Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

Stefanowski and pals Hartford Courant columnist Kevin Rennie, along with a posse of other non-partisan Connecticut reporters and commentators, have noted a slip-up made by Republican gubernatorial hopeful Bob Stefanowski. Stefanowski told Hearst and WFSB that he supported a woman’s right to abortion “in the first trimester” of the birth process and then a day later corrected himself. Connecticut law allows abortion until the fetus is “viable.” Stefanowski said, “I misspoke last night, and anybody who has been following this campaign closely knows it. Nothing about may campaign has changed…   I’ve said for months that Connecticut’s law won’t change when I’m governor – and it won’t. Period. Full Stop.” Not enough, Rennie commented . “Stefanowski appeared not to have understood the magnitude of his blunder.”   Perhaps, Rennie speculated, “the former payday executive has never been fluent in the law of the reproductive rights in Connecticut. Worse, “Robert of Arabia used t...

Rennie -- NPR Kevin Rennie’s op-ed piece -- Two Connecticut Republican campaigns. One inspiring. One nauseating – appeared on October 22, about 20 days before the 2022 off year elections. Rennie finds Republican Larry Lazor’s campaign in the 1 st U.S. Congressional District against John Larson, who has held the seat since 1999, “inspiring.” However inspiring, political bookmakers very likely would call the race in Larson’s favor. The last Republican to have held office in the 1 st District was Edwin May in 1957, and Larson has held the seat in a gerrymandered district for 11 terms. Lazor is quoted in the Rennie piece to this effect: “We cannot reap the benefits of discourse and negotiation afforded by our two-party system while promoting the false and misleading narrative that the Presidential election was stolen.” It may be helpful -- and inspiring -- in the next few weeks before Election Day, if Republican candidates for office who appear to imply that current Connecticut ...

David Brooks -- New York Times   For Democrats, the signs of the times appear to be pointing downward, and the American media also appears to be tottering on the abyss. “Just 7% of Americans have ‘a great deal’ of trust and confidence in the media” Gallup reported recently, “and 27% have a fair amount… Meanwhile, 28% of U.S. adults say they do not have very much confidence and 38% have none at all in newspapers, TV and radio. Notably, this is the first time that the percentage of Americans with no trust at all in the media is higher than the percentage with a great deal or a fair amount combined.” Citing “ The Economist  / YouGov poll on Wednesday,” Newsweek reports, “Biden's net approval fell 14 points to 39 percent. Earlier, Biden had an unusually high approval rating from ‘less committed Democrats’ YouGov says. The president ended the week with a 45 percent approval rating. Independents, however, seem to be giving Biden the cold shoulder as his approval fell a whoppi...

I want to be sure to thank Pam Salamone and Mary Beeman for inviting me to speak to you today. I’ll begin by saying something about liberty and heroism, move on to discuss the status of Connecticut’s two political parties, and close with a Q&A session that, I hope, will open my own eyes to your genuine concerns. I won’t take much more than 20 minutes of your time. You probably will not mind if, along the way, I take a paddle to the deserving backsides of Governor Ned Lamont and President Joe Biden.   People in this room will be aware that they are outnumbered by registered Democrats in the state by about two to one. Unaffiliateds outnumber Democrats by a small margin. Connecticut’s larger cities have been in the Democrat hopper for a half century or more – and it shows. Democrats in the General Assembly have nearly a veto-proof majority. All the state’s Constitutional offices are held by Democrats. Jodi Rell was the state’s last “moderate” Republican Governor. She was follo...

Dante's nine circles of Hell Problem, Inflation and recession : The classic definition of inflation, suppressed these many months throughout the administration of President Joe Biden and his reality deniers in Washington D.C., is – “too many dollars chasing too few goods.” It does not take a genius, or a Dr. Fauci, to discover why there are, in our post-COVID era, too few goods and services. Chief Executives across the nation, with notable exceptions such as South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, shut down nearly the entire economy in response to COVID, which kept mutating, each successive manifestation less dangerous than its predecessor, though one would never guess this to be the case while Fauci was directing from behind an OZ curtain the whole U.S. economy. Yes, he was – don’t let the bugger say “Nay.” Fewer open businesses led to fewer jobs, fewer paychecks, fewer tax receipts, larger deficits, less scholarly children, and more breast beating from the rooftops by savior pol...

