They're bitter... they cling to guns and religion.

If you're a heavily armed religious nutjob and you live in a cave in Afghanistan, you're bad. But if you're a heavily armed religious nutjob living in a ranch-style tract home in America's 'heartland', you're the 'salt of the Earth.' Why?

Call me an Obama-nable snob if you like, but why are we always expected to kiss up to our gun-toting religious crazy American Taliban (a.k.a the heartland) when, just for the want of a beard or two, they're every bit a drag on civilization as the real thing? Why is it that the aspirations and opinions of the vast majority of Americans without outhouses and megachurches are somehow not as important as the gripes of the 'heartland'? And why did Obama get such a hard time for suggesting, oh so politely, that they may have their priorities a little skewed?

Sure, the American Taliban didn't do 9-11 (though their political wing did do 4-19) but it is largely thanks to them that we've had to endure 8 f***ing years of George Bush. It's thanks to these paranoiacs and their circus ringleader that we may well have made planet Earth uninhabitable for future generations, put WWIII into gear, racked up the most massive debts in human history and got hopelessly stuck in a half-assed colonial occupation in Iraq. The American Taliban are not terrorists per se, but it is thanks to their colossal insecurity and grim determination to remain pig-shit ignorant that so much more damage has been wrought on America than the actual 'terrists' could ever dream of doing. So what exactly did Obama say that was so bad again..?

Personally, I'm sick of the media and the politicos heaping fulsome praise on the lumpen proles wreaking havoc on our democracy with their perversely self-defeating voting habits. The American Taliban vote out of spite and an almost psychotic sense of chippiness. They never vote 'for' anybody, they always vote against somebody else (e.g., Barack Obama). This is why McCain is not just being pointed and laughed at but is actually taken seriously as a viable candidate.

I'm sick of everyone referring to these societal deadweights as 'America's heartland' as if a lifelong aversion to education and common sense was somehow a patriotic mission. Screw them. And screw those unashamed cretin groupies like Clinton and McA-hole who so eagerly seek their support. But you must win over the heartland they tell us - as if being nice to them was some kind of fail-safe stepping stone to power. But really, it's not that the 'tards represent a majority that needs to be won. It's just that they're so much easier to impress with mediocrity and a bit of on-message misanthropy. Especially for clapped-out Senators from Arizona or hectoring egomaniacs from New York who might otherwise look like idea-less hacks with nothing to offer.

Rick Perlstein at The Nation says:

Yup, American Taliban, don't ever doubt that someone, somewhere might be looking down their nose at you with a condescending sneer. They are. And these people are called the rest of the world. From legless beggars in the streets of Calcutta to wind-burned yak herders on the foothills of Everest... from boomerang-tossing aborigines in the outback of Australia to naked, porn-loving Swedes frolicking in the forest, they all think you're stupid. 6.5 billion latté sipping elitist bastards...

I hope you will all join me in praying for a particualrly active tornado season this year to blow through the trailerparks and annihilate our Bush-voting, Limbaugh-listening American Taliban before they get chance to elect McA-hole. That would be at least one happy side effect of global warming. (Link to this)

There is a conspiracy afoot that you certainly don't need a tin foil hat to believe in: the conspiracy of stupid aimed at destroying Barack Obama.

So many of us have tapped into the 'yes we can' mood and are demanding a government that operates beyond an eighth-grade level. And this scares the bejeezuz out of the same-old, same-old pols and their media camp followers who have such a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. Consequently, there is a vast conspiracy afoot that you certainly don't need a tin foil hat to believe in: the conspiracy of stupid determined to destroy Barack Obama.

Whether it's Ma and Pa Clinton handing out platitudes like candy to the grubby hoi polloi, the GOP foisting McA-hole upon us or the mainstream media who just love the cut and thrust of cartoon politics, they all like things just the way they are. Because of this, they have the knives out for Obama - and the aspirations of a massive swathe of the people who care about all that real stuff that barely gets a nanosecond of news coverage. Obama must be destroyed because he doesn't conform and he challenges the media/pol comfort zone.

