With modern mainstream news being little more than an echo chamber for corporate sponsored propaganda (I would add “and political talking points” but that seems redundant) often the only place to find any truth is in comedy.

What so many people take for granted as “conventional wisdom” (the type of garbage peddled in mainstream media) is often actually completely absurd and quite frequently the people who are best at pointing out these absurdities are comedians. What follows are my personal favorite sources for the truth served in a hilarious way.

Six Of The Best Sources For Truth In Humor

George Carlin

It’s called the “American Dream” because you have to be asleep to believe it. Unfortunately Carlin died in 2008. Finding great jokes in the insanity of Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, and the Republican Tea Party would have been like playing T-Ball for him.

The Colbert Report

The Colbert Report began as a satire of Bill O’Reilly but by today’s standards of Fox nutjobbery (Glenn Beck) he almost seems reasonable (talk about moving the goalposts.) In fact, often times it seems that the reality of what’s on Fox in the Obama era (they’ve really dialed up the crazy since Obama took office) is nearly satire proof. How do exaggerate something that’s already an exaggeration of itself?

My favorite Stephen Colbert moment is when he roasted George W. Bush at the 2006 Presidential Correspondents Dinner. It was great to see Bush have his bullshit reflected back at him like that.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

There’s more truth in a 20 minute episode of The Daily Show than a full year’s worth of the Fox GOP Propaganda channel. There’s a good reason Jon Stewart is America’s Most Trusted Newsman.

Bill Hicks

Sadly Hicks is no longer with us. In fact he died over 16 years ago (on February 26, 1994) but for the most part his words ring just as true today (if not more so) than they did when he was alive. Hicks managed to cut through all of the bullshit to the real core of truth that I think everyone is aware of on some level (although many people do their best to hide themselves from it.) Oh yeah, he was really funny too.

Bill Maher

Real Time is one of the most interesting shows on TV. He often has great guests and they talk about interesting subjects (usually.) Plus it’s pretty damn funny. I like that Maher is one of the few people around today who openly talks negatively about organized religion. I don’t agree with him all the time, sometimes he’s a bit too antagonistic I think. But even when I disagree with him, I think he’s coming from an honest place.

The Onion

As the political landscape in the United States has become increasingly more insane The Onion’s absurd fake news stories are now sometimes confused for the real thing (by Republican Tea Party idiots anyway.)

Alan Grayson is probably the toughest most honest congressman we have today. I think it’s absolutely vital that he wins reelection this fall so that other congressmen get the hint: Stand up strongly for what’s right and the voters will support you.

Watch this excellent new ad from Grayson on protecting public schools from Republican attacks:

If you like this ad then donate some money to get it on the air.

From the Republican viewpoint only wealthy children deserve quality schooling. It’s this kind of “I’ve got mine, the rest of you can go to hell” attitude that has this country slipping behind the competition when it comes to education. It’s time to make public education better, not slash it’s funding (like the Republicans want to.)

I think this site has really hit the big time because I’m starting to receive some great hate mail! (send yours to prezcan.us@gmail.com)

Each Thursday I plan on featuring the dumbest hate mail of the previous week. I will not reveal the identities of those who send these emails because I believe in protecting the privacy of the stupid.

Without further adieu:

“Your a joke just as your web site is a joke. Republicans will regain power in next election and all your crying and negative post can’t stop that. We do not need a Muslim in office, he was born a Muslim and is still a Muslim. He is anti Christian and not to smart other then his way of speaking…but that is OVER as well….I am counting the days…”

Ah, where to begin? Well first of all, this email came from an AOL.com email address. Yes, people actually use AOL in 2010 and I’ve noticed that a very high percentage of the truly stupid emails I get (like this one) are from AOL email addresses. Now, I don’t want to prejudge every single person that uses AOL, maybe there are some otherwise intelligent people who just don’t know any better - but the correlation between stupidity and AOL.com email addresses seems quite obvious.

And while I don’t want to reveal the identity (or the claimed identity anyway) of this particular idiot, I think it’s worth mentioning that he refers to himself as a “wrestler” in his signature. Very strange.

