Not-so-funny

This kind of stuff just boggles the mind. TPM reports on a candidate for the chairmanship of the Republican National Committee who has sent out a CD with the song “Barack, The Magic Negro”:

If one of the Republican Party’s challenges is how to effectively oppose the first black president without coming off as racist, one of the candidates for RNC chair is hardly off to a good start — he is now distributing a CD that includes a racially-charged song called “Barack, The Magic Negro.”

Chip Saltsman, the former campaign manager for Mike Huckabee, has distributed a goodie bag to committee members that includes a CD by Paul Shanklin, a writer of right-wing parody tunes who is often featured on Rush Limbaugh. The “Magic Negro” track, which first gathered controversy in the Spring of 2007, featured Shanklin portraying Al Sharpton as an Amos & Andy stereotype, ridiculing white liberals who support Obama.

Just like his fellow Republicans at FGO and the Oklahoma GOP, former Oklahoma congressman and failed Oklahoma gubernatorial candidate Ernest Istook chose to besmirch the Spirit of Christmas with an unabashedly (and unashamedly) partisan Christmas message. I received the following email in my inbox yesterday morning — Christmas morning:

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Forward this to your friends who care.  Merry Christmas!
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Santa Evacuated from North Pole!

Read the details at http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=84508

Here are excerpts:

Evacuation operations continue at the North Pole, as Santa Claus, Mrs. Claus, their reindeer and an estimated 5,000 elves are being relocated due to global warming to a secure but undisclosed location.

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“The only way to save future Christmases was to evacuate the toymakers and Mrs. Claus and to re-locate operations before the ice melts,” said Nobel Laureate Al Gore, who was on the scene with a camera crew for the occasion.  The footage will be included in Gore’s new documentary, “An Inconvenient But Jolly Old Elf”

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Observers confirmed that Santa was red with anger and threatened to retire.  Said one onlooker:

“His cheeks were like roses and his nose like a cherry.

His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow,

And the heat of his anger was as white as the snow.”

It was unclear who would have the power to appoint a replacement, but several governors volunteered to accept responsibility for picking a successor to Santa.  Said one, “You don’t get many opportunities like this.  Appointing a Senator is worth a lot.  But choosing a new Santa Claus?  Priceless!”

There’s more.  Read it all in Ernest Istook’s column at: http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=84508

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I’ll repeat what I said in my post last Saturday regarding co-opting the Christmas holiday for partisan pandering:

This partisanship by the party that so often likes to believe it’s more “Christian” than others certainly doesn’t reflect the spirit of this Christian holiday or the Christ whose birth is being celebrated.

Leave it to the Oklahoma GOP and people like Jim Martin to make the Christmas holiday — the holiday of “peace on earth and goodwill to all men” — a partisan event.

Wishing You A Merry Red OK Christmas! click on link for flash animation

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Un-be-liev-able.

This partisanship by the party that so often likes to believe it’s more “Christian” than others certainly doesn’t reflect the spirit of this Christian holiday or the Christ whose birth is being celebrated.

My oldest daughter attends one of Edmond’s three high schools. In general, we like her school, most of her teachers and her academic success there. Yet, there are some things that don’t always set well with me (as would be the case in just about any circumstance, I suppose).

Over the weekend, she was telling us about a substitute teacher she had in a couple of her classes on Friday. The curriculum for the day was apparently Mauri Povich during one class period and Divorce Court in another class period. For the students, this was entertaining, especially when the substitute talked back to the TV during Divorce Court. But, as you might imagine, to parents like us, such information raised eyebrows — or in my case, an exclamation of “WHAT?!?”

I’m glad that my daughter wasn’t in that substitute’s class during the Jerry Springer Show! While I will admit that these trash TV shows can be entertaining and that I’ve indulged in viewing a few times, they certainly don’t seem like the type of educational programming one would expect from a higher-caliber high school. It begs the question, is this a common practice? Are the substitute teachers not given guidance and/or plans for the classes their substituting for?

At one time or another, my father, my mother and my brother have all substituted in the middle and high school levels. I know the challenges that they face and I know that I wouldn’t want to do it. But that doesn’t excuse the schools’ responsibility to know what’s going on in their classrooms.

Don’t the schools owe the students a better education than Mauri Povich, Divorce Court or Jerry Springer — even if it is a substitute teacher? As a parent and as a taxpayer, I would most certainly expect more.

This video was classified as “comedy.” I didn’t find so funny, if for no other reason than there are countless voters exactly like this. This may be from Kentucky, but there are some in Oklahoma who feel (and act) the same way. Sullivan commented, “get a better idea of why the people introducing Palin and McCain keep referring to Barack Hussein Obama.”

I’ll let the ignorance speak for itself…

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After eight years of rule under the “fiscally conservative” party, the national debt clock has become outdated — and not in a good way…

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Think Progress points out…

Recall in September 2000, during President Clinton’s last year in office, the National Debt Clock had the reverse problem. It was shut down because “it started ticking in the opposite direction, shaving off roughly $30 a second.”

A sobering in-depth look at the wreckage left behind from the housing crisis…

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TPM Election Central takes note of the GOP nominees latest “do as I say, not as I do” moment…

In public remarks a little while ago, John McCain professed his disappointment with the “lack of bipartisan good will” in dealing with the financial crisis, and called for everyone to “come together in a bipartisan way” in order to chart the way forward.

At around the same time, his campaign released a new ad directly attacking Democrats and Obama and blaming them for the meltdown.

[...]

McCain made his remarks calling for bipartisanship at around 11:10 this morning. The McCain campaign sent out the ad attacking Dems and Obama at 11:26.

So it only took 16 minutes for the McCain campaign to drop its principal’s bipartisan pretenses. Which is actually an improvement over yesterday, when McCain managed to attack Obama over the crisis and then call for no finger-pointing in the space of only two sentences.

A reader of The Daily Dish writes about the possibility of a Sarah Palin vice presidency
sinking in:

It dawned on me this morning just how bad a pick Sarah Palin is. Driving to work, I realized that I understand the pertinent issues of the day far more than she does. I realized that I would be a better pick for VP. In that moment: fear.

Who knew that John McCain’s VP pick could do so much to improve the standing of the current occupant of the White House in the competency department?

“Can we now admit the obvious? Sarah Palin is utterly unqualified to be vice president. She is a feisty, charismatic politician who has done some good things in Alaska. But she has never spent a day thinking about any important national or international issue, and this is a hell of a time to start…

In these times, for John McCain to have chosen this person to be his running mate is fundamentally irresponsible. McCain says that he always puts country first. In this important case, it is simply not true.”

— Fareed Zakaria