77 responses to
“Reaching the tricky parts.”

1. alex said on June 24th, 2009 at 10:42 am

   You know what else hap­pens when you clear away the under­brush, gents? You look like the kind of guy who thinks an opti­cal illu­sion really fools some­thing other than the eye. Go buy some Bud Light.

   Nance, if I’d had cof­fee it would have been out my nose and all over the screen.

2. coozledad said on June 24th, 2009 at 10:48 am

   Well, pros­ti­tu­tion is legal in Argentina, but you aren’t sup­posed to open a knocking-shop. I don’t know how you would enforce this, unless it just makes the job of being a build­ing inspec­tor more inter­est­ing.
   “These whores ya got here? Not to code. You’re gonna have to pull ‘em out or I’ll be forced to write ya a citation.”

3. jeff borden said on June 24th, 2009 at 10:58 am

   Are there any NN.C com­men­ta­tors from South Carolina?

   While I often tease my wife about the weirdos who seem to abound in her native Florida, there’s a whole ‘nother brand of whack­doo­dle preva­lent in the Pal­metto State. Look at the head­lines out of that bas­tion of the Old Con­fed­er­acy. Not one but two racial slurs from top GOP­ers in one week. Then Mr. Gov­er­nor­Fam­i­ly­Val­uesJudeoChris­tian­NoFed­er­al­BailoutScrewThe­P­oorAnti­Gay­Mar­riage San­ford pulls a “Where’s Waldo” and returns to Colum­bia after a mys­te­ri­ous trip to Argentina, obscured by lies from his staff (or maybe from him) that he was hik­ing the Appalachian Trail? And even his wife and kids did not know where he was? And this guy is so pop­u­lar down there that he was men­tioned as a pres­i­den­tial con­tender in 2012??

   I lived in Char­lotte for 4 1/2 years, which is closer to most of S.C. than the rest of N.C., but I never got close to fath­om­ing the bizarre pol­i­tics there. A state where you could not buy beer on Sun­days, but could play video poker to your heart’s con­tent? Where large num­bers of evan­gel­i­cals have moved to a sin­gle county so they can begin incul­cate the local polit­i­cal offices and fash­ion a more Jesus-oriented soci­ety? Where Bob Jones Uni­ver­sity exists just an hour or two from the annual biker orgies at Myr­tle Beach?

   There was always an inter­est­ing strain of rebel­lious­ness melded to a reli­gious self-righteous, but San­ford is really upping the game. The most pow­er­ful elected offi­cial in the state goes off the grid for days so he can “recharge” his bat­ter­ies by cruis­ing the coast of Buenos Aries, eh? But day­time tem­per­a­tures in coastal Argentina are in the high 50s these days and the 30s by night, since it’s win­ter down there.

   South Car­olini­ans, WTF is up with San­ford and the pol­i­tics down there?

4. mark said on June 24th, 2009 at 10:59 am

   San­ford: Go with the obvi­ous. Sex or money.

   The shav­ing thing: The under thirty crowd can be “mar­keted” into doing lots of stu­pid things. The opti­cal illu­sion bit makes no sense to me. By the time the goods are being inspected, clos­ing the sale is usu­ally a fore­gone con­clu­sion. Appear­ing as a (rel­a­tively) large pre-pubescent would only be help­ful with a small per­cent­age of shop­pers, unless there is a gay angle to this that I don’t (and don’t really need to) understand.

5. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on June 24th, 2009 at 11:01 am

   Didn’t you know? All Repub­li­can gov­er­nors have to go down and con­sult with Men­gele from time to time (those Hitler cloning projects don’t run them­selves, you know).

6. Anonymous (For Obvious Reasons) said on June 24th, 2009 at 11:02 am

   Gray hair.…just saying.

7. Catherine said on June 24th, 2009 at 11:16 am

   Thanks for get­ting that stu­pid freak­ing song stuck in my head.

   Re San­ford, what mark said, plus add a splash of narcissism.

8. Rana said on June 24th, 2009 at 11:28 am

   Three words: Ingrown hair. Stubble.

   *itches just think­ing about it*

9. ROgirl said on June 24th, 2009 at 11:28 am

   Argentina, Appalachia — sounds like a game of tele­phone. Another poten­tial Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial can­di­date appar­ently self-immolating in a messy pile of his exposed sex­ual adventures.

   Is the man­shav­ing a porn thing? Just wondering.

10. jeff borden said on June 24th, 2009 at 11:45 am

    Sanford’s behav­ior reminds me of that old ele­men­tary school story, about the kid who believed he was invis­i­ble to the teacher if he just closed his eyes. San­ford sim­ply can­not be so stu­pid that he would be sur­prised at the hub­bub his dis­ap­pear­ance and reap­pear­ance caused, so you have to won­der about his judg­ment. News reports quote sev­eral of his fel­low Repub­li­cans as being extra­or­di­nar­ily angry about this behav­ior, so this falls out­side the usual Dem vs. Rep blather.

    As a res­i­dent of Illi­nois, I am inured to polit­i­cal shenani­gans, but up here, it’s always all about the money. Hell, we’d have been happy if Rod Blago­je­vich just dis­ap­peared in Buenos Aries instead of grab­bing cash with both hands. We’d pay his way. Instead, our weird politi­cians wind up dis­ap­pear­ing in the fed­eral prison sys­tem, lol.

11. alice said on June 24th, 2009 at 11:55 am

    Jeff Bor­den: I’m from South Car­olina, born & reared. All I can say is every fam­ily I knew had at least one “eccen­tric” at a min­i­mum. Being from the Low­coun­try I’ve always blamed the heat and the swamp gasses.

