The Top 10 Conservative Idiots, No. 271

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The Top 10 Conservative Idiots, No. 271

The Top 10 Conservative Idiots, No. 271

December 11, 2006
The Madness Of King George Edition

This week: George W. Bush (1, 2) is still in denial about Iraq, the Republican-controlled House Ethics Committee (4) washes its hands of the Foley matter, and we bid a not-so-fond farewell to all the Unseated Republicans (10). Buh-bye. As usual, don't forget the key!

George W. Bush

"Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed." -- George W. Bush, May 1, 2003

"This is an historic times. (sic) This is a great moment in history. As a free country emerges, it serves as an example in a part of the world that's so desperate for freedom." -- George W. Bush, June 1, 2004

"See, what's happening is that freedom is beginning to rise up in a part of the world that is desperate for freedom ... My opponent says that going to war with the terrorists is actually improving their recruiting efforts. I think the logic is upside-down. I think that shows a misunderstanding of the enemy." -- George W. Bush, August 12, 2004

"And we will continue to work to advance liberty -- liberty in the broader Middle East -- because freedom will bring a future of hope and the peace we all want. If America stays strong and resolute and determined, we will prevail. And our strategy is succeeding. We're making progress." -- George W. Bush, September 3, 2004

"Our nation's mission in Iraq is difficult, and we can expect more tough fighting in the weeks and months ahead. Yet I am confident in the outcome. The Iraqi people are growing in optimism and hope. ... Americans can be proud of all that we and our coalition partners have accomplished in Iraq. Our country has been tested before, and we have a long history of resolve and faith in the cause of freedom. Now we will see that cause to victory in Iraq." -- George W. Bush, June 25, 2005

"I'm encouraged by the increasing size and capability of the Iraqi security forces. Today they have more than 100 battalions operating throughout the country, and our commanders report that the Iraqi forces are serving with increasing effectiveness." -- George W. Bush, October 1, 2005

"To achieve victory over such enemies, we are pursuing a comprehensive strategy in Iraq." -- George W. Bush, November 30, 2005

"And this turbulence on your TV screens affects the conscious of Americans -- I know that, and so does the enemy. But amidst all the turmoil I want you to remember that progress toward democracy is being made. ... Democracy is on the march in Iraq." -- George W. Bush, March 24, 2006

"This nation of ours and our coalition partners are going to work with the new leadership to strengthen our mutual efforts to achieve success, a victory in this war on terror. This is a -- we believe this is a turning point for the Iraqi citizens, and it's a new chapter in our partnership." -- George W. Bush, May 1, 2006

"There's still difficult work ahead in Iraq. Yet this week, the ideology of terror has suffered a severe blow. Al Qaida has lost its leader in Iraq, the Iraqi people have completed a democratic government that is determined to defend them, and freedom has achieved a great victory in the heart of the Middle East." -- George W. Bush, June 10, 2006

"I told the folks here that the politics in Washington can be rough. But make no mistake about it, I am determined to succeed. And we will implement a plan to achieve victory, which is necessary, and that they need to tell the troops that no matter how tough it looks here in the nation's capital, that I know we're doing the right thing, and I know we will win." -- George W. Bush, June 26, 2006

"A vital part of our strategy to defeat the terrorists is to help establish a democratic Iraq, which will be a beacon of liberty in the region and an ally in the global war on terror. ... Here at home, some politicians say that our best option is to pull out of Iraq, regardless of the situation on the ground. Many of these people are sincere and patriotic -- but they could not be more wrong." -- George W. Bush, September 2, 2006

"Five years after September the 11th, too many Democrats still do not get it. The best way to protect this homeland is to find the enemy and defeat them overseas. Oh, I know you've heard all the discussion about Iraq. They say -- in Washington, the Democrats say it's not a part of the war against the terrorists, it's a distraction. Well, don't take my word for it -- listen to Osama bin Laden." -- George W. Bush, October 28, 2006

"The situation in Iraq is grave and deteriorating. ... The challenges in Iraq are complex. Violence is increasing in scope and lethality. It is fed by a Sunni Arab insurgency, Shiite militias and death squads, al Qaeda, and widespread criminality. Sectarian conflict is the principal challenge to stability. The Iraqi people have a democratically elected government, yet it is not adequately advancing national reconciliation, providing basic security, or delivering essential services. Pessimism is pervasive. If the situation continues to deteriorate, the consequences could be severe. A slide toward chaos could trigger the collapse of Iraq's government and a humanitarian catastrophe. Neighboring countries could intervene. Sunni-Shia clashes could spread. Al Qaeda could win a propaganda victory and expand its base of operations. The global standing of the United States could be diminished. Americans could become more polarized." -- Iraq Study Group Report, December 6, 2006

"The truth is a lot of reports in Washington aren't read by anybody. To show you how important this report is, I read it." -- George W. Bush, December 7, 2006

"It's bad in Iraq." -- George W. Bush, December 7, 2006

"Holy crap, our country is being run by a complete frickin' maniac who is utterly disconnected from reality." -- Everybody, December 7, 2006

George W. Bush

George W. Bush may have read the Iraq Study Group's report, but he doesn't appear to be paying much attention to its conclusions. While the report says that Iraq has basically gone tits-up, and that urgent action is required in order to avoid making a really terrible situation even worse, Our Great Leader appears to think that the report has actually justified his enormous failure.

