AUGUSTA, Maine — A year after Gov. Paul LePage stirred outrage by saying critics of his decision to skip NAACP-sponsored Martin Luther King Day Jr. events could “kiss my butt,” he is politely declining invitations to annual breakfasts honoring the civil rights leader in Orono and Portland so he can attend one in his hometown of Waterville, his office said Thursday.
The governor received invitations from leaders of the Bangor and Portland chapters of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People to attend their annual breakfasts, LePage spokeswoman Adrienne Bennett said Thursday. The Bangor chapter holds its breakfast in Orono.
LePage responded that he already had planned to attend the King Day breakfast event in Waterville, which is held around the same time of day and he has attended for several years, Bennett said.
“Unfortunately, the timing of the Bangor branch’s event does conflict with the Governor’s other MLK commitment that day; and therefore, the Governor is unable to accept the invitation,” said an email from LePage’s scheduler, Jeanne St. Pierre, to Diane Khiel of the civil rights group’s Bangor chapter. “We thank you for your understanding,” it concludes.
A similar response was sent to Rachel Talbot Ross of the Portland branch. Khiel deferred to Ross for comment.
Ross said that while past governors have attended or sent representatives to the Portland breakfast, that’s less important to her group than the fact that LePage is recognizing the day, as he’s doing in Waterville. LePage is also issuing a proclamation calling on Mainers to honor King by participating in community service.
“We’re pleased that the leader of our state is going to take time to honor a great American, whether it’s in Portland, Orono or Waterville,” said Ross. “We hope that eventually we will be able to get the governor to spend time with us.”
A year ago, LePage drew national attention after responding to a reporter’s question about criticism he had received over his decision not to attend the state NAACP’s annual King Day celebrations. He said at the time that he didn’t attend events for special interests.
“Tell them to kiss my butt,” LePage was quoted as saying. The comment drew harsh criticism from state and national leaders of the NAACP, as well as from politicians and editorial writers in Maine.
In the wake of his comments, LePage attended a Martin Luther King Jr. Day breakfast in Waterville, where he served as mayor before being elected governor in 2010.
“For many years, the governor has attended this particular event to honor Dr. King and that’s what he’d like to continue to do,” said Bennett.
My only question here is who’s planning on putting on the lipstick? Will it be NAACP members and supporters who want to look pleasing for the occasion or Paul who wants to be kissed but has been showing up at various public locations over the past year looking rather unattractive?
Yes, let’s try and look like we’re not racist by attending a breafast on MLK Day with a bunch of other middle-aged and old white guys.
He may be many things but it doesn’t appear he is racist, considering he has attended this event over the years.
NAACP are the racists.
The Governor adopted a black child. Pray tell, what exactly is he suppposed to do to escape your assuming he is racist??
Untrue. He adopted no children of any color. He sponsors a young man who is the son of his golf caddy in the Bahamas while he is going to college here in the states.
The guy is a fat dumb troll.
See how nice and polite this year’s event is going to be? Now, if only the NAACP representative hadn’t implied LePage was a racist last year, he wouldn’t have had to extend his own personal invitation to them. See, we can all get along.
Yeah, let’s live in dream land and pretend the kiss my butt comment never happened.
ooooh…This year he wants to tell them to kiss his butt on live tv…
In 1999 a Memphis Jury determined the FBI had assassinated Martin Luther King.
The question for Mr Politically Correct “the Guv ” is why are local, state and county
law enforcement agencies doing business with the FBI, eh?
see
In 1999 the Martin Luther King family sued one of the assassins of Martin Luther King in civil court. They did this because Assistant AG Eric Holder of the department of justice would not reopen the investigation after the Martin Luther King family uncovered evidence that the FBI, CIA, and Memphis police had assassinated Dr King. The King family also wanted to enter their evidence into a public record so it could be accessed.The jury returned a verdict in favor of the King family and juror members held a press conference saying it was a clear cut case of the FBI assassinating Dr King. There was a media blackout of the trial. Details of the trial can be viewed here or by reading the book called ACT OF STATE THE EXECUTION OF Martin Luther King
written by the trial attorney William Pepper.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/spl2/mlk-conspiracy-exposed.html
The question for the Bangor City Council is do you really trust Police Chief Gastia
after he went to be “trained” at the FBI Academy?
see
Yo Moonbats read the book Tainting Evidence
Tainting Evidence:
Inside the Scandals at the FBI Crime Lab
by John F. Kelly and Phillip K. Wearne
In February 1975,
an internal FBI investigation into the activities of Special Agent Thomas N. Curran, an examiner in the FBI
lab’s serology unit, revealed a staggering record of perjury,
incompetence and falsification. At the trial of Thomas Doepel for rape
and murder in Washington, D.C. in 1974, Curran testified under oath that
he had a bachelor and masters degree in science, that both Doepel and
the victim were blood type O and that the defendant’s shorts bore a
single bloodstain. In reality, Curran had no degree in anything; Doepel,
on re-testing, turned out to be blood type B; and the shorts evidenced
two, not one blood stain.
After further complaints, FBI
Special Agent Jay Cochran was instructed to do a full review of
Curran’s work. Curran’s aberrations, like Zain’s, were systemic. Curran
had issued reports of blood analyses when “no laboratory tests were
done”; had relied on presumptive tests to draw up confirmatory results
and written up inadequate and deceptive lab reports, ignoring or
distorting tests results. “The real issue is that he chose to ignore the
virtue of integrity and to lie when asked if specific tests were
conducted,” concluded Cochran’s report to the then head of the FBI laboratory, Dr. Briggs White. It was an early warning of what could happen at the FBI
lab. Tom Curran turned out to have lied repeatedly under oath about his
credentials and his reports were persistently deceptive, yet no one, FBI lab management, defense lawyers, judges, had noticed. When they did, there was no prosecution for perjury.
you have way too much time on your hand.
