Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

In his masterful style, Christopher Hitchens in Slate Magazine [“Plame Out: The ridiculous end to the scandal that distracted Washington”] bids goodbye to the farcical Valerie Plame/Joe Wilson fandango, concluding that pretty nearly everyone – but most especially the lemming media – got it wrong. It was not the pro-Iraq war Bushies – Rove, Cheney et al -- that outed the CIA intelligence analyst. The outing came from the camp of the dubious -- Colin Powell and Richard Armitage.

In an interview with Front Page Magazine , Richard Poe looks under George Soros' skirts and finds much to his disliking. Soros is the deep-pocketed amature philosopher who has financed left leaning blogs such as MoveOn.org and DailyKos, sites occassionaly mentioned on this blog.

It seems like only yesterday that special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald was homing in on Karl Rove. Top vice presidential aide I. Lewis Libby, second in command to Vice President Dick Cheney, was said to have leaked the name of Valerie Plame to a reporter and blown her CIA cover, apparently in retaliation for a piece written in the Wall Street Journal by her husband, Joe Wilson, that questioned President Bush’s rational for prosecuting a war in Iraq. Plame was a CIA analyst and not an undercover agent at the time her name was released. But this made no difference. Hot on the chase and anxious to bag Cheney and Rove, the mainstream media devoted an ocean of ink to the subject, and it was widely speculated that Libby was executing a dirty trick on the Wilsons on orders from Rove, the Svengalli of the Bush administration. It all turned out to be a lot of sound and fury , signifying nothing . According to recent more accurate reports in the New York Times, it was not Libby, but rather R

Let’s play Connect The Dots. Dot 1: Sen. Hillary Clinton, wife and co-president of ex-President Bill Clinton plans to run for president on the Democrat Party ticket sometime in the near future, some think as early as 2008, when current President George Bush will retire to Crawford, Texas and Cindy Sheehan will move her “Bring The Troops Home Now!” show to, some think, Chappaqua, New York, the present residence of the Clintons. Dot 2: Hillary Clinton was visited recently by Ned Lamont, the Connecticut giant killer who, with a little help from his friends, recently bested Lieberman in a primary and has now become the nominee of his party for the U.S. Senate. Lamont’s friends include a pirate ship of bloggers -- among them Marcos Zuniga Moulitsas, captain of the good ship DailyKos – who hate, bloody hate, anyone associated with the Democrat Leadership Council, a bunch of candy-ass wimps and wimpettes who just don’t know what it means to be a Democrat. Dot 3: Bill Clinton, Hillary’s husban

Democrat senatorial nominee Ned Lamont’s campaign was stretching the truth a bit – and also taking advantage of a situation to embarrass his opponent, Democrat Senator Joe Lieberman – when campaign manager George Jepsen , citing “a dramatic shift in course,” supposed that Lieberman would denounce Rep. Chris Shays for having adopted a position on the war in Iraq similar to Lamont’s, which may be described charitably as an open-ended withdrawal. Returning from his 14th trip to Iraq, Shays spoke to a reporter from the plane and said, “"I believe if we left Iraq immediately or prematurely, it would result in just what Joe Lieberman sees: an all-out civil war, fuel prices off the scale. Of greatest concern, ultimately, would be that Islamist terrorists would have won. It would make Iran the new power in the gulf. That can't be allowed to happen." Shays' talks with Iraqi officials have led him to conclude that, “"The progress simply stopped. The Iraqis lack the politic

The Hartford Advocate reports that the Lamont campaign may be gay-averse at worse and at best simply rude. Kevin Brookman, vice president of Hartford’s Connecticut Pride Center, a gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people organization, was rudely rebuffed by staff people working for Democrat Party nominee for the U.S. senate Ned Lamont. When Brookman attempted to collect a promised contribution from Lamont for Hartford’s Connecticut Pride Festival, he was met with a torrent of verbal abuse from top Lamont campaign staffer John Murphy, once Tom Swan’s deputy at Connecticut Citizens Action Group. Swan is Lamont’s campaign manager. According to the Advocate: Brookman said when he recently tried to secure a promised donation from Lamont’s campaign, he was stunned by the cursing and disrespect he received from a campaign staffer. Brookman is organizing the Connecticut Pride Festival, which is expected to draw at least 10,000 people to downtown Hartford on Sept. 9. (He’s also a neighb

According to a Hartford newspaper , this is the kind of remark, made by Senator Joe Lieberman on a “Face the Nation” broadcast, that has “infuriated” a lot of his critics: “"If we leave precipitously - if we say we're going on X day, everybody's getting out - as bad as things are, they will get worse. There will be an all-out civil war in Iraq. Iran will surge in to control large parts of that country. There will be a wider regional war. And al-Qaida and similar radical Islamist terrorists will use Iraq as a safe haven from which to attack us and others." Some of Lieberman’s hot-headed critics are easily infuriated. Now, the first thing we should notice about the infuriating remark is that it is predictive rather than descriptive. Lieberman is saying “If A happens, B, C, and D will follow. There are only two ways to answer a prediction: You may wait until an event happens and then view the consequences to see if the prediction is true; or you may use your intelligence

