Decal

http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/thomas100604.asp

Shorter Cal Thomas:

Dick Cheney clearly won his debate with John Edwards because I agree with everything he said, even the stuff that later turned out to be blatant lies like never meeting Edwards before. Ok, I didn't like one thing--the part where Cheney expressed actual human feeling for his lesbian daughter and stated his personal oppositon to a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. That part was wrong.

Shorter Cal Thomas:

Since Richard Clarke's former employer, the Clinton administration, had a less than perfect record fighting terrorism, Clarke has no right to criticize the even worse terrorism-fighting record of his former employer, the Bush administration. Therefore, I need not address any of the facts in Clarke's book demonstrating the Bush administration's failures in fighting terrorism, failures Clarke observed first-hand.

Bonus alternate version:
Richard Clarke is friends with Rand Beers. Rand Beers, a career governmental national security expert in intelligence and counter-terrorism, curently advises John Kerry on foreign policy. Ergo, everything Clarke says and writes should be ignored as it is done for the sole purpose of helping John Kerry.

(Of course Richard Clarke is a Republican who worked for four presidents, and Clarke says his favorite boss was George Herbert Walker Bush.)

Shorter Cal Thomas:

John Kerry is an elitist flip-flopper and nobody likes him, least of all Democrats.

(My favorite line from the column was this one: "Not many seem enthusiastic about Kerry, the man. He is merely a tool, and an elitist one at that. If he were a hammer, he would be made of sterling silver. He'd be Tiffany & Co. to President Bush's Wal-Mart." Ah, yes. George W. Bush, that millionaire son of a former President. What hope can Kerry possibly have against that self-made man of the people and working class hero? I'm sure Bush has shopped at Wal-Marts quite frequently over the years.)

Shorter Cal Thomas:

The Spanish electorate's decision to vote out its current ruling party, a party whose leader lied to prevent the Spanish public from finding out Al-Qaeda was responsible for the recent Madrid terrorist bombings, and whose leader supported and sent troops to aid President Bush's Iraq War against the express wishes of the overwhelming majority of the Spanish public opposing a war unrelated to the Al-Qaeda threat, shows the Spanish people to be a bunch of craven and cowardly appeasers of Al-Qaeda.

Shorter Cal Thomas:

Unless the Bush administration can force the millions of Christianity-hating Islamic fundamentalists in Iraq to respect Christianity, the Iraq war will have been as big a disaster for us as Vietnam was.

Shorter Cal Thomas:

People should vote for George W. Bush in November because he'll nominate Supreme Court justices who will vote to overturn Roe v. Wade. Of course that decision would have been overturned in 1992 but for three things: (1) the late Justice Blackmun was bamboozled by his law clerks; (2) Justice O'Connor has a vagina; and (3) Justice Kennedy is a big girly-man who doesn't have enough deep meaningful chats with Justice Scalia.

Shorter Cal Thomas:

Our public schools should be treated like a business. A money-losing, failing business that gets closed down in the real world. This will allow all of our children to go to private religous schools. I offer no opinion on the feasiblility, constitutionality, or logistics of such a massive change in our societal structure. What I can tell you is that a student in Washington, D.C. got shot at school. What more do you need to know?

Shorter Cal Thomas:

The Bible forbids homosexuals to marry. Therefore, gay marriage can never be legalized in the United States. Ah, who am I kidding? Sadly, the American people are just a bunch of godless degenerates so I'm afraid gay marriage is inevitable and, as night follows day, legalized incest, polygamy, and any other kind of sick relationship you can think of will follow.

By the way, I would not be able to tell the difference between right and wrong if it weren't for my Bible. I don't know how atheists do it.

(Ironically, Mr. Thomas cites to Thomas Jefferson in support of his views. Of course Jefferson was about as close to an atheist as any president we've ever had in this country).

Shorter Cal Thomas:

In 1971, a number of anguished veterans told fellow veteran and war hero John Kerry about war crimes they had been forced to commit in Vietnam. Instead of pretending that this never happened, Kerry testified about this before Congress hoping to stop further atrocities and needless American casualties. This proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that "Kerry doesn't know what he believes and cannot be trusted, especially at a time of grave peril to American interests and security". Republicans should bring up Kerry and Vietnam at every opportunity as that will ensure Bush wins the election.

