Young Turks: Schwarzenegger mistress tells all to Hello Magazine.

Glenn Beck blames Ed Schultz:

Newsy: Federal Judge upholds gay Judges Prop-8 ruling.

Rat and Cenk: Republicans are fiscally responsible? How about the missing 6.6 Billion dollars?

Republican teabaggingfest Debate:

• Jon: Second Republican debate is a success (via OneGoodMove).
• Young Turks: Who lost?
• Ed and Pap: Republicans dig their own grave with pathetic candidates.
• Newsy: Who came out on top?
• Ed: Who won? Part I
• Ed: Who won? Part II
• Lawrence O’Donnell: GOP Candidates stance on the economy is pure baloney.

Cenk: Teabagger Summer Camp for Kids.

Stephen: GOP would win Presidency if not for those meddling kids (via TalkingPointsMemo).

Newsy: Wisconsin Republicans further gains in their War on Workers.

Bill Maher with some New Rules.

Young Turks: TX Gov. Rick Perry claims he is a ‘Prophet’.

President Mittens:

• Mittens tells unemployed Floridians that he is unemployed.
• Maddow: Mitt’s own voter fraud, Part I
• Maddow: Mitt’s own voter fraud, Part II
• Kinda creepy. Mittens jokes that a waitress grabbed his ass (via TalkingPointsMemo):
• Stephen: The Business End (via OneGoodMove).

Newsy: NY on the verge of allowing gay marriage.

Cenk: Newt’s 3rd wife is behind his staff quitting.

Thom: The good, the bad, and the very very ugly.

Sam Seder: Catherine Harris calls in on behalf of her friend Michelle Bachmann.

More at the Weiner Roast:

• Mark Fiore: Suzie Newsykins on why Rep. Weiner made the world a better place.
• SCTV: A scandal worse than Anthony Weiner’s:
• Young Turks: Larry Flynt offers Anthony Weiner a job
• Olbermann: Does Boehner have his own sex scandal popping up? (Via Crooks and Liars.)
• Newsy: Weiner’s pension plan comes under fire
• Cenk and Rachael: Resignation.
• Newsy: Move over Rambama…the Weiner Dolls are here!
• Young Turks: Is Weiner a secret Muslim???

Sam Seder: Who are Santorum’s gay friends?

White House: West Wing Week.

Young Turks: Wingnut talk show host says to kill Blacks.

Ed and Pap: Sissy conservatives are afraid of EVERYTHING.

Texas Legislator: “Too many Hispanics in the Legislature (via Crooks and Liars).

Michelle Bachmann’s unrivaled extremism.

Cenk: Paul Ryan’s budget benefits his family.

Most Offensive Ad Ever:

• Most offensive ad ever? New Republican ad is like “Willie Horton on steroids” (via TalkingPointsMemo).
• Ed: Most ‘racist, sexist’ ad ever (via Crooks and Liars).
• Newsy: Attack ad called racist and sexist.
• Chris Hayes: Disgusting ad

Lawrence O’Donnell speaks with Lt. Dan Choi & Adam Green.

Sam Seder: Herman Cain suggests war is just like delivering pizza.

Young Turks: Did Bush have CIA try to destroy Juan Cole?

Last week’s Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza can be found here.

A power substation in Redmond, WA, about 2 miles from my house, experienced an explosion and fire today.

I’ve been watching the King5 live feed.

Thick black smoke is bellowing from the site—probably a mixture of burning insulation and transformer oil. In the bad old days, transformer oil contained PCBs. Nasty stuff. But I don’t think this substation is old enough to have the rally nasty stuff on-site.

It is probably unwise to use water to fight fires at electrical substations, so they brought in a foam truck, supposedly from Seatac.

They’ve dumped a third load of foam on the fire, and it is still going strong.

Oh…the humanity!

Update: A fourth application of foam applied from multiple angles seems to be doing the trick.

Update: MyNorthwest, “Puget Sound Energy tells KIRO Radio there are about 9,000 scattered outages in the area.”

