Please just go away

Via Shakesville:

“Today marks a lot of tragedy. … Tragedy comes in threes... Pearl Harbor, Elizabeth Edwards’s passing and Barack Obama’s announcement of extending the tax cuts, which is good, but also extending the unemployment benefits.”- Christine O'Donnell, speaking at the launching for her new political action committee, "ChristinePAC."

Fitting

I suppose that it's fitting that both Tom Corbett and Jane Orie won as Corbett refused to investigate fellow Republican Orie (now under indictment in a different venue).

I also suppose we have a good vs. evil thing going on with Christine O'Donnell (I'm not a witch but I did make out on a sacrificial alter) losing and Jane Orie (I speak to the angel lady) winning.

Or something...

More Evidence Of Conservative Anti-Intellectualism

Glenn Beck on Evolution:


To be in denial about a central pillar of modern science is simply astonishing to me. And to use, as Christine O'Donnell did, an "I don't see it happening so it can't be true" argument (Beck said, "I haven't seen a half-monkey, half-person yet.") is simply astonishing on top of astonishing.

But this, my friends, is a great example of the know-nothing right's know-nothingness. It celebrates its own ignorance while deploring as "elitism" anyone in the classroom with the right answer.

Next they'll be saying that the theory of relativity is a liberal plot because it disagrees with the Bible.

No wait, they already have.

Teh Crazie - Darwinian Style.

Scenes From Teh Crazie Tea Party

First, from Delaware:

Republican Senate nominee Christine O'Donnell of Delaware on Tuesday questioned whether the U.S. Constitution calls for a separation of church and state, appearing to disagree or not know that the First Amendment bars the government from establishing religion.

The exchange came in a debate before an audience of legal scholars and law students at Widener University Law School, as O'Donnell criticized Democratic nominee Chris Coons' position that teaching creationism in public school would violate the First Amendment by promoting religious doctrine.

Coons said private and parochial schools are free to teach creationism but that "religious doctrine doesn't belong in our public schools."

"Where in the Constitution is the separation of church and state?" O'Donnell asked him.

When Coons responded that the First Amendment bars Congress from making laws respecting the establishment of religion, O'Donnell asked: "You're telling me that's in the First Amendment?" [emphasis added.]

Take a look:


The fun stuff is way at the end - O'Donnell doesn't seem to understand what's in the First Amendment - it's found at about 7:10. She sounds like rather incredulous.

Oh, and at about 1:40 she lectures Coons about how much he doesn't know about the Constitution and about evolution - which she says is not a fact but "a theory."

Her campaign's trying to minimize how Constitutionally ignorant she sounded:

“In this morning’s WDEL debate, Christine O’Donnell was not questioning the concept of separation of church and state as subsequently established by the courts,” said campaign manager Matt Moran. “She simply made the point that the phrase appears nowhere in the Constitution.”

Sure she was. It's obvious that if you listen to what she said and the way she said it, she was obviously making the silly point that the phrase "separation of church and state" does not occur in the First Amendment.

Of course she was.

If you believe that, you'll believe that Evolution has been disproved because monkeys aren't changing before our eyes into hu-mans.

Dick Armey Credits Toomey With Sparking 'Conception' Of Tea Party

Via The Philadelphia Inquirer's Commonwealth Confidential:

Former Rep. Dick Armey (R.,Tex.), whose Freedom Works organization has helped the Tea Party grow, said Tuesday in Philadelphia that the movement was conceived the moment President George W. Bush endorsed Sen. Arlen Specter (then-R, now D) over Pat Toomey in the 2004 Republican primary.

[snip]

Naturally, Democrats would like to hang responsibility for some the more - er, unusual - Tea Party candidates around Toomey's neck. After all, he was head of the Club for Growth, a powerful advocacy group that has spent a decade pushing from the GOP candidates and officeholders deemed insufficiently pure in their conservatism.

Sestak's campaign said in a statement that Toomey and O'Donnell would be a "perfect match" in the Senate...

[snip]

"Congressman Toomey may not be a witch, but his policies are just as scary," said Sestak spokeswoman April Mellody. "Eliminating all corporate taxes, privatizing Social Security and shipping jobs to China are so out of touch with Pennsylvanians that if you didn't have a private plane, you'd need a broomstick to reach them."

An Interesting Twist

By the pricking of my thumbs
Something tea part this way comes. [not-MacBeth]

That darling of the tea-party, Sarah Palin endorsed Christine O'Donnell, anti-gay, anti-science, anti-masturbation GOP candidate for the United States Senate from the Great State of Delaware has been lying about her education. More than twice.

Talking Points Memo has the story (both of them).

First it was Oxford University:

Senate nominee Christine O'Donnell (R-DE) proclaimed on her LinkedIn the University of Oxford under "education," but it turns out that's another exaggeration on her resume. The claim is that O'Donnell earned a certificate from an Oxford course which her campaign said is "overseen" by a summer seminar program called the Phoenix Institute.

The TPM story leads back to this at the Washington Post:

O'Donnell's LinkedIn bio page lists "University of Oxford" as one of the schools she attended, claiming she studied "Post Modernism in the New Millennium." But it turns out that was just a course conducted by an institution known as the Phoenix Institute, which merely rented space at Oxford.

What's more, the woman who oversaw Phoenix Institute's summer program at Oxford tells me O'Donnell's claim about studying at Oxford is "misleading."

