The Top 10 Conservative Idiots, No. 312

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The Top 10 Conservative Idiots, No. 312

The Top 10 Conservative Idiots, No. 312

October 29, 2007
Fox On Fire Edition

This week sees the California wildfires dominating media coverage - Fox News (1) knows who's really to blame, Glenn Beck (2) finds the whole thing amusing, and FEMA (3) gives itself a big pat on the back. Elsewhere, George W. Bush (6) is throwing your money down the toilet, Fred Thompson (7) speaks his mind (what little there is of it) and Chuck Norris (9) reveals his choice for president. Enjoy, and don't forget the key!

Fox News

Hands up who couldn't see this coming a mile away?

This morning on Fox News, hosts of the show Fox and Friends blamed the wildfires in California on a new culprit: al Qaeda. They pointed to a 2003 FBI memo, which raised the possibility that al Qaeda may try to set wildfires around the western United States. They also noted that men in a "hovering helicopter" saw "a guy starting one of these fires."

Well that settles it! Since there is no other evidence to the contrary, clearly he must have been a member of al Qaeda!

So, Fox and Friends, tell me this: if the surge is working, and we're fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them over here, how come they've managed to set southern California on fire?

Perhaps this is just their way of thanking us for bringing freedom and democracy to the Middle East. It's okay though, because:

Later in the segment, host Steve Doocy acknowledged that in memo, al Qaeda didn't even mention California. "They mention Colorado, Montana, Utah, and Wyoming," he added.

Did you know that studies have shown that watching Fox News can actually make you stupid?

Seriously, I'm not kidding.

Glenn Beck

I don't know why Fox News is getting so bent out of shape about al Qaeda burning Californians out of their homes anyway - according to CNN's uber-wingnut Glenn Beck, they deserve it.

With more than 1,100 homes destroyed, two deaths reported and more than a quarter-million people ordered to evacuate, the wildfires ravaging Southern California have been as indiscriminate as they have been devastating.

But the images of charred residences, grieving homeowners and valiant firefighters apparently were not enough to move conservative talk radio host Glenn Beck, who told his listeners on his nationally syndicated show Monday that those suffering losses "hate America."

"I think there is a handful of people who hate America," Beck said. "Unfortunately for them, a lot of them are losing their homes in a forest fire today."

But don't worry - as usual, Beck had a compelling explanation:

On Tuesday, Beck said his comments were misinterpreted by "a few liberal bloggers."

"The wildfires in California are a tragedy," he said during his radio program. "I don't want anyone to lose their home. I don't care what their political stripes are. I don't want a soul to lose their home, and anyone who doesn't want to make me into an evil supervillain would understand that."

"Those who don't listen to the show ... , let me give you a little piece of advice," Beck added. "You have to engage what I would like to call your brain. You actually have to think: I might be making a joke; I might be serious."

So you see, there's nothing to be upset about - Beck was just making a joke about thousands of people getting burned out of their homes. Gee, lighten up everybody!

FEMA

You may be surprised to discover that FEMA has learned from the mistakes of Hurricane Katrina. Yes indeed. For example, FEMA brass held a press briefing last week which revealed they were doing a great job handling the disaster in southern California. Just one small problem:

The agency had called the briefing with about 15 minutes notice as federal officials headed for southern California to oversee and assist in firefighting and rescue efforts. Reporters were also given a telephone number to listen in on but could not ask questions.

But with no reporters on hand and an agency video camera providing a feed carried live by some television networks, FEMA press employees posed the questions for Johnson that included: "Are you happy with FEMA's response so far?"

According to Friday's Post account, which Walker confirmed, Johnson replied that he was "very happy with FEMA's response so far."

FEMA apologized last week, with deputy administrator Harvey Johnson - the man who gave the press conference - announcing that "We can and must do better, and apologize for this error in judgment." Meanwhile:

A spokeswoman for Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, who has authority over FEMA, called the incident "inexcusable and offensive to the secretary."

Heck of a job, Chertoff. Things just keep getting better and better on your watch, I must say.