As part of the vast conspiracy of stupid, those RedState.com pinheads have just sent out a new email alert headed "Obama Adviser Denigrates Jesus. Don't let him get away with it." They go on:

Oh my, to think I was frittering away brain cells worrying over my family having no health insurance... I was stressing over how to pay the over-inflated mortgage on my negative equity property. Thank you Red State for putting me straight on what really matters.

It's easy to figure that a politician stirring up the latent ability of Americans to think about stuff would scare the crap out of the dead-weights at the top of our political and media pyramids. You can almost here them yelling "Quick... we did Reverend Wright and 'Bittergate' - bring on gay Jesus in diapers being run over by a bus!" (Link to this)

What's ABC's game? certainly ain't journalism.

"As you'd imagine, the debate is the talk of the town here today, and not all of it is positive." - David Wright, abcnews.go.com

Fried Wire is currently experimenting with a profanity-free prose style in order to avoid being blocked by so many Web filters on the grounds of tastelessness. So it's definitely not a good idea to mention that pathetic excuse for a 'debate' that the A**holes Bitches and C**ts network screened last night. Not all of it is positive? Try none, you mealy mouthed sycophant.

ABC's Democratic debate was more like an E! channel celebrity smack job for the first half with all the political perspicuity of Elmo's World and amounted to nothing more than dead air. Who decided to zing Obama with as much inconsequential and irrelevant crap from decades before and completely avoid any issue that might be of importance to the viewing public? And why wasn't it until, as Obama pointed out, 45 stultifying minutes into this sad exhibition of hackery that subjects like gas prices or healthcare reforms were even mentioned?

Critics ripped ABC journalists Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos, a former Bill Clinton staffer, for wasting time on questions like why Obama wasn't wearing an American flag pin (when no-one else was). Charlie and George also sought to draw more mileage for Clinton by revisiting the tired and tested Reverend Wright 'controversy' (though, intriguingly, didn't think to explore why Clinton still belongs to a crackpot religious cult the founder of which was inspired by Adolf Hitler).

It has to be said, televised political debates rarely finish with the audience booing the mediators... but such was the new sub-standard set last night. The A**holes Bitches and C**ts network? Maybe I was wrong. How about the All Bitches for Clinton network?

But if there was any good to emerge, it is the affirmation that, given the amount of anger around today, people really are done with the 'old politics' (i.e., smear-crazy, Rovian charlatanism that Clinton still clings to). The MSM nabobs think the 'old politics' don't work with Obama because he is 'teflon'. But if there was a brain amongst them, they might realize that the 'old politics' don't work simply because we are sick to death of the BS. Paging Hillary and ABC... (Link to this)

"You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations." - Barack Obama, 2008

Whoever Reads Bourgeois Newspapers Becomes Blind and Deaf: Away with These Stultifying Bandages! Photomontage by Heartfield, 1932. To think, John Heartfield only had Hitler to contend with... we've got Lou Dobbs.

Are we being held back in some kind of cognitive arrested development by our infantile news media? Or does the media just feel obliged to churn out senseless garbage because we're a nation of dumb a-holes and it's the only language we understand? In short, did they make us stupid or did we make them stupid?

The recent pundit shell game over Obama's 'bitter' comments is yet another depressing example of how our news media have become the most powerful force for misinformation known to man. Obama's comments were thoroughly decontextualized by the media nobs to remove whatever salient point he was trying to make (see excerpt above) and make him appear to conform to their chai-sipping snob archetype. The media now tires of Obama's populist firebrand image, so now we're now supposed to see him as that stuck-up guy who hates the gun-toting, church-going working classes. Why? Because Lou Dobbs says so.

So what if all the media spin and the Clinton campaign's official take on his remarks make absolutely no sense? So what if the last thing Obama would want to do is alienate the largest demographic in the country when he needs their votes? The media's manufactured reality is not supposed to make sense. It's just supposed to make us go "oh no he didn't" and warm to McCain (at least until such time that they decide to move on and tear him to pieces instead).

It's not so much the media's determination to misinform us at every turn and twist decent words against those who speak them that should offend us. It's the end result of these low-brow, Orwellian shenanigans that should piss us off: Nobody in the public eye being able to communicate because their words must pass through the media gibberish filter before we can hear them.

