🚀 go-pugleaf

On 26 Apr 2004 00:26:49 -0700, anon5c6c@nyx.net (In Your Dreams) wrote:

>The Top Ten Conservative Idiots (No. 153)
>   April 26, 2004
>   Lowest of the Low Edition
>
>   It's official: These people have no shame. Even though their candidate
>   dodged service in Vietnam, then went AWOL from the National Guard,
>   these assholes actually have the gall to question the John Kerry's
>   military service. If the Critics of John Kerry's War Record (1) really
>   want to go there, I say bring it on. But they're not the only
>   conservative idiots. Maytag Aircraft (2) has fired an employee for
>   taking pictures of flag-draped coffins, George W. Bush (3) is engaged
>   in a little illegal diversion of funds, and Donald Rumsfeld (4) is
>   doing a little creative editing. After that, we've got six more
>   idiots, and don't miss the special bonus section this week! 
>
>   1 Critics of John Kerry's War Record hypocrisy hypocrisy hypocrisy
>   hypocrisy
>   How dare they? How dare the GOP criticize John Kerry's war record in
>   Vietnam? From Ed Gillespie to Rep. Sam Johnson (R-TX), Republicans
>   were flooding the airwaves last week with criticism of Kerry's
>   military service. Why? Because, they say, there are questions about
>   the seriousness of his injuries. Excuse me? Here we have a man who
>   volunteered to command a swift boat on the Mekong Delta, who earned
>   the Bronze Star for heroic achievement, the Silver Star for gallantry
>   in action, and three purple hearts, and the Republicans are
>   questioning the seriousness of his injuries? I guess they haven't
>   noticed that, unlike their hero George W. Bush, John Kerry was
>   actually in Vietnam. The closest Bush came to enemy fire was having
>   his teeth examined in Alabama. To disparage a combat veteran's service
>   because you don't think his injuries weren't serious enough has got to
>   be the lowest of the low. What's the GOP going to tell kids who come
>   back from Iraq with all their limbs intact? "Well, well, look who's
>   back. I see you've still got your legs. Perhaps you weren't really
>   trying out there." By the way, this recent furor was started by one
>   John O'Neill, a so-called political independent who served in Vietnam
>   with John Kerry and said he "couldn't tie the shoes of some of the
>   people in Coastal Division 11." That is, John O'Neill didn't actually
>   serve with Kerry - he showed up two months after Kerry had left
>   Vietnam. Oh, and if you were wondering what kind of "political
>   independent" John O'Neill is, he's the kind that gets invited to the
>   White House by Nixon and Kissinger, worked for William Rehnquist, and
>   promotes the website WinterSoldier.com which is run by the Free
>   Republic Network. You know, one of those kinds of "independents."
>
>   2 Maytag Aircraft covering your ass
>   Newspapers finally published pictures of coffins coming back from Iraq
>   last week, and the result was, well, chaos. The Seattle Times started
>   the ball rolling, publishing a photograph taken in Kuwait by Tami
>   Silicio, an employee of military contractor Maytag Aircraft. The media
>   haven't been showing pictures like this until now because the Pentagon
>   has a policy of banning the media from taking pictures of caskets
>   being returned to the U.S., which they claim "defers to the
>   sensitivities of bereaved families." That's complete crap, obviously -
>   the policy is clearly intended to prevent the American public from
>   seeing what really happens when you send the nation's children off to
>   war. But in a shocking turn of events, Tami Silicio was subsequently
>   fired by Maytag Aircraft, along with her husband. According to the
>   Times, Silicio said "she hoped the publication of the photo would help
>   families of fallen soldiers understand the care and devotion that
>   civilians and military crews dedicate to the task of returning the
>   soldiers home." And for that, she got shitcanned. In related news,
>   nobody in the Bush administration has been fired yet for ignoring
>   urgent warnings of a massive terrorist attack on U.S. soil, failing to
>   catch Osama bin Laden, or lying about weapons of mass destruction in
>   Iraq. Priorities, priorities.
>
>   3 George W. Bush warmongering
>   There were more bombshell revelations about George W. Bush's Rush To
>   War(TM) last week, this time from journalist Bob Woodward whose new
>   book Plan of Attack reveals that Bush diverted $700 million from funds
>   approved for the war in Afghanistan to pay for the planning of his
>   Iraq adventure. Oh, but whoops! Bush apparently forgot to mention this
>   small appropriation to Congress, which is illegal. Funny really, you'd
>   think that someone as dedicated to upholding the Constitution as
>   George W. Bush wouldn't be going around stealing money out of the
>   treasury from under the nose of Congress. But there you have it.
>   Woodward also reveals that Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld decided to
>   tell Saudi Arabia's Prince Bandar about the decision to invade Iraq
>   two days before they mentioned it to Secretary of State Colin Powell.
>   And when I say tell him about it, I mean describe it in detail,
>   including showing him all the top secret war plans. And in what can
>   only be described as a bizarre coincidence, Woodward told 60 Minutes
>   last week that Bandar had assured Bush that Saudi Arabia would lower
>   oil prices later this year "to ensure the U.S. economy is strong on
>   election day," according to CBS News. That's really very nice of
>   Prince Bandar you know. I mean Bush doesn't bother his country after
>   15 of his fellow Saudis commit the September 11 attacks, and let's him
>   see the Iraq war plans before the U.S. Secretary of State gets to see
>   them, and all Bush gets in return is artificially low oil prices in
>   the run-up to the election. Fabulous.
>
>   4 The Pentagon and Donald Rumsfeld covering your ass covering your ass
>   lying
>   But there's more - according to the Washington Post, "The Pentagon
>   deleted from a public transcript a statement Defense Secretary Donald
>   H. Rumsfeld made to author Bob Woodward suggesting that the
>   administration gave Saudi Arabia a two-month heads-up that President
>   Bush had decided to invade Iraq." That's right, Donny-Boy was giving
>   Prince Bandar the scoop on the invasion of Iraq, and surprise,
>   surprise - the Pentagon didn't want you to know about it. Rumsfeld, of
>   course, doesn't recall exactly what he said. I mean, seriously, for
>   the guy in charge of the nation's defense, the dude has a terrible
>   memory. The deleted comments center around Rumsfeld telling Bandar
>   that he could "take that to the bank" that Iraq would be invaded. But
>   according to the Post, "Rumsfeld told reporters at a briefing
>   yesterday that he may have used the phrase 'take that to the bank' but
>   that no final decision had been made to go to war." Uh, so what was he
>   telling Bandar to take to the bank exactly? Some rolls of quarters?
>   The rebate check that just came in from those blank CD-Rs he bought
>   three months ago? Apparently the Pentagon deleted eight questions and
>   answers from the public transcript - according to Woodward, "I was
>   surprised that it was deleted because it obviously dealt with a
>   critical issue." Rumsfeld's response? Well, last week he described the
>   deleted portions of the transcript as "some banter." Ri-i-ight. Some
>   banter. Uh-huh.
>
>   5 Diebold election stealing
>   There was big news for e-voting critics last week when Diebold
>   acknowledged that their voting machines have "significant security
>   flaws," according to the Tri-Valley Herald. Said Diebold Election
>   Services Inc. president Bob Urosevich, "We were caught. We apologize
>   for that." Wait a second - you were caught? Hmm... interesting.
>   Apparently Diebold "supplied hundreds of poorly designed
>   electronic-voting devices that disenfranchised voters in the March
>   presidential primary," and, "Unknown thousands of voters were turned
>   away at the polls." Great job, Diebold. I mean, you've only been going
>   on about how frickin' awesome your machines are for the last
>   god-knows-how-long. But the good news is that a California voting
>   systems panel voted unanimously last week to recommend decertifying
>   the Diebold machines, and the state attorney general may now file
>   criminal and civil charges against the company for violating
>   California's election laws. So it looks like poor old Wally O'Dell,
>   the CEO of Diebold who said last August that he was "committed to
>   helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the President next year"
>   (see Idiots 124), will have to cross California off the list of other
>   states in which he planned to "help" Dubya.
>
>   6 The Journal-Advocate dumb dumb
>   It seems a few newspapers are following the Pentagon's orders and
>   making sure the American people don't see anything unpleasant coming
>   out of Iraq. In the case of the Journal-Advocate of Colorado, that
>   even extends to violence against cartoon characters. The
>   Journal-Advocate decided not to run the Doonesbury comic strip last
>   week because, in their words, "of the graphic, violent battlefield
>   depictions of Iraq in this week's installment." In the strip, the
>   character "B.D." is injured in combat and loses a leg. Not that this
>   is happening to real soldiers in Iraq, you understand - in real life,
>   when soldiers die they're just vaporized painlessly into nothingness,
>   just like in a video game. And then their clothes are placed into a
>   casket which is wrapped in the flag. Which, of course, you're not
>   allowed to see either. I mean, we don't want anyone getting all
>   squeamish and thinking that perhaps war isn't just a big game after
>   all, do we?
