If you need an excuse to jump-start your weekend drinking, Dave Weigel at Slate is covering this year’s “Values Voter Summit“, the annual fanfest for dog-torturers, luggage-lifting-rentboy-buyers, and Talibangelical-ticklers. Here’s a taste of his coverage on St. Gidget of Narnia:
… One hundred hours ago, the Republican establishment and a large number of the conservative movement’s thinkers were in agreement. O’Donnell was an unacceptable candidate. She had falsely claimed to have a college degree in hand when she didn’t, falsely claimed to have won two counties against Joe Biden when she didn’t, sued one of the citadels of the movement — the Intercollegiate Studies Institute — and in that lawsuit, mentioned a Princeton program she was supposedly in that no one heard tell of ever again. She had paid her family and herself from campaign funds. Most unforgivably, she had converted the Delaware seat from a sure Republican gain to a sure Democratic hold.
__
The establishment pointed this out. The base decided to create a new reality. In this reality, O’Donnell was a maltreated, misunderstood Average American, a Christian attacked for her faith. Going after her was going after them. They responded to the negative coverage of her by crashing her website with more than $1 million of donations — this for a candidate, again, who has paid her mother from campaign funds, the kind of offense that lights up talk radio when it’s committed by Democrats.
__
The media covers the reality that the base creates, and so O’Donnell arrived at this conference as a superstar. Top talent from ABC News, Fox News, and NBC News waited outside to get a chance to talk to her. A capacity room waited for her to speak, and more than a dozen cameramen splayed onto the floor to capture the moment…
__
O’Donnell walked onstage and gripped the papers containing her speech. The gist: She was the embodiment of the Tea Party movement. She experienced “the despondency” that they felt when Barack Obama came to Washington, and was mocked like they were mocked.
__
“There’s something about our national DNA,” said O’Donnell, “that stands up and shouts at our would-be masters, you’re not the boss of me.” She compared the movement, and by extension herself, to Aslan from the Chronicles of Narnia: “Of course he isn’t safe, but he’s good.”
Fortunately for Tony Perkins, the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has no mandate to prevent the ‘values-based’ parting of fools from their money…
Jbird
My values?
1) People shouldn’t starve because they’re poor
2) People shouldn’t die from treatable illness because they’re poor
3) People shouldn’t be barred from education because they’re poor
ruemara
@Jbird:
You know who else was all about helping the poors?
Not Tax Cut Jesus. You hippie.
Omnes Omnibus
@Jbird: Communard!
Cris
What she means to say is “Know your place, boy.”
El Cid
You just can’t help but feel for the persecution these poor TeaTards have been put through. I mean, first there’s a black President. And then, he has policies. What’s more, it’s been like years and they haven’t yet made Mexicans and Muslims illegal.
General Stuck
The mouse brain that roared
quaint irene
Do we need any other phrase to illustrate that these teatard fools have the mentality of melodramatic, pouty thirteen year olds?
So, is Ms. O’Donnell planning to offer herself up to sacrifice on a stone table? Just asking
dmsilev
She compared herself to Jesus?
Good to know that modesty is one of her virtues.
dms
freelancer
…should be a lexicon entry. I’m having a hard time explaining the tears streaming down my face at work. So much win.
Cris
@quaint irene: Maybe she’s hoping Liam Neeson will do her voice in the cartoon adaptation of her campaign.
BGinCHI
“You’re not the boss of me?”
Narnia?
Seconds till she accuses Obama of having “pushed her down” on the playground.
cleek
all i’ve heard about for 5 fucking days is the motherfucking Tea Party.
maybe it’s time for a total media boycott.
'Niques
Really? Her “Christian” faith dictates that she should be a thief? And a liar? And that she shouldn’t be attacked for these qualities?
Something tells me Jesus wouldn’t agree.
New Yorker
Yeah, I find the term “values voters” deeply offensive.
Hey, I have fuckin’ values too. I value a strong separation of church and state. I value a generous welfare state. I value hard work and intelligence (as opposed to ignorance, fraud and sloth, the values of Sarah Palin). I value objective truth (sorry, Christine, but evolution is an objective truth). I value a more humble America on the international stage.
