Monthly Archives: August 2010

“Qualified Citizen Politician”

Those are Christine O’Donnell’s words in describing herself in her first campaign ad. I struggled with the notion of whether to post the video of the ad (courtesy of Dialogue Delaware) or the transcript, for I do not want such filth on our blog. But I decided that I want Christine to win the primary, so why the hell not? So here we go:

I’m Christine O’Donnell, candidate in the special election for the Senate seat once held by Joe Biden. If you’re tired of backroom deals and mudslinging, and you want a qualified citizen politician to go to Washington and serve, then I’m asking for your vote on Sept. 14th. To get our country back on track, we must replace career politicians with citizen politicians who represent you. Please visit Christine2010.com for more information.

Oh, the treasure trove that is Christine O’Donnell. First, if you are tired of mudslinging, why in God’s name would you vote for a Teabagger? Their kind have been dipping in mud from the day their reactionary movement was born. How many epithets have they hurled President Obama’s way again? I have lost count. But of course, I am forgetting the rule that is IOKIYAR (It’s OK if you are a Republican). And I am forgetting the all important Republican tactic of projection: always attack your opponent for what you do.

Second, I must admit, for once, and perhaps for the first time ever, Christine O’Donnell is telling the truth. She has finally narrowed down her qualifications for the Senate seat to something that is vaguely plausible rather than completely fictitious. She has proclaimed herself to be a “qualified citizen politician.” I assume that she was born in this country, thus making her a citizen of this country (although not for long if Christine has her way). I guess I should demand a birth certificate, as she looks somewhat Irish to me, but alas, I am too busy to forge an Irish birth certificate at the moment to back up my own doubts as to her citizenship. So lets just say for the moment that Christine O’Donnell is a citizen. Check. She is a qualified citizen. I doubt she could pass a INS citizenship test asking basic civics questions about our system of government and American history, but that is not required to be a citizen if you are lucky enough to be born here.

Christine has also proclaimed herself to be a politician. That would be correct. Remember, you don’t have to be a successful politician, or even a good one, to be a politician. She has been running for this Senate seat since 2002, albeit unsuccessfully. It is interesting to note, however, that the only thing preventing Christine O’Donnell from being a career politician rather than a citizen politician is her own lack of success in any of the races she has been in. If, God forbid, she has somehow won in 2002, she would be the very same “career politician” she disdains today. And I wonder why she disdains “career politicians” when her only career and only source of income has been running for office for eight years and appearing as a Faux News talking head. Would that not make her a “career politician?”

Perhaps I misspoke earlier. It would appear that Christine is stretching the truth again about her not being a career politician.

Always the Bully

As I begin writing this, I get a CNN alert that Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska will concede to her Teabagger opponent, mortgage defaulter Joe Miller in the Republican Senate primary. Geek says in two weeks our own Teabagger experience with the wondrous Christine O’Donnell will be over. I pray not that my learned friend is wrong, if only for more moments like this:

State GOP staffer John Hawley and Evan Queitsch, a supporter of U.S. Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell got into a scuffle after a Founder’s Values group candidate forum Monday night. During the event, Hawley had been standing in the back of the room video taping the candidates speaking. Hawley has traveled to candidate forums across the state during the campaign to record speakers. Afterward, Hawley remained in the auditorium filming O’Donnell as she talked to attendees. When O’Donnell went to leave and Hawley followed, the trouble started. [..]

Queitsch was part of a group of four O’Donnell staff members that had circled around the candidate to keep Hawley and a member of the press from getting near her. When O’Donnell walked out the door, the staffers blocked the entrance. Republican Party Chairman Tom Ross said Queitsch tried to block Hawley from leaving the room. He said Hawley was pushed into the wall. At one point in the video, Hawley can be heard saying “no need to be violent.”

Yes, that is EvanQ, a frequent wingnut bully commentator here at Delaware Liberal who most recently bullied Dave Burris and Delaware Tomorrow into hiatus for daring to write about the rank incompetence, lies and disqualifications of one Christine O’Donnell. To be sure, there are no victims here, as both Hawley and Evan Q are Republican thugs, although my sympathy, if I possess any, would tend towards Hawley for the mere reason that O’Donnell was ducking questions like most, if not all, Teabagger candidates do (i.e. Rand Paul in Kentucky and Sharon Angle in Nevada). Here is the video of the incident:

Tuesday Open Thread

Welcome to your Tuesday open thread. Are you all watching the track of Hurricane Earl like I am? It could be a big factor in our Labor Day weekend weather.

