Poor People = Stray Animals. WHAT THE FUCK?!

You stay classy South Carolina.

GREENVILLE - Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer has compared giving people government assistance to "feeding stray animals."

Bauer, who is running for the Republican nomination for governor, made his remarks during a town hall meeting in Fountain Inn that included state lawmakers and about 115 residents.

"My grandmother was not a highly educated woman, but she told me as a small child to quit feeding stray animals. You know why? Because they breed. You're facilitating the problem if you give an animal or a person ample food supply. They will reproduce, especially ones that don't think too much further than that. And so what you've got to do is you've got to curtail that type of behavior. They don't know any better," Bauer said.

I Was Wrong......Sort Of

Ok so I was wrong about the South Carolina GOP lawmakers who inserted an antisemetic stereotype in their op-ed in praise of Senator Jim DeMint not apologizing for their transgression. But this is what you call the classic form of Republican apologizery.

Ulmer, the Orangeburg County chairman, said the remark was "truly in admiration for a method of bettering one's lot in life" and he meant nothing derogatory.

Added Merwin, the Bamberg County chair: "I have always abhorred in the past, and shall continue to do so in the future, anti-Semitism in any form whatsoever. I ... beg that any and all who were offended will accept my deep felt apology."

State GOP Chairwoman Karen Floyd called the comment absolutely unacceptable, but said the apologies should end the matter.

So they didn't really mean it, they always abhorred the kind of thing that they said, and nobody should say another word to them about it.

Got that?

I have no words....

Racial Stereotypes As Praise

I am going to make a prediction here. These two South Carolina GOP bozos who used a racial stereotype about Jewish people to try to heap praise on Senator Jim DeMint in an op-ed will NOT be apologizing anytime soon.

I wouldn't be surprised if they say they are the victim in fact. When it happens remember that I predicted it here first. Such is the state of the Republican Party these days.

In Which He Presumes And Proceeds To Speak For God

Just when you thought Mark Sanford couldn't come off as any more of a self serving prick.

So in the aftermath of this failure I want to not only apologize, but to commit to growing personally and spiritually. Immediately after all this unfolded last week I had thought I would resign - as I believe in the military model of leadership and when trust of any form is broken one lays down the sword. A long list of close friends have suggested otherwise - that for God to really work in my life I shouldn’t be getting off so lightly. While it would be personally easier to exit stage left, their point has been that my larger sin was the sin of pride. They contended that in many instances I may well have held the right position on limited government, spending or taxes - but that if my spirit wasn't right in the presentation of those ideas to people in the General Assembly, or elsewhere, I could elicit the response that I had at many times indeed gotten from other state leaders.

Their belief was that if I walked in with a real spirit of humility then this last legislative term could well be our most productive one - and that outside this term, I would ultimately be a better person and of more service in whatever doors God opened next in life if I stuck around to learn lessons rather than running and hiding down at the farm.

Isn't it covenient that he never heard from God when he was all too happy to condemn and judge President Clinton?

At this point I hope he DOES stay so that the hypocrisy of the GOP can be exposed for the next year and and half as Democrats hold him up as the standard bearer for the Republican Party all over this country.

And there is going to be a special place in hell reserved for him whenever he leaves this earth.

Almost Admirable: Game Over

You already know where I stand on the Mark Sanford sex scandal and you already know where I stand on those who would so easily try to forgive him because he appeared to "come clean" of his own accord. It was already apparent before now that such a notion was pure fantasy, but now this comprehensive story in The State put the final nail in his political coffin.

Shortly after 5 a.m. Wednesday, Smith went to the airport. Shortly after 6 a.m., she met a surprised Sanford. Smith was the only media member there.

Sanford said he had just arrived from Argentina. He also said he had not been on the Appalachian Trail.

When asked who he had been with in Argentina, the governor cut off the interview.

By 7:30 a.m., thestate.com had broken the news that Sanford had not been on the Appalachian Trail, but in Argentina.

In their morning meeting, State editors decided to immediately inform the governor and his inner circle about the e-mails. .

A reporter called a Sanford staffer, saying the paper had e-mails that outlined an affair between the governor and Maria. Unless Sanford would address the issue privately, The State would have no choice but to ask him — with TV crews filming — if he knew Maria at his press conference that afternoon.

