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   The Ronald Reagan Top Ten Conservative Idiots (No. 159)
   June 14, 2004
   Multiple Reagasm Edition

   In honor of the Gipper's passing we have decided to rename this week's
   Top Ten Conservative Idiots, "The Ronald Reagan Top Ten Conservative
   Idiots." And now on with the show. In the number one slot we have
   George W. Reagan (1) - I mean, George W. Bush - who is trying to
   attach himself to the legacy of Ronald Reagan in much the same way a
   horny cocker spaniel tries to attach itself to your pantleg. He's got
   some competition though in the form of The Ronathon (2), a loose-knit
   group of individuals with a common goal: brown-nosing the Gipper. But
   it's not all Reagan this week - the Bush Administration (3) is in
   trouble over torture, the State Department (4) is in trouble over
   terrorism, and the Pentagon (7) is in trouble over Iraq. Closing out
   the list, George W. Bush (9) went to the G8 summit (picture gallery!),
   and Jonathan Cunningham (10) sells his wife's underpants. 

   1 George W. Reagan pandering excessive spin hypocrisy
   And so at long last, George W. Bush has found a flag-draped coffin he
   doesn't mind standing next to. In fact, Our Great Leader was
   practically clambering into Reagan's casket last week in a vain effort
   to get some of that Gipper Goodness to rub off on him. Team Bush
   replaced their campaign website's home page with a tribute to the
   ex-president, and when I say "tribute," I of course mean a desperate
   attempt to confuse people into believing that Little George is the
   second coming of Saint Ronnie. Fat chance. Somehow I don't think we're
   going to be seeing Bush referred to in the history books as "The Great
   Communicator." (Note: the Bush campaign has taken down their tribute,
   but you can see it here.) Meanwhile, the Misadministration were out in
   force spreading the word. Colin Powell said "I think there's a
   similarity," between Bush and Reagan, Martin Anderson (chief domestic
   adviser in the Reagan White House) said "everything Bush talks about
   was something Ronald Reagan had tried to do," (what, Reagan wanted to
   invade Iraq? I thought he was selling Saddam weapons) and don't be
   surprised if all we hear from now till November is exhortations to
   "win one for the Gipper" by voting for Bush. Not that the Republicans
   would ever consider playing politics with Reagan's death, of course.
   But for all these wonderful comparisons, perhaps we should heed the
   words of someone who knew Ronald Reagan better than most - his son,
   Ron Jr. What's Ron's opinion? "My father crapped bigger ones than
   George Bush." Case closed.

   2 The Ronathon excessive spin partisanship dumb
   So what's it to be? How are we going to immortalize Ronnie, and what's
   the most inappropriate way of doing it? Yes, the Ronathon was in full
   effect last week as right-wingers competed to demonstrate how far they
   could get their noses up Dutch's backside. Sen. Mitch McConnell of
   Kentucky wants to replace Alexander Hamilton on the $10 bill, Rep.
   Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif) wants Reagan on the $20, and Rep. Jeff
   Miller (R-Fla.) prefers to replace John F. Kennedy on the 50-cent
   piece. Meanwhile Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist has suggested
   renaming the Pentagon to "the Ronald Reagan National Defense
   Building." (Seriously.) Some in Congress are even trying to get the
   25-year waiting period removed so they can place a memorial on the
   National Mall. But why stop at the National Mall? Grover Norquist and
   the Ronald Reagan Legacy Project want to put a monument to the Gipper
   in every county in the United States (there's more than 3000 of them).
   I hope they're paying for it. And let's not forget putting Ronnie's
   head on Mount Rushmore, of course, which is a very popular suggestion.
   Tell you what, why don't we rename the Statue of Liberty after him -
   or better still, replace Lady Liberty's head with Ronald's, complete
   with cowboy hat? Or we could carefully set massive forest fires in the
   west which when viewed from space form a majestic flaming image of his
   smiling face. We could call it the Ronald Reagan Tree Is A Tree Clean
   Air Monument. Because you know, I bet that's what Ronald Reagan would
   have wanted.

