In a move carefully calibrated to steal the Wacky Evangelical Vote from sometime-Baptist and Catholic-hater-repudiator John McCain, Senator Barack Obama today announced that he intends to “fund the living hell” out of still-President George W. Bush’s Office of Faith-Based Initiatives, an agency the Bush White House uses primarily to pay massive blocs of homophobic Protestants to vote Republican.

But this latest move to the center may hurt the Illinois senator more than it helps. Predictably, the snarky Left went immediately out of their socialist minds upon hearing the news, filling “The Blog O’Sphere” — that giant Irish sandbox into which over-fed policy wonks with Mountain Dew addictions and near-critical levels of sunlight deprivation evacuate their steaming mental waste because upwards of a dozen people* care what they have to say — with immediate calls to recount the primaries and install Hillary Clinton as the presumptive nominee, because she’ll do whatever anyone tells her to at this point, just help her pay off that mountainous debt, for Christ’s sake! But it was the reaction on the Religious Right that may be more problematic, which is odd considering how those people never cause any sort of political trouble.

“This is terrible news for us Christians!” said Jim Peterman of Findlay, Ohio. “Obama’s a gay Muslim racist from Africa that hates the flag, and now he’s going to fund a ‘Council for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships’? Now I’m thinking the separation of Church and State may have been a good idea after all.” Mr. Peterman noted that rumors abound in the grocery stores and auto shops — which, of course, carry more weight than anything found in a printed newspaper or on television — that Senator Obama is a Muslim and so, as President, Obama would naturally pour taxpayer dollars into mosques for the express purpose of blowing up The Infidels, of which Peterman counts himself a proud member. “Oh I’m sure they’ll blow me up, given how much I love America with all my flags and my little Washington Monument statue and whatnot. This is just terrible!”

Senator Obama sought to alleviate such concerns by noting, specifically, “[F]ederal dollars that go directly to churches, temples and mosques can only be used on secular programs,” reminding us that jihad-based activities such as Infidel Exploding Programs are most certainly dogmatic and therefore not eligible for federal funding.

Woken from his bi-hourly nap for a comment, Senator John McCain shouted the words “flip-flopper” several times while pointing at a jar of Metamucil, then accused the bus driver of being a spy for the Vietcong.   

________________

* We would just like to note, here, that we would be positively thrilled with an audience of a dozen people, as we are currently read only by a half-mad Rhesus monkey with Irritable Bowel Syndrome named Mr. Syllabus, who is also our unpaid intern and Research Desk. ™

In an effort to remind voters which presidential candidate is the Average Joe and which the Out-of-Touch Elitist that can’t understand the issues of the day, Senator John “I’ve Fallen And I Can’t Get Up” McCain and his Sexy Robot Wife Cindy purposefully failed to pay property taxes for four years on a La Jolla, California condo so that they could experience harassing phone calls and humiliating registered mail like so many other struggling Americans. “It’s a gesture,” a McCain campaign aide told The Daily in an anonymous interview. “The least they could do, really, to connect with blue-collar workers that can’t abide the silver-spoonism of those stuck-up Obamas.”

The lapsed taxes — totaling nearly $8,000, or roughly the weekly cost of Mrs. McCain’s face-buffing and eye-glazing therapies — threaten to evict an elderly aunt of Cindy’s banished to California after she voted for John Kerry in 2004. “She’s clearly insane,” Mrs. McCain noted after a 52-hour peroxide bath left her in an unusually candid mood. “I can’t have my lunatic relatives living in any of the six houses I do pay taxes on, can I? What would the neighbors think?”

McCain supporters have reacted with enthusiasm to the overdue tax news. “I’ve been looking for something that really connects me to John McCain,” says a man whose home was recently foreclosed upon. “Now he could lose one of his seven houses to back taxes, I know he’s American as apple pie.”

Or, at the very least, as American as a tax lien.

The New York Times reported today that, as hard as this might be to believe if you’re a fucking adult and expect that maybe your elected government officials are also fucking adults and perhaps should behave accordingly, the Bush Administration has reached the point where it simply won’t read communications it knows will get its nugget-sac in a bunch:

The White House in December refused to accept the Environmental Protection Agency’s conclusion that greenhouse gases are pollutants that must be controlled, telling agency officials that an e-mail message containing the document would not be opened, senior E.P.A. officials said last week.