Yea that’s what FBI SAC DeSauliers keeps telling me.
see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loyd_Jowers
Loyd Jowers (November 20, 1926[1] – May 20, 2000) was the owner of a restaurant (Jim’s Grill) near the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968. In December 1993, Jowers appeared on ABC’s Prime Time Live and related the details of an alleged conspiracy involving the Mafia and the U.S. government to kill King. According to Jowers, James Earl Ray was a scapegoat, and not involved in the assassination. Jowers believed that Memphis police officer Lieutenant Earl Clark fired the fatal shots
Um, Was the man on the grassy knoll there?
Didn’t James Earl Ray confess?
http://whatreallyhappened.com/RANCHO/POLITICS/MLK/mlk.html
also see
http://www.nytimes.com/1998/03/25/us/hidden-evidence-claimed-in-king-slaying.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm
Hidden Evidence Claimed in King Slaying
By KEVIN SACKPublished: March 25, 1998
The lawyer for James Earl Ray maintained today that a retired F.B.I. agent
concealed evidence he collected in the initial search of Mr. Ray’s car
30 years ago, and that the long-hidden papers provide verification of
Mr. Ray’s assertion that he was set up to take the blame for the
assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
But isn’t this one of those “Special Interest” groups he vowed he would never meet with? Someone better tell the Gov that the NAACP doesn’t stand for the “National Association for the Advancement of Carbuncular Politicians.”
I wonder if he is going to tell anyone to pucker up while he is there.
The NAACP didn’t pucker up last year, so Paul decided he’d better go this year.
Here is a Preview of coming attractions!
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_eW8U4L0niRE/TTIZmCAlZgI/AAAAAAAAG8g/duUEHgUg5Rc/s1600/lepage+kiss+my+butt.jpg
….
Yeah? How so?
I hope they Muzzle him!
Wonder what kind of ploy or game LePage is playing with this phony visit. Everybody knows what he really thinks because he has said it many many times before. Maybe he is doing a George Wallace.
The BDN, again, on a daily basis, is trying to stir the mudpile on our Governor. How would you like to be haranged by the left about a racial issue? Do you know he is raising a black child? I doubt there is anything Lepage could do to make you people happy. MLK day should be celebrated in the spirit it is meant and not this filth you people espouse.
If King were alive today, he’d be denegrated as a socialist, communist and a racist. He’d be criticized for engaging in “class warfare.” King’s goals and ideals (dreams) would be labeled as “special interest.” LePage already aired his true feelings last year, but I guess maybe he should be given credit for being more open minded this time around?
“It should come as no surprise that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a Republican. In that era, almost all black Americans were Republicans. Why? From its founding in 1854 as the anti-slavery party until today, the Republican Party has championed freedom and civil rights for blacks. And as one pundit so succinctly stated, the Democrat Party is as it always has been, the party of the four S’s: slavery, secession, segregation and now socialism.
It was the Democrats who fought to keep blacks in slavery and passed the discriminatory Black Codes and Jim Crow laws. The Democrats started the Ku Klux Klan to lynch and terrorize blacks. The Democrats fought to prevent the passage of every civil rights law beginning with the civil rights laws of the 1860s, and continuing with the civil rights laws of the 1950s and 1960s.
During the civil rights era of the 1960s, Dr. King was fighting the Democrats who stood in the school house doors, turned skin-burning fire hoses on blacks and let loose vicious dogs. It was Republican President Dwight Eisenhower who pushed to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1957 and sent troops to Arkansas to desegregate schools. President Eisenhower also appointed Chief Justice Earl Warren to the U.S. Supreme Court, which resulted in the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision ending school segregation. Much is made of Democrat President Harry Truman’s issuing an Executive Order in 1948 to desegregate the military. Not mentioned is the fact that it was Eisenhower who actually took action to effectively end segregation in the military.”
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=16500
How sad that the conservative Republicans have turned into the racists. It’s not the Democrats these days that I hear using racist language.
When Yankee Democrats supported the civil rights movement – and especially voting rights and busing – in southern states in the 1960’s and ’70’s , all those racist Dixiecrats (who were Democrats because Lincoln was a republican) switched parties and became racist republicans.
This was part of Nixon’s “Southern Strategy” to republicanize the racist South.
Some of us know the history here…
yessah.
since gov. lepage blew the event off last year,I think he should be publicly uninvited this year!
Does Adrian Bennett really expect us to believe that Penguin is declining scads of invitations to MLK celebrations? I bet he hasn’t been invited to one.
Alright so the Governor declined invitations again and is no shocking surprise going to Waterville and so far has told nobody to kiss his butt, let’s pick on someone else this year, what’s his spokesperson Adrienne Bennett doing? Is she going with him to defend anything he might say that could be “blown out of proportion” or “taken the wrong way” in Waterville?
Mentioning this guys ( The Penguin) name in the same sentence as MLK is totally ridiculous. Maybe he should attend MLK services at UMO and tell all the students what he personally thinks of MLK?
Home town of Waterville? I thought he was from Lewiston?
Don’t tell anyone but he’s from Quebec. Shhhh.
You see the fat rolls hanging off his collar? It looks like he’s going to explode. lol
stay Classy, Paulie