The names of two other women tumbled into the newsroom.

Fearful Sanford’s staffers did not get it — that the paper would ask publicly what Sanford’s relationship was with Maria — a State editor called Davis, Sanford’s former chief of staff.

Davis, a Beaufort lawyer, recently had been elected to the state Senate. When called, he quickly said he no longer worked for Sanford.

The editor said he knew that but wanted to talk with Davis. Sanford had landed from Argentina, and the paper had e-mails about an affair with a woman in Argentina.

The editor told Davis why he thought the e-mails were genuine. They mentioned Coosaw, the Sanford plantation, and Sanford’s love of digging holes; they quoted Bible verses and contained details about Sanford’s known schedule.

And more names of women were coming in over the transom. The total was at three and counting.

“Women?!” Davis responded, sounding incredulous. “Women?!”

The editor repeated that the paper would ask Sanford publicly about Maria with TV cameras running. Jenny Sanford and the couple’s four sons should be spared that image, and it was up to Davis to ensure Sanford’s staffers “got it.”

Davis, who said he was in Beaufort, promised to call Sanford’s staff and call back.

When he called back, Davis said he was driving to Columbia.

Now actually there are some ethical questions you have to ask about "The State" too here. Why were they so intent on giving the Governor a heads up? Why did they go out of their way to make sure Sanford's staff "got it". And even if you buy that they were trying to protect his wife and kids, once the cat was out of the bag, why didn't they ask any questions about the other 3 names that had come into the news room?

Regardless I think its apparent now that Sanford was doing anything noble. He was just taking advantage of the opportunity to come clean that The State granted him when they gave him his "heads up".

Almost Admirable?!

Really Joe Klein?

The Mark Sanford case is a bit different from the others, and almost admirable. Not for him the usual "I made a mistake" dodge, not for him the exploitation of a staffer or a child. This is a guy who clearly fell in love, and seems unable to hide it very well.

Riddle me this Joe. If YOUR wife was carrying on a sexual relationship for over a year and you found out about it and then SHE flew to Argentina so she could get it in with "Rico" one last time on Mother's Day weekend and didn't tell you nor anybody else. And if she ended up having to stand in front of cameras and tell the world that she cheated on you for over a year.....would you find THAT "almost admirable"?

What a load of bullshit is being shoved down our throats. The same Village idiots who wanted President Clinton strung up and beaten because he got head a couple of times are now oh so forgiving and understanding of Governor Sanford because he was "in love".

Yeah well tell that shit to the wife he committed himself to for life.

Tell that to the kids he couldn't even find the time to call on Father's Day while he was with his mistress.

We are talking about a guy who was most recently seen trying to deny his state badly needed stimulus funds. We are talking about a guy who was as holier than thou as you can get when he was voting for President Clinton to be impeached. We are talking about a guy who has spoken out against empathy in recent weeks.

The victims in this story are Jenny Sanford and her kids, not the bastard who ruined their lives.

I won't even get into the Bill Clinton analogies but its absolutely fucking AMAZING that Republicans can totally fuck over their wives and kids and the Villagers NEVER hold it against them. From Newt to Rush to Ensign to Vitter to now Sanford, you damn near have to pull teeth to get MSM types to mention their past transgressions. Hell every single time, and I mean EVERY SINGLE TIME, Joe Klein mentions Newt Gingrich he makes it a point to say he is smart/briliant/very intelligent. But does he ever mention he is a sorry son of a bitch who cheated on every wife he has ever had and brought divorce papers to his first wife while she was in the hospital battling cancer?!

HELL NO.

Give me a break. Mark Sanford is a dick who doesn't believe in empathy, so I am sure as shit not going to spare any of mine for him.

Not To Beat A Dead Horse

I just couldn't resist posting this interview with South Carolina Republican State Senator Jake Knotts on MSNBC about Mark Sanford's dissappearance. The guy has this thick southern good ole boy accent that just reminds me of that old show "In The Heat Of The Night". And he doesn't pull any punches on Gov Sanford over his dissappearance.




Sanford presser scheduled for 2pm for all those interested.

Move Bitch, Get Out The Way

The South Carolina Supreme Court has ruled that their asshole Governor Mark Sanford must accept the stimulus money for education.

