So that's where Mark Sanford was, but why are we surprised?

South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford cheated on his wife. Hardcore. He didn't cheat on her in South Carolina, he didn't even pop up to North Carolina for a bit of afternoon delight, no, Mark left the freaking continent.

Sanford, who looks like what would happen if you spliced the DNA of Bert with that of a carrot, went AWOL last week but everyone's suspicions were raised when his wife said she "didn't know where he was" but wasn't the least bit worried. Republicans rushed to defend one of their rising stars - Sanford has been listed as a potential Presidential candidate in 2012 - but even they had to know something was amiss. Some spoke of how Sanford was supposedly out hiking, and "being a man, something lubrals (liberals) wouldn't understand". Well, if being a man means leaving the your wife and four children behind while you desecrate your marriage thousands of miles away, I don't know if that's what I want to be.

Now their defense is that Sanford "made a mistake" and that it's "no worse than what Clinton or Edwards did" (ah, the old Slick Willy chestnut), but they're wrong. They're very wrong. The actions of Bill Clinton and John Edwards were nothing short of despicable, no one is doubting that, but Clinton and Edwards never ran on a platform of family values, Christian morals, and never pushed sexual minorities to the fringes of society with their rhetoric. Sanford has made no secret of his distaste for homosexuals, bisexuals, or even sexually active heterosexuals who may not be married. He is going to get a lot of stick for this incident, and he deserves every bit of it. There is no room to defend this hypocritical lying sack of crap, there isn't.

Soon we will hear them climb atop their towers and cry foul of the "liberal media", the same liberal media that includes The State newspaper, Columbia's daily, which received the erotic emails exchanged between Sanford and his lover as early as last December and elected to withhold them, in essence, protecting a conservative official from public scorn. All the outlets are blocked off, Sanford is impossible to defend. You can't blame this one on Obama, who, I may add, is a dedicated husband and father. He's also a Christian. He is what Sanford claimed to be.

Furthermore Sanford was a harsh critic of Bill Clinton and voted for the President's impeachment following his affair in the 1990s. Sanford actually resorted to name calling, though he was never as bad as Lindsay Graham. Sanford may not have lied under court oath, but he did lie. He lied under religious oath to his wife (you know, something about a Preacher, an alter, a Church, lots of people watching), he lied to his family, he lied to his staff, and he lied to South Carolina. By his own standards, he is unfit for leadership.

No, this isn't a good time to jump on Mark Sanford, that happened a long time ago.

One person in the Observer editorial forum asked if we could send NC Gov. Bev Perdue for a hike and transfer Sanford here, you still want that? Bev might be stupid, but she has nothing on Sanford.

I'm not a Democrat, in fact I'm not very fond of them, but thanks to people like Mark Sanford, John Ensign, Larry Craig, and Mark Foley (all supposedly Christian men who ran on a platform of morals only to prove themselves hypocrites) this country is going to become a one party state with the Democrats in charge.

Well, at least the Democrats try. The SC Libertarian party is probably loving this, and they have every right to be. Every right to be.

North Carolina elections 2008

They're really, really bad.

I don't like either of the candidates running for Governor, and I don't know enough about the third (Mike Munger, a Libertarian) to pass judgment on him.

Pat McCrory is largely inoffensive, he doesn't do much at all as Mayor of Charlotte. The arena scandal made a lot of people, including myself, very angry though. I guess you can say he helped develop the area, but at the same time he's held us back in areas such as alternative energy. He does (or did) hold a position at Duke Power which may create a conflict of interest. Charlotte has two Nuclear Power Plants in the area and to be honest they scare the crap out of me.

Bev Perdue has done nothing but attack McCrory which has rubbed me the wrong way. She's gotten really nasty about it and to be honest I may well be tempted to vote McCrory because of it, and I'm a friggin' Green. That's not how we act in North Carolina, Bev, you were raised better than that.

Robin Hayes is up to his typical bullcrap. Hayes helped pass CAFTA and cost North Carolina, and specifically his district (NC 8) lots of jobs. Hayes did this at the urging of Bush and other Republican top brass, his vote passed the bill. That day Hayes showed that his loyalties lie with the Republican Party of the United States, and not the people of North Carolina. I'm voting for Larry Kissel.

The US Senate race is the worst, Kay Hagan (D) and incumbent Elizabeth Dole (R) are acting like ― for lack of a better phrase ― two catty bitches. There's an ad out where Dole's camp metaphorically calls Hagan a bitch (not that Kay has done anything to disprove that theory), and Hagan's ads just throw mud at Dole. Though the DSCC has some hilarious anti-Dole ads out. I hate both of them. Where's Beth Troutman when you need her?

Walter Dalton would be a better Lt. Governor than Robert Pittenger, most people probably don't know anything about this office, heh.

Ugh. This is why we need to let Greens, Libertarians, and Constitutionalists debate with the Democrats and Republicans, what a hot mess this is.