Would you trust this woman to public office?
 
Did you guys know that this election cycle brought us the first openly gay Senator, Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin? Did you also hear about Tulsi Gabbard, the first Hindu in Congress, or Mazie Hirono the first Asian-American woman Senator, both from Hawaii? Well who the hell cares?!?

We all know the real civil rights issue of our time is not race, religion, gender, or sexuality; the greatest victims of our society are our noble nerds. Have you ever been on Kotaku or a particularly esoteric sub-reddit? Nerds live under oppression you couldn’t even imagine!

Colleen Lachowicz, a Democrat from Maine, was recently elected to the state senate amidst a fury of anti-nerd controversy. Her opponents created a really, really terrible website hellbent on admonishing her using the harshest accusations possible.

Colleen Lachowicz is a Democrat candidate for Maine State Senate. In Colleen’s online fantasy world, she gets away with crude, vicious and violent comments like the ones below. Maine needs a State Senator that lives in the real world, not in Colleen’s fantasy world.

Daaaaaaaammmnm dude! Harsh! And what quote do they use to expose her unnatural predilections?

So I’m a level 68 orc rogue girl. That means I stab things … a lot.  Who would have thought that a peace-lovin’, social worker and democrat would enjoy that?!

So she admits it?!? For shame!

Luckily, in the grown-up world, no one really gives a shit, and Lachowicz won. I mean, if I were a Mainer, I’d be impressed, but demand to know her stance on Zelda, obviously.

 
Maine Gov. Paul LePage is the Tea party-supported idiot who squeaked into office with just 38% of the vote in a three-way race last year. Hardly the stuff of a mandate—61 %voted against him, of course—but this didn’t stop LePage—who doesn’t really give the impression that he’s a very bright fellow—from barging right in like a bull in a china shop and disrespecting the working people of his state. For no good reason, either. He’s just a dummy.

Instead of worrying about things like, oh, the state’s economy, the battered tax base, the elderly, state roads or ANYTHING THAT MATTERS, dimwitted LaPage took it upon himself, nay made it his business—after what he described as “complaints” about the supposed “anti-business” atmosphere (which later he admitted consisted of one single anonymous letter!!!) —to remove an eleven-panel mural from Maine’s Department of Labor building depicting actual events in American labor history! He also directed conference rooms be renamed so they won’t honor labor leaders, including one named for Frances Perkins, the Secretary of Labor under FDR who helped established the first minimum wage laws (and the first woman at a cabinet level in US history).

Incredible.
 

 
Judy Taylor, the artist of the piece who was selected by the Maine Arts Commission, remarked of the mural’s removal: “There was never any intention to be pro-labor or anti-labor. It was a pure depiction of the facts.”

Aside from proving to his constituents that he’s a blustering buffoon—as if there was ever a reason to doubt it—now Tea party-inspired foolishness might cost Maine taxpayers more than $38,000.”>the Department of Labor who granted most of the money for the mural are going to send LePage a bill for violating the terms of the grant. This Tea party-inspired foolishness might cost Maine taxpayers more than $38,000.

That’s… leadership, baby! Republican leadership. Actually, in all fairness, I can’t blame them: LePage is such a fucking goof-ball that he’s even been rebuked by HIS OWN PARTY for being a dickhead! How many times do you ever hear a Republican break ranks to criticize another Republican??? For a low IQ wingnut like Paul LePage (who told the NAACP that they could “kiss his butt” and that he’d “laugh” at anyone who protested the mural’s removal) they will make an exception! That’s right, as unlikely as this sounds, this twit brings shame on all members of the Maine GOP and they told him so in a very public way to disassociate themselves from this political trainwreck. LaPage is the turd in the punchbowl of Maine policitcs and everyone knows it but him.

Ultimately, this mural business, as annoying as it is, is a small matter because when LePage is defeated in the next election cycle—if he runs, he surely will be challenged by a fellow Republican—his Democratic successor in the governor’s mansion is just going to undo everything damned thing this buffoon ever did, including hanging the mural back up and restoring the names of the conference rooms.

In the meantime, temporary Gov. LePage, was bitch-slapped the other day by a guerrilla artist who projected Judy Taylor’s labor history mural onto the exterior of Maine’s Capitol building. Here’s a statement about the video:

We put this video up to remind our peers that you have a voice, as soon as you choose to use it. If your government takes a symbol away and tries to hide history, you can make the truth resonate a thousand times stronger with your own 2 hands.

This is a lesson the labor unions taught us all, though some have chosen to forget it. We will remind you.

The maker of the art is unimportant. What matters is that you see it, and you have the freedom to speak about it.

Help make this video go viral!
 

 
They probably just should have spelled out Portland, Maine.

(via TDW)