Let's begin with Hipólito Yrigoyen.

The Radical:



The Radicals took over in 1916, after years of conservative power, in the first election after the beginning of universal male suffrage in...



... Argentina, our "History of" country today. Wikipedia's History of page for Argentina is way too long for me even to consider summarizing. I feel as weary as Hipólito Yrigoyen looks in that picture. And the information looks too much like a list of all the many people who have held the leadership position in Argentina. So I'm afraid I must skip arbitrarily over all of this to find 5 things that seem interesting to me.

1. "Europeans first arrived in the region with the 1502 voyage of Amerigo Vespucci."

2. "The United Kingdom officially recognized Argentine independence in 1825, with the signing of a Treaty of Friendship, Commerce, and Navigation on February 2..."

3. "During the early 1920s, the rise of the anarchist movement, fueled by the arrival of recent emigres and deportees from Europe, spawned a new generation of left-wing activism in Argentina. The new left, mostly anarchists and anarcho-communists, rejected the incremental progressivism of the old Radical and Socialist elements in Argentina in favor of immediate action."

5. "In 1946 General Juan Perón became president; his populist ideology became known as peronism. His popular wife Eva Perón played a leading political role until her death in 1952."

6. "In the late 1960s and the early 1970s, Marxist-Leninist militias such as People's Revolutionary Army utilized aggressive tactics that sometimes resulted in violence. Later the military government used these acts as justification for their even more brutal measures.... Serious economic problems, mounting charges of corruption, public discontent and, finally, the country's 1982 defeat by the United Kingdom in the Falklands War following Argentina's unsuccessful attempt to seize the Falkland Islands all combined to discredit the Argentine military regime."

"Barack Obama made an uncharacteristic error, more akin to those of his predecessor George W Bush, by referring to the Falkland Islands as the Maldives."

Now, there's a pathetic subheadline.

They don't even say it seems more akin... which it does because the media pounced on anything that was a Bush misstep. Obama, by contrast, has been portrayed as a mastermind. He, the great genius, made a gaffe?!

I'll let somebody else compile a list of Obama's 30 dumbest gaffes, put it next to an equivalent list for Bush. Here's a start: 57 states.

I'll bet the 2 lists are damned... akin.

Are you annoyed at the way the death of Michael Jackson has overshadowed the protests in Iran?

This may help.

IN THE COMMENTS: Titus says:

I am annoyed the way Michael Jackson's death overshadowed Mark Sanford.

I want more Mark Sanford.

I want more previous video clips of Mark Sanford moralizing and passing judgment on others. I want 24 hour Mark Sanford and I want it now....

I want to hear Mark Sanford bitching about not taking stimulus money but than using tax payer money to fuck in Argentina... with someone other than his wife.

"I have been unfaithful to my wife. I developed a relationship with what started as a dear dear friend from Argentina."

"It began very innocently, as I suspect these things do, in just a casual e-mail back and forth. But here, recently, over this last year, developed into something much more than that. And as a consequence, I hurt her. I hurt you all, I hurt my wife. I hurt my boys. I hurt friends like Tom Davis. I hurt a lot of different folks."

So says Gov. Sanford, who says he spent the last "five days of my life crying in Argentina."

I must say I'm thoroughly bored with these politicians and their sexual affairs, but at least Sanford was a bit weird — disappearing, getting the staff to lie, absconding to another hemisphere, crying....

Mr. Sanford is the third sitting governor to become the central figure in a major scandal in recent years. Gov. Eliot L. Spitzer, Democrat of New York, resigned a few days after his involvement with prostitutes was revealed in March 2008. Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich, Democrat of Illinois, clung to office for weeks after being accused by prosecutors of influence-peddling, including trying to sell the Senate seat vacated by President Barack Obama; he was impeached and removed from office by the state legislature on Jan. 29.

Scandal? What scandal? An extra-marital affair is not a scandal, not in the political sense anyway.

UPDATE: Gah! Emails:

I could digress and say that you have the ability to give magnificent gentle kisses, or that I love your tan lines or that I love the curve of your hips, the erotic beauty of you holding yourself (or two magnificent parts of yourself) in the faded glow of the night’s light - but hey, that would be going into sexual details ...

Wouldn't want to go into sexual details. Imagine them published in the newspaper.

And John Kerry shoots off his moronic mouth:

"Too bad, if a governor had to go missing it couldn’t have been the governor of Alaska. You know, Sarah Palin."

I love the way he thinks we might not be quick enough to pick up who the Governor of Alaska is. What an idiot!

IN THE COMMENTS: Pogo said:

Well, at least we can add "He went hiking on the Appalachian Trail" to the list of infidelity metaphors.

And crying in Argentina.

Randy said:

"Don't cry for me Appalachia! The truth is I never hiked you..."

-@burckart on Twitter
(via Freeman Hunt's twitter feed)

AND NOW: A word from the wife:

I believe enduring love is primarily a commitment and an act of will, and for a marriage to be successful, that commitment must be reciprocal. I believe Mark has earned a chance to resurrect our marriage.

Psalm 127 states that sons are a gift from the Lord and children a reward from Him. I will continue to pour my energy into raising our sons to be honorable young men. I remain willing to forgive Mark completely for his indiscretions and to welcome him back, in time, if he continues to work toward reconciliation with a true spirit of humility and repentance.