The
Top Ten Conservative Idiots (No. 70)
June
3, 2002
Cover Your Ashcroft Edition
Our
friend John Ashcroft manages to leap from number three last
week to number one this week. Why? Because he's dismantling
the Bill of Rights! Good work, John. John beats out his own
boss, Dubya (2) who this week shows off those famous foreign
policy skills. And not far behind are John Boehner and Steve
Chabot (4), who would like children to grow up to be just
as S-M-R-T as their president. The evil beast from hell, um,
I mean, Katherine Harris (5) makes a comeback this week, and
Dick Cheney (6) figures that George isn't sending the economy
down the crapper fast enough so he'd better lend a hand. In
the rear we have more Bill of Rights bashing from the Bethesda
Chevy Chase High School (8), and finally Jerry Tingle (10),
a Dubya wannabe whose doctorate fell off the back of a truck.
Enjoy! (And as usual, don't forget the key.)
John
Ashcroft
John "Big Brother" Ashcroft is watching you. Last
week the Bush administration gave itself a collective woody
and announced that the Fourth Amendment was toast. See, apparently
the FBI needs "broad new powers to monitor Americans,"
according
to Yahoo News, and John Ashcroft is salivating with excitement
now that he can spy on websites, libraries, churches and political
organizations without needing any evidence of criminal
wrongdoing - oh, providing the goal is "detecting
or preventing terrorism," of course. Civil liberties
organizations are concerned that these new powers will mean
a return to the civil rights abuses of the 60s and 70s, but
apparently the government has promised that it won't, which
means there's nothing to worry about. So if John Ashcroft
is reading this, we'd just like to say: Luv ya, John! You're
the man! You crazy whacked-out unconstitutional power-hungry
psycho!
George
W. Bush
President Brainiac was on top form last week as he demonstrated
his extensive knowledge of furriners. During a meeting with
President Fernando Henrique Cardoso of Brazil, Bush's synapses
misfired like a tailpipe stuffed with a Dan Quayle potatoe.
Perhaps he was looking for ways to bond with Cardoso, perhaps
he was simply paying too much attention to the voices in his
head, but Bush suddenly asked
the Brazilian president, "Do you have blacks, too?"
As Cardoso gibbered with confusion, Condoleezza Rice gently
explained to Dubya that yes, they have blacks in Brazil. Probably
more than in the US in fact. In a display of overwhelming
generosity, Cardoso said later that when it came to Latin
America, Bush was still in his "learning phase."
Perhaps cokeboy should just go back to preschool and start
all over again.
John
Ashcroft (again)
It was a little more than a week ago (May
21, to be exact) that Ashcroft's Department of Justice
declared they were going to file suit in three Florida counties,
charging voting rights violations in the 2000 presidential
election. If you thought the news was too good to be true,
that's because it was. By the middle of last week, the DOJ
had already begun making excuses for people they were supposed
to be suing. On May 28, the DOJ declared that there was (surprise!)
no
credible evidence that any Florida residents were intentionally
denied voting rights in 2000. Apparently this is not going
to be a particularly vigorous legal action on the part of
the DOJ. If they do uncover any wrongdoing at all, my guess
is that they will miraculously discover a previously unknown
stash of 50,000 Bush votes which had been "misplaced"
in the office of a loyal Republican member of the board of
elections.
John
Boehner and Steve Chabot
Reps. John Boehner and Steve Chabot of Ohio last week urged
the Ohio Board of Education to ensure that students understand
that there are alternatives to the "controversy"
of evolutionary science, according
to the Washington Post. Yes, proponents of the completely
unscientific "Intelligent Design Theory" (which
basically says that if you can't figure why something happened,
Superman must have done it) are crawling out of the woodwork
to let children know that when in pursuit of scientific knowledge,
there are more important things than facts and evidence. Intelligent
Design Theory is nothing more than Creationism dressed up
as science, except without the need for all those pesky scientists.
So hats off to John Boehner and Steve Chabot - tirelessly
working to ensure that we nurture a generation of kids with
the critical thinking capability of George W. Bush.
Katherine
Harris
Ding dong, the witch isn't dead - she's busy getting ready
to move to Washington when her braindead constituents hand
her a landslide victory this November. But in the meantime
Ms. Harris is also occupying her time writing a book all about
how brave and honorable she was in the 2000 election fiasco.