By itself, O'Donnell's Oxford claim might not matter too much. But the larger context is that O'Donnell has already been nabbed fudging her education record not once, but twice. She claimed for several years to have graduated from Fairleigh Dickinson Unversity, but she actually obtained her bachelor's degree last summer. And in a lawsuit she suggested she was trying for a Master's degree courses at Princeton -- but subsequently acknowledged she hadn't taken a single Princeton graduate course.

Princeton, too?

Then there's this:

Claremont Graduate University tells TPM that Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell did not attend the Southern California school despite listing it under education on her LinkedIn profile.

But here's the twist:

Turns out O'Donnell (R-DE) did receive a fellowship from a conservative think tank named the Claremont Institute, also in Claremont, Ca. but not affiliated with Claremont Graduate University.

While feeding the ear worm "It's a small world, after all" guess who sends gobs of money to the Claremont Institute?

My best friend 4-evah Richard Mellon Scaife.

According to mediamatters, the foundations he controls (Carthage, Sarah Scaife) have given $4.8 million dollars to the Institute over the last two decades. That's more than any other foundation, by the way.

In yet another ear worm moment, O'Donnell was a 2002 Lincoln Fellow. Did you know that another paragon of honesty is among the 2009 Lincoln Fellows?

Andrew Breitbart.

In 2009, the Scaife sent $375,000 to the Claremont Institute.

y god, his crap is everywhere!

More On Christine O'Donnell's Intellect

Christine O'Donnell, the Sarah Palin-endorsed darling of the Tea Party and GOP nominee for the United States Senate for the great state of Delaware, thinks evolution is a myth.


Her skepticism is based on this ultra-scientific question:

Then why aren’t monkeys still evolving into humans?

Maher points out:

This is somebody who could be in the Senate, who thinks that mice have human brains and doesn't understand that, oh my god, monkeys don't evolve in the time it would take to watch them.

Darling of the Tea Party, Sarah Palin-endorsed, GOP Candidate for the United States Senate. Shouldn't scientific ignorance of this magnitude disqualify someone from being taken seriously as a candidate for public office?

That's right, this is the GOP we're talking about here.

More On Christine O'Donnell, Witchcraft Dabbler.

The latest fresh face of the Tea Party.

From Talkingpointsmemo:

Eleven years ago a boisterous Christine O'Donnell confessed to Bill Maher and his ABC audience that she'd dated a witch, "dabbled into witchcraft" and even went on a midnight date involving blood on an altar.

And now a thought experiment: Imagine the uproar if there was a video clip of, say, Michelle Obama declaring that she'd "dabbled in witchcraft" and had gone on a date where there was a satanic altar with some blood on it.

Fox "News" would never ever stop talking it. The Southern Baptist Convention and the American Family Association would never ever stop talking about it. Ever.

What if there were a video tape of Nancy Pelosi declaring the same? Or of Hilary Clinton?

We won't hold our breath waiting on the silence from the right-wing/corporate media to mention O'Donnell's witchy-past.

More On Christine O'Donnell

A clearer picture of Christine O'Donnell, that darling of the Tea Party, has been emerging since she defeated Mike Castle for the GOP nomination for Senate from the great state of Delaware.

She's a creationist.

New York Magazine had a piece out yesterday on her enlightened cosmological views. Have a taste:

This was during one of our country's periodic debates over teaching creationism in schools. In a discussion moderated by anchor Miles O'Brien, O'Donnell squared off against Michael McKinney, a University of Tennessee professor of evolutionary biology. Not only was O'Donnell in favor of teaching creationism alongside evolution, but she wasn't even sure evolution was real.

First there's this:

Well, as the senator from Tennessee mentioned, evolution is a theory and it's exactly that. There is not enough evidence, consistent evidence to make it as fact, and I say that because for theory to become a fact, it needs to consistently have the same results after it goes through a series of tests. The tests that they put — that they use to support evolution do not have consistent results. Now too many people are blindly accepting evolution as fact. But when you get down to the hard evidence, it's merely a theory.

Then there's this:

Well, creationism, in essence, is believing that the world began as the Bible in Genesis says, that God created the Earth in six days, six 24-hour periods. And there is just as much, if not more, evidence supporting that.

She's against masturbation.

From Talkingpointsmemo:

O'Donnell, it seems, is opposed to masturbation, and considers looking at pornography akin to adultery. And back in the 90s, though [on the video] the hair was different and Joan Osborne's 90's mainstay "One Of Us" played in the background, O'Donnell maintained a similar stance: "The Bible says that lust in your heart is committing adultery. You can't masturbate without lust!"

She's got a problem with homosexuality.

From the dailybeast:

Toward the end of the Clinton administration, she protested the appointment of James Hormel to be ambassador to Luxembourg, a posting the religious right opposed because Hormel was gay. “The SALT was concerned about Hormel’s ties to the pedophile-rights movement,” her website said, though there was not a shred of evidence behind the slur. In 1997, in a clip recently unearthed by Talking Points Memo, she appeared on C-SPAN, where, looking fresh, lovely, and innocent, she objected to AIDS sufferers being called “victims” because the disease is the product of their own actions. In an appearance on Fox in 2000, she exclaimed over the horrors of New York’s gay pride parade: “They’re getting away with nudity! They’re getting away with lasciviousness! They’re getting away with perversion!”

On 'tother hand, one ex-aide of hers calls her a "complete fraud" and Bush's brain is on record saying she's said some "nutty things" and that she's unelectable.

Teh crazie. Tea-Party Palin style.