Anthony Weiner just resigned, and as you can imagine I am disappointed:

I can think of one circumstance under which Rep. Weiner should resign: he makes a pact with Sen. Vitter and they both fall on their swords (figuratively) and go away.

Yes…I’m disappointed…primarily because Sen. Vitter is still a Senator.

Seriously…Weiner inappropriately flirted electronically. Vitter broke the law when he hired a prostitute, and broke his marriage vows when he fucked her. And he broke his mother’s heart when he wore diapers for foreplay.

And I’m disappointed because…well, we have lost our distraction. Weinergate was fun, with its rich raw material for double entendres. It’s hard to resist. It brought out the 14-year old in all of us. (Okay…maybe not all of us, but a lot of us.)

The scandal even emboldened those normally sexually repressed and anal retentive tweeters, bloggers, and media talking heads, who were suddenly given license to unleash upon their audience jokes and banter of a prurient nature that rivaled the most salacious tweets from Rep. Weiner.

Except that it was okay for them to do that because…well, it’s in the news, and his name is Weiner. And everyone else is doing it.

So now, I suppose, we will have to go back to talking about serious issues, like clawing our way out of this stubborn recession brought to us by eight disastrous years of George W. Bush. We’ll have to grapple with an enormous debt caused almost entirely by the Bush tax cuts and Bush’s reckless failure to fund his Most Excellent Military Adventures. And we now have to start asking whether Republican obstructionism in fixing the economic mess they created puts them in league with al Qaeda.

See why Weinergate was such a nice distraction?

So let’s go at it one more time…for old time sake. Let’s get some major Weiner distraction going in the comment thread….

The Seattle Chapter of Drinking liberally meets tonight, and there are a few topics likely to be raised over a pint: The Washington state gubernatorial race, Ron Sims’ return to Seattle (running for Gov?), the tunnel-ish vote, last night’s Republican debate, today’s Wisconsin Supreme Court decision, and today’s Prop. 8 ruling in California.

So please join us tonight for drinks, conversation, and even dinner at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E. Starting time is 8:00 pm, but a few folks show up around 7:00 pm for dinner.

Can’t make it? Drinking Liberally—Tacoma meets on Thursday, June 16th, 7:00pm at the Hub Restaurant.

Special Event:

Next week, our meeting will be moved from Tuesday to Wednesday (June 22) for a special Drinking Liberally with Living Liberally co-founder Justin Krebs.

Justin is on his “538 Ways to Live, Work and Play Like a Liberal” book tour.

Bring your copy of the book for Justin to sign. Copies of the book will be available for purchase at the event. We’ll meet at the usual spot.

Dear Reagan Dunn,

What a bold move you’ve made in blacklisting The Stranger from your AG campaign press releases. Is it a coincidence that Rob McKenna is also passing over The Stranger? Or is this a recent addition to the Washington State Republican Party platform?

I couldn’t help but notice that The Stranger was blacklisted after their recent acquisition of a certain potty-mouthed, muckraking, filthy, blogging asset from HorsesAss.

Just so you know, since Goldy’s departure, we gone to great lengths to clean up our act. We’ve not uncovered even a single Republican beating up his Mother, we’ve not exposed even one lethal mix of cronyism and incompetence in a top federal agency, we’ve eschewed asking pointed questions about potential brain damage in members of your caucus, and we have made (mild) jokes about Rep. Anthony Weiner.

Why, just recently we rebranded the blog:

The New HorsesAss…Same great flavor, 50% less “fuck.”

Besides that, at the New HorsesAss we are so totally not obsessed with the size of your enormous closets….

I think it’s clear that, of the two publications, HorsesAss is quickly overtaking The Stranger as the more palatable news source to people with language “sensitivities.” And I note we were the first media to break the news that you were running for AG.

So I was wondering…can you please send HorsesAss the press releases you used to send The Stranger?

Thanks in advance!

