From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
For the record, my governor's last name is pronounced i-dē-ət.
The last time Maine's teabagger governor Paul LePage said something stupid, he promised to tape his mouth shut. (Within minutes, his favorable ratings shot up ten points.) Alas, it turns out he's a mouth-breather, so the tape had to go. And that means the state with the most embarrassing governor in the country will have to endure more of his mind-numbingly bad judgment, reports Mike Tipping at The Bangor Daily News:
At a speech to a conservative audience in Falmouth last week, Governor Paul LePage made a statement that is deeply revealing. Informed that the event was wrapping up, LePage said he had two more points to make. The first was just one word: “energy.” The second was, he said, in reference to “workforce development.”
“About 47% of able-bodied people in the state of Maine don’t work,” said LePage.
On the recording you can hear a member of the audience ask “what?” LePage repeats himself: “About 47%. It’s really bad.”
Except, of course, it's not...just as Maine's mid-level state workers weren't "as corrupt as can be" when LePage made that particular accusation
last year.
Laura Clawson posted the real numbers yesterday at about the same time that LePage's Democratic challenger, Congressman Mike Michaud, was standing up for real Mainers:
Those aren't the Maine workers I know. I worked for 29 years at Great Northern Paper Company and I know that Maine workers are some of the hardest working in the world. They take pride in their work and they deserve a governor who will take pride in them! It’s time we have a governor who will lift Maine up and be a champion of this state, not put it down with misinformation and attacks.
Oh, and about LePage's first point, "Energy": After begging other countries to do business with Maine, he just
chased a Norwegian offshore wind-energy company out of the state, along with the $120 million it would've meant to us in economic activity. But say the words "tar sands oil" and he'll drool all over you like Pavlov's dog. Sorry for that visual.
To repeat: my governor's last name is pronounced mor-än.
Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Wednesday, October 23, 2013
Note: Whistle while you work Hitler is a jerk Mussolini broke his weenie now it doesn't work. That story, plus the Bayside neighborhood gets a new skate park and a chilly weekend ahead, tonight on Newscenter.
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10 days!!!
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til Thanksgiving
and the start of Hanukkah:
36
Days 'til the
Austin Celtic Festival:
10
Percent of Americans who think the Republican and Democratic parties, respectively, suck overall:
63%, 49%
President Obama's approval rating:
48%
(Source:
Washington Post-ABC News poll)
Amount lost per day at National Parks during the govt. shutdown:
$450,000
(Source: National Park Service)
Estimated number of additional Ohioans who will have health insurance when Medicaid gets expanded in the state:
275,000
(Source:
The Columbus Dispatch)
Regular season winning percentage of both the Boston Red Sox and St. Louis Cardinals, who face each other in Game 1 of the World Series tonight:
.599
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Mid-week Rapture Index: 185 (including 5 floods and 1 "ant"-Christ with three years and three months left on his contract). Soul Protection Factor 24 lotion is recommended if you’ll be walking amongst the heathen today.
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Shake it, baby…
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CHEERS to gettin' your daily vittles. Keep your eye on the diaries today as a blogathon to end hunger in America kicks off. Says Kossack and organizer Aji:
This year, we're taking a bit of a different approach: We're focusing on food justice specifically for underserved populations, including those in communities of color, and on local community programs designed to help provide nutritious food raised in sustainable ways. It's a two-fer: fighting hunger while supporting food sovereignty and food justice.
Today's contributors include Will Allen of Growing Power, Inc.; Phaedra Ellis-Lampkins of Green For All, Nikki Henderson of People's Grocery; Mrs. side pocket; and Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse. You know the drill: click 'em, read 'em, tip 'em, rec 'em, get that ball and fight fight fight! (Hunger. But you knew that.)
JEERS to a very bad start. Y'know, I'm really disappointed in the new web site that people can sign up at…or, rather,
can't sign up at…to get the information they need. The list of grievances seems endless, from bad software to uploading nightmares to frozen screens to endless delays and disappearing accounts. Millions of people are relying on it so they can get the information they need, but it's just a great big mess. And now they're scrambling like hell to fix it. There's no excuse for this crap. So I point my bony finger in their direction and say:
fix the damn Common Application college sign-up site already! You're making the private sector look bad.
CHEERS to #15? There's a state Supreme Court case down in New Mexico that gets under way today on the issue of marriage equality. If the mojo of enough justices aligns, the state will become the fifteenth to allow gay couples to tie the knot. How big is this in the Land of Enchantment? Pretty big, by the sound of it:
For the first time in the state’s history, arguments in front of the Supreme Court will be webcast. KOAT will stream the arguments on their website. KUNM will also simulcast the arguments. The arguments are slated to begin at 9:00 am on Wednesday. KOAT will stream from koat.com while KUNM will stream from kunm.org. … The state Supreme Court will not make a ruling from the bench and it could be several weeks before a decision comes down. In the meantime, eight counties are currently issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples.
Meanwhile, same-sex couples in New Jersey are Bollywooding their way down the aisles on their third day of marriage equality. So far only one locust swarm has been spotted, and that was during the Johnson-McGillicutty vows when they were released from a box in place of doves. Entomologists. You had to be there.
JEERS to a post-Ghaddafi world: Year 2. A reminder that there's no mail delivery in Libya, seeing as it's Liberation Day. Two years ago today, Libyans were out in the street celebrating their new independence from Muammar Ghaddafi by chanting, singing, dancing, and shooting their guns into the air (we still have a few bullets lodged in our roof). So how are things working out two years after the new head poobah promised that "We are now united. We have become brothers in love"? Well…
Libya is...um...here!
In the past two years, Libya has been gripped by more turmoil, with rising numbers of young men joining militias to provide some measure of law and order in a nation with no central police force. Some complain the militias answer to no one. "These militias and Islamists kill innocent people. All this happened because we don’t have a strong government." … In the face of unrest, Libyan refugees have been piling into boats bound for Europe.
I guess they meant "brothers in love" the way I mean "my brother who once shot me in the leg with a BB gun in the back yard and I shall have my vengeance when he least expects it." Hey, Happy Anniversary!
P.S. This just in from Fox News: "Benghazi! Benghazi! Benghazi! Benghazi! Benghazi!" Surprising restraint.
And Saudi Arabia is...um...here!
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WHATEVER to dissent from the desert. Oh no---a country that commits human rights abuses, degrades women and beheads people while acting like they're the most cultured and refined (well, their oil, anyway) society on earth doesn't like us anymore.
Waaah. Apparently we're not doing enough to stop humans from acting very badly in countries that don’t rhyme with "Baudi Barabia," so they're…I dunno…
un-friending us on Facebook or something. Of course, it might have been taken a little more seriously if the sheiks hadn't made their announcement in a You Tube video shot at a Vegas strip club. A complicated culture.
CHEERS to the Greatest Game Ever Played. On October 23, 1930, the last round of the first miniature golf tournament was played in Chattanooga. Republicans especially love it. It's fulfills their ideological fantasy: nothing but green after green after green…
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Five years ago in C&J: October 23, 2008
Jon Stewart was right last night:
John McCain can't complain about
the tea party now, because he was
the one who opened that Pandora's box.
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JEERS to the sloppy schoolmarm. There she goes agaaaain! An 8 year-old student submitted a question to a journalist about what the vice president's job is. The reporter relayed it to Sarah Palin and this was her
brilliant, Constitution-challenged answer:
Palin: "That's a great question, Brandon, and a Vice President has a really great job, because no only are they there to support the President agenda, they're like a team member, the team mate to that President. But also, they're in charge of the United States Senate, so if they want to they can really get in there with the Senators and make a lot of good policy changes that will make life better for Brandon and his family and his classroom."
Somebody fetch Harry Reid the smelling salts.
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And just one more…
CHEERS to climbing back on the wagon. Every year around this time I challenge myself to give up my worst addiction: candy corn. My brain thinks that candy corn is a gift from God for which we are just barely worthy. But my pancreas is thinking, "Have you no decency, sir? At long last have you left no sense of dietary decency?" So I owe it to myself to give it the old college try, cold-turkey style. I've got my stopwatch with me, and I'm hoping to beat my old record of…[opens notepad]…2.5 seconds without eating candy corn. So let's do this! Ready, set, GO...
The candy corn calls me.
"Billeh! Billeh! Eat us now!"
Tick…
Nom nom nom nom nom nom nom nom nom nom NomNomNomNOMNOMNOM!!!
…Tock.
1.2 seconds. Oh well. There's always Lent.
Have a nice Wednesday. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial:
"I, for one, have never met Bill in Portland Maine, but as an honorary doctor of fine arts, I am willing to stake my professional reputation that he is stuck in an anal retentive stage caused by his parents shaming him during potty time."
---Stephen Colbert
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