Mark "MIA" Sanford positions himself in the 2012 GOP wingnut derby. 3PM (ET) UPDATE: AH, YET ANOTHER WINGNUT CHEATER-LIAR

Trust Fox Noise to misidentify the man of the hour, or scumbag of the day, as a "D." MediaMatters reports that the Noisemakers did eventually correct the identification to an "R."

ABC News reports (also see ENSIGN UPDATE below):

South Carolina Governor Sanford Admits Affair, Resigns As Chairman Of Republican Governors Association
Governor Explains The Reasons Behind His Unannounced Disappearance

Bu HUMA KHAN and ERIC NOE

Apologizing profusely to his staff, family and friends for disappearing unexpectedly, a teary-eyed South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford said he had been "unfaithful" and admitted affair with a woman in Argentina.

"I've been unfaithful to my wife," Sanford said at a press conference this afternoon, adding that his affair was with a "dear, dear friend from Argentina."

The affair, Sanford said, began "casually" but "last year developed into something much more."

"We developed a remarkable friendship over those eight years and then as I said about a year ago it sparked into something more than that," Sanford explained. "I have seen her three times since then, during that whole sparking thing. ... It was discovered five months ago and went into serious overdrive."

Sanford also offered his resignation from his position of chairman of the Republican Governors Association.

An emotional Sanford said he needed a break from his job after what he called an "exhausting" battle against President Obama's stimulus bill.

"What I've found in this job is that one desperately needs a break from the bubble," he said.

"When you live in the zone of politics, you can't ever let your guard down."

He said his wife was aware of his affair before he left for Argentina, and that the family had been trying to work through the situation for "about the last five months."

"What I did was wrong, period, end of story," Sanford said.

"I'm committed to trying to get my heart right... this was selfishness on my part."

On whether he was separated from his wife, the governor responded: "I don't know how you want to define that. I'm here, she's there. I guess in a formal sense we're not."

He did not identify the woman with whom he'd been having an affair, but when asked whether he was alone during his five-day trip to Argentina, Sanford said, "obviously not."

Sanford did not answer a question from reporter asking him whether he would resign as governor.

[Article continues onsite.]

Now that we know the truth (we think), back to our original report . . .

Inside a black SC state SUV found parked at Columbia (SC)'s Metropolitan Airport is a parking pass for the school attended by the children of Gov. Mark Sanford-- you know, the kiddies left without their daddy on Father's Day while he hiked the Appalachian Trail on national Naked Hiking Day. Or maybe not.

"Originally, it was believed Sanford took a hike on the Appalachian Trail."

-- from reporter Jack Kuenzie's account, as posted

on the WIS-TV (Columbia, SC) website

by Ken

So what do you think, is "hiking in the Appalachians" or "hiking the Appalachian Trail" going to take its place alongside "wide stance" in the growing stock of wink-wink euphemisms contributed to the language by the wingnuts-in-high-places fraternity? Of course it's only now that we know what it's a euphemism for: apparently, a week in Argentina.

[Afterthought: And what do you suppose "a week in Argentina" is a wink-wink euphemism for?]

Argentina? Well, the governor is supposed to be back in his office today, so I'm sure he'll explain it all. (A press conference is scheduled for 2pm ET.) But according to the WIS-TV account, he told a CNN reporter that he was going to go hiking on the Appalachian Trail but at the last moment decided instead to go someplace "more exotic." That, apparently, would have been Buenos Aires. I guess it's kind of a lucky thing he happened to have his passport with him when he set out for the Appalachians.

Maybe it's just me, but I love that line of reporter Jack Kuenzie's: "Originally, it was believed Sanford took a hike on the Appalachian Trail." You always have to worry when a reporter takes a dive into the passive voice. "It was believed"??? Is there anybody on the planet who believed the governor was hiking the Appalachian Trail? Okay, there are the usual slaves to wingnut propaganda, who'll believe anything they're told by the puppeteers as long as it's crazy and dishonest enough. But is there anyone with a normally functioning brain who believed?