An op-ed by Stanley Fish points out the general hypocrisy of the anti-mosque crowd. Haven’t we learned the lesson about collective guilt?

But according to the same folks who oppose the mosque because of what it stands for, Michael Enright’s act doesn’t stand for anything and is certainly not the product of what Time magazine calls a growing “American strain of Islamophobia.” Instead, The New York Post declares, the stabbing is “the act of a disturbed individual who is now in custody,” and across the fold of the page columnist Jonah Goldberg says that “one assault doesn’t a national trend make” and insists that “we shouldn’t let anyone suggest that this criminal reflects anybody but himself.”

The formula is simple and foolproof (although those who deploy it so facilely seem to think we are all fools): If the bad act is committed by a member of a group you wish to demonize, attribute it to a community or a religion and not to the individual. But if the bad act is committed by someone whose profile, interests and agendas are uncomfortably close to your own, detach the malefactor from everything that is going on or is in the air (he came from nowhere) and characterize him as a one-off, non-generalizable, sui generis phenomenon.

The only thing more breathtaking than the effrontery of the move is the ease with which so many fall in with it. I guess it’s because both those who perform it and those who eagerly consume it save themselves the trouble of serious thought.

Yes, this is what we’ve been saying. It seems so obvious that we didn’t think we actually had to point this out, but apparently we do. Not that it will stop the anti-mosque hysteria.

Finally, a win for the good guys. Rightwing nutcase AG Ken Cuccinelli is not allowed to go on a witchhunt against climate scientists. Since he’s in a court, he has to produce actual evidence.

An Albemarle County Circuit Court judge has set aside a subpoena issued by Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli to the University of Virginia seeking documents related to the work of climate scientist and former university professor Michael Mann.

Judge Paul M. Peatross Jr. ruled that Cuccinelli can investigate whether fraud has occurred in university grants, as the attorney general had contended, but ruled that Cuccinelli’s subpoena failed to state a “reason to believe” that Mann had committed fraud.

…

According to Peatross, the Virginia Fraud Against Taxpayers Act, under which the civil investigative demand was issued, requires that the attorney general include an “objective basis” to believe that fraud has been committed. Peatross indicates that the attorney general must state the reason so that it can be reviewed by a court, which Cuccinelli failed to do.

Sometimes courts can do the right thing and act as a check on the power of politicians. I’m sure the RWNJs are already howling with outrage about this since Mann said mean things in an email once.

Rollins/Urquhart Debate Open Thread

I was unable to attend today’s Rollins-Urquhart debate because of a work committment but several of you are either listening or attended. Use this thread to discuss what you’ve heard during the debate.

From what I gather on the Twitter coverage:

Rollins calls herself pro-life but supports abortion rights (she specifically mentioned rape victims). I’ve seen a lot of pro-choice activists actually use this type of language “pro-choice is pro-life.”

Rollins said that the Park51 Islamic center had the right to be built and it was a local NYC issue. Urquhart doesn’t think it should be built.

Urquhart hammered Rollins hard on WTC and TARP. It sounds like he put her on the defensive.

Urquhart thinks national debt is our greatest threat. (Greater than al Qaeda?)

Share your thoughts below.

The O’Donnell Boomlet

Yesterday we asked if Mike Castle was feeling some heat from Christine O’Donnell when there was suddenly a rash of Christine O’Donnell surging stories. There were stories from The Huffington Post, Daily Kos, Talking Points Memo, The Swing State Project and Michelle Malkin. The surge of interest came because the Tea Party Express announced they were going to spend a lot of money on Christine O’Donnell’s behalf (more than $0.5M), just like they did with Joe Miller in Alaska. PPP Polls looks at the comparison of Alaska to Delaware to see if Tea Partiers can pull off another miracle and take out Castle.

The arguments for:

-Lisa Murkowski’s poll numbers with Republicans back in January are far superior to where Mike Castle’s have ever been in our surveys. When we looked at Alaska in January Murkowski’s approval within her party was 77/13. By contrast our Delaware poll this month found Castle’s favorability with Republicans at only 60/25. It was 61/23 last December so it appears there’s a pretty solid quarter of the electorate ready to vote against him from day 1 that didn’t exist with Murkowski.

