South Carolina GOP Weighs Sanford Impeachment

Do it already, put the man out of his and our misery. Via Taegan.

South Carolina Republicans will discuss whether to impeach Gov. Mark Sanford (R) when they meet this weekend, the Columbia State reports.

"Lawmakers, once reluctant to discuss removing Sanford, will weigh what it would take to force the Republican governor out and how the process would work."

"Sanford has been under fire since secretly leaving the country for five days in June to meet his lover and later admitting an extramarital affair with the Argentine woman. Since then, Sanford has been under fire for flying in expensive business-class seats and his use of state and private planes. All could violate state law or ethics rules."

Extra Added Cartoon of the Day

Because it was too damn good. Click to enlarge, via.

Video- Mark Sanford- Boring old adultery

Man, it was starting to look like the Gov of New Jersey there for a bit... Video added and Politico has a good run down.

Ensign Quits Leadership Post

By GottaLaff

So what about the other Rushpublics who don't live up to their own Family Values hype?

Sen. John Ensign (R-NV) resigned his Senate Republican leadership post after admitting having an affair with a staffer, the AP reports.

Mrs. Berlusconi: Ciao, Silvio

By GottaLaff

Arrivederci, baby:

Less than a week after writing an open letter criticizing her husband for cavorting with much younger women, the wife of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said she wanted to file for divorce.

“I’d like to close the curtain on our married life,” Mr. Berlusconi’s wife, Veronica Lario, 52, told the center-left daily newspaper La Repubblica in an article published Sunday. “I was forced to take this step,” she told the Turin daily newspaper La Stampa. “I don’t want to add anything else.” [...]

If Ms. Lario does file for divorce, it is unclear whether Mr. Berlusconi, 72, will be affected politically. Despite colorful gaffes that would sink a politician elsewhere, Mr. Berlusconi enjoys more power and popularity than ever, thanks to the disarray of his left-wing opposition and his brilliant reading of Italian sensibilities.

In fact, part of Mr. Berlusconi’s success lies in his ability to present himself at once as a devoted family man and as a consummate ladies’ man, a contradiction embodied in his marriage to Ms. Lario. [...]

She was also angered by press reports that Mr. Berlusconi had attended the 18th birthday party in Naples of Noemi Letizia, who has said in several recent interviews that she called the prime minister “Daddy” and that he gave her a gold and diamond necklace.

“That surprised me,” Ms. Lario told ANSA. “Because he never attended the 18th birthday parties of his own children, even if he was invited.”

If President Obama presented himself as "at once as a devoted family man and as a consummate ladies’ man", he'd be impeached (see Clinton, Bill). It's a good thing all Bush did was torture people.

The unexpurgated Cindy McCain

By GottaLaff

Rumor has it that Mrs. Gramm-pa wasn't thrilled with today's New York Times piece. Can't imagine why. These excerpts also reveal Gramm-pa's cold, removed, unfeeling side. I highlighted that part in red, to set it apart.

Sorry this is so long, but when it comes to Her Royal McTongueyness, it's hard to know where to stop:

Mrs. McCain, 54, describes herself as her husband’s best friend, though for the last two decades they have mostly lived apart, she in Arizona, he in Washington. She initially seemed like an ideal political partner, giving Mr. McCain a home state, money and contacts that jump-started his career. But as the years passed, she also became a liability at times. She played a role in the Keating Five savings-and-loan scandal, and just as her husband was rehabilitating his reputation, she was caught stealing drugs from her nonprofit organization to feed her addiction to painkillers. She has a fortune that sets the McCains apart from most other Americans, a problem in a presidential race that hinges on economic anxieties. She can be imprecise: she has repeatedly called herself an only child, for instance, even though she has two half-siblings, and has provided varying details about a 1994 mercy mission to Rwanda. [...]

Carol McCain was still a presence on the social scene, working in the Reagan White House and as an events planner. Everyone knew her story: she had stood by her husband during his captivity in North Vietnam, never passing word of a debilitating car accident, only to discover, a few years after their reunion, that he was leaving her for a younger, richer woman. [...]

Recently, Mrs. McCain has called the separations painful, volunteering that she endured several miscarriages alone. She spent subsequent pregnancies mostly confined to home, Ms. Ross said, sitting in a favorite stuffed chair, watching videos. But she rarely complained. “Her attitude was as a good soldier,” Mr. Gullet said. [...]

Her husband was accused of improperly intervening on behalf of a donor, Charles Keating, whose failed savings and loan had cost taxpayers billions. Four other senators were implicated, and one Senate spouse: Mrs. McCain. [...]