Darryl

Via Politico:

…Politico’s Ken Vogel has confirmed that former King County Executive Ron Sims has resigned his senior post at the federal department of Housing and Urban Development. He then wonders if it has anything to do with Monday’s decision by Gov. Chris Gregoire to retire after two terms. Sims lost to Gregoire in the 2004 Democratic primary.

An announcement of a gubernatorial bid from Jay Inslee is imminent. Would a Sims run throw a wrench into the works with the top two primary? I doubt it…we’ll still have a Democrat (probably Inslee) running against McKenna.

Could it be that Sims is really eying a congressional race in the 1st or 7th LD? My gut feeling is that Sims is much, much more interested in an executive position than a legislative position….

I watched most of the Republican debate this evening, and I’ve got to say, it is good news for Obama. He’ll win re-election.

This isn’t partisan wishful thinking on my part. I don’t make the same claim for the Inslee—McKenna race for Washington governor. I have my (very strong) preferences, but the outcome of that race is far from clear.

There isn’t much uncertainty left in the 2012 presidential race. Obama will win, absent of some sort of catastrophe.

You know, some scandal like Obama or Biden shooting a friend in the face, or outing a CIA covert agent, or firing numerous “non-compliant” U.S. attorneys, or getting busted lying about warrant-less domestic spying on Americans, or starting an illegal rendition program, or authorizing torture of prisoners, or misplacing palettes of $6.7 billion U.S. currency. Stuff like that.

I mean, that shit would absolutely sink any President’s chances at a second term…bar none (unless he is a Republican).

Here’s what I have learned from the debate. The Republican candidates (except for Ron Paul) are situated sharply to the right. Ron Paul is a Libertarian kook off in some other political dimension, with zero chance of making it through the primary, but the rest of the pack are extremists! Extremists of the teabagging ilk.

Seriously…at one point (here), a Mainstream Republican in the audience pointed out that he was feeling left out, and asked what candidates would do to take a balanced approach that would include him. Mr. Santorum started out the discussion by pointing out how he had eliminated welfare and set up the template for eliminating other entitlements, like Ryan’s proposals to end Medicade, food stamps. He then pointed out that the “Teaparty is a great backstop for America.” It came off more than a little cccccrazy and not at all inclusive of the mainstream Republican questioner. Bachmann was next and gave a slightly less crazy answer(!)—the Teabaggers R U, she said. Herman Cain started his answer pointing out that the Teabaggers are “not too negative and not too critical.”

Mmm’kay then…feel better, Mr. Mainstream Republican?

Another amusing example of candidates trying to out-crazy each other can be found in the extended exchange on NASA beginning at 7:00 here including the Newtster’s claim that “we’re not a developed country” because of NASA (8:06). What the fuck?

All of the candidates reject the TARP and auto bailouts (at 5:28). So fuck you Detroit! Even Herman Cain, who once support TARP, explains his flip-flop (2:10). The candidates spent most of this debate trying to out-wingnut and out-teabag each other. (Except Paul, who was just being himself—quite sensible about 40% of the time, a lunatic 40% of the time, and too incomprehensible to really tell 20% of the time.)

Everyone knows that candidates swing toward the extremes of their base during primaries and bounce back to the center during the general election. But things are different now. The Teabaggers have dragged Republican candidates not just to the right, but to the extreme right. As they maneuver to out teabag each other, their statements and positions are captured in audio or video in an easy-to-disseminate format.

In the mean time we have Barack Obama, who will not be seriously challenged in the primary. He’s a centrist. He sold himself as a centrist in 2008, and has pretty much lived up to it (or down to it if you are significantly to the left of Obama). He has a solid grip on the center, and he will sit there like a rock through the primary season while the Republicans joust over who is the teabaggiest of them all. The winner of the Republican primary will come out looking like Paul Ryan on Oxycontin wielding the mighty Loofah of conservatism, and will to battle his/her way back to the center, where Obama will be firmly entrenched.

