Thursday Kibble: Sanford, Gingrich, Thomas, Russian Brides, et al.

South Carolina Republicans are jumping ship on Gov. Mark Sanford over his adulterous liaison and misuse of public funds, with ten out of twenty-seven GOP senators now calling for his resignation.  Versha Sharma at Talking Points Memo provides the schadenfreude.  Conservative columnist William Bennett says Sanford should stop "embarrassing himself" and that "he is telling us way too much."  (Speak for yourself, Bill.  I'm still enjoying the sordid details.)

On Fox News Channel, a guest appearing on The Glenn Beck Program is hoping for another terrorist attack against America.  (This seems to be an evolving theme with some Republicans - and it will bite them on the ass.)  Crooks and Liar's David Neiwert snaps the leash.

Former house speaker Newt Gingrich says this about America's health insurance providers:  "They have done it well."  (If by "it" he means lining their pockets at the expense of patient care, then yes, they've done that extremely well.  But no, Gingrich is just sucking corporate teat.)  And he gets his facts wrong, according to Think Progress.

Ads for Russian Brides have been appearing all over ScienceBlogs, which is particularly offensive in light of their recent (and worthwhile) Silence is the Enemy campaign.  DrugMonkey and GrrlScientist object to the practice of accepting ads from companies that sell female flesh in the guise of finding wives for men too lazy (or scary) to obtain a mate in the usual way.  

The Delhi High Court has just overturned Indian Penal Code 337 that criminalized consensual gay sex.  Rex Wockner explains why this is marvelous news for equality advocates around the globe:  "India is the world's second-most-populous nation: 17.22 percent of all humans live there. That's 1,165,760,000 people."  
 
Todd S. Purdum of Vanity Fair has written a delicious expose about Sarah Palin.  With gossipy anecdotes and insider observations, the article shows why the Alaska governor was such a disaster as a vice-presidential candidate.  Some light is shed on Palin's delusions of grandeur:  More than once in my travels in Alaska, people brought up, without prompting, the question of Palin’s extravagant self-regard... When Trig was born, Palin wrote an e-mail letter to friends and relatives, describing the belated news of her pregnancy and detailing Trig’s condition; she wrote the e-mail not in her own name but in God’s, and signed it "Trig’s Creator, Your Heavenly Father."  And I like Purdum's take on the political climate in Alaska:  It is culturally conservative: the local newspaper recently published an article that asked, "Will the Antichrist be a Homosexual?"  It is in this Alaska - where it is possible to be both a conservative Republican and a pothead, or a foursquare Democrat and a gun nut - that Sarah Palin learned everything she knows about politics, and about life. It was in this environment that her ambition first found an outlet in public office, and where she first tasted the 151-proof Everclear that is power.  (You really should read this in its entirety.)  Purdum's piece has prompted catfighting infighting among Republican strategists.  Over at Video Cafe there's a clip of Purdum discussing his article on Hardball.

Veteran correspondent Helen Thomas and CBS reporter Chip Reid take issue with the Obama administration's lack of transparency.  Their questions annoy White House press secretary Robert Gibbs.  Raw Story has video of the encounter.  (When Helen is riled, pit bulls tremble.)  Bill Dupray at The Examiner compares Gibbs to "a smart-ass 16 year old kid" and says he should resign.  (I second that.  Gibbs is consistently unprepared, and he's as snide as any spokesperson Bush trotted out to the public.)  Thomas also called Prez O. on the carpet for praising "the power of the images of brutality coming out of Iran" while at the same time refusing to release images of our own brutality against prisoners at Gitmo.  Obama brushed her off.  Glenn Greenwald at Salon notes the hypocrisy.

Comments

[Aggie]

The collie in the picture has more sense than any of the people mentioned in the stories, except perhaps the Delhi High Court.

[Bee Girl]

Dresses better, too.