From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
Don’t Shit in Our Yard, You Twit
I thought something smelled bad. It was a pungent, sour, nutty smell I'd last gotten a whiff of when I used to lived down the road from a sugar beet processing plant in Bay City, Michigan. There's no sugar beet plant here in Maine, though, so the foul stench could only mean one thing: someone associated with James O'Keefe had arrived and laid a big ol' turd.
Sure enough, last Friday the "news" broke that a "shocking" undercover video had turned up EXPLOSIVE EVIDENCE of MASSIVE WIDESPREAD FRAUD AND ABUSE in Maine's welfare system. It was so damning that it sent the nervous ninnies from Maine's Heritage Foundation clone and Americans (Excluding Non-Millionaire Americans) for Prosperity to the fainting couch, but not before they dashed off their EXPLOSIVE PRESS RELEASES. We're doomed, they said. The welfare cheats have destroyed the hopes and dreams of every child and stolen their lollipops to boot, they said. AND IT'S ON VIDEO! (They're fond of caps.)
Just one tiny detail, and one you know all too well: currently-on-probation James O'Keefe runs a dishonest "gotcha" syndicate that has yet to hit the bullseye once. In this case, he and his conservative orcs are clutching their pearls because…well, because they played dress-up, went to a DHHS office, and did nothing but get some blank forms after wasting half an hour of a couple state employees' time.
In fact, James O'Keefe failed so miserably that even our Republican tea party governor let him have it with both barrels: "I do not believe for a second that the individual involved was willfully allowing abuse of the welfare program."
Said the Portland Press Herald's editorial board:
No welfare system, including Maine's, is immune to fraud, and our state has uncovered instances of cheating in the past. The governor is right in wanting employees to be better prepared to deal with potential cheaters, but we would hope that the increased training will be geared more toward real-world threats to the integrity of the system than toward camera-wielding hucksters looking to capture headlines.
O'Keefe's response after learning his Maine footage had ended up in the dumpster? Paraphrasing here: "It's the lamestream media's fault! They're the ones not catching all this not-fraud stuff! Shame on them for not yelling 'Fire' in the absence of smoke!"
But, ultimately, O'Keefe's conspiracy porn isn't designed for anyone in the reality-based community. It's gut-level crack for the idiots out there who are so void of critical-thinking skills that they could be shown a video of paint drying on a wall and be convinced it's a liberal plot to take away their freedom. And that's exactly what I heard Saturday morning on our local conservative talk radio station, which opened up the discussion to callers: paranoia and resentment of "them freeloaders" that was so thick you could put a tri-corner hat on it and call it Louie Gohmert.
Meanwhile the overworked and underpaid DHHS office employees involved, who did a fine job dealing with O'Keefe's dress-up nutball faker, have been dragged through the muck and falsely tarred as the public face of waste, fraud and abuse. I feel bad for them because that face, of course, looks a lot more like O'Keefe's, given his pathetic record of whiffing at every underhanded thing he does. (Did I mention he's on probation? That was a particularly dumb whiff.)
To recap: An idiot came to Maine to cause trouble. He got rode out on a rail. The End.
Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Tuesday, August 16, 2011
Note: To the family of the gnat I accidentally peed on yesterday while it was buzzing over the bowl in the executive restroom: I'm so sorry for your loss and I hope you enjoyed the rotten-fruit basket I sent.
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til the 2012 general election: 448
Days `til the National Hamburger Festival in Akron, Ohio: 4
Estimated number of children under age five who died in Somalia between May and July because of the famine there: 29,000
(Source: Time)
Percent of the nation's greenhouse gas emissions that are caused by heavy-duty trucks and buses: 20%
Estimated savings, in terms of money and oil, respectively, that will be saved under new federal fuel-efficiency standards between 2013 and 2018: $50 billion / 530 million barrels
(Source: The White House)
Number of civil union licenses issued in Chicago and the surrounding area in June and July, the first two months they were available to gay couples: 1,400
Rank of Alabama among states with the highest number (240) of copper telephone-cable thefts this year: #1
(Source: AT&T)
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Tuesday Words of Wisdom from the Right-wing Blogosphere:
My mom is a little concerned about me traveling alone since I’ve never been to Charleston (and I’m 53).
---Commenter RWingmom at RedState
All together now: 1…2…3… Awwww. Cute.
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Puppy Pic of the Day: "Read me Cujo again, kid! Read me Cujo!"
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CHEERS to Twofer Tuesday. In Wisconsin, it's on, baby! Last week Democrats snagged two out of six state senate seats in the recall election, and today it's the Republicans' turn to try and unseat two Democrats. As difficult as our challenge was, theirs appears to be even more so, judging by the latest PPP polling:
SD-22
Robert Wirch (D-incumbent): 55
Jonathan Steitz (R): 42
SD-12
Jim Holperin (D-incumbent): 55
Kim Simac (R): 41
No time for complacency, though! So remember: "Rick 'em! Rack 'em! Rick 'em! Ruck 'em! Get them votes out, Dems, and really…fight!" (There's apparently a dirty version of that cheer, but I can't imagine what it is.)
JEERS to weekend words of wisdom. Billionaire publisher Mort Zuckerman, occupying one of the "liberal" chairs on The McLaughlin Group Sunday, chastised President Obama for addressing the nation on TV Monday as the stock market was plunging. Oh, Mort hated the president's speech. Squishing up his face up into a mean old scowl so his disgust wouldn’t be lost on viewers, Zuckerman---a Very Serious Person Emeritus---proceeded to not make any sense:
"The president, in a sense…he either should have spoken before the markets opened, or after the markets opened. I don’t know who let him go out there. Whoever it was, it was a mistake!"
In other words, Obama was wrong for speaking up after the markets opened up and went down because he should've spoken up before or after the markets opened up and went down, but he also shouldn’t have spoken up at all, because it was a real downer. Ladies and gentlemen, please let this serve as a warning to you and your children: this is your brain on cocktail weenies.
Ch'CHING to mega-corporations getting mega-corporationier. Yesterday the business world was all abuzz when Google announced it was buying Motorola Mobility---maker of the Android Somethingorother---for $12.5 billion. ("Gladys! How much we got in the petty cash drawer?") Apparently the company is drooling less over the products Motorola sells, and more over the 17,000 patents it owns:
“People are starting to realize that Google could become the Microsoft of the mobile world,” Morgan said. Google is battling Apple and Microsoft, among others, over patent issues, and its handset partners have been facing similar challenges. So Google needs more than a toehold in this intellectual property turf battle. …
In other words, the future of smartphones and tablets will look a lot like the desktop computer market that it’s rapidly supplementing, if not replacing: Apple with a small but consistent slice of the market on the high end of the price spectrum, and a something-for-everyone panoply of Android-based devices at all levels of price and functionality beneath it.
It's a topsy-turvy development, but the company promises that one thing won’t change: the entire world will always and forever be able to Google Santorum.
JEERS to overstraining. On August 16, 1977, while sitting on his golden throne, 42 year-old Elvis Presley's heart ran out of steam and he died at 3:30 p.m. (He was supposed to kick off a concert tour in Portland, Maine the next day.) Tonight we add a new ingredient to our cocktail: Metamucil. Pay your hunka hunka burnin' respects here, darlin' Thankyuhvrrrmuch...
CHEERS to the Texas non-miracle. Okay, so Rick Perry's officially in the Republican potato-sack race for the White House. Personally, I find him charismatic and cool and steely-eyed and musky and square-jawed and broad-shouldered and…and…that hair!!! I know he'd be terrible for America, but…[sigh]. Perhaps Jim Hightower can throw a monkey wrench in my swoon, via The Last Word last night:
"[Texas is] #1 in the things we should be #50 in, and we're #50 in the things we should be #1 in. … He's George Bush without the intellect or the ethics. He's Michele Bachman with a better hairdo."
Nope. Didn’t work. All I heard was better hairdo. [sigh...]
CHEERS to riding the rails. 113 years ago today, in 1898, Edwin Prescott patented his design for a "roller coaster." It was followed the next day by a patent for "Ye Olde Hurl Bucket."
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Five years ago in C&J: August 16, 2006
LORD A'MIGHTY to Heaven's humpers. According to a new poll, good old-fashioned Christian values apparently include good old fashioned Christian porn addiction:
The poll results indicate that 50% of all Christian men and 20% of all Christian women are addicted to pornography," said Clay Jones, founder and President of Second Glance Ministries [...] Additionally, 60% of the women who answered the survey confessed having "significant struggles with lust." 40% admitted to being "involved in sexual sin" in the past year.
I'll pray for you wicked people. Pray real hard, I will. Right after I adjust my halo.
CHEERS to the glass being 98% full. This is cool---out of 435 House races, Democrats have candidates running in a record 425 of them. Actually it's 426, but we're not too hopeful about the prospects of the unfortunately-named Democrat George W. Gooper.
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And just one more…
JEERS to Mark Trail. Hey, look, I know he's an environmentalist and an ecologist and all that, but I think he's cracking up. Recently he let a mountain man kick the sheriff in the balls and then defended the mountain man! That's assault on a law enforcement, official, you idiot! And then he told his adopted son that he was clearing out time so they could go fishing, but then he found this goose with a gold band with a biblical passage on its leg, and he's all, like, "Sorry, son, I gotta check this out in town. But stay right by the dock and I'll be right back and we'll go fishin' together, I promise." So Mark Trail does some investigating and decides, hey, this gold band on the goose's leg thing might make a terrific story! So he calls his editor and is all, like, "Hey, boss, I want to do this story---can I put it on your expense account?" And the editor says, "Yeah, man, go for it." So now Mark Trail is about to go off on, literally, a wild goose chase while his son sits at the dock, toes dangling in the water, idle fishing pole at his side, wondering why his deadbeat daddy isn’t coming home to fish with him like he promised to. Who does he think he is, Congressman Joe Walsh? And I won’t even mention the time not so long ago when he set the drug dealers' shack on fire and then flew away, not waiting to find out if the blaze was threatening to destroy all the flora and fauna on the island. I mean, "What th?!" When did Mark Trail become such a black-ink stain on the comic page? When did he...stop caring? I don’t know. I just hope he's not smokin' crack in the tool shed or leading a tragic double life like that guy on Dexter or that other guy on Breaking Bad. I'll investigate and let you know what I find out. I think I'll start at the stripper bars. And put it on your expense account.
Have a beardly Tuesday. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial:
Stop coddling Bill in Portland Maine
---Warren Buffett
8/14/11
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