So onto the content of his hate mail…

First off you will notice the misuse of the word “Your.” It’s hard to miss as it’s the very first word in the email. What he meant was “You’re” (you are.) Your is possessive. But you know, my writing could be far better than it is so I won’t hold that against him. These types of mistakes are quite common.

My site is a joke? Well, I won’t argue with that. This site is pretty lame in a lot of ways. My writing is haphazard and I don’t update it nearly as often as I should. Also my banner still says “2008 Presidential Candidates” on it. I should get a new banner one day.

Next he says that the Republicans will “regain power” in the next election. Well even if the Republicans do win both the House (which looks quite possible at the moment) and the Senate (less likely, but still possible) President Obama will still be the President and he will have veto power, so to say that the Republicans will “regain power” is somewhat untrue, even assuming they win both the House and the Senate.

But still, so far this hate mail hasn’t been particularly stupid.

“We do not need a Muslim in office.”

Ah, yes! Thank you! There’s the stupid I’ve been waiting for. 100% unadulterated pure stupid! Mmm, delicious. Since when is this a Theocracy? Let’s assume for the moment that we did have a Muslim President, why should I care? As long as he keeps his religion separate from his governance (which I would expect of every leader, regardless of their religion) I don’t see how it’s relevant in a country that is very much based in the idea of religious freedom like ours is.

“he was born a Muslim and is still a Muslim.”

Anyone who has the slightest clue about anything knows that President Obama has said many times that he is a Christian. What more do people want? Since when do we question people’s faith? This whole thing with calling the President a Muslim is not just stupid, it’s disgusting. It’s truly the lowest form of behavior I can imagine. It’s the type of thing where I can’t even imagine even being friends with someone who said that. It’s despicable. And anyone (Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, etc) who does their best to get people to question the President’s religion is even more despicable than the idiots who actually believe this garbage.

“He is anti Christian”

Isn’t it great how this mouth breathing moron just spits that out without offering even the slightest bit of reasoning? In what way is the President “anti Christian” (especially considering he and his family are Christians!) It’s insanity.

“and not to smart other then his way of speaking”

Isn’t this just adorable? Stupid people saying smart people are stupid really does it for me. I just get a real kick out of it.

“but that is OVER as well….I am counting the days…”

This makes absolutely no sense. What is over? What is “that” in this sentence? If anyone out there reads fluent moron, please leave a comment of your interpretation for me because I can’t make any sense out of it.

I’m assuming the “I am counting the days…” part refers to either waiting for the election (November Is Coming my fellow idiots!) or the end of Obama’s Presidency. I guess he wants to get back to the good old days of the Bush years.

The latest in a long line of right wingers to come out of the closet is Ken Mehlman who was the campaign manager for George W. Bush’s 2004 reelection campaign and a former head of the RNC.

What’s most disheartening about this particular out of the closet Republican is that he was the architect of a campaign that so purposefully used people’s homophobia to drive turnout in 2004. They got anti gay marriage initiatives on the ballot in states all across the country to help get the haters (who vote Republican, of course) out to the polls.

I’d say it’s safe to assume that any gay bashing Republican is actually a homosexual himself. Their self hatred is truly sick and I wish they would keep it to themselves.

You can get a “Turn Off Fox: Bad News For America” bumper sticker for free at colorofchange.org — Hopefully this “Turn Off Fox” movement will build momentum because Fox “News” is the biggest source of right wing propaganda in this country. It’s the main place Americans get false information.

Fox’s entire reason for existence (besides making money of course) is to help Republicans get elected so that they can in turn protect corporate interests when they are in power. They will twist as many facts and tell as many lies as they have to in order to help the GOP.

President Obama brings the truth:

As their voting record makes clear, the Republicans support the manipulation of the voters by corporate power. That makes sense as a manipulated public is the only way they can get elected. They certainly can’t win based on the facts or rational thinking. That’s why they need to spread lies about President Obama and the rest of the Democrats. That’s why they have to create faux controversies (see “ground zero mosque“) to take attention away from where it should be (see the Republicans voting down health care for 9/11 first responders.)

