The Top 10 Conservative Idiots, No. 278

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The Top 10 Conservative Idiots, No. 278

February 12, 2007
A Cornucopia Of Crazies Edition

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Welcome to the 278th edition of the Top 10 Conservative Idiots. This week, Rush Limbaugh (1) proves that ESPN was right to fire him, Bill O'Reilly's (2) dreams come true, and Michael Flory (3) is in big trouble. Meanwhile, if Ted Haggard (4) is completely heterosexual, then Pat Robertson (6) is completely non-racist, and Katherine Harris (10) is completely sane. Enjoy... and don't forget the key!



Rush Limbaugh

If you watched Super Bowl XLI last week you may have been under the impression that Chicago Bears quarterback Rex Grossman, er, let his team down a little. You're not alone - here's award-winning sports writer David Haugh of the Chicago Tribune:

Sure, the Bears had issues against the Colts with their run defense, problems with the offensive line and breakdowns in the secondary. But all of those contributing factors to the loss might have been moot if not for one Grossman pass with 11 minutes 59 seconds left in the game.

Grossman's decision to attempt such a throw given the situation could be described best as reckless. Ill-advised. Even ignorant, to use the word Grossman himself introduced into Super Bowl week.

The sideline pass Grossman floated to Muhsin Muhammad in the fourth quarter changed the Super Bowl more than any other play. Muhammad wasn't that open, and the Bears didn't really need to take such a risk at the time. It turned out they couldn't afford one either.

It's one thing for Grossman to be a gunslinger, but not if he is going to shoot himself and his team in the foot.

(snip)

Despite the off-night and the negative reaction Sunday will produce, Grossman also can take solace in proving himself a good NFL quarterback in 2006. This might have been the season Grossman solidified the position for a Bears franchise that traditionally hasn't experienced much.

But those who believe the Bears would not have been here without Grossman this season also have to acknowledge his mistakes prevented them from winning Sunday more than any other player's.

That's the hard reality that will stare Grossman in the face Monday morning, and maybe every day until he and the Bears return.

If you don't like football, you're probably wondering at this point why I'm devoting such a large section of this week's Top 10 to the sport. The answer is simple: Rush Limbaugh. According to Media Matters:

On the February 5 broadcast of his nationally syndicated radio show, Rush Limbaugh, responding to media coverage of Chicago Bears quarterback Rex Grossman, stated "they're dumping on this guy - Rex Grossman - for one reason, folks, and that's because he is a white quarterback." Limbaugh later insisted in conversation with a caller that, "they just want this guy not to do well 'cause he's a white quarterback," and that Grossman was "targeted for destruction."

Limbaugh is right, of course. Grossman was only castigated for his error-prone play because he is white. The much-praised Indianapolis Colts quarterback Peyton Manning, on the other hand, was unjustly lauded for his performance merely because he is black. It's a crying shame.




Bill O'Reilly

A few weeks ago Bill O'Reilly spoke out loudly on the Shawn Hornbeck/Ben Ownby kidnappings (see Idiots 275). Here are a few choice excerpts:

"...the question is, why didn't he escape when he could have? There are all kinds of theories about that. Joining us now from Washington, Greta Van Susteren, who has been out to Missouri reporting on the case. All right, you know, the Stockholm syndrome thing, I don't buy it. I've never bought it. I didn't think it happened in the Patty Hearst case. I don't think it happened here."

"I'm not buying this. If you're 11 years old or 12 years old, 13, and you have a strong bond with your family, OK, even if the guy threatens you, this and that, you're riding your bike around, you got friends. The kid didn't go to school. There's all kinds of stuff. If you can get away, you get away. All right? If you're 11."

"The situation here for this kid looks to me to be a lot more fun than what he had under his old parents. He didn't have to go to school. He could run around and do whatever he wanted."

"I think when it all comes down, what's going to happen is, there was an element here that this kid liked about his circumstances."

"I actually hope I'm wrong about Shawn Hornbeck. I hope he did not make a conscious decision to accept his captivity because Devlin made things easy for him. No school, play all day long."

Good news, Bill! There's no need to keep hoping against hope because you were wrong about Shawn Hornbeck after all. According to the Associated Press, the man accused of kidnapping Shawn and Ben was also charged last week with "69 counts of forcible sodomy." Sure looks like Shawn was having "a lot more fun than what he had under his old parents."

Perhaps they didn't escape because they were so enjoying being repeatedly and involuntarily buggered, eh Bill? "No school, play all day long," and all they had to do to keep up the fun was get raped every now and again. How does that theory sound to you?