12. jeff borden said on June 24th, 2009 at 12:00 pm

    Alice,

    That’s as good an expla­na­tion as any, I guess. You know, I wouldn’t want to give the impres­sion I don’t like South Car­olina. It’s a beau­ti­ful state and I always enjoyed myself there, par­tic­u­larly Charleston and the coast. But the pol­i­tics down there just pretty much defy description.

    Since it’s going to be mid-90s and muggy as hell in Chicago today, I am going to use the heat excuse for any tran­gres­sions today, lol.

13. Sue said on June 24th, 2009 at 12:05 pm

    MMJ­eff, could I have your take on this Cyn­thia Davis thing? How can any­one who is not in a Dick­ens novel use the phrase “hunger can be a pos­i­tive moti­va­tor”?
    http://​cyn​thi​a​davis​.net/​P​D​F​s​/​c​p​r​0​9​0​6​0​4​_​S​u​m​m​e​r​_​F​o​o​d​_​P​r​o​g​r​am.htm

14. peter said on June 24th, 2009 at 12:25 pm

    Maybe the gov wanted to visit Evita’s old office — per­haps that’s the polit­i­cal equiv­a­lent of vis­it­ing Morrison’s grave, which reminds me of a line that works well with today’s entry: “Hear me talk of sin and you know this is it.”

15. alice said on June 24th, 2009 at 12:34 pm

    At least we have Stephen Col­bert now.

16. Mindy said on June 24th, 2009 at 12:35 pm

    My friend’s photo of her dog Sasha star­ing into the car’s rear view mir­ror is a hit on I Has A Hot Dog today. Seventy-eight cap­tions and count­ing. My favorite so far is Hello Claireeece.…
    http://​ihasa​hot​dog​.com/
    Sasha died in Feb­ru­ary after surgery to remove a large tumor on her liver. She was a sweet girl and we miss her ter­ri­bly. Every­one, be sure to give extra hugs to the pooch in res­i­dence if there is one.

17. Sue said on June 24th, 2009 at 12:36 pm

    I won­der if Stephen Col­bert switches back to a South Car­olina accent when he goes home for a visit. What do you think, Alice?

18. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on June 24th, 2009 at 12:43 pm

    May i sug­gest Cyn­thia Davis be placed in a Dick­ens novel as soon as possible?

    The kind­est thing i can say about her is that it seems pretty clear she writes her own stuff. Hav­ing said that, i could write a bet­ter cri­tique of the sum­mer feed­ing pro­grams, hav­ing actu­ally, oh, been to one or two or a few hun­dred — we host one at Water’s Edge Min­istries in Buck­eye Lake, one of the low­est house­hold income zip codes in the state.

    We are lucky to keep the doors open, and pro­vid­ing the food would push us far beyond our capac­ity, since we’re busy spend­ing it on other things leg­is­la­tors like Ms. Davis thinks churches and non-profits ought to do instead of pro­vid­ing school fund­ing for, like tutor­ing, and job readi­ness for youth, and com­puter skills with work­ing, post-Windows 98 software.

    I don’t want to acci­den­tally help any Davis-ites out there, but the waste is truly hor­ren­dous at these feed­ing sites in the sum­mer, and if she or a staffer had actu­ally just gone to one or two and stood around or even (HA!) helped, they would have writ­ten about that — clear­est sign to me this is pure polit­i­cal patella-reflex boil­er­plate, with very lit­tle think­ing or heart (ok, no heart) going into it.

    But when the heav­ily sub­si­dized high fruc­tose corn syrup and sugar indus­tries are all doing their best to help par­ents cheaply & eas­ily hand the kids a two liter and a bag of chips on their way out the door (Rant on that, Ms. Davis, and then link to obe­sity stats, thank you; make sure to men­tion the shut­tered and unmowed parks, let alone the end of rec pro­grams statewide), our prob­lem is that a bologna sand­wich with a slice of gar­den fresh tomato and an apple with a half­pint of milk isn’t ter­ri­bly appeal­ing when there’s still a half bag of Dori­tos and a bot­tle of Dew at home. Noth­ing else, but there is that. You have to work some cre­ative pro­gram tie-ins to make it work and go down the hatch, else the trash bags are awfully heavy and leak on your shoes on the way to the dump­ster (which ser­vice we pay for, not the gov’mint, OK ma’am?).

    We teach table man­ners, shar­ing, and give nutri­tion and even home food prep ideas a shot, along with sum­mer read­ing — since the Ohio libraries are all about to take one in the teeth, we may be the only sum­mer read­ing pro­gram within ten miles of where these kids live. Did i men­tion most of the sin­gle par­ent house­holds, whose head-of-households are out work­ing as per wel­fare reform, have left their 9 and 6 and some 4 year olds home for the day? Mind you, no one leaves a 4 year old “alone,” they have an older sib­ling watch­ing them, so you feel bet­ter, don’t you? That is, if you count 10 as older, which would be fine except of course, thanks to all the well-er off munic­i­pal­i­ties in the county, at state encour­age­ment hav­ing barred sex offend­ers from liv­ing effec­tively any­where in their bounds, so we have a stun­ning num­ber of Tier III S.O.s liv­ing within a half mile of the 400 unit trailer park we’re at one gate of.

    I’m sorry, what was the ques­tion? Any­how, thanks to Ein­steins like Ms. Davis, we’re also flooded with kids who age out of fos­ter care at their 18th birth­day and are given a few hun­dred bucks and a suit/dress, and told “now you’re on your own, so you can finally get a driver’s license,” which they can’t, legally, as fos­ter kids, and now they can’t afford dri­ving school, which is the only way to get costs down other than Honor Roll, but we just bought the rat-trap, i mean, house next door for $32,000 and are try­ing to write grants to fix and house up to eight “eman­ci­pated for­mer fos­ter clients.” Food stamps are the only assis­tance we can get these young adults, and i’m sure Ms. Davis’ next Cap­i­tal Report will explain why they should be moti­vated by hunger to plant a tomato patch instead of get fur­ther state aid, since they’ve “lived off of gov­ern­ment hand­outs” for so long.