Unable to parse this data without first consulting that kid on the playground who, in 1973, won an argument with me following a brilliant oratorical maneuvering composed entirely of “Did not!”s to my less-brilliant “Did so!”s, The Daily turned instead to its NSA Wiretapping Intercepts, thankful as always that Bush and Company are too stupid not to have themselves bugged along with all the rest of us.

The following transcript explains how, exactly, your Administration and mine could simply ignore a Supreme Court-ordered investigation when to do otherwise might make our Commander-in-Chief cranky.

December 7, 2007 : The White House

George W. Bush: Whistling the theme song to “The Andy Griffith Show.”

BUSH’S COMPUTER: You’ve got mail!

GWB : (Over intercom, panicked.) Joshua! Git in here, son, my com-puter is talkin to me agin!

Joshua B. Bolton, White House Chief of Staff: (Over intercom.) Sir, we’ve discussed this before. Your computer is not possessed, it’s just telling you about some e-mail you’ve received. Please don’t pour holy water on the keyboard again, the guys in IT hate that.

GWB : I don’t like it when this thing talks, goddamnit, gives me the willies. Machines ain’t sposed to talk less they’re ro-bots like Cindy McCain. Heh-heh. Heh-heh. Cindy McCain, I says. Heh.

JBB : Yes, hysterical as always, Mr. President.

GWB : Git on in here, Josh-Josh-B’Gosh, lessee what’s in this ‘lectric mailbox here.

JBB : (Enters Oval Office, peers over the President’s shoulder.) It’s the E.P.A.’s report on Climate Change and Pollutant Control, Mr. President.

GWB : Who did the whut-now?

JBB : It’s a lot of paper about the Earth getting very, very hot, owie-hot, Sir, and all the yucky black smoke in the air, coughy-coughy!

GWB : Oh that’s that shit I don’t believe in, right? Since it ain’t in the Bible? God wouldn’t make the world owie-hot now, would he, Bolt-O? Jes like he wouldn’t make giant lizards and whatnot.

JBB : (Sighing.) That’s right, Sir. No global warming, no giant lizards.

GWB : I mean them things jes ridickalus, how’s Noah sposed to get them things on that Ark? Wouldn’t’a been nothin left but dinosaurs, you ask me, put one them Velociwhatnots on the Ark, that shit’s all over for your goats and sheep and such. (Shudders.)

JBB : (Biting inside of cheek.) Hmm. Yes, Sir.

GWB : So Eppa sent over some happy horseshit about the pollution, that what this is?

JBB : Eppa, Sir?

GWB : Come on, Bolt-O-Matic, says it right there on the tee-vee! (Points to his computer monitor.) “E-P-A,” Eppa! Jesus Christ, boy, you must be sorta re-tarded.

JBB : Eppa, yes, Sir. This is the report the Supreme Court required us to produce to determine whether greenhouse gases represent a danger to health or the environment.

GWB : (Stares at Bolton blankly for several long seconds.) Well hell, Joshua Tree, how many ‘Mericans live in a goddamn greenhouse?

JBB : No, Sir…

GWB : And why they got so much gas? They growin their own beans in there? Jesus Christ the beans give me the gas, Bolt-O. I should never have moved to Tex-Mex country.

JBB : Back to this report, Sir…

GWB : Oh for Christ’s sake you know I never lissen to the Supreme Court, they don’t know shit from … from …

JBB : Shinola, Sir?

GWB : Whut the hell’s a ‘Shinola’?

JBB : We seem to be getting off track here, Mr. President.

GWB : Supreme Court’n go to hell, whattuh they ever done fer me, Bolt-O?

JBB : (Under his breath.) You mean besides make you president?

GWB : Whut’s that?

JBB : Nothing, Sir.

GWB : Thought you said somethin there. Somethin derogatational.

JBB : Not at all, Sir. Won that one fair and square.

GWB : Goddamn right, Joshtentatious.

(Uncomfortable silence.)

GWB : So this report gonna make me mad, boy?

JBB : To the extent that you’ll understand it at all, I’m sure it will, Sir.

GWB : Peeved? Gonna make me peeved? Peevish?

JBB : Undoubtedly, Mr. President.

GWB : An why’s that, zackly?

