If you watched Rachel Maddow last night, you saw Republican honchos Ed Gillespie and Michael Steele bending themselves into pretzels defending Christine O’Donnell’s weird claim that she is “privy” to “classified information.” Greg Sargent has a transcript of exactly what O’Donnell said.
There has been much guffawing at the idea that O’Donnell has a security clearance, but so far I haven’t seen anyone point out that much of what she said about Christianity in China is nonsense. Here’s what she said:
O’DONNELL: There’s much that I want to say. I wish I wasn’t privy to some of the classified information that I am privy to because I think that I —
QUESTIONER: Can I interrupt and say how are you privy to classified information?
O’DONNELL: Because I’ve been working with various non-profit groups for over 15 years. And we’ve been sending missionaries to China for a very long time. And these missionaries go to China, risking their lives because you are not allowed to be a Christian over there.
So a country that forces women to have abortions and mandates that you can only have one child and will not allow you the freedom to read the Bible. You think they can be our friend? We have to look at our history and realize if they pretend to be our friend, they have got something up their sleeve.
First, it is simply not true that Christianity is banned in China. Doesn’t anyone else remember that President Bush attended a Christian church service while in Beijing to watch the Olympics?
And neither is the Bible banned in China. In fact, the Bible is being printed in China.
China bans foreign missionaries of any religion, but of course that doesn’t stop the determined evangelical from going there anyway. In 2008, a number of Christian mission organizations encouraged people traveling to the Beijing Olympics to do a little faith witnessing while they were there.
I doubt there have been any official Christian missions in China for several years. I understand there is very low key, “underground” Christian missionary work going on, however.
In recent years Beijing has been posing as a great friend to religion, which is why President Bush’s visit to a church was a great publicity coup for the Chinese Communist Party. But religions are considered to be something like trade unions in China, and they must be registered with the government and headed by loyal Party members. Non-registered churches are illegal; non-registered religious observances attended by more than 12 people are banned.
There are bureaucracies set up to supervise religions. In the case of Buddhism, the government often dictates what ceremonies can or cannot be performed, how many people can participate, etc. Monks receive salaries from the government, and many of the larger monasteries are more or less run as tourist attractions.
But my impression is that Beijing doesn’t care what religious beliefs people hold as long as they are loyal to China, and only China.
For example, the Catholic church in China is more or less severed from Rome, and bishops are appointed by the Party, not the Pope. And, of course, the Party has taken over the job of recognizing reborn lamas of Tibetan Buddhism.
Any resistance to government authority is absolutely not tolerated. My understanding is that China went ballistic about Falun Gong after Falun Gong members staged large peaceful protests of the way they were being treated in Chinese media. And, of course, Beijing is raving, mouth-foaming insane regarding His Holiness the Dalai Lama.
But the larger point is that Once again, we see little Christine making it up as she goes along. Along with pushing her for the details of her “security clearance,” I’d like to know which “non-profit groups” she’s been “working with” all this time. My bet is they don’t exist.
“If you watched Rachel Maddow last night, you saw Republican honchos Ed Gillespie and Michael Steele bending themselves into pretzels defending Christine O’Donnell’s weird claim that she is “privy†to “classified information.â€
You know it amazes me that they would not only defend this idiot that they would even acknowledge her candidacy at all. I mean the model is there, they should be treating this amateur just as the Democratic Party has chosen to treat our “senatorial candidate†in South Carolina (Alvin Greene), just ignore her. I suspect that they have been ordered to support this joke because mama Grizzly has endorsed her. Hopefully we are witnessing the implosion of the republicant party, if they are to survive they will have to cut loose the Christine O’Donnell’s as well as the Caribou Barbie’s, they’ll figure it out one day, hopefully it will be too late!
To say nothing of the fact that the government doesn’t as a rule just give classified information to random nonprofit groups. It’s a complete non-sequitur to respond to the question “How did you get classified information?” to say “I worked for non-profits…” The two concepts don’t connect.