This isn't much of a problem for Clinton as her vacuous pablums tend to come meticulously pre-gibberished for MSM consumption and without any inconvenient substance to remove like avacado pits. It's definitely no problem for McCain as he has nothing to say to begin with and spin, even of the negative variety, only works to make him look interesting. But it's one hell of a problem for Obama with his strategy of trying to get elected on his own merits rather than by capitalizing on the perceived deficiencies of his opponents.

So why aren't we angry? Why aren't we demanding that the media pinheads just shut the hell up and let us decide who we want to run our country? My grandmother used to say "if you haven't got anything nice to say, just shut up." (And, yes, I thank God she never got to read Fried Wire.) But we should demand even more of Lou Dobbs, Sean Hannity and all the other smack-talking clowns of the MSM: If you don't have anything to say that isn't deliberately divisive, dishonest, destructive or otherwise profoundly inconducive to the common good, just shut up.

We got saddled with 8 years of Bush because the media was so preoccupied with hurling feces at Gore and Kerry. Are we now getting ready to lose the best chance for a damn good president in decades because the media wants to tear him down too? God help us. (Link to this)

If there's anything really stupid happening in America, odds are it'll be going down in Florida - God's best argument against natural selection.

"Well, yup, I have a tight schedule and I never know when the mood will strike. I like the convenience of being able to go on homicidal shooting sprees during office hours too."

Great news for Floridian HR departments... A new bill is headed to Gov. Charlie Crist to sign into law that will allow Florida residents to pack heat at the office. The so-called "take-your-guns-to-work" measure is backed by the NRA (single-issue lunatics) and some of the more assertive labor unions (about that 50 cents-an-hour raise... ker-click...).

"Dozens of workplace shootings occur every year in the United States and studies have shown that job sites where guns are permitted are more likely to suffer workplace homicides than those where guns are prohibited." What kind of rocket scientist could have figured that out huh?

I wouldn't suggest that Republican pols love making stupid, dangerous and otherwise completely pointless laws while steadfastly refusing to get involved with anything that would actually improve society... oh wait... yes I would. (Link to this)

Living proof that money can't buy you happiness?

Robert and Tonya Harris were interviewed on the "Today Show" after just winning $270 million on the lottery. For some reason, they sounded more like they'd just totaled their 1975 Ford Ranger. Miserable f***ers.

And our government seriously thinks a $600 check in the mail will cheer people up? (Link to this)

A quick scraping from the bottom of the news barrel...

Yoo Horrible Bastard...
"Thirty pages into a memorandum discussing the legal boundaries of military interrogations in 2003, senior Justice Department lawyer John C. Yoo tackled a question not often asked by American policymakers: Could the president, if he desired, have a prisoner's eyes poked out? Or, for that matter, could he have "scalding water, corrosive acid or caustic substance" thrown on a prisoner? How about slitting an ear, nose or lip, or disabling a tongue or limb? What about biting?"

Yoo's answer? All bets are off in times of war and "federal laws prohibiting assault, maiming and other crimes" are trumped by presidential authority. Yoo is now a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley. Kinda like having Fred Phelps teaching the Lesbian, Bisexual, & Gay Studies Program.

Huckabee in Hollywood...
Former Republican presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee has signed a contract with one of the largest talent agencies in Hollywood, Creative Artists Agencies. CAA represents more than 2,000 clients, including George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Christina Aguilera, Jennifer Aniston, Drew Barrymore and Tony Bennett. "Nothing has been decided," his daughter and adviser Sarah Huckabee told CNN about his future projects. The mind boggles.

Bowflex Jesus Marked for Death...
Two Pennsauken High School students have been arrested after a teacher found what was believed to be a hit list that targeted actor Chuck Norris. [Insert humorous aside here] (Link to this)

Ah, remember this rare moment of candor accidentally broadcast by Fox in 2006? See below for more recent Hannity-sucking activity...

What happens when you get three opinionated pricks with only one functioning brain cell between them in a TV studio together? If you're Fox News, you run the cameras and pump out some more 'fair and balanced' political commentary.