In his radio address last week - which is titled "Victory in Iraq" on the White House website - Bush said that "the Iraq Study Group's report ... explicitly endorses the strategic goal we've set in Iraq: an Iraq that can 'govern itself, sustain itself, and defend itself.'"

Well, duh. But the report also says that Bush needs to make massive changes to his broken strategy if there's a snowball's chance in hell of that happening. According to McClatchy Newspapers:

Top Democrats in Congress left a White House meeting with President Bush on Friday frustrated over what they perceived as his reluctance to embrace major recommendations from the bipartisan Iraq Study Group.

(snip)

"I just didn't feel there today, the president in his words or his demeanor, that he is going to do anything right away to change things drastically," Senate Majority Leader-elect Harry Reid, D-Nev., said following the Oval Office meeting. "He is tepid in what he talks about doing. Someone has to get the message to this man that there have to be significant changes."

Instead, Bush began his talk by comparing himself to President Harry S Truman, who launched the Truman Doctrine to fight communism, got bogged down in the Korean War and left office unpopular.

Wow, who's he going to compare himself to next? Napoleon Bonaparte?

And it's not just Democrats who think that the president might have gone round the bend. According to U.S. News & World Report:

Former White House advisers to George H.W. Bush are keenly disappointed and concerned about the current President Bush's initial reaction to the report by the Iraq Study Group.

They consider him rather dismissive of the group's conclusions, issued yesterday, which include the view that current Iraq policy is failing. The group recommends a variety of important changes, such as assigning U.S. troops to play more of an advisory and training role and less of a combat role. The ISG also recommends that the United States withdraw most of its combat brigades by early 2008...

So I guess there's just one question remaining: will there be time to impeach Bush before the men in white coats come to take him away?

The Bush Administration

One of the Iraq Study Group's most important recommendations is that the government should do more to train Arab linguists and cultural specialists. I know what you're thinking - "How come they haven't done that in the five years since 9/11?"

The answer is quite simple actually. They haven't done it because they've been too busy firing the Arab linguists and cultural specialists that they already had. Check out this Servicemembers Legal Defense Network press release from July 2006:

The U.S. Army recently discharged a highly regarded Arabic linguist who was the target of an anonymous email "outing" campaign. Former Sergeant Bleu Copas was stationed at Fort Bragg, N.C., and was a member of the prestigious 82nd Airborne Division. A decorated Sergeant who received impressive performance reviews, Copas also performed in the 82nd Airborne Chorus. His dismissal, under the federal "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" ban on lesbian, gay and bisexual personnel, brings the total number of Arabic language specialists dismissed under the ban to at least 55.

Instead the Bush administration has been wasting millions of dollars on bizarre ideas like Hi! Magazine, which was intended to "develop a dialogue with young, Arabic speaking audiences on topics that affect them." The print version was suspended last year so the State Department could evaluate its effectiveness.

White House press secretary Tony Snow was particularly snippy about the ISG's recommendation last week. "You don't snap your fingers and have the Arabic speakers you need overnight," he said.

No - apparently you snap your fingers and fire them overnight instead.

The House Ethics Committee

The Republican Congress ended last week with a whimper, not a bang, as the House Ethics Committee released its long-awaited ethics report on Mark Foley. The general consensus appears to be, "Congressional pages are fair game."

According to the New York Times:

The report concludes that evidence of Mr. Foley's "creepy" interest in young male pages dated back to 1999. One woman who worked with the pages took to shadowing Mr. Foley when he was around them. The report makes clear that Mr. Foley's misconduct became known to an ever-widening circle of his colleagues and their aides, including Speaker Dennis Hastert. But no one made any serious attempt to stop Mr. Foley or reveal his misdeeds. A few urged him to cut it out, for political reasons, but did not follow up.

The committee concluded that other people preferred to remain willfully ignorant - to protect Mr. Foley's secret homosexuality, to avoid partisan embarrassment or for other political reasons.

But even after all that, the report said that none of this amounted to the sort of behavior that might discredit the House of Representatives and thus violate ethics rules. The committee, which never heard from Mr. Foley, did not call for disciplinary action against current members of the House or their staffs. The committee said those who have already left, like Mr. Foley, were no longer its problem.