I'm still waiting for Rush Limbaugh to complain that people are picking on the kidnapper because he's white.



Michael A. Flory

Speaking of rape...

A Cuyahoga County grand jury charged a Michigan attorney and political activist Wednesday with raping a fellow delegate at last July's National Federation of Young Republicans convention in Cleveland.

Michael A. Flory, 32, of Jackson, Mich., faces charges of rape, kidnapping, aggravated burglary, gross sexual imposition and witness intimidation.

Police and prosecutors say he escorted a drunken 21-year-old colleague to her hotel room after an evening of partying in the Warehouse District. She told police he attacked her when she was feeling sick and on the verge of passing out.

(snip)

Flory gained attention at age 18 when he gave a televised speech to the Republican National Convention in the Houston Astrodome. He served as vice chairman of the National Federation of Young Republicans and ran unsuccessfully for the top spot in 2003.

I mean, really.



Ted Haggard

Stop the presses! After an intensive course of therapy Ted Haggard, the disgraced former president of the National Association of Evangelicals, has learned, much to everyone's astonishment, that he is "completely heterosexual" after all. It's true! Just listen to Rev. Tim Ralph, one of Haggard's four "overseers" during his three-week counseling session.

He is completely heterosexual. That is something he discovered. It was the acting-out situations where things took place. It wasn't a constant thing.

This news has come as a bit of a surprise to Ted's former lover Mike Jones:

Well, that's the quickest therapy I've ever heard of. It's hard for me to imagine someone who is performing oral sex and saying that he is "straight." That just doesn't jive. If you were to ask me "Do I think is Ted haggard gay?" I would have to say "yes."

So despite the fact that up until fairly recently Ted liked to sneak off and enjoy secret man-on-man action with a male prostitute, a three-week course of therapy has made him realize that he isn't gay in any way whatsoever. No, he's straight as an arrow. Completely heterosexual, you might say.

In other news, Peyton Manning has confirmed to the press that he is "totally, 100% black."



George H. W. Bush

Last week Poppy Bush went to Los Angeles to receive the 2007 Ronald Reagan Freedom Award (whatever that is), and while in town, had lunch with "Desperate Housewives" star Teri Hatcher. Apparently George Sr. thought that Teri really was desperate, because he ended their lunch date by giving her a couple of slaps on the ass.

It's true. And if you don't believe me, then you won't want to miss the video.



Pat Robertson

Oh Pat, is there anyone you won't offend? According to Media Matters:

On the February 7 edition of the Christian Broadcasting Network's The 700 Club, host Pat Robertson said that people who have received too much plastic surgery "got the eyes like they're Oriental" while he put his fingers up to the side of his face.

I thought I should get some expert advice on this, so I decided to instant message my wife (she's Asian) at work to get her opinion. Following is an actual transcript of our conversation (the usernames have been changed to protect the innocent).

EarlG (05:03 PM) :
hi
MrsEarlG (05:03 PM) :
hi
EarlG (05:03 PM) :
so i'm writing the top 10 and i wanted to get a quote from you about Pat Robertson
MrsEarlG (05:04 PM) :
ok
EarlG (05:04 PM) :
http://mediamatters.org/items/200702070009
MrsEarlG (05:07 PM) :
wow
MrsEarlG (05:07 PM) :
what an asshole

Thanks honey!



Tom Tancredo

Perhaps the new motto of the GOP should be, "when in doubt, make something up." It worked most famously for the Bush administration, allowing them to drag us into an invasion and occupation of Iraq. So when Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-CO) got into a spot of bother recently, he happily jumped aboard the "make something up" bandwagon.

Last November, Tancredo said that illegal immigration has caused Miami to become a "third world country." Even Republicans didn't like that, with Miami Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen inviting Tancredo to "visit beautiful Miami, my hometown, and experience firsthand our hospitality ... Come on down, Tom, the water's fine!"

But why would Tom Tancredo want to visit a place that he'd already compared to a "third world country?" Much better to make something up instead. According to Think Progress, he appeared on CNN on January 16 and said:

The Miami Herald took a poll on my statements. Seventy percent of the people that responded supported me. Most of the radio and television stations down there that have done similar polling also supported me.

Just one problem. "Noticiero Univision" anchor Maria Elena Salinas looked into Tancredo's poll claims, and reported last week that:

My office consulted the Herald about the alleged Tancredo poll, and they told us there was no such poll.

What a surprise!



