The Top 10 Conservative Idiots, No. 246

top10 ADMIN

(155 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore

Sun Jun-04-06 10:34 PM
Original message

The Top 10 Conservative Idiots, No. 246

Edited on Mon Jun-05-06 09:48 AM by EarlG

The Top 10 Conservative Idiots, No. 246

June 5, 2006
So Much For The War On Terror Edition

Welcome once again to the Top 10 Conservative Idiots! This week, the Bush Administration (1) gives up its last shred of credibility on terrorism and Karl Zinsmeister (2) gets off to a cracking start as Bush's new domestic policy adviser. Meanwhile Vernon Robinson (3) and Rick Santorum (4) are showing off their, er, conservative credentials, and the RNC (5) demonstrates the awesome power of its grassroots fundraising operation. Elsewhere, Pat Robertson (6) can lift a Mini Cooper, Bill O'Reilly (7) has his facts wrong - again - and Jim Galley is the latest "pro-family" Republican to make a fool of himself. Don't forget the key - which you can now also see in the right-hand column of this Journal.

The Bush Administration

George W. Bush settled down for a pleasant night of 9/11 exploitation last week, inviting relatives of the Flight 93 victims to join him at the White House for a screening of, er, "Flight 93." You remember Flight 93 - that was one of the hijacked planes which was headed for a field in Pennsylvania while Bush sat on his ass reading The Pet Goat to schoolchildren before getting on Air Force One and flying to Louisiana.

Our Great Leader was obviously so moved by the film that he decided to take bold action. Last week the Department of Homeland Security cut New York's anti-terror budget by 40%, from $208 million to $124 million. Meanwhile, Georgia got a 40% increase in its budget. Just in case, you know, terrorists decide to bomb the Chatham Artillery Monument or the Pig Hill of Fame instead of the Statue of Liberty.

What's at the very top of the Department of Homeland Security's terrorist hit list? Yup - rail terminals and rail lines in New York. Washington D.C. also saw a drastic cut in its anti-terror budget, while various other states like Nebraska and Kentucky got increases.

But do you want to know why New York saw this budget cut while other, er, less-targeted areas of the country saw increases? Do you want to know the bizarre, ridiculous, mind-bending, toe-curling reason?

Because, according to ABC News:

New York has no national monuments or icons, according to the Department of Homeland Security form obtained by ABC News. That was a key factor used to determine that New York City should have its anti-terror funds slashed by 40 percent - from $207.5 million in 2005 to $124.4 million in 2006.

The formula did not consider as landmarks or icons: The Empire State Building, The United Nations, The Statue of Liberty and others found on several terror target hit lists. It also left off notable landmarks, such as the New York Public Library, Times Square, City Hall and at least three of the nation's most renowned museums: The Guggenheim, The Metropolitan and The Museum of Natural History.

The form ignored that New York City is the capital of the world financial markets and merely stated the city had four significant bank assets.

New York City is home to Chase, JP Morgan, Citi Group, The New York Stock Exchange, The Commodities Exchange, American Express, George Soros funds, Michael Gabelli's funds, Lazard Frere and Salomon Brothers, to name just a few of the more prominent banking interests located there.

Will this insanity never end?

According to CNN, "Department officials have changed the criteria used to award money under their programs, saying that instead of looking at population, they are trying to focus more on where risks exist."

"It does not mean the risk in New York is different ... or lower," Assistant Secretary Tracy Henke said. "It means we have additional information, additional clarity" about how to best allocate resources.

So perhaps all that warrantless wiretapping has borne fruit after all. Perhaps the NSA has been hearing "increased chatter" discussing a terrorist attack on the World's Largest Talking Cow in Neilsville, WI.

By the way, just as a reminder of how concerned Bush really was on 9/11, you may be interested to know that "the day ended on a relatively humorous note" and he was in bed by 11:30.

Karl Zinsmeister

Say hello to George W. Bush's new domestic policy adviser Karl Zinsmeister, who's only been on the job for five minutes and is already up to his neck in it. The Zpinmeister admitted last week that he "did something wrong when he took a newspaper profile of himself, altered quotes and text, and then posted it on a Web site without noting the changes," according to the Washington Post.

Back in 2004, the Zpinmeister was interviewed by the Syracuse New Times and said, "People in Washington are morally repugnant, cheating, shifty human beings." When the article was reprinted on the American Enterprise Institute's website, the quote read as follows: "I learned in Washington that there is an 'overclass' in this country stocked with cheating, shifty human beings that's just as morally repugnant as our 'underclass.'" How did that happen? Possibly because Karl Zinmeister was, at the time, the editor of the American Enterprise Institute's magazine.

The Zpinmeister made several other edits to the original article where he felt that there had been "misunderstandings or truncated notes" - but accidentally forgot to note the changes on the AEI website. How absent-minded of him.

