The Goat Pen

how much for a crabby paddy?

tick - if you are still on Mt Desert Island try to visit Southwest Harbor - almost working class compared to Bar Harbor and lots of nice boats near the Hinckley yard

fuckin Maineacs.

Isn't Acadia where the original Cajuns of Louisiana came from?

I thought that was The Rock...wasn't he Acadian?

They refused to swear allegiance to the King of England and were deported from southeastern Canada.

We've got a well-traveled bunch here. I keep waiting for someone to post, "I ain't never been nowhere."

Travel is my thing. If I had been what I was supposed to be in life, I would have been Anthony Bourdain or Arthur Frommer.

I feel the same way. But I'll probably have to wait until the kids are all grown before I can visit some of the places I want to. Some of my co-workers are in Israel right now. There's a chance I might get to go there soon. We also send people to Ireland occassionally. Would love to go there and have told my boss as much. I'm pretty well-traveled, but a lot of that was when I was a kid myself. There are still a lot of desinations on my bucket list.

Hopefully Hell is one of them.

If I ever find myself in Hell, I'll just tell the devil that I had to put up with you all these years and he'll let me go.

Doubt it. He's my father.

Wow...just wow...and the last line is govt at its best...no interview required...

State Gets $5 Mil Bonus For Food Stamp Sign Up

http://www.judicialwatch.org/blog/2011/ ... stamp-sign

Last Updated: Thu, 09/29/2011 - 3:26pm

In its quest to promote taxpayer-funded entitlement programs, the Obama Administration has actually rewarded one state with a $5 million bonus for its efficiency in adding food-stamp recipients to already bulging rolls.

It’s part of the administration’s campaign to eradicate “food insecure households” by improving access and increasing participation in the government’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Incidentally, the program was recently changed to SNAP to eliminate the stigma that comes with a name like food stamps. Just a few months ago the federal agency that administers the program, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), launched a multi-million-dollar initiative to recruit more food-stamp participants even though the number of recipients has skyrocketed in the last few years.

This week Oregon officials bragged that the USDA has given the state $5 million in “performance bonuses” for ensuring that people eligible for food benefits receive them and for its “swift processing of applications.” The money comes on the heels of a separate $1.5 million award from the feds for making “accurate payments of food stamp benefits to clients.” So welfare recipients are clients? .

It marks the fifth consecutive year that Oregon has been “recognized” by the federal government for “exceptional administration” of the entitlement program, according to the announcement posted on the state’s Department of Human Services web site. The state official who runs SNAP assures that her staff will “continue working very hard to exceed expectations” so that Oregonians can “put healthy foods on their table quickly.”

Could this be why the number of food-stamp beneficiaries in Oregon has increased dramatically in the last few years? Since 2008 the state has seen a 60% boost in the number of food-stamp recipients, which means that more than 780,000 people (one out of five Oregonians) get groceries compliments of Uncle Sam.

As if this weren’t bad enough, the feds are also giving the state a two-year grant to test an “innovative approach” to the food-stamp “client eligibility review process.” This will make it even easier for people to get food stamps because it grants state officials a waiver that allows them to grant the benefit without interviewing the candidate.

Hacksaw wrote:ome of my co-workers are in Israel right now. There's a chance I might get to go there soon.

I've got to see Jerusalem before the Iranians nuke it.

Nuke the Dome of the Rock??

That would turn the whole Muslim world against them in a Jihad.

Now Tel Aviv??? That's open for nuking.

Tel Aviv is 45 miles from Jerusalem. Nuke one, the other becomes unvisitable for a while.

YEP, but not destroyed. No Jihad.

I'd nuke the entire area myself and throw in Idaho for good measure.

Afterwards, the Iranians would say the Mossad and CIA nuked Jerusalem. 90% of the Muslim world would believe them. No Jihad.

They'd still have Mecca and Medina.

I asked one of my Israeli co-workers if he lived in a safe part of Israel, where he didn't have to worry about rockets raining down on his head. He said there is no such place in Israel.

This week Oregon officials bragged that the USDA has given the state $5 million in “performance bonuses” for ensuring that people eligible for food benefits receive them and for its “swift processing of applications.”

Not that I would ever be the kind of person to say I told you so...