JBB : (Blowing out a long, exhausted breath.) Oh, because it shines a big bright light on your environmental failures, highlights your business-friendly policy decisions, brings back the whole regulation-by-corporate-fiat disaster, disproves almost everything we’ve ever said about Global Warming and greenhouse gases…

GWB : Whoa, whoa, Jesus, that’ll do er, Bolt-O, that’ll do er. You sure you work for me?

JBB : For the time being, Sir.

GWB : (Squints until his eyes vanish entirely.) Cause usually my folks don’t tell me none of that bad stuff, usually they jes kiss a great big buncha my ass.

JBB : I hadn’t noticed, Sir.

GWB : So if this lectric mail here’s gonna piss me off, mebbe I jes shouldn’t open that fucker, what you think about that, Bolt-O?

JBB : (Blinking.)

GWB : Heh-heh. Jes don’t open ‘er!

JBB : (Blinking.)

GWB : Can’t read ‘er if you don’t open ‘er. Can’t leg-slate nuttin you ain’t read, can’t read what’n you don’t open!

JBB : (Staring at ceiling dizzily.)

GWB : Called logic, Bolt-O. Deducifyin. How I run things here, I’m the Logic Guy. I use the logic.

JBB : Mr. President, we can’t just not read our e-mail.

GWB : Shore we can’t! Look, watch this, Bolt-O, watch. (Turns his back to the computer.) See dat! I ain’t readin it! You see me readin it? Eppa e-mail? What Eppa e-mail? Heh-heh. That’s logictudinal, Bolt-O.

JBB : No, Sir, what I mean is, someday the E.P…uh, “Eppa” is going to ask what we thought of the report. They’re going to want to know what we plan on doing about their recommendations.

GWB : Fuck’im! Didn’t read it!

JBB : (Horrified.) But Sir…

GWB : This is how we work here, Bolt-O: It’s all about Neener Diplomacy. Don’t like Iran? Neener! Won’t talk to you! Syria too big fer its britches? Neener! No talk fer you! Eppa sends out a report gonna make me peevish? NEENER! Ain’t readin it! Neener, neener, neener, Bolt-O!

JBB : Mr. President…

GWB : NEENER!

JBB : And what if it leaks to the press that this is how we treated a major report by the Environmental Protection Agency that affects the lives of every living thing on this planet, Sir?

GWB : Well then neener on them times infinity, goddamnit! What, the press gonna start takin me to task now? After all the free lunches they give me for 7 years? Neener!

JBB : I think I may be sick, Sir.

GWB : Yeah, well, do that in yer own office, Bolt-O, I got Cheney comin in here in a minute and I gotta kneel down and whatnot, don’t want to be kneelin in any your puke.

JBB : So we’re simply not going to read the e-mail, that’s the plan. Seriously.

GWB : Neener on it and neener on them for sendin it, Josh-Kosh. All them ‘Mericans livin in greenhouses just gotta stop eatin them beans. Laura made me stop a week after we moved to Craw-ferd, can’t be that hard.

JBB : Yes, Mr. President.

GWB : Damn straight.

Being a Brief History of Republican Product Placement Now That Their Brand is Finally Dying the Cancerous, Painful and Hopefully Merciless Death It Has So Long Deserved

It seems the “Republican brand” is in a bit of trouble these days. Which is surprising, given how open-minded, inclusive and tolerant the party has been since Ronald Reagan pioneered the delicate art of appealing to the long-dormant racist asshole in previously sane Democrats.

But we were curious as to what this “Republican brand” looked like before it got itself so gloriously flushed through Karl Rove’s embattled lower intestine and then unceremoniously dumped into the Big Golden Toilet of Political History, where the unsinkable turds of Faith-Based Initiatives, “Mission Accomplished,” and Social Security Reform still float, waiting for the merciful Courtesy Flush that is the 2008 election. Assuming that anything with a brand has to support itself through advertising, we dusted off our Crack Research Team — which consists entirely of an irritable Rhesus Monkey named Mr. Syllabus that we’ve taught to use Google between angry bouts of throwing his own feces at episodes of The Glenn Beck Show — and found some truly memorable Republican branding campaigns of yesteryear.