Don't worry though - as usual, this lack of integrity was once again brushed aside by the White House - according to the Post, press secretary Tony Snow said that "Zinsmeister erred in making the changes, but he was well-intentioned." Oh really, Tony? How so? "This was done not out of animosity; it was an attempt to set the record straight and he did it in an unartful way," clarified Snowjob.

So I guess this is just item 127,846 on the Bush administration's list of "unartful but well-intentioned" errors.

One last thing: Back in 2003 Karl Zinsmeister wrote in the National Review, "many of the journalists observable in this (Iraq) war theater are bursting with knee-jerk suspicions and antagonisms for the warriors all around them. A significant number are whiny and appallingly soft. … I almost wished there would be a very loud explosion very nearby just to shut up their rattling."

Looks like Zinsmeister has been getting his wish. The recent deaths of two CBS journalists in Iraq brings the total number of journalists killed in that conflict up to 71, which is two higher than the number of journalists that were killed in all of World War II.

Vernon Robinson

Having finally run out of ideas (thank goodness, because let's face it, the ideas they've had so far have all been terrible), Republicans have got one thing left to run on this fall: hate. The poster boy for this plan is Vernon Robinson of North Carolina, who has so far run one of the most despicable campaigns ever.

Robinson has run radio ads saying that if his opponent, Democrat Brad Miller, is re-elected to represent North Carolina's District 13, "America would be nothing but one big fiesta for illegal aliens and homosexuals." The ad comes complete with mariachi music in the background. Robinson has also called Markos Moulitsas Zuniga of DailyKos.com, "Brad Miller's San Francisco Soul Mate." Get it? Don't vote for Brad Miller - he's gay!

But Robinson hasn't just stopped at "gay by association" innuendo - he's also taken it to a very personal level. According to the News & Observer:

"Soon after winning the GOP primary in the 13th District in May, Robinson mailed literature to more than 400,000 households portraying Miller's voting record and personal life as being out of the mainstream.

Among many other things, the literature calls Miller a "childless, middle-aged personal injury lawyer."

Middle-aged and childless? The guy must be gay, right?

Um, actually, no:

Miller said his wife of nearly 25 years, Esther Hall, could not bear children because she had endometriosis and then a hysterectomy at age 27 before the couple were married.

Still, nothing like trying to win over the bigots in NC-13 by using your opponent's wife's medical problems to insinuate that he's queer, eh Vernon?

Rick Santorum

Rick Santorum (R-Fecal Matter) is also jumping aboard the "no ideas so let's just spread the hate" bandwagon for his upcoming re-election campaign this fall. A new Rasmussen poll shows Santorum trailing his opponent, Democrat Bob Casey, by a staggering 23 percentage points. So it's time for Slick Rick to pull out all the stops.

His first target: people who think that other people should be treated nicely. Appearing on the radio show "Janet Parshall's America" last week, Santorum had this to say:

SANTORUM: If you think about it, Janet, from everything from Brokeback Mountain to, you know, all the TV shows that you see promoting and affirming alternative lifestyles - I guess to put it nicely - you would think that the culture would eventually just move in the other direction. But I think these kind of debates are the chance for a public discourse to counter what Hollywood is purveying to our young people. Not just what Hollywood is purveying to young people, to all people. And it's an opportunity for us to get beyond, you know, 'We should treat everybody nicely.' I'm for treating everybody nicely, but that doesn't mean that we need to change the law to recognize a form of marriage that is harmful to our country.

Yeah, we really need to get beyond "we should treat everybody nicely." You know, if there's one thing wrong with America today, it's that we don't treat people badly enough. We need to do more to create a culture where we don't have to treat everybody nicely - especially gay people. Perhaps we need to come up with some kind of labeling system so we can separate people who should be treated nicely, ie. rich white men like Rick Santorum, from people who don't need to be treated nicely, ie. everyone else.

After all, Rick claims to be a devout Christian, so he knows that if there's one thing Jesus didn't want us to do, it's treat everybody nicely.

The RNC

Somehow I've ended up on the RNC's mailing list - which to be honest I don't mind. It makes for a good chuckle every now and again. But occasionally some of the emails will stick out - for example, on several occasions over the past couple of months my inbox has been assaulted by an exuberant Ken Mehlman ballyhooing the RNC's new "MyGOP" service. The service was to be launched with a fanfare - a series of GOP house parties across the nation which would demonstrate the power of the Republican grassroots. I was so excited I almost thought about hosting one myself.

The point of the house parties was to, of course, make money - and as an incentive the RNC were offering a Video iPod for the five parties which raised the most cash. Thanks to MyDD, here are the top five golden geese:

1. GOP Bloggers
$498 raised

2. Brian Bridgeforth, VA
$426 raised

3. Melissa Nolen, Davie FL
$150 raised

4. Hank Gill, Tampa FL
$100 raised

5. Matthew Larvick, Vancouver WA
$50 raised

Wow, those are some impressive numbers! As Chris Bowers points out, "If you consider that the retail price of an iPod is about $300, the RNC lost about $200 bucks on the event."