Shorter Cal Thomas

The American people must change for the better and the only hope of that happening is if we are lucky enough to suffer through another Depression and world war.

Shorter Cal Thomas:

I pulled strings to avoid going to Vietnam but at least I can openly laugh about it as I'm not running for office like President Bush. Anyway, since Bush is running against a genuine Vietnam war hero, this topic is an embarrassment so Bush needs to change the subject by reminding Americans that anyone who votes against him in November is helping the terrorists kill us all.

P.S. Did you know there's a picture of John Kerry and Jane Fonda together?

P.P.S. I'm not gay.

Shorter Cal Thomas:

We are in a War on Terror. There are millions of Palestinians in the Middle East and some of them are terrorists. Ergo, we are in a war against all Palestinians. Unless each and every Palestinian can guarantee that not a single Palestinian is or will ever be a terrorist, the Palestinians can never have their own state. If they did, that country would just be a giant incubator for baby terrorists. Anyone who can't see that just doesn't realize we're in a War on Terror and they need to have their ass kicked.

Shorter Cal Thomas:

Saddam was a bad man, a very bad man, and John Kerry once thought he had some WMD's. Therefore, President Bush was right to go to war with Iraq even though all the reasons he actually gave for going to war were completely false, and if everybody in this country could go on a date with an Iraqi they would agree with me.

(One additional note: In defense of the war, Mr. Thomas says "Let Kerry and the other candidates say that more fatherless children would have been acceptable to them". Hey Cal, lots of our now-dead soldiers were fathers too! How many fatherless children in THIS country are acceptable to you, you jackass!)

Shorter Cal Thomas:

I am in complete denial about the failure to uncover any weapons of mass distruction in Iraq. We know Saddam had them in the early 1990's. Everybody said so. Therefore it follows he must have had them in 2003. They are obviously being hidden in Syria. Syria I tell you!!!

Shorter Cal Thomas:

The Super Bowl halftime show was just like one of Caligula's orgies, except that nobody had any sex or even took their clothes off unless you count that one crazy woman who exposed one of her breasts for 2 seconds. The FCC must crack down immediately on all shows featuring any suggestion of sexual behavior even though millions of people allegedly like that sort of thing.

Shorter Cal Thomas:

Fiscal conservatives now finally realize Bush's economic polices are horrible!

Shorter Cal Thomas:

If we broke the news to every pregnant woman that the fetus she carries in her womb has the potential to become a real, live human being, something she may not be aware of, abortions would be a thing of the past. That's good because we all know that everyone who has ever had an abortion later regretted it and wished they could go back in time and abort themselves.

When the obituary of the George W. Bush administration is written, hopefully historians will recognize Bush's 2004 State of the Union address as the beginning of the end. While Cal Thomas praises it, most of the country spat out the vile product as if drinking from a carton of milk long past its expiration date. Mr. Thomas thinks Bush "directly and artfully made a good case" for his Iraq adventure. In fact, Bush delivered his speech at about the same time David Kay proclaimed Saddam had no weapons of mass distruction, blowing the final hole in Bush's trumped up case for war. Yes it's good Saddam's gone. But you know what, on balance it's far worse that we've lost over 500 Americans who died for Bush's lies about a phony threat. Bush prattled on all night about the crucial issues of the day, bravely exposing the dangers of athletes on steroids, but maybe a majority of the American public has finally had enough of deadly lies, broken promises, and incompetent policies.

Cal Thomas is a little upset about George Bush using a recess appointment to place Charles Pickering on the federal appeals court. Is Mr. Thomas upset because Judge Pickering is a racist tool? No. He's upset Bush found it "necessary" to use the recess appointment after Senate Democrats filibustered Pickering's nomination. Why oh why would Democrats do this awful thing? Well, to hear Mr. Thomas tell it, they're smearing Pickering as a racist "for simply following the law in a civil rights case liberals thought should have turned out differently, and for a 40-year-old article he wrote defending Mississippi's anti-miscegenation laws, when the state was a different place and Pickering was a different person." Apparently Mr. Thomas can read minds and he knows without a doubt that Pickering has nothing but love now for African-Americans.

