No, you read that right, and this is not the National Enquirer. Republican Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina, who for the past year has had a torrid affair with a married Argentinian woman, and who decided to split for a week to see her without telling anybody -- apparently had this affair as a result of the Obama administration destroying everybody's lives, according to class clown Rush Limbaugh.
See, Rush's twisted logic here is that Obama has screwed up so badly that the governor did the only sensible thing he could do -- leave the country (and his state legally leaderless) to go get some strange in Argentina! Well, I certainly see the connection there, don't you? Especially since the affair started last summer when then-Senator Obama was only campaigning for President. Maybe Sanford was clairvoyant?
You can see the vid here in Jason Linkins' article on the HuffPo:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/06/25/limbaugh-blames-sanfords_n_220993.html
Boggles the mind, doesn't it?
Friday, June 26, 2009
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Gov. Sanford Goes Walkabout
** UPDATE ** Well, it appears that Gov. Sanford was in Argentina (for a week) to see his mistress instead of hiking the Appalachians. Another possible 2012 Republican presidential candidate implodes! The only good thing is that his wife didn't stand up there beside him and let him humiliate her in public like some political wives have done. Mrs. Sanford, get smart and divorce the jerk posthaste. As for the governor, I think he should resign, not because of the affair (after all, being a Democrat I would have to also defend those of my party who have committed similar moral crimes), but because leaving the state (and the country) without telling his family, his staff, his security detail or his lieutenant governor where he was going shows a horrible lack of judgment and created a constitutional crisis as the state was left without legal leadership in case of an emergency. The people of South Carolina deserve a governor who doesn't get so distracted by the notion of seeing his girlfriend that he forgets to hand over the keys to somebody before he scrams out of the country. Governor Sanford should resign for the good of the people of South Carolina.
****
Mark Sanford, the Republican governor of South Carolina, apparently decided to take a powder and left South Carolina leaderless in the process. When his state legislature did the sane thing and overrode his asinine decision not to request $700 million in federal stimulus money the state was entitled to, Sanford apparently couldn't deal and decided to take his shalaleigh for a little stroll in the Appalachian Mountains. For six days. Without telling anybody -- not his wife, not his Lieutentant Governor, not his security detail -- no one. He was not even reachable by phone.
Now if Mr. Sanford were a plumber, this would be a little weird but not particularly dangerous. If you encountered a plumbing problem you could just call the next guy listed in the Yellow Pages. But Sanford is a governor. He has responsibilities in case of emergencies, and his deciding to pout his way through the Appalachians after his legislative defeat is indictive of somebody who apparently lacks the ability to handle the stresses of his job. In his absence his responsibilities should fall to the Lieutenant Governor, who was not told that the Governor would be gone. What if the Lieutenant Governor had decided to go walkabout at the same time?
Well, I do believe Gov. Sanford is going to have some 'splainin' to do if he wants to run for President in 2012. Such as, how you can say you have "family values" when your family doesn't know where you are for a week (and over Father's Day weekend, too)? And how you can leave your state leaderless for a week so you can "clear your head"? And this guy wants to be President? Can you imagine what would happen if Obama just disappeared for a week without the Secret Service, without telling Michelle or VP Joe, all because Congress did or didn't pass some bill or another and he was pissed off about it?
The fact that the Governor was so surprised that this was a big deal when he finally got in touch with civilization is disturbing and says a lot about the guy's sense of responsibility. Next time you folks down there in S.C. get a chance, you might want to hire somebody who's somewhat more serious about doing his job!
****
Mark Sanford, the Republican governor of South Carolina, apparently decided to take a powder and left South Carolina leaderless in the process. When his state legislature did the sane thing and overrode his asinine decision not to request $700 million in federal stimulus money the state was entitled to, Sanford apparently couldn't deal and decided to take his shalaleigh for a little stroll in the Appalachian Mountains. For six days. Without telling anybody -- not his wife, not his Lieutentant Governor, not his security detail -- no one. He was not even reachable by phone.
Now if Mr. Sanford were a plumber, this would be a little weird but not particularly dangerous. If you encountered a plumbing problem you could just call the next guy listed in the Yellow Pages. But Sanford is a governor. He has responsibilities in case of emergencies, and his deciding to pout his way through the Appalachians after his legislative defeat is indictive of somebody who apparently lacks the ability to handle the stresses of his job. In his absence his responsibilities should fall to the Lieutenant Governor, who was not told that the Governor would be gone. What if the Lieutenant Governor had decided to go walkabout at the same time?
Well, I do believe Gov. Sanford is going to have some 'splainin' to do if he wants to run for President in 2012. Such as, how you can say you have "family values" when your family doesn't know where you are for a week (and over Father's Day weekend, too)? And how you can leave your state leaderless for a week so you can "clear your head"? And this guy wants to be President? Can you imagine what would happen if Obama just disappeared for a week without the Secret Service, without telling Michelle or VP Joe, all because Congress did or didn't pass some bill or another and he was pissed off about it?