A hope for the Republican might have been to adopt the Bush 2004 strategy: “TERRORISTS, TERRORISTS, EVERYWHERE!” But, oops…Obama killed bin Laden.

He’ll win.

It has long been suspected that Gov. Christine Gregoire would decline running for third term in 2012. Several media sources are now reporting that Gregoire will make her retirement “official” at a 10:00 AM press conference today.

Gregoire’s statement clears the way for an announcement from Rep. Jay Inslee (D-WA-01) that he will be running for the office. Expect an announcement soon.

Unless something really odd happens because of the top-two primary system, Fall of 2012 should bring us a choice between Inslee and State Attorney General, Rob McKenna (R).

Thom: What American has given up for the Bush tax cuts?

Patriotic millionaires have a Message to Congress: “Tax Me”.

Washington Supreme Court rules medical marijuana patients can be fired for testing positive for marijuana:

Liberal Viewer: FAUX News hates solar power?

Weiner Weird & Woeful Week:

• Maddow points out Santorum’s discordant positions on Weiner and Ensign.
• Ed: Can Weiner survive?
• Ann Telnaes: Weiner’s lies.
• Young Turk: Should Weiner resign?
• Second City: Plausible Deniability
• Jon Stewart’s Press Conference
• Bill Maher and Jane Lynch give dramatic reading of Weiner’s dirty messages (via Political Carnival):
• Sam Seder: Media becomes blind to all but Weinergate
• Newsy: Congress runs from twitter and Weiner scandal.
• Maddow: The post-Bill Clinton modern American political sex-scandal Consequence-o-Meter.
• Young Turks: Why do men cyber cheat?

Thom: Republicans hold U.S. and world economy ransom.

Mark Fiore: Dogboy and Mr. Dan tackle the debt ceiling.

Herman Cain:

• Ed: Anti-gay psychotalk from Herman Cain.
• Herman Cain on gays, guns and abortion
• Young Turks: Anti-Muslim comments on Glenn Beck by Herman Cain.
• Sam Seder: Herman Cain wants bills to be smaller than half a pizza.

Rep. Jay Inslee (D-WA-01) leads discussion on Northwest biofuels.

Thom: Is Jon Steward single-handedly bringing down FAUX News?

Patriotic millionaires for America.

Palin around with Craaaaaazzzzzy!!

• Ann Telnaes: Palin’s free ride
• Sarah Palin’s totally home moves from her totally-not-a-campaign tour (via Slog).
• Sam Seder: “Darn tootin’ I was right about Paul Revere!”
• Young Turks: are Palin and Bachmann at war?
• Newsy: Crowdsourcing Sarah.

Politico: Norm Coleman’s (R-MN) ping-pong diplomacy.

White House: West Wing Week.

Jobs:

• Young Turks: Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA) suggests government employees should “find a real job”
• Thom: Working for the government IS a real job.
• Ed: Some psychotalk from Rep. Paul Broun.
• Young Turks: Walmart allows unions…outside of U.S.
• Jon: One Nation, Overdrawn (via OneGoodMove).
• Cenk: Where are the jobs BILLS, Republicans?

Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA) on new doppler radar system.

Cenk: Is Rep. Vern Buchanan (R-FL) corrupt?

Thom: The vast Sesame Street conspiracy.

Rob McKenna announces:

Young Turks: Alabama’s draconian new immigration law.

Sam Seder: Rush pwned by caller on taxes, stimulus or oxy.

Newtany

• Young Turks: Newt in a world of trouble.
• Newsy: Staff calls it quits.

Pap: America’s new service society.

Young Turks: MA Rep. thinks crimes against illegal immigrants is okay.

Lawrence O’Donnell: Saying no to Norquist.

Maddow with Cenk: GOP now going after privatization of Social Security?

Thom: Kids say the darnedest things (about Bush and Cheney).

Mittens:

• Lawrence O’Donnell: Jennifer Granholm on Mitt Romney eating his own and flip-floping.
• Young Turks: Rush attacks Mittens over global warming.
• Welcome to Detroit Mitt Romney.
• Not the homecoming he expected.
• Young Turks: Mittens gay rights dodge.