During the April 3 edition of Hannity & Colmes, shemale dog-scarer Ann Coulter referred to Barack Obama's book "Dreams from My Father" as a "dime store Mein Kampf." Sean Hannity then picked up on the riff and mused whether Obama is a "is a two-bit Hitler." Hmm. Interesting take on Obama's politics of opportunity and inclusion.

Colmes then continued: "We should be as wary of Obama as they should have been of Hitler in Nazi Germany?" But no-one was sure whether he was being ironic as they never listen to Colmes anyway...

So here's my questions: How is an embarrassingly inadequate hack with cry-baby fascist tendencies like Hannity still getting away with it after 12 frigging years on Fox? Does Roger Ailes really think he's insightful or provocative or entertaining or, in short, anything other than a hack? How come Coulter still can't get the right drugs to stabilize her brain or finish off her sex change? And Colmes? What the hell is up with that Jim Henson Creature Shop liberal? Why does he... Oh, sorry, Colmes too boring... can't concentrate on rant...

So let me finish with this thought: Why do they always put stickers on the top rung of a ladder telling you not to stand or sit on it? Ladder manufacturers, why not save some money and just skip the last rung altogether? You're welcome. (Link to this)

Think this site sucks as bad as I think it does? Go write your own, smart ass...

So let's get this straight. America is undergoing the worst recession since the Great Depression. We are stuck in a dead-end war in Iraq costing more than a 12 billion a month. Unemployment is at a 3-year high. More than 47 million Americans are without health insurance. Life expectancy, infant mortality and education are all headed toward Third World levels... and the architect of our nation's unraveling backs John "More of the same" McA-hole who's currently favored for president by 44% of Americans. What the hell is wrong with us??? Just thought I'd mention it in case anyone still remembers the concept of common sense...

And, while on the subject of ol' Shaky Fists of Fury McA-hole, I was confused to see the result below when I Googled the phrase (hey, don't judge) "casual sex republican":

God knows, I wouldn't dream of suggesting McA-hole's DILF is a 'casual sex' enthusiast (I neither know her or would want to get beaten to death by her famously ill-tempered dad) but it seems Google is. What's up with that Google? And, just by the by, if there's casual sex, would getting blown by a skank while wearing a tuxedo constitute formal sex? (Link to this)

He's angrier than a nest of caffeinated hornets... he's madder than Dick Cheney with a punctured hemorrhoid pillow... he'd make a rabid wolverine fighting a Tasmanian Devil in a sack look like the Dalai Lama and Mother Theresa doing yoga...

Man, you just can't stop this insane clown throwing hands and epithets:

A scuffle? Strom Thurmond was 93 at the time. How classé...

Could McA-hole's otherwise inexplicable nomination be proof of my theory that those GOP pranksters are just fucking with us? Are they just testing how low they can go with their candidates before we all go "you're kidding, right?" If this buffoon is their idea of a credible candidate, it's about time they cut to the chase and nominate a mound of cow manure squeezed into a monkey suit with a Speak-n-Spell jammed inside for a voice box.

Republican presidents have long been known for their linguistic quirks (Reagan and Baby Bush spring obviously to mind), but McBush? If elected (paging Dr Kevorkian...), he could carve a whole new genre of bad. A few highlights from the wit and wisdom of John McA-hole:

How I'm looking forward to the (literal) swearing in of President McA-hole and the 2009 State of The F**king Union Address. (Link to this)

Can't restrain my anger any longer... must... hate Clinton...

"So are we now really prepared to sit back and watch this impressive young man be dragged through the mud by a mean-spirited, vindictive, relic of the past, based solely on her sense of entitlement? If we do, we don’t deserve the presidency–in fact, it will signal the time for a third party." - Eric L. Wattree, Black Star News

Right on board with the above sentiment. Screw what the voters want (which isn't her), screw what's best for the party or the country (which isn't her), the bitch just refuses to quit.

