She also figured that Bill Clinton should be investigated for the “murder” of Vince Foster: Category: DC - TPM – Talking Points Memo
Last I saw she was asked directly about this issue of hers and she ducked it so has she changed her position?
More though is it is one thing to hold an odd position and another to form a non-profit dedicated to pushing that agenda. Seems she was pretty committed to it to me.
Which of course neatly ducks the point that she did not pay for her education.
If I made use of your services and didn’t pay you for 17 years that wouldn’t bother you overly much?
Sure:
*[A] conservative radio host was compelled to correct her when she claimed that she had won two counties in a 2008 race against Senator Joe Biden. That would have been quite a trick, given that Delaware has only three counties and she lost the election by 65 percent to 35 percent.
“I meant tied,” she said, forcing the host to point out: “You didn’t tie him either.”
- (cite)
And it points out a scary level of paranoia. Biden was a Senator from Delaware for over 30 years. He took the train home with everyone else. Where he lived was no secret to anyone and he never (to my knowledge) had staffers checking his bushes every night.
If you are ok with a paranoid Senator that is your lookout. To me it goes to state of mind and it is not a good state. YMMV.
We are certainly seeing a trend here. Her campaign paying some of her apartment costs. Her not paying her tuition. Was woefully behind on her mortgage payments. Conveniently sold her house to a staffer. Not paying her staff and so on.
That she spruced some of these things up at the 11th hour conveniently in time for an election does not take away from her repeatedly not paying in the first place.
No doubt. I wonder though how these conservative people would feel about having to pay for their daughter (or wife’s) pregnancy because she was raped. Or will the government foot the bill in that case? Oh wait! :rolleyes:
It is a horrendous prospect to foist on women and displays a lack of thought and compassion that is so shocking that by itself it should disqualify her.
Of course here she is woefully thin on details. Want a flat tax? Tell me how that will work (a flat tax would amount to a tax increase for all but the wealthy and a substantial one at that…if not how will she pay the bills the government has [as if she knows how to pay a debt]). America’s “official” language? What does that mean exactly beyond pablum for conservatives? Health care run by the free market? We’ve seen that, it’s been a disaster…does she mean to just let it continue as it was?
Those are important questions and all her positions are devoid of reason and just “feel good” to a segment of the population who can’t or won’t think about the implications.
I’ll leave you with a quote from Bill Clinton that I think neatly covers all this pretty well (he was talking about Michele Bachmann but works here too):
*“I respect people with a conservative philosophy,” he continued. "This country has been well-served by having two broad traditions within which people can operate. If you have a philosophy, it means you’re generally inclined one way or the other but you’re open to evidence. If you have an ideology, it means everything is determined by dogma and you’re impervious to evidence. Evidence is irrelevant.
“That’s how I see Rep. Bachmann. She’s very attractive in saying all these things she says, but it’s pretty stupid.”* (cite)
If everything was supposed to be wrapped up in March, why was there still a balance to be paid in May?
O’Donnell picked up a million dollars in campaign donations overnight. I wonder how much of it will be used on the actual campaign?
Proving she is not the only one to hold crazy views, not that the views aren’t nuts.
I saw her on the Today show (?) being shown an old clip of hers, and saying in response, “That was a long time ago, and many of my positions have matured since then, as well as how I communicate them.”
Maybe. I don’t see any specific disavowel of her position, but neither do I see her actively pushing it.
Sure. You framed the issue as a lie, so I responded to the accusation of a lie. Now you mention the non-payment, and I don’t know if it’s serious or not.
I didn’t get my own undergraduate degree for nearly a year following my “graduation.” The hold-up? A library book, with supposed replacement value of $30. Problem is, I had returned it. I refused to pay, they refused to issue the transcript. Eventually I have up, because I couldn’t get into law school otherwise.
Was her situation similar, or did she owe tens of thousands of dollars? My view of the seriousness of her non-payment rests on that answer.
Unfortunately, I can’t research this any further than your initial claim. The author does not identify the radio host, the exact time, or anything that would help me track it down.
True. But even you must admit that this was unusual to the other extreme.
Agreed. She seems to have a very shaky financial grasp.