Stephen: The Word — Hear no evil.

Young Turks: Rush mocks Cenk, the postmortem.

ONN: Antigay Senator’s horse affair caught on tape.

Bill Maher and Jane Lynch give dramatic reading of Weiner’s dirty messages (via Political Carnival).

Young Turks: Guilliani for 2012—irrelevant.

Thom: So…who’s pushing Granny over the cliff?

Maddow: Anti-choice nut-jobs shoots self in foot re: contraception.

Pawlenty Cuts Self:

• Cenk: Pawlenty’s disastrous economic “plan”
• Newsy: Pawlenty’s “bold” economic plan

Santorum wants constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage.

Last week’s Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza can be found here.

Stranger reporter David Goldstein, a.k.a. Goldy, provides more details on the incident last night at McKenna’s campaign kicker in which Goldy was blocked from attending the post speech press conference.

The campaign was specifically targeting The Stranger for exclusion, as the publication did not receive an invitation…and they essentially told Goldy as much. McKenna’s campaign communications coordinator Adam Faber told Goldy that “he wasn’t invited” and he couldn’t get in. Nevertheless, Goldy observed that Erik Smith, the right-wing whack-job who writes for Washington State Wire “also lacked campaign-approved credentials, but Reagan Dunn personally ushered him in.” So…it wasn’t that Goldy showed up uninvited (as did Smith)…it was that Goldy and The Stranger are specifically blacklisted.

Here is the audio Goldy captured beginning a few seconds into the conversation:

[audio:http://www.thestranger.com/images/blogimages/2011/06/09/1307655150-faber.mp3]

Goldy muses:

It’s an odd idea that candidates for public office (let alone an open government champion) should get to pick and choose which professional journalists get to attend their press conferences—and yes, that paycheck I get from The Stranger makes me a professional journalist, so suck it up. Granted, I haven’t exactly written glowing prose about McKenna, but politics is a tough business, and besides, it’s not like denying me access is going to stop me from writing.

An interesting irony in this exchange comes at about 1:50:

Goldy: And I could have been at the Tom Skerritt happy hour this evening…

Faber: Well…he looked great on that cover you had the other day.

Huh…So Adam Faber, the communications coordinator, reads (or at a minimum checks out the cover of) The Stranger—the publication his campaign has blacklisted?!?

What a bunch of hypocritical assholes!

There are warning signs here. The McKenna campaign, right out of the starting gate, is engaging in thuggery. “Open government champion,” my ass. This feel a hell of a lot like the tactics of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker….

Wouldn’t it be hilarious if the hooker that diapered and fucked Sen. Vitter was also sexting with Rep. Weiner?

(H/T Slog)

In 2004, King County Superior Court Judge William Downing issued a controversial ruling that same-sex couples could marry. The Seattle Times, sprung to action to find out where candidates in state-wide races stood:

…King County Councilman Rob McKenna, criticized the ruling’s wording as too broad and said its argument that there is no compelling state interest to deny marriage to two people in a committed relationship could leave marriage open to blood relatives or those practicing polygamy.

“It threatens to destroy all standards we apply to the right of marriage,” he said.

McKenna didn’t quite go as far as describing “man-on-dog” relationships, but the rest sure sounds like the nutty rhetoric of former Sen. Rick Santorum:

Every society in the history of man has upheld the institution of marriage as a bond between a man and a woman. […] In every society, the definition of marriage has not ever to my knowledge included homosexuality. That’s not to pick on homosexuality. It’s not, you know, man on child, man on dog, or whatever the case may be. It is one thing. And when you destroy that you have a dramatic impact on the quality — […]

The idea is that the state doesn’t have rights to limit individuals’ wants and passions. I disagree with that.