My only real question is whether she is the one who was inflating her access, or whether it was someone else who told her something claiming it was classified and she was too stupid to realize she was hearing bullshit. I don’t know which would be better, knowing manipulator or naive dupe, but either way, not worthy of a seat in the US Senate.
Maha, have you forwarded this to the major news organizations and to the political party headquarters?
Preston
O’Donnell is the ultimate recipient of Wingnut Welfare (WW). If it weren’t for WW, ‘reality’ TV, and interview shows, what else would she have lived off of?
Seriously, I worked in HR for a number of years, and you have to seperate out the not only applicants who have character issues, but ones who clearly aren’t qualified for a particular job.
Lying about when and where you went to college, and when you graduated, are not just red flags, they will prevent you from being hired; and if you are hired, once discovered, you’ll be fired.
Using money given to you for one purpose, say a campaign for public office, to pay your rent, pay down debt, and use it for entertainment (like bowling), are huge character issues.
If my company works with the US Government, does your being privy to the information about China indicate a security clearance that I should know about? And if you’re lying about it – Bye, bye…
Ok, those are the ‘character issues.’ Now, tell me her qualifications for the US Senate, outside of being able to spout out wingnut talking points on cue, and being endorsed by the most morally bankrupt bimbo grifter of our times?
That’s what I thought…
The Republican have spent the past 2+ years screaming about how little “we” know about this President, how he wasn’t properly “vetted,” isn’t experience enough. Yet, apparently, they vetted O’Donnell and are ok with her character, knowledge and experience, and are supporting her RUN FOR THE US SENATE!!!
Frank Rich wrote on Sunday that the Republicans needed her because, in their line-up of mean-sprited, soulless freaks running as candidates for public office across this nation, she’s the only one who isn’t wealthy. She’s their version of an ‘everywoman.’ Ok…
Whether these people win or lose, I wonder what they’ll run in ’12, ’14 and ’16? Can an animated cartoon character run for elected office? Maybe if he/she is created and drawn here, it’ll be ok. Animation is fine, but no “anime.”
Something tells me we’ll find out soon.
‘And so America ends, not with a bang, but with a whimper…’
cundgulag as usual covered it, and covered it well. However, as a senator her presence and floor speeches in the Senate would definitely play hell with the smug gravitas, intellectually superior image the Senate has so diligently attempted to portray themselves as to us lesser mortals. It’d definitely be a laugh-riot to see all those holier-than-thou senators squirm in their seats when Christine was on the floor spouting her nonsense – not to mention what it would do to their carefully constructed, and fake, image they’ve worked so hard to pass off on the rest of us.
I had the same thought as biggerbox: Since when does working for a religious-based NGO get a person access to “classified information”? What a load!
I think I figured Christine out after she blathered that nonsense about hanging with Satan worshipers, then said she had considered converting to the Krishna sect, and now she’s an uber-Catholic or whatever the hell, and a TPer. She’s a nut looking for her tree.
I’m willing to bet that even the story of having worked with a religious organization that sends missionaries anywhere, never mind China, is a fabrication, since she clearly has no idea what’s actually going on with Christianity in China. I say she is exhibiting compulsive, pathological lying.
Yep.
Christine O’Donnell has one thing in common with both Sarah Palin and Pam Geller in addition to politics, all three are shameless narcissists who long for their screen time with the public. All three of them also live in their self-created realities where each of them are the center of their own universes.
I would bet some fairly big bucks that O’Donnell’s “working with non-profits” is simply hearing about some mission group to China at her local church and maybe kicking in a few bucks (and that probably not even directly, but by chucking money into the collection plate). It’s the same way that folks I know “work with non-profits” who work in Burma.
Tin foil hat time!
3 strikes or lies.
Christine is over the limit.
She is a serial liar.
The following is an excerpt from Christine O’Donnell’s upcoming interview with Katie Couric…
Couric: You’ve said you have been working with various non-profit groups for over 15 years, sending missionaries to China for a very long time. Which non-profit groups have you been working with?
O’Donnell: All of ’em, any of ’em that have been in front of me over all these years.
Couric: Can you name a few?
O’Donnell: I have a vast variety of sources where we get our news too. Alaska isn’t a foreign country, where, it’s kind of suggested and it seems like, ‘Wow, how could you keep in touch with what the rest of Washington, D.C. may be thinking and doing when you live up there in Alaska Delaware?’ Believe me, Alaska Delaware is like a microcosm of America
Over at slactivist, Fred Clark points out that Ms. O’Donnell’s claims of having dabbled in witchcraft, having explored Buddhism and even Hare Krishna, and having picnic’ed on a bloodstained Satanic altar are simply lies — particularly, they are lies of a kind that American fundamentalist Christian evangelicals are accustomed to hearing, a kind of lie to which some evangelicals are prone when they feel the need to boost their credibility.
“Maha, have you forwarded this to the major news organizations and to the political party headquarters”
Preston has an excellent point, I’ve not seen any reporting of GW’s Chinese church visit to refute this “banning of Christ”.
I haven’t, but if anyone wants to use the “email” button below the post to forward it to whomever, be my guest.
While I fully understand the ridicule everyone is heaping on Ms O’Donnell, there is one point about which I venture to be mildly contrarian. Yes, it is true that there is limited practice of Christianity permitted in China, and as you detailed, Maha, of other religions as well. But if one can only be a Christian (or a Buddhist, or a Muslim…) through the sufferance of the State, and the form and the scope of one’s practice and faith are unchallengeably determined by the State, then I think that it really is debatable whether one is “allowed” to practice one’s religion. To have the inner counsels of the practitioners of the religion, and their daily practices comprehensively monitored and controlled is in no way a free practice of religion. It were well to recall that China is still in many ways a totalitarian society, and one thing that is intolerable to a totalitarian state is the existence of any institution that presents alternative moral and ethical sensibilities to those favored by the State. In the U.S.A. there are many, many religions and sects, but they are generally not directly challenged by the State unless they engage in illegal activities. Societal censure of “foreign” religions such as Buddhism, Hinduism, or Islam may lead to prejudicial application of zoning laws and such, as you have detailed in prior posts; but under our Constitution and statutes, these acts of prejudice can be challenged and successfully counteracted on the state and federal levels. Should the problems arise in the first place? Certainly not, but recourse is available. Not so in China. This is a difference not to be overlooked.
We now return you to our regularly-scheduled Tea Partier whuppin’!
I fully appreciate that, which is why I went into a bit more detail about exactly what’s going on with religion in China. However, it is absolutely not true that Christianity is “banned” in China, and not only are vast numbers of Bibles being printed in China, a portion of those Bibles are being exported. China is a major supplier of the Bible in Chinese to the world. And I very much doubt any non-governmental organization in the U.S. that O’Donnell might have “worked with” has sponsored missionaries to China for many years. As far as missionaries risking their lives in China, I don’t believe the current regime in China has executed any foreigner for mission work. They do expel foreigners they catch proselytizing pretty much instantly, though.
JerseyJeffersonian makes the point that my mind has been grappling with. In Fundie World, things are a bit more black and white. And so the kinds of nuances and grays that Maha and JerseyJeffersonian are explaining, kind of go over the heads of Fundies. If there’s any kind of oppression at all, then it means Christianity is banned. The problem is not with China or Christianity, but with the childlike insistence on everything being filtered in black and white.
In the meantime Frank Rich really is right about Christine O’Donnell. She’s the Trojan Horse, the candidate who has little chance of winning in Delaware, who keeps sweetly grinning and spouting nonsense, and who distracts attention from other the candidates of her ilk, who hold almost the same extremist positions, and who have a better chance of getting voted in.
It’s been years since I heard the name but it popped in my mind today that the entire Tea Party movement is a political version of “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.” Google it – it’s by James Thurber. The character is in his real life a timid underachiever who daydreams about being a pilot or explorer or… Senator??
Thurber presumes that his readers can tell the difference between reality and fantasy. The author makes us laugh at a petty man who bolsters his sagging ego with a series of improbable heroic stories Mitty dreams up – always with himself the star.
The Walter MItty concept appeals to the vanity of millions of Walter Mittys who have no answers – or even a clear appreciation of the problems – and are convinced that with the ‘common sense’ of the founding fathers, they can cure the political ills of the country, like Walter Mitty can step from his humdrum life and be a natural pilot or surgeon or whatever.
The founding fathers who wrote the Declaration of Independence and Constitution and Federalist Papaers were not ‘common men’. They came from well-off families & were educated at Harvard and Princeton and Columbia – Jefferson at College of William and Mary. While I don’t think an education at an ivy-league college is required for elected office, a lack of education is a disadvantage to be overcome NOT AN ASSET.
It has to be said by someone better than me – the USA was not built by country bumpkins and the current problems won’t be solved by fools – no matter how good their intentions. Putting up Palin or Angle or O’donnell to appeal to the ‘Walter Mitty’ in the voters is the height of foolishness and deserves all the scorn that the voters and the press can heap on it.
“She’s the Trojan Horse, the candidate who has little chance of winning in Delaware, who keeps sweetly grinning and spouting nonsense, and who distracts attention from other the candidates of her ilk”
Is Karl Rove that smarty? If that’s true then putting her in office would be the counter punch. Let her and all the teabaggers really fuck things up for a while. Maybe we should turn everything over to the rubes. Maybe things need to get alot worse before these “middle class” teabaggers see the light. How in the fuck can a middle class person blame the left for the wholesale transfer of wealth to the top2%? The sell off of good paying jobs to China? Somehow they use the “unions make too much argument”, I guess 30 years of Reaganomics worked! How fucking stupid have we become?
Just stoopid enuf, uncledad. With a lot of help from our decaying educational system, coupled with the corporatization of the media, and the fiendishly successful three-card monty played by the nomenklatura, of course.
Christine is a little Sarah Palin clone. She’s singing the same tune and following the same blueprint for a political/ economic foundation as Momma Grizzly. “I’m being slandered”, “I’m being unfairly caricatured”, ” I love Jesus and only want to restore America to the Christian values that were entrusted to us by our founding fathers”.
Whether she wins her political contest is of no real consequence because in the process she will have established herself as a virtuous Christian women who defended Christian values against the onslaught of secularism/ liberalism. Her ticket will be punched, guaranteeing her a payday on the Christian circuit and the political circuit. She probably won’t get the $100,000. speaking engagements like Palin, but she’ll lap up a tidy sum from an eager market who can’t get enough of what she’s selling.
Her tales of Christian persecution in China is part of a standard schtick in Christian evangelism. It’s the Pastor Wally story. The fundies thrive on tales of persecution, and the truth of the tales is not important.. it’s the suffering for Christ that they feed on.
How fucking stupid have we become?
I think stupid is the default mode and some of us get wise….but a lot don’t.
“How fucking stupid have we become?”
Beyond description.Have a look at Fox N’ Fiends reporting about the City of Los Angeles purchasing 10,000 jet packs for the police and fire departments……..
moonbat – oh dear. If I remember correctly, King Priam and the citizens of Troy, against all warnings from Laocoon and Cassandra wheel the giant wooden horse, after removing the lintel from the entrance gate to the city (which they were previously warned never to do) into the city, thereby sealing Troy’s fate.
Laocoon’s warning cry has rung through the ages, “Are you mad, wretched people?” (Seems to me I said something like that when George was elected in ’04.)
This bill is the farthest thing from communism. It is a compromise but not communism. Gosh, it isn’t even socialism. The bill keeps the private health insurance industry in place, forces it to be more efficient and expands its market by 30 million people. We are free to make our own choices and it is completely ridiculous to say that our government runs “everything in our livesâ€.
http://www.tampabay.com/blogs/juice/content/elvira-not-witch-christine-odonnell