From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
"LePlagiarism 101"
Senator Rand Paul's plagiarism antics are child's play compared to what our tea party governor just got caught up in the middle of here in Maine. This is fun.
No square peg he can't
jam into a round hole.
After giving big tax breaks to Maine's wealthiest residents, Governor Paul LePage decides it's time to go after the poors by crying, "Welfare fraud!" After all, he once claimed that 47 percent of all able-bodied Mainers were
just a bunch of slackers sitting around eating bon bons and suckling off the welfare teat.
So then he shells out nearly a million bucks, this fiscal conservative tea party hero does, to a consultant with a terrible reputation, to rig a "report" confirming the governor's pre-conceived conclusion that "welfare fraud" is rampant and the poors must be punished because, hey, Jesus always said we should stomp on the least well-off among us, right?
And the study comes back. It confirms everything the governor wanted confirmed. But, wonder of wonders, the consultant gets caught living down to his reputation by plagiarizing the everlivin' shit out of his report. (Hats off to Mike Tipping at the Maine People's Alliance for digging into the slime and documenting it.)
And now Governor LePage is all like, "I'm shocked…shocked!...to find out that the partisan report I commissioned to reach a pre-ordained conclusion is flawed! Bark bark bark bark bark! This is all Democrats' fault! They made me do it!"
As the Portland Press Herald summed up in its op-ed page Saturday:
These are conspicuously absent from
"borrowed" sections of the report.
The state was looking for a political bludgeon, not original thought. The governor is not an innocent bystander here, and shifting the blame shouldn’t work: LePage and Health and Human Services Commissioner Mary Mayhew are personally responsible for awarding this extravagant no-bid contract, so they have to accept responsibility for this enormous failure of judgment now that it has blown up in their faces.
The entire LePage administration has been a failure of judgment. Good lord willing and the creek don't rise, this fall we'll elect
Democrat Mike Michaud who, not unlike President Obama, will have the unenviable task of cleaning up a Republican's mess.
Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Tuesday, May 27, 2014
Note: We hope you had a nice Memorial Day weekend. As promised, here are my fresh Jarts wounds: here….here…here here and here…oh, and these sixteen here that form a heart shape. Final score, as usual: 0-0.
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11 days!!!
By the Numbers:
Days 'til primary elections in AL, CA, IA, MS, MT, NJ, NM and SD:
7
Days 'til Ohio's
Columbus Arts Festival:
11
Percent increase in the sale of new homes in April:
6.4%
Number of bee hives that will be rented and brought to Maine to help pollinate our blueberry fields:
75-80k
Number of bees in those hives, collectively:
4.8 billion
(Source:
The Portland Press Herald)
Percent of National Spelling Bee winning words that were
nouns and adjectives, respectively:
64%, 18%
Year of the shortest winning word ("Luge"):
1984
(Source:
Parade)
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Tuesday Words of Wisdom from the Right-wing Blogosphere:
Yes! Demons are at work in our nation with one having been installed in the WH as it's chief executive with welcoming arms by an adoring and grossly misled media and an equally adoring and misled electorate.
A nation is truly on its way to the rubbish bin of history when it intentionally elects and appoints to its highest leadership positions of government the likes of Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, John Boehner, Mitch McConnell, John McCain and a host of others to include those who are appointed by the aforesaid to our highest court of adjudication. And that includes John Roberts. We have a political party which essentially carries the name: The "Demon-crat" Party
---Commenter Smok67 at performance art blog World Net Daily
All together now: 1…2…3…
Classy!
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Slurp.
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CHEERS and JEERS to the world's top cop on patrol. As if to prove that the situation in Afghanistan is still really dangerous, President Obama flew in to Bagram Air Force Base Sunday the only safe way he could: fast, steep and unannounced under the cover of darkness:
"Button that collar! Shine those shoes!
Stand up straight! Drop and gimme forty!"
After a concert from country music star Brad Paisley, Obama spoke before a rally of 32,000 Americans currently serving in Afghanistan. Obama made a bit of news, saying he was hopeful that a new president in Afghanistan would lead to a signed security agreement that would leave a small number of American troops in the country after 2014. That agreement has been elusive under the government of Hamid Karzai. Obama, however, mostly focused on thanking the troops and reminding them about the beginning of America’s longest-running war.
Good for him making the trip to help buck up troop morale. Bad on him for hinting strongly at keeping 10,000 troops there indefinitely, a la Europe, Kuwait, Japan, and South Korea. But most important, Brad Paisley failed to wear a flag pin on his lapel, which is excellent news. It'll keep the Fox News tongues wagging about something besides Benghazi for at least a good half hour.
CHEERS to masking tape. It was invented on this date In 1930. It has a million and one uses, but to shut up a Republican blowhard only duct tape will do.
CHEERS to the Candyman-in-Chief. Seriously---was there ever any doubt that the guy who would win in a landslide in Ukraine's elections wouldn't be the chocolate maker??? Puh-leez…
Poroshenko, with
his new cabinet.
Petro Poroshenko, a billionaire chocolate manufacturer, claimed the Ukrainian presidency with an emphatic election victory on Sunday, taking on a fraught mission to quell pro-Russian rebels and steer his fragile nation closer to the West. A veteran survivor of Ukraine's feuding political class who threw his weight and money behind the revolt that brought down his Moscow-backed predecessor three months ago, the burly 48-year-old won more than 50 percent in preliminary results, against just 13 percent for his closest challenger.
In fairness, his opposition was hobbled by the fact that they were makers of cod liver oil lollipops, deep-fried pig spleen gumdrops, and asbestos cotton candy on a stick with a nail in it.
JEERS to bad wiring. Using the NRA's logic, over the weekend a good guy with a gun (three, actually, all legally acquired) turned into a bad guy with a gun and killed a bunch of good guys without guns until the good guys with guns showed up, upon which the bad guy with a gun turned back into a good guy with a gun and stopped himself. I'd link to a story about it, but they all mention the bad guy with a gun's name.
CHEERS to Frank Carandini. You know him better as Christopher Lee, and he turns 92 today. He's made a whopping 279 movies---most notably as Dracula, Bond villain Scaramanga, and the evil wizard Saruman in the Lord of the Rings trilogy---and he's still going strong. Not many people know this, but...he does a mean Timewarp.
Hey Oscar people! Stick a crowbar in your vault and give him one already!
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Five years ago in C&J: May 27, 2009
JEERS to daffy disclaimers. We cat-sitted (cat-sat?) for a friend this weekend, and while rifling through her drawers for jewelry and other valuables we found a copy of the Looney Tunes Golden Collection. Awesome! I watched those every Saturday morning from the day I was born. In fact, tens of millions---maybe hundreds of millions---of kids grew up with Bugs and Porky and Foghorn and Elmer and "Beep Beep!" So we were surprised to learn we may have been watching the equivilent of snuff films and porn, judging by the stern disclaimer we found on the back of the DVD package:
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The Looney Tunes Golden Collection is intended for the adult collector and may not be suitable for children.
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Now that I think about it, a bunch of 'em did run around
without any clothes on. I can't believe James Dobson never warned us.
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And just one more…
CHEERS to the inaugural edition of, "Hey, look! It's Barney Frank feeding a deer!" La la la la la... Hey, look! It's Barney Frank feeding a deer!
This has been the inaugural edition of, "Hey, look! It's Barney Frank feeding a deer!"
Have a tolerable Tuesday. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial:
The creationist Creation Museum in Petersburg, Ky. plans to unveil a new attraction this weekend: a world-class Bill in Portland Maine skeleton.
---TPM
"Wait, what?"
---Bill in Portland Maine
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