For what it is worth, the American Anthropological Association—you know, the folks who study humans and their cultures, cross-culturally and historically—take exception to both Santorum’s and McKenna’s narrow, conservative view of marriage and family:

The results of more than a century of anthropological research on households, kinship relationships, and families, across cultures and through time, provide no support whatsoever for the view that either civilization or viable social orders depend upon marriage as an exclusively heterosexual institution. Rather, anthropological research supports the conclusion that a vast array of family types, including families built upon same-sex partnerships, can contribute to stable and humane societies.

But back in 2004, McKenna could express his inner-Santorum because he had an easy out:

McKenna said that although he agrees with the Defense of Marriage Act, his personal opinions would not enter into how he argued a court case.

That was then…this is now. As Governor McKenna, Rob’s personal opinions would have a huge impact on the lives of Washingtonians. His opinion would help inform decisions to sign or veto bills and how the legislation is executed. He would have the bully pulpit for setting the legislative agenda.

We are on the journey to learn whether Washingtonians are ready and willing to put a little Santorum in the governor’s mansion.

(h/t)

Update: In which Stranger reporter and HorsesAss religion correspondent David (Goldy) Goldstein gets pissed on by the McKenna campaign.

I can think of one circumstance under which Rep. Weiner should resign: he makes a pact with Sen. Vitter and they both fall on their swords (figuratively) and go away.

Think about it. The calculus is right. Weiner flirted at a distance with women. Vitter hired a prostitute to play out his diaper fantasies. Roughly speaking, Vitter’s crime (yes…he actually broke the law) is many times worse than Weiner’s stupid, ill-advised, boorish, but not illegal, e-flirting.

A simplistic model would value a Senate seat as worth about 4.38 (=438/100) times the value of a house seats, giving the paired resignations impacts roughly commensurate with the respective offenses.

You know what is totally unacceptable?

Answer: Assholes calling for Rep. Weiner’s resignation without applying the same moral standards to Sen. Vitter. Because that is blatant, ugly, stupid, repulsive hypocrisy.

Rep. Reince Priebus is an asshole for his blatant, ugly, stupid, repulsive hypocrisy.

And to be clear, by “same moral standards”, I mean standards that consider the seriousness of the allegations. Vitter broke the law at the same time he was committing adultery by fucking a prostitute. Maybe you believe sexting is a form of adultery. I believe most people would recognize sexting as less of a violation of ones vows in partnership than physically fucking a prostitute—which, at the very minimum, has the potential for more serious complications like STDs or extramarital pregnancies. Honest politicians and pundits shouldn’t treat Weiner any worse, for an offence far less serious, than they have (or will) treat Vitter.

I’ll call for neither of them to resign…as happened in 2010 for Vitter, we should leave it to the voters to decide.

Unless, of course, Weiner and Vitter agree to resign together.

Please join us tonight for an evening of politics under the influence at the Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally. We meet at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E. Starting time is 8:00 pm, but feel free to join some of us for an earlier dinner.

Every time Sarah Palin makes a statement to the media, God kills an historian:

Not in Seattle? There is a good chance you live near one of the 228 other chapters of Drinking Liberally.

Okay…Rep. Weiner’s press conference wasn’t the world’s weirdest—that title still has to go to former Gov. Sanford’s “post-Appalachian hiking” trip presser.

The weirdness was at the front end. When I tuned in the live stream just before 1:00 pm local time, there was Andrew Breitbart, the person who broke the Weiner story, at the podium. And he hung out at the podium answering questions for a long time, leading one reporter to ask via Twitter whether the press had been duped into some sort of Breitbart publicity stunt. The press has developed a partial skepticism of Breitbart, something he earned by breaking previous stories that ended up being dead wrong and based on doctored or misleading videos. You know…the phony ACORN “scandal” and the “Shirley Sherrod is a racist” bullshit.

In this case however…Breitbart got the story pretty much correct.

When Breitbart finished there was a long break before Weiner took the podium.

Weiner fought back the tears as he confessed to and profusely apologized for having inappropriate tweets, emails, and a couple of phone calls with about six women over three years. He made clear that he never met any of them in person and never had sex with them. He met them on Facebook.