Rudy Giuliani

The pro-choice, pro-gay, thrice-married cross-dressing former mayor of New York is certainly not shy about pandering his butt off in order to win the support of the religious right. But this could be awkward: when he was mayor of New York Rudy had the power to perform marriages and the Huffington Post noted last week that back in 2001, Rudy's gay roommates said, "He did tell us that if they ever legalized gay marriages, we would be the first one he would do." That's nice.

But what's this?

Tony Perkins, head of the Family Research Council, told The Hill Saturday that former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani (R) would support a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage.

Gosh, that's a complete reversal from his previous position! Hmm. So how did Tony feel about that?

Perkins said that was not enough to assuage his concerns about Giuliani, but "it was nice to hear."

So there you have it - Rudy Giuliani will literally say anything to get religious fanatics to maybe consider the possibility that he's not Satan incarnate. Now that's what I call principles.

This tremendous flip-flop comes on the heels of some other unsettling news for Rudy. The Village Voice uncovered secret documents last week - documents which were supposed to remain unpublished until after the 2008 presidential election - that http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0743,barrett,78158,6.html">reveal Rudy didn't know dick about terrorism before, during, or after 9/11.

In a recent broadside deriding the Clinton administration's response to Al Qaeda, Rudy Giuliani told an audience at Pat Robertson's Regent University: "Bin Laden declared war on us. We didn't hear it. I thought it was pretty clear at the time, but a lot of people didn't see it, couldn't see it." Other tenets of his standard stump speech include the assertion that he's been "studying terrorism" for more than 30 years, and that "the thing that distinguishes me on terrorism is that I have more experience in dealing with it" than the other presidential candidates.

However, in private testimony before the 9/11 Commission in 2004, Rudy gave a very different version of how much he knew about terrorism when the World Trade Center was attacked.

(snip)

A 15-page "memorandum for the record," prepared by a commission counsel and dated April 20, 2004, quotes Giuliani conceding that it wasn't until "after 9/11" that "we brought in people to brief us on al Qaeda."

(snip)

Asked about the "flow of information about al Qaeda threats from 1998-2001," Giuliani said: "At the time, I wasn't told it was al Qaeda, but now that I look back at it, I think it was al Qaeda."

Perhaps Rudy should stick to the stuff he knows best. For example, last week he told an audience in New Hampshire, "I took a city that was known for pornography and licked it to a large extent, so I have my own set of qualifications."

Yeah, he http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2007/10/24/rudy-i-took-a-city-know_n_69736.html">actually said that.

Rudy Giuliani and Michael Mukasey

The confirmation hearings for Bush's new pick for attorney general, Michael Mukasey, were going relatively smoothly last week, until...

In testimony before the Judiciary panel on Oct. 18, Mukasey demurred when asked whether waterboarding constitutes torture and is therefore illegal. "I don't know what's involved in the technique," he said. "If waterboarding is torture, torture is not constitutional."

I see. But apparently Mukasey's old buddy Rudy Giuliani has a simliar problem with the definition of torture. According to ABC News:

Rudy Giuliani, R-N.Y., left the door open, Wednesday evening, on whether the United States should engage in waterboarding, an interrogation technique that simulates drowning, when trying to protract information from suspected terrorists.

Speaking at a town hall meeting in Davenport, Iowa, Giuliani was asked whether he agreed with U.S. Attorney General nominee Michael Mukasey on the subject of waterboarding. Mukasey said during his confirmation hearings last Thursday that he was not certain waterboarding was torture.

"I'm not sure it is either, it depends on how it is done," said Giuliani who is a longtime friend of Mukasey. "It depends on the circumstances. It depends on who does it."

Aha! And there we have it. It turns out that waterboarding isn't bad, it's just misunderstood - and more importantly, it depends on who does it.

For example, when a Japanese officer engaged in waterboarding during World War II, he was charged with war crimes and sentenced to 15 years hard labor.

But when the U.S. does it, it's not torture - it's merely enhanced interrogation. Get the picture?

And it turns out that Rudy might have already used these techniques well before 9/11. At the same town hall meeting he said:

GIULIANI: And I see, when the Democrats are talking about torture, they're not just talking about even this definition of waterboarding, which again, if you look at the liberal media and you look at the way they describe it, you could say it was torture and you shouldn't do it. But they talk about sleep deprivation. I mean, on that theory, I'm getting tortured running for president of the United States. That's plain silly. That's silly.