Like this one . Iraqi group uses Michael Moore film to mock Bush Fri Aug 18, 2006 8:23 AM ET By Alister Bull BAGHDAD (Reuters) - An Iraqi militant group has produced an elaborate video of what it said were attacks on U.S. troops, in the latest example of the increasingly sophisticated propaganda war being waged by Iraqi insurgents. "The Code of Silence" was posted on the Internet by the Rashedeen Army, thought to be a relatively small Sunni group which has produced videos in the past of attacks it claims to have carried out. At almost an hour in length, it is the longest and most professionally made of recent postings by mainly Sunni militant and insurgent groups fighting the U.S.-backed government. The U.S. military said earlier this week that recent intelligence indicated al Qaeda in Iraq was refining its strategy by producing propaganda and adding a political base to its violent campaign of suicide bombings. Lifting scenes from Michael Moore's anti-war film "Fahre

There will be time, there will be time To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet – The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T. S. Elliot The key to a successful campaign in Connecticut – if you are a Democrat – is to swing left in a primary and right in a general election. Primaries are songs sung to the Democrat choir. One of the reasons Sen. Joe Lieberman did not vigorously defend his principled position on the Iraq war during the primary was because the Democrat choir in Connecticut is unappeasable in its pacifism. What is the point in preaching to a choir of doves if you are a hawk? Lieberman’s opponent, Greenwich millionaire Ned Lamont, tacked left during the primary, and now he intends to move in an opposite direction so that he may capture what some have called “the vital center,” a simmering cauldron of dissident and doubtful voices. A tantalizing item from the Drudge Report to the effect that Lamont intended to make adjustments to his staff, the better to prepare for

Thanks to a decision made by Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, transcripts of usually closed-door proceedings by the ultra secretive Judicial Review Council have been made public. Blumenthal’s decision that the council’s investigatory records must be made public after the council determines it has sufficient evidence to bring charges has opened a small window into the council’s deliberations and findings. No one yet has asked Blumenthal whether his decision will apply retrospectively to previous Judicial Review Council investigations. In any case, Blumenthal’s decision opens the doors wide to a case involving State Supreme Court intrigue that previously had been bathed in the half-light of secret deliberations – and the resulting disclosures are not pretty. According to the transcripts of the council’s deliberations, Justice Richard Palmer learned on April 8 from a law clerk’s query that Supreme Court Chief Justice William Sullivan had placed a hold on the publication of a decision

Count Michael Barone among Sen. Joe Lieberman’s defenders. In a recent column, Barone let loose on head-in- the-sand progressive bloggers by reminding them of the important difference between Neville Chamberlain and Winston Churchill. After Chamberlain had been foxed by Hitler, he willingly gave up the mantle of leadership to Churchill – and supported him : Chamberlain proceeded to build up Britain's military forces and to embark on a vigorous diplomacy to cabin Hitler in. He realized instantly that he had been, as Winston Churchill was to say in his funeral oration in the House of Commons, "deceived by a wicked man." He prepared to call Churchill, his bitter critic on Munich, into government. Chamberlain's diplomacy ultimately failed: Hitler wanted war too much. But Chamberlain stayed true to his countrymen, yielding his place to Churchill and strenuously supporting him when Britain was in peril. But the left in the United States seems overcome with cognitive disson

A ticked off squirrel attacked and bit two children in Winter Park Florida. Just curious: Do they have snow there? The squirrel was captured by a vigilante who plopped a bucket over it and waited two hours for the animal service to show up, incarcerate the thing and perhaps provide it with an animal psychologist. But they were no-shows, and the squirrel was released in its own custody. Well, wouldn’t you know it, the vicious squirrel, whose country of origin could not be determined, promptly bit a senior citizen and another kid. At around the same time the squirrel was gnawing on park dwellers, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was palavering with esteemed American journalist Mike Wallace of CBS. The jovial president of Iran expressed some surprise that Wallace was still among the living. Ahmadinejad doesn’t get out much, and American talking heads are not his cup of tea. Ahmadinejad then tore into President Bush, who apparently did not give proper attention to a treatise the jew h

The title of this talk is “Property Tax Reform for Whom?” I intend to answer this question, but it might be proper to provide a little background information first. I began writing for a local paper here some 25 years ago – perhaps more. And after I had produced what the Editorial Page Editor of the paper that launched my column perhaps realized were several “not liberal” (if not conservative) pieces that he gleefully printed, he said to me in the tone of a seasoned advisor offering a cautionary word to a promising columnist, “You know, the state is pretty liberal.” Meaning: You’re not gonna get very far convincing people that they should discard the ideological straight-jackets they’ve been wearing all these years, and probably no one else will print you.” I really didn’t care. I just wanted to mainline a bit of inoffensive contrarian thought into at least one newspaper, and I’ve persisted in this perversity ever since. But in answer to his remark, I said, “Yeah, sure. I wonder why th

Sen. Joe Lieberman believes that there are some things more important than political parties; Senator Chris Dodd believes there are things more important than friendship. And then, of course, there was the Englishman who said that if he had been given the choice to betray his friend or his country, he hoped to God he would have the good sense to betray his country. There is an ongoing vigorous debate within the Democrat party on all these points. The most humorous moment in the campaign so far occurred when Attorney General Richard Blumenthal lost his place in his script. As reported by Gregory B. Hladky in the Bristol Press : State Attorney General Richard Blumenthal momentarily slipped into old habits before swiftly correcting himself. "I am supporting Joe Lieberman," Blumenthal began and then stopped in embarrassment. "I am supporting Ned Lamont as ardently as I supported Joe Lieberman," he added.