Weiner also admitted to lying to everyone about that initial tweet—with the photo of his inflated briefs—which he meant to PM and tweeted instead. The suggestion that his Twitter account had been hacked was a lie, he confessed. He apologized to everyone—his wife, their families, his constituents, the Seattle woman whose life was disrupted by this, his staff (meaning, I believe, his congressional staff), and The Press. Christ…he even apologized to Breitbart.

It took a follow-up question to ask if he would resign. No, he won’t. And then he answered reporter’s questions frankly and earnestly. No…his wife and he were not going to split. Yes, they love each other. Yes, she was disappointed. He admitted to lying about the tweets because he was embarrassed and didn’t want to get caught. And, over and over again, he kept “taking full responsibility” and apologizing.

He also kept pointed out that what he did was stupid. But not illegal. So that was the presser.

I have to say…I am not surprised. Even without surprise, I am a little disappointed in Weiner. That’s why I haven’t had much to say about the scandal, except for having a little fun at Dick Cheney’s expense. Seriously, I cannot get too worked up about flirting via social media. What he did doesn’t arise to much (so to speak…in another sense it raises surprisingly….).

Where I do fault Weiner is…STUPIDITY! Public figures should not flirt via social media. Not because of any legal or even ethical questions. No…because it invites scandal, precisely of the type we have here. So Weiner acted stupidly.

This is the same point I made for former Rep. Christopher Lee, who wasn’t simply engaging in flirting, exactly. Rather, he was trolling for sex via Craigslist using his real name, but claiming to be a lobbyist:

Lying, willingness to break his marriage vows…and sheer stupidity! Seriously…the dude didn’t even change his name and then sends the woman a topless photo of himself. Was he trying to create a public scandal?

Lee’s “activities” should be several orders of magnitude over Weiner’s on the sheer stupidity scale. But given that Weiner kept sending flirtatious tweets after Lee’s insta-resignation raises his stupidity level one order of magnitude below that of Lee.

Somewhere in between them is former Sen. Larry Craig, whose wide stance and toe-tapping turned into disorderly conduct. Stupid.

And then there is the stupidity of Sen. Vitter, whose sexual fantasies involved trans-infantile activities with a hooker, and former Gov. Elliot Spitzer who just liked very high price hookers. These guys were sort of stupid, and they both broke the law. They both left enough clues to get caught. And one of them is a flaming “family values” hypocrite. Oddly, he’s the one still in office.

And then there is the uber-stupidity of former Sen. Ensign and former Sen. Edwards. They had affairs whilst in the public spotlight. They were both busted as “family values” hypocrites. And they both took actions to cover up their scandals that involved large sums of money. Now they are both at risk of doing time for their alleged crimes. And that’s just super-stupid!

But almost nothing tops the stupidity of former Gov. Sanford, whose flirtations (Weiner-magnitude stupidity) via email turned into a full-blown affair (about Craig-level stupidity). So he concocted a story about hiking the Appalachian trail, ditched his security detail, left his car at the Atlanta airport, flew to Argentina, and thought nobody would notice for ten days. That’s Vitter—Spitzer stupid, at least. Oh…and he my have used state money to hook-up with his paramour, money he later reimbursed to the state (near-Ensign—Edwards stupid). It doesn’t look like Sanford is going to jail. But what puts Sanford at the top of the stupid politician stupidity scale was the interviews he gave shortly after his “hiking” trip:

In emotional interviews with the AP over two days, he said he would die “knowing that I had met my soul mate.” […]

Sanford insisted his relationship with Maria Belen Chapur, whom he met at an open air dance spot in Uruguay eight years ago, was more than just sex.

“This was a whole lot more than a simple affair, this was a love story,” Sanford said. “A forbidden one, a tragic one, but a love story at the end of the day.”

Too! Much! Information!!!!

In sum…It’s the stupidity, stupid!

So, Weiner…install some Constituent Control and Monitoring Software on your computers, and get back to work.