Because theirs is the party of strong moral leadership and laissez-faire economic policies meant to kick The Little Guy in the balls while letting Free Markets run the world, the GOP ran into a little snag in October of 1929 when, during the Republican stewardship of Herbert “The Tariff” Hoover, the entire fucking economy disappeared. Sensing what in political circles is known as a “royal ass-reaming” by people suddenly too poor to buy bowls in which to carry their dust (see Wrath, Grapes thereof), Republicans launched a Patriotism Campaign meant to remind everyone that — even when times are tough — a good American knows how to manipulate Old Glory for political ends:

Ah, election year in West Virginia. A time when a young politico’s fancy turns to purchasing as many votes as soft Internet money can buy in a state where “election fraud” means bouncing the check with which you paid some random Cleatus to vote for you 1,192 times in 7 minutes. And though analysts are predicting a Clinton Blow-Out (allowing printers to handily recycle mastheads leftover from the Monica Lewinsky scandal), the Obama campaign may just have enough money in its suspiciously bottomless War Chest to buy the votes needed for a surprise victory. And it wouldn’t be the first time: Faced with an army of redneck Protestants that would rather elect a one-eyed coon dog* president than a stinking Catholic from Massachusetts, presidential candidate and syphilis sufferer John F. “Back And To The Left” Kennedy surpassed expectations in West Virginia by putting the state’s entire electorate on his American Express Black card.

Of course the Clinton camp is crying foul, mostly because — with her campaign $20 million in the red and hemorrhaging cash like Rush Limbaugh sweats gravy — Hillary can only afford to buy sub-prime voters and their often unreliable product. One such Discount West Virginian — a one-legged coal miner who is his own uncle and whose purchase price in the 2006 midterms was “one them squashed raccoons what they got down the train depot” — mistakenly cast his ballot for someone named “Cooter” and then tried to get the voting machine to take his picture. “These are the people that poll taxes were invented to weed out,” a Clinton organizer said sadly.

In West Virginia, “the only state in which it is legal for a campaign to pay workers and voters money for showing up at the polls”, cash is certainly king. But with her Internet fund-raising at a near-crawl (“Click Here To Flush Your Money Down A Hopeless Toilet!”) and celebrity endorsements reduced to Fran Drescher, possibly the only other female on the planet more annoying than Hillary, the Clinton machine will have to rely on good old-fashioned fear- and hatred-based voting to carry the day. “We just can’t compete with Senator Obama’s money machine in a state that’s this for sale,” Clinton campaign super-dunce Terry “I Killed Tim Russert’s Old Man” McAuliffe told us this morning. “Barack bought one-third of the Charleston Racists and the entire Clarksburg chapter of the KKK with petty cash he keeps on his bus, for God’s sake!” A campaign staffer agreed, saying, “Thank God for racism and exceedingly stupid white male voters. That’s all we’ve got right now.”

But exactly why is West Virginia such an important state on the Giant Pointless Digital Electoral Map that this asshole will eventually make love to this coming November? Honestly, we have no idea. So instead of doing any serious “research,” we’ve assembled a brief pictorial history of the Mountain State after raiding some random historical archive we found while browsing for porn. Enjoy!

_________    

* “Stumpy” the coon dog, blinded by an unfortunate run-in with an ill-tempered badger while hunting for varmint, is currently leading in exit polls against Senator Obama by 47 points.   

West Virginia has long enjoyed a rich cultural history suffused with Appalachian customs and traditions, most of which involve shooting something with an absurdly long rifle:

Though currently ahead of only Arkansas and Mississippi in per capita income (and besting Louisiana 2-to-1 in per capita honkies), West Virginia nonetheless offers fine backwoods dining and down-home specialties rarely found in the finer bistros of New York and L.A.:

Family life is important in West Virginia, with as many as seven separate bloodlines now making up the state’s population. When not coughing up bloody chunks of coal-dust-ravaged lung tissue or making Ned Beatty squeal like a pig, West Virginians enjoy spending time with their families in classic American style:

West Virginia’s politics are maddeningly inconsistent. While the state itself is solidly Democratic — with the governorship, both senate seats and two-thirds of house seats, and both its state legislative houses currently filled by Democrats — West Virginia is nevertheless a “swing state” that voted for George W. Bush twice, the second time by more than twice the margin of the first. This is an excellent indicator of how enormously retarded West Virginians are. Early attempts at grasping politics didn’t fare much better:

West Virginians are an athletic people, though this has more to do with the flat-out sprint required to catch an angry opossum for Sunday dinner than any general desire to exercise. Indeed, West Virginians are the 3^rd fattest people in America, which is strange considering that “playing with pets” is considered a favorite pastime:

And finally, West Virginia enjoys what many of its local folk call “sweet, delicious racial purity” in a population that is 96% white. This probably has to do with the state’s historical requirement that black people wear their best suits and spend their last few dollars on “a nice lynchin’ hat fer the head” prior to their hanging by ridiculously stereotypical-looking chinless white men:

We hope you’ve enjoyed this little stroll down the historic mountain paths of West Virginian culture, and that — at the very least — you are now as mortally terrified as we are that this state should have any influence whatsoever in the election of the next leader of the Free World.