Not everyone agrees with you.
See, this it what I find amazing. You can’t just say you disagree. No,no - it has to be that her position is so bad it disqualifies her.
I agree this needs to be answered in detail.
She is using campaign funds to pay for half her rent. Her claim is that she is also using it as a campaign office. If you have ever tried to claim a home office deduction on your taxes, you know what a difficult task it is. I wonder if that deduction has been audited by the IRS.
Here’s another good one:
Cite: Christine O'Donnell Endorses Romney for GOP Presidential Nomination | Fox News
No, that one is true.
Okay, I think this in the bag for the Democrats. It went full circle from wacky enough to be a beloved eightball into crazy in the coconut plumb loco. Sort of like certain movies go beyond “so bad it’s good” right back into being horrible again.
On The Economist’s website, one of the writers for their Democracy in America blog asks Why has Christine O’Donnell’s frank defence of Catholic doctrine made her the butt of jokes? I don’t have an answer for that myself, though personally I think the argument the writer makes is pretty weak.
Frankly, I hope she gets bands of people singing Every Sperm is Sacred at her campaign stops.
There, you have answered the question: Because the Catholic doctrine in question is laughable.
O’Donnell wrote checks for personal bills using her campaign money long after the campaign was over. That is illegal. She wrote checks for from rent to bowling allies.
Palin gave her advice today to only speak to Fox news. She said that is the way to get the truth out.
She got fired from a job and sued them for 6.9 million dollars for sexual discrimination.
She is a fine conservative tea bagger.
Preferably from the bushes.
Exactly. If she had grown up in a UFO cult and championed their beliefs nobody would write an article defending her save another member of the UFO cult.
Dodge.
It is not hard to be clear on this. She isn’t.
Actively pushing it today? No, of course not. It is a crazy position and not one that would endear her even to other Tea Baggers as I am willing to bet a lot of them jerk off (most adults masturbate).
If it was just this one thing I wouldn’t fuss too much if at all (although 17 years to repay the debt and then magically coming up with the money one week before a primary debate is suspicious).
I agree by itself as lies go it is not huge. However, as an attorney I bet you are happy to show a pattern of behavior and I think this plugs into that. Take this with all the rest and a picture starts to form and it is not a pleasant one.
Here ya go (well, the link in the article to the actual interview seems broken but the detail you want is here).
*"The Mike Castle Death Star – please hit me up if you have a better name – zooms on as everyone in Washington is mysteriously tipped off to a bristling interview between Delaware U.S. Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell and Newsradio WGMD host Dan Gaffney. O’Donnell, expecting softer treatment from a host who endorsed her long-shot 2006 bid for Senate (she lost in the GOP primary), is taken aback when Gaffney uses oppo against her.
First up – a tape of O’Donnell telling an audience that she “won two counties” in her 2008 sacrificial lamb bid against Joe Biden."* (cite)
Biden was unusual in taking the train home but IIRC he is the poorest or second poorest senator and has always been a “regular guy”…at least as far as that means anything among senators. Nevertheless I do not think he had his bushes checked in 30 years and it is relevant because he too is from Delaware so not like we are comparing Chicago cement shoe politics to someone else.
I know not everyone agrees with me.
I would like to see Tea Baggers actually defend the position though to show they thought it through.
Their wife/sister/daughter is violently raped and impregnated by her attacker. The government now tell her she MUST have the baby. How does the government enforce that? Tie her down? I thought the government is supposed to be out of people’s business? Who pays for her medical bills? The Tea Bagger husband/brother/father? Sure as shit in Tea Baggerville ain’t gonna be me…not my problem. Tell me how, in the free market health care they want, how happy they will be spending thousands of dollars of their own money to see a rapist’s baby born.
Get all those sign waving tea baggers to reconcile that for me then we can talk more.
Breaking news: just saw a clip of an event that happened yesterday, with O’Donnell at a Q&A. Question: “In the past, you have advocated a number of positions that impinge on people’s private lives. Where do you stand government interference in private matters now?”
Answer: “That’s personal. When I go to Washington, it won’t be personal things I’m concerned with. I will be guided by the Constitution only.”
