Democratic Underground

The Top 10 Conservative Idiots
(No. 236)

March 13, 2006
Grand Theft Allen Edition

Why did Claude Allen (1) resign from his position as Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy in February? If you guessed, "Because the evil liberals didn't like him," guess again. Elsewhere, The Bush Administration (2) discovers that Dubya has spent the last penny of his political capital, Ken Mehlman (4) gets increasingly whiny, and Robert Travis (6) teaches us a lesson on racism. Bringing up the rear we find Rush Limbaugh (9) laughing himself stupid, and Bill Frist (10) who, if we're all really lucky, might just run for president. Enjoy, and don't forget the key!

1Claude Allen arrest crook
Back in 2003, George W. Bush nominated the number two official in the Health and Human Services Department, Claude Allen, to the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. The nomination went to the Senate in 2004 but never received a vote. Not a man to let a such a talented individual get away, George W. Bush appointed Allen Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy in 2005.

"Claude Allen has been a valuable member of my Administration since 2001, helping to improve the health and welfare of all Americans," said George. "He is a dedicated public servant and a tireless advocate for those in need. I look forward to his continued service in this new role as my domestic policy advisor."

But Allen suddenly resigned in February, purportedly to "spend more time with his family." This sparked some speculation, particularly among members of Free Republic, who of course blamed the Democrats:

"I wonder if he and his family were getting threats."

"The libs forced Miguel Estrada to withdraw, Carolyn Kuhl to withdraw and Charles Pickering to resign after a recess appointment. It's a disgrace."

"Sick! These people are sick. Such a brilliant mind - what a shame."

Yes, curse you liberals for forcing this dedicated and tireless public servant from his job! Except it turns out that Allen was apparently dedicated and tireless at something else: shoplifting. He was arrested last week for 25 alleged thefts from Target and Hecht's stores in Gaithersburg, Maryland.

Prosecutors say that Allen would buy items from a store, then return to the store empty-handed, pick the same items and take them to the return desk, using the receipt for the original items to get credit.

This is known in shoplifting parlance as "refund fraud." Or, if you prefer, "fucking stupid."

2The Bush Administration helping the terrorists hypocrisy excessive spin
Last week, Dubai threatened the United States with economic retaliation if Congress blocked its takeover of U.S. ports. According to The Hill:

Retaliation from the emirate could come against lucrative deals with aircraft maker Boeing and by curtailing the docking of hundreds of American ships, including U.S. Navy ships, each year at its port in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the source added.

It seems that George W. Bush thinks it's a good idea to do business with people who threaten you if they don't get the deal they want. But unfortunately for Our Great Leader, his political capital has all been spent - Congress decided to block the deal anyway (or at least, they would have if it hadn't collapsed at the last minute).

Okay, two things about this deal. First, George W. Bush has been going around saying that if we don't sell our port operations to Dubai, we'll risk offending the Arab world - and let's face it, we wouldn't want to do that. Shock & Awe, Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, and the shrugging off of 30,000 dead Iraqis - hey, we were just playing. But look out - not selling our port operations to Dubai might really make them mad.

Second, George W. Bush called the United Arab Emirates "a valued and strategic partner" last week. That's odd - here's what Dick Cheney had to say about the U.A.E. in 2000:

Q: If Iraq's President Saddam Hussein were found to be developing weapons of mass destruction, Governor Bush has said he would "take him out." Would you agree with such a deadly policy?

DICK: We might have no other choice. We'll have to see if that happens. The thing about Iraq, of course, was at the end of the war we had pretty well decimated their military. We had put them back in a box, so to speak. We had a strong international coalition raid against them, effective economic sanctions and a very robust inspection regime that was in place. So that the inspection regime under U.N. auspices was able to do a good job of stripping out the capacity to build weapons of mass destruction - the work that he'd been doing that had not been destroyed during the war on biological, chemical agents as well as a nuclear program. Unfortunately, now we find ourselves in a situation where that's started to fray on us, where the coalition now no longer is tied tightly together.

Recently the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, two Gulf states, have reopened diplomatic relations with Baghdad. The Russians and the French now are flying commercial airliners back into Baghdad and sort of thumbing their nose, if you will, at the international sanctions regime. And of course the U.N. inspectors have been kicked out. And there's been absolutely no response.

That's right. Just five years ago, Dick Cheney was citing the U.A.E.'s diplomatic relations with Baghdad as a reason for invading Iraq, yet now they're our best friends. Uh, when they're not threatening us with economic sanctions, that is.

3Bill Napoli anti-choice anti-choice anti-choice religious nut hypocrisy
As I'm sure you're aware, South Dakota recently passed a bill banning abortion which contains no exceptions for cases involving rape, incest, or threats to a woman's health.

