“Idiocracy Watch” chronicles stories that expose the fact that the U.S. of A. is a nation of stupid people who blend anti-intellectualism with racism to create ignorance and intolerance.

From the “How’d That Happen?” file comes the story of a 19-year-old son of a former Ku Klux Klan grand dragon who ran for a Republican Palm Beach County post and won, and who is now fighting his own party, which is trying to deny him his seat. Oh, and who came to Derek Black’s defense? Former presidential candidate, America’s best-known racist and former KKK grand wizard David Duke. Whose ex-wife just happens to be Derek’s mama.

Derek’s daddy, Don Black, runs Stormfront.org, the oldest continually running discussion board for the “White Nationalist Community.” When he was 12, Derek contributed to a kids page on Stormfront and today helps Daddy Don with his podcasts on the “Racialist discussion board for pro-White activists and anyone else interested in White survival.”

But let’s let them tell it in their own words:

“We’re going to fight,” [David] Duke said. “I know Derek Black is going to fight for his constitutional liberties. That’s why I’m here, because I want to assist Derek.”

Sorry, says county GOP Chairman Sid Dinerstein. In the qualifying period in June, Black didn’t sign a loyalty oath pledging he would not do anything injurious to the party. And that’s not the only problem.

“He participates in white supremacist activities,” Dinerstein said. “We’re the party of Lincoln. We’re the party that says we don’t judge anybody by the color of their skin.”

Derek Black’s response: “I’ve told (Dinerstein) I’m not a white supremacist; that’s an insult. I would describe myself as a white person who is concerned about discrimination against white people.”

Duke can still turn an elegant racist phrase: “Sid Dinerstein, a Jewish-extremist loyalist to Israel, has the chutzpah to think that he has the right to deny Derek Black his legally elected office because he doesn’t like Mr. Black’s views.”

Apparently, Barack Obama’s election to the presidency has been a boon for Don Black’s Web site, with white survivalists flocking to its discussion boards:

Duke said the historic election has helped galvanize support for the causes he believes in: “Obama enables people to see more clearly. It makes it clear we’re losing control of our country.”

I couldn’t find a copy of the Palm Beach County Republican Party’s loyalty oath online, but I did manage to find the PBCRP’s constitution. The eight principles of the PBCRP’s constitution include: “In general to uphold the principles of freedom, equality and justice on which the Republican Party and the government of the nation are founded as set forth in the Constitution of the United States and the State of Florida.” (emphasis added)

Young Derek might have trouble adhering to that portion of the platform, though it does seem to provide a loophole. But Black must have counted on the PBCRP’s inability to fulfill this part of their mission statement: “Promote an informed electorate through political education.”

Man, the party really blew it there. Do you think that if the Republicans of Palm Beach County had known that they were voting for the son of a former KKK leader, they would have voted for him? Well, maybe the outcome of the race would have been different if Black’s opponent had gone by “Ed” or “Eddie” instead of Eduardo Burkhart, which, in West Palm Beach at least, doesn’t sound quite white enough, does it?

Just embarrassing

George W. Bush is delusional. That’s the only explanation, short of alternate universes, for his comments on what his legacy will be in an interview conducted by his sister, Dorothy Koch.

Let’s start with No Child Left Behind.

“I think the No Child Left Behind Act is one of the significant achievements of my administration because we said loud and clear to educators, parents and children that we expect the best for every child, that we believe every child can learn, and that in return for Federal money we expect there to be an accountability system in place to determine whether every child is learning to read, write, and add and subtract,” he said.

Bush said because of his administration’s No Child Left Behind policy, the “achievement gap” between white children and African-American and Latinos is “narrowing.”

“The promise of No Child Left Behind has been fulfilled,” Bush said.

Among its “17 Reasons NCLB Must Go,” NoChildLeft.com lists disappointing educational results, schools labeled as failures despite being underfunded or serving challenged students such as those for whom English is a second language, narrowing of curriculums to accommodate “teaching to the test,” forcing out underachieving students in order to raise school-wide test scores, loss of current and future teachers, and stagnation within the educational system.

So much for No Child Left Behind. What else does Bush want us to remember?

[…]

Did the Senate Minority Leader just say he’ll be happy to see Bush go?

A top Republican said on Friday that Democratic U.S. President-elect Barack Obama is “off to a good start” and indicated he was pleased to see President George W. Bush get ready to leave.

“Our members, in one way, are kind of relieved by the departure of an administration that became unpopular and made it very difficult for us to compete,” Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell told reporters on Capitol Hill.

McConnell won 52.9 percent of the votes over Democratic challenger Bruce Lunsford in a surprisingly (to McConnell) competitive re-election campaign. Had he lost, it sounds like McConnell would have blamed it all on Bush, the man who employs McConnell’s wife, U.S. Labor Secretary Elaine Chao. McConnell has also been at Bush’s side on Iraq, cheering on the alleged progress that showed victory was just around the corner every year since he backed Bush’s ill-fated plan to invade.

