Christine O'Donnell is clearly in over her head

Watching Christine O'Donnell fumble her way through the Delaware senatorial debate has been, to say the least, very amusing. Watch excerpts from the debate via CNN here.

Never mind the fact she can't, off the top of her head, name a single supreme court ruling, or the fact that she suggested the IRS will somehow control our health care. What really bugged me was how she swore to end partisan bickering while at the same time deriding her opponent, Chris Coons, for having attended an ivy league school and a 'privileged' background.

When did having an ivy league degree become bad for politicians? When did a persons childhood background even begin to matter?

Having embellished her record, and with news of that coming out these past few weeks, it seems she felt the needed to make some kind of point about her education and her background, so she did.

She continued to prove just how unprofessional she can be, when later in the debate as Chris Coons criticized the national media for focusing on things that don't matter about O'Donnell, she could be heard in the background snorting with laughter and blurting out:

You're just jealous you were not Saturday Night Live

Interrupting your opponent to make a point clear during a debate is one thing, but interrupting him to make a childish comment while he is defending you is whole other issue.

From what I can gather, this woman has no real insight on the issues she potentially faces. The vagaries of abortion and an unbalanced budget seem to be the extent of the depth she goes into addressing them, alongside, of course, the usual vague conservative diatribes of keeping energy costs competitive, strong support of the second amendment, and keeping the UN out of our foreign policy. (http://www.christine2010.com/issues)

Polls are showing Chris Coons still has the favor of voters, with 49% of likely voters, with O'Donnell showing 40%.


I'd be willing to bet most voters in Delaware don't hold ivy league degrees either, but apparently that doesn't mean they're willing to vote for an anti-intellectual such as O'Donnell.

Conservatives go hog wild over Chris Christie

Lately amongst Republican operatives, the trend seems to be every few months, pick a 'party savior'. And then, after the normal, often moderate, level headed portion of the population quickly realizes that the 'party savior' is really a complete whack job, demote them to a lower level of visibility.

This past month, that party savior seemed to be Chris Christie. He made headlines across the nation last month when plans to cancel the much needed ARC tunnel that would run underneath the Hudson for New Jersey to New York. Conservatives have praised the move as a cost cutting strategy, to ensure the tunnel comes in on budget, as outlined in this National Review piece:

Then, of course, there is the fact that the ARC project will take many years to complete. The completion date was penciled in for 2017. That is, New Jersey taxpayers are committing themselves to many, many, many years of bus fare, and bus fares are pretty darn high these days. It doesn’t seem entirely unreasonable to factor in the future cost of lunch. Indeed, if bus fare is a priority, one might consider switching from filet mignon to, say, steamed broccoli.

I'm not sure how pulling the plug on the whole project is going to help pay for the project, or what the alternative the author is suggesting exactly is. He concedes it is badly needed, yet at the same time, instead of working to find money for the project, quickly, he just throws up his hands in disgusted defeat.

I don't know about you, but I like initiative in my leaders. Not pointless whining about budgets. To me this is electioneering at its finest, because Chris Christie is a potential GOP candidate for president in 2012. So, basically in the mind of Chris Christie, destroy a very highly lauded project to gain notoriety and make some sort of weird, ideological statement.

And it seems to have worked. For now. Maybe once the public realizes that the upcoming 50 billion dollar stimulus bill will help expedite the project and bring the state 3 billion dollars. But that sort of side note often gets shelved.

Pressure from both sides are starting to force Christie to rethink his plan. Other Republican governors are joined Obama in support of the stimulus bill, which, by the way, will create jobs.

The republicans seem to have be making fairly desperate moves to regain traction after the debacle in 2008. Lately they've resorted to by pandering heavily to extreme right ideologues, as outlined in this weeks piece in the New Yorker by Sean Wilentz.

I have a feeling that this strategy might work for awhile, it made even give them a heads up in the 2010 midterms. But like the 1994 midterm elections, the strategy will likely backfire and cost them a presidential election, when the jobs do start, and the economy does begin to approve.

Something I came across on Hulu. The T. Don Hutto was a facility run in Taylor, Texas by the Corrections Corporation of America. It held Immigrant females and their children while they awaited either a court date or deportation, in clearly inhumane conditions.

http://www.hulu.com/watch/178293/the-least-of-these

No matter where you stand on the issue of immigration, the bottom line is the people who cross our borders, legally or illegally, are still human beings. I would like to believe that the United States stands for something better than treating fellow human beings who have not been convicted of any crime, and especially children, as just that: human beings. I think their legal status as American citizens is really irrelevant. In this country, we treat people as people.

Another interesting point here is the outsourcing of the work to the Correctional Corporation of America. Arguably one of the worst forces in the American justice system, the outsourcing to private institutions of what is a very national issue whether it is in regard to the containment of Immigrants awaiting the status of their legality to the incarceration of citizens who have broken laws is a rather sickening prospect. The very word 'correctional' are obviously laughable, as we're all well aware of the lack of 'correctional' action being taken in our prison system.

This same Corporation who control prisoners of all sorts throughout the nation were also in charge of entire families?

The ACLU filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in 2007. In 2009 the facility stopped holding families, and currently only holds females.

When the often heated topic of immigration comes up, people often forget the human side of the story, that those involved aren't always out to do any harm but merely to provide a life for their children. American or not, all people on this planet have rights.