Belloc Here richly, with ridiculous display, The Politician's corpse was laid away. While all of his acquaintance sneered and slanged I wept: for I had longed to see him hanged – Hilaire Belloc A news item written by Dean Pagani in The Laurel tells us the Hartford Courant will no longer be endorsing candidates for office at the state level. “It would be better,” Pagani writes, “if the Courant and Tribune [the paper’s owner] just told the truth. Our [Courant] staff has been cut dramatically, no one reads the editorial page, so we are focusing on the news we can best deliver.” Well sure, honesty is always the best policy, but Pagani has said far too little. The Courant, the ownership of which has shifted hands over the years, has been outflanked by other news conglomerates. Courant reporters have either retired or drifted off to greener pastures. The conglomeratization of news is a serious problem. Big, in the news business, is not always better; it is simply more remunerati...

Biden Ben Salman bump The Blumenthal/Murphy resolution – deny military equipment to Saudi Arabia until the Saudis jump through the latest hoop held out to them by the Biden administration – some  Middle East watchers have argued, will simply drive Saudi Arabia into the clutches of Russian terrorist President Vladimir Putin. U.S. Senator Chris Murphy, we all know, is Connecticut’s Junior Senator, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman   is the heir to the Saudi throne, and Putin is the terrorist President of Russia, seeking for eight months to add  Ukraine  to his dominions. Side note: Russian soldiers, pilfering museums in Ukraine, managed to carry back to mother Russia a tiara once worn by Attila the Hun. It is said by some humorists that Putin plans to wear the Hunnish tiara on state occasions. Further side note: Having failed to hold positions in in the southeast of Ukraine, Putin is now indiscriminately bombing targets, many of them civilian targets in unoc...

AG Tong -- Westport News Connecticut Attorney General William Tong has confessed to being “disoriented.” The four month old U.S. Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson is responsible for Tong’s four month old disorientation. Surrounded by Democrat legislators and abortion activists, Tong said, according to a piece in the Hartford Courant , that the four month old decision “is, for many of us,” including the Attorney General himself, “disorienting because like a lot of people, I had only grown up in a world in which abortion was safe, legal, and accessible,’' Tong told reporters in Hartford. “I was born a month before Roe was decided, and now it’s gone.’' Roe v. Wade is not gone in Connecticut. Tong is well aware that he lives in a state in which, way back in 1991, the Connecticut legislature codified Roe v. Wade into state law. And he is well aware that the four month old Supreme Court decision rescinding Roe v. Wade does not disturb Connecticut’s legislation. In fac...

Foreign-Born in the U.S., Number and Percent, 1900-2022, plus Census Bureau Projections to 2060, from Center for Immigration Studies Vice President Kamala Harris’ visit to New Britain, Connecticut was carefully plotted and scripted. She came, she saw, she conquered, she left – without suffering interrogation from a contrarian media. No probing questions on important issues of the day were asked of her during the campaign stop, and her visit was well north of the International Bridge in Del Rio, Texas, near the Mexico-U.S. semi-permeable border. In the recent past, both Harris and President Joe Biden have been chided in some quarters for not having visited points along the border heavily infiltrated by illegal migrants from various nations. Early in October, the New York Post noted, “Vice President and Biden White House  migration czar Kamala Harris  is heading back to Texas — just not to the US-Mexico border.” On August 31, 2022, CBSNews reported, “ During the first 10...

V. P. Harris -- Getty We’re approaching the 2022 off-year presidential elections in Connecticut. Nationally, Republicans appear hopeful they will be able to re-capture the US House and, some eupeptics think, the US Senate as well. In Connecticut, there is, as this writer has said previously in columns, no enemy to the left. Democrats control: the largest cities in the state; the General Assembly, where ruling Democrats enjoy a nearly veto-proof majority; all the state’s Constitutional offices; the Governor’s office; and much of the state’s media. In Connecticut, “the land of steady habits,” it seems reasonable to predict that the upcoming elections will leave our politics untouched. We have become, to adjust the aphorism a bit – a state of bad “steady habits,” and habits determine elections -- unless something comes along to change the habits. The citizens of Paris in1789 tolerated the royal government and the splendor of Versailles until merchants in Paris, always overtaxed and...

Stefanowski -- Stamford Advocate As late as August 10, President Joe Biden, who has presided over the worst national economy since stagflation President Jimmy Carter, hit the airwaves to assure a doubtful nation that “the US had ‘zero inflation’ in July. Hours earlier the federal Consumer Price Index data showed annual inflation  dipping only slightly to 8.5% , which outraged Republicans and other critics who pointed out it’s still near a four-decade high,” according to the New York Post . Owing to a severe reduction in future supplies caused partly by Biden’s war on fossil fuel, gas prices rose sharply throughout Biden’s current term as President. According to AAA, Connecticut now ranks 15th in US for highest gas prices : “T oday's statewide average for a gallon of self-service regular is $3.42, 11 cents higher than last week and $1.25 higher than last year. "’Compared to a year ago, it’s costing drivers about $17 more to fill up their vehicles,’ says Fran Mayko, AAA Nort...