BUCKNACKT'S SORDID TAWDRY BLOG
We should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive & well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, chocolate, bier or wein in hand, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming "WHOO-HOO, WHAT A RIDE!!!!!!"
DOO DUH, DOO DUH!!! Hey you stupid ignorant traitors, YOU LOST, GET OVER IT! If you don't love the United States of America you are free to leave, you will not be missed! From KBTX3 in Bryan, TX.....
Published: Feb. 13, 2026 at 4:20 PM EST|Updated: Feb. 14, 2026 at 6:57 PM EST
SPARTANBURG COUNTY, S.C. (WHNS/Gray News) - A large Confederate flag that has flown over an interstate in Spartanburg County is coming down.
According to court documents, the Sons of Confederate Veterans Camp No. 68 constructed a 120-foot flagpole on its property near Interstate 85 without getting a required development permit.
In October 2022, Spartanburg County first issued a notice of violation and told the group to either lower the flag to 30 feet and display a flag that does not exceed 5-by-8 feet or to remove the flagpole.
The camp appealed the violation in January 2023 to the zoning board, which initially sided with them.
However, Spartanburg County appealed that decision to the circuit court, which reversed the board’s decision in February 2024, reinstating the violation notice.
Documents show that in January of this year, the group filed a motion asking the court to reconsider its Dec. 29, 2025, decision. But a judge denied that motion, rejecting every argument the group presented in a 10-page order.
The group was given until Feb. 5 to comply with the court ruling.
Robert Merting, attorney for the Sons of Confederate Veterans, said the flag was taken down in late January and will stay down for now.
The group has appealed again to the South Carolina Court of Appeals, with a decision still pending in that case.
Copyright 2026 WHNS via Gray Local Media, Inc. All rights reserved.
SAD fact is the people of South Carolina are stupid enough so this fool has a chance of being elected. There is something to be said for the species that eat their young right after birth because they know there is something wrong with them. From Mother Jones....
This election season, as in 2012, many sitting Republicans face
challenges from tea party candidates, who aren't afraid to tout
conspiracy theories or say brash things about women's bodies.
One GOP Senate challenger, vying against veteran Sen. Lindsey Graham
(R-S.C.), has gone as far as claiming that the IRS is training an army
of "Brown Shirts" to enforce Obamacare—with assault weapons no less.
South Carolina state Sen. Lee Bright argued in a speech last August
that we should "get rid of that IRS." (See the video above). He also
discussed comments from US Rep. Jeff Duncan (R-S.C.), a member of the
House Homeland Security Committee, who toured a federal law enforcement
facility last spring and reported seeing IRS agents training with the
semi-automatic AR-15 rifles. Bright added:
If that’s true…and they're doing assault-weapon training, the Brown
Shirts are next because that's the enforcement for Obamacare, is the
IRS. If you don't have an IRS, you don't have Obamacare. That's the
mechanism that's controlling our lives for far too long.
In fact, the armed agents Duncan saw probably belonged to a special
criminal investigation division, which sometimes goes after drug
traffickers and money launderers. At the time, according to Politico,
Duncan questioned whether "that level of firepower is appropriate when
they could coordinate operations with other agencies, like the FBI,
especially in a time of austerity." That's a far cry from likening IRS
agents to Nazi storm troopers.
After Bright made his IRS comments, at a Republican Liberty Caucus gathering (for more on the meeting, see the Charleston City Paper), an audience member asked for Bright's take on other conspiracy theories, including that "FEMA is training a militia."
"Most of the federal government is a scam," Bright replied. "FEMA is the biggest scam in the world."
This isn't the first time Bright has taken a controversial stand.
Last year, he drafted a bill allowing North Carolina schools to offer
firearms training to children. "I believe the more guns we have the
safer we are," he told
a local TV station. Bright has also opposed state funding for
rape-crisis centers, and he has sponsored a bill that would make it a
crime for federal officials to enforce the Affordable Care Act, with
penalties of up to a year in prison.