During an interview with PBS last week, State Senator Bill Napoli, who strongly backed the bill, was asked if he could think of a real-life scenario in which an exception may be made. Here's what he had to say:


So let me get this straight: Bill Napoli would still prohibit a woman from getting an abortion if she was a) raped but not brutally so - you know, by a kind, gentle rapist who is attentive to her needs, b) brutally raped, but not a virgin, c) brutally raped, but not religious, or d) not sodomized during the rape.

Yes folks, that is as screwed up as you think it is.

4Ken Mehlman partisanship excessive spin
It's an election year, and the GOP is increasingly desperate to deflect attention from the long, long, long list of Republican screw-ups, scandals, failures and flops which will be hung round their necks come November. So RNC chairman Ken Mehlman has decided on a bold course of action - he's going to wet his pants like a kindergartner. According to the Associated Press:

In an address to the Southern Republican Leadership Conference in Tennessee, Ken Mehlman singled out party leaders and two potential 2008 presidential candidates - Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and John Kerry - for criticism on a range of issues, from national security to the economy to judicial nominees.

"Not only can they not settle on an agenda, they can't even agree on a slogan," Mehlman said in remarks prepared for delivery. He then offered some suggestions, albeit critical ones.

"If they really want the American people to know what they are going to do, then how about, 'Together, Americans can pay more in taxes,'" he said. "Or, 'Together, we can retreat from the central front in the war on terror.'"

Ken's remarks clearly demonstrate that the most important thing to Republicans these days is having a good slogan. Forget the Gulf Coast, forget Iraq, forget the United Arab Emirates; forget Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, illegal wiretapping, the outing of covert CIA agents; forget health care, outsourcing, poverty, Medicare, Social Security, education - forget all that.

The Republican party may be flushing this country down the toilet, but hey, at least they've got good slogans.

5Netscape News partisanship partisanship partisanship Clinton hating
In a related story, let's take a quick look at the way the media framed Mehlman's cryfest. Bear in mind that this "story" was nothing more than the head of the RNC saying something dumb about Democrats - not exactly an unusual occurrence.

But you wouldn't know that if you saw the front page of Netscape News (or the Netscape section on CNN's website) last week - check this out:

Oh my God, Hillary Clinton and John Kerry have been indicted! Uh, not really. It turns out that the "indictment" Netscape News was trumpeting was actually Ken Mehlman "launching a broad indictment of the Democratic Party."

Now obviously that's a bit different from, say, Rep. Tom DeLay being indicted for conspiracy and money laundering, or Rep. Duke Cunningham being indicted for bribery and corruption, or Chief of Staff to the Vice President Lewis "Scooter" Libby being indicted for perjury and obstruction of justice, or "Bush Pioneer" Tom Noe being indicted for theft and forgery, or Republican super-lobbyist Jack Abramoff being indicted for conspiracy and wire fraud, or... well, you get the picture.

Nice job at muddying the waters though, Netscape News.

6Robert Travis racism racism racism
"Is there racism in Brownsville?" That was the pressing question posed recently by the Brownsville Times of Oregon when Brownsville resident Robert Travis placed a sign on his front door which read, "We must protect our borders." The sign has an arrow underneath the text which points at the Hispanic family next door.

So is there racism in Brownsville? Robert Travis insists there is not. I am not a racist," he said in an interview with the Eugene Register Guard. "I have Mexican friends, Puerto Rican friends, black friends. Some of my best friends are Mexicans."

Indeed. So is there racism in Brownsville? "After 9/11, you had all these raghead guys and Afghanis and people putting on bumper stickers about securing our borders," says Travis. "I'm just doing what our country did when it was attacked. That doesn't make me a racist."

A compelling argument. So is there racism in Brownsville? "Beer bottles. Kids' toys. Yeah, I've run over them with my lawn mower. I mean business. Go back to Tijuana if you're going to live that way," says Mr. Travis, who has already threatened to report the family to the Immigration and Naturalization service. Never mind the fact that they're naturalized U.S. citizens: "I can tell by looking which ones are illegals," he says.

So is there racism in Brownsville? Gee, I just can't quite figure it out.

6Jim Welker racism racism racism
While we're on the subject of racism, let's take a peek at the recent antics of Colorado State Representative Jim Welker (R-Obviously) who previously made the Top 10 back in April 2005 for suggesting that gay marriage would lead to bestiality (see Idiots 192). Last week Welker was "blasted by his colleagues for e-mailing an essay written by someone else that accused 'welfare-pampered blacks' of waiting for the government to save them from Hurricane Katrina," according to the Rocky Mountain News.

Welker later said he didn't agree with everything in the essay, although he didn't make any mention of that when he forwarded it, adding no comments. The essay contained a passage which read "President Bush is not to blame for the rampant immorality of blacks."

When he realized that his racist email had caused an uproar in the Colorado General Assembly, Welker came up with the lame excuse that he forwarded the email "because of its message about society victimizing people by making them dependent on government programs."