Vomit-inducingly titled "Center of the Storm: Practicing
Principled Leadership in a Time of Crisis," the book
will apparently feature "previously unknown anecdotes"
(which we're sure will be hilarious) and according
to CNN will "focus on the leadership principles Harris
drew upon during the process." Well if Harris's example
of "leadership principles" is anything to go by,
we're sure the book will be a useful manual for anyone
who wants to take away the people's right to vote, bend over
and obey one's political paymasters, and basically do the
complete opposite of what is right and moral. We think a lot
of Republicans will buy it.
Dick
Cheney
Let's face it - the country was much better off when
Dick "Undisclosed Location" Cheney was cowering
in his hidey-hole. Why? Because while he was in hiding he
obviously figured that Dubya's tax cut wasn't doing enough
damage to the economy, so he's now taken to trying to wreck
it all by himself. How so? Well, on May 20, Yahoo News
reported
that the Dow Jones industrial average closed down 123.58 points
after Cheerful Cheney's vague terrorist warnings over the
previous weekend. Two days later, they reported
that the Dow Jones had lost 247.37 over the previous two sessions,
after "warnings from the FBI and Vice President Dick
Cheney each of the past three days." And what's this?
On May 29 Yahoo News again reported
that the Dow had fallen, this time by 58.54 points. Why? Because
"more corporate red flags flew over the market, alerting
investors to weak profits and yet another government probe
into corporate accounting, the latest inquiry involving oilfield
services giant..." - can you guess who it is? Of course
you can! - "...Halliburton Co." Dick, for the
love of Zod, get back in your hidey-hole before the dollar
collapses!
Donald
Carty
Never mind September 11 - airline execs can feel those hefty
profits slipping through their fingers and something must
be done. Step forward Donald Carty, chief executive at American
Airlines, who suggested
last week that "It will be a hollow victory indeed if
the system we end up with is so onerous and so difficult that
air travel, while obviously more secure, becomes more trouble
for the average person than it is worth." Hmm, yes...
although I think most people would find it less onerous to
stand in line for an extra thirty minutes than to be slammed
into a building at 450mph.
Bethesda
Chevy Chase High School
If you think First Amendment Zones are bad news, be thankful
you're not still in high school. Condoleezza Rice will be
speaking at the Bethesda Chevy Chase High School on June 4,
and school administrators are threatening to ban students
from the ceremony if they continue to plan a protest. One
fourth of the senior class signed a petition against Rice,
and now the administration is demanding that the student government
write her a letter of apology. Apparently a sympathetic teacher
has also come "under fire," according
to IndyMedia DC. Welcome to Bush's New America! Please check
your First Amendment rights at the door...
Dick
Armey
What's a Member of Congress to do? You've got a group of junior-high-schoolers
visiting Capitol Hill, and you're afraid of looking like a
geek. Dick Armey's got a great way to look hip to the *Nsync
set: Ask the kids if they drink alcohol. But Armey doesn't
give the kids any of those dorky just-say-no lectures. No
way. Here's a report
from The Hill newspaper: "As his young listeners
saw it, the question gave Armey the aura of being one very
'cool' congressman. One 13-year-old, Mike Ayers, said he felt
that Armey brought up the subject of booze to connect with
them and to 'relax us a little so we don�t act like retards.'"
Well done, Dick. I can just hear the kids now: "But mom,
Dick Armey says alcohol is cool..."
Jerry
Tingle
And finally, Jerry Tingle, Republican candidate for the Alabama
state Senate, is a very smart man. He must be - he has a PhD
in biomedical engineering from LaSalle University, graduating
magna cum laude. But wait - that's not the respected
LaSalle University in Philadelphia, no sir. This is LaSalle
University in Mandeville, LA. Which isn't so much a university,
per se, as a "diploma mill," according to
the FBI. Yes, it turns
out that Jerry's doctorate was obtained from a university
which was not accredited, whose five-member faculty held one
bachelor's degree between them, and whose owner, James Kirk,
pleaded guilty to fraud and admitted that he swindled students
for $36 million. He's a smart guy, that Jerry Tingle. So,
to sum up - that's not a real school, not a real doctorate,
and not the James Kirk. See you next week!
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