It seems to us here at The Daily Clusterdouche that all of this white indignation over the Reverend Jeremiah Wright’s furious pulpit-pounding could use a little context, a brief love-hug with those already crammed ass-to-elbow into the Fat White Evangelical Pantheon of Fabulous America-Blaming Hate-Speech. Because that’s the crux of it all, that Wright’s rants are specifically “un-American” in their fiery, pulpit-powered rhetoric; as one blogger put it, with typical bloggy erudition: “those comments are just plain WRONG!” Wrong indeed, I won’t for a moment excuse the deep wrongness in Rev. Wright’s fury, however racially justified that fury may be. But shouldn’t we view anything said from the pulpit through a like lens when scrambling up on our soapbox to denounce the sermon and its source? I’m amazed at how rare are the mentions of Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson in this debate — sermonizers both, and with audiences that are orders of magnitude larger than anything Wright could hope to reach — and their very Christian comments following 9/11. How “American” is it for a corpulent, filthy-rich, pinheaded white man — a man that has benefited in every conceivable way from his doughy Caucasianhood, from his mock-Christianity, from collecting the pennies and dimes of a gullible flock, this Capitalist in Celebrant’s clothing — to say of his country following the attacks in New York and D.C., “I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians…the ACLU, People for the American Way…I point the finger in their face and say ‘you helped this happen.’” (Jerry Falwell, from a story by Diana L. Eck.)

Are those words any different from a black man’s claim that our chickens — and lord we have some Godzilla-sized chickens, y’all — have come home to roost? And doesn’t the black man — any black man — have more a right to damn America and its latent Jim Crow values than any fat white mega-millionaire living on the tithes of a population safe in its superior whiteness? When the black man screams his indignation from the pulpit he rages against the shadows of inhuman bondage, against chains and lashes knit from the memories of fire hoses and white men with clubs and guns at the end of a long bridge in Alabama. He testifies to living memories of segregation and subjection the white preacher cannot fathom in his well-fed soul. So we ask you, White Christian America: with what righteous fury does Falwell claim his god’s wrath fell upon us on September 11? Pagans and abortionists? Gays and lesbians? Lunatic ravings like Falwell’s draw little ire from the Christian community, for the vast majority secretly nod their heads in agreement: The ACLU did this to us, Amen; The Gays did this to us, Amen; baby-killing abortion whores did this to us, A-MEN! We excuse our Fat White Preachers their misogyny, their homophobia, their slathering devotion to knocking down the wall between Church and State in order to legislate their own bigoted, hypocritical morality; we excuse it because they’ve got the white man’s Bible on their side, and we do not fear the White Man’s wrath. For all its piety, for all its wild-eyed bluster and petulant fury, we know we have nothing to fear from a Fat White Preacher grown soft and supple with the balm of enormous wealth and prosperity. The Fat White Preacher won’t overthrow the government that has been so good to him, that has never once taxed his land or the tithing box that brings him untold millions, oh no. His wrath is mouthy, bigoted, just as homophobic and misogynistic as the Old Testament from which he draws his inspiration; but it is never inspires guilt or fear, and it is never, ever dangerous.

Not so the Angry Black Preacher. And so all of this indignation of ours, this How Dare He, this shock and awe we so easily denounce from our high-speed onramps to our own wired pulpits: it’s nothing but fear made fury. The Angry Black Preacher has cause for his calumny, however incendiary, however “wrong” it may be. His is a righteous anger that needs no Leviticus for inspiration; to the contrary, his is the wrath of a people that suffered under the very Book that excuses the Fat White Preacher’s bigotry and hate. The Angry Black Preacher doesn’t need to hide behind Chapter and Verse to make his argument against the ills of a society still struggling to Reconstruct Winthrop’s city on a hill. We know immediately the dark source of this vitriolic flood when it pounds down upon us, Indignant White America, and in our guilty hearts we fear that Heart of Darkness. But post-9/11 we pound fragile fear into arrogant fury and lash out against those that would accuse us, that would prick us, that dare challenge the moral superiority of a country still unreconciled with its hateful past.