All of which means that Foley gets to retire quietly and keep his $33,000 taxpayer-funded pension. Gee, I can't possibly imagine why people regarded the Republican-controlled 109th Congress as a bunch of useless, corrupt, do-nothing time-wasters.

The Bush Administration

In 1973, the Environmental Protection Agency began a campaign to reduce lead emissions from gasoline. 23 years later, they completed the final stage of the project.

"The elimination of lead from gas is one of the great environmental achievements of all time," (then-EPA Administrator Carol M.) Browner said. "Thousands of tons of lead have been removed from the air, and blood levels of lead in our children are down 70 percent. This means that millions of children will be spared the painful consequences of lead poisoning, such as permanent nerve damage, anemia or mental retardation." The actions taken today, although procedural, mark the end of a quarter-of-a-century of work to keep Americans safe from exposure to lead from gas.

But don't worry - those of you who miss walking down the street choking on noxious exhaust fumes may soon be able to relive the good old days. The Bush administration announced last week that it is "considering doing away with health standards that cut lead from gasoline, widely regarded as one of the nation's biggest clean-air accomplishments," according to the Associated Press.

The Environmental Protection Agency said this week that revoking those standards might be justified "given the significantly changed circumstances since lead was listed in 1976" as an air pollutant, claiming that concentrations of lead in the air have dropped more than 90 percent in the past 2 1/2 decades. Battery makers, lead smelters, refiners all have lobbied the administration to do away with the Clean Air Act limits.

Follow that logic? After a 23-year-long campaign to remove lead from gasoline, concentrations of lead in the air dropped by more than 90 percent. Therefore these "significantly changed circumstances" mean that it's okay to put lead back in gasoline again. It makes perfect sense!

Bill O'Reilly

What better time of year than Christmas to broadcast one's genocidal notions on national radio? Last week Bill O'Reilly announced that he definitely didn't want to kill hundreds of thousands of people in the Middle East - but we may have to. Oh yes, we may have to.

O'Reilly: The United States will never be conquered by Muslims -- ever. But you don't want it to reach the point where, we have to, example, you know, level cities like Tehran, kill hundreds of thousands of people, which we may have to do -- which we have already done in Germany and Japan. OK? We have already killed hundreds of thousands of people on one day. Now, do we want to do that again? Of course not, but we may have to.

Bill then invented a scenario in which Iran takes over Iraq, creates a revolution inside Saudi Arabia, and refuses to sell oil to the United States. What happens next?

We are going to level that country, because you need gasoline to live.

Fortunately for O'Reilly this little fantasy took place on radio, so nobody could see him pleasuring himself with falafel under the desk.

John McCain

John McCain has already fired up a presidential exploratory committee, and one of his most recent hires might give an indication of the kind of campaign he's planning to run in 2008. Last week the Washington Post noted that McCain had selected Terry Nelson as his campaign manager.

"I'm honored to have Terry's leadership and management expertise as we move forward through this process," said McCain. "I know, if we decide to take the next step, the day-to-day management of the campaign will be in capable hands."

So who is Terry Nelson? Well, according to Raw Story:

Nelson, along with Karl Rove protegé Scott Howell, produced a controversial ad for Tennessee's 2006 U.S. Senate race between Democrat Harold Ford, Jr. and Republican Bob Corker, in which a white woman seductively invites an "off-camera" Ford to call her. Ford, an unmarried African-American, and Corker, the white former mayor of Chattanooga who eventually won the open Senate seat, both criticized the ad. The NAACP said the ad was "a powerful innuendo that plays to pre-existing prejudices about African-American men and white women."

Yup, he's that guy. So if you were looking for Maverick McCain to change the face of politics in 2008 with his straight-talking, genuine campaign style, forget about it. You might get to see some quality race-baiting though.

Jack Kingston

The 109th Congress worked for a mere 103 days in 2006. According to the Washington Post, that's "seven days fewer than the infamous 'Do-Nothing Congress' of 1948."

But all that is about to change. When Democrats take control of Congress in January, House members will be expected to - gasp - actually do some work.

Forget the minimum wage. Or outsourcing jobs overseas. The labor issue most on the minds of members of Congress yesterday was their own: They will have to work five days a week starting in January.

This news is not sitting well with some members of Congress - mostly Republicans - who are used to working a mere three days a week and taking lots and lots of vacations. Take Rep. Jack Kingston (R-GA) for example. "Keeping us up here eats away at families," he whined. "Marriages suffer. The Democrats could care less about families - that's what this says."

Making Congress work five days a week says that the Democrats don't care about families? Tell that to Americans who have to work two jobs and still can't feed their kids because for ten years Republicans couldn't find time in their pathetic schedule to raise the minimum wage.