Three other Republican candidates besides Bright are challenging
Graham, who has been in Congress since 1995 but has come under attack
from the party's right wing for supporting some of President Barack
Obama's judicial nominees and policies, including immigration reform.
Graham has also raised hackles by bashing tea party insurgents. "The
problem with the tea party, I think it's just unsustainable because they
can never come up with a coherent vision for governing the country," he
told the the New York Times Magazine in 2010. Graham boldly
predicted that the movement would "die out." The tea party apparently
wants to see Graham's career die out first.
Mariah Blake is a reporter in Mother Jones' DC bureau. Got a tip? E-mail her at mblake [at] motherjones [dot] com. She's also on Twitter. RSS | Twitter
Virginia
state Sen. Dick Black fought to block a statue of Lincoln and invited a
reporter to watch him viewing violent rape porn on a library computer.
Now he's looking for a promotion.
A great piece from Salon that slams the ignorance of gop / tea-bagger south carolinians, reminds us that callista gingrich(k) is an adulterous trophy wife and exposes a brief moment of sanity in the fotze known as ann coulter....Enjoy!
The neo-Confederate wing of the GOP cares more about humiliating Obama than about beating him in November
Look, nobody’s third wife is going to be first lady. In the privacy of the voting booth, American women won’t stand for it. Regardless of how flawlessly the bejeweled Callista enacts the role of pious matron, she remains the embodiment of the Trophy Wife — younger, more adoring, unencumbered by children, a climber on the make. In effect, a successful Monica Lewinsky, although unlike Bill Clinton’s paramour, Callista was no kid.
Even Ann Coulter knows that. Having placed an early bet on Mitt Romney, the GOP’s vestal virgin pronounced herself shocked to hear South Carolina Republicans accepting “Democratic” arguments excusing Newt Gingrich’s serial adultery. On “Fox & Friends,” Coulter said, “I promise you, if Mitt Romney or Rick Santorum had cheated on two wives — that we know, the ‘open marriage’ thing is the only thing he contests, we know he cheated on two wives — I wouldn’t support Mitt Romney.”
Ah, but there were deeper passions at play in South Carolina. So let’s switch metaphors. Judging by the whooping and hollering of the CNN debate audience, the GOP’s neo-Confederate wing wishes for nothing less than an electoral replay of Pickett’s charge — the doomed infantry attack at Gettysburg most historians believe marked the beginning of the end of the Civil War. A sizable proportion of South Carolinians have yearned for a rematch ever since.
And they don’t think they’re going to get it with Mitt Romney, a Yankee’s Yankee who goes around babbling passionless truisms like this gem unearthed from his standard stump speech by the National Review’s Mark Steyn:
“I believe in an America where millions of Americans believe in an America that’s the America millions of Americans believe in. That’s the America I love.”
Do what? (That’s Southern for what the hell?)
Romney’s not only a dead ringer for Sesame Street’s puppet anchorman Guy Smiley, but could probably have switched places with CNN’s John King without missing a beat. To Gingrich supporters, Steyn observes, he comes across as “a synthetic, stage-managed hollow man of no fixed beliefs.”
There’s little sign of anger in his personality. But then why would there be? The son of a failed candidate, Romney gives every indication of wanting to be president simply because, well, he deserves to be president.
To a GOP base bombarded with Manichaean propaganda depicting President Obama as a veritable antichrist, that may not be good enough. They don’t simply want to prevent Obama’s reelection. They want to see him obliterated, humiliated and shamed. Watching Gingrich verbally pummel Fox’s Juan Williams and CNN’s King — antagonists who, by definition, can’t fight back — sharpened their appetite to see him take on Obama.
Republican debate audiences that have boisterously cheered Texas’ use of the death penalty, booed a gay soldier serving in Iraq, hooted at Fox News’ Williams for asking about racially stereotyping food stamp recipients, and even applauded torture, appear to find Gingrich’s surliness and ill-concealed personal resentments a perfect match for their own. Newt’s ability to channel their anger resembles Richard M. Nixon’s, albeit without Nixon’s self-discipline.