Of course reporter Kuenzie knows the story about the story about hiking the Appalachian Trail. As he's about to report, it was just one of the series of lies told by the governor's staff in an effort to cover up . . . well, we don't rightly know yet what the loony scumbag is actually covering up. First, though, instead of reporting, he offers a wee bit of spin. "It was believed." Indeed.

"The plot continues to thicken in the case of Gov. Mark Sanford's mystery trip.

Originally, it was believed Sanford took a hike on the Appalachian Trail. But Wednesday morning, CNN reported that Sanford told a reporter with the State newspaper at the Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport in Atlanta that he was returning from a seven day visit to Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Sanford said he had not been hiking along the Appalachian Trail, as his staff said in a Tuesday statement to the media. "

Here are some things we do know. Across the country governors have awakened to the harsh reality that in the wake of the economic meltdown, the buck stops in their bucks-challenged statehouses. Can you believe, some of them seem to have been surprised? (Anyone heard from Louisiana's Bobby Jindal lately?) But for the ones who knew it was coming, it didn't help that much. There wasn't much they could do to cushion the blow. They have to keep their states functioning.

Of course this is trickier for the wingnut-loon governors who don't believe in government, and therefore are hard put to see why exactly it depends on them to keep their states running. Goodness knows, even in better economic times many of them were doing their darnedest to disable their state governments.

Among wingnut governors, the still harsher reality of the new economic reality has been even harder to face. After all, these are folks who didn't bring much to public service but some combination of raw ambition and a satchelful of mindless wingnut policy bromides that should have been finally discredited through the catastrophic adventure in crony capitalism that was the Bush regime.

AT ANY RATE, THEY SHOULD HAVE BEEN DISCREDITED

This should have been the one redeeming takeaway from the otherwise unmitigated horror of eight years of Bush-Cheneyism. For eight nightmare years, those loony far-right bromides, which are so useful when the loons are in opposition and trying to persuade voters feeling dispossessed that someone really cares about them, even thought they don't, were used for actual governing, and the results couldn't have been more disastrous.

There was a teaching opportunity there, a chance to help average Americans see how empty and dangerous all that far-right bombast is, and how worse-than-useless it is applied to actual governing. Democrats could have come out of the 2008 starting gate with their rhetoric blazing. But not many did, least of all the presidential nominee, who apparently felt that such talk would have been perceived as "divisive" and held against him. It was probably a good choice for his personal popularity, but now that personal popularity (which is dropping in any case) is almost impossible to translate into support for a political agenda.

Meanwhile, it's every wingnut governor for him/herself as state budgets have to be closed with some minimal level of government services provided. One fine example is Minnesota's gutless windbag Tim Pawlenty, indicating his intention to hightail it out of the governor's chair as soon as he can git. This, he presumably hopes, will give him a chance to wipe his fingerprints off the wreckage he'll be leaving behind in St. Paul and the state.

Another wingnut-loon governor who sees himself as potential 2012 presidential timber is none other than Mark Sanford, perhaps the most devious and dangerously reality-resistant of the bunch. Last week, as the state's legislature wound down to the closing of its spring session, the legislators faced up to the reality that while they may be every bit as ideologically blotto as the governor, somebody has to actually conduct the state's business, and keep it functioning. This is reflected in the ten gubernatorial vetoes they overrode, including the governor's much-ballyhooed refusal to accept federal stimulus money.

It could all be a coincidence, of course, but this is the point at which the governor did his disappearing act. I'm sure Buenos Aires is lovely this time of year. But it's really very naughty of a sitting governor to just disappear for a week. It would be a lot easier for him at this press conference today if he could show visual marks of having been nearly eaten by Appalachian Trail wolves.

Last night Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow (with in-the-dark SC Lieut. Gov. Andre Bauer as a guest), and Jon Stewart all feasted on the story. (Telling moment: Guest Lewis Black recalling to Keith that he had been asked what comics were going to do once George W. Bush was gone from the scene.) Even Fox Noise was reporting that the South Carolina capital was in something of a tizzy over this bizarre episode.