    You know, i went off Lisino­pril six months ago, and was doing fine. Now i’m try­ing to think where i put the last bot­tle. But that’s my take on her.

19. Sue said on June 24th, 2009 at 12:55 pm

    MMJ­eff, I sin­cerely apol­o­gize for upset­ting you.
    But that was awe­some. I wanted a view from the trenches, and I got it. I think you just spoke for every state, red or blue, because I think it’s going on every­where to var­i­ous degrees. Thank you.

20. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on June 24th, 2009 at 1:03 pm

    Oh, YOU didn’t upset me. SHE, on the other hand, did, and lived down to every moronic stereo­type of Repub­li­can that there is. Plus, she doesn’t know a thing about the real­ity she’s leg­is­lat­ing on, and that strikes me as leg­isla­tive mal­prac­tice. At least Newt Gin­grich actu­ally swings ham­mers at Habi­tat sites and Dubya stood in line with Laura serv­ing meals to the home­less every hol­i­day season.

    It’s like pass­ing leg­is­la­tion you haven’t read!

    And it’s only back up to 116/72.

21. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on June 24th, 2009 at 1:20 pm

    OK, i will let this drop, but when she says “Par­ents nat­u­rally love their chil­dren and enjoy car­ing for their chil­dren just as much as ever dur­ing an eco­nomic downturn” — if you read that slowly, i’d say she’s right. Just as much. Yup.

    C’mon, this whole “par­ents love their kids and only gov’mint inter­fer­ence messes that up” deal is like those on the other side of the metaphor­i­cal aisle who say “chil­dren are nat­u­rally good and lov­ing and car­ing and shar­ing.” That’s an ide­o­log­i­cal state­ment, not a state­ment based in anyone’s actual expe­ri­ence out­side of Sat­ur­day tea at Grandma’s (and that when Mommy said “If you behave at her house, drink the dang tea, and play nice with each other qui­etly, then i’ll get Happy Meals on the way home, all right? Break some­thing, and it’s prunes and spinach — i’m not kid­ding this time!”).

    Back before George Will lost his mind and his morals and his grip on his zip­per, he wrote a book he ought to go back and read — “State­craft as Soul­craft.” Among other things, he artic­u­lated a coher­ent con­ser­v­a­tive argu­ment on some­thing like the lot­tery: no prob­lem with legal, lightly reg­u­lated gam­bling if that’s what the peo­ple want, but the state shouldn’t be seen as pro­mot­ing it. Stay out of gov­ern­ment pro­mot­ing the some­thing for noth­ing business.

    Like­wise, pos­i­tive par­ent­ing can be lightly encour­aged by indi­rect means, and par­ents who endan­ger the health and safety of their chil­dren, rea­son­ably defined, should face seri­ous con­se­quences; in between, tread very, very carefully.

    A sum­mer feed­ing pro­gram, aside from giv­ing the com­mu­nity nec­es­sary tools to help main­tain a pos­i­tive impact, helps coun­ter­bal­ance the way fed­eral crop and com­mod­ity sub­si­dies (corn syrup, sugar) under­mines parental attempts to pro­vide good nutrition.

    Not too far under this con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­t­ian screed on sum­mer feed­ing pro­grams is a none too well dis­guised Dar­win­ian cyn­i­cism. She’s got to know what’s really going on in poorer com­mu­ni­ties, no one is that stu­pid, even with extra effort; her argu­ment only makes sense if she’s slyly say­ing “kids with par­ents who do the right thing will get more vit­a­mins and min­er­als and be health­ier, while par­ents who sluff off and give their kids crud should have to watch their lump­ish spawn sit on their sofas and never enter the work­force, and it serves them right.”

    A smart con­ser­v­a­tive (i know, some of you’ns think that’s an oxy­moron) would real­ize we have not only no chil­dren to spare, we have no skilled work­ers to spare, and need their minds and tal­ents even on the most entry level honed to com­pete in the global mar­ket­place that impacts even sub­ur­ban St. Louis — so good job feed­ing healthy foods and teach­ing skills, you guys! Now teach ‘em Man­darin, OK?

    You’re all in luck, a 1:30 appoint­ment. Some­one type in what San­ford says at 2 pm; i’m mor­bidly curi­ous to see if he shows up, smiles, and says “none of your busi­ness, good day!” and walks away. But Iran may swamp even that tale today …

22. adrianne said on June 24th, 2009 at 1:28 pm

    It’s got to be sex. Not money. Nobody is that stu­pid for money, y’all!

23. alice said on June 24th, 2009 at 1:50 pm

    Sue, I heard Col­bert give a talk once & he did his “Jawn’s Island” accent.

    A moment of lev­ity: the dog just came in from a squir­rel bark­fest with bird poop on his back. I guess they’re tired of all the racket.

24. ROgirl said on June 24th, 2009 at 2:36 pm

    Just started lis­ten­ing to the live feed of Sanford’s press con­fer­ence. It’s an affair, he and his wife are separated.

25. Scout said on June 24th, 2009 at 2:44 pm

    I am giv­ing Jeff (tmmo) a stand­ing ova­tion. Not only for what he does for oth­ers, which is mon­u­men­tal, but for the elo­quent report­ing of the con­di­tions on the ground. Thank you, Jeff. You are my hero for the day.

26. Dexter said on June 24th, 2009 at 2:59 pm

    ‘scuse me for drop­ping in like this, but I gotta believe there’s at least one True­Blood fan here, another HBO smash-in-your– face Sun­day night can’t-misser — I just wanted to share this web­site which is pretty good:
    http://​true​blood​net​.com/​c​h​a​r​a​c​t​e​r​-​j​e​ssica/

27. Jeff Borden said on June 24th, 2009 at 2:59 pm

    You beat me to it, ROgirl.

