Legion World Forums LEGION COMPANION The Anywhere Machine So, South Carolina has a guy win the US Open...

only to have a truly stupid, moronic a-hole as a governor. Now, we knew this putz was off for some reason when he took pigs to the state house and in a state that is severely hurting turned away monies that people that had lost jobs through no faults of their own needed, but...

How, as a Governor of a State, do you think you are going to be able to sneak off, nail your honeypot OVER FATHER'S DAY WEEKEND, NOT TELL ANYONE WHERE YOU ARE...AND GET AWAY WITH IT?

Ya know, SC takes a lot of crap. People outside the state still tend to think of us as dirt eating slavery wanting inbred idiots...and this a-hole gives them all the ammo they need.

And, if this costs him the governorship, then, we get the idiot in waiting, Bauer. From dumb to dumber.

words cannot express my joy at the thoughts of this.

chicken manure in a bucket can, though.

Apparently Fox News first identified Gov. Sanford as a Democrat.

This is the second time that Fox News misidentified a Republican who was acknowledging misconduct as a Democrat.

Rickshaw, I never thought of you as dirt-eating. You are no Matter-Eater Lad!

Honestly i suspected an affair on the first mention of the story. ONLY A booty call to Argentina I'm disappointed. He didn't even have to pay like Spitzer.

At least he wasn't caught cross dressing in an airport men's room, sitting on a legislative page boy's lap, and paying an underage prostitute dressed as a German prison warden to commit S&M acts while typing his acceptance speech for an honorary degree in moral philosophy from Oral Roberts U.

I personally look forward to the day when my political party will be well-established enough for its first nationally-covered sex scandal.

And hey-- When our Mayor got caught fooling around, his lust-object's real last name turned out to be "Breedlove." Beat that, Dixieland.

Amusingly, the official story was first that he was hiking on the Appalachian Trail.

Then it was brought up that it was Naked Hiking Day on the Appalachian Trail, a day for the nudists and naturists to let it all hang out, and the official story changed to 'nobody knows where he is, but he isn't Naked Hiking!'

At least he'll be able to keep his position if it was an Argentinian woman. Infidelity (and dumping wives that get sick or old, trading up for the women they've been cheating on them with) is practically a rite of passage in D.C. (among both parties).

Louisiana's Vitter got a standing ovation from his colleages in the Senate after winning re-election after admitting to being one of the DC madam's clients.

Larry Craig and that dude from Florida (who sent naughty texts to his aides) were run out of office and stripped of their committee seats for *legal* shenanigans with men. (And shenanigans that didn't involve actually having sex! One got entrapped in a highly dubious police sting in a bathroom, the other talked dirty to some guys of legal age, and was promptly labeled a pedophile!)

'The only things that can kill a politicians career is to be caught with a dead woman, or a live man...'

Well, I don't really give a hang about his political career. My state never gets much publicity, but when it does, its almost always negative. Very few good things ever get reported about us.

Then, we have something that may be not much of real importance except to one person and his family, a national championship, only to have it knocked off the front page by our butterfaced bimbo chasing governor who put himself in a sex scandal.

And the truly bad thing is...I suspect he did it deliberately for just the reasons mentioned above. People like to forgive folks and applaud when they apologize for screwing up. It makes them "human, with faults just like us" or some such crap.

I wouldn't vote for him to be a pipe plug at a waste sanitation station. I don't care what he does in his private life. He wants to throw away a marriage and his family, more fool he. But he tracked his mud into our house.

Barney Frank seemed to survive well enough.

The times they are a changing. lol.

I'm starting to get tired of these weepy confessions and liking slimedog Clinton's more and more. He practically crows. "Well of course I hit it, you would too if you could but you can't because you ain't me. Hell, what's the point of being Pres if you can't hit on the pretties."

Okay, that's not a real quote. More of a mind read.

Forget about throwing them out of office. Just snip the problem in the bud, so to speak.

As for the cheating: Argentina has some HOT women. This might be forgivable but

it was FATHERSDAY!!!

Freaken knucklehead should have his father's license revoked. Makes me think violent thoughts.

As for South Carolina, there aren't two people outside the state (except maybe in Argentina) that will even remember this a fortnight from now, let alone where it occurred. Hell, I can't think of a single thing South Carolina is known for, outside of Clemson and Charlestown. Georgia, N. Carolina, Alabama... I can tell you bunches without googling once but S. Carolina? nada.

All I know is, I'm gonna' throttle the next defender of any politico caught pants-down who carries on and on about "Oh, teh evol media robbing the poor politicos of their precious precious PRIVACY!"