Where to begin with this pack of lies? Well, the "civil rights case" concerned a defendant convicted of burning an eight-foot cross on the lawn of an interracial couple with a young child. The defendant faced a severe mandatory sentence, but Pickering took drastic steps like ex parte conversations and threats to order a new trial (without power to do so) to finally convince the state of Mississippi to drop the minimum mandatory.

Rather than "simply following the law", Pickering in fact bent over backwards to give a cross-burning fella (who convinced a juvenile and a retarded man to help him) a huge break. Pickering called the crime a "drunken prank". Perhaps the same could be said of Bush's recess appointment.

As for the 40-year-old article, it hardly even matters when there's so much other evidence of Pickering's racism. His involvement with Mississippi’s State Sovereignty Commission that was set up to spy on and intimidate advocates of civil rights back in the 1960's; his more recent lies under oath to the U.S. Senate about that involvement; his opposition to civil rights, affirmative action, and the "one person/one vote" principal. The historians have all the facts here.

So it looks like Pickering isn't a "different person" after all. Just your typical lifelong bigot whose gone from overt racism to covert racism in these more sensitive times. Reminds me of a Harry Truman quote (via Gore Vidal): "You know, you always get told in politics how some son of a bitch has really changed, but I've found in life that no one ever changes, except maybe for the worse."

Sports columnist no more, Cal Thomas dons another of his guises--book reviewer! Today's target: The Price of Loyalty, David Suskind's new book about former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill's tenure in the Bush White House. Actually, Mr. Thomas doesn't target the book, he targets Mr. O'Neill. Cal compares him to a "disgruntled former employee who returns to his old workplace and starts shooting to avenge his perceived mistreatment". Yep, O'Neill's no better than a psycho-killer. Except that O'Neill's crime wasn't killing anyone, it was telling the truth about George W. Bush. Suskind's interviews with O'Neill reveal the devastating truth that Bush has no knowledge of or interest in economic policy and that it's Bush's political team (Cheney & Rove), not his economic team, that ultimately decides economic policy. Now O'Neill's job performance can't really be defended, but he correctly opposed Bush's insane tax cuts for the wealthy that eliminated the surpluses and brought back the gigantic deficits Clinton had eliminated, just in time for the Baby Boom generation to have nothing to retire on. Mr. Thomas knows as much about economics as Bush does so he predictably defends the tax cuts as stimulus for the economy. Short-term demand needed stimulus in 2001 and to anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of economics Bush's supply-side soak the rich policies were the wrong remedy at the wrong time for the wrong reasons but now I've gone and made things too complicated for the likes of Cal Thomas. Let's just let stagnant wages and the loss of millions of jobs speak for themselves.

Mr. Thomas also tries to throw cold water on O'Neill's claim that Bush and his people planned to go to war with Iraq from the beginning of their administration. Unfortunately using famous crackpot Laurie (Saddam was responsible for the Oklahoma City bombing) Mylroie as his expert witness to debunk the claim speaks for itself. ABC News confirmed O'Neill's assertion on January 13th, 2004:

"President Bush ordered the Pentagon to explore the possibility of a ground invasion of Iraq well before the United States was attacked on Sept. 11, 2001, an official told ABCNEWS, confirming the account former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill gives in a book written by former Wall Street Journal reporter Ron Suskind. The official, who asked not to be identified, was present in the same National Security Council meetings as O'Neill immediately after Bush's inauguration in January and February of 2001. 'The president told his Pentagon officials to explore the military options, including use of ground forces,' the official told ABCNEWS. 'That went beyond the Clinton administration's halfhearted attempts to overthrow Hussein without force.'...Both the official who spoke to ABCNEWS and O'Neill have acknowledged that Bush had not yet made up his mind for a ground invasion at the start of his administration, but they say officials were told to find ways to get rid of the Iraqi leader."

Mr. Thomas and the right-wing can assasinate Paul O'Neill's character, but they can't kill the truth.