    Man,it is cold-blooded to blow off your wife and four kids on Father’s Day to go see your mis­tress. He’s appar­ently also agree­ing to step down as gov­er­nor, so his polit­i­cal career is over. He won’t be missed. His grand­stand­ing over the fed­eral bailout money fluffed his rightwing cre­den­tials at the expense of the poor­est and weak­est cit­i­zens in his state.

    So, he’s just another phi­lan­der­ing jerkball.

28. MarkH said on June 24th, 2009 at 3:04 pm

    ROGirl was cor­rect. Here’s the local angle:

    http://​www​.thes​tate​.com/​1​5​4​/​s​t​o​r​y​/​8​3​8​8​2​3.html

29. Jeff Borden said on June 24th, 2009 at 3:10 pm

    CORRECTION:

    San­ford said he will resign his pres­i­dency of the Repub­li­can Gov­er­nors Assn. Noth­ing about his tenure as gov­er­nor of S.C.

30. 4dbirds said on June 24th, 2009 at 3:35 pm

    Wow so much today.

    Jeff: you rule and I laughed at this “chil­dren are nat­u­rally good and lov­ing and car­ing and shar­ing.” Any­one who thinks that never met my sis­ter Mary. She was mean mean mean. She made my life miserable.

    Dex­ter: I love True­blood. So much that I read every sin­gle one of Char­laine Harris’s (is that how the pos­ses­sive ’ is done after an s?) Sookie Stack­house books.

    The adul­ter­ous Gov­er­nor. I fig­ured it was sex, but more like anony­mous sex not an affair.

    I don’t know why I know this and I’m not proud of the fact that I know this but the under thirty crowd is very very groomed, uh down there. I find it icky and won­der why a grown man would like a woman who looks like a lit­tle girl but there you go.

    Some­one (thank you some­one) in com­ments ear­lier in the year told of using 5 gal­lon tubs to plant tomatos. Well I fol­lowed the direc­tions and am the new mother of two thriv­ing plants. One beef­steak and one roma. Woo hoo. I’m a gar­dener. Who would have thunk it.

31. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on June 24th, 2009 at 3:36 pm

    Gawrsh, Scout, thanks.

    OK, pro­posal — let Obama fin­ish his term, then declare an 8 year mora­to­rium on men in pol­i­tics. Fed, state, local, dog­catcher. I’m not kidding.

    I mean, McGreevey, Spitzer, Vit­ter, Edwards, Ensign, now San­ford, and that’s just the high points of the last five years in the Senatorial/Governorial locker room, let alone the high pro­file clergy crashes of the last few years in churches i know of & work with.

    As i angrily punched into Twit­ter while lis­ten­ing to the car radio, what is WRONG with men? And apolo­gies to Moe who no doubt enjoys this even less than the rest of us, but i’m just stunned at the will­ful dumb­ness that men with offi­cial and pub­lic respon­si­bil­i­ties are show­ing in recent years.

    Not that women won’t crash and burn a bit when hold­ing down a plethora of high offices, but let’s see, shall we? And i’ll bet they won’t be STUPID and nasty enough to com­pound the dumb­nos­ity on MOTHER’S DAY weekend.

32. jeff borden said on June 24th, 2009 at 3:40 pm

    Jeff TMMO,

    If what I see in my class­rooms is accu­rate, we are mov­ing toward a soci­ety where women will run things. Over­all, the per­cent­age of women to men in col­lege is now 60 – 40. Where I teach, it’s more like 70 – 30. Per­haps these bright young women will enter pol­i­tics at the same rate as men and, if so, we might indeed have a dif­fer­ent kind of gov­ern­ment. Given how badly the male of the species has screwed things up, I’m happy to give them their shot.

33. Sue said on June 24th, 2009 at 3:49 pm

    On a related note, the Chief of Police in Mil­wau­kee just admit­ted to an affair with a jour­nal­ist, who hap­pens to teach jour­nal­is­tic ethics at UWM. The affair appar­ently started when she wrote a 5000-word extremely pos­i­tive pro­file of him for Mil­wau­kee Mag­a­zine. Yawn. What I want to know is, what moti­vated the per­son who anony­mously sent copies of email exchanges between the love­birds to the Mil­wau­kee Journal-Sentinel, expos­ing the whole scandal?

34. brian stouder said on June 24th, 2009 at 3:51 pm

    Every time South Car­olina comes up, I think of the say­ing — ‘Too small for a repub­lic; too large for a lunatic asylum’.

    I’d be will­ing to bet that Olber­mann won’t make it 3 min­utes into his show before he repeats that SC/asylum quip.

    Any­way — any NN.c entry that begins with a dis­cus­sion of the finer points (so to speak) of groin-shaving, and ends with the pro­pri­etress vow­ing to have a sweaty time ‘beat­ing the day into submission’ — is a GOOD entry!

35. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on June 24th, 2009 at 3:57 pm

    See, Jeff B’s got the other side of this prob­lem. What is the deal with men, any­how? And i can’t believe it’s because we all got our feel­ings hurt by Title IX, and pro­grams to help girls han­dle math, that young men in droves are avoid­ing higher edu­ca­tion and par­tic­u­larly the more chal­leng­ing fields. There’s a stream of con­ser­vatism that acknowl­edges the prob­lem but blames the efforts to help women and minori­ties, which i’m not buy­ing either on a gut level, or prac­ti­cally, either. If i’m up for a post where an African Amer­i­can woman named Sanchez is also on the list, i’m toast: so what? That’s the new nor­mal, and doesn’t have a thing to do with stay­ing at home to “watch” inter­net porn and drink lite beer and skip classes.

