He didn't mean to say exactly what he meant to say

Everyone hates Maine Gov. Paul LePage. Literally everyone on the planet. There are as-yet undiscovered tribes living in the deepest parts of the Amazon, and the first thing they're going to say when some intrepid anthropologist first makes contact with them is "Oh yeah, that Maine governor? Screw that guy!"

The latest reason to hate LePage? His assertion while speaking at a town hall meeting in Freeport that Maine's biggest problem is not a disastrously bad economy or its tire fire of a Health and Human Services Department, but "asylum seekers" who bring diseases like "Ziki fly" to Maine's fair (extremely fair; that state is whiter than a Hellman's truck accident at a Kenny Chesney concert) shores:

LePage said asylum seekers don’t get medical assessments and can bring foreign diseases to Maine.

“And what happens is you get hepatitis C, tuberculosis, AIDS, HIV, the ‘ziki fly,’ (sic) all these other foreign type of diseases that find a way to our land,” he says.

Mainers now hate LePage so much, they not only booed him for blaming The HIV and other diseases on "asylum seekers" (which we guess is code now for "Syrian refugees?"), but they also chanted "shame, shame" like the crowd from The Scarlet Letter -- which, to be fair, is a time period we're not entirely sure Maine has advanced past. (Kidding! We're just kidding, Mainers. Our grandparents are from Maine, it has lovely ... uh ... lobsters and shit, we think, we haven't been back since we were like 14.)

Also too! Since the subject of the Zika virus is at hand, we feel it is incumbent upon us to bring up a dumb meme you've seen popping up lately from websites with names like "frolicacrossagreenearth.com" posted by your one cousin who also loves to post links about how vaccines are responsible for autism and SIDS and the Kennedy assassination.

If you've been lucky enough to miss this one, quick summary: Brazil has seen an increase of cases in microcephaly since the Zika virus started spreading. Despite studies indicating that yes, this is being caused by Zika, Very Dumb Liberals have been blaming these birth defects on Monsanto, because of course they have. Actual scientists (who are actual professionals who got their degrees from actual universities rather than the Google) have refuted this idiot claim:

Pyripyroxyfen has been used for decades, with no reports of increased birth defects, said Ernesto Marques, associate professor of infectious diseases and microbiology at the University of Pittsburgh, who is working in Recife, Brazil to study microcephaly.

"It's ridiculous," said Marques, of the purported link between the chemical and microcephaly. "These guys come out of the blue, and people believe them, with no evidence at all. It really shows the lack of science education among the public."

Turns out the real reason the pesticide is found in areas with an increased number of microcephaly cases is because it's being used to try to control the populations of the Aedes aegypti mosquitos that spread the Zika virus. Why, it's almost as if the laws of cause and effect disprove the notion that this particular pesticide could possibly be responsible for this problem, you goddamned morons. These people are as bad as Paul LePage.

[contextly_sidebar id="q5bJ0Ka46RP8U5WXYPbLSsU2SRFrUdo0"]OK, that's unfair; no one is as bad as Paul LePage. To refresh your memory, LePage is also well-known for being a dick during the Ebola scare back in 2014. And when he did a racism but then said it wasn't racism but then was like "yeah, it totally was a racism." And for his never-ending war on the scourge of poor people.

We could keep going with reasons to hate Paul LePage, but we'd be here all day, and we're really behind on "The Flash."

[MBPN / USA Today]