On the day after Connecticut’s bruising Democrat primary, early supporters of “Crashing the Gate” primary winner Ned Lamont, among them the Reverends Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, were jubilant. Prominent Democrats who previously had supported the now ejected Sen. Joe Lieberman, among them Sen. Chris Dodd and Rep. John Larson, joined hearts together on the dais with a smiling Lamont. Once again, primary wounds have been bound up, and Democrats have become one big happy family. However, the glad tidings have not reached Surfing Bird, nesting in the Nedroots, who offered the following comment on a much read progressive blog site : My fellow Nutmeggers: we can't let this stand! If Lieberman gets away with running as an Independent, it will set an unhealthy precedent. Next thing you know, candidates all over the country who lose their primaries will run as Independents, and the whole primary process will be rendered meaningless. We need to make sure the next three months are pure hel

Ex Governor and Senator Lowell Weicker’s pre-primary election interview with radio talk show host and Illuminati Colin McEnroe was a classic in artful dodging. McEnroe asked Weicker to dilate on the similarity between his fractious relationship with the Republican Party and Senator Joe Lieberman’s uneasy relationship with the Democrat Party. Lieberman, at the time, was being assaulted by leftist purists in his party for having too cozy a relationship with Republicans, even as Weicker once had been under attack from Republican stalwarts for being a better Democrat than, say, Senators Edward Kennedy or Chris Dodd. The difference, said Weicker, was that he had never been rejected in a primary – even though, after losing to Lieberman, Weicker had fled his party and run for governor as an Independent. Vive la difference, as the French say. McEnroe nodded assent. Perhaps he was over tired and did not recall that Weicker, having shoehorned his chief aide, Tom D’Amore, into the chairmanship of

Anonymous said... He's going to give the Iranians a reason not to build a nuclear bomb Like what, give the Ayatollah his lapsed membership in the Round Hill Club? -- Connecticut Local Politics The anonymous blogger has a point: Most terrorists are fairly hard-headed, and there may be no permanent solutions in the Middle East, only a past soaked in blood and a doubtful future. Diplomatists talk as if it is possible to negotiate the suicide pack off the chest of the suicide bomber. They are wrong. The post-primary blogs have a different tone and message than the pre-primary blogs, which suggest considerable movement in Connecticut’s political templates -- for primaries are different than general elections. Primaries are intra-party struggles for prestige and power; general elections are much broader in scope and purpose. In showing Sen. Joe Lieberman the door, Lamont supporters – a Pequod crew of anti-war protesters, energetic college and high school students, gone-to-seed-former sha

Q: After the Democrat primaries, who are the winners and losers? A: It hardly matters if Lieberman wins the primary. The Lamont campaign represents a significant win for progressives, as they style themselves, in the Democrat Party. Q: Who are they? A: The anti-war crowd and various hanger’s on. The Lamont candidacy was launched from the epicenter of Connecticut and national politics. You can’t go further left than anti-war protestor Lowell Weicker and the proprietor of Daily Kos, Markos Moulitsas Zuniga. The Democrat establishment would have been satisfied with Lieberman, mostly for self serving reasons. Democrats control pretty much the entire political barracks in the state, but the governorship has eluded them. According to the polls, Rell continues to be strong, and the Lieberman/Lamont primary has prevented Democrats from launching a concerted attack on a governor widely regarded as a moderate (read: safe Republican). Rell may be best understood a stand-alone political party. Tha

The front page Associated Press picture in the Hartford Courant said a thousands words. It showed a somewhat cautious Ned Lamont being bear-hugged by Tommie Jackson, the pastor of Faith Baptist Tabernacle Missionary Baptist Church in Stamford, while the Reverend Al Sharpton stood to his left beaming, no doubt waiting for his papier-mâché hug or, perhaps better, a peck on the cheek and a whispered sweet nothing in his ear. Why so diffident? Well sir, hugs and pecks mean something in our politics. They are a way of branding a politician. A serious hug means: I’m yours, and you’re mine. In the 21st century, no politician will plight their troth for more than, say, fifteen minutes, just enough time for a quick dip in fame’s baptismal font. They will rent themselves out to all comers, for the price of a vote. Those who have committed themselves, whether to a person or a cause, will be followed about by a huge papier-mâché reminder of their indiscreet dalliances. It seems that Lowell Weicker