    From what i’ve heard about “The Hang­over,” it could be a doc­u­men­tary. “Men behav­ing badly,” is turn­ing into a redun­dant state­ment, the oppo­site of oxy­moron. What’s the deal with men?

36. ROgirl said on June 24th, 2009 at 4:03 pm

    It’s hard to get too worked up about a pub­lic fig­ure hav­ing an affair any more. I mean, it’s not espe­cially sur­pris­ing. On a per­sonal level it can be deeply hurt­ful to fam­ily and friends, of course, and there’s usu­ally a tremen­dous amount of hypocrisy sur­round­ing the whole thing that affects his posi­tion with respect to the pub­lic: the ini­tial whis­per­ing, the denials, the accu­mu­la­tion of bits of evi­dence, the gath­er­ing momen­tum of spec­u­la­tion, and finally the awk­ward press con­fer­ence con­firm­ing the rumors. But sur­pris­ing? No.

37. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on June 24th, 2009 at 4:23 pm

    Just so you can hear the con­ser­v­a­tive voices say­ing “Yes, we deserve a larger help­ing of ridicule when our lead­ers crash and burn like this.”

38. jeff borden said on June 24th, 2009 at 4:24 pm

    I’m not sur­prised by much in the polit­i­cal world and cer­tainly not by adul­tery. What I find aggra­vat­ing is the rank hypocrisy of those who carry a Bible in one hand, and the flag in the other, while ques­tion­ing the moral­ity and patri­o­tism of their ide­o­log­i­cal oppo­nents indulging in the same behav­ior they claim to abhor.

    We see this time after time. Noted restroom cruiser Larry Craig is, of course, vehe­mently against gay mar­riage. Mark Foley, who lusted for teenage pages, led efforts to fight child porn. John Ensign is another grand defender of mar­riage who couldn’t keep his fly zipped. Newt Gin­grich lec­tures on tra­di­tional val­ues after cheat­ing on his first two wives. Now San­ford comes along with his confessional.

    Damn, give me Wayne Hays. He was a cranky old-line Repub­li­can rep­re­sen­ta­tive from Ohio, who had a dal­liance with a blonde named Eliz­a­beth Ray, who was hired to be one of his sec­re­taries despite an inabil­ity to type. We didn’t begrudge Hays his fling –he never claimed to be on a mis­sion from God or, when caught, that God already had for­given him– but we were ticked off that tax­pay­ers were foot­ing the bill for his mistress.

39. Jenflex said on June 24th, 2009 at 4:26 pm

    Thanks for the link, Dex­ter. I love (LOVE!) TB. Not enough to actu­ally install cable, but a lot.

40. nancy said on June 24th, 2009 at 5:30 pm

    Jeez, I finally make it to the pool and miss one of the more watch­able press con­fer­ences in months.

41. Catherine said on June 24th, 2009 at 5:31 pm

    Cyn­thia Davis sounds like the nuns and priests in the Irish orphanages.

    And, Jeff,… you GO! Loved the report/rant. And your pragmatism.

42. Jenflex said on June 24th, 2009 at 5:40 pm

    Hear, hear, Cather­ine. Should Jeff change his name to “the mild-mannered, prag­matic one?” (TMMPO)

43. Danny said on June 24th, 2009 at 7:50 pm

    Hey, every­one, sorry I was late get­ting here today. I just got back from hik­ing the Appalachian Trail. So what’s been going on?

    Errr.. nev­er­mind.

44. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on June 24th, 2009 at 7:56 pm

    I’d ask how Mount Mitchell looked in the early morn­ing light, but hav­ing just seen what “The State” is run­ning in tomorrow’s Colum­bia SC edi­tions, never mind. The curse is that some sen­tences can’t be unread.

    My wife and i are plan­ning to cel­e­brate our 25th/her 50th by tak­ing North Kaibab Trail into the Grand Canyon, down to Phan­tom Ranch by the Col­orado River next spring — maybe the trip back out i can learn a few things worth teach­ing the Repub­li­can Party about how to clam­ber out of a deep, deep hole.

45. Danny said on June 24th, 2009 at 8:00 pm

    How’s about, “Sir Jef­frey, the Lion-Hearted, Pro­tec­tor of the Realm, Encour­ager to Those Wear­ing Prac­ti­cal Shoes and Lay­ers — ‘Cuz You Just Never Know About the Weather”

46. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on June 24th, 2009 at 8:13 pm

    Hey, i was “Jeff” for a cou­ple of years, and then in the Goe­glein ker­fuf­fle, two other rather intem­per­ate Jeffs started post­ing, and i wanted to clar­ify who i was not. The TMMO suf­fix has been a pleas­ant iden­ti­fier, but i can be happy going by any­thing other than “Mark Sanford.”

    Jeff TLHPRETTWPSLCYJNKAW is a bit much, even with­out the “Sir.” Danny, you may just call me “Your Ineffability.”

47. Jolene said on June 24th, 2009 at 8:17 pm

    The curse is that some sen­tences can’t be unread.

    Right. I’m not sure whether I’d rather not have read Mark Sanborn’s email to his mis­tress or rather not have watched the How to Shave Your [Body­part] videos. Unfor­tu­nately, I did both.

48. brian stouder said on June 24th, 2009 at 8:21 pm

    And now, Detroit-style!, come the steamy e-mails, at least from the gov­er­nor to the object of his desire

    You have a par­tic­u­lar grace and calm that I adore. You have a level of sophis­ti­ca­tion that so fit­ting with your beauty. I could digress and say that you have the abil­ity to give mag­nif­i­cent gen­tle kisses, or that I love your tan lines or that I love the curve of your hips, the erotic beauty of you hold­ing your­self (or two mag­nif­i­cent parts of your­self) in the faded glow of the night’s light — but hey, that would be going into sex­ual details …”

    Every free-lance photo seller (I don’t feel like look­ing up the cor­rect spelling of paparazi) worth his or her salt must be in a mad scram­ble to find images of this women with the ‘two mag­nif­i­cent parts’!!

