy has got to be high as a kite.
 George
W. Bush 
Since Our Great Leader is apparently too cowardly to come out
of his hidey-hole, this week we're going to take a look at George
W. Bush by the numbers (numbers are accurate at time of writing).
| 1863 |
Number of U.S. soldiers
killed
in Iraq since the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom. |
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|
| 57 |
Number of U.S. soldiers
killed
in Iraq since Bush went on vacation earlier this month. |
| |
|
| 35 |
Approximate price of a barrel
of oil (in U.S. dollars) in 2000 when Bush said,
"What I think the president ought to do is he ought to
get on the phone with the OPEC cartel and say we expect you
to open your spigots. ... if in fact there is collusion amongst
big oil, he ought to intercede there as well. I used to be in
the oil business. ... And so I understand what can happen in
the marketplace." |
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|
| 63.59 |
Price of a barrel of oil
(in U.S. dollars) last
Thursday. |
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|
| 1.52 |
Average price for a gallon
of gasoline in September
2000. |
| |
|
| 2.55 |
Average price for a gallon
of gasoline in the U.S. last
week. |
| |
|
| 49 |
Bush's overall approval
rating on August 2 (Rasmussen) |
| |
|
| 43 |
Bush's overall approval
rating on August 18 (Rasmussen) |
| |
|
| 338 |
Number of days
Bush has spent on vacation during his presidency, a new record.
The previous record was held by Ronald Reagan, who spent 335
days on vacation during his eight-year presidency. Bush has
topped
that in just four-and-a-half years. |
With stats like this, Bush will be lucky if he's still on the team
by the end of the season.
 John
Roberts 
With everyone's attention currently focused on Crawford and
the Iraq war, Supreme Court nominee John Roberts continues to fly
under the radar. But there were several pieces of disturbing news
last week which further indicate that Roberts is not the right man
for the job.
According
to Newsday, "In internal White House memos written in the
1980s, John G. Roberts often showed his conservative edge."
Conservative edge, eh? Let's see what Roberts wrote:
In some memos, for example, he made jokes about Hispanics and
women. For a 1983 Reagan interview in Spanish Today, he said,
"I think this audience would be pleased that we are trying
to grant legal status to their illegal amigos."
He also joked in 1982 about Kickapoo Indians, saying "a
group of them made Newsweek by choosing to live in squalid conditions
beneath the International Bridge in Eagle Pass, Texas, rather
than their Mexican homeland."
In a 1984 memo advising on how to respond to an eccentric letter
to his boss, Fred Fielding, asking if all property had been placed
in a public trust, Roberts began, "One Ramon L. Rivera of
Los Angeles (where else?) ..."
"Conservative edge?" Sounds more like Andrew Dice Clay
to me. Other documents brought Roberts' views on women to light.
According
to the New York Times:
In an Aug. 2, 1984, memo, Roberts responded to a former member
of the Federal Reserve's Board of Governors, John E. Sheehan,
who had written President Reagan to suggest an election-year strategy
that Roberts described as closing the ''so-called 'gender gap.'"
Reagan was more popular among men than women.
Sheehan's plan called for then-Chief Justice Warren Burger, who
was nearing retirement, to step down soon after the 1984 Republican
convention and be appointed as an ambassador.
"The president would elevate Justice O'Connor two weeks
later, and then name yet another woman to succeed O'Connor two
weeks after that. Presto! The gender gap vanishes," Roberts
wrote.
"Any appointments the president may make to the Supreme
Court will not be based on such crass political considerations,"
Roberts advised in a memo to his boss, Fred Fielding.
And again according
to Newsday, Roberts wrote, "Some might question whether
encouraging homemakers to become lawyers contributes to the common
good."
Meanwhile, a file of Roberts' papers on affirmative action has
mysteriously gone
missing from the Reagan Presidential Library. Well, I say "mysteriously"
but the file disappeared after it was "reviewed" by two
White House lawyers. So reading "mysteriously" as "deliberately"
and "reviewed" as "shredded" may get you closer
to the mark.