The fact that the Governor was so surprised that this was a big deal when he finally got in touch with civilization is disturbing and says a lot about the guy's sense of responsibility. Next time you folks down there in S.C. get a chance, you might want to hire somebody who's somewhat more serious about doing his job!
Monday, June 1, 2009
Pro-lifers miss the point of Dr. Tiller
Like most people who engage in the debate over abortion, pro-lifers miss the whole point behind the need for doctors like Dr. George Tiller, who performed late-term abortions in Kansas and was murdered yesterday.
I have only known one woman who had a late-term abortion, but I will briefly relate her story. She was a co-worker of mine many years ago. She married in her late 30's, and she and her husband, knowing her child-bearing years were few, set about to start a family. She got pregnant and went happily through 5 1/2 months of pregnancy, until she had a sonogram (this was in the early days of HMOs, when they were seriously stingy about doling out services). The sonogram unfortunately showed that the fetus had abnormalities so severe that there was no way it would be viable outside the womb. In reality, Mother Nature would normally have caused an early miscarriage to happen with abnormalities of this kind, but for whatever reason the pregnancy had continued. In addition, carrying the fetus to term would only mean that a C-section would be in order, and the fetus would die a slow, painful death.
My co-worker lived in Missouri; she had to go through the Christmas season pregnant, and after the holidays flew to Texas to have a late second-term abortion procedure. This is a married woman who desperately wanted children; this was NOT someone who simply waited too long to decide they didn't want to be a mother. This was a fetus that unfortunately was not a perfect, cherubic little child who could be easily adopted; this fetus had zero chance of living outside the womb and, if a doctor such as Dr. Tiller had not intervened, would have died a horrible death instead of the much less painful procedure the doctor performed (sorry, but I'm not going into details here, you'll just have to trust me that it was a preferable way to die, given that death was inevitable).
Pro-lifers never understand that THIS is why we need to keep abortion legal. I frankly don't care if somebody who is an adult got pregnant by accident -- as far as I'm concerned abortion is not to be used as birth control by irresponsible adults. It's people like my former co-worker, or the 10-year old who was raped by her father, that I care about. That's why abortion must remain legal. From what I understand, Dr. Tiller's practice was not centered around women who just took too long to decide they didn't want a baby, but around those unfortunate and sad cases when a late-term abortion is medically necessary or is simply the more humane choice of the two options, as in the case of my former co-worker. This is the point that pro-lifers don't understand, but they need to. If they did perhaps we wouldn't have had the tragedy of Dr. Tiller's murder in the first place.
I have only known one woman who had a late-term abortion, but I will briefly relate her story. She was a co-worker of mine many years ago. She married in her late 30's, and she and her husband, knowing her child-bearing years were few, set about to start a family. She got pregnant and went happily through 5 1/2 months of pregnancy, until she had a sonogram (this was in the early days of HMOs, when they were seriously stingy about doling out services). The sonogram unfortunately showed that the fetus had abnormalities so severe that there was no way it would be viable outside the womb. In reality, Mother Nature would normally have caused an early miscarriage to happen with abnormalities of this kind, but for whatever reason the pregnancy had continued. In addition, carrying the fetus to term would only mean that a C-section would be in order, and the fetus would die a slow, painful death.
My co-worker lived in Missouri; she had to go through the Christmas season pregnant, and after the holidays flew to Texas to have a late second-term abortion procedure. This is a married woman who desperately wanted children; this was NOT someone who simply waited too long to decide they didn't want to be a mother. This was a fetus that unfortunately was not a perfect, cherubic little child who could be easily adopted; this fetus had zero chance of living outside the womb and, if a doctor such as Dr. Tiller had not intervened, would have died a horrible death instead of the much less painful procedure the doctor performed (sorry, but I'm not going into details here, you'll just have to trust me that it was a preferable way to die, given that death was inevitable).
Pro-lifers never understand that THIS is why we need to keep abortion legal. I frankly don't care if somebody who is an adult got pregnant by accident -- as far as I'm concerned abortion is not to be used as birth control by irresponsible adults. It's people like my former co-worker, or the 10-year old who was raped by her father, that I care about. That's why abortion must remain legal. From what I understand, Dr. Tiller's practice was not centered around women who just took too long to decide they didn't want a baby, but around those unfortunate and sad cases when a late-term abortion is medically necessary or is simply the more humane choice of the two options, as in the case of my former co-worker. This is the point that pro-lifers don't understand, but they need to. If they did perhaps we wouldn't have had the tragedy of Dr. Tiller's murder in the first place.
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