The Top 10 Conservative Idiots, No. 288

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The Top 10 Conservative Idiots, No. 288

Edited on Sun Apr-22-07 11:37 PM by EarlG

The Top 10 Conservative Idiots, No. 288

April 23, 2007
Two Thumbs Down Edition

Alberto Gonzales (1) gets a raspberry, Karl Rove (2) changes his tune, and John McCain (3) is off his rocker. Elsewhere, Rush Limbaugh (5) flips out, George W. Bush (7) has no clue what's going on, and Tommy Thompson (10) takes faux pas to a whole new level. Enjoy, and don't forget the key!

Alberto Gonzales

In case you missed Alberto Gonzales's electrifying testimony before the House Judicary Committee last week, he's been getting some rave reviews. Here are the highlights:

"A pathetic performance!" -- The Capital Times

"Mr. Gonzales came across as a dull-witted apparatchik incapable of running one of the most important departments in the executive branch!" -- The New York Times

"The overwhelming impression Mr. Gonzales left was that of an out-of-touch executive who had little idea why these prosecutors were fired in his name!" -- The Dallas Morning News

"Gonzales said more than 70 times that he could not recall the details of the prosecutors' firing!" -- The Houston Chronicle

"Attorney General Alberto Gonzales looked like an ineffective, and at times clueless, leader!" -- The Seattle Times

"Really deplorable!" -- Sen. John Cornyn, (R-TX)

"Why is your story changing!" -- Sen. Chuck Grassley, (R-IA)

"I believe the best way to put this behind us is your resignation!" -- Sen. Tom Coburn, (R-OK)

But let's be fair. It wasn't all bad.

"He has done a fantastic job in the Department of Justice!" -- The White House

Karl Rove

Last week Karl Rove gave a speech at the Mount Union Theater in Alliance, Ohio. After he'd finished regurgitating his stale Iraq talking points (we're fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them over here, etc.) Mr. Rove was kind enough to hold a Q&A session. According to the Akron Beacon Journal:

In a question-and-answer period after his speech, Rove was asked whose idea it was to start a pre-emptive war in Iraq.

"I think it was Osama bin Laden's," Rove replied.

Oh, really? It was Osama bin Laden's idea to trump up intelligence falsely linking himself to Saddam Hussein? It was Osama bin Laden's idea to use that false intelligence to whip the nation into a war frenzy? It was Osama bin Laden's idea to tell Americans that Iraq had vast stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons and was capable of using them to strike the United States within a matter of hours?

So, how long has Osama bin Laden been in charge of U.S. foreign policy?

Give Karl a break though - it seems this unfortunate remark was simply brought on by war fatigue. He continued:

"I wish the war were over," Rove said. "I wish the war never existed... History has given us a challenge. It is a challenge which we will at our own peril ignore."

Oh come on, don't be like that. If the war had never happened, you wouldn't have been able to get away with this:

Or this:

But let's be fair - Karl Rove has always been a big opponent of the Iraq war. According to Think Progress:

In January 2002, Rove told conservatives, "Americans trust the Republicans to do a better job of keeping our communities and our families safe... We can also go to the country on this issue because they trust the Republican Party to do a better job of protecting and strengthening America's military might and thereby protecting America."

In June 2002, Rove was giving PowerPoint presentations candidates advising them to "focus on the war" in their fall campaigns.

In August 2002, Rove was chairing the White House Iraq Group, whose mission was to "develop a strategy for publicizing the White House's assertion that Saddam Hussein posed a threat to the United States."

In September 2002, Time reported that when friends asked whether Bush planned to invade Iraq, Rove was been known to reply, "Let me put it this way: If you want to see Baghdad, you'd better visit soon."

I have to say, my biggest worry right now isn't terrorists - it's that one of these days Karl Rove will accidentally tell the truth about something and the universe will explode.

John McCain

The pressure of being this year's biggest loser must be getting to John McCain - he's started singing about bombing Iran at campaign appearances. According to Raw Story:

At a stop on Senator John McCain's "Straight Talk" tour, the 2008 presidential candidate decided to respond to a question with some bars of a song, but it is unlikely that Arizona's Republican senator will be reaching the final rounds of Fox's "American Idol."

Speaking at Murrells Inlet VFW Hall in South Carolina, McCain was asked when he thought the US Military might "send an air mail message to Tehran."

"McCain began his answer by changing the words to a popular Beach Boys song," the Georgetown Times reports.

"'Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran,' he sang to the tune of Barbara Ann," the paper notes.

McCain spokesman Kevin McLaughlin said later, "He was just trying to add a little humor to the event." Sure thing - because after four years of disastrous war in the Middle East, there's nothing funnier than hearing a presidential candidate joking about starting another one. No wonder MoveOn has made an ad featuring the singing senator's gut-busting antics.

