Hmm, so that important meeting that Haley Barbour had with assorted Washington fancies on Monday night … folks thought it was all just prelude to a 2012 run, but might it have had something to do with the whole Sanford affair? Because now Barbour is the new head of the Republican Governors Association — at least, until he confesses to an illicit romantical affair with a South American canasta champion. MORE »

An important new Associated Press topical article notes that exactly five other governors in American history have done something weird, while in office. So nature-boy mountain lamer Mark Sanford is not alone! Come out of the closet, Mark, and come back to America. MORE »

As the authorities trace his phone calls so as to locate him and his wife “Jenny” drinks bottle after bottle of zinfandel and morphine in sweatpants while watching her programs, South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford, a “2012 presidential hopeful,” is currently getting cover from his staff for his insane disappearance. They’ve been claiming all day that he is fine, but they probably have no fucking clue either. What’s the latest make-believe excuse? MORE »

South Carolina welfare queen Governor Mark Sanford is nowhere to be found, in South Carolina! His “whereabouts” have been “unknown to state officials since Thursday,” the news outlets report. This country should consider itself lucky to have survived the weekend! So did he get kidnapped in Mexico or something? Hopefully, but those close to him — and no, that does not include his family — claim he is just crying in private for a few days after losing a political battle. MORE »

The best thing to happen in all of Texas last year was when a few Democratic anarcho-syndicalists burned down Rick Perry’s governor’s mansion with a flaming bag of Barney Bush’s poop, maybe. But because the remaining outer shell of this hell castle is a Historical Texas outer shell — and Texas never cheaps out when it comes to honoring its proud history of slavery, violence, oil, and self-importance — the difficult, tedious renovation will cost TWENTY MILLION dollars. CONSIDERING THE COST, the Texas state legislature is now telling Perry that if he wants his dumb house, then $11 million of that sum will have to come out of the Obama Stimulus Package — the thing Perry pretended to hate so much that he vowed to secede over it in ~FY2011. MORE »

Eliot Spitzer was on the Today show this morning to chat with Matt Lauer about that time the latter fought a deer with his bike, and lost. Now look, jokes about how Eliot Spitzer made it with all the ladies are not funny anymore, at all (although it is funny in this interview when Matt Lauer basically asks Spitzer how many hookers he’s sexed, specifically). Spitzer is smart and goddamnit he should have another job! He should still be running New York! Total FBI-Wall Street conspiracy set-up with this guy, maybe. [MSNBC/Salon]

DAVID PATERSON IS FINISHED: New York Gov. David Paterson, whose reign started about a year ago in that very auspicious first week when he admitted to cheating on his wife and doing coke all the time, is trailing New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo 61-18 (!) in a theoretical gubernatorial primary poll. In a theoretical general election matchup against RUDY TERRIBLE GIULIANI he is losing 53-32. [Quinnipiac]

WOOOOOOOOWWWWWWW: OOH LOOKY HERE, the deadline for governors to accept stimulus funds is today, and the last three holdouts in the country — Bobby Jindal, Sarah Palin and even Mark “Queen Welfare Queen” Sanford — have decided to accept allllllllllll of their allotted portions, after ranting for months and months about how accepting that money would destroy their state economies and add trillions in new terrible debt and force them raise taxes to 14,000% within a week just to pay a SINGLE TEACHER. Mark Sanford, of course, accepted this toxic money while still calling Obama a moron for allowing him to do so, because now he’s just going to launder it. [McClatchy]

• MARK SANFORD REJECTED AGAIN: Skinny communist blog hipster Peter Orszag has rejected South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford’s request to use his stimulus money to pay down state debt, because of the lack of stimulus. This is the second time Orszag has had to tell this nut to go away, and now Mark Sanford will be the Republican nominee in 2012, assuming the country exists. [AP]

Welfare Queen and prominent asshole Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina, who continues to simultaneously call Barack Obama a sack of shit and ask Barack Obama to pay off his state debt, said today that Obama’s spending policies will lead to Zimbabwe-style hyperinflation, the only real-world situation in which the term “11 million percent” can be applied non-jokingly. Black South Carolina Rep. James Clyburn responded by calling Sanford a racist for comparing Obama to an African country, to which Sanford’s spokesman shot back “Rep. Clyburn always plays the race card,” and now… huh? [HuffPo]

Look everybody, it’s your new failed Commerce Secretary nominee, Gary Locke. At least that’s what the reporters are saying! He is what the AP terms a “Chinese-American,” which could mean anything. He was the first “Chinese-American” governor of Washington, the state, from 1997 to 2005. So why will he have to withdraw? Eh, who knows, the AP is going insane about some campaign contribution controversy from back in the day. Meh. All we know is that when you google-image his name, you get not only the accompanying picture but a mirror image of it too in the first handful of results. Is Gary Locke a witch? [AP]