Maine Minutiae : Dems Sing the Blues as Maine Turns Red

Gov.-elect LePage**

I know that you've already absorbed what happened in the elections held yesterday throughout the Nation. But you may not know what happened to some of the "out of the way places" like the state in which I now live - Maine. Those of us up here in the top right hand corner of the United States underwent some sweeping changes in our neck of the woods, too. For the first time since 1962, Republicans are the majority party in both houses of the state legislature and have a Republican Governor in the Blaine House (The Gov's official residence while in office) to work with. The outgoing Governor, Democrat John Baldacci, was term limited out and his Republican successor Paul LePage will be heading the state government for the next four years. Baldacci is a real nice man, but he was/is a wishy washy Liberal as a Governor, which why I am very excited to see what Governor-elect LePage brings to the table. LePage, one of eighteen children, has a powerful life story that has seen him go from a homeless 11 year old (yes, really) to the highest elected office in the State of Maine. Currently the next Guv is the Mayor of Waterville, a town of about 16,000 twenty miles or so north of my living room on I-95 and he is also the General Manager of Marden's (a cross between Big Lot and Dollar General). LePage's awe inspiring life story can be found here. If this man is as good for the state of Maine as he was to the citizens of Waterville as their Mayor, I look forward with great anticipation to the revival of the state economy and a more business-friendly atmosphere for entrepreneurs. This state is loaded with fine people with good ideas and with the LePage administration leading the way, our future looks so bright we gotta wear shades.

Mainely Red**

When I first started typing this article, I was gonna lean on the Democrats and Liberals pretty hard, but as I started telling you a snippet of the life of Paul LePage, I found it way more productive to tell you what we see in our future in Maine with LePage leading the way, than to blast the dumbasses who've had their hands on the throats of Mainers for almost a half century. The Dems/Libs will do something stupid soon enough then I'll unload on them. But until then, I'll just listen to them sing the blues because at long last, Maine has turned red.

**Photos from bangordaileynews.com**

Plus One: Election Leaves Liberals Seeing Red

Where did all the blue go? bwahahahahaha

Well, well, well, what have we here? The map of the USA looks like it's been painted firetruck red, with a touch of blue or purple here and there. That fact brings me to this question: Hey, you Liberals! How does all that Conservative ass taste today, you bunch of peckerwoods? bwahahahahahahaha  I hate to be sore winner...no I don't. For the last six years, Liberals have called Conservatives everything but children of God. The Left's treatment of Conservative women like Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachman and the O'donnell lady from Delaware has been dispicable to say the least. If you don't agree with them or if you just don't like them, state that fact and move on. There's no need to to try to destroy these women with vitriol and flat out lies about them and their children, for God's sake. Now that the shoe's on the other foot, and Liberalism has been shown to be the ideas of idiots and roundly rebuffed by the voters of the US, will the Conservatives try to destroy the lives of Leftist idiots like Nancy Pelosi or Harry Reid? No. Because the grown ups have the upper hand now, and they'll be too busy trying to undo the mess that Obambi, Ms. Granny McBotox, Dingy Harry and the rest of those America-hating inbreds have forced on this country through less than scrupulous means against the will of the overwhelming majority of the American people. Oh, they're still gonna bitch and moan about an unfair election, the disenfranchisement of certain ethnic groups or Florida in 2000. That's the way pussies and Liberals operate. They never lose, something's always taken from them. And it's always a Conservative white guy that does it. These Socialist asswipes are the ones who call a slowdown in the growth of something, like entitlement programs, a "cut", even though more money is being spent on said entitlement. When Liberals don't get their way, not only is it someone else's fault, they threaten to hold their collective breath till they are "blue" in the face. (Libs, blue, I made a funny). Just wait until the next Congress convenes and the evil, abortion-hating, white guy Republicans introduce a bill to de-fund, or repeal altogether, ObamaCare. I'm telling you now so you'll be ready, clean all the old programs off your DVR so you'll have lots of space to record the hilarity for posterity. There promises to be temper tantrums of Biblical proportions from the knuckleheads on the Left.