I should note that McCain didn't actually sing the entire line, "Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran" - he only got as far as "Bomb bomb bomb..." before stopping. But that's okay, he's old. He probably forgot the words.

Massacre Enthusiasts

Last Monday everything stopped as the horrible news of the massacre at Virginia Tech trickled in. Of course, conservative idiots coudn't even wait for the bodies to cool before trying to make political hay out of the tragedy. Take John Derbyshire for example, who just one day after the murders wrote from his quarterback's armchair:

Where was the spirit of self-defense here? Setting aside the ludicrous campus ban on licensed conceals, why didn't anyone rush the guy? It's not like this was Rambo, hosing the place down with automatic weapons. He had two handguns for goodness' sake - one of them reportedly a .22.

At the very least, count the shots and jump him reloading or changing hands. Better yet, just jump him. Handguns aren't very accurate, even at close range. I shoot mine all the time at the range, and I still can't hit squat. I doubt this guy was any better than I am.

Interesting logic - John Derbyshire can't hit squat with his handgun, therefore the 32 people that Cho Seung-Hui managed to kill with his handguns must have been cowards. (This seems to be a bit of a pattern for Mr. Derbyshire - lest we forget, he was last seen in the Top 10 belittling the British soldiers who were captured by Iran.)

So how did Cho Seung-Hui get so good with his handguns? By 3pm on the afternoon of the shootings, ambulance-chaser Jack Thompson and TV doctor Phil McGraw already had the answer: violent video games were to blame. Thompson and McGraw both appeared on various cable news shows to promote the theory - without any evidence whatsoever - that Cho Seung-Hui had trained on "murder simulators." A few days later, according to MSNBC:

...authorities released a search warrant listing the items found in Cho's dorm room. Not a single video game, console or gaming gadget was on the list, though a computer was confiscated. And in an interview with Chris Matthews of "Hardball," Cho's university suite-mate said he had never seen Cho play video games.

Perhaps there's a more likely explanation for where Cho learned to use his guns with such skill...

Investigators also say Cho practiced shooting at a firing range in Roanoke, about 40 miles from the campus, in mid-March.

Nah, can't have been the real-life training. Must have been the video games.

Elsewhere, cartoonist Mike Lester managed to wait a whole 48 hours before conjuring up this charming image:

Tasteful. And lastly, Rush Limbaugh weighed in on the affair by announcing that:

If this Virginia Tech shooter had an ideology, what do you think it was? This guy had to be a liberal. You start railing against the rich and all this other -- this guy's a liberal. He was turned into a liberal somewhere along the line. So it's a liberal that committed this act. Now, the drive-bys will read on a website that I'm attacking liberalism by comparing this guy to them. That's exactly what they do every day, ladies and gentlemen. I'm just pointing out a fact.

Is it just me, or does Rush Limbaugh become more irrelevant by the day?

Rush Limbaugh

I guess its not just me. Last week Limbaugh went on a rambling rant about the real culprits behind the firing of Don Imus. Can you guess who it is?

The ironical thing about this is, or the ironic thing is, that Imus is no conservative -- most of his guests were liberal -- but he was critical of Hillary. And so he had to go. This is an election year. Clinton Inc., you get on their case, they're going to take you out. They're going to do what they can to marginalize you or do whatever. I've seen a couple stories I was reading over the weekend, that the Clinton team saw their opportunity.

Ah yes, the Clintons. But they're not the only ones to blame. Rush continued:

And when I say the Clinton team, I include Media Matters for America, this supposed tax-exempt media watchdog group. It's just an arm of the Democrat Party. They have an agenda. They are tax-exempt, and they're doing nothing but advancing a political agenda. And they are George Soros-funded. This is clearly part of the Democrat Party machine.

(snip)

This is Stalinist, folks. This is an attack on certain kinds of information that is protected by a template which says, "All conservative information is misinformation. It is reported by liars and racists," and that's the foundation under which they all proceed, and they're all in on it.

Whoa, easy big fella! Sounds like someone needs to take a chill pill.

Er, I mean, someone needs to calm down a bit.

Dana Rohrabacher

Now it's time for a quick check on how America-loving Bush-supporter Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) is getting on lately. Let's just say he seems a little tense:

On April 17, we witnessed Representative Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) unleash his unbridled anger onto members of the European Parliament’s committee on Human rights who were invited guests and witnesses in the House Foreign Affairs European subcommittee hearing.

(snip)

Rohrabacher said if European countries did not cooperate with the United States and go along with whatever the Bush administration wanted, they were condemning their countrymen to death by not using extralegal methods to imprison terrorist suspects. When citizens attending the hearing, including members of Codepink Women for Peace and Veterans for Peace, heard Rohrabacher's statement, they collectively groaned. Then, much to the shock and disbelief of everyone in the hearing room, Rorhbacker said to those who had expressed displeasure at his statements: "I hope it's your family members that die when terrorists strike."