The Bush Administration

Maybe "when in doubt, make something up" isn't such a good strategy after all. Sure, it might get you the results you want for a little while, but eventually people are going to find out that, well, you're just a lying bastard.

According to the Los Angeles Times:

As the Bush administration began assembling its case for war, analysts across the U.S. intelligence community were disturbed by the report of a secretive Pentagon team that concluded Iraq had significant ties to Al Qaeda.

Analysts from the CIA and other agencies "disagreed with more than 50%" of 26 findings the Pentagon team laid out in a controversial paper, according to testimony Friday from Thomas F. Gimble, acting inspector general of the Pentagon.

But... but... I thought that the dodgy intelligence which got is into Iraq was all the fault of the CIA! And now you're telling me that they - and "other agencies" - shot down more than half of the administration's claims about Iraq and Al Qaeda prior to the invasion? So how come Bush & Co. ended up using this bogus information?

Although the Pentagon Inspector General's report released Friday did not address the accuracy of such assessments, it documented the unusual efforts by Defense Department policymakers to bypass regular intelligence channels and influence officials at the highest level of government.

Feith's work was of critical importance to Vice President Dick Cheney, who once referred to the Pentagon team's conclusions as the "best source" for understanding the relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda.

(snip)

P.J. Crowley, a retired Air Force colonel and a senior fellow at the Center of American Progress, said that the intelligence peddled by Feith tainted the public dialogue.

"They weren't creating intelligence, but they were assembling the pieces to create a rationale for war," Crowley said. "Their production was discredited, but they had the desired effect. The little pieces ended up infecting the process."

If one attempted to sum up George W. Bush's legacy in three words, I think "infecting the process" would be a pretty good effort.



Karl Rove

Back to the topic of immigration for a moment... ABC News reported last week that:

White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove explained the Bush Administration's guest worker program and immigration policy at a luncheon Thursday by saying, "I don't want my 17-year-old son to have to pick tomatoes or make beds in Las Vegas."

But wait! There's an explanation. (There's always an explanation, isn't there?)

White House Deputy Press Secretary Dana Perino told ABC News that the White House does not deny that Rove made the remark but claims it has been taken out of context.

Of course - it was taken out of context. Let's have a look at the text of the actual speech and see what Karl really said:

I don't want my 17-year-old son to have to pick tomatoes or make beds in Las Vegas. Nor do I want him to join the military and go to Iraq. In fact, I don't want him to have to do anything other than ride my coat-tails onto the good-old-boy network, stepping on the backs of the less-well-off in order to achieve my own perverse re-imagineering of the American Dream. I want him to crush the poor, spit on the sick, and sup 63rd Street Martinis out of the skulls of polar bears. I want him to become vice chairman of the National Federation of Young Republicans and I don't care who he has to rape to get there. Eventually he will run for the presidency, which he will win after I convince the American people that his opponent is a serial child-molester. His first priority as president will be to spend the entire national budget on the military-industrial complex in order to fund breakthroughs in space travel and weapons technology, which we will use to subjugate nearby solar systems. Following that, we will rule the galaxy as father and son.

See? Totally out of context.



Katherine Harris

And finally, a couple of weeks ago I briefly noted that Katherine "Crazy As A Squirrel Stuck Up A Drain Pipe" Harris had been spotted handing out business cards at the 2007 State of the Union address. Now it seems that Harris's desire to remain in Congress - despite losing her quixotic Senate race - extends to parking her car in the Cannon House Office Building.

According to Raw Story, Roll Call's Ben Pershing says "he can confirm that the ex-lawmaker has indeed been parking it regularly (there) since she lost her day job. The car was there Friday evening, in the same spot where she always parked when she actually worked in that building."

Harris' car reportedly "still had a medallion hanging in it from the 109th Congress." A House aide was quoted as saying that "officials were still in the process of distributing parking permits for the 110th Congress," which apparently allows Harris and others with permits from the 109th Congress to continue parking in the garage.

Now, I've been scratching my head trying to figure out why she's doing this, and I think I've come up with the answer: Katherine Harris thinks that election results are decided in her mind.

See, when she was Florida's Secretary of State she decided that George W. Bush was going to win the 2000 presidential election, and voila, as if by magic, he did! So she thinks that the same thing has happened to her, and that she's actually the junior senator for Florida.

I know, I know - this doesn't explain why she's parking her car in the Cannon building instead of the Hart building. But have you considered the possibility that she's completely nuts?

See you next week!

-- EarlG