When Mrs. McCain visited Bangladesh after a cyclone, she stopped at an orphanage founded by Mother Teresa, who was not, as the campaign has said, present for the visit. Mrs. McCain returned with two baby girls; Mr. Gullet later adopted one, and Mrs. McCain informed her husband on landing that they would adopt the other. [...]

She had used the drugs, first given for back pain, to numb herself during the Keating Five investigation, she confessed to Newsweek magazine. “The newspaper articles didn’t hurt as much, and I didn’t hurt as much,“ she wrote in an essay. “The pills made me feel euphoric and free.” [...]

In interviews, some of Mrs. McCain’s statements seem questionable. She often tells of how she moved to California, leaving her children behind, for four months in 2004 to recover from a stroke that left her unable to walk or speak. But news reports from the time indicate she had few discernible impediments. She gave interviews four days afterward, attended a baseball game with her husband and a reporter several weeks later, and spoke at a Tempe, Ariz., Chamber of Commerce event. “One month out, I feel wonderful,” she told the audience. The McCain campaign declined to resolve the discrepancy. [...]

Rick Davis, a contentious figure in the McCain camp because of his lobbying ties, emerged as campaign manager, in part because Mrs. McCain, with whom he spent months traveling and fund-raising, backed him.

The ideal First Family.

Oh, suh-NAP! Obama responds to John Sidney McCain's attack ad

By GottaLaff

Obama spokesman Tommy Vietor responds to the new ad:

The fact that John McCain dispatched his paid consultant to launch this despicable ad from a so-called ‘independent’ committee shows how desperate he is to change the subject from his shocking disconnect with the economic struggles of the American people. He knows that Barack Obama has denounced the detestable crimes that Bill Ayers committed 40 years ago.
Instead of invoking Paris, Britney and obscure '60s radicals, Sen. McCain should take the day off at one of his seven homes to consider whether his support for outsourcing, tax breaks for companies who ship jobs overseas and continued spending of $10 billion a month in Iraq is really putting "country first." To us, it sounds like just more of the same.

He forgot one little tiny thing, though:

John Sidney McCain ducks CNN questions about his divorce

By GottaLaff

(Cindy McMealTicket looks particularly odd, almost alien-like, in this one)

I can't for the life of me imagine why J Sid would be reticent to discuss his cheating on his badly injured wife with a much younger, wealthier beer heiress. Remember, at the Fake Forum, J Sid said his greatest moral failing was his first marriage, not his cheating:

CNN's John King has been looking into the circumstances of McCain's divorce from his first wife, Carol, and on Wednesday's American Morning he presented a preview of the full story that will air on CNN tonight. [...]

"I was a little taken aback, because I was a lot younger than he was," Cindy McCain told King of that first encounter.

"And you lied about your age?" King asked John McCain.

"I lied," McCain agreed, breaking out in a reminiscent chuckle.

Not only was McCain 17 years older than Cindy, but he was still married to Carol, and their daughter was only 12 years old.

"The marriage was in trouble," King explains. "He'd been having affairs for several years."

Cindy told King that it didn't bother her to be dating a married man because "my husband had been separated. ... You know, six and a half years, it was a long separation."

McCain also wrote in his memoir that he had separated from Carol before he started dating Cindy. However, notes King, "his own divorce filing shows they dated for nine months while he was still living with Carol, and records show he applied for a marriage license in Arizona before his divorce was final."

When King asked McCain about the fact that "the chronology that is presented publicly doesn't necessarily match the chronology of the documents," McCain's only answer was, "It's 30 years ago. I have a happy marriage."

Cindy McCain similarly replied, "His reasons are his reasons. I think I've been a good wife."

That maverick. It's okay to cheat on a suffering spouse because he's happy now. Besides, it was so long ago! And Cindy Lou McMealTicket has been a good wife, so the lies and deceit have been justified.

See how easy it is, kids? Just follow Mr. and Mrs. Cheat's example, and you can be a maverick, too!

Conclusion: Time and happiness are healers and erase any culpability. Future presidents take note.

Video: George Bush disrespects American flag at Olympics

By GottaLaff


I was hoping somebody would YouTube this. I saw it during the Olympics coverage, and couldn't believe our patriotic, wartime president would treat the flag with such disrespect.

This is acceptable, but if Obama doesn't wear a flag-shaped piece of tin, made in China, he's unAmerican. If McCain leaves his disabled wife for a younger, wealthier woman, that's fine too. But let's not forget to condemn John Edwards 24/7.