Jbird
Yeah, I’m stealing “St. Gidget of Narnia” and I’d suggest adopting it. Usually I am not a fan of name-calling, but O’Donnell isn’t so much the political opposition as she is the opposition to sanity.
I’m wondering if anyone knows a story that investigates in some detail all the bad stuff Delaware Republicans have said about her. I keep finding short quotes, and I’m really interested in the impression they got of O’Donnell.
Judging from her views, her lack of savvy, and her biography, my guess is that spending five minutes talking to her is really enough to convince even TP-hungry Republicans that she isn’t really cut out for tough roles like “responsibility” or “opening her mouth”.
She’s that creepy girl from the no-smoking, no-drinking dorm who has a bookshelf full of dog-eared Christianized ripoffs of Sweet Valley High and argues with the biology TA about whether mitochondria are real.
Linda Featheringill
For political animals like myself who get depressed about it all, a couple of links that show that the Democrats are throwing themselves into the contest:
Outreach to African-Americans:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/17/AR2010091704243.html?hpid=topnews
and
Outreach to Latinos:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/17/us/politics/17immig.html?ref=politics
It ain’t over til it’s over.
BGinCHI
She does seem smarter than McMegan though.
At least she read a book.
beltane
The high-point of today’s events was when Senate nominee Christine O’Donnell stood on the podium embraced by Santorum.
Loneoak
I’ve been sitting on this one all day, waiting for an open thread. Read it and then lift your collectivist jaw off of the floor.
slag
Wait a second! I saw this movie!
It was the one about the oldest white boy being deemed the leader by virtue of his being the oldest white boy while the younger sister kept getting yelled at for criticizing oldest white boy’s stupid ass decisions and thinking too much, and then the little dark boy got in trouble because…well…he just wasn’t like the others, was he? Plus, weapons from Santa! Can’t beat that.
I should totally be a movie reviewer.
BGinCHI
@Loneoak:
Wow. Just wow.
I hope Dave Eggers saw that.
Though I am dying to see one little kid yell “looter!” at another one.
A Conservative Teacher
@Loneoak: Here’s what Loneoak is talking about… Under liberal policies, pushed by Democrats in state and nation government, the poverty rate in America has increased from around 12% in 2006 to 13% in 2008 to 15% in 2010… Democrats=poverty. Wrap your little minds around that.
Cacti
Don’t have the link handy, but I read earlier today that since O’Donnell’s win over Castle, Nate Silver downgraded the Repubs chance of a Senate takeover from 26% to 15%, and Coons went from 95% chance of losing to Castle to 94% chance of beating O’Donnell.
This woman is a gift.
slag
@Loneoak: Wait a second. Is that blog a spoof? Please tell me that blog is a spoof. It’s really hard to tell, but I can’t, for the life of me, figure out how an actual conservative would come across a McSweeney’s story. Although I can understand how a conservative would totally miss the irony of a McSweeney’s story should he accidentally come across one.
New Yorker
@Loneoak:
That’s gotta be a clever satire, right? Nobody is that insane, right?
Right?
Anywho, I noted this part:
Can someone please explain to me how we can have a right wing in this country that is both devoted to Ayn Rand and Jesus at the same time? Isn’t the New Testament full of Jesus admonishing people to give their worldy possessions away? The story of the widow’s mite? Hello?
And what about “render unto Caesar”? I think Jesus wants you to pay your taxes.
wasabi gasp
@A Conservative Teacher: Nothing a little compassionate conservatism can’t fix, if ever given the chance.
mcd410x
@Loneoak: That is fucking awesome. Gotta hate it when the snark filter fails. Completely.
BGinCHI
@A Conservative Teacher: OMG. It’s alive!
You do realize that you don’t even understand the culture you live in? You don’t have any idea what’s going on, do you? So you stick with ordering little kids around, keep them compliant, instill some “values” in them.
And then blame everyone else for a problem that you are personally making a lot worse just by the sheer force of your ideological stupidity.
Wait till Jesus gets his hands on you, buster.
slag
@A Conservative Teacher: Oh god. Please tell me you’re not real. Or at least not a real teacher. Seriously, you’re freakin me out.
