"A bad guy is a bad guy. I don’t care what color he is. When you go to war, if you know the enemy, the enemy dresses in red and you dress in blue, you shoot at red. … You shoot at the enemy. You try to identify the enemy. And the enemy right now, the overwhelming majority of people coming in are people of color or people of Hispanic origin."
--Paul LePage, Republican Governor of Maine
So, what I'm asking myself is when was the last time you were dressed in a blue uniform and the enemy was wearing a red uniform? Was that the Revolutionary War?
Governor LePage, who was duly elected by the citizens of Maine is saying that most crime in Maine is committed by colored people. Actually, Maine has one of the lowest rates of crime in the country, and one of the lowest incarceration rates, at 350 people per 100,000. But, it is true Blacks are imprisoned at 1,553/ 100,000, Indians at 747/100.000, HIspanics 407/100,000 and whites at 259/100,000. How that math works out, I'm not sure.
There are 15,707 Blacks living in Maine, out of a population of 1,300,000 people. The Internet is a wonderful thing. If Blacks are imprisoned at a rate of 1,553/100,000, one might calculate all 15,000 are in jail, given the fact that there are 1.3 million Mainers, which seems to be a hard and verifiable number.
Does this number refer to the number of Blacks in jail per 100,000 Maine citizens of all colors? Or does this mean 1,553 Blacks of every 100,000 Blacks in Maine are in jail? Somewhere, somebody will know these things. I'll ask Gov. LePage. He might consult his notebooks with the mug shots.
Somehow, I think I must have got my arithmetic wrong. Or Gov. LePage has his arithmetic wrong. Or maybe his sampling methodology leaves something to be desired. Or someone does.
Presumably, these numbers refer to the number of Blacks per 100,000 of all Mainers who are in jail. Since Blacks are a tiny percentage of the Maine population, that means a fairly high proportion of the small number of Black Mainers are in jail. Why the Governor did not include Indians, who appear to wind up in jail more often than Hispanics, is another question.
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| Wait,! A Hispanic in blue? |
Presumably, none of those 259 white men wore red uniforms. Then again, there are no photos.
Was Governor LePage saying all those Black drug dealers were wearing red uniforms? Had he just seen "Hamilton?" There were Blacks wearing red uniforms in "Hamilton." But the, Gov. LePage would have had to have traveled to New York City, which seems highly unlikely. Gov. LePage listening to Hip Hop for two hours? Seems unlikely. Unless it was "opposition research." Remains to be seen.
The governor has expressed concern about all those out of state colored men who come to Maine, sell drugs and then impregnate a white girl before leaving. He has a loose leaf binder with all the cases. What the governor does not tell us is how many colored girls get impregnated by those out of state drug sellers of color. Do these men prefer to impregnate white women?
It is an interesting question.
Mad Dog,
ReplyDeleteI just have a couple questions..1) Why does Maine get to have all the fun-with the loco governor and all his crazy talk. When he talks to his enemies he channels Yosemite Sam "I'm going to shoot you right between the eyes", says things like black men, known as D-Money, Smoothie and Shifty, like to come up to Maine and impregnate white girls (guess like a herd of migrating wildebeest) and still he gets to stay in office. You'd think he'd be gone by now, looked like he really did it this time...Nope-Mainers know a good thing when they see it and LePage is good for a constant stream of laughs, not to mention, shock and awe..Mainers don't care if the rest of the country is laughing at Maine because of the bigot at the helm-he's their bigot and they're gonna keep him.
2) What's up with Republicans and "binders"? Romney had his "binders full of women"-- yeah baby..and now LePage has binders full of impregnating black and Hispanic drug lords- presumably all named D-Money, Smoothie and Shifty. Wow. How come the Dems don't have any good binders?
Maud
P.S. Now we know why Manuel Miranda left "Hamilton"-he didn't belong in that blue uniform...
Ms. Maud,
ReplyDeleteYours are additional questions of great interest.
I have just returned from a fact finding trip to Gov. LePage's state, and will file a more complete report, but suffice it to say here, there are Mainers who are not crazy, and in fact, if Monhegan Island is representative (unlikely) a substantial proportion is not crazy, but simply afflicted. Which may portend poorly for the nation as a whole. Enough crazies can put a crazy into office.
As for the binders--in the 21st century when the Roladex has gone extinct and files are now in bytes not pages, binders strike me as atavistic. But maybe that's the point. The governor gets down to basics--the same techniques he learned in grade school circa 1960, serve him now.
Mad Dog
Ms. Maud,
ReplyDeleteAnd, oh. Did you ever notice how it's the Republicans who can be counted on defending white womanhood? Mr. Trump defends against Mexican rapists, who Louie Gomert (R-Texas) has noted hunger only for white women, and now Gov. LePage emerges as the defender of the frail. What is it about white women which non white men cannot resist? Perhaps you have some experience to offer; I cannot say. But considering all the Black women impregnated by their white masters, one wonders whether this has to do with sex or what?
Mad Dog