Fox News’ Steve Doocy spoke for them all, predicting that, if nominated, “Newt is going to take off the head of the president” (lovely metaphor) in debates. Many actually believe that Newt’s a brilliant extemporaneous thinker like Rush Limbaugh, while Obama’s an affirmative action hire who’s helpless without his teleprompter.
Meanwhile, back in reality, the saner kinds of Republicans are running scared. The Washington Post’s George Will empathizes with GOP candidates who could find themselves “running next autumn with Gingrich — whose current approval rating nationally in a Jan. 12-14 Fox News and Opinion Dynamics poll was 27 percent favorable, 56 percent unfavorable — atop the ticket.”
The very decorous Ms. Coulter laments that “South Carolinians would rather have the emotional satisfaction of a snotty remark toward the president than to beat Obama in the fall.” The scholarly author of “Demonic: How the Liberal Mob Is Endangering America” explains that the GOP nominee can’t win over independent voters simply by calling the president bad names. Now she tells us.
Conservative talk show host Michael Medved cautions that “for swing voters and independents, Gingrich’s reference to ‘Obama’s secular-socialist machine’… may sound extreme and irresponsible; few of them would agree with his conclusion that the current president represents a greater threat to the nation than Nazism or Soviet communism.” He adds that “the current craving for an intense and impassioned candidate” would likely backfire in the general election.
You know things are crazy when Ann Coulter starts making sense. I think even the perception that Newt could get under Obama’s skin is badly mistaken. In a presidential debate, the guy sweating and glowering is the guy losing. The sorehead right, however, won’t believe it until they’ve lost the visceral confrontation they so crave.
In that sense, a Gingrich nomination could end up being very good for the country.
Arkansas Times columnist Gene Lyons is a National Magazine Award winner and co-author of "The Hunting of the President" (St. Martin's Press, 2000). You can e-mail Lyons at eugenelyons2@yahoo.com. More Gene Lyons
newt gingrich(k) had an affair with this woman, the former marianne ginther, while married to his first wife. Seems she didn't mind him cheating when it was with her. These interviews only show the the hypocrisy of newt gingrich(k) and his 2nd and 3rd wives and the low class of people they are. How can the religious community in this country consider him for president, especially after the way they turned on Bill Clinton after his affair with monica lewinsky? One can only speculate their racist hatred of Pres Obama trumps their concern about family values. What a sad comment on the "evangelical" wing of the republican party in this country. From WikiLeaks, followed by the reports from NPR....... Marriages and children http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newt_Gingrich
Gingrich has been married three times. In 1962, he married Jackie Battley, his former high school geometry teacher, when he was 19 years old and she was 26.[131][132] Gingrich and Battley have two daughters from their marriage: Kathy Gingrich Lubbers is president of Gingrich Communications,[133] and Jackie Gingrich Cushman is an author, conservative columnist, and political commentator[134] whose books include 5 Principles for a Successful Life, co-authored with Newt Gingrich.[135]
In the spring of 1980, Gingrich left Battley after beginning an affair with Marianne Ginther.[136][137] In 1984, Battley told The Washington Post that the divorce was a "complete surprise" to her. According to Battley, in September 1980, Gingrich and their children visited her while she was in the hospital, recovering from surgery, and Gingrich wanted to discuss the terms of their divorce.[138] Gingrich has disputed that account.[139] In 2011 their daughter, Jackie Gingrich Cushman, said that it was her mother who requested the divorce, that it happened prior to the hospital stay, and that Gingrich's visit was for the purpose of bringing the couple's children to see their mother, not to discuss the divorce.[140] Although Gingrich's presidential campaign staff continued to insist in 2011 that his wife requested the divorce, court documents obtained by CNN from Carroll County, Georgia, indicated that Jackie had asked a judge to block the process stating that although "she has adequate and ample grounds for divorce... she does not desire one at this time [and] does not admit that this marriage is irretrievably broken.[141]
According to L. H. Carter, Gingrich's campaign treasurer, Gingrich said of Battley: "She's not young enough or pretty enough to be the wife of the President. And besides, she has cancer."[142][143] Gingrich has denied saying it. His supporters dismiss Carter as a disgruntled former aide who was miffed at not being asked to accompany Gingrich to Washington.[144]
In 1981, six months after the divorce from Battley was final, Gingrich wed Marianne Ginther.[145][146][147][148] In the mid-1990s, Gingrich began an affair with House of Representatives staffer Callista Bisek, who is 23 years his junior. They continued their affair during the Lewinsky scandal, when Gingrich became a leader of the investigation of President Clinton for perjury and obstruction of justice in connection with Clinton's alleged affairs.[149] According to Ginther, his second wife, she declined to accept Gingrich's suggestion of an open marriage.[150]
In 2000, Gingrich married Bisek shortly after his divorce from second wife Ginther was finalized. He and Callista currently live in McLean, Virginia.[151]
EnlargeMARK WILSON/ASSOCIATED PRESS Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and his then-wife, Marianne, leave their home on Tuesday, Jan. 7, 1997. At the time, Gingrich was in the midst of an investigation over congressional ethics violations.