Loneoak
That is some hyperspeed trolling, I tell ya what.
Sasha
OK, desecrating deeply held American principles is one thing, but desecrating a deeply loved book series? This means war.
O’Donnell is going down like Jadis at the First Battle of Beruna.
RedKitten
@Loneoak: I
Please tell me that’s satire. Please. I’m begging you.
Steve
We have a woman who has never held down a real job, who survives as a perennial candidate for office, living illegally off her campaign donations and stiffing her staff.
And now she has just raised a million dollars in campaign donations.
I think what she meant to say is: “In no other country on earth, is my story even possible.”
Cacti
@slag:
S/he is probably a future member of the Kansas Board of Education.
slag
@Loneoak: Aha! It’s you, isn’t it? Seriously, you’re going to have to go way further out for that blog to be outlandish enough to be funny. As it is, I’m not sure it’s helping.
Cain
@quaint irene:
Hopefully wearing something appropriate. :D
cain
RalfW
“stands up and shouts at our would-be masters, you’re not the boss of me.”
Except if you are my boss at WalMart. Or whatever corporate oligarchy these TeaBaggers subsume themselves to.
I just don’t get how they can be so suspicious of government, and so totally, slavishly accepting of corporate power.
Loneoak
@slag:
I wish I was that clever. I’ve tried my hand at satire and I can’t pull it off. Not that I’m vouching for the site, or the commenter, as being satire-free, but it ain’t me.
My money is on Conservative Teacher being the real thing. It’s the right mix of ideological blinders and Midwestern sincerity to remind me of people I grew up with. Regardless, they are their own satire at this point.
Martin
@‘Niques: Yeah, well, Jesus isn’t in the fucking room to complain now, is he?
Linda Featheringill
@Loneoak:
The Conservative Teacher:
Sigh.
Of course, he might not be as influential as he would like. Children at the age of potty training are not very good at sharing, anyway. And a number of them grow up to be quite nice human beings. These children might also do that.
The Teacher may be like the rooster who thinks that the sun rose because he crowed.
TooManyJens
ACT needs to team up with Andrew Schlafly and get his students writing Conservapedia articles.
freelancer
@RedKitten:
At least SamK will have people his own age to pity, when he grows up.
slag
@Loneoak: Nooooooooooooooo! How friggin depressing that would be. I know our educational system has problems (after all, I am a product of it). But I just can’t believe anyone that supremely ignorant can be a teacher. Of anything. Even of Megan McArdle’s business classes!
The brain. It hurts.
El Cid
More persecution of Real American Woman Revolutionary Last Line Defenders by snotty big-head elitists.
HA! Take that all you pointy heads! How you gon’ explain that?
Huh? All your ‘evolution’ don’t work ’cause Mt Saint Helens erupted!
sukabi
@Loneoak: this is just proof that some people shouldn’t be allowed to breed… forget the potty training, they’re training little sociopaths.
'Niques
@New Yorker: Also, wasn’t Ayn Rand an atheist? How can these “christians” justify treating her writings as Gospels?
freelancer
@New Yorker:
Not to mention what Rand has to say about God.
Forgive the Godwin here, but raising your kids on the Bible AND Objectivism is like teaching kids Mein Kampf and Elie Wiesel’s “Night” with the same amount of fervor. It bespeaks a cognative dissonance that is galactic in scale.
Bob L
Amazing, you really can’t parody O’Donnell. The woman hasn’t successfully done anything in her life and now they want her in the senate. It isn’t so much her ideology so much as she is so clearly utterly incapable of carrying it out. Like the whole degree thing, sure she may have earned it but she didn’t get the piece of paper. The forum as well as the function is part of politics.
I am predicting a lot of these Grizzlies this year will follow Palin’s example and only go 1/2 term. It just won’t be fun for them once the election is over and then have to sit around the Senate and politely listing to boring speeches.
Jbird
@Loneoak:
Holy shit, amazing find. The libertarian equivalent to getting misty-eyed when your kid starts walking? When your kid calls her brother a “looter” and shoves him away after he politely asks if he can play with a toy you gave her for doing something you wanted.