If this outrage of ours is born of anti-Americanism, and the Genesis of our great social religion is not Let There Be Light but We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, which is the more truly American wrath, Wright’s or Falwell’s? Who has lost more, and who has more to lose by speaking a fiery word from the shoulders of a shared god? Why do we drown ourselves in a chorus of AMENS! to hear Falwell declaim the country that has made him so very fat and so very rich as corrupted by “pagans” and then climb an arid mountain to denounce the angry black preacher that dares vent a lifetime of frustration and fury? We ask again: Who has more to lose in speaking Truth to the Powerless?

None of this, of course, has anything — anything — to do with Barack Obama. If we are to be held personally accountable in matters of judgment or fidelity by the company we keep, not a one of us would be suited to condemn the other. Without the benefit of 20 years of personal friendship and spiritual guidance, John McCain keeps the company of a clearly insane Fat White Preacher that is certain the Catholic Church is the Whore of Babylon, come to lead the Jews and Unitarians to their fiery Apocalyptic wiener-roast, and who doubts his character on the company he keeps? Do I believe Barack Obama worships a furious god intent on the destruction of America for the sins of its past? I do not. Do I believe a man that has run such a near-perfect campaign for the highest office in the land could possibly achieve such success were he victim or villain, prey to some greedy pastor’s calculating wrath? I do not. I take Senator Obama at his word that his is a lasting and important friendship with Rev. Wright, and — adult that I am – I understand that two grown men can hold opposing viewpoints and remain close spiritual partners. I don’t excuse Rev. Wright’s incendiary comments, nor could I possibly understand them, being an extremely white American. But neither do I pretend to a sanctity that permits impotent, institutionalized white rage to divide America against its other minorities now that the Book that guides them can no longer impel the slavery that is our country’s Original Sin.

And I do not fear.

Oklahoma City, OK - These are heady days for the U.S. Constitution. In the never-aggravating U.S. House of Representatives (“The House That Suck Built”), serious consideration is being given to House Resolution 888, which calls for an entire week of Federally-approved Religious History recognition, like the fact that Daniel Boone kilt him a bar with a big-print edition of the Gideon Bible and the Alamo (see “Remember The”, Big Texas Mud Forts Where We Got Our Asses Kicked, Gore Vidal, 1967) was saved from filthy Mexican invaders when God smote them with a plague of flaming Japanese Dung Beetles. Also the Founding Fathers were all ordained Christian tongue-speaking evangelists that were “just kidding” about this being a secular nation. So that’s fun! And it’s nothing but good times for the Fifth, Eighth and 14^th Amendments (or as Cheney calls them, “The Optionals”) as the Bush Administration celebrated its freewheeling vetofaction¹ of the Let’s Not Pretend To Drown Prisoners To Make Them Talk bill last week. Oh, George! How you love to mock-suffocate the brown people!

But never has the Constitution of the United States been in such good hands as when Oklahoma State “Legislator” Sally Kern uses it as a crinkly, parchment-colored diaper with which to wrap the soft ass of Christian Righteousness in defense of her own deeply pinheaded morality. And when Representative Kern (R., as if we had to tell you that) gets to speaking, the words that pour from her mouth like so much hiker-scented bear diarrhea are in desperate need of First Amendment protection. Thankfully, for those Americans that may have the voting power to expel this sloth-toed dogmatist from office, members of the Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund were listening, and recorded Kern’s wildly anti-gay rant as she spoke to more than 50 people in a public meeting. “I’m not gay bashing,” Kern assures us after getting caught. “But according to God’s word that is not the right kind of lifestyle. It has deadly consequences.” Deadly consequences indeed! We all know, for example, that gays having sex in Oklahoma City causes baby panda bears to die of anus cancer.

