Skip to main content

Bad Ass Bass

Paul Bass is – or was—the editor of the New Haven Independent, a left leaning blogpaper. The Hartford Courant’s Northeast Magazine picked him up as a columnist after longtime political columnist Michele Jacklin left the paper to join Mayor John DeStefano’s gubernatorial campaign. Jacklin has since left the DeStefano campaign for parts unknown. Bass recently penned in Northeast Magazine a broadside against Sen. Joe Lieberman, universally reviled by Connecticut’s leftist bloggers, that opened to rave reviews from the Kossacks, the blogging storm troopers of the left in the state’s Democrat Party.

Many of the approving reviews have appeared in Connecticut Local Politics, a political blog site that sports an accompanying communication space frequently visited by earnest leftists. The proprietor of the site led off with an adulatory comment: “Wow. This editorial by Paul Bass is one of the harshest and most unflinching portrayals of Sen. Lieberman's political career that I've ever seen.” His commendation was followed by some magical figuration supplied by BRubenstein showing that, God wot, Lamont could defeat Lieberman after all.

Quoting from a piece written by Bass six years earlier, turfgrll then pointed out that the Bass piece was a rehash of somewhat stale positions ventilated six years earlier: “So what can we say about the latest salvo from Mr. Bass? More of the same, he's been pounding the anti-Leiberman drum beat for quite awhile now. He didn't have to go to his attic to rummage through his anti-Lieberman rhetoric, he has never sung from any other hymnbook.”

The lady also questioned the figures presented by BRubenstein – “Your math skills must be on par with your lawyering skills. Good one there, go on thinking that 33% represents a majority” -- which produced an impassioned rejoiner from the affronted BRubenstein: “Turfgrll... once again you misread the prior posting i did...i am beginning to think that you may have a cognitive brain problem.” So it goes in Blogland, where perfectly reasonable points – 33% is not 51% -- are met with gattling gunfire and take-no-prisoners rhetoric.

In any case, Turfgrrl is right. Lieberman already has answered most of the points raised by Bass elsewhere, some of them in the pages of the New Haven Advocate, Bass’ old stomping grounds. The points presented by Bass do not gain in cogency simply because they have been conveyed from the Hartford Advocate, via the New Haven Independent, to the no less liberal Courant. So, what’s going on here?

What we have in Bass’ Courant column is the script for an attack on Lieberman from the left, and a prod to a possible debate between Lieberman and Lamont. It’s a summation of possible talking points that may, in the end, serve only as after dinner chatter for leftists.

Lieberman, in fact, is very capable of defending his record. And it is by no means certain that Lamont would carry a debate even on the Iraq war – even a debate monitored by Paul Bass.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Blumenthal Burisma Connection

Steve Hilton , a Fox News commentator who over the weekend had connected some Burisma corruption dots, had this to say about Connecticut U.S. Senator Dick Blumenthal’s association with the tangled knot of corruption in Ukraine: “We cross-referenced the Senate co-sponsors of Ed Markey's Ukraine gas bill with the list of Democrats whom Burisma lobbyist, David Leiter, routinely gave money to and found another one -- one of the most sanctimonious of them all, actually -- Sen. Richard Blumenthal."

Obamagod!

My guess is that Barack Obama is a bit too modest to consider himself a Christ figure , but artist will be artists. And over at “ To Wit ,” a blog run by professional blogger, journalist, radio commentator and ex-Hartford Courant religious writer Colin McEnroe, chocolateers will be chocolateers. Nice to have all this attention paid to Christ so near to Easter.

Did Chris Murphy Engage in Private Diplomacy?

Murphy after Zarif blowup -- Getty Images Connecticut U.S. Senator Chris Murphy, up for reelection this year, had “a secret meeting with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif during the Munich Security Conference” in February 2020, according to a posting written by Mollie Hemingway , the Editor-in-Chief of The Federalist. Was Murphy commissioned by proper authorities to participate in the meeting, or was he freelancing? If the former, there is no problem. If the latter, Murphy was courting political disaster. “Such a meeting,” Hemingway wrote at the time, “would mean Murphy had done the type of secret coordination with foreign leaders to potentially undermine the U.S. government that he accused Trump officials of doing as they prepared for Trump’s administration. In February 2017, Murphy demanded investigations of National Security Advisor Mike Flynn because he had a phone call with his counterpart-to-be in Russia. “’Any effort to undermine our nation’s foreign policy – e