Well that couldn't be clearer. Thanks, Dana.

George W. Bush

How isolated and out of touch has George W. Bush become? Well, last week he said that "pulling out of Iraq too soon would trigger a bloodbath," according to the Washington Post. Hmm. A bloodbath, you say?

Our Great Leader drew upon his extensive combat experience during the Vietnam War to illustrate the problem:

"I want to remind you that after Vietnam, after we left, millions of people lost their life," Bush said here when an audience member asked about comparisons between Vietnam and Iraq. "The Khmer Rouge, for example, in Cambodia. And my concern is there would be a parallel. . . . The same thing would happen. There would be the slaughter of a lot of innocent life.

Hmm. The slaughter of innocent life, you say? Er, hello?

Meanwhile, George met with Democratic leaders Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid last week, where the following "Jeez, what a dumbass" moment occurred:

After weeks of scorn from the White House and its political allies, Speaker Nancy Pelosi told colleagues she was surprised to hear from President Bush that he hadn’t personally criticized her trip to Syria earlier this month.

The exchange occurred Wednesday in a side conversation between the president and speaker when Pelosi attended a meeting at the White House on the Iraq war funding bill. The California Democrat made no public mention of the matter when she spoke to reporters afterwards, but she has since told other Democrats of the incident and that the president had accepted her offer to brief him on her trip.

(snip)

"He just said, 'I didn't criticize your trip to Syria,'" Pelosi said. "In the course of the conversation, he said, 'I didn't criticize your trip.'"

Well, technically George, I suppose that's true. Although your vice president did ("I'm obviously disappointed. I think it is, in fact, bad behavior on her part." -- Dick Cheney), and your press secretary did ("It sends the wrong message" -- Dana Perino), and your wife's press secretary did ("It's unfortunate that she took this unilateral trip that we only see as counterproductive." -- Gordon Johndroe).

As you can see, Dubya's handlers seem to be keeping the old bubble walls nice and thick these days.

Todd Rokita

Indiana's secretary of state, Todd Rokita, gave a speech last week at a Republican party dinner. During the speech, Rokita decided to touch on issues of race and diversity. According to the Indianapolis Star:

Rokita said Monday that his overall message about the black vote was meant to encourage the Republican Party to continue its efforts to diversify, in part by continuing to reach out to blacks.

Sounds reasonable. So how did that work out?

According to the Washington Times-Herald, the local newspaper in that county, Rokita questioned in his speech why so many blacks vote for the Democratic Party.

"How can that be?" Rokita was quoted as saying. "90 to 10. Who's the master and who's the slave in that relationship?"

Oh dear. Better luck next time, Todd.

The Bush Administration

From the department of "why am I not surprised":

A federal government plan for responding to emergencies will not be ready in time for the approaching hurricane season, officials have told Congress.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency, which bore the brunt of criticism following the 2005 season when Hurricanes Katrina and Rita devastated the Gulf Coast, sent an advisory to Congress last week acknowledging it will not meet its June 1 deadline for issuing a new national response plan.

The Atlantic hurricane season is officially from June 1 to Nov. 30, according to the Web site of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory. Nearly all hurricane and tropical storm activity occurs in that six-month period. Early September is the most-active period.

Nice going, guys. After all, you've only had two years to prepare. So what is FEMA going to do in lieu of a plan?

The FEMA advisory said development of the new plan had been delayed by unexpected issues, and more time is needed to resolve them. No new target date was set. In the meantime, a modified version of the plan in place during Katrina will be followed.

What, the plan that left thousands of people stranded for days without food or water, while others drowned in their attics? At least tell me you've got somebody capable in charge.

The White House ordered Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff to conduct a full review of the plan and to revise it.

Oh shit.

Tommy Thompson

And finally: Gentlemen, start your engines! Three! Two! One! And... crash!

Tommy Thompson's presidential campaign got off to a smashing start last week when he "told a Jewish group Monday that earning money is 'part of the Jewish tradition,'" according to the Associated Press.

"I'm in the private sector and for the first time in my life I'm earning money," Thompson told the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism. "You know that's sort of part of the Jewish tradition and I do not find anything wrong with that."

Later, he added: "I just want to clarify something because I didn't (by) any means want to infer or imply anything about Jews and finances and things. What I was referring to, ladies and gentlemen, is the accomplishments of the Jewish religion. You've been outstanding business people and I compliment you for that."

Turns out that Tommy had a good excuse for his dubious comments - he had a cold. "I was tired, I made a mistake and I apologized," he said to Politico.com.

Poor guy. If only he'd had some of this on hand:

It's the "Daytime, Non-Drowsy, Congested-Stuffy Head, Sore Throat, Coughing, Aching, Fever So You Can Get Through The Day Without Accidentally Making Remarks About Jews And Finances And Things" medicine.

See you next week!

-- EarlG