The Republicans manage to keep setting new lows in ridiculousness. Their latest “WTF?! You have to be kidding me!?” attack on the President is that he’s taking too much vacation time.

Seriously.

This is the party of George W. Bush who spent nearly a third of his Presidency on vacation (a total of 977 days.) At this point in his Presidency Bush had taken off 155 days. Obama’s current count? 48.

Yes, Bush had been on vacation more than three times as much as Obama yet they are still trying to make this insane “Clark Griswold president” meme stick.

This is a mind blowing example of how little facts and reality matter to these people. They clearly believe that they can get the voters to believe anything, no matter how ridiculous it is. Considering the recent polling showing nearly half of Americans think Obama signed the bank bailouts into law (he didn’t, Bush did) and that nearly a quarter of Americans think he’s a Muslim (he’s not, he’s a Christian.) They may be right.

One would hope that as some point they go too far with the nonsense and it backfires on them. At what point will people say enough is enough? The idiocy and lies coming from the Republicans are just staggering in their magnitude. What will it take for people to see what it so obvious to anyone with even the slightest clue as to what is actually going on and even the most basic reasoning ability?

A great example of this “blaming it on the black guy” is that according to a recent poll more Americans think the bank bailouts (TARP) happened under President Obama (47%) than think they happened under President Bush (34%)! To be clear, the bank bailouts happened under Bush.

Remember: The economy went to hell in September of 2008 well before President Obama took office. Come on people, work on that attention span! It was the Republicans who screwed this country into the ground and it’s the Republicans who have obstructed every attempt by the President and the Democratic congress to fix those problems for purely political reasons (they put this country last — well behind political ambition — time and time again.)

Remember: Obama inherited a huge deficit from Bush (largely because of Bush’s unfunded tax cuts for the rich and the war in Iraq.) When so called “conservatives” talk about the deficit keep in mind that Dick Cheney said “Reagan proved deficits don’t matter” and that George W. Bush turned Clinton’s budget surplus into a deficit.

And one more thing, before making the huge mistake of putting the Republicans back in power please read up on what they plan for our country:

RepublicanTeaPartyContract.com

This nonsense about the so called “Ground Zero Mosque” (it’s actually a “Burlington Coat Factory Community Center” that’s two blocks from the WTC site) is just another example of the right wing propagandists making people talk about what they want them to talk about.

Instead of talking about the Republicans stopping the 9/11 first responders from getting health care (which they did) people are talking about some made up “controversy” to elicit emotional reactions from their ignorant racist base.

It’s amazing to me how proudly ignorant so many people are. It’s not just that they’re stupid, they’re proud of it, they’re willfully ignorant. Even after they learn that they are completely wrong, they go on believing in whatever it is anyway. In fact, they may believe in it even more strongly.

An example is that 20% of Americans believe that President Obama is a Muslim even though there’s absolutely no truth to that belief.

This means that as a baseline, 20% of our country are complete morons.

And yes, if you believe this - you are a moron - please don’t comment here. I don’t care what you say - because if you believe that then you are a moron so why should I waste my time reading your ignorant bullshit? Why is it socially acceptable for people to be morons? It really shouldn’t be. Morons should be ostracized. If believe President Obama is a Muslim (or born anywhere other than Hawaii) then you should really fuck right off.

There’s good news for the Democratic Party when comparing June polls to July polls in eight competitive Senate races. In all 8 of of the races where PPP polled in both June and July the prospects for the Democratic candidate looked better in July.

Democratic pick-ups of Republican seats are now looking quite possible in Ohio (D+2), New Hampshire (R+3), Kentucky (Even), North Carolina (R+5), and even Louisiana (R+9.)

The Democrats are also likely to pick up Florida (assuming Charlie Crist caucuses with them) and they have a good shot in Missouri.

If they manage to somehow win all seven of these Republican seats that would more than offset their likely losses in Arkansas, North Dakota, and Indiana.

In fact if the Democratic Party can successfully make this election about the “Republican Tea Party” then I think getting a 60 seat majority again is not out of the question.

The Republican Tea Party’s “Contract on America” should be quite frightening to any American who is even slightly intelligent and informed: