Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

Yale Daily News -- Michael Paz, Photography Editor  Hamas, active in Israel at the behest of Supreme Leader of Iran Ali Khamenei, a dark imitation of the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, has been compared by some wide-awake commentators with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s proxy army, the Wagner Group. Putin, some Western political speculators reckon, may be at death’s doorstep, but this rumor may be either hopeful thinking or Russian propaganda. Actually, Iran has at its disposal three carefully groomed proxy armies: Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, bordering Israel to the north, and the Houthi in Yemen. Proxy armies allow their leaders to assume indifference and deniability to the damage sown by the proxy army, while assuring that no body bags will choke the streets of Moscow or Tehran. Generally, people react unfavorably to the stench of corpses brought home by failed state leaders. Hessian forces had their uses during the American Revolution, but it was only battlefiel...

Some data – usually indispensable – never seems to make it through the finely spun ideological mesh that clutters our perceptions. Dominic Pino has written an eye-opening piece for National Review, The Mother of All Fiscal Cliffs , that will, as usual, not open nearly enough eyes. Pino begins his article provocatively: “The current argument over government funding and the risk of a shutdown is small potatoes. The debt-limit fight over the summer was small potatoes. Even the great ‘fiscal cliff’ of 2012–13 was small potatoes. The mother of all fiscal cliffs is coming in 2025, and we’re not ready for it.” One hardly needs to point out that 2025 is right around the corner, a year after, most politicians may be relieved to hear, the upcoming 2024 national and state elections. A cliff arriving prematurely before the elections might possibly wash big spenders out of office. The precipitous cliff has rattled Paul Winfree, an economic historian and president and CEO of the Economic Po...

By lustily embracing neo-progressivism, an ideology that lifts ambitious politicians far above traditional democratic norms, U.S. Democrats have abandoned the prescriptions of classic liberalism and left on the roadside author of The Wealth of Nations Adam Smith and liberal politicians such as President John F. Kennedy. Neo-progressivism can be traced to socialist theory, liberalism to the liberating architects of American democracy.   Those who have seen Tennessee Williams’ play A Streetcar Names Desire likely sympathize with the play’s female lead, Blanche Dubois, who is beset on all side by savage males. At the end of the play, she is carted off to an asylum muttering bravely to one of the medical personnel, “Whoever you are—I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.” And she is whisked off stage, a torn and tragic figure. Such is the condition of Connecticut’s Republican Party – dependent entirely on the kindness of Democrats who have abandoned the central prece...

Blumenthal rally at the West Hartford town hall -- Michael Walsh / Hearst Connecticut Media It might be instructive to compare different rallies in Connecticut following Hamas’ attack on Israel. The differences are not merely a matter of tone. The pro-Israel rally in West Hartford on Monday, October 9 was covered by a Hartford paper and headlined, “ We stand with Israel, we grieve with Israel .” The lede on the story reads, “Drawing loud applause from a crowd of about 700 outside West Hartford town hall Monday evening, U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal and Sen. Chris Murphy pledged solid support for Israel in its battle against Hamas.” U.S. Senator Dick Blumenthal addressed the crowd: “We are here to shout ‘We stand with Israel, we grieve with Israel, we pray with Israel,'” Blumenthal told the rally, organized by the Jewish Federation of Greater Hartford. “This fight is our fight. This fight is America’s fight because it’s a fight against terrorism.” Various speakers “labeled th...

Ayatollah Ali Khameini praising the attack on Israel -- Zuma Press The day after a deadly attack by Hamas terrorists on Israeli citizens, both within and outside the Golan Heights, the Associated Press (AP) reported: “There was still some fighting underway more than 24 hours after an unprecedented surprise attack from Gaza, in which Hamas militants, backed by a volley of thousands of rockets, broke through Israel's security barrier and rampaged through nearby communities.” Everyone expects a retaliatory response from the Israeli government. How long will the non-retaliatory mainstream media in the United States and Europe “cover” the unfolding events? It usually takes a few days for important Front Page stories to migrate to the back pages. This one might take a bit longer, depending upon Israel’s response. Israelis, it seems, are determined, perversely some reckon, to defend the Israeli state against thug terrorist organizations financed chiefly by Iran. Hamas and Hezbollah...

Frost “ Good fences ,” Robert Frost wrote, “make good neighbors.” By “fences,” Frost, a hearty New Englander, meant fieldstone fences or walls. The fences, stones gathered by farmers in new fields and used to mark the boundaries of their property, may still be seen in Connecticut coursing through forested areas. President Joe Biden has decided, surprisingly, to supply funds to Texas that will be used to reinforce former President Donald Trump’s “border wall” because, he has said, he was forced to do so by law. The law to which he has referred is the presence of funds made available by a congressional order. Some Biden critics have averred it was the presence in the United States of millions of foreign citizens who have not been processed properly at a southern border overrun by illegal immigrants, not a spending bill, that converted Biden on the matter of Trump’s wall. Many people in the country tend to take things said by Biden during an election campaign with – quoting Mark T...

Newsom -- Eric RisbergAP The answer to the age old question – Will there always be a California? -- is “Yes.” California is a state, a geographical location that cannot not be moved to, say, the Eastern Seaboard, although people in California have been bleeding into other states for years. The governor of California is the resourceful Gavin Newsom, who has just chosen as a temporary replacement for the dearly departed U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein Laphonza Butler , the President of Emily’s List, the financing arm in the United States of Big Abortion. Problem: Registration records indicate Butler lives in Maryland, not California. Solution to problem: Announce that Butler plans to establish legal residence in California soon after Democrats, who have ruled the political roost in “The Eureka! State” for decades, approve Gavin’s nomination of Butler as an interim replacement for Feinstein. Newsom spokesperson Izzy Gardon has issued the following statement: "Butler is a long...

Don, Kathy, Andrée and Dublin A good vacation should give vacationers the opportunity to vacate – that is, to cleanse the spirit of the usual 21 st century toxins. Just as travel broadens the mind, so unexamined habits narrow it. Opening a book – my wife Andrée is a voracious reader of books – does for the mind what travel does for the spirit. Laziness in politics leads inescapably to political entropy and authoritarian political structures. Authoritarianism – but evidentially not the unchallenged authority of a single party state -- has become a recent hobgoblin of the left.   If you are, as I am, a political commentator, a vacation should be free of politics, newspapers, radio, television, and clamorous neighbors, most of them already primed to vote, as they have always voted, in favor of the party in power. In Connecticut, “the land of steady [bad] habits,” that would be the Democrat Party. It’s good to purge the spirit of all this stuff once or twice a year. All persiste...