CHRISTINE O'DONNELL

Christine O’Donnell wants to be Sarah Palin when she grows up.

But before we get to that, I must discuss the caste system currently prevalent in the United States of America today.

In an interview today with "Fox News Sunday," Alaska GOP Senate nominee Joe Miller had trouble explaining how he would help the 43.6 million Americans in poverty, even as host Chris Wallace repeatedly pressed him for more than conservative talking points.

Wallace asked Miller about his assertion in August on CBS's "Face the Nation" that unemployment benefits are unconstitutional, noting that without them, many more Americans would be in poverty. "What would you do for them?" asked Wallace. …

Miller, however, struggled to come up with an answer, and instead shifted to talking points about reducing the size of the federal government. Wallace repeatedly pressed him on the issue, without ever receiving an actual response

ILLER: I think the question is what is the role of the federal government? Right now we've grown the federal government into such a size we have, I think we have, what -- in absolute terms now, $13.4 trillion in debt. If you look at the future unfunded obligation, a lot of those are the entitlement programs, by some estimates $130 trillion. That is unsustainable. That's just the facts. And I think Americans recognize that those are the facts. The exciting thing is Americans are looking for answers. Alaskans are looking for answers. Here in Alaska, 40 percent of our economy in Alaska is somewhat derived from the federal government. If we continue say things have to continue the way they are, the expansion from the government which is unconstitutional in many ways is the future, it's a dead-end road. Particularly for this state, because of the impending bankruptcy --

WALLACE: Mr. Miller, if I may, I'm not sure you answered my question. Why are unemployment benefits unconstitutional? In the time of a tough economy, recession, and now kind of a jobless recovery, what are you going to do for the 44 million people who are living in poverty?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/09/19/joe-miller-alaska-poverty-unemployment-unconstitutional_n_730710.html

Well I’m not sure Mr. Miller or Senator Inhofe or Senator McConnell or Senator McCain or any repub member of Congress will ever be able to answer Mr. Shaefer’s question.

You see, as I have written on many previous occasions, if there were people dying of hunger right outside George Will’s office at the Times; if there were riots in the streets; if there was 40% unemployment; old George would just be citing something from the Federalist Papers; just as Mr. Miller would like to continue to recite the Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

It does appear, however, that if you are out of work you can always run for Congress or at the least help someone else run for Congress.

Political action committees must spend money to make money, typically hiring staff members from the organizers who created the group. But it is less common for them to funnel most of their outside spending through a vendor controlled by a committee executive, as Mr. Russo has done.

Such a practice, while legal, can create a question about whether the committee — and its donors — are getting a fair price for goods and services, said Brad Smith, a former Republican appointee to the Federal Election Commission and now a professor at the Capital University Law School in Columbus, Ohio.

Mr. Russo estimated that Russo & Marsh, and his wife’s company, King Media Group, had been paid about $250,000 a year for their work with the Tea Party cause.

An analysis of Federal Election Commission records by The Times puts the total amount paid — for commissions, services and wages to executives and staff members — at nearly $700,000 in the last 20 months, or about 13 percent of the $5.2 million the committee has spent. (By comparison, media buyers for candidates’ campaigns typically take a 6 percent to 15 percent commission, according to one consultant.)

But the campaign finance records for the Tea Party Express also showed payments totaling more than $10,000 for stays at casino hotels, as well as bills for meals at expensive restaurants near Mr. Russo’s offices, including nearly $5,000 at Chops Steak House, which former staff members said the Tea Party Express frequented after work.

“I was kind of shocked,” said Kelly Eustis, who served as political director at the Tea Party Express until leaving last fall. “It kind of turned me off.”

Mr. Russo disputes that there was any lavish spending. “There have been a lot of cheap shots taken,” he said. “This has not been a profitable activity for us. We have plowed every penny back into this thing.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/19/us/politics/19russo.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&hp

And of course we have the example of Ensign using campaign funds to pay off extortion demands. http://www.citizensforethics.org/crew-calls-on-ethics-committee-to-act-on-ensign

Palin has had a wonderful time spinning political hatred into tens of millions of dollars. I mean her children are fed and housed for free; she gets all the ‘bendy straws’ she desires; her husband receives his cut as salary (I mean just the strain of having to listen to her demands that he be reimbursed somehow); and they all travel for free.

And this was all going on while she campaigned for governor, while she was governor; while she ran on McCain’s ticket and while she does whateverthehell she does right now.

http://www.swamppolitics.com/news/politics/blog/2008/09/sarah_palins_expense_account2.html

All these people either ride on the taxpayer dime or the public campaign dime one way or the other. They hire family members, friends, in-laws and business associates. They put their own people on their staff, at their campaign headquarters and at fronts posing as think tanks.