I'd like a dollar for every time in the last year that I've had to whiz in a cup for a total stranger just for the privilege of being considered for some piece of crap barely-above-minimum-wage job. Yeah, I could really afford to get stoned out of my gourd nightly on nine bucks an hour. :rolleyes: Whatever.

The power elite and its lost PRIVACY can kiss my big fat jobless rear end.

I actually feel pretty bad for you there Rick. South Carolina can't catch a break these days. I know you're proud of your home and it must really gall to have these buffoons in the National news.

I agree with you. It's a non-story now. Missing Governor found, he's alright and now he can get back to work. His family, his community and all his affiliations need to sort out their own business on their own terms. If we're doing it for Iran then it's certainly fair to grant S.Carolina the same courtesy.

It may be that a divorce is hurtling at him like a runaway train but have you noticed how powerful his wife (soon to be ex I'm presuming) is sounding in those news bites? She sounded a hell of a lot smarter than the Sarracuda and was pretty in-your-face about family values.

True belief, media skills and good political instincts. Watch out for her.

for what it's worth, Rick, I don't hold your guv against you, your state or your party. And congrats re: US Open.

I can't speak for everywhere, but the SC coastal towns have a good rep among snowbirds/retirees up here.

Sanford, Spitzer, Blagovitch (sp?), Ensign... the list goes on, on both sides of the aisle. I myself do try to avoid painting the "other side"'s transgressors as worse. Spitzer, my former guv (and the only one I ever met), was just as much a hypocrate as the "family values" GOPpers who cheat.

The current system encourages the dirty dawgs who can pontificate like saints. A large chunk of the systematic fault (but NOT the blame for what any given individual does - that's all theirs) is our own, I fear, for expecting pols to practice what they preach in a system which marginalizes and/or destroys a legit straight-shooter.

either we need to accept that dirty dawgs are going to run and win, or we need to be prepared to work overtime as citizens to really clean up the system, and not merely to follow one single political ideology's formula. But as long as people are more concerned with American Idol and Simon Cowell (whoever he is? I keep hearing the name), don't hold your breath.

Do we treat the "hypocrites" worse than others or is it just political party that matters here?

I cheat therefore I am Clinton?

I love my Fannie May Frank?

What next? I rob therefore I'm okay? I murder therefore I'm okay.

We play this "hypocrite" thing up way too much IMO and permit it to divert from the real point while just perhaps permitting ourselves opportunity to feel holier than thou.

Who in history has never been a hypocrite? Not being one can get more criticism than being one. Carter said he "lusted in his heart" and gets torn to shreds even by his own party, whereas depends upon what you mean by "is" Clinton gets a free pass?

Rather a hypocrite than a liar. More damage is done by those trying to hide a lie (Tricky Dick) than by those willing to come forward quickly when caught red handed.

The only ones looking at this as a S. Carolina issue are the S. Carolinians. For the rest of us it's just your turn. If they took a poll asking what state this guy was governor of, the response would be "what governor?"

Although it is an issue for South Carolinians, there is the issue of his going missing and not being accessible during that time. Nowadays, the job of being the executive, whether president, governor, or mayor, requires one to be on-call 27/7.

If by 'free pass,' you mean a taxpayer-funded $60 million dollar investigation that dragged on for years and the second impeachment in US history, which failed by like 5 votes, then yeah, he totally got a 'free pass.'

Lying is dumb, *especially* in such a public world. These days it's beyond dumb, since so much of our communications are subject to surveillance and capture by companies and governments. (Sanford probably didn't expect his private emails to 'Maria' to get read on TV, for instance, *but he should have* since he voted for the damn bill that allows every word an American types or speaks into a telephone to be stored for years and parsed for 'threats to America' by bored NSA workers.)

Clinton was dumb. Gary Hart was dumb. Sanford was dumb. Ensign was dumb. Spitzer was dumb. Gingrich was dumb. McCain was dumb. Edwards was dumb. Guiliani was dumb. Vitter was dumb. It's not a party thing, it's a 'dumb men who think that they are above the law and that they can screw around on their wives and keep it secret' thing.

Clinton was egregiously dumb, since it was pretty obvious that he'd been sleeping around for over a decade, and that Hillary knew all about it. He was just an idiot and got caught, and Hillary was pissed that she looked like a chump (since it's not politically correct to say, 'Yeah, he sleeps around. You don't think I let him in my bed, do you?" about your husband).

For the record, I actually think there's a huge difference between this situation, in which (from what I can gather) Sanford and his wife had been having marital problems for awhile, and he develops romantic feelings for a longtime female friend, and, for example, Craig's trolling for random men in bathroom stalls or Spitzer's hiring prostitutes.

Barring it being the case that he misused state funds or something, I agree that it's pretty much a non-story at this point. I actually don't buy the whole "He was inacessible for four days!" thing as anything more than a media exaggeration. It sure sounds like his staff was able to get ahold of him pretty quickly once the thing started to really blow up.

Hey Rick, I live in Illinois. I'd trade you Sanford for Blago any day! I do feel your pain, man. I don't think most people blame the state, or the city, for these things. As the posts on this thread indicate, we hold the person responsible. As someone who came from a broken home where his dad cheated on his mom and left her for another woman, I can say that this guy's performance at the press conference was nauseating. He tries to turn anger and outrage that he justly deserves into pity because he was just "following his heart" with "a dear, dear friend." Give me a break! That press conference alone is going to cost a year's therapy for his kids. And he was trying to cover this all up, as recently as getting off the plane yesterday morning when a reporter for the State (Columbia, SC) confronted him at the airport. It wasn't until the State made clear to him that they had his sexy emails that he decided he better fess up, and then he tried to make himself sound like a pure, innocent victim of Cupid's arrow. Makes me wanna puke.

I just noticed that under South Carolina law, he's technically due some jail time.


"SECTION 16-15-60. Adultery or fornication.

Any man or woman who shall be guilty of the crime of adultery or fornication shall be liable to indictment and, on conviction, shall be severally punished by a fine of not less than one hundred dollars nor more than five hundred dollars or imprisonment for not less than six months nor more than one year or by both fine and imprisonment, at the discretion of the court."

Not necessarily jail time. Note the "or" between the fine and jail time.

I wonder, though, does a South Carolina state law like that apply if the adultery and fornication takes place in a foreign country? What determines the violation of the law, the location of the fornication or the state residency status of the fornicator? Any constitutional law scholars out there?

If you re responding to me, as you seem to have ben, please re-read. You will see that I did slam both sides.

As the last admin demonstrated, your "next" is already water under the bridge.

Maybe. But I disagree.

If a pol preaches one thing and also legislates for it, all the while doing the opposite, then he/she clearly thinks he/she is free to make rules for the rest of us that he/she does not have to follow. If I am a hypocrite about something (and I probably have been), I have not done so in a way which compels anyone else to have followed my preaching. So a hypocrite in a position of authority is worse - and fair game for criticism.

I criticize Spitzer because he was supposedly cracking down on prostitution, yet was a John himself. Ensign and others shout about Family Values and often try to legislate them.... and look what happens.

It's not just sex. If I'm a bank exec (for example) that run for Congress, and I pass legislation to bind other banks knowing full well my own bank will likely avoid prosecution, or pass legislation to improve my friends' position over others, that's just plain wrong - it doesn't matter which party does it.

We may be so used to Halliburton and the like playing insider baseball that we're numb to it, but it's still wrong.

somebody clearly wasn't paying attention in the 1990s.

you want to see what a real "free pass" looks like? look at the 2000 election fraud, Iran/Contra, Blackwater, and W's securities fraud in the early 1990s. All worse transgressions than a stained dress.

Nope but thanks for the post.

Don't be too hard on yourself. It's a new millenium, maybe you'll do better.



Ooh, those winky things are fun.

As another South Carolinian, I just think it's funny personally. So many politicians stand for "family values", and you just know so many of them couldn't give a rip. Sanford, in particular, was always on the moral high ground and presenting himself as standing by whatever position he took no matter what. Case in point was his refusal to accept the state's economic stimulus money from Washington. This was such an unpopular move that the state's Congress voted to force him to accept the money and in turn overturned everything he vetoed no matter what the bill may have been.

I should clarify that I don't necessarily agree or disagree with the SC Congress here, but it was clear Sanford had lost them. Basically he was already a lame duck guv before this scandal. This was just overkill!

Personally, I hope his wife dumps him, leaves him penniless and starts her own political career as another poster suggested. I feel sorry for their kids, though, but I can't see the two of them making it work after how all this played out in public. You just don't cheat on your wife with another woman for a whole year and salvage that!

Rick, if it makes you feel any better, lots of us Connecticuters used to wear South Carolina hats back in high school--you've got the coolest mascot ever, after all

(FYI, its the South Carolina Gamecocks )

PS - When someone running for office starts getting all preachy about family values, it usually means he/she is a serious asshole.

And doing exactly what they're preaching AGAINST...

In the district where I grew up, our bachelor-long-rumored-to-be-homosexual Congressman used to run commercials every election cycle of himself walking around with people who were implied to be his family. He suddenly got married a couple of years ago about the time a lot of the scandals concerning gay members of Congress were breaking out.

I actually suspect that for each of these we hear about, there probably are quite a few that get away with stuff.