Candace Gringrich

Only someone who really knows you can totally nail why you’re wrong, wrong, wrong. Newt Gingrich’s half-sister Candace does just that as she lets her big (and we mean big) half-brother know why his position on gay rights sucks.

Dear Newt,

I recently had the displeasure of watching you bash the protestors of the Prop 8 marriage ban to Bill O’Reilly on FOX News. I must say, after years of watching you build your career by stirring up the fears and prejudices of the far right, I feel compelled to use the words of your idol, Ronald Reagan, “There you go, again.”

However, I realize that you may have been a little preoccupied lately with planning your resurrection as the savior of your party, so I thought I would fill you in on a few important developments you might have overlooked.

“You give a pass to a religious group when they use their money and membership roles to roll back the rights of others, and then you label us ‘fascists’ when we fight back”

The truth is that you’re living in a world that no longer exists. I, along with millions of Americans, clearly see the world the way it as — and we embrace what it can be. You, on the other hand, seem incapable of looking for new ideas or moving beyond what worked in the past.

Welcome to the 21st century, big bro. I can understand why you’re so afraid of the energy that has been unleashed after gay and lesbian couples had their rights stripped away from them by a hateful campaign. I can see why you’re sounding the alarm against the activists who use all the latest tech tools to build these rallies from the ground up in cities across the country.

This unstoppable progress has at its core a group we at HRC call Generation Equality. They are the most supportive of full LGBT equality than any American generation ever — and when it comes to the politics of division, well, they don’t roll that way. 18-24 year olds voted overwhelmingly against Prop 8 and overwhelmingly for Barack Obama. And the numbers of young progressive voters will only continue to grow. According to the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning, about 23 million 18-29 year olds voted on Nov. 4, 2008 — the most young voters ever to cast a ballot in a presidential election. That’s an increase of 3 million more voters compared to 2004.

[…]

A stunning 30 percent of Floridians approve of the job Pres. Bush is doing, according to a new Quinnipiac University poll. That blows FOX News’ 29 percent and Quinnipiac’s own 23 percent national ratings out of the water.

Oddly, Bush handmaiden Sen. Mel Martinez (R-Fla.), who comes up for re-election in 2010, is only slightly more popular in the state than the Republicans’ standard bearer.

Although Sen. Martinez gets a somewhat favorable job approval rating, only 36 percent of voters say he deserves another term, while 38 percent say no and 26 percent say they are not sure. If the election were today, 36 percent say they would vote for Martinez while 40 percent would support his unnamed Democratic opponent and 24 percent are undecided.

Meanwhile, Rasmussen has given up on Bush altogether. Their “Daily Presidential Approval Index” lists only one set of numbers: those for Pres.-Elect Barack Obama. It’s as if Bush has ceased to exist. The poll show most folks think the Wish-He-Were-Pres.-Now is doing well. Rasmussen arrives at its index by subtracting the number of people who “strongly disapprove” from the number who “strongly approve.” By this measure, Obama has a +19 rating.

The Washington Post’s index shows that it was March of 2005, just two months after Bush’s second inauguration, that his “disapprove” numbers overtook his “approve” and never recovered. That’s a really long time for a country to have disliked its leader. No wonder Rasmussen, and most of us, are so eager for it to be over that we’re pretending Bush is already gone.

Holy moly. I haven’t watched this video and don’t plan to but I did listen to the audio, knowing what the contents of the video were. Was that one reporter making a very black joke by asking the governor about issues on the chopping block? Either way, the tone-deaf top executive of Alaska is amazingly clueless and self-absorbed. And this video makes me so glad I’m a vegetarian.

File this one under “A” for “Absurd.”

Perhaps nothing so clearly illustrates the positions of the two parties in Florida as the locations where each held its post-election/planning meeting this year.

The 76 Republican House members met at the luxurious, gulf-front Water • Color Spa & Resort in Santa Rosa Beach. The 44 Democrats booked a teachers’ union conference room a block from the Capitol building in Tallahassee. Both meetings were financed by the parties, not the taxpayers.

As the Republicans discussed their solid victories in the recent election and debated how best to rape and pillage the state in the coming year, they enjoyed such entrees as, “Grilled Petite Filet Wrapped in Applewood Smoked Bacon and Fresh Gulf Fish with Citrus Beurre Blanc Served with Roasted Potato Medley and Seasonal Vegetables.”

Meanwhile, the Democrats likely reviewed the fact that they only picked up one seat in what should have been a year of sweeping victories while trading halves of the sandwiches they each brought and passing around a bag of chili-cheese Doritos.

What the Democrats should have been talking about is their party’s vote on Dec. 20 for a leader. They can either choose to stay the course with the ineffectual Karen Thurman, who not only subcontracts for a Republican lobbyist but oversaw a boycott of the state by Democratic presidential candidates, or they can pick somebody new. There are a couple of hats in the ring so far and our only preference is this: Anybody But Thurman.