Because, honestly, we know that it’s an important election and all, but it’s turned everyone into stupid screeching partisan bellends. And Exhibit A would be this – at a Sarah Palin rally in Florida yesterday, people not only let Elisabeth Hasselbeck from The View screech on witlessly about politics for 10 entire minutes, but they also actually clapped her at the end.

It just goes to show how much trouble the Republican campaign is in – it’s clear they just let Elisabeth Hasselbeck shriek her worldview to a crowd so that Sarah Palin would look marginally more intelligent in comparison. Let’s hope it worked, because it’s literally impossible to pander to the lowest common denominator any more than that. Well, unless someone gives Jessica Simpson a call, but who’d want that?

You know what’s naused up this election for us? Famous people. It’s a scientifically-proven fact that at any given moment in time, upwards for 50 celebrities are screaming their newfound political opinions, either on TV or in magazines or on the internet or spinning around in their garden like a toddler on E-numbers. The other day we saw a video of Ron Howard shaving his beard off for Barack Obama and it genuinely made us want to throw ourselves off a bridge.

What we’re trying to say is this – if we wanted to hear the political opinions of a badly-educated jumped-up egotistical nincompoop with epic delusions of grandeur, we’d go and stand in front of a mirror for half an hour.

By and large, celebrity endorsement ahead of the election seems to have fallen on the side of Barack Obama, with many of them even complaining if John McCain uses one of their songs. But now it’s time to turn the tide, and the Republicans have got a mighty trick up their sleeves. She might not be as famous as, say, Matt Damon, but this little lady is 10 times as loud, and pound for pound is about 30 times more of an idiot than just about anyone who’s allowed to go on TV. Ladies and gentlemen, Elisabeth Hasselbeck.

Everyone knows how much of a fierce conservative Elisabeth Hasselbeck is, because of the skin-melting velocity in which she bellows about it every single morning on The View. Her opinions are so strong that people are guessing that she’ll either quit The View or die of a horrible aneurysm at some point before the election unless something gives.

Neither will probably happen now, though, because yesterday something gave. For some reason that we don’t think we’ll ever understand, the Republican party yesterday let Elisabeth Hasselbeck introduce Sarah Palin at a rally in Florida. And it was like lancing a boil. A big screeching boil that burst in a frequency that only bats can understand and quite often didn’t really seem to know what it was talking about. Oh, go on then, here’s the video…

Did you manage to get all the way through that? Us neither. After about four minutes it started to make us feel like we were trapped inside a metal cave full of piercing rape alarms and screaming babies and we had to abort.

Still, though, at least we know why everyone else on The View constantly tries to shut Elisabeth Hasselbeck up now. We’ve never felt such gratitude towards Whoopi Goldberg.

But it would appear that Paris Hilton is indeed running for the presidency of the United States of America. In a video statement released to political hardline site Funny or Die, Hilton responded to the recent campaign ad from John McCain and the Republican party with her own brand of politics.

In the original ad, Paris was likened to Democratic Senator Barack Obama – popular, but ultimately vacuous and easily forgotten (or maybe it was the other way round). It would seem that young miss Hilton didn’t take too kindly to these words and has launched something of a war on the Republican Party, vowing to bring them down if it’s the last thing she does.

Okay, so maybe we’re going a bit overboard – even told a couple of porkie pies. She isn’t trying to bring down the Republican Party. She isn’t actually running for presidency. And Funny or Die isn’t technically a political hardline site.

But she has been involved in a video response, so it’s not all bad news laced with lies.

The video, produced as a direct response to the Republican campaign advert, stars young Paris – and she’s hardly even naked at all, meaning we live in some bizarre world where she can manage to make something that both isn’t a sex tape and is funny. No, instead of committing lewd acts then releasing the video footage for profit, the Simple Life star simply lazes on a sun lounger and puts forth her views on today’s US politics.

Of course, her words come across as if they were completely, totally and utterly written by no one but Paris Hilton herself. No help involved here. No sireee, not with this mastermind at the helm. Definitely. We’d be willing to bet on that.

Alright, so we’re back to lying again.

Nevertheless, the video is quite funny and Paris doesn’t make herself into a complete tit throughout. Frankly, this is nothing short of a genuine miracle, when you take into account the above-mentioned fact that this isn’t even a sex tape. Paris’ credentials for the presidency aren’t that bad either – she is the perfect wife after all and she’s a genius, though she may run some of her voters over if she isn’t careful.

In all honesty though, we at hecklerspray are still waiting for the Britney Spears response to hit the web. Who knows – maybe a career in politics is just the kind of low-stress job Miss Spears needs, as soon as she’s free to roam again? And the combination of high profile work and actual responsibility could put her in good stead to get her kids back from that prat Kevin Federline. Hey – it’s just a thought.