   3 The Bush Administration unconstitutional just plain evil
   John Ashcroft was in hot water last week when he potentially placed
   himself in contempt of Congress by refusing to release a January 2002
   memo which says that George W. Bush is above the law and can torture
   whomever he damn well pleases. "I believe it is essential to the
   operation of the executive branch that the president have the
   opportunity to get information from the attorney general that is
   confidential," said Ashcroft. But he didn't invoke executive
   privilege, so he was basically saying, "oh, and by the way, I'm above
   the law too." The memo itself was 56 pages long, and according to
   Reuters said that George W. Bush had "'complete authority over the
   conduct of war,' overriding international treaties such as a global
   treaty banning torture, the Geneva Conventions and a U.S. federal law
   against torture." That's right folks - Our Great Leader doesn't need
   to abide by such petty out-dated concepts as "the law" because he's
   defending our freedoms. Never mind the fact that authorizing torture
   places George W. Bush in the same league as Augusto Pinochet. Because
   don't forget - even though we're doing the same things the evil-doers
   are doing, we know that it's wrong, and that makes us better than
   them. Um, or something. And anyway, I bet it's what Ronald Reagan
   would have wanted.

   4 The State Department helping the terrorists dumb
   Mind you, all this torture must be working because according to a
   State Department report, terrorist attacks have drastically declined
   in the last two years. All hail George W. Bush, Inconveniencer of
   Terrorists! Mind you, in order to actually believe that terrorist
   attacks have drastically declined, you'd also have to believe that the
   State Department's report is accurate, and if you believe that then -
   ha ha! - sucker! Yes, the Associated Press revealed last week that the
   State Department was "wrong in reporting terrorism declined worldwide
   last year... Instead, both the number of incidents and the toll in
   victims increased sharply, the department said." Wow! Incredible...
   they released a report claiming that terrorism had decreased sharply,
   and in fact it had increased sharply! Impressive. So Team Bush are
   running around trying to claim that John Kerry would be "weak on
   terrorism." Yet the Bush Administration is proven to be weak on
   terrorism, but doesn't even know it because the State Department's
   reports are wrong. I'm so glad the grown-ups are in charge. Colin
   Powell had a good explanation though, saying, "Errors crept in that
   frankly we did not catch." Oh, well that should make everyone feel
   much better.

   5 Dick Cheney hypocrisy hypocrisy
   While we're on the subject of lies being told about John Kerry (refer
   to Idiots 151 for previous Crashcart campaign hypocrisy), check this
   out - it seems that Dick Cheney wasn't as big an admirer of Ronald
   Reagan as he pretended to be at last week's state funeral. See, when
   Cheney was a congressman back in the 1980s, he criticized Reagan for
   "tolerating a decision-making process in the upper reaches of the
   Administration that lacked integrity and accountability." Cheney also
   said that if Reagan "doesn't really cut defense, he becomes the No. 1
   special pleader in town," and that "you've got to hit defense." But
   wait a second - I thought that cutting defense spending is bad - at
   least, Team Bush is constantly criticizing John Kerry for it. Well
   that's the funny part - see, actually it turns out that when Cheney
   was George H. W. Bush's secretary of defense, he did everything he
   could to cut defense spending - and bragged about it. In fact,
   according to the San Diego Union-Tribune, he "presided over the
   biggest cutbacks in defense programs in modern history." Yup, Dick
   actively took part in "downsizing" Reagan's legacy. Who'da thunk it?

   6 George W. Bush fiscal irresponsibility
   It's a shame that Ronnie's demise is keeping news from Iraq off the
   front page at the moment though, because things are looking up over
   there. For example, while Americans are paying record prices for
   gasoline, Iraqis are only paying five cents a gallon! Yes, all thanks
   to "hundreds of millions of dollars subsidies bankrolled by American
   taxpayers," according to the Associated Press. That's right, a
   three-month supply of gas for the Iraqi people costs America half a
   billion dollars. Gee, I hope nobody said before the invasion that the
   occupation of Iraq would pay for itself. That would make them look
   pretty stupid now. Anyway, I guess there is one way George W. Bush is
   similar to the Gipper - he's firmly on the "deficits to infinity and
   beyond" bandwagon. I'm sure it's - *sniff* - what Reagan would have
   wanted.

   7 The Pentagon dumb dumb
   But like the subsidized oil, the good news keeps flowing. The
   Associated Press recently revealed that "Misguided U.S. training of
   Iraqi police contributed to the country's instability and has delayed
   getting enough qualified Iraqis on the streets to ease the burden on
   American forces." Wait a minute, that's not good news either. Who said
   that? Some commie-pinko-America-hater? Uh, not quite. These are the
   thoughts of Army Maj. Gen. Paul D. Eaton, the head of armed forces
   training in Iraq. "We've had the wrong training focus - on individual
   cops rather than their leaders," he told the AP last week. Well, gee,
   uh, I guess we hand the country over in two weeks or so... isn't it a
   bit late to be telling us this? "They basically quit. They told us,
   'We're an army for external defense and you want us to go to
   Fallujah?' That was a personal mistake on my part." Whoa, whoa, hold
   on. This is terrible. You've been doing this for a year, and the whole
   thing is a flop? How do you explain this? "We thought we were going to
   be nice and comfortable in a benign environment and rebuild this
   country." Oh, right.

   8 William Graham anti-choice anti-choice just plain evil
   How low can the fundie nutjobs go? Family planners Causeway Medical
   Clinic filed a lawsuit against William Graham of Louisiana last week,
   because Graham has allegedly been running a fake referral service
   named Causeway Center for Women. The lawsuit claims that Graham has
   been tricking women who call him (confusing his "center" with the real
   one) by telling them he will refer them to a doctor who performs
   abortions, but then repeatedly rescheduling them until it's too late
   to get a legal abortion. In some cases women have apparently foregone
   prenatal care - because they think they're going to get an abortion -
   and then have been forced to carry the baby to term. What a scumbag.

   9 George W. Bush dumb dumb dumb dumb
   George W. Bush attended the G8 summit last week.
   'Nuff said.

   10 Jonathan Cunningham sex dumb
   And finally, in order to end this edition as far from Ronald Reagan as
   we possibly can, we're going all the way across the Atlantic to Great
   Britain, where Conservative Party candidate Jonathan Cunningham was
   recently "dragged before local party supremos," according to The
   Register. Why? Because the Tories weren't too happy when they found
   out that he'd registered a website in order to sell his wife's used
   underwear. The website - www.pantopia.biz - (here's all that's left in
   Google's cache) - was created with the full cooperation of his wife,
   who appeared topless on the site with some of her friends and wrote "I
   really do get off on my sexual openness. All the girls including my
   horny, sexy self are real amateurs that get their sexual kicks from
   getting their tits out." And how did the local Conservative Party find
   out about Cunningham's enterprise? He unfortunately registered his
   website using the same address as the one listed in "Tory election
   literature." Whoops. See you next week!

   Addendum: It appears that Rush Limbaugh, popular radio talk show host
   and avowed defender of conservative family values, ended his third
   marriage this week. Our thoughts and prayers go out to Rush during
   this difficult time, which comes hot on the heels of his recent
   problems with drug addiction and troubles with the police. Hopefully
   this latest blow will not prevent Rush continuing his daily three-hour
   lectures on personal responsibility, morality, and why his problems
   are all Bill Clinton's fault.

   Linked cites verifying the aforementioned idiots can be found at:
          http://www.democraticunderground.com/top10/index.html            
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                            Re-Defeat Bush 2004!          
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