>
>   7 Jennifer Carroll Clinton hating
>   Surely there's nothing funnier to Republicans than a joke about
>   assassinating Hillary Clinton. Here's what State Rep. Jennifer Carroll
>   (R-Naturally) had to say at the Southern Republican Leadership
>   Conference in Miami Beach last week, according to the Jacksonville
>   Times-Union: "Carroll said Clinton was visited by the ghosts of
>   Presidents Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln. According to The
>   Associated Press, the joke had Clinton asking each president what she
>   could do to help the country, and Lincoln told Clinton to go to a
>   theater. Lincoln was assassinated in Ford's Theater in Washington."
>   Har-de-har. Apparently Carroll later told the Associated Press, "You
>   infer what you want to infer, but I never said assassinate, or kill or
>   maim." Uh, okay then, let's see. Then what are we to infer? So, Abe
>   Lincoln, who was assassinated in a theater, told Hillary Clinton that
>   to help the country she should go to a theater. Hmm. And according to
>   Carroll, this has got nothing to do with assassination. So... hmm.
>   Sorry, I don't get it then.
>
>   8 Paul Bremer dumb
>   After closing down al Sadr's newspaper, sparking the recent violence
>   which has led to the deaths of more than one hundred US soldiers and
>   hundreds of Iraqi civilians in the past month, Paul Bremer has been
>   struggling to come up with another way to win the hearts and minds of
>   the Iraqi people - and it looks like he might have done it. Last week,
>   Bremer announced that former members of Saddam Hussein's Baath party
>   may be able to return to their old jobs. Oh happy day! Well, that
>   pretty much knocks the wind out of the sails of those who think that
>   we're not doing a good job liberating Iraq. I mean, what could be
>   better than returning to power the very people who we were fighting to
>   free the Iraqi people from in the first place? Hey, wait a second...
>
>   9 The Treasury Department partisanship partisanship
>   George W. Bush has done a pretty great job of spending public money on
>   his election campaign this year. First there were the
>   taxpayer-subsidized jaunts to events like the Daytona 500 (see Idiots
>   143, 144), which, of course, were absolutely not campaign appearances,
>   no sir - and now he's got the Treasury Department doing his dirty work
>   for him. It was revealed last week that the IRS placed a sentence in
>   four April 9 news releases which read, "America has a choice: It can
>   continue to grow the economy and create new jobs as the president's
>   policies are doing, or it can raise taxes on American families and
>   small businesses, hurting economic recovery and future job creation."
>   Gee, shouldn't they at least included the line "I'm George W. Bush and
>   I approved this message?"
>
>   10 Condoleezza Rice dumb
>   And finally, the Freudian Slip Of The Decade award goes to... National
>   Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice. According to NewYorkMetro.com, Rice
>   was recently overheard at a recent dinner party saying, "As I was
>   telling my husb-" before stopping herself abruptly, and saying, "As I
>   was telling President Bush." Uh-oh, I hope Pickles doesn't find out
>   about this! Looks like someone might have designs on her man! See you
>   next week...
>
>   Bonus Idiots
>   In other news ... Arnold Schwarzenegger hasn't retrofitted his Hummer
>   yet ... Ex-police commissioner Bernard Kerik says "another 9/11" is
>   more likely if Kerry becomes president (odd, there's only been one
>   9/11 so far, and that happened when Bush was president) ... Rep. John
>   Hostettler got caught with a loaded 9mm handgun at a Kentucky airport
>   ... Christian faith-based teen-rehab program Teen Reach was shut down
>   after a long history of child abuse ... Missouri State House
>   Republicans voted to eliminate a sales tax exemption for the St. Louis
>   Post-Dispatch and the Kansas City Star because the newspapers
>   criticized them ... and George W. Bush said the world owes Ariel
>   Sharon a "thank you," Sharon took that to mean, "feel free to off
>   Yasser Arafat," and Russia said, "oh no you don't." Armageddon outta
>   here...
>
>   Linked cites verifying the aforementioned idiots can be found at:
>          http://www.democraticunderground.com/top10/index.html            
>   _____________________________________________________________________
> 
>              Liberal = Jesus   ...  Conservative = Mussolini
>   _____________________________________________________________________