Ken Mehlman 
RNC chief Ken Mehlman was the guest of honor at the Ohio County
Republican Party Lincoln Day Dinner last week and he brought with
him an uplifting
message of confidence and hope. Democrats, he said, "used to
tell people you have nothing to fear but fear itself. Now they have
nothing to offer but fear itself."
You know, he could be onto something here. When the Bush administration
came to power, who was it that told them in early 2001 that terrorism
should be their number one priority? That's right, it was Bill Clinton
- A DEMOCRAT. Thank goodness Bush & Co. didn't buy into his
left-wing fearmongering.
And who was it that told the Republican National Convention in
2004 that John Kerry would so decimate the military, we'd be defending
ourselves with spitballs? Why, it was Zell Miller - A DEMOCRAT.
It certainly doesn't get much scarier than Zell Miller.
And sure, there may have been one or two times between 2000 and
2004 that the Bush administration mentioned mustard-gas-spraying
unmanned aerial vehicles and uranium from Niger and weapons of mass
destruction in the areas north, south, east and west of Tikrit,
and I have a feeling there was something in there about mushroom
clouds and biological weapons and possibly an axis of evil and so
on and so forth, but come on now. The GOP weren't trying to scare
anyone into giving them what they wanted, they were just trying
to be helpful.
 George
W. Bush 
It seems that with his approval ratings in the toilet and support
for the war at an all-time low, Our Great Leader is going back to
what he knows best: 9/11.
This week George W. Bush is planning a "weeklong push to remind
Americans why he believes the United States must stay on the offensive
in Iraq and not bow to terrorists," according
to the UK Guardian, and that push begins with planned
9/11 "reminders" which will culminate presumably in the
Pentagon's America Supports You Freedom March (see Idiots 210).
Not that Iraq had anything to do with 9/11, but hey, you know the
drill by now. And not that the Bush administration wants you to
worry about terrorism. Remember, according to Ken Mehlman Republicans
don't do fearmongering.
 Arnold
Schwarzenegger 
Pump up Sacramento? More like pimp out Sacramento. Governor
Groping Austrian Beefcake was in hot water last week when it was
revealed that he failed to declare a $250,000 contribution to one
of his pet charities from American Media Inc.
According
to the San Francisco Chronicle, "The tabloid publisher's
charitable contribution to the fitness group was required by its
2003 contract with Schwarzenegger in which he was named executive
editor of American Media's Muscle & Fitness and Flex magazines.
... Critics charge that the failure to file may violate section
82015 of the California government code, which requires elected
officials to file reports detailing any donation over $5,000 made
at their behest or solicited by an agent on their behalf."
But that's not all - it was also revealed last week that American
Media paid actress Gigi Goyette $20,000 to keep quiet about an affair
with Schwarzenegger just a few days before he announced his intention
to run for governor.
Coindicentally, Arnie is also getting paid up the butt by American
Media. Again according to the San Francisco Chronicle, "The
governor's business ties to American Media have come under scrutiny
since it was revealed last month that he could earn more than $1
million a year as executive editor of the muscle magazines. The
governor had said in 2003 when the arrangement with the publisher
was first announced that he would donate his $1.5 million salary
as editor to the governor's council on fitness. But he did not disclose
that he also could earn advertising-related revenue, which the publisher
estimated was upward of $5 million over the life of the five-year
deal."
So props to Arnie - it normally takes politicians years of practice
to rack up these kinds of ethics violations, but he's done it in
record time.
 Gary
Muchler
And finally, they're a dwindling number and may soon be extinct,
so let's take a quick look at the conservative counter-protestors
who have been voicing their support for the war. You've already
met memorial vandal Larry Northern, but now I'm proud to present
ardent Bush supporter Gary Muchler. Here he is in Wilkes-Barre PA,
trying to snatch a sign at a rally for Cindy Sheehan:
Just a thought, but instead of assaulting peaceful protestors perhaps
Gary could sign up for the military. He loves the war, he's already
got the camo pants (which the Army would be delighted to show him
how to belt properly), and he'd get into shape right quick. C'mon
Gary, sign up today!
Gary joins the elite ranks of the Pro-War Rogues' Gallery, which
features previous honorees "The Unknown Patriot":
...and of course, "Morans Guy":
See you next week!
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