We might comfort ourselves with wistful aphorisms about how good always wins out in the end, but we're not living in Disney World. We live in the real world where good is worn down and beaten into a bloody pulp by bad. We live in the real world where ball-crushing viciousness trumps everything and a lack of 'class' is no impediment to power. We live in the real world where people possessed with any modicum of reason and integrity will eventually bow out of the fight rather than enter into some kind of scorched earth apocalypse that would only hurt the country you profess to love.

Remember Al Gore's apparent 'rolling over' for Bush in 2000? That's what happens when 'class' gets in a fight with lack of class. Now the Clintons have turned the Democratic primary into their own Brooks Brothers riot. If they can drag out the farce much longer, it seems logical to assume that Obama, like Gore, will step down in the face of overwhelming nastiness lest he start to appear as self-serving and as reckless his opponent. Clinton will be Obama's George Bush. Clinton will represent the irresistible force of reckless desperation exploiting what she perceives as Obama's fatal weakness: his sense of responsibility. Sucks. (Link to this)

Even after his much publicized brain fart in Iraq, seems McBush still can't differentiate between his Sunnis, Shiites and Chers:

"Questioning General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker in an on-going Senate Armed Forces Committee hearing, John McCain just tried to reaffirm al Qaeda's importance by asking if it was "a minor Shiite group... or minor Sunni group, or anybody else." He was clearly trying to draw out a "no," but that's not the point. The point is that McCain still doesn't seem to understand al Qaeda is a Sunni group." (Link to this)

The embargo on Hillary v. Obama bullshit is still in force. So let's give a rare hats off to that shell-less turtle from Arizona...

As a McBush hater, I find his habit of doing things that make me almost like him very infuriating. Just last month, he publicly disowned a pinhead talk radio "personality" speaking at one of his rallies who had whipped the crowd into a McCain-loving frenzy by running his mouth about Obama's fantasy Muslim ties. No-one would really have given a rat's ass and no uproar would have ensued but McBush took a stand and must have lost not an inconsiderable amount of mouth breather support by acting honorably.

And who couldn't warm to him after reading about his 'c**t' tirade documented in Cliff Schecter's new book "The Real McCain"? For anyone still unfamiliar with the episode:

Damn you, McBush, stop making me (almost) like you. (Link to this)

First off, let me apologize to my army of avid readers for taking time off without warning. And let me apologize to the even larger legion of avid haters who may have been entertaining hopes that I'd shut up and shut down.

So what have I missed that's mind-swirling, apoplexy-inducing, painfully ironic or just plain stupid during my two-week rage sabbatical?

I'll avoid commenting on the presidential race as, even for me, it's become way too stupid. So let's pause instead for a 21-gun salute to honor the passing of Moses impersonator and wingnut gun nut Charlton Heston. After announcing in 2002 that he had symptoms consistent with Alzheimer's disease, Heston blazed a trail for 'conservative values' such as the inalienable right of America's insane to buy bazookas. Not sure whether Alzheimer's and conservatism are inextricably linked, but Heston would seem to provide a compelling case study to support that thesis.

In other wingnut-oriented news, California congressman Darrell Issa has earned vituperation from his GOP colleagues for referring to 9-11 as "simply" a plane crash. "It seems that with the passage of time, something happened along the way where the scope of the problem and the real extent of the problem has not drifted out to California," said Staten Island GOP Rep. Vito Fossella. Thanks Vito, but let me be one of many left-coasters to break the news: we're not all as retarded as the hack chimps (e.g., Schwarzenegger, Issa and the cartoonishly depraved John Doolittle) that we are are wont to elect round these parts. Don't hate us for it - it's just our sense of humor.

Speaking of obnoxious residents of the Golden State, Fried Wire was also intrigued by the news that a legendary performer from the 60s has released a comeback album. Jagger? McCartney? Dean Martin..? Nope. Charley Manson.

Although live gigs outside the highly exclusive 94964 ZIP code might be few and far between, would anyone be so small as to begrudge success to that grizzled George Bush soundalike on the release of his forty-years-in-the-making solo album? After all, it's undoubtedly the best one ever recorded on a smuggled tape recorder in a Vacaville Prison cell by a guy who can neither sing nor play guitar.

"Seacrest out" for now... (Link to this)