All the money is public money in one sense or another. And middle class people who have been screwed for about three decades now foot a lot of these bills out of sheer ignorance.

But sometimes people over-react to this kind of chicanery.

The spotlight is now on Christine O’Donnell, the 41-year-old Sarah Palin-endorsed upset winner of Delaware's GOP Senate primary, and from the looks of it, it ain’t pretty. O’Donnell is currently being targeted by a watchdog group claiming the Tea Partier abused campaign funds for personal use and made false statements on forms she filed with the Federal Elections Commission. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, which earlier in the year scrutinized Charlie Rangel, filed a complaint to the U.S. Attorney’s office in Delaware and the Federal Elections Commission alleging that O’Donnell illegally spent more than $20,000 in 2009 and 2010. “It turns out Miss O'Donnell has treated her campaign funds like they are her very own personal piggy bank,” said Melanie Sloan, the group’s executive director. “She's used that money to pay for things like her rent, for gas, meals, and even a bowling outing. And that's just flat-out illegal.” Much of these campaign expenses were made in 2009, when O’Donnell was not a candidate for anything. Representatives for O’Donnell could not be reached for comment. The Daily Beast’s Benjy Sarlin reported earlier this week that O’Donnell paid her mother $3,500 for consulting on her last campaign.

Read it at CNN

http://www.thedailybeast.com/cheat-sheet/newsmaker/politics/

What has happened down here is the winds have changed. And Christine O’Donnell is attempting to be the MINI ME of Sarah Palin (I stole this line from LisB by the by. Ha)

She wears glasses from time to time now with the wide rectangular lenses and a red dress. Her hair style is even beginning to resemble the great Grizzly she-bear.

We already surmise that the red dress was probably picked up at Target for 30 bucks, but Christine is still fairly young, slim and good looking and it works.

This campaign crime spree of O’Donnells is probably less than 1% of what Sarah was allowed to steal from her campaign chests.

The entire kerfluffle is bullshit; chickenshit really.

I mean as ThePeopleChoose points out in my previous version of this post,  Christine O’Donnell can barely account for about a mile of income last year ($5,280.00)

Christine O’Donnell has no visible means of support.

Christine O’Donnell is a fraud like Joe the Plumber or half of the teabaggers you see at the rallies.

One hundred years ago, Christine O’Donnell would be arrested, tried and imprisoned for impersonating a lady, for chrissakes.

I think it best if the left stays the hell away from this silly expose of O’Donnell. It could back fire.

I mean so what if Christine’s mom brought sandwiches to her campaign headquarters on a regular basis? Jesus H. Christ!!! Are we supposed to be that concerned that mommy was cut a break here in the grand total of 3500 bucks? Who gives a damn really?

And $20,000 was taken by O’Donnell?

One day on the golf course with Abrams costs more than she was paid over a two year period.

Hundreds of thousands of dollars went from McCain’s campaign towards supplying Palin with today’s equivalent of leopard skin pill box hats. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/23/us/politics/23palin.html

We got to get our act together here. Hundreds of thousands of dollars, millions of dollars, tens of millions of dollars in payoffs FROM PUBLIC COFFERS are being made inside and outside of Capitol Hill every goddamnable day.

CREW, GET A LIFE!

But I did find this other gem since I first started this essay:

In fact, the O’Donnell case is more revealing for what hasn’t been disclosed on YouTube but for what has been blithely tolerated without seeming to threaten her political fortunes in the slightest. Her former campaign manager, Kristin Murray, resigned from this Tea Party-concocted protest candidacy because, “I found out [O’Donnell] was living on campaign donations - using them for rent and personal expenses, while leaving her workers unpaid and piling up thousands in debt. She wasn't concerned about conservative causes. O'Donnell just wanted to make a buck." Four years ago, in a previous senate run, O’Donnell also invented a diploma for herself from Fairleigh Dickinson University, a document that even her campaign now admits she was only just awarded in late August 2010 under cryptic circumstances.

A woman who uses the company card to buy her clothes and pay her rent, stiffs the help and invents academic credentials is thus to be welcomed as a vibrant young upstart wishing to return the country to the principles of the Founding Fathers. I see. This doesn’t so much beg the original question of how the gluttony of information and the famine of knowledge has vitiated our culture as answer it with a resounding, “Whatevs

http://www.newcriterion.com/posts.cfm/The-loon--the-witch-and-her-wardrobe-6368

This is just another example of a poverty-stricken con artist who must learn her trade by first learning to steal from the members of her own caste.

Hats off to LisB for the idea and previous version of this post is at: http://onceuponatpm.wordpress.com/2010/09/22/dummies/#comments