If Newt Gingrich got a boost for his prospects in South Carolina on Thursday with rising poll numbers and an endorsement from rival Rick Perry, his second ex-wife, Marianne, seemed to be doing her best to dampen his prospects with an ill-timed interview on ABC's Nightline Thursday night.
In an excerpt released by ABC Thursday morning, Marianne tells Brian Ross that her ex lacks the moral character to be president. In what ABC says is her first television interview since the 1999 divorce, Marianne did not seem to hold back. As Brian Ross reports:
"In her most provocative comments, the ex-Mrs. Gingrich said Newt sought an 'open marriage' arrangement so he could have a mistress and a wife.
She said when Gingrich admitted to a six-year affair with a Congressional aide, he asked her if she would share him with the other woman, Callista, who is now married to Gingrich.
'And I just stared at him and he said, 'Callista doesn't care what I do," Marianne Gingrich told ABC News. 'He wanted an open marriage and I refused.'
Marianne described her 'shock' at Gingrich's behavior, including how she says she learned he conducted his affair with Callista 'in my bedroom in our apartment in Washington.'
The Washington Post reported similar details about an open marriage in its own interview with Marianne. She also told the newspaper about a family values speech Gingrich gave shortly after asking her for a divorce:
"'How could he ask me for a divorce on Monday and within 48 hours give a speech on family values and talk about how people treat people?' she said."
These sorts of disclosure seem unlikely to play well with socially conservative voters in South Carolina.
The second ex-Mrs. Gingrich has spoken out before. In August of 2010, she gave a long interview to Esquire.
"Back in the 1990s, she told a reporter she could end her husband's career with a single interview. She held her tongue all through the affair and the divorce and even through the annulment Gingrich requested from the Catholic Church two years later, trying to erase their shared past," Esquire reported then.
In that interview Marianne also seemed eager to point out the discrepancies between Gingrich's public and private lives:
"He could have been president. But when you try and change your history too much, and try and recolor it because you don't like the way it was or you want it to be different to prove something new ... you lose touch with who you really are. You lose your way," she told Esquire. "He believes that what he says in public and how he lives don't have to be connected," she says. "If you believe that, then yeah, you can run for president."
Over at Slate's XX factor, Jessica Grose questions whether the 11th-hour disclosures could actually generate sympathy for Gingrich:
"Marianne's interview may even have a positive effect on South Carolina voters. They may see her as a bitter woman who's just attempting revenge-by-network news, and this may galvanize their wavering support for Newt. They may not even believe whatever Marianne has to say."
That could be. In any case, the ABC excerpts surfaced in plenty of time to make their way into Thursday night's GOP debate at 8 p.m. ET on CNN.
