Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

Lieberman Among some people in Connecticut who genuinely like people who bravely say the inconvenient truth – there are a few – former U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman will be missed. He left us without warning and in a pickle not of his making. Republicans in Connecticut still praise Lieberman for flushing former U.S. Senator and Governor Lowell Weicker out of the state’s Republican Party. Weicker was the classic “Republican in name only” (RINO) who once said of his state party, “Why doesn’t someone take it over? It’s so small.”   And he referred to himself, approvingly and truthfully, as “the turd in the Republican Party punchbowl.” The state Republican Party did not prosper under Weicker’s tutelage. He used the party under which he prospered politically for 31 years principally as a foil that stood him in good stead with Democrats. When Weicker left the U.S. Senate, his liberal Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) rating was 10 percentage points higher than that of Democrat U.S.

Jefferson "He who gives up freedom for safety deserves neither” – Ben Franklin The two most important political questions are: “Who decides,’ and “Who benefits?” The less important political question is: “What shall be done?” V. I. Lenin answered this last question in his most famous pamphlet: “What Shall Be Done?” Lenin’s answer to this question was: The ownership of property, including wages and benefits, should revert from property owners to workers. This, pretty much, is the unstated program of our new, reform minded, Marxist tinged, neo-progressive Democrat Party. But, of course, business questions must be decided by someone. If not property owners and the managers of businesses under the direction of its stockholders, then who? For Lenin especially, the question “Who shall decide what is to be done?” was paramount. His answer to the question was: All important matters of state, including the direction of the national economy, would be decided by a communist vanguard o

Logan -- Connecticut Post, Brian Pounds George Logan lost a race in 2022 to third term U.S. Representative in Connecticut’s 5 th  U.S. Congressional District Jahana Hayes by a heart stopping slender margin. Logan lost by 1,842 votes out of over 250,000 votes cast. An energetic Republican politician who served as a member of the Connecticut State Senate representing Connecticut's 17 th  District, Logan is back for round two, and he has brought some friends with him. Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Mike Johnson recently stumped with Logan at a successful Hartford fundraiser. The current 2024 race will be different than the 2022 race because, while the personalities are the same, political circumstances have changed. COVID has expired, according to President Joe Biden. Schools have been reopened, but education, for various reasons unrelated to monies spent, has suffered throughout the nation. Some businesses that had survived the politically induced shutdowns during

Kotkin's Stalin The nation could use a few Orwells or, failing that, half a dozen H. L. Menkens or Mark Twains among its political commentary community, now sadly tilting far to the left – only partly due to its loathing of former President Donald Trump. The Democrat Party’s tilt to the left began long before the advent of Trump. The new model Democrat Party hopes to reelect President Joe Biden in the upcoming 2024 elections and remove Trump as a possible future dogcatcher nominee in U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s New York District, impoverishing the billionaire in the process. Ocasio-Cortez is being challenged by Veteran Wall Street investor Marty Dolan , a Republican running on a safe-streets and subways platform. The issue has become popular in the nation’s large cities, most suffering from an influx of international illegal migrants -- i.e. border jumpers -- lax prosecutors and criminal gangs who hope to enrich themselves by robbing retail outlets and sellin

Biden -- Alex Wong/Getty Images Former President Barack Obama once said of his Vice President, Joe Biden, that no one should underestimate his ability to screw things up. It was a grownup thing for Obama to have said, and there is no indication Obama ever regretted saying it, though he was speaking out of school at the time. Obama, charming and African American -- two strikes in his favor -- was not a plagiarist politician. He was, and may still be, the point of a neo-progressive spear the Democrat Party now feels indispensable in winning campaigns. Obama, an accomplished street organizer before his first of two elections, could think on his feet, and his rhetoric was not borrowed without attribution from British Labor Party politician Neil Kinnock. In a story published by the Washington Post more than five years ago, “ Echoes of Biden’s 1987 plagiarism scandal continue to reverberate ”, reporter Neena Satija noted, “On Sept. 23, 1987, Joe Biden stood before a crowd of reporters an

Schumer “They have dressed the wound of my people with very little care, saying, ‘Peace, peace,’ when there is no peace [at all]” -- Jeremiah 6:14, from a Hebrew translation . According to an AP report reprinted with some excisions in the Hartford Courant on March 15, 2024, “Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer on Thursday called on Israel to hold new elections, saying he believes Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ‘lost his way’ and is an obstacle to peace in the region amid a growing humanitarian crisis in Gaza. “Schumer, the first Jewish majority leader in the Senate and the highest-ranking Jewish official in the U.S., strongly criticized Netanyahu in a 40-minute speech Thursday morning on the Senate floor. Schumer said the prime minister has put himself in a coalition of far-right extremists and as a result, he has been too willing to tolerate the civilian toll in Gaza, which is pushing support for Israel worldwide to historic lows. “’Israel cannot survive if it b

Netanyahu and Biden -- Avi Ohayon, Israeli Government, via Associated Press Hamas is one of three terrorist