Fat-Ass Paul LePage Chronicles, Part Ten or So

Ol Fat-Ass Paul LePage, he of more chins than a Chinatown phonebook, was quoted as saying the unemployed need to "get off the couch and get yourself a job."

Umm, Fat-Ass, I would LOVE to have a job. Any job. But I've been unemployed for almost four frickin' years, including the last two years under your fat-ass regime.

I have news for you, Jackson. Ain't no one hiring in this state. You've shut down all the state hiring, and the private sector has all the people they need. And all your tax cuts that were supposed to create jobs? Yeah, right. You give the 1% a tax cut, they either stick it in the bank or invest in some crooked politician.

Fat-Ass's equally fat-ass daughter, Fat-Ass Lauren LePage, who has a degree in eating from the University of the Fat, has a job, but that's only because Daddy hired her (in complete violation of state law, but we all know state laws don't apply to anyone with an "R" after his or her name).

I just wish I thought Fat-Ass would be unemployed himself after the next election, but Maine's answer to Sanford and Son will probably take him back in a flash.

Fat-Ass Paul LePage... the wet spot on the toilet seat of life.

Oh, and Fat-Ass's erstwhile employer, the aforementioned answer to Sanford and Son, is now selling used -- very used -- fire department bunker gear. Judging by the condition, it isn't safe for use any longer. God only knows who would want to buy dirty, smelly, unsafe bunker gear.

Fat-Ass Rethuglicans: Always SOOO Classy

This time, it's New Joisey's fat-ass rethuglican governor, Chris Christie, talking to a law student:

And let me tell you something; after you graduate from law school, you conduct yourself like that in a courtroom, your rear end's going to get thrown in jail, idiot."

...and:

I mean, damn man, I'm governor, could you shut up for a second?

Yeah, these rethuglicans certainly have restored common decency in politics.

Fat-Ass Christie's almost as reliable as Fat-Ass Paul LePage when it comes to being a venal, lying, incompetent, idiotic, hypocritical boor.

Schticks of One....

Senator Snowe Retiring

Maine Senator Olympia Snowe announced she was not going to seek re-election, citing the "atmosphere of polarization and 'my way or the highway' ideologies..." Of course, Snowe does not mention it is her party, beholden to Teabagging lunatics like Frothy, Lizardboy, and Mittens, that has been displaying those tendencies.

It will be interesting to see who fills the void.  Maine has a Teabagger governor, Fat Ass Paul LePage, a Rethuglican/Teabagger majority in both state houses, two Rethuglican Senators (Snowe and Susan Collins) and two Democratic Representatives (Mike Michaud in northern Maine and Chellie Pingree in the southern part of the state). I don't think a Democrat stands a snowflake's chance in hell, in that our illustrious voters -- at the behest of the Teabaggin', Bible-thumpin', hooker-humpin', sister-marryin', rifle-rack-in-the-pickmup, neocon wingnut idjits -- supported a "people's veto" of marriage equality... a veto funded by a bunch of out-of-state ultra-conservative whackjobs who are suing to maintain their anonymity, since they, like the rest of their ilk, are violently allergic to the light of day.

I fear that Fat Ass will prevail upon Snowe to resign early, so that Fat Ass can, in turn, resign as governor (like his Teabaggin idol, Caribou Barbie), so that his successor can appoint Fat Ass  to Snowe's seat, giving him a foot up in the next campaign.

Breitbart Dead

Right-wing blogger, famous for playing fast and loose with facts, Andrew Breitbart has died of natural causes, according to authorities. The far-right-wing whackjobs have decided that President Obama had Breitbart whacked, due to Breitbart's possession of a video of Obama that "proves" our duly-elected President is the devil incarnate, or a Muslim, or a Martian, or something.

Why don't you kids go away somewhere and let the grown-ups run things, 'kay?

Sauce for the Goose, Sauce for the Gander

The Maine Tea Party Patriot party -- better known as Maine's Teabaggin lunatic fringe -- claims unswerving loyalty to the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of Maine.

One small problem: Maine's state treasurer, Bruce Poliquin.

The state Constitution states the treasurer "shall not, during the treasurer's continuance in office, engage in any business of trade or commerce, or as a broker, nor as an agent or factor for any merchant or trader."

Poliquin, who was appointed treasurer by Fat Ass Paul LePage, has continued to operate at least two separate business during his tenure.

State Rep Mark Dion, an attorney and former sheriff, asked the state's Attorney General if Poliquin's activities were within the constraints of the Constitution.  The AG, William Schneider -- also appointed by Fat Ass -- said that Poliquin should  "disassociate himself from active management" of his businesses and "not appear before any governmental bodies on behalf of entities that he owns."

Since Poliquin decided to ignore the AG's recommendations, Dion is now asking the Maine Supreme Judicial Court for a ruling.

It'll be interesting to see if the Teabaggin lunatics support the Constitution or their Teabaggin buddy. I know where my wager is going.

Girl Scouts: Cookie Monsters or Gay-Agenda, Pro-Abortion Terrorists?

Some useless little state rep in Indiana, Bob Morris, is terrified of the green-clad harbingers of doom known as the Girl Scouts, claiming they are the “tactical arm” of Planned Parenthood, a “radicalized” group with a homosexual agenda that promotes abortion while seeking “the destruction of traditional American values.”

Hey, dude, go back home and don't bother the grown-ups anymore, okay?

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/02/28/2666042/have-a-cookie-support-a-girl-scout.html#storylink=cpy

Truly Disgusting Headline:

"For Romney, a new strategy after a Santorum surge"

Please pass the brain bleach.

 

Here We Go Again...

Once again, who you know is more important than what you did...

Manhattan prosecutors have decided not to file rape charges against a son of Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly after a two-week investigation of a woman’s accusation that he had attacked her in October inside the Lower Manhattan law office where she worked, prosecutors said in a letter on Tuesday.

The Manhattan District Attorney declined to press charges, saying:

 “the facts established during our investigation do not fit the definition of sexual assault crimes,” according to the brief letter, which was written to Mr. Kelly’s lawyer, Andrew M. Lankler. “Therefore, no criminal charges are appropriate.”

Of course, had this been someone other than a police commissioner's son, you know damed well there would have been at least a grand jury investigation.

Oh, and what does Greggy do for work?

After the allegations became public, Mr. Kelly took a leave from his position as an anchor of “Good Day New York” on the Fox station WNYW (Channel 5).

But of course.

Gingrich: "Romney is a liberal"

Lizardboy has declared that Mittens is a "pro-abortion, pro-gun control, pro-tax increase liberal."

This from the guy who asked his wife for an "open marriage."

Sweet baby Jebus.

TSA Strikes Again... With Credit Where Credit is Due?

I don't really know if this should be filed under "TSA Strikes Again" or "Credit Where Credit is Due."  Senator Rand Paul (Teabaggin Independent Lunatic Fringe) was denied boarding at Nashville, after he refused a pat-down search (he had allegedly "triggered a routine alarm").

"When an irregularity is found during the TSA screening process, it must be resolved prior to allowing a passenger to proceed to the secure area of the airport," TSA spokesman Greg Soule said in a statement. "Passengers who refuse to complete the screening process cannot be granted access to the secure area in order to ensure the safety of others traveling."

At least the TSA goons treated a teabaggin "moran" the same way they treat us.

Correction Time

I just completed a post complimenting a business exec on the opinions expressed in a letter to her customers. Since I had a few minutes, I did a little background research on the company. Not good. The family strongly supports both Wisconsin Teabaggin Governor Scott Walker and the John Birch Society. Googling the company name revealed several forums full of disgruntled ex-employees, among other things.

When I saw that, I realized I had been had.

I deleted the post.

Oh, Puh-Leeeeeze...

[Update: corrected an error - should have been manly, not many.]

Just saw a commercial for Dr Pepper Ten... Pair of overly-macho adventurers talking about their shoot-em-up and the fact that Dr Pepper Ten has "only ten manly calories." They go on to disparage "girly" drinks and chick flicks.

Yeah, like guys like that are gonna worry about calories.  Remember Gablinger's Beer?

Professional-Strength Time Waster

I've been doing some cleaning around the house today, and I left the TV on for some noise. Turns out Spike TV is running a marathon of one of the most bizarre programs I've ever seen: 1000 Ways to Die. It's a series of mini-clips of really unusual deaths... swallowing an M-80 with a lit fuse, dumping a smoke into a toilet filled with gasoline.. all those good things.

I haven't gotten much done the last couple of hours...

Happy New Year. Whatever.

Today's Maine Telegram has an interesting article on some of the new laws taking effect in Maine. One law requires the state's business ombudsman to establish a "central permitting program for retail businesses." This is in keeping with Fat Ass Paul LePage's promise to make Maine big-mega-business friendly. 

The idea is to make it easier to apply for and receive annual permits required for eating and lodging establishments, and for businesses that sell liquor, wine and beer, tobacco, food, beverages, lottery tickets and gas.

Individuals applying for public assistance will also face new procedures: they will have to provide notarized affidavits from all eight great-grandparents, a celebrity chef, a Heisman Trophy winner, and a draft pick to be named later.

Looking Back. Way Back. Yet Looking Ahead, Too...

I was reading the usual blogs this morning, when one brought to mind a good memory.  I'd like to share it with you.

Back in 2006, I was conducting a First Aid/CPR/AED course for my employer. The company -- amazingly -- allowed each of its almost 1000 employees to sponsor a non-employee for First Aid/CPR/AED training, at the employer's expense.

Part of my lecture was along these lines:

We do not go into emergency services because of the fantastic schedules. We know that for the first twenty years, we will miss every holiday, every birthday, every wedding anniversary, every school play, every PTA meeting. We do not go into emergency services for the fancy uniforms. The uniforms are polyester: they are hot in the summer, cold in the winter, and they always look horrible. We do not go into emergency services for the money. There is no money in emergency services: most of us are volunteers, or at best, paid-on-call.  We do not go into emergency services for fame, fortune, glory, or greed. Do you know the name of even one police officer, firefighter, or paramedic in your town? Or do you know only the Johnnie Gages and Roy DeSotos, the Barney Millers, the Tommy Gavins? We may not admit this, especially when we're sober, but we go into emergency services because we want to make a difference. We want to keep our friends and families, our neighbors, even strangers, safe and healthy. We want people to go home to their families, their spouses, their children, in the same condition as when they left in the morning. We don't want to see tears, we don't want to hear anguished crying, we don't want to tell people their loved ones are never coming home. We want people to stay alive, to go on vacation, to see their children marry, to bounce grandchildren on their knees...

Well, the wife of one of our staff members was in that class, and she listened to what I said. No, she more than listened, she heard, she understood, for the following year when it was time to recertify her CPR, she told me she was back in school, going for a paramedic certificate to pay her way through nursing school... to become a trauma nurse and eventually, a flight crew member of the local air ambulance.

What brought that memory to mind?

This:




Via Mustang Bobby

Yeah, I guess I made a difference, too.

TSA Strikes Yet Again: They Stole My Cupcake!

A woman flying from Las Vegas to Boston learned the hard way that "what comes from Vegas, stays in Vegas." Well, sorta, at least. The woman attempted to pass through the TSA screening with a frosted cupcake.  A cupcake. The TSA officer (shown below) thought the frosting could be a security risk, so he seized it.

 

Bubba consumed the cupcake to keep 'murrica safe.

Seriously, though, this is just another instance of TSA using its obscene power and authority for the sole purpose of oppressing the American public in the name of security. It was bad enough when Richard Reid tried to light his shoe, and caused the American public to shuffle through the local Checkpoint Charlie barefoot. Then we had last year's infamous "UndieBomber" and the rigamarole about water and shampoo. Now, frosting is considered a possible terrorist threat.

C'mon, people, get real.

Frosting?  A threat?

Maybe to the Jenny Craig crowd, but fergawdsake, give me a break.

FatAss Paul LePage Chronicles

FatAss Paul LePage has decided that people who receive taxpayer's money should be drug-tested.

Wonder if that includes himself and his fatass daughter... both of whom receive taxpayer money in their state salaries.

Bet it doesn't.

Glass Houses Department

A while back, I mentioned that one of the medical bloggers I read got caught up in the Massachussetts EMS scandal, where more than 200 EMS personnel got caught falsifying recertification training records. This guy now has a post up criticizing private-sector EMS providers, and says he's embarrassed when the best excuse he can make for them is lack of training.

This coming from someone who fraudulently submitted records claiming he had attended mandated in-service training.

To use his own phrase, "Sorry, guy, I am not impressed."

If you want to bitch about someone else's training, maybe you should have made sure your own was in order.

Oh, yeah, that's right, you were too busy skipping training but claiming the credit anyway.


And he no longer allowing commenting on his blog.  Maybe he got tired of being called a hypocrite.

RIP Hal Bruno

Hal Bruno, the long-time political director for ABC News, and life-long volunteer fire fighter, has died at the age of 83.

He was the commanding general of ABC's political coverage in the 80s and 90s, but more important to me, he was a dedicated firefighter, rising to the rank of Chief in his department, and a tireless campaigner for fire safety:

In what amounted almost to a second career, Mr. Bruno was a volunteer firefighter for much of his life and became an authority on fire safety. He wrote a monthly column for Firehouse magazine.

When he retired from ABC in 1999, he was appointed chairman of the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation, which honors firefighters who have lost their lives in the line of duty and provides assistance to their families, a position he held until 2008.

Mr. Westin recalled that on Sept. 11, 2001, Mr. Bruno was among the first to phone in details of the attack on the Pentagon. He had got word of a fire there and had rushed to the scene to help.

Chief Bruno won just about every award there was in the world of fire suppression.  His voice, his expertise, and his experience will be missed.

[And now, the Block Quote function has decided not to work. Don't know if it's Blogger or Microsoft or both.]

Perry: At Least He (Usually) Speaks English...

Goodhair's YouTube moment, when he forgot the third Federal agency he would eliminate as President, drew its share of humor, from Dependable Renegade all the way to Goodhair's own campaign committee.

As Tengrain might have put it, "'Hey, he's from Texas, jes lahk gee-dubya. Y'all oughta be happy he's talkin in English, and makin' full sentences,' his campaign committee didn't add."

Betting around here at 618Rants World HQ is more or less evenly split among the Department of Health & Human Services, EPA, National Endowment for the Arts, IRS, ATF, and of course GAO (Government Accountability Office)... basically, all the agencies that keep the Teabaggin wingnuts from doing whatever the hell they want.  My money is on CPB, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (stopping to make sure I put the "L" in "public"), which isn't really a government agency per se, but the Teabaggin wingnuts hate them some CPB.

Movie review

Watched a disappointing movie last night, Certain Prey, based on a novel by John Sandford. The made-for-TV movie was produced by Mark Harmon (of NCIS fame), so -- not surprisingly -- it starred Harmon "as you've never seen him"... which is a load of hooey.

Certain Prey is part of Sandford's series about Lucas Davenport, formerly Lieutenant and Deputy Chief with Minneapolis PD and later with the Minnesota Department of Public Safety.  Davenport is described in most of the novels as relatively tall, ruggedly handsome (as opposed to Harmon's almost "pretty boy" looks), with a chilling smile.  Face it, Harmon just doesn't fit that bill.  I think Nick Chinlund (below) is much closer to Davenport's description of his protagonist:


"He was slender and dark-complexioned, with straight black hair goping grey at the temples and a long nose over a crooked smile. One of his central upper incisors had been chipped and he had never had it capped. He might have been an Indian except for his blue eyes." 

Harmon's Davenport is almost exactly like Harmon's Leroy Jethro Gibbs: calm, collected, wry, ready with a quip, driving insanely fast (although in Davenport's Porsche rather than Gibbs' Charger), and being an inhumanly accurate shot.  Not exactly Harmon "as you've never seen him." The only Gibbs characteristic that is missing is the headslap.

Comparing the movie to the book (which I had re-read the previous day) showed a lot of shortcuts and plot changes.  In the book, Carmel Loan and Hale Allen had a professional relationship prior to the killing; in the movie, they had had an affair several years earlier. There were many others, some understandable because of the transition from book to movie, others were unnecessary.

The biggest problem, though, was perhaps unavoidable, given the star's history.  In the book, the lead FBI agent's name is Louis Mallard.  Since the medical examiner on NCIS is Dr. Donald "Ducky" Mallard, that would have been a bit much.

An earlier "Prey" novel, Mind Prey, starred Eriq LaSalle (of ER), who was also one of the producers. This indicates to me that maybe Sandford (or his agent) should be a little more careful about selling movie rights (Sandford has a whole page about that fiasco here).

Now I'm not saying I could have done any better, or even that I could have done as well. I'm simply saying I think the movie could have been much, much better.

One of the BEST Things in Life...

... other than cuddling the lovely yet talented Mrs 618...

We had turkey for dinner last night, so today I had the pleasure of making turkey samdwiches for lunch.  Turkey, mayo, fresh-ground pepper.

It just doen't get much better.

Remind Me Again...

... why we don't have effective gun-control policies in this country?

In the last 24 hours, we've had shootings in Kent, WA, Grand Prairie, TX, and Orlando, FL, resulting in -- at last count -- twenty-one injured and five killed. This is in addition to the usual shootings that don't make national news.

Now, the NRA crowd claims that "iffin ever'one carried, we wouldn't have none o' these sittawations, cuz the law-bidin' folks would gun down them nig...err, Islam.... err, bad guys."  Texas has a huge percentage of gun nuts; where were they?  I thught the whole idea of having armed lunatics gun down the bad guys was to prevent the armed lunatics from gunning down the good guys.

How much you want to bet the shooters will be more right-wing Christianist-fundamentalist whack jobs like Gerald Loughner?  I mean, face it, we DFHs don't go on shooting sprees... that's the job of the Bible-thumpin', hooker-humpin', sister-marryin', rifle-rack-in-the-pickmup neocon wingnut idjit crowd.