Or maybe it’ll just get ignored and the whole event will be taken exactly as it’s ’supposed’ to, with people watching, laughing and forgetting. Bah. Watch the video below:

Non-partisan as hecklerspray may be though (you vote for who you actually want to vote for), we can’t help but feel something of an affinity with Barack Obama after his presidential rival John McCain compared the Democrat to both Britney Spears and Paris Hilton.

That’s the kind of politician we could get on board with!

You may be confused – why would we support those likened to Hilton and Spears, she of limited values and she of limited mental wellness? It’s alright; McCain is not saying Obama is a hot little philly to be adored by men and idolised by young women. No, the Republican is getting on board with the hecklerspray way of thinking, seeing Spears and Hilton as vapid wastes of space, sucking up valuable air and not being worth the paper they’re printed on.

What do you mean they’re not actually made of paper? It’s certainly how they come across.

But is McCain alluding to the possibility of Obama having severe mental issues? Is he stating through his campaign ads – in which the comparisons are made – that Barack is likely to lose his kids and have to give them up to Kevin Federline? Because frankly, that’s just harsh. That’s below the belt. That’s downright dirty.

But the question we need to know the answer to – the one that has been keeping us awake for these last few… errm… hours – is this: is Senator John McCain of the Republican party, presidential candidate and genuine Old Man claiming, in a roundabout way probably too subtle for the masses to understand, that he is in possession of a porn film starring Barack Obama?

Is that why he’s equating the Democrat to Paris Hilton? We need to know.

The questions raised by McCain’s political broadcast are sure to get the US talking about the race for the presidency more than ever before. Surely all Obama has to do now is make an appearance on the VMAs and his reign at the helm of the most powerful nation in the world will be guaranteed.

Rick Davis, campaign manager for McCain, let the world in on this fact-nugget:

“I don’t know Paris Hilton and Britney Spears but they are international celebrities, so, you know, apples to apples.”

No, we have no idea either. It’s just a funny quote when you take it out of context.

Check out the video for yourselves, see if you can picture Barack Obama miming to ‘Toxic’ in a bikini top and tight-fitting PVC pants. Because that’s the image it conjures up over here…

Let’s face it – even if you ascribe to Bill Hicks’ philosophy that American politics is basically choosing which puppet can give the best impression of your beliefs (something Britain seems to have emulated too), then you might as well make a bit of cash out of this whole upcoming election shebang.

So we’re all doomed to Armageddon no matter who gets into office? Who cares? You’ve got a tenner that’s burning a hole in yer pocket, and you’ll be damned if you’re not going to do something election-based with it, right here, right now.

Let’s kick things off with the big boy, then: the betting odds for which party is going to win the 2008 US Presidential Election, as mapped out by those lovely people over at Paddy Power.

Republican Party (Odds: 7-4)

Anyone with a base grasp of world affairs – so Big Brother contestants can look away now – will be aware that the Republicans presently hold office by virtue of grinning simpleton George W. Bush.

This is something of a disappointing low point in their legacy thus far. Even if you don’t agree with their politics, any party that can count Ulysses S. Grant - a name surely on a par with Hercules T. Magnificent or Jesus Q. Megatron – among their past leaders has it least got it right in the impressive-sounding stakes. Being British, we don’t really know anything about old Ulysses here at hecklerspray, except for the fact that he was apparently known for ‘tolerating financial and politician corruption among top aides.’ Hey – maybe he’s not so different from Georgie-boy after all.

George won’t be eligible for president this time around, though, as a) American rules forbid any president ruling for more than two terms, and b) he has a lot of colouring-in to catch up on. And those Garfield And Friends puzzle books don’t fill themselves in, you know.  He’ll be replaced by either John McCain, Mitt Romney, Rudolph Giuliani, Ron Paul, Fred Thompson or the terrifying Mike Huckabee. We’ll be going further in depth about these fellows soon enough, but for now all you need to know is that the Republican Winning Odds stand at 7-4.

Democrat Party – 2-5

The oldest political party in the United States, you can trace the roots of this organisation way back to 1792, roughly around the same time Jackie Collins was born. Left-leaning and liberal, the Democrats generally tend not to take such a rabidly knee-jerk view of things as their main political rivals, and rank John F Kennedy as among their previous leaders.

Certain party figureheads, though, have been quite fond of inserting cigars into the vaginas of young lady interns, which last time we checked isn’t common practise in any workplace we know (JJB Sports have yet to get back to us on the matter). And it hasn’t been a total success story over the years – there’ve been quite a few election losses, including two by Adlai Stevenson (who kind of made up for it by having a Sufjan Stevens song written about him).

Last time the Democrats were running for office, they made the insane choice of having John Kerry as their leader – a man who decided to act as a refreshing alternative to the war-crazy government by waffling on about Vietnam all the time and saluting every baby he was handed to kiss. This time around, however, it could either be Hilary Clinton, Barack Obama or John Edwards trying to grab votes. As with the Repubs, there’ll be more on them from us soon, but in the meantime you just pay attention to those 2-5 betting odds, mister.

Paddy Power Election Betting Odds