David Gregory: Edwards affair "creates another shadow over Barack Obama"

By GottaLaff

Josh Marshall:

David Gregory speculates that the Edwards' affair may be bad news for Obama. I have a very hard time seeing how Edwards' affair reflects on Obama. What I do know is that this is another of those cases where there is a tacit but uniform agreement among pretty much all reporters and close campaign watchers not to publicly state the obvious: that this is a perilous development for John McCain. Just as Bill Clinton's public undressing in the Lewinsky scandal led indirectly to the exposure of several high-profile Republican affairs, Edwards' revelation will inevitably put pressure on the press in general to scrutinize John McCain under something more searching than the JFK rules they've applied to date.

This is what we've been saying, too. It opens the door for reporters to ask more questions of McAdulterer, if they decide to shake off all that POW adulation.

Then again, in J Sid's case (per Rachel Maddow's fill-in radio host David Bender), the press thinks it's all hunky-dory, because he married his mistress. That cleanses him somehow. Nancy Reagan and I would disagree.

On adultery, Edwards cites McCain

The best thing to come out of this crap fest. While everyone is watching, John got it out there for all the looky loos to hear and wonder about.

The full version of Bob Woodruff's interview with John Edwards just aired on ABC, figuring Edwards alternately penitent, defensive, and dismissive of the tabloid reports that unearthed his affair.

He also, in explaining his view that his dalliance could remain private, cited Republican John McCain's reported affair at the end of his first marriage almost three decades ago.

"What I was thining was this was something that was personal to my own family," Edwards said, citing other public figures having survived extramarital affairs. He recalled, he said, having heard "John mccain talk about the mistakes that he’s made in his past with respect to his first marriage."

Greg has some more instances of people bringing up McCain's affair now here.

**Video is the only piece of the interview I can find so far.

Shallow Thoughts: John Sidney McCain Cheated On His Wife Edition

By GottaLaff

Today's Shallow Thought:

Why is John Edwards the only adulterer worthy of discussion after what John Sidney McCain did to his first wife?

Cindy McMealTicket, February 22, 2008:

Cindy McCain did not hesitate as she stepped toward the microphone, taking her place in the history of political wives who stood by their men in the face of rumored or alleged marital infidelity.

"Well, obviously, I'm disappointed," she said, her voice low but clear and self-assured. "More importantly, my children and I not only trust my husband, but know that he would never do anything to not only disappoint our family, but disappoint the people of America. He's a man of great character."

John Sidney McCain doesn't like women, and here's proof

By GottaLaff

Paddy sent me an e-mail, which is also posted here. Plus, I'm re-posting my "Grow Up, J Sid" video since it makes similar points. :

Don’t Like Women? That’s OK, Neither Does He

You ever get the feeling that some guys just really don’t like women at all, or care what they think, or respect them?

Seems John McCain is one of them.

He’s decided that a woman shouldn’t be able to end a pregnancy EVEN IF IT’S GOING TO KILL HER. The story is here:

(http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/Vote2008/story?id=4824779&page=1)

Yes, he’s going to let the right-wing radicals who run the Republican Party push for outlawing abortion even if a woman has been brutally raped.

Even if she’s a 14 year old violated by her own father.

Even if she might die if the pregnancy is brought to term.

And speaking of rape, McCain thinks a joke about a woman being beaten and raped is just hilarious:

(http://thepoliticalcarnival.blogspot.com/2008/07/infamous-mcjoke-about-rape.html)

And it’s not just McCain’s determination to overturn Roe v. Wade. On a whole host of issues, he’s against women’s rights:

(http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/06/07/mccain-and-womens-issues-its-more-than-just-roe/)

He voted against requiring health care plans to cover birth control (3/22/03).

He voted against comprehensive, medically accurate sex education (7/25/06).

He voted against international family planning funding (3/14/96).

He voted against funding to prevent teen and unintended pregnancies (3/17/05).

He voted against public education for emergency contraception (3/17/05).

And he voted against restoring Medicaid funding that could be used for family planning for low-income women (3/17/05)

Of course, McCain cheated on his loyal, devoted first wife and dumped her for someone with a lot more money. His first wife wasn’t attractive to him any more. But I guess being in a car wreck does cut down on your sex appeal.

(http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1024927/The-wife-John-McCain-callously-left-behind.html)

And this whole “equal pay for women” thing? McCain says he’s for it—but when the chips are down he votes against it:

(http://blog.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2008/04/24/by_juliet_eilperin_washington.html)

Yes, McCain thinks that women are basically 2nd rate people who can’t be allowed to make their own decisions. But there’s one way McCain puts his wife out front and center:

He said she should enter a topless beauty pageant.
(http://thepoliticalcarnival.blogspot.com/2008/08/pour-some-sugar-on-cindy-mccain.html)

Wow. What a guy. Just what we need.

To go back to the 19th century.

Oh, and let's not forget that old chestnut, calling his wife the C-Word. He'd make some role model for our kids, huh?