Yeah, sure he did.

8Tony Phyrillas dumb
It appears that the increasing unpopularity of George W. Bush is seriously threatening the mental well-being of his few remaining die-hard fans. Take Tony Phyrillas, columnist for the Pottstown Mercury, "a Pulitzer Prize-Winning Newspaper" according to the banner on its website.

Last week Mr. Phyrillas penned what at first glance appears to be a pretty typical right-wing rant. For example, he mentions the Democrats' "allies in the mainstream media" and "far-left billionaires" in the first couple of paragraphs, and talks about how "The reason 9/11 happened was that Bill Clinton failed to respond to a half-dozen terrorist attacks going back to the first bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993." (Well, sure, if you ignore the inconvenient fact that the people responsible for the 1993 bombing were captured, convicted, and sentenced to life imprisonment, of course.)

But read on and you'll find out what passes for conservative thinking these days. After asking us to "Follow through with this nightmare scenario," Mr. Phyrillas really gets into his groove: thing Democrats will push is the impeachment of George W. Bush (and Dick Cheney, too). If there's one thing that gives Democrats nightmares, it’s the prospect of Dick Cheney as president. They can't very well impeach Bush if Cheney is his successor. So the Democrats will impeach Bush and Cheney.

Meanwhile, Osama bin Laden will emerge from his cave and lead an even bigger assault on U.S. interests. The war will spread to the oil-rich Gulf states. Militant Muslims will attempt to destroy Israel.

Where does that leave us? With oil cut off and Israel forced to use nuclear weapons to defend its existence, President Nancy Pelosi will have no choice but commit the U.S. to an even bigger war in the Middle East. Over the objections of Secretary of State Cindy Sheehan and Secretary of Defense Michael Moore, Pelosi will have U.N. Ambassador Jimmy Carter ask for a Security Council resolution to begin an all-out bombing of at least a half-dozen countries in the Middle East. The U.N. will turn us down, of course, with the Islamic Republic of France joining with other members to reject intervention in the Iran-led final solution of the Israeli problem.

Pelosi and her war council - Ted Kennedy, Hillary Clinton, Dick Durban (sic), Barbara Boxer, George Clooney and Sean Penn - will come to the conclusion that the U.S. will have to go it alone in the war. This time, our enemies will be a true axis of evil: Iran, al-Qaida, Hamas, Syria, Iraq under the reinstated dictator Saddam Hussein and Afghanistan, back in the hands of the Taliban. World War III? You betcha. And our casualties won't be 2,500. Multiply that by hundreds of thousands. Maybe millions.

If you think Nov. 7 is an opportunity to kick George Bush around some more, think twice. A weakened United States at home and abroad will have deadly consequences for all of us. That's what's at stake if Democrats regain control of Congress in November.

Look out - I think I spy another Pulitzer Prize heading in the Pottstown Mercury's direction!

9Rush Limbaugh
Peace activist Tom Fox was executed in Iraq by his kidnappers last week, which must have filled Rush Limbaugh with a great deal of glee. Why would this news make Rush so cheerful? Because when news of the kidnapping broke last November, here's what he had to say on his radio show:

You've met the bad guys, and you tried your technique on them, and now you're blindfolded in a room with guns pointed at you and knives at your throat. I don't like that. But any time a bunch of people that walk around with the head in the sand practicing a bunch of irresponsible, idiotic theory confront reality, I'm kind of happy about it, because I'm eager for people to see reality, change their minds, if necessary, and have things sized up.

Rush continued:

As warped as these people are, you know they're going to blame Bush for this. ... They wouldn't have been kidnapped because they wouldn't have been there in the first place if Bush hadn't gone and caused the war and created all these terrorists. I mean, these people are liberals, they're warped. Well, I mean, that's why there's - I'm telling you, folks, there's a part of me that likes this.

If Rush liked the fact that Tom Fox was kidnapped, he must be positively giddy now that his body has turned up "at a rubbish dump in western Baghdad, bound, shot and showing signs of torture."

10Bill Frist loser
And finally: exciting news from last week's Republican Leadership Conference - Bill Frist placed first in a straw poll designed to predict the GOP's presidential front runner for 2008.

Bill Frist as the Republican party's 2008 nominee? That would be an interesting race. It's not often that you get the chance to run against an ethicist who is under investigation for insider trading, a moralist who refused to criticize the vice president for telling a Senator to "go fuck yourself," a doctor who doesn't know if you can get HIV from sweat and who can diagnose a persistent vegetative state by watching a videotape, a philanthropist whose AIDS charity gave half a million dollars to his own political consultants, and a compassionate conservative who, while larking around in the tsunami-hit region of Sri Lanka, told a photographer to "get some devastation in the back."

Bill Frist in '08? It could happen... if we're lucky. See you next week!

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