The hate and ignorance expressed by these people is disgusting because they are old enough to know better and to know they should keep their stupidity to themselves. They should be ashamed but I doubt they are, I think their apologies are just a pathetic attempt to save their carriers. How sad they actually think these thoughts, how pathetic they are in positions of power and influence.
COLUMBIA, S.C. — A South Carolina lawmaker on Thursday called a Republican gubernatorial candidate of Indian descent a "raghead," saying we have one in the White House, we don't need one in the governor's mansion.
Republican state Sen. Jake Knotts later apologized for the slur, saying the remarks about President Barack Obama and state Rep. Nikki Haley were meant as a joke.
They came on Internet political talk show, Pub Politics. Co-host Phil Bailey said Knotts said, "We've already got a raghead in the White House, we don't need another raghead in the governor's mansion."
No audio was available because of a technical problem, Bailey said.
"If it had been recorded, the public would be able to hear firsthand that my 'raghead' comments about Obama and Haley were intended in jest," Knotts said in his statement. "Bear in mind that this is a freewheeling, anything-goes Internet radio show that is broadcast from a pub. It's like local political version of Saturday Night Live, which is actually where the joke came from."
He did not repeat his original comment in his apology. Knotts of Lexington is a supporter of Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer's gubernatorial campaign.
Haley, who has been endorsed by Sarah Palin and is a favorite of the tea party, also represents Lexington in the Statehouse and has faced other landmines in her attempt to become the state's first female governor. In the past two weeks, two men have come forward to say they had trysts with her, which she denies.
Her campaign manager Tim Pearson called Knotts "an embarrassment to our state and to the Republican Party."
"Jake Knotts represents all that is wrong with South Carolina politics," Pearson said in an e-mail.
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Bailey, who also is director of the state Senate Democratic Caucus, said Knotts is known for speaking his mind, but he went too far.
"I was appalled by the comments," Bailey said.
Four Republicans and three Democrats are vying to replace term-limited Gov. Mark Sanford who rocked the state when he confessed last summer to an affair with an Argentine woman. It ruined his marriage and likely his political future, which included presidential aspirations.
Bailey said he hopes to have the full discussion posted on the show's website Friday.
State Republican Party Chairwoman Karen Floyd called on Knotts to apologize "so that we can put this unfortunate incident behind us."
"The South Carolina Republican Party strongly condemns any use of racial or religious slurs," Floyd said in an e-mail statement Thursday night.
Longtime White House scribe Helen Thomas caused more than a few eyebrows to perk up when video surfaced on Friday of her declaring that Jews should "get the hell out of Palestine" and go back to Germany and Poland.
Captured by Rabbi David Nesenoff of RabbiLive.com, the footage made the rounds on mostly conservative and neoconservative sites, with some private complaints that her comments weren't getting wider play.
Thomas on Friday apologized in a written statement, saying she deeply regretted the comments -- which were offered, ironically, during the White House's Jewish Heritage Celebration.
But even as she was trying to walk back the remarks, calls for her firing mounted. Among the more vocal was former Bush Press Secretary Ari Fleischer, who claimed to have a close relationship with Thomas when he was manning the daily briefings.
"She should lose her job over this," Fleischer said in an email. "As someone who is Jewish, and as someone who worked with her and used to like her, I find this appalling."
"She is advocating religious cleansing. How can Hearst stand by her? If a journalist, or a columnist, said the same thing about blacks or Hispanics, they would already have lost their jobs."
A longtime fixture of the White House press room, Thomas hasn't exactly hid her politics on the Middle East conflict. The day after Israeli Defense Forces stormed the flotilla, she pressed spokesman Robert Gibbs as to how the administration could stand by the blockade of Gaza and the broader treatment of Palestinians by the Israeli government. A good faction of political and foreign policy observers found the line of inquiry refreshing.
The comments that surfaced on Friday were far less filtered than the quite-pointed questions she's offered in the briefing -- enough so that they've spurred earnest conversation as to whether she should be given a pass because of the historic perch she's held as the longest serving White House correspondent or whether it's time for her to leave that perch.
Here is the clip of Thomas:
