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Monday, October 05, 2009

Bu..bu...but they told him he was SPECIAL and CHOSEN!
Posted by Jill | 6:01 AM
Mark Sanford simply won't go away:


Gov. Mark Sanford said he was a broken man after admitting an extramarital affair in June, a revelation that required him to pick up the pieces of his administration and fend off efforts to remove him from office.

In the 100 days since he returned from his secret trip to Argentina to acknowledge his affair, Sanford's schedule shows - and observers agree - the Republican governor has turned his focus to the state's moribund economy.

But that new focus came only after weeks of vacations and apologies and a campaign to defend Sanford from questions about his use of state planes.

[snip]

What has Sanford done over the last 100 days?

- He has been on out-of-state trips or vacations a fifth of the time.

- He has spent another 16 days traveling the state to speak to civic and community groups, generally opening his speeches with an apology.

- He has toured a handful of state manufacturing plants and small businesses and also visited with job-creation and technical school programs.

- He moved, by an executive order, a program for developmentally challenged infants and toddlers to First Steps, an early education program created by his Democratic predecessor.

Sanford's official schedule typically contains no more than three or four items a week.

The never-ending Mark Sanford saga is interesting not just because it demonstrates a man with one hell of a pathological narcissism monkey on his back, but also one whose very belief system has been shaken to its core. It's easy to understand why pathological narcissists would be attracted to the doctrine put forth by "The Family" (of which Sanford is a member), because it elevates "clean slate Christianity" to an entirely new plane, one where there is an even smaller "elite" than the huge number of worldwide Christians, one that is, according to David Coe, heir apparent to the group's founder Douglas Coe, exempt from the rules of conduct according to which the rest of us are obligated to live.

Jeff Sharlet, in an excerpt from his book:
Attempting to explain what it means to be chosen for leadership like King David was -- or Mark Sanford, according to his own estimate -- he asked a young man who'd put himself, body and soul, under the Family's authority, "Let's say I hear you raped three little girls. What would I think of you?" The man guessed that Coe would probably think that he was a monster. "No," answered Coe, "I wouldn't." Why? Because, as a member of the Family, he's among what Family leaders refer to as the "new chosen." If you're chosen, the normal rules don't apply.

The article linked above is worth reading in its entirety, because it is a portrait of a man who has yet to believe that his spiritual leaders have lied to him when they said he was part of a special elite for whom the rules don't apply. If you thought Mark Sanford had already had his complete breakdown, you haven't seen anything yet.

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Wednesday, July 22, 2009

Sanford to SC residents: I have the divine right of kings, so STFU
Posted by Jill | 4:21 AM
Now in the arrogance of Mark Sanford and John Ensign, we're seeing the arrogance of the spiritual system followed by "The Family", a system in which you can embezzle, cheat on your wife, misuse state funds, rape little girls, rape little boys for that matter, and it's all OK because God has told you that he's chosen you to be special.

Didn't we used to call people who heard voices in their heads "schizophrenic"? There are medications for this, you know.

But in South Carolina, Gov. Mark Sanford has remembered his special status as One Anointed By God to be part of the He-Man Woman Haters Club at the C Street house and is telling South Carolina reporters to fuck off:
Gov. Mark Sanford said it was time for the state to move on from the weeks-long debate about whether he should stay or resign following his admission of an extramarital affair.

Sanford spoke at the Greer office of the Department of Motor Vehicles to discuss concerns about a federal ID program, his first public appearance in weeks.

The governor said he had apologized for his mistake and was working to win back the trust of S.C. residents. A handful of people applauded and shouted their agreement.

“I’m moving forward and I think the people of South Carolina are ready to do the same,” Sanford said, adding to the media: “I’m going to move on with my life. The question is, will you?”

Because after all, apologizing for misusing state funds that could be used to help the citizens of his state is enough. Because he is so special that there's nothing else he has to do. He is a member of "The Family" after all, and

If the voters of South Carolina are stupid enough to buy into this crap, then they deserve to live in a state with a 50% public high school graduation rate and where only 35% of the population has ever graduated high school, where nearly one in six people lives in poverty, where the teen pregnancy rate is increasing and they think the answer is MORE "abstinence education". The problem is that they are raising their children in these conditions, and that they want to perpetrate their fascist ChristoCryptoFascist governor on the rest of us.

(h/t)

UPDATE: Oh, and by the say, 670 people a week lose their health insurance in South Carolina while Mark Sanford was flying business class to dip his wick in Argentina. As I said -- they vote for him, they deserve him.

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Sunday, July 19, 2009

Oh Just Shut the Hell Up Already
Posted by Jill | 2:05 PM
Remember when the Republicans were the party of personal responsibility? Remember when they talked about how the government shouldn't help people because they should actively pull themselves up by their bootstraps? Remember when they talked about how anyone could find a job if they Just Looked Hard Enough?

Isn't it peculiar, then, how the brand of Christianity that these moral scolds and hypocrites practice allows them to be passive vessels for God's Will. THEY don't have to actively do anything to help themselves. THEY don't have to have any personal responsibility, because God will do it all for them.

Mark Sanford is the new poster boy for conservative passivity masquerading as personal responsibility:
South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, still clinging to office after admitting to an extramarital affair, wrote in an opinion piece released Sunday that God will change him so he can emerge from the scandal a more humble and effective leader.

"(W)hile none of us has the chance to attend our own funeral, in many ways I feel like I was at my own in the past weeks, and surprisingly I am thankful for the perspective it has afforded," Sanford wrote in the opinion piece distributed statewide for Sunday newspapers.

[snip]

In the opinion, Sanford vows to work with lawmakers he's long fought and cites scripture and his faith in God – just as he's done in his few public appearances since admitting the affair.

"It's in the spirit of making good from bad that I am committing to you and the larger family of South Carolinians to use this experience to both trust God in his larger work of changing me, and from my end, to work to becoming a better and more effective leader," he wrote.


Asshole. Changing one's life is WORK. It's HARD FUCKING WORK. We've all known those people who spend years in therapy to find out that the reason they're always late is because they're angry at their fathers -- but then the world owes them "understanding" when they're late. NO. Once you know from whence your problems stem, it's your RESPONSIBILITY to use that knowledge to MAKE CHANGES IN YOUR LIFE to overcome your lousy childhood. Stopping at "I know why" isn't enough. So-called "Christians" like Mark Sanford who hide behind a Great White Alpha Male in the Sky and a Jewish carpenter who got nailed to a cross 2000 years ago because he dared to say we should be nice to each other and take care of the poor to absolve themselves of having to do anything active to change their lives deserve nothing but our contempt.

Mark Sanford could do us all a favor and stop with the press conferences already. He's a spiritual welfare queen, asking God to do all the heavy lifting for him while he sits in the governor's mansion collecting a state paycheck.

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Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Around the blogroll and elsewhere: Let's Pile On Mark Sanford Edition
Posted by Jill | 2:39 PM
Because "hiking the Appalachian trail" is a euphemism we haven't heard before.

Blue Gal pens a letter to Mrs. Sanford.

Blue GIRL says she too has sometimes felt like running off to Argentina. (I, however, really AM in Cologne.)

Drifty and Maggie bring Teh Funny.

Jesse: Evasion: Ur doin it wrong.

And finally...

Melissa watched the presser. Another good God-fearin' Repulican specifically targeted by Satan, as if Lucifer and God play Skee-ball down in Keansburg and the ol'forked tail one gets extra bonus points by getting Christians to fall off the chastity and fidelity wagon. You'd think by now we could put the culture wars to bed, after seeing sanctimonious family-values Republican after sanctimonious family-values Republican get up and do one of these confessions. Funny....not all of us feel driven to cheat on our spouses. In fact, if I were going to guess, I'd say that secular people probably cheat LESS, because most of us allowed ourselves to sow our wild oats when we were young, whereas these people had to marry the first person they slept with.

Christianity as a spiritual system may or may not be about loathing your own presence as a sexual being. But Capital-C-Christianity as it's pontificated by social values conservatives in this country is about fear and loathing -- of themselves and of everyone else who doesn't need to believe in a big nasty punishing Great White Alpha Male in the sky, or a get-out-of-jail-free card, to have a code of moral values.

The hell with Mark Sanford, and Newt Gingrich, and Larry Craig, and the bunch of them. A bunch of lying sacks of shit -- id-driven two-year-olds who want to pass laws controlling the behavior of other people because they can't control their own.

Now will the media stop listening to these nimrods?

And a message to the President: With this latest example of how the proponents of the Defense of Marriage Act treat their own marriages so cavalierly, isn't it a great time to seriously work on repealing it? After all, gays are not the threat to the marriage of Republicans. The Republicans are doing a fine job of it all by themselves.

UPDATE: Great Orange Satan: Fox News identifies Sanford as a Democrat. Because reality has a decided liberal bias, and arbitrarily changing Sanford's party affiliation in the crawl is just creating an "alternative fact."

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Tuesday, June 23, 2009

And this guy is supposed to be a presidential contender?
Posted by Jill | 3:12 PM
I read at HuffPo the other day that South Carolina Governor and supposed 2012 GOP hopeful Mark Sanford was missing, and that no one seemed concerned. Supposedly he went hiking on Father's Day, which is weird enough, but no one had seen or heard from him.

It's hard to tell one freak show from another these days, with the publicity hogs from Pennsylvania who actually think people give a shit about the very public end of their marriage and the gravy train that pimping out their kids has put them on -- and now this. There's the obvious family values joke about a good Christian Southern Republican who skips out on his family on Father's Day, but as Blue Girl notes, something smells very fishy about this:
Today is day five since South Carolina Governor Marc Sanford went missing, and I have a bad feeling about how this is all going to turn out, so until he is located and known to be safe, I will be refraining from snark and mockery.  

Too much of this story simply doesn't add up.

First he leaves the mansion alone in a state-owned SUV without his security detail, presumably telling his wife he needed to "get away from the kids" so he could "write something"  and that at least sounds  somewhat plausible - he had an editorial that appeared on Father's Day in one of the state's major  newspapers, bemoaning  the ten vetoes the state legislature overrode the last day of the session, and decrying the need to reform the legislature because it effectively checked his wingnuttery.   Except anyone who has ever contributed anything to a newspapers editorial page knows that the op-ed page is laid out days in advance.  In my experience, an op-ed column for Sunday has always had a Wednesday deadline.  I have never contributed so much as an LTE to the paper that ran his op-ed, but I can't imagine that the deadlines are that much different at the Post and Courier than they are in every other dead-tree paper in the country.  

After the story broke on Monday, the Lt. Governor called the Governor's office and demanded to be allowed to speak to him.  Of course that wasn't possible, because no one knows where he is or what he is doing and he has turned off his cell phones.


I'm betting on it being something having to do with a closet, perhaps one with a door somewhat ajar. What do YOU think is going on?

UPDATE: Yesterday MSNBC's First Read was reporting that Sanford will report to work today. But if Sanford thinks this is going away just because he shows up for work, guess again. Because later on, that same source noted that Sunday, the day Sanford was supposedly hiking the Appalachian Trail, was "Naked Hiking Day." Now, I don't care if Sanford wants to participate in Naked Hiking Day, though ditching your family on Father's Day to hike naked seems a bit, well, unusual for a family-values Republican. But even that explanation isn't putting the story to bed:
WYFF News 4 has received exclusive information from sources who say they have information about Gov. Mark Sanford's whereabouts during a mysterious absence over the past several days.

Sanford's wife Jenny said she last talked to him on Thursday, and though she didn't know where he is, she said she wasn't concerned. She said he had left to have time to write.

Joel Sawyer, communications director for the governor's office, then said the governor had been on the Appalachian Trail. Sawyer said staffers heard from Sanford on Tuesday morning and the governor plans to return Wednesday.

Sawyer said the governor is surprised by all the attention.

On Tuesday, sources told News 4's Nigel Robertson that a state vehicle is missing and was tracked down, not to the Appalachian Trail, but to the Hartsfield-Jackson Airport in Atlanta.

Sources told Robertson that a federal agent spotted Sanford in the airport boarding a plane. Robertson was told that the governor was not accompanied by security detail.

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