-The ideological composition of the Delaware and Alaska Republican electorates is actually almost identical. Intuitively you would expect Alaska’s to be far more conservative but our last Delaware poll found 58% of Republicans identifying as conservatives and 37% as moderates. Our Alaska ‘exit poll,’ which we’ll release tomorrow, found theirs at 59% conservatives and 37% moderates.

So according to PPP’s high level look there are enough conservative voters in Delaware to swing the election to O’Donnell. She just has to get them to the polls and frankly, convince them to vote for her.

The arguments against:

-Mike Castle has been elected statewide in Delaware 13 times. Lisa Murkowski had been once. It’s a lot easier to destroy someone’s image with 50%+1 of the primary electorate in a very short period of time when they’re relatively new to the scene than it is when they’ve been in statewide office for 30 years like Castle has.

-Time and money. We haven’t seen any public polling out of Delaware on the primary but it seems pretty safe to say Castle’s still up by a good amount and with only two weeks to go there’s not a lot of time to make that up. And it will probably take a much bigger investment to put a huge dent into Castle when that involves buying up Philadelphia tv time than it did in Alaska where a little money goes a long way.

-The lack of a Sarah Palin endorsement for O’Donnell. Our Alaska ‘exit poll’ actually found that Palin wasn’t as big a factor in Miller’s win as she seems to be getting credit for but there’s no doubt that would be a big help with at least some portion of the Republican electorate.

O’Donnell hasn’t had a big name endorsement and I don’t think Jim DeMint or Sarah Palin has that much influence in Delaware. The key to the Tea Party Express’s success in Alaska was a commercial where they portrayed Lisa Murkowski as a liberal.

I guess we’ll have to wait and see what kind of ad the Tea Party Express runs in Delaware. $0.5M won’t go as far in Delaware as in Alaska but an ad could get plenty of media coverage. There’s not much time to change things (the primary is in only 2 weeks) but there were a lot of undecideds in the last PPP Poll. PPP Polls also tweeted that they plan to poll Delaware again.

Monday’s Asshat of the Day

I’m going out on a limb here today with my award (and maybe facing “excommunication”), for I am going to be taking on the former Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Israel.

First some background. Judaism, unlike other religions, does not have a political hierarchy. Rabbi’s do not report to a senior rabbi, who reports to more senior rabbi, who reports to a rabbi sitting in a city-state in Israel. There are two Chief Rabbis in Israel, the Ashkenazi (European) and Sephardic (Eastern/Arabic countries). Basically the Chief Rabbis are the final say in matters for their very religious followers. Then of course, you have other Orthodox movements who have their own leaders. What’s that old joke – put 3 Jews in a room, ask them a question and you’ll get 5 answers.

It seems that Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, who is a very learned man, and the head of the Shas party in Israel, decided to use his Shabbat sermon to ask G-D to “remove all nasty people who hate Israel, like Abu Mazen (Abu Abbas),” from the face of the Earth. “May G-D strike them down with the plague along with all the nasty Palestinians who persecute Israel,” he said.

Not very rabbinic, if you ask me. I’ve been pilloried on this site many times for my support of Israel and her right to exist. I don’t back away from any of that. But Rabbi Yosef’s comments are just as bad as those of the religious wingnuts we have right here in the US, especially the ones who are so vocal in their opposition to the Park 51 Cultural Center. And I would be wrong for not calling him out for this evil statement as I do the so-called moral majority-types we have in our midst.

As we approach the start of the Jewish High Holy Days next Wednesday night, beginning at sundown with Rosh Hashonah and ending with Yom Kippur on September 18, I urge Rabbi Yosef, and all of those who have this hate in their hearts to look deep inside and ask G-D for forgiveness for harboring such thoughts.

Rabbi Ovadia Yosef – our Asshat of the Day.

Monday Open Thread

Welcome to your Monday open thread. Today we have the return of summer weather and the return of school traffic. Sigh. Yesterday the UD students moved back in as well so traffic everywhere is snarled.

Newsweek does something called journalism and checks GOP rhetoric vs. what the GOP has actually proposed and voted for. Surprise, surprise the GOP plan would increase the deficit and increase unemployment (who could have guessed that laying off teachers, firemen and police actually increases unemployment):

There’s only one problem with Boehner’s message: so far, the things that Republicans have said they want to do won’t actually boost employment or reduce deficits. In fact, much the opposite. By combing through a variety of studies and projections from nonpartisan economic sources, we here at Gaggle headquarters have found that if Republicans were in charge from January 2009 onward—and if they were now given carte blanche to enact the proposals they want to—the projected 2010–2020 deficits would be larger than they are under Obama, and fewer people would probably be employed.