That comes from people who have never investigated a real criminal case, never investigated organized crime. You know how I put hundreds of Mafia people in jail? And I helped to put thousands in Italy in jail? You know how I did it? I did it by electronic surveillance and aggressive questioning. None of them wanted to give me the information. They didn't walk into my office and say, "I want to tell you about all of those Mafia murders..."

They got 'em because we arrested them, we got very significant charges on them, and we questioned them for long, long periods of time. With very aggressive techniques. Never ever tortured anybody. I can tell you that. Would never allow it.

So nobody every got tortured on your watch, eh Rudy? Are you sure about that?

The arresting officers beat Louima with their fists, nightsticks, and hand-held police radios on the ride to the station. On arriving at the station house, he was strip-searched and put in a holding cell. The beating continued later, culminating with Louima being raped in a bathroom at the 70th Precinct station house in Brooklyn. Officer Justin Volpe kicked Louima in the testicles, then, while Louima's hands were cuffed behind his back, sodomized him with a plunger, causing severe internal damage to his colon and bladder that required several operations to repair. Volpe then walked through the precinct holding the bloody, excrement-stained instrument in his hand, indicating that he had "broke a man down."

No, wait, don't tell me - that's Rudy Giuliani's definition of "aggressive questioning."

George W. Bush

So Our Great Leader is threatening to veto health care for poor kids - again - because at $35 billion it's just too darned expensive. Those sick children will have to pull themselves up by the bootstraps like everyone else, the lazy little bastards.

Funnily enough, George's threat came around the same time that he requested another $46 billion to kill brown people on the other side of the world. Priorities, people, priorities! Those brown people could destroy Our Way Of Life - which these days apparently involves denying health care to children of the working poor and torturing people to death. Yes folks, that's our way of life, and George W. Bush needs another $46 billion of your money to defend it.

Meanwhile, it was reported last week that "The wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and anti terrorist efforts abroad could cost the country $2.4 trillion over the next ten years, according to a report Wednesday."

Yes, that's a $2 trillion dollar price tag. Or to put it another way, two thousand billion dollars. I mean, seriously, you can see why people can't get their heads around this. When you're talking about sums of money that large, you might as well say "a gajillion dollars."

The $2.4 trillion would pay to keep 75,000 troops deployed overseas from 2013 to 2017. About 210,000 troops are currently deployed. It does not include the Pentagon's normal spending, which in 2007 is estimated to be about $450 billion.

The estimated $2.4 trillion works out to about $21,500 per American household.

How the hell has it ended up costing so much? And what are we getting for our money? Well, this might give you a clue:

The U.S. State Department is unable to account for most of $1.2 billion in funding that it gave to DynCorp International to train Iraqi police, a government report said Tuesday.

"The bottom line is that State can't account for where it went," said Glenn D. Furbish, who was involved in putting together the 20-page report for the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction (SIGIR).

Don't worry though, it's just a BILLION dollars. A drop in the bucket! Plenty more where that came from, right?

Fred Thompson

If you think that the best thing for this country in the coming years is a continuation of the Bush presidency, look no further than Fred Thompson. Thompson was campaigning in South Carolina last week when he announced that we couldn't withdraw from the disaster in Iraq because:

THOMPSON: We will not be a safer country, we will not be a safer America if the whole world watches us being defeated by a bunch of kids with improvised explosive devices.

Way to boil this extremely complex situation down to the dumbest possible soundbite, Fred! What's next? Assurances that we'll "smoke 'em out of their caves?" Exhortations to "bring 'em on?" Declarations of "mission accomplished?"

Just what America needs - another president with a big mouth and a turd where his brain should be.

Fundy Nutjobs

Happy birthday to you,
Happy birthday to you,
Happy birthday dear planet,
Happy birthday to you!

That's right, last week did not just mark Hillary Clinton's 60th birthday - it also marked the 6,010th birthday of our planet Earth, at least according to World Net Daily:

How old is the world?

Most people would say: "Nobody knows."

Well that's not true is it. But do go on.