JAHILL10
@freelancer: They are cafeteria fundamentalists. Ignore Jesus when he tells you that a camel has a better chance of walking through the eye of a needle than a rich man has of getting into heaven. And ignore Rand when she says religion is a form of mental illness.
Cris
They like a religion that tells them they don’t have to share heaven, and a social philosophy that tells them they don’t have to share anything else.
Bob L
@New Yorker:
I work for Defense sub-contractor, government job in other words. One of the managers came directly from the military to us, never worked a day in truly private industry. His job is just to generate reports, in other words red tape. He is a Libertarian and has both The Bible and Atlas Shrugs on his desk.
Go google Prosperity Christianity.
Roger Moore
@New Yorker:
Cognitive dissonance is a way of life for these people.
gbear
Look at the bright side – That’s a million t-bag bucks that won’t be doing anything productive. I’d rather they gave it to St. Gidget than to Beck. She’ll squander it stupidly.
freelancer
@JAHILL10:
So they ignore what I consider to be the only sane conclusions reached in either philosophy? Makes total sense to me.
gbear
@Bob L:
One of the prosperity churches in the Twin Cities area hasn’t been very prosperous
It couldn’t happen to a more deserving couple.
Cris
Well said. Once again, many people seem to think 1984 was an instruction manual.
Zuzu's Petals
@A Conservative Teacher:
If your past record of hit-and-run trolling is any indication, I don’t expect you to stick around to read this, much less respond. Nevertheless, let me repeat my prior reaction to your writing: I hope to God you don’t teach English. (“State and nation government”?)
Second, I’m interested to know where you got those figures, because as far as I know, 2010 is not yet over. The most recent US Census figures show a poverty rate of 14.3% for 2009. Perhaps you can tell us exactly which “liberal policies” were implemented in 2008 and early 2009 that would result in such figures? Be specific.
On the other hand, experts have credited Democrat-enacted programs with keeping the poverty rate from being higher:
Zuzu's Petals
I think we can look forward to a Palinesque campaign.
That is, maximum rally time with bussed-in teabaggers and fundies. Minimum interview time all with friendly media, zero press conference time, and multiple ghostwritten op-eds on grown-up topics.
If she agrees to a debate, look for lots of smiley-winky-I’ll answer the question my way nonsense.
A not-dissimilar type of campaign got Ahnold elected here in California, so I wouldn’t take anything for granted. (Yes, he was popular to begin with, but still substance-free.)
Elie
An excellent quote from the ancient Greek philosopher Isocrates from a very interesting and thought provoking article in the October Vanity Fair on the Greek economic (and moral) crisis…
“Democracy destroys itself because it abuses its right to freedom and equality. Because it teaches its citizens to consider audacity as a right, lawlessness as a freedom, abrasive speech as equality and anarchy as progress”.
I am not sure that I agree with every word, but I believe that the quote is worth thinking about in the context of the extremes we see in our society in the name of freedom of expression and moral “rightness”.
I highly recommend the article by Michael Lewis on savvy Greek monks who became billionaires and brought down a government. It is an examination of deep moral breakdown and the failure of civic committment to true values and morality.. its a cautionary tale of what happens when individualism/greed breaks down the civic and moral fabric in a society.
El Cid
@Bob L: Regulations by governments are attempts to impose man’s law where God’s rule should be followed, and this is attempted usurping of God’s rule. Executing people for murder, though, is simply following God’s law.
KJ
While I love making fun of crazy as much as the next person, I don’t think all of this attention bodes well for Coons. He’s like the forgotten person in this sideshow. Republicans are boosting her and Dems are tearing her down, but they are all talking solely about her.
New Yorker
@KJ:
The same thing kind of happened after McCain picked Palin. People completely forgot Joe Biden existed and just kept talking about Lady Starbursts.
The problem is, the more coverage Palin and O’Donnell get, the more people dislike them. If anything, O’Donnell should want less media coverage, not more, so people have less of an opportunity to find out what a train wreck she is.