    For the record, I think it was cow­ardly to resign from the GOP cam­paign com­mit­tee, but not from his governorship.

    If any­one of you or I sim­ply dis­ap­peared and missed 7 days of work, so that no one — includ­ing our fam­ily — had any idea where we even were, we’d sim­ply be fired, as he should be if he won’t resign.

49. nancy said on June 24th, 2009 at 8:25 pm

    Do you think “hik­ing the Appalachian trail” will become a euphemism? E.g.: “Dar­ling? Would you like to hike the Appalachian trail?” Bet­ter: “I sus­pect you have been hik­ing the Appalachian trail with some­one else.”

50. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on June 24th, 2009 at 8:52 pm

    STOP — STOP — STOP — not the two mag­nif­i­cent parts line again.

    How about the euphemism “dri­ving the Argen­tine coast”?

51. MarkH said on June 24th, 2009 at 9:09 pm

    Brian just touched on some­thing in his last graph: as a gov­er­nor (or any elected offi­cial), isn’t it the eas­i­est thing to do, to just half-bake a plau­si­ble rea­son for any type of “offi­cial” visit to any­where, get a lying staff on board and make it stick? Rather than leave a gap­ing hole in your offi­cial sched­ule with no way to explain, so no lie your staff comes up with has any ring of truth? I mean, how hard is it to just estab­lish a “fact-finding mis­sion for how latino eco­nomic stim­u­lus pro­grams can work in my state”??? A few retail store and fac­tory vis­its with your con­cu­bine, er, lia­son, uh, OFFICIAL GUIDE (yeah, that’s it!) and mis­sion accom­plished. Stu­pid peo­ple all around.

52. nancy said on June 24th, 2009 at 9:15 pm

    Rachel Mad­dow just asked the State reporter who con­fronted him if he “seemed OK” — with just that sub­text. This goes beyond stu­pid into will­ful self-destruction.

53. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on June 24th, 2009 at 9:21 pm

    Ana Marie Cox pro­posed, even before the announce­ment — what if he’s just flip­pin’ insane? She of course did not flip, so to speak.

    There is a huge degree of dis­so­ci­a­tion going on here, which i sup­pose can often be an occu­pa­tional haz­ard in polit­i­cal life; in a pro­saic way, he’s just got an ampli­fier and reverb hooked up to the same softly spo­ken set of ratio­nal­iza­tions that guys say all the time — “i was try­ing to help, we were both want­ing to encour­age each other’s mar­riage, things just hap­pened, we couldn’t stop.” You’ve gotta have some­one in your life to snort and say “Mark, c’mon, things just hap­pened? Like in a dream, you real­ized your pants dis­ap­peared? C’mon, man up; you did the wrong thing and you didn’t want to stop and you worked at mak­ing it “just hap­pen” again — right?”

    Which, may i add, is often greeted with vast, tear­ful relief and silent nods. But if you got no one in your life who can say that to you, the voices you hear inside your tiny lit­tle cra­nium do a great job of the old sit­com lit­tle guy on each shoul­der sce­nario, with the one in the red suit always prevailing.

54. Jolene said on June 24th, 2009 at 9:24 pm

    I like “dri­ving the Argen­tine coast” as a euphemism. I’ve been see­ing “hik­ing the Appalachian trail” sug­gested as an all-purpose excuse rather than a euphemism for illicit nookie. But, hey, both are good addi­tions to the lexicon.

    Mark San­ford is not, appar­ently, an expe­ri­enced liar.

55. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on June 24th, 2009 at 9:26 pm

    Mean­while, the Iran story should lead every­thing, EVERYTHING, but we have only audio, not visu­als for what (may have) hap­pened, while there’s this great visual of a sorry, sad, ulti­mately non­signif­i­cant story from a national POV.

    Still wait­ing for the next round of cell pix, but the fact that ALL the Iran Twit­ter feeds are down tells me this is as awful as the one call that got through to CNN made it sound.

56. coozledad said on June 24th, 2009 at 9:47 pm

    How about “Your are­o­las have always been like Oreo-las to me, babe.”

    My wife didn’t like it either.

57. brian stouder said on June 24th, 2009 at 10:06 pm

    This story will have legs (so to speak) and will become a navel-gazing/thumb sucker (sorry)…because the news­pa­per (the State) has had the e-mails since Decem­ber(!!), and found the woman some time ago. Why did they not, like, you know — REPORT this stuff?

    Aside from that, regard­ing the lex­i­con — I pre­fer “Dar­ling — let’s do the Patag­o­nia; no — I’ve a bet­ter idea — storm the Falklands!”

58. beb said on June 24th, 2009 at 10:14 pm

    we’re sup­posed to believe that the gov­er­nor flew to Argentina, was com­pletely out of con­tact with his aides just to schtupp his mis­tress? The naked hik­ing cel­e­bra­tion was more believ­able than that. I mean, it’s a long ways to go to have sex. Surely there were closer, pri­vate places they could have gone to? Las Vegas, maybe? How could the gov­er­nor imag­ine that he could dis­ap­pear for a week and not have some­one come look­ing for him. Has he lost his mind? I’m more will­ing to believe he ran off to have some covert face lift­ing so he’d be all hand­some for his prez run — not that that’s going to hap­pen now.

59. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on June 24th, 2009 at 10:25 pm

    It sounds like he went down there “to break it off,” which those of us who have talked friends off these crum­bling ledges know means go “to see if there’s still a chance.” Which no doubt his wife already knows, or has fig­ured out. She changed the locks two weeks ago and said “fig­ure out what you want to do, and let me know through either my lawyer or my father, but do not try to sell me any more tired ratio­nal­iza­tions, by phone, e-mail, or in person…got it?”

    Either the lady in Argentina said “non, finis,” when he got there, or the nego­ti­a­tion was still under weigh and seek­ing har­bor when shots across the bow were fired from back in SC, and he came to a par­tial real­iza­tion of “holy cr4p, i’m quasi-delusional” — and came home.

60. Danny said on June 24th, 2009 at 10:26 pm

    Danny, you may just call me “Your Ineffability.”

    Okay, if you say so: “You’re an effin’ hill-billy.”

    Well, speak­ing of euphemisms, going down there “to break if off” sounds awfully sus­pi­cious, Pastor!

61. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on June 24th, 2009 at 10:28 pm

    As Axel says a few times in “The Deer Hunter,” Effin’ Eh.

62. Danny said on June 24th, 2009 at 10:33 pm

    Man, I can’t type or think tonight. I had to edit that last post three times. Being up since 2AM does not agree with me.

63. moe99 said on June 24th, 2009 at 10:34 pm

    Jeff tmmo, what do you think of Jenny Sanford’s press release?

    South Carolina’s First Lady Jenny San­ford released the fol­low­ing state­ment Wednesday:

    “I would like to start by say­ing I love my hus­band and I believe I have put forth every effort pos­si­ble to be the best wife I can be dur­ing our almost twenty years of mar­riage. As well, for the last fif­teen years my hus­band has been fully engaged in pub­lic ser­vice to the cit­i­zens and tax­pay­ers of this state and I have faith­fully sup­ported him in those efforts to the best of my abil­ity. I have been and remain proud of his accom­plish­ments and his ser­vice to this state.

    I per­son­ally believe that the great­est legacy I will leave behind in this world is not the job I held on Wall Street, or the cam­paigns I man­aged for Mark, or the work I have done as First Lady or even the phil­an­thropic activ­i­ties in which I have been rou­tinely engaged. Instead, the great­est legacy I will leave in this world is the char­ac­ter of the chil­dren I, or we, leave behind. It is for that rea­son that I deeply regret the recent actions of my hus­band Mark, and their poten­tial dam­age to our children.

    I believe whole­heart­edly in the sanc­tity, dig­nity and impor­tance of the insti­tu­tion of mar­riage. I believe that has been con­sis­tently reflected in my actions. When I found out about my husband’s infi­delity I worked imme­di­ately to first seek rec­on­cil­i­a­tion through for­give­ness, and then to work dili­gently to repair our mar­riage. We reached a point where I felt it was impor­tant to look my sons in the eyes and main­tain my dig­nity, self-respect, and my basic sense of right and wrong. I there­fore asked my hus­band to leave two weeks ago.

    This trial sep­a­ra­tion was agreed to with the goal of ulti­mately strength­en­ing our mar­riage. Dur­ing this short sep­a­ra­tion it was agreed that Mark would not con­tact us. I kept this sep­a­ra­tion quiet out of respect of his pub­lic office and rep­u­ta­tion, and in hopes of keep­ing our chil­dren from just this type of pub­lic expo­sure. Because of this sep­a­ra­tion, I did not know where he was in the past week.

    I believe endur­ing love is pri­mar­ily a com­mit­ment and an act of will, and for a mar­riage to be suc­cess­ful, that com­mit­ment must be rec­i­p­ro­cal. I believe Mark has earned a chance to res­ur­rect our marriage.

    Psalm 127 states that sons are a gift from the Lord and chil­dren a reward from Him. I will con­tinue to pour my energy into rais­ing our sons to be hon­or­able young men. I remain will­ing to for­give Mark com­pletely for his indis­cre­tions and to wel­come him back, in time, if he con­tin­ues to work toward rec­on­cil­i­a­tion with a true spirit of humil­ity and repentance.

    This is a very painful time for us and I would humbly request now that mem­bers of the media respect the pri­vacy of my boys and me as we strug­gle together to con­tinue on with our lives and as I seek the wis­dom of Solomon, the strength and patience of Job and the grace of God in help­ing to heal my family.”

64. Danny said on June 24th, 2009 at 10:43 pm

    Classy, dig­ni­fied, grace­ful. Bet­ter than he prob­a­bly deserves.

65. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on June 24th, 2009 at 10:55 pm

    IMO, she’s say­ing — i didn’t do the dam­age, and i’m not going to be the one who ends it. If you don’t want to try, don’t blame me, but don’t wait for me to call a lawyer because i have sons to raise, and some dam­age to repair. Get some help, prove you have even a hint of under­stand­ing of what you’ve done, and we can talk and maybe even pray together. But please don’t explain any­thing to me.

    One gets the impres­sion he’s done lots of explain­ing to her over the last few months, and she’s not respond­ing with “oh, i see, honey,” and he can’t deal with that. So two weeks ago, she said “here’s the deal, but i’ll do my part to the extent it takes to let you do your job,” and he went all “oh, i’m so hurt by that,” and ran to The Argen­tine at the ear­li­est inter­val … where it sounds like he might have heard “what, are you kid­ding me? No, i’m stay­ing right here.”

    And like the prover­bial ass between two piles of hay, he stood baf­fled in Buenos Aires until the vol­ume of emails on his Black­berry sunk in and swayed him to … wher­ever it is he’s stand­ing right now. Which is a lonely place of his own making.

    While she has her dad sit­ting at the door of a house on Sullivan’s Island, pos­si­bly with a shot­gun in his lap. Could be rock salt, might not be. San­ford and paparazzi may con­sider them­selves on notice.