Representative Kern is obviously something of a Constitutional scholar, with a deep and profound understanding of our nation’s precious founding documents. Jefferson’s self-evident truth that “all men are created equal” must have been singing in her ears, for example, when she stated with pride, “Not everybody’s lifestyle is equal. Just like not all religions are equal.” Sing it, sister! Stupid Muslims with their inferior beliefs! And don’t Seventh-Day Adventists know it takes eight of them to equal a single Baptist? Jesus Christ other religions are stupid!Kern is also something of a closet history buff, noting accurately that “No society that has totally embraced homosexuality has lasted more than, you know, a few decades.” Discounting, oh, you know, the Greek and Roman Empires — both of which we’re fairly certain “lasted” something more than a few decades — she’s absolutely right; the ancient society of Homonecia (located in what is now the San Francisco Bay area) was a total disaster, dooming itself to less than a decade’s glory by unwisely having nothing but “back door loving,” none of which produced viable offspring with which to carry on Homonecia’s proud gay legacy of sewing triangular pink togas and producing lavish Broadway musicals.

But it’s when Representative Kern gets to talking about vital issues of national security that she really begins to shine, reminding us all that homosexuality is “the biggest threat our nation has, even more so than terrorism or Islam.” In this she simply could not be more correct, and we need look only as far as her own beloved Oklahoma City for proof. On April 19, 1995, for example, a Gay Pride parade through the streets of that city caused hundreds of pedestrians to run screaming in shock and horror, some clutching bloodied wounds or carrying the crushed and crippled bodies of young children as they fled the insidious wrath of that terrible, threatening gayness. Oh no wait, we’re sorry; those people were actually fleeing the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, which on that particular day had been blown up by American terrorist Timothy McVeigh. So yeah, unless McVeigh torched that building out of a deep self-loathing for his own criminal gayness, Kern is totally talking out of her asshole on that one.

That an elected official in this country fears the romantic or sexual relationships of people she’s never met more than she fears religious extremism made into public policy in the form of various exploding Middle Easterners is precisely the reason we need more Christian-based legislation in our government. These people obviously love Hating The Gays For Christ, and that hatred needs to be legislated immediately. What we love about this story is Kern’s snippy indignation when cornered about these hateful and retarded statements. “What is wrong with me as an American exercising my free speech rights on a topic that is a very big issue today?” she demanded after refusing to apologize for being yet another in a long line of pinheaded Christian Bigots For Christ. What is wrong, indeed? Never mind that demanding an apology is in no way a violation of her First Amendment right to reveal herself as a tiny-minded Biblical zealot willing to denounce secular legal traditions in exchange for some preachy rabble-rousing among Oklahoma’s mouth-breathing electorate; never mind that few rational Americans see homosexuality as “a very big issue today” when compared with the collapsing economy or genocide in Darfur or global warming. The real issue here is the increasing number of cowardly Christian pinheads using the Bible as their pulpit of hate and intolerance while cowering behind a document whose protections are meant to safeguard us all from exactly their sort of bitter extremism.

So today we offer a hail and hearty “Go fuck yourself” to Oklahoma State Representative Sally Kern and congratulate her on discovering the precious benefits of the First Amendment, just one of Twenty-Seven in that hallowed document that must prevail if we’re to see the end of her brand of scurrilous hatred and fear.

*   *   *

Today’s article was brought to you by Freedom For The Thought We Hate: A Biography of the First Amendment, by Pulitzer Prize-winning constitutional law scholar Anthony Lewis. This book is a must-read for any American citizen that has ever had either the courage or the cowardice to stand behind the First Amendment while saying something known to be wildly unpopular. Pinheaded Christians won’t read it because it was written by a Jew.

__________________________

¹ For those of you keeping score, George W. Bush likes to veto issues that “make Baby Jesus cry,” like scientific research that might heal those afflicted with Jesus-approved illnesses, caring for sick children suffering from Jesus-approved illnesses, and limiting the use of non-wine-converted water in the torture of those that hate them some Baby Jesus.

Part Two of Dubya’s last prep session for a State of the Union (in which he must bald-facedly lie to the American public about everything he hasn’t accomplished since taking office because he’s been too busy taking naps and watching cartoons between clearing brush and blowing up innocent people) finds the President well-rested and ready to learn following a two-hour break in which he did nothing but watch “Dora The Explorer” and eat Oreo cookies.

George W. Bush: Damn that’s a good show, ain’t it? Did you know they got super babies on Dora now? She pushes em around in a little stroller, but hell, they can fly! She got herself a basket fulla little flyin Mexican babies!