The Supreme Court's ruling came a day after arguments in two lawsuits filed by students and school administrators. Sanford had tried to get those cases merged in federal court with his lawsuit against the state, which he filed moments after legislators overrode his budget veto. But he lost that battle Monday when a federal judge refused to take those cases.

Sanford had refused to request the $700 million _ the portion of the $2.8 billion bound for the state that he says he controls _ unless legislators agreed to offset state debt by an equal amount. The White House twice rejected that idea, noting the money must be used to help education and avoid job losses.

South Carolina, which had the nation's third-highest jobless rate in April _ hitting a state record high of 11.5 percent _ cut more than $1 billion from its $7 billion spending plan for 2008-09 as tax revenues slumped in the recession.

Sanford's refusal has raised the ire of U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn, the No. 3 House Democrat, who accused the governor of being a foe of public education. Amid budget cuts and uncertainty over the federal money, districts had told hundreds of teachers they don't have a job in the upcoming school year.

State education officials estimated schools would eliminate 2,600 education jobs, including 1,500 teachers, without the stimulus money.

Clyburn, D-S.C., inserted an amendment in the federal law with Sanford's anti-bailout stance in mind, saying legislators could go around a governor's refusal. While the legality of that was questioned, U.S. District Judge Joseph Anderson on Monday cited it in saying it was clear Congress intended to allow legislators to get around governors who didn't want the money.

Thank God that Congressman Clyburn had the foresight to put that amendment in the bill.

I Can See The Future

Yesterday I posted this comment on Greg Sargent's blog post entitled S.C. GOPer On Sanford’s Stimulus Denial: “I’m Asking You To Pray For Us”.

Sandford did the same thing last year with their unemployment funds. I predict he will do the same thing tomorrow that he did then, accept the stimulus funds but frame it like he had no choice and that he won some kind of moral victory by waiting for the last possible moment. The guy is mental.

Today we get this from article from McClatchy entitled "Sanford gives in on stimulus, will seek funds for S.C."

WASHINGTON — Gov. Mark Sanford will comply with a midnight Friday stimulus deadline and become the last governor in the nation to seek millions of dollars in federal economic-recovery funds for his state, aides said late Thursday.

Sanford will continue contesting $700 million in education and law enforcement money for South Carolina, but his 11th-hour move to meet the deadline buys time for schools fearing mass teacher layoffs and draconian cuts.

Sanford's month-long fight over stimulus money placed South Carolina in the national spotlight and put him at loggerheads with President Barack Obama.

"Tomorrow the governor is going to send the (Section) 1607 certification for everything except the stabilization funds," Sanford's spokesman, Joel Sawyer, said Thursday evening. "The governor will apply for that (additional) money if the General Assembly is willing to compromise and pay down some debt with it."

Obama has twice rejected Sanford's written requests to use $700 million in State Fiscal Stabilization Fund money to pay off state government debt instead of its stated use to help school districts retain teachers and modernize old schools or build new ones.

White House officials confirmed for the first time Thursday that a 45-day deadline in the $787 billion stimulus bill, which Obama signed into law on Feb. 17, applies only to governors' initial requests for the money — and not to states' formal application for it.

State leaders in Columbia and Washington had thought that midnight Friday was the deadline for actually claiming the $700 million in disputed funds.

Obama aides cheered Sanford's decision to protect most of $8 billion in stimulus funds slated for South Carolina.

"We are pleased with reports that Governor Sanford will join the other 49 governors — Democrats and Republicans — in filing a certification to accept Recovery Act money," said Kenneth Baer, a spokesman for White House Budget Director Peter Orszag.

"The Recovery Act will create or save 3.5 million jobs (nationwide), and we do not want to see the citizens of any state denied the help that it can provide," Baer said.

Obama has claimed that the stimulus package will create or preserve 50,000 jobs in South Carolina, whose 11.4 percent unemployment rate is the nation's second highest after Michigan's.

Sanford will likely continue to tussle with state general assembly leaders from his own Republican Party over his insistence that at least some of the disputed $700 million pay off debt, despite $1.1 billion in state budget cuts already imposed this year because of revenue shortfalls.