…

The final piece of the puzzle is the Bush tax cuts. Obama wants to extend them for the 95 percent of taxpayers making less than $250,000 a year; Republicans want to extend them for everybody. How will these extensions affect the deficit? Glad you asked. According to data compiled by The Washington Post, “the Democratic proposal would add about $3 trillion to the deficit during the next decade, while the GOP plan would cost $3.7 trillion.” That brings the total Obama deficit to $3.784 trillion over 10 years, and its GOP counterpart to—drumroll, please—$4.155 trillion.

Repealing health care reform costs money, because HCR reduces the deficit. Extending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy costs money because tax cuts don’t pay for themselves. This doesn’t even take into account the costs of privatizing Social Security, the secret program Republicans don’t want to talk about.

The likely GOP Senate candidate from Alaska is a real nut – he’s more extreme than Rand Paul or Sharron Angle.

It’s easy to check off most of the routine garbage — Miller has birther tendencies, demands the elimination of all abortion rights (even in cases of rape or incest), wants to repeal the entire Affordable Care Act, rejects global warming science, wants to “transition out” Social Security, and is eyeing cabinet agencies for elimination, including the Department of Education.

But it’s his constitutional beliefs that help set Miller apart. In July, he rejected the very idea of unemployment benefits, insisting that they’re not “constitutionally authorized.” This does, by the way, make him more radical than Angle and Paul, who’ve denounced extended aid to the jobless, but haven’t rejected the policy itself as illegal.

Yesterday, on CBS’s Face the Nation, Miller went even further. (TP has the video)

BOB SCHIEFFER: You have also taken some fairly controversial, some would say, very extreme positions. First, you say you want to phase out Medicare. You want to privatize Social Security. I have to say there are a lot of people in Alaska who are on Medicare and are getting Social Security. Isn’t that position going to be a problem for you in the election, in this general election?

JOE MILLER: Well, yeah, and I would suggest to you that if one thing said the Constitution is extreme then you would also think that the founders are extreme. We just simply want to get back to basics, get — restore essentially the constitutional foundation of the country, and that means the federal government becoming less onerous, less involved in every — basically every item of our lives. And what that means is there does have to be some transition.

It’s hard to interpret this as anything but Miller characterizing Social Security and Medicare as being at odds with the Constitution — a position that positions him on the far fringes of American political thought.

What’s even nuttier is that this guy has a chance to win.

Is Mike Castle Feeling The Heat?

On Friday we wrote about a Chris Coons press release criticizing Castle for attending yet another stimulus event. Castle’s campaign had a rather bizarre response:

The fact is that the bike lane was funded by the Delaware Department of Transportation. It is true that Rep. Mike Castle is a strong supporter of recreation opportunities in this area, including the bike lane on the bridge, and has secured funding for the coordinated federal, state, and local effort to create the C&D Canal Recreation Trail.

“Congressman Castle has fought for and secured federal dollars for this area of Delaware over the years and continues to support the state’s needs for federal funds that have already been appropriated. Voters in Delaware know what the Coons campaign does not — The nation is in debt and the rate of spending that he supports has got to stop in order to get the economy back on track. Chris has spent $360,000 of New Castle County residents’ tax dollars in lobbying fees to his campaign donors and regularly raises our taxes, it is no wonder that he doesn’t realize that we are in a budget crisis.

I’m not even sure what he’s saying – is he blaming Chris Coons for the U.S. deficit? I guess Mike Castle wants you to ignore his 18 years in Washington.

I’m a bit surprised that Castle is feeling some heat from Christine O’Donnell’s campaign as well. This time, though, he relied on the Delaware GOP to have a response:

Back in Delaware, O’Donnell has been cited repeatedly lying to voters and manipulating her own political history. Recently, O’Donnell has claimed that she won two out of three counties in Delaware in her 2008 race against then-Senator Joe Biden. Election results show that Biden won overwhelmingly against O’Donnell and that she did not win any counties in the state of Delaware. In addition to this blatant spin on reality, O’Donnell yesterday told Politico that she had not sought the endorsement of the Constitution Party of Delaware. But last week, The News Journal reported that O’Donnell had pushed to be on the November ballot for the election, quoting Constitution Party Chairman Pell Sherman.