Advisor 1: Hmm, yes, that’s very interesting, Mr. President. Now back to this…

GWB: Now how the hell we gonna patrol the border down there in Texas if them people have flyin babies? You’d have to have guards down there with nets on big sticks. Catch them some flyin Mexican super babies tryin to come into this cun-tree illegally. (Pauses reflectively.) You think that little brown boy Diego knocked er up? Them Diego’s little super babies?

Advisor 2: We really have no idea, Sir, that show is intended for preschoolers.

GWB: Preschoolers my ass, son, today they learned us all about the dinosaurs!

A1: (Blinking.) We thought you didn’t believe in the dinosaurs, Sir.

GWB: Oh, right. Cause they ain’t in The Bible™. (Looks perplexed.) But Dora says they lived 200 years ago, now I’m all confused!

A1: Two hundred million years ago, Sir.  

GWB: Well now you’re just talkin dummy-talk. Two hundred million years ago, you must be one horseman shy of an apocalypse, son.

A2: (Sighing.) Sir, if we could get back to the State of the Union? We wanted to talk to you about this part where you say, “As we increase funding, we must also reform our veterans system to meet the needs of a new war and a new generation.”

GWB: How’d Noah git them dinosaurs on the ark, then? Explain that’un to me. That’d be a goddamned enormous boat, you had dinosaurs riding in that thing.  

A2: (Ignoring this.) Mr. President, we’re concerned that by mentioning veteran’s aid and funding you might be inviting criticism for how long you and this administration have done…well…

GWB: Doodlesquat? Big fat diddily doodlesquat?

A2: Hit the nail on the head, Sir. We’d rather you steered away from the giant gaping failures of this Administration to care for its wounded, crippled and deeply disturbed soldiers coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan…

GWB: Wait, who said they could come home? Pelosi tell you that? Git them back out there, they gotta Surge, why ain’t they Surgin? Oh hell, Hillary ain’t in charge already, is she?

A3: Sir, one in eight of the 47 million Americans without health insurance is a military veteran or in a veteran’s household.

GWB: Oh fuck me. That ain’t true, is it?

A3: Yes, Sir. That’s almost 2 million veterans without healthcare, up 290,000 since 2000.

GWB: Was I president in 2000?

A3: No, Sir. Bill Clinton was the president in 2000. Remember that budget surplus he left you?

GWB: (Laughing.) Spent the shit outta that thing, ain’t I?

A3: And in Illinois they’re saying “poor care” in a VA hospital killed 19 vets over the past two years. “Substandard care,” they say.

GWB: (Looks deeply troubled, then brightens.) Maybe we could use them flyin cars to catch us some flyin super Mexican border babies!

A3: (Sighing.) Yes, Sir.

GWB: You got anything else there, grumpy?

A1: Speaking of healthcare and the uninsured, Sir…

GWB: Shitballs.

A1: This whole paragraph here about health care makes me throw up in my throat a little bit, Sir. Do you really want to say that expanding “consumer choice” is the best way to fix the nationwide healthcare crisis? Can you tell us what that means, exactly?

GWB: (Leaning forward, eyes squinty. Squintier than usual.) Gotta give those consumers more choice, gotta give them more options. See, government can’t control the healthcare, we ain’t doctors… 

A1: (Muttering.) Some of us aren’t even politicians.

GWB: …so you gotta give the consumers more choices. In other words, we gotta give em alternatives.A2: Sir, that tells us nothing. “Alternative” is just another word for choice.

GWB: Didn’t I just say “in other words,” dummy? Christ you don’t lissen too good, do you? You want me to send you over to Cheney?

A2: (Instantly blanching.) Oh god no, Sir. Please, not that.

GWB: Look, I’m jes givin a speech here, dummy. There ain’t no question and answerin, no pain in the ass press corpse with their smart asses. I ain’t gotta mean any of this shit, it’s jes a speech.  

A1: We’re just concerned that a disproportionate amount of what you’re planning on saying has no basis in fact.

GWB: Yeah, but we got bases in Iraq and they ain’t goin nowhere. Ka-pow!

A1: (Sighing.) Isn’t it time for “Blue’s Clues,” Sir?

GWB: (Frantically checking his watch.) Oh holy hellballs, is it? I ain’t missin it, am I? Blue and Joe go to the zoo today, dammit!

A1: Watch out for those dinosaurs, Mr. President.

GWB: Fuckin-A, bubba.