Thanks for tracking that down. I didn’t mean to be the “Prove It,” guy, and I know (from personal experience!) that it takes three seconds to type “Cite?” and twenty minutes to hunt something down, so it can be a crappy debate technique if done in poor faith. Please trust me – it wasn’t. And I appreciate your taking the time to provide this detail.
True enough.
My own position is a practical one: the number of abortions due to rape or incest is vanishingly small. If we were able to stop all abortions except those due to rape or incest, I would happily accept it as a huge victory. But since the objection to abortion is that the unborn child is a human life, he becomes an innocent victim even if he was conceived by rape. So my approach would be a practical one, not an ideological one.
Some others can’t get rid of the ideology. But if you disagree, that makes it an issue of disagreement, not a disqualification. (I mean obviously they are disqualified to eanr YOUR vote, but they are not objectively disqualified.)
O’Donnell’s use of campaign funds ,long after the campaign was over keep surfacing. This million dollars overnight will put her on easy street.
So does that mean she will support abortion rights since that is constitutional?
I’m guessing no so you’ll have to forgive me if I do not find her statement compelling or persuasive on how she will comport herself. Her answer merely displays some media savvy…doubtless she is coached on this stuff (as are most if not all politicians).
Near as I can tell she is still listed as the head of SALT.
I think it objectively disqualifies her because she would push her ideological dogma on the country. Or FFs did not want to roll that way. If they did then where does ideology stop? Don’t like Muslims? Let’s get an amendment to ban that religion (you’d need an amendment currently to ban abortions so the comparison could be made).
Some may believe that life begins at conception but the science is far less clear on that. A stalk of celery has more “life” in it than a zygote does. Belief and ideology trump facts in your world? Your belief and ideology trump my beliefs? Seems to me the FFs setup a country specifically to be tolerant of differeing beliefs and not let one overwhelm the other.
Then add where do the rights of the woman figure in?
Checking around a commonly cited figure is 1% of all abortions are performed due to rape (I am not here to nitpick numbers, just get a ballpark feel for what we are talking about). There are roughly 1.2 million abortions performed annually in the US. So that would mean 12,000 abortions are performed because of rape. Is that a vanishingly small number to you? Remember this number is cumulative too. In ten years that would be 120,000 women with pregnancies due to being raped.
Now let’s take a stroll through O’Donnell-Land if she had her way.
Your 14 year old daughter is violently raped (pretend you have one if you don’t).
Let’s also pretend you are a janitor with no employer provided health care and you make $25,000 per year. Health care has been privatized and there is no state help…not even state hospitals. The average cost of a vaginal delivery with no complications is $7,700 and prices go north from there (that does not count prenatal care…just delivery so you are almost certainly on the hook for more money). At the least Dad is on the hook for near a third of his yearly gross (not net) pay to deliver the rapist’s baby.
Now, in O’Donnell-land abortion is illegal. Thus a woman who gets an abortion is a criminal…a murderer no less…premeditated murder at that. So, the police will be by every week to check that your distraught daughter is still pregnant. If she is beside herself with grief and shame and self-aborts in some fashion the police will prosecute your daughter for murder.
Note even if your wife gets pregnant and does so on purpose with you and wants the baby the state will still keep on eye on her. If she miscarries there will be an investigation (after all a human just died…the state looks into those things).
So yeah…I’d say O’Donnell’s vision is as anathema to US ideals and as Gestapo as can be thus objectively disqualifying her from office. Or it should anyway.
Contraception is of the Devil.
But the Constitution also provides a method to amend itself.
If she were contending for an executive office, your objection might have more weight. She would indeed be “following the Constitution,” if she sought an amendment to ban abortion. She would NOT be following the Constitution if she supported a law that flew in the face of current Supreme Court rulings regarding abortion.
So, in your view, abortion’s legality is simply a settled issue, and a politician that advocates for abortion to be made illegal is not just wrong, and someone who should be voted against, but OBJECTIVELY wrong, literally disqualified for office based on that position.
Wow.
Tell me: would you support an amendment to the Constitution that said, “Any person supporting the criminalization of abortion shall be disqualified for any office of the United States or any state?”