“O’Donnell is hoping that voters have a short-term memory and ignore her record in Delaware,” said Tom Ross, Delaware GOP Chairman. “Sadly, Christine continues to avoid the tough questions and will spin her own reality with the hope that the national press won’t catch on.” He went on to note how O’Donnell is seldom seen in Delaware and never misses an opportunity to seek endorsements and coverage outside the state.

Her campaign appears to be getting desperate as the Republican primary is only two weeks away. The most recent Rasmussen poll has shown her support drop by five points in only a month to 36 percent – robbing her of the talking point that she would beat Democrat Chris Coons in November.

O’Donnell’s campaign is no doubt desperate but why is Castle paying attention to her at all?

Terrorism At A Tennessee Mosque

The Burlington Coat Factory Islamic Center has gotten a lot of attention but there’s also been some protests about a proposed mosque in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. The Daily Show did a story on the protests and interviewed the leader of the anti-mosque group.

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Did you think that was funny? I really didn’t. She’s no lone bigot and now we see the outcome of the ignorance and fear that is being spread. Remember, the Lt. Governor of Tennessee is repeating this rhetoric, at one point saying that Islam was a cult and therefore not eligible for 2nd amendment coverage. This weekend, someone committed arson at the mosque construction site:

Federal officials are investigating a fire that started overnight at the site of a new Islamic center in a Nashville suburb.

Ben Goodwin of the Rutherford County Sheriff’s Department confirmed to CBS Affiliate WTVF that the fire, which burned construction equipment at the future site of the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro, is being ruled as arson.

Special Agent Andy Anderson of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives told CBS News that the fire destroyed one piece of construction equipment and damaged three others. Gas was poured over the equipment to start the fire, Anderson said.

The ATF, FBI and Rutherford County Sheriff’s Office are conducting a joint investigation into the fire, Anderson said.

When mosque members went to assess the damage, someone fired shots at them:

Rutherford County Sheriff’s deputies are investigating a complaint about shots being fired this afternoon near the construction site of the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro on Veals Road off Bradyville Pike.

The report came just hours after a fire of suspicious nature damaged construction equipment at the site.

A group of congregation members was at the site looking at the damage done to construction equipment by the fire overnight when they heard nine shots fired from two directions.

The incident occurred around 3:15 p.m. The congregation members reported hearing six shots coming from one direction, and about three minutes later they heard three more shots from another direction, said Saleh Sbenaty, a congregation member and MTSU professor.

Responsible members of the Republican and Democratic parties need to stop cowering in the corner and stand up for American values before someone gets hurt.

What Is The Tea Party All About?

Steve Benen at Washington Monthly writes a brilliant piece about the Tea Party gathering in DC yesterday. Just what is this Tea Party all about?

But that doesn’t actually tell us what these throngs of Americans are fighting for, exactly. I’m not oblivious to their cries; I’m at a loss to appreciate those cries on anything more than a superficial level.

This is about “freedom.”

Well, I’m certainly pro-freedom, and as far as I can tell, the anti-freedom crowd struggles to win votes on Election Day. But can they be a little more specific? How about the freedom for same-sex couples to get married? No, we’re told, not that kind of freedom.

This is about a fight for American “liberties.”

That sounds great, too. Who’s against American “liberties”? But I’m still looking for some details. Might this include law-abiding American Muslims exercising their liberties and converting a closed-down clothing store into a community center? No, we’re told, not those kinds of liberties.

…

This is about patriotic Americans willing to make sacrifices for the good of their country.

That sounds reasonable; sacrifices can be honorable. But if we’re talking about patriots willing to sacrifice, does that mean millionaires and billionaires can go back to paying ’90s-era tax rates (you know, when the economy was strong)? No, we’re told, not those kinds of sacrifices.

This is about a public that, at long last, wants to hear the truth from those who speak in their name.

What a great idea. Maybe that means we can hear the truth about global warming? About the fact that health care reform wasn’t a socialized government takeover? About Social Security not going bankrupt? About how every court ruling conservatives don’t like doesn’t necessarily constitute “liberal judicial activism”? No, we’re told, not those truths.

I think we’ve thought all along that the tea party had a big dose of sore loserdom. It’s helped along by the fact that the economy is terrible and it’s just easier to find a scapegoat than to take a long, hard look at how we got here.