The Maine Department of Health and Human Services (motto: Helping the Needy by Requiring Them to Fill Out Lots of Forms That Nobody is Ever Actually Going to Read, Although That Won’t Stop the Bureaucracy From Finding Some Excuse for Denying Any Benefits) is running a big deficit. 

I want to stress that I am not a conspiracy theorist. No matter how many times Fox News runs reports about how at least half the liberals in Congress are actually badly dressed woodchucks, I don’t believe it. The New York Times can keep on exposing Republican presidential candidates as thinly disguised squirrels, but I’m not buying it.

In the wake of the Nov. 8 election in which Maine voters overwhelmingly rejected a proposed casino at the Bates Mill in downtown Lewiston, the mayor of that fair city, Larry Gilbert, and other supporters of the development gracefully accepted defeat. 

When people from away think of Maine, what’s the first thing that comes to their minds?

“Isn’t it winter there, like, ten months a year?”

“I think it’s part of Canada. Or Sweden.”

“Stephen King is the governor. Or the governor is some other psycho like him.”

Which just goes to show that people from away are idiots.