Pat Robertson

Holy smokes! Pat Robertson claims to have leg pressed a remarkable 2,000 pounds!

No, seriously - he's really claming that thanks to the power of his "Age Defying Shakes," he can leg press 2,000 pounds. See for yourself.

Apparently 2,000 pounds is close to the weight of a Mini Cooper. Do you realize what that would look like?

Good grief.

A 2,000 pound leg press certainly sounds quite impressive, and in fact it is - 2,000 pounds is 645 pounds heavier than the world record leg press of 1,355 pounds. So Pat's awesome shakes are apparently real, um, miracle workers.

Bill O'Reilly

There's not much I can say about Bill O'Reilly that Keith Olbermann didn't already say last week. O'Reilly got into an argument with Wes Clark on Fox News, basically claiming that the alleged Haditha massacre we've been hearing so much about is no big deal because that sort of thing happens all the time in war. Of course, O'Reilly knows a lot more about warfare than Clark, who was only NATO's Supreme Allied Commander during the war in Kosovo.

To prove his point, O'Reilly cited the Malmedy massacre in World War II, in which - according to the Falafel Master - "U.S. forces captured S.S. forces who had their hands in the air and were unarmed and they shot them dead, you know that. That's on the record. And documented."

Sadly that's not on the record, and not documented. What's on the record is that in fact it was U.S. troops who were slain at the hands of the Nazis in Malmedy. O'Reilly got his facts 100% wrong, and in the process accused dead U.S. soldiers of carrying out war crimes. Nice going. And just in case you thought that O'Reilly's screw-up was a slip of the tongue, you'll be interested to know that he has actually made this same accusation on his show last year. Interestingly, O'Reilly is following in the footsteps of one Sen. Joe McCarthy, who claimed that the S.S. officers who carried out the Malmedy massacre were framed.

But honestly, I can't sum up this outrage any better than Keith Olbermann did, so you owe it to yourself to check out the video of his performance, courtesy of CrooksAndLiars.com.

The Left Behinders

Unless you've been living under a rock, you'll have heard of the Left Behind books - the series which has made Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins so rich that one might think they'd start worrying about getting into heaven. (But of course, they're doing God's work so I'm sure he doesn't begrudge them using his name to obtain their multi-million dollar fortunes.)

Anyway, the great news for Left Behinders is that soon they'll be able to bring the "Tom Clancy-like suspense," "touches of romance," and "Biblical references" (the New York Times' words, not mine) to their home computer, courtesy of the "Left Behind: Eternal Forces" video game.

Now, I was always under the impression that right-wing radicals were highly critical of violent video games, but I guess that's because they weren't making any money off them. With "Eternal Forces" you can:

Conduct physical & spiritual warfare: using the power of prayer to strengthen your troops in combat and wield modern military weaponry throughout the game world

Command your forces through intense battles across a breathtaking, authentic depiction of New York City

Control more than 30 units types - from Prayer Warrior and Hellraiser to Spies, Special Forces and Battle Tanks!

Sounds awesome! And check out this screenshot:

Here you can see the members of Tribulation Force not only taking on a demon, but also shooting an unarmed scientist in the back. Take that, science!

According to the Los Angeles Times, "the creators hope the game packs enough action to appeal to a generation of kids reared on such titles as 'Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas' and subtly coax them to consider their own spirituality." Which makes one wonder whether or not the developers ought to reconsider this function:

Play multiplayer games as Tribulation Force or the AntiChrist's Global Community Peacekeepers with up to eight players via LAN or over the internet!

Hmm. I wonder which side will be most popular with Internet gamers. "I can play as Satan? Yes please!"

Meanwhile KRT News reports that Jeff Frichner, president and cofounder of Left Behind Games, says that the key to success is "boosting quality while toning down preachy theology."

I'll give it a week before someone comes up with a Chloe Steele nude patch.

Jim Galley

Jim Galley is the Republican candidate for California's 51st Congressional District. He has the backing of such GOP luminaries as Brian Bilbray (Francine Busby's Republican opponent in California's 50th) and Howard "Istanbul" Kaloogian. Galley is running as a "pro-traditional family" candidate.

Therefore you won't be surprised to learn that according to the San Diego Union-Tribune, Galley "was married to two women at the same time, defaulted on his child support payments and has been accused of abuse by one of his ex-wives."

In his defense, Galley said "the contemporaneous marriages were a mistake because he thought his first divorce had been completed" and "the child support default was only for a few months" and "the abuse allegation was made only to get him out of the house."

Incidentally, the two wives he was married to simultaneously are no longer in the picture - Jim "pro-traditional family" Galley is now onto his third wife.

Is this the best they can do? Er, yes.

George W. Bush

And finally, in light of the fact that Our Great Leader has just been voted worst president in the last 61 years in a new Quinnipiac poll, I think this Reuters photo says it all:

In over his head or what? See you next week!

-- EarlG