Naturally, as suggested above, there is comradely wingnut blowback. I was looking yesterday at the comments appended to Chris Cillizza's washingtonpost.com report of the phony-baloney announcement that Governor Sanford wasn't missing at all but was hiking the Appalachian Trail -- on Naked Hiking Day weekend. While those online comments were by and large appropriately derisive and/or scathing, but then there were the occasional gems like this one:

gfafblifr wrote:
"Some considered Sanford's disappearance odd for someone seen as a likely presidential candidate in 2012." with some being defined as the editorial staff who wrote the article. Why is it unusual for someone to get out and relax after working hard?

Um, gfafblifr, has anyone pointed out to you that you appear to be seriously insane? It would be nice to think that no even semi-responsible adult disappears for five days without either his family or his coworkers know anything about his whereabouts. When it comes to the governor of a state, unless he can do some mighty fine 'splainin', he better be packing his resignation. And take with him the staffers who covered for him, stonewalling even the lieutenant governor who was trying to figure out who exactly was in charge.

It was also pointed out that if a Democrat had pulled a stunt like this, the Right-Wing Noise Machine would have been in a dudgeon such as to make the noisemakers forget their BS grandstanding over Iran.

Dallas138 wrote:
A sitting governor going incommunicado on his own for five days, without his staff knowing where he was? What, pray tell, could possibly be "odd" about that? Don't all governors do a vanishing act every now and then and disappear from the face of the earth for five days at a time? Oh. So OK, they don't. Well, drop it anyway, because he's a Republican, so it's politically incorrect to question anything he does, especially in a state like South Carolina. Too bad he's not a Democrat, as then he could be savaged by the legitimate press, as well as by Fox and National Hate Radio for being a less-than-stable politician who can't handle the pressures of office.

Ah yes, the eternal Wingnut Crunch: so many lies to tell, so little time to tell them, despite their 24/7 unencumbered, seemingly unlimited access to the Infotainment News Media.

2ND UPDATE: SPEAKING OF WINGNUT CHEATER-LIARS,
CREW FILES AN ETHICS COMPLAINT AGAINST ENSIGN

BREAKING: CREW files Ethics Complaint Against Sen. John Ensign (R-NV). His "stunning abuse of power shocks the conscience"

Submitted by crew on 24 June 2009 - 12:07pm.
Today, CREW filed a complaint against Sen. John Ensign (R-NV) with the Senate Select Committee on Ethics and a complaint with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) against his campaign committee and leadership PAC, based on activities surrounding his affair with a campaign staffer, Cynthia Hampton. The complaint can be found here.

On June 16, 2009, Sen. Ensign announced he had engaged in an affair with Ms. Hampton, who was married to Doug Hampton, the Senator’s administrative assistant. The affair began in began in December 2007 and ended in August 2008.

The complaint details a number of Senate ethics rules and legal violations.

First, Mr. Hampton has alleged Sen. Ensign terminated him and his wife for reasons related to the affair. If true, the senator likely engaged in discrimination on the basis of sex in violation of Title VII, and Senate Rule 42, which incorporates the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to Senate employees and prohibits discrimination based on sex. At least two members of Congress previously have been investigated for sexual harassment, including former Sen. Bob Packwood (R-OR) and former Rep. Jim Bates (D-CA).

Second, Ms. Hampton apparently received a severance payment directly from Sen. Ensign when she was terminated from the campaign committee and PAC, but neither committee reported any in-kind contribution by the senator. In addition, if Sen. Ensign paid Ms. Hampton more than $5,000 he may have made an illegal excessive contribution to the PAC. Knowingly failing to report a contribution of over $25,000 is a violation of criminal law.

Mr. Hampton apparently was paid $6,000 upon his departure, purportedly for vacation time. If this actually was some sort of severance payment, Sen. Ensign’s office may have misused official funds.

CREW has alleged Sen. Ensign violated the rules prohibiting improper conduct that reflects upon the Senate by abusing his authority as the head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) to hire and pay the Hampton’s son as an intern at the NRSC and by claiming to have been blackmailed by Mr. Hampton, without reporting the alleged crime to law enforcement authorities.

[More onsite.]

So for now, it's Ensign and Sanford neck and neck, while Pawlenty searches for someone -- preferably female -- to have sex with him.

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