66. basset said on June 24th, 2009 at 11:00 pm

    I keep hear­ing a Blue Meanie…

    “Ar-gen-tee-na?”

67. Danny said on June 24th, 2009 at 11:10 pm

    The trial sep­a­ra­tion thing kind of reminds me of a (now) funny story from when I was a teenager and told my high school sweet­heart that it would be best if we would break up … for the sum­mer, only, of course.

    You see, there was this other girl who I really liked…

    Any­way, not only did I NOT get to go out with this other girl, but I got a good butt whoopin’ from my old girlfriend’s new boyfriend.

    It may not sound funny, but I do laugh think­ing about some of the dumb things we did as teens.

    The moral of the story is don’t break up for the sum­mer? Don’t get your butt whooped? I dunno. Some­thing like that.

68. alex said on June 24th, 2009 at 11:16 pm

    I believe whole­heart­edly in the sanc­tity, dig­nity and impor­tance of the insti­tu­tion of marriage.

    Oh yeah, Jenny? My man don’t fuck out on me. I’d say what we’ve got going beats the hell outta yours. Go back to Wall Street and sell your com­modi­ties to another bidder.

69. del said on June 24th, 2009 at 11:24 pm

    Danny, I like what Mor­gan Freeman’s char­ac­ter says to the parole board in The Shaw­shank Redemp­tion — some­thing about want­ing to go back in time to when he was 20 and whoop his own butt.

70. Jolene said on June 24th, 2009 at 11:27 pm

    It’s not sur­pris­ing, Danny, that this inci­dent calls up teenage mem­o­ries, as it seems to me that San­ford is act­ing exactly like a lovesick teenager. I feel sorry for him, to some extent. He’s fallen in love, it seems, and is act­ing in a way that is con­sis­tent with his polit­i­cal per­sona – that is, a sort of roman­tic ide­al­ist of the right. What he doesn’t seem to real­ize is that the oppor­tu­nity to fall in love is all around us and that, if you are mar­ried, you’re sup­posed to walk away. You can’t always fol­low your feel­ings any­more than, in pol­i­tics, you can always stick to your ideals.

71. moe99 said on June 25th, 2009 at 12:33 am

    Alex, you cas­ti­gate Jenny, you are fling­ing it at me. I fig­ured I was will­ing to stay in the mar­riage because of two things: 1) the chil­dren and 2) the mar­riage itself, the most sacred vow in pub­lic that I felt I had ever taken, super­sed­ing even my oath as I was sworn in as an attor­ney. Some­one once told me that the great­est gift a man can give his chil­dren is to love his wife, and this still rings hard and true with me.

    Again, you cas­ti­gate Jenny, you are throw­ing rocks at more women than you know.

72. Jolene said on June 25th, 2009 at 12:54 am

    Yeah, I didn’t get the ratio­nale for bust­ing on Jenny either. Her state­ment was a lit­tle over­wrought for my taste, but, based on what lit­tle we know, it doesn’t seem that she’s done any­thing to jus­tify ver­bal assaults.

    Granted, she is prob­a­bly not a pro­po­nent of same-sex mar­riage, but I’m not sure that we gain respect for gay mar­riage by sneer­ing at straight peo­ple whose mar­riages fail.

    Your remark seemed to lack your usual deft touch, Alex.

73. Dexter said on June 25th, 2009 at 1:47 am

    cap­tion time for this photo:

    http://​thinkprogress​.org/​w​p​-​c​o​n​t​e​n​t​/​u​p​l​o​a​d​s​/​2​0​0​9​/​0​3​/​s​a​n​f​o​r​d​-​p​i​gs.jpg

    my entry: “No, don’t be silly — YOU’RE not the pig that’s I’m greas­ing this weekend!”

74. Dexter said on June 25th, 2009 at 2:18 am

    elec­tronic mail – mail sent electronically —  — –

    “One from the gov­er­nor read: “I could digress and say that you have the abil­ity to give mag­nif­i­cent gen­tle kisses, or that I love your tan lines or that I love the curve of your hips, the erotic beauty of you hold­ing your­self (or two mag­nif­i­cent parts of your­self) in the faded glow of the night’s light — but hey, that would be going into sex­ual details.”

    Sev­eral res­i­dents said they were dis­ap­pointed in San­ford. “
    —Chicago Tri­bune account

75. ROgirl said on June 25th, 2009 at 6:54 am

    Why do these guys immor­tal­ize their indis­cre­tions by express­ing their thoughts in writ­ing? I mean, come on, have their brains really stopped func­tion­ing by that point and they’re just float­ing on the intox­i­ca­tion of lust? Is it the ulti­mate in com­part­men­tal­iza­tion? Hey, I am the Gov­er­nor of South Car­olina and I can wield power the way I see fit and still send sala­cious emails to my hot South Amer­i­can mistress.

76. alex said on June 25th, 2009 at 7:20 am

    On reflec­tion that was pretty nasty of me. Please par­don my lapse in judg­ment, y’all. That was an alcohol-fueled knee-jerk reac­tion on my part.

    What got my dan­der up when I read her words is that if she’s been run­ning Mark Sanford’s cam­paigns she’s been com­plicit in sell­ing snake oil.

77. coozledad said on June 25th, 2009 at 7:34 am

    Alex: I thought as a wife of one of C Street’s van­guard of the Biblethumpers, she was just sup­posed to shut up and let it all wash over her. After all, as a child of the liv­ing God, Mark can do what­ever the hell it is he wants.
    http://​www​.rolling​stone​.com/​p​o​l​i​t​i​c​s​/​s​t​o​r​y​/​9​1​7​8​3​7​4​/​g​o​d​s​_​s​enator
    This group’s cozi­ness with Opus Dei is a lit­tle unset­tling to me. They’re still dig­ging up mass graves in Spain from the days when these pricks were in charge.