Steve
@KJ: Coons is the county executive of the county where two-thirds of Delaware residents live. He doesn’t have Mike Castle’s wattage, but he’s a known quantity to voters – a sober, prudent administrator. The national dialogue isn’t really relevant and he’s not in a position where he has to introduce himself to voters.
'Niques
@Steve:
Even if he was an unknown, all he’d really have to be is “not her”!
gnomedad
@Loneoak:
Maybe Conservapedia can rewrite the Raffi song:
It’s mine and you can’t have it
From you I’m gonna keep it
‘Cause if I give some to you
Then I’ll have less
Svensker
@‘Niques:
Rabid atheist. She hated religion.
jhlipton
@cleek @ 12:
I think it’s time for the quislings of the media to lined up against the wall and taught what happens to quislings.
grumpy realist
Yah. The media goldfish are having their fun chasing the shiny toy called O’Donnell at present, but let’s see what happens closer to the election. At some point, I suspect the more business-oriented republicans are going to say: “ok, we’ve had our fun cocking a snook at those honchos telling us we had to vote for Castle, but we’re not going to vote for wacko crazy.”
My feeling is that with the downturn in the economy, everyone with any sense or brains is having to madly work just to keep on top of things. Either we’re putting in loads of overtime and trying to pay down debt while worrying about what other possible disasters are out there, or we’re unfortunately unemployed and out busting our asses looking for jobs. Which means that the only people with the leisure to run for political office are the deranged…..
Chris G.
@Cacti: I’m very grateful the Dems got Chris Coons to make what probably looked at the time like an impossibly uphill run for the seat. And he’s been running hard despite that. It’s almost like the Democrats should always try to recruit decent candidates, even when it looks impossible to win, or something.
A Conservative Teacher
@Zuzu’s Petals: Got the numbers from the census bureau. It’s legit. Sorry it doesn’t jive with your view of the world- perhaps you’d be more comfortable pretending they are phony or not real or something? Obama’s election did lead to rainbows and sunshine, or something like that.
slightly_peeved
@El Cid:
If only someone had had the foresight to ask Jesus about this issue directly. Then we’d have an answer these people would have to be complete idiots to ignore.
psycholinguist
Yeah, I think Teacher is real and McSweeney is a pretty brilliant parody, that teacher has somehow mistaken as real.
What bugged me about teacher’s post, other than he’s batshit insane, is that he characterized his gummy bear strategy as Pavlovian conditioning. While his strategy could result in Pavlovian conditioning, the conditioned response would be that his daughter would (and maybe she does by now) crave a sweet every time she goes potty (or she might need to pee whenever she eats a gummy bear, depending on when she gets the candy). Teach, you’re describing OPERANT conditioning you nitwit.
piratedan
@ACT
no linky, no believie
Been surfing through the US Census stuff myself and
based on the fact finder page, the latest numbers they
post are 2006-2008 with a 13.2% of folks below the
poverty line based on this:
http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/STTable?_bm=y&-geo_id=01000US&-qr_name=ACS_2008_3YR_G00_S1701&-ds_name=ACS_2008_3YR_G00_
doesn’t mean that you aren’t right, just prefer a
source if you’re gonna quote.
and posted per above, which newly implemented
government policy(ies) would have been responsible
for more folks being below the line (as if we don’t
REALLY know the cause, right?) because there’s no
way that it couldn’t just be big companies sitting
on cash and reporting dividends because of all of
the savings from having just laid off those workers…..
could it?
Zuzu's Petals
@A Conservative Teacher:
Gee, after having your terrible writing skills criticized, you’d think you’d try a little harder this time – “jive” with my view of the world? What incompetent agency allows you to stand in front of a classroom?
And you still fail to support your claim of a 15% poverty rate in 2010. I’ve even run your Google search for you…so how about you tell us exactly where the Census Bureau has published such a figure?
Obviously you’re never going to tell us exactly which “liberal policies” led to these supposedly disastrous results. That would be too much like being, you know, honest.
eladale
Tea Party members or not, these Vicious Voter Summits always produce the same hateful rhetoric year after year. Though with an intelligent Democrat as president they now have a delicious new target to attack. Small minds evolve slowly–if at all.