Jeff Miller

It seems that wherever Katherine Harris goes, screwed-up elections follow. There's trouble afoot in her old House district, FL-13. According to the Sarasota Herald-Tribune:

A review of Sarasota County voting results shows that in almost every precinct a high percentage of voters didn't cast ballots in the hotly contested 13th Congressional District, a trend that likely affected the outcome of the race.

Democrat Christine Jennings lost to Republican Vern Buchanan by 368 votes, making it the second closest congressional race in the country.

More than 18,000 voters who showed up at the polls voted in other races but not the Buchanan-Jennings race.

That means nearly 13 percent of voters did not vote for either candidate - a massive undercount compared with other counties, including Manatee, which reported a 2 percent undervote.

Clearly there must be something wrong with the ES&S electronic voting machines, but there's a problem: ES&S don't want anyone to actually look at their machines to figure out what went wrong. On December 19, a circuit judge will decide whether they have to reveal the machines' source code.

Christine Jennings is calling for a new election, and Howard Dean has joined her. This, of course, has really ticked off Florida Republicans who think that election integrity isn't important (as long as they win).

Which is where Rep. Jeff Miller comes in. According to the Palm Beach Post:

Rep. Jeff Miller, R-Pensacola, told delegation members it was important that "Florida solve the problem" and not have outsiders come into the state demanding a new election. Miller also said it was "critical that Florida not go into the 110th Congress a member short. We have to bring this to a close quickly."

Of course! The election is seriously in dispute, but for goodness sake let's make sure that our number one priority is bringing this to a close quickly. And how come Miller doesn't want people from out of state to get involved in this problem? Why, back in 2000 the Republicans brought people all the way from Alaska!

Unseated Republicans

And finally, it's time to bid a not-so-fond farewell to the following Republicans, all of whom spent their last day in the halls of Congress this past Friday (apart from the ones who have already resigned or are in jail, of course). It wasn't nice knowing you. Farewell, and please don't let the door hit you in your giant collective ass.

JD Hayworth (AZ) (Idiots 24, 26)
Jim Kolbe (AZ)
Richard Pombo (CA)
Joel Hefley (CO)
Bob Beauprez (CO) (Idiots 252, 259)
Rob Simmons (CT)
Nancy Johnson (CT)
Mike Bilrakis (FL)
Katherine Harris (FL) (Idiots 1, 2, 14, 25, 28, 29, 30, 31, 33, 45, 63, 70, 77, 78, 83, 93, 104, 139, 166, 205, 209, 237, 240, 242, 250, 253, 254, 256, 257, 258, 264, and to be fair, I've probably missed a few)
Mark Foley (FL) (Idiots 84, 262, 263)
Clay Shaw (FL)
Butch Otter (ID)
Henry Hyde (IL) (Idiots 148)
Chris Chocola (IN)
John Hostettler (IN) (Idiots 81, 153, 203)
Mike Sodrel (IN)
Jim Nussle (IA)
Jim Leach (IA)
Jim Ryun (KS)
Anne Northup (KY)
Joe Schwarz (MI)
Gil Gutknecht (MN)
Tom Osborne (MT)
Jim Gibbons (NV) (Idiots 189, 266)
Jeb Bradley (NH)
Charles Bass (NH)
Sue Kelly (NY)
John Sweeney (NY) (Idiots 269)
Sherwood Boehlert (NY)
Charles Taylor (NC)
Mike Oxley (OH)
Bob Ney (OH) (Idiots 103, 140, 228, 260)
Ernest Istook (OK) (Idiots 42)
Melissa Hart (PA)
Curt Weldon (PA) (Idiots 265)
Mike Fitzpatrick (PA) (Idiots 255)
Don Sherwood (PA) (Idiots 197, 207)
Bill Jenkins (TN)
Tom Delay (TX) (Idiots 1, 2, 3, 9, 12, 17, 57, 58, 64, 65, 71, 98, 99, 110, 113, 114, 135, 149, 176, 182, 191, 192, 193, 194, 196, 213, 216, 218, 219, 225, 227, 232, 247, as well as guest appearances in many other editions)
Mark Green (WI)
Jim Talent (MO)
Conrad Burns (MT) (Idiots 254, 257, 258)
Mike Dewine (OH) (Idiots 253)
Rick Santorum (PA) (Idiots 107, 108, 164, 178, 199, 206, 209, 212, 234, 246, 249, 254, 261, plus honorable mentions elsewhere)
Lincoln Chafee (RI)
Bill Frist (TN) (Idiots 96, 108, 150, 162, 182, 195, 211, 215, 202, 206, 220, 221, 222, 226, 235, 236, 238, 245, 251)
George Allen (VA) (Idiots 256, 257, 260, 261, 262, 263, 264, 266, 267)

Wow, that felt good. See you next week!

-- EarlG