But the author of the book frequently described as the greatest history book ever written, said the world was created Oct. 23, 4004 B.C. - making it exactly 6,010 yesterday.

In the 1650s, an Anglican bishop named James Ussher published his "Annals of the World," subtitled, "The Origin of Time, and Continued to the Beginning of the Emperor Vespasian's Reign and the Total Destruction and Abolition of the Temple and Commonwealth of the Jews." First published in Latin, it consisted of more than 1,600 pages.

The book, now published in English for the first time, is a favorite of homeschoolers and those who take ancient history seriously. It's the history of the world from the Garden of Eden to the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70.

Of course, there will be those who disagree with Ussher's calculations of time - especially evolutionists who need billions of years to explain their theory of how life sprang from non-life and mutated from one-celled animals into human beings.

Well well, I never knew that "evolutionists" were the ones who came up with the idea that the earth is billions of years old. Fascinating. I guess geologists and astronomers had nothing to do with it.

World Nut Daily continues:

This is one of the most important literary, historical and Christian works you'll ever own, a treasure for any home library. It's a must for your homeschool library.

And not just as a piece of historical literature! According to World Nut Daily, Annals of the World is "Considered not only a literary classic, but also an accurate reference" that is "highly regarded for its preciseness." Never mind the last three and a half centuries of scientific progress - the mid-17th century is where it's at!

Anyway, it turns out that the saps at FreeRepublic.com were most impressed by this "news" (which was actually an ad for the book, which World Nut Daily happens to be flogging in their store).

yankeesdoodle wrote:

God is very clear on the fact that humans get 6000 years to attempt to rule ourselves. ... The book may very well be pretty close.

Ruy Dias de Bivar wrote:

If I remember correctly, Issac Newton examined Ussher's work and could find nothing wrong with it.

Meanwhile ari-freedom noted that:

...most scientists are liberals and believe in Glorebal (sic) warming so you have to err on the side of caution when it comes to accepting their words as fact.

To be fair, there were some naysayers...

Getting to the point of this article, it is rediculous that anyone thinks they can name the exact day. Rediculous.

I agree - it's completely rediculous.

Chuck Norris

Mike Huckabee got a ringing endorsement last week from America's Greatest Living Joke, Chuck Norris. The star of such movies as "Missing in Action," "Missing in Action II: The Beginning," and "Braddock: Missing in Action III" endorsed the former Arkansas governer last week in his column on World Nut Daily.

Chuck supports Huck because, "Like our Founding Fathers, he's not afraid to stand up for a Creator and against secularist beliefs." He also approves of Huck's stance on "saving marriage" from the homos, and "protecting the right to life." And according to Norris, there's even a "a pro-Huckabee swell rising among the younger generation." Eww.

But what about the electability question? Chuck's got that covered too:

As with the other candidates, Huckabee has, and will continue to have, his hecklers: "He hasn't raised enough money." "He'll never beat Hillary." "Our society is too prejudice (sic) and paranoid to vote for a once Baptist minister." "He'll never out-race the top four Republican candidates."

I was thinking about these types of comments the other day when I recalled another leader in ancient times that didn't match up in the line up: King David. Seven men were poised and paraded for the position of king, but David was left in the field shepherding because he wasn't "a frontrunner in the polls." They overlooked the best because they were too busy judging by outward appearance. But God appointed David king.

In case the moral of that story is unclear, God is going to appoint Huckabee president. But come on Chuck, a Bible analogy? Booo! I've got a better one.

Once there was a humble Texas Ranger called Lone Wolf McQuade. He got in too deep with a gang of drug runners and lost his best friend and his badge. So McQuade tracked down those drug runners, aiming to bring them to justice. But they got the better of him, shot him down, and buried him alive in his own pickup truck. Now McQuade could have given up right there and then - but you know what he did? He cracked open a beer, poured it all over his head, hit the gas - and drove that truck straight out of the ground.

I think there's a lesson there for all of us.

Dick Cheney

And finally, Dick Cheney was so concerned by the news coming out of California last week that he fell asleep during an emergency cabinet meeting. Here's the video.

I wonder what he was dreaming about?

See you next week!

-- EarlG