Sanford's expected move is an implicit acknowledgement that he'd erroneously claimed for weeks control over only the $700 million in education funds, not over the entire $8 billion package.

In fact, Sanford's failure to request the stimulus funds by midnight Friday would've imperiled all $8 billion reserved for his state.

The stimulus package, an ambitious bid by Obama to jolt the economy, provides $8 billion to South Carolina for Medicaid payments, road and bridge repairs and construction, unemployment benefits, police, tax cuts and a host of other needs.

"The action we are taking tomorrow is perfectly consistent with where we've been throughout the stimulus debate," Sawyer said late Thursday.

So is it that I have a crystal ball? Of course not. Conservative assholes are just too predictable these days.

Shattered Dreams

This is Governer Mark Sanford's legacy in the name of national politics. I really hope he is proud. Better yet I hope the people of South Carolina never ever forget.

More Cow Bell From The GOP

Everyone meet prospective Republican Presidential candidate for 2012 Mark Sanford, Governor of South Carolina and newly elected head of the Republican Governors Association. Many in the Republican party are excited at the thought that Sandford might run for President some time in the near future because of his conservative governing style. You see as I have said before, the Republicans don't think conservatism was the problem in the last two election cycles. In their minds it was actually the LACK of "real" conservatism that doomed them. So lets take a look at some of the fruits of Sandford's conservative labors.

From the New York Times:

COLUMBIA, S.C. — Just hours before the unemployment benefits fund was to run out in South Carolina, the state with the nation’s third-highest jobless rate, Gov. Mark Sanford relented Wednesday and agreed to apply for a $146 million federal loan to shore it up, after weeks of refusing to do so.

The governor’s position had drawn rebukes even from fellow Republicans in the Legislature, one of whom denounced Mr. Sanford as “heartless,” and from newspaper editorial pages. On Wednesday, The State, the daily newspaper here in Columbia, accused the governor of playing “chicken with the lives of the 77,000” who are unemployed in South Carolina.

snip

The back-and-forth dueling between the conservative governor and the unemployment agency has gone on for weeks, and its executive director, Roosevelt T. Halley, warned that he would have to stop issuing benefit checks to the jobless beginning Jan. 1 if Mr. Sanford did not back down and ask the federal government for the loan.

“It’s absolutely unheard of, it’s insane, for a governor of any state not to request those funds,” State Senator Hugh K. Leatherman, a Republican who is chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said last week. “I can’t believe anybody would be this heartless, and create such a heartless act on these people.”

snip

Mr. Sanford, a wealthy real estate investor, is often mentioned as a potential Republican presidential candidate in 2012, in part because he is seen as an exemplary adherent of the party’s low-government, antispending philosophy. He recently wrote an op-ed article in The Wall Street Journal saying he was opposed to a “bailout” for states.

His stand on unemployment benefits was consistent with his contentious six-year tenure as governor and his philosophy, which is described as “basically libertarian” by William V. Moore, a political scientist at the College of Charleston. He has continuously sparred with members of his own party in the Legislature over spending, limiting his record of accomplishment.

snip

Mr. Sanford once carried two piglets onto the floor of the House chamber to symbolize his opposition to what he considered wasteful spending. One of the piglets promptly defecated; lawmakers were not amused. Indeed, though Republicans dominate both chambers, they have overriden hundreds of his vetoes on spending over the years, including, in one recent session, money to expand children’s health insurance, indigent defense, and to provide cost-of-living adjustments for retired state employees.

After one special session last year, the legislators overrode 228 out of 243 of the governor’s vetoes, restoring money Mr. Sanford had rejected for H.I.V. prevention and health programs, and for state parks and beach reconstruction.

Notice that the although Republicans in his own state can't stand the guy and presumably they would know what kind of leader he would make, the National Republican Party folk think he is golden. That he gets his vetoes overridden on the regular and the fact that his state is in dire economic straits means nothing to these people. "But he is a Conservative damn it" I would imagine is their retort.

Try to think about something really really hard for a moment, have you seen ANY Republican in recent years that you would describe as a "thinker"? I mean a smart person who still takes the time to think through there actions without always falling back on party orthodoxy?

Me either.

But I salute the Republicans for maniacally sticking to their ideals, may they comfort them the many nights they spend out in the abyss.