When we woke up this morning, Liberalism had been exposed as the class warfare, government control sham that it is. When we woke up this morning, we woke up to real hope and change. The kind of hope and change that will utilize the exceptionalism that is America and its people, to take this country forward back to its rightful place as the best nation in the history of the World. When we woke up this morning, America was battered, but not beaten by the full frontal assault on her by those who wish she were more like Europe.When we woke up this morning, America herself had breathed a sigh of relief that the constraints placed on her over the last four years, especially the last two, had been removed and she could once again breathe the fresh air of freedom and liberty. When we woke up this morning, the sun shone a little bit brighter as it brought a new day to America.

Texas Tidbits: Special Edition! Texas Tweeties by Bob Zeller

Miss April

Several weeks ago on Texas Tidbits, I did a post on The Concho City  of San Angelo. The reason I chose San Angelo as a topic for Texas Tidbits is simple. As you know, my Dad was a trucker for over 40 years and I was thinking of some of those "far away places" he used to drive to, and I remembered San Angelo as a city he delivered to many times. So, I did a post on San Angelo. Long story short: a guy named Bob Zeller emailed me and thanked me for doing that post on his town... San Angelo. If I recall correctly, he eluded to the fact that places like San Angelo were kind of forgotten locales. Since then Bob and I have exchanged emails and blog comments on an almost daily basis and let me tell you it has raised the level of the crowd I hang out with exponentially. Bob's a funky old dude with a gift for photography and an itch for birding. And he does a magnificent job of combining the two. You can see much of Bob's work on his web site Texas Tweeties.

Bob recently took his gift and his itch and put together a calendar for 2011 featuring some amazing  photos of some of our fine feathered friends that have made their way through San Angelo over the past several months. Mr. Zeller was nice enough to send me one of his calendars and it has some outstanding photos in it, one for each month. I showed it to my little girls, ages 3 and 8, and they loved it. We have a bird feeder behind our apartment and it's kind of a game we play when the various birds here in Maine pay us a visit every day. The 3 year old, Bailey, knows what a blue jay is and the sound they make so when she saw the blue jay on the calendar, it was a laugh riot. Anyway, like I said, Bob sent me a copy of his calendar and it's not one of those calendars made out of what feels like Charmin, this mamma jamma is made of some very sturdy paper. It would make a great gift for someone and it certainly would be a nice addition to your office or any room in your home. (mine's going on the wall in my home office or a my wife calls it, "your side of the bedroom".)

I'd love to see Bob sell a few thousand of these calendars, but if it was something that looked like crayon drawings on toilet paper, I would not waste my time, blog space and bandwidth writing about it.I highly recommend it without reservation. And NO I ain't makin' a penny off Bob by promoting his calendar. I'm writing about it because I have seen it, held it and I love it. End of story. Another reason I mention this calendar is that I now consider Bob Zeller my friend. He's a good man with an affinity for taking pictures like few people can. Did I mention that Bob recently turned 76 years young?

You can contact Bob through his blog or bobzeller1 AT aol DOT com. Help a funky old dude out. :)

Plus One: Your Civic Duty

Today is Election Day. From my point of view, this is one of, if not the most important election in the 234 year history of this grand experiment we call the United States. To be up front and open, I want you to know from the get-go that I am a Conservative/Republican, with the emphasis on Conservative.

For the last four years, the Democrats, specifically the Liberals like Pelosi, Frank and Reid, have been in control of Congress. Since that time, they have pulled every legislative trick possible in order to ram through some of the most dangerous legislation this country has ever seen! This is especially true since the 2008 election that brought us Barack  Hussein Obama. The Democrat-controlled Congress has rammed through such socialist policies as "universal" health care, the government bailout of several huge corporations, such as GM and AIG, and that dumbass $1 TRILLION "stimulus" bill against the wishes of a large majority of the American people! I won't go into specifics on each of these disasters as they have argued back and forth and back again. Pelosi, Reid and Company have extended the government's intrusion into our lives like never before in our history. It's extremely scary if you just sit back and think about it. I don't recall the exact figure, but do you realize that you and your children are in debt to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars? And that number is growing by the minute.

I am 54 years old and I have seen the best and worst of this country during my lifetime. I remember the gasoline lines of the '70's, buying on an odd day/even day system and being allowed to purchase a set maximum number of gallons. Gas lines were longer than the restroom lines at Cowboys Stadium on a free beer night. I remember unemployment in double digits and interest rates at 20%! All of those things result of the socialist ideas of another Democrat - Jimmy Carter, the second worst President of my life time. The worst President of my lifetime lives at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue as we speak.

The assholes in power in Washington, D.C. today have no regard for you or for this country. They are in it for power. They could give a rat's ass about you or me. All they want is to control your life from cradle to grave. Think I'm kidding? What kind of crap is your kid learning in Public (read: Government) School? Tommy has two mommies? Global warming? There are no winners or losers in life? We don't keep score at the kids' soccer game so the losing team won't have their little feewins hurt? As your kid goes to college, guess who he's getting his college loan from? The United States Government. Income taxes, Social Security Taxes, taxes with initials we don't even understand. then come Medicare, ObamaCare which means some bureaucrat with an actuary table deciding for you whether or not it's feasible and cost effective enough to have a kidney transplant or get treatment for your cancer. Do you want that shit? I don't. Let's move on to illegal immigration, shall we? The Democrats want to grant amnesty to 12 MILLION people in this country illegally! They broke the damn law to get here! Thus, they are criminals! After amnesty for the "undocumented worker" (that phrase makes me want to puke) the Liberals in Congress will give the illegals every Government subsidy known to man inorder to keep them on "the reservation" and completely beholden to the Government for their whole lives. And who will these people continue to vote for? yup. Liberals. Hell, these illegals will make more money being on welfare here than they ever had the chance to make in their own country! Why in the hell would they wanna vote for anyone but a Liberal. Here's an analogy for you. If there's a stray puppy in your neighborhood and he looks like he needs a good meal, out of the kindness of your heart, you feed him. The next day the same thing happens and you feed him again. Same for the next day. And the next. And the next. The lesson here is : feed 'em and they come back. That's true for stary puppies and "stray" people. feed 'em and they come back. The Liberals are counting on this. Instead of seeing people eager to come into this country legally and reap its rewards from hard work and attaining citizenship and its attendant rights by following the rules, Liberals just want to heap these rights on the illegal immigrants without any sort of path to becoming a citizen! Feed 'em and they come back.

My point here is that this is YOUR country and as a citizen, you elect people to Congress to work for you, not for themselves! Vote those kinds of bastards out of there, they are screwing you without even giving you a kiss. Take back YOUR country! Get out and vote today! Give an elderly person a ride to the polls. Call you friends and family to remind them to vote. Voting is the Most sacred Right you have in this country, a right mentioned in the Declaration of Independence as unalienable.

It's your country and it's time to take it back.The future of our nation is at stake. If you don't vote, you have no right to bitch about the outcome. So get off your ass and go vote today! It's your Civic Duty.

God Bless you and may God continue to bless the United States of America.

Texas Tidbits: The Little Man Who Came Up Big

The Shoe**

This story is a bit personal to me because I am related to the man that this article is about. At one time, he was one of the most famous men in the world and is still held in high esteem by any horseman worth his salt. the man's name? William Lee Shoemaker. To some, he was Willie Shoemaker, to others, Bill Shoemaker and to  everybody else, he was simply "The Shoe".
The Shoe came into this world fighting for life. On August 19, 1931, in Fabens, Texas, William Lee Shoemaker came into this veil of tears at a whopping 2.5 pounds. Willie was so small, he was put into a shoe box (ain't that ironic? The Shoe in a shoe box) and put into an oven to keep him warm.  He was not expected to make it through the night , but somehow he did. And the world, particularly the horse racing world, was better for it. This would not be the only life or death fight Shoe would have in his life. He was almost killed twice on the race track and again after he retired from riding when he rolled a Ford Bronco over while driving while drunk, which left him paralyzed from the neck down. Through all this adversity, Willie Shoemaker never gave up and he never felt sorry for himself. He said, "You've got to play the hand you're dealt, and I was dealt this one". As one of his big rivals, Eddie Arcaro said, Shoe "is a tough son of bitch".

As a full grown man, Willie Shoemaker stood a towering 4ft 11in tall and tipped the scales at 96 pounds. He was a small man in a world of small men. At the time he retired as a jockey, The Shoe had won a record 8833 races, won the Kentucky Derby four times, the Preakness twice and the Belmont Stakes five times and, surprisingly, never won the Triple Crown of horse racing. He rode over 40,000 mounts and won 1009 Stakes races and his mounts earned over $123 million.

His biography is very interesting and I just touched on a few points of his life in this post. If you'd like to learn more about Willie, bookmark this page or click on through. It's a nice piece about a man whose legacy will live for a long time to those who knew him as The Shoe and to those of us who are proud to share a name with William Lee Shoemaker - the Little Man Who Came Up Big.

**Photo from si.com**

Second Chance Sunday: Ghosts and Two Georges for One Buck

We've made it to Halloween Day and here in New England we are actually having some autumn weather. It's 35 degrees with a wind chill of 27 and snow is falling about 40 miles from my living room and it could be headed our way. We'll see. At any rate, be extra careful tonight if you get out and about and watch for all the little ghouls and goblins seeking treats and tricks - unless the kid is too old to be trick or treating. If that's the case, then slip the little fooker some tofu, it'll serve 'em right.

Lots of football going on today, but the real game for my friends in Texas is Game 4 of the World Series, with San Fran leading the Rangers 2 games to 1, after another great outing for Colby Lewis last night. Tonight Madison Bumgarner takes the hill for the bad guys and Tommy Hunter will try to even the Series for Texas. The first pitch is scheduled for 8:20 EDT tonight in Arlington.

Thanks to you, our Country Music Month Tribute was a big success. I want to thank you for all the kind words and the time you took to pay us a visit. I am, indeed, very grateful. I went through the Three States Plus One archives and picked out three of the most popular posts for the month, and decided to give them an encore presentation. There are a thousand memories to relived, so let's get to it.

• George Strait - Even after thirty years-plus as a major Country Music star, this guy is still cranking out Number 1's and continues to sell out venues all over the world. And he's still country. Can I get an "amen" from the readership?
• George Jones - With a career entering its seventh decade, there still ain't another soul on God's Green Earth that can sing 'em like The Possum.
• Buck Owens - I remember hearing Buck Owens songs on the radio, KBOX-1480, when I was a little boy in Fort Worth. Buck and Don Rich gave us harmony that is still some of the best ever in Country Music.

Over the past few days, I also posted some good, spooky stuff about some haunted places in the Three States. For the scary details click here, here, here, here, here and here. That's a good day's worth of reading right there, so whenever you get a minute and you want something to do, just click away. If you dare.


**Photo from The Regina Leader-Post**

Texas Tidbits: Lone Star Spirits

Real ?**

Twas the night before Halloween, ghosts and ghouls are waiting to be seen
Children with their costumes pulled up taut, looking for treats and homes to haunt,
Grown ups dressed up, both sexes, And here's a post about haunted Texas.

This post will link to a page with several places in Haunted Texas. Some have videos and of course, there are lots of photos. If you don't have time to look at them all, you can always come back another time or two to finish up, but make sure to check out as many as you can.

For my friends in the Metroplex, one of the stories is about the Lady of  White Rock Lake, an oldie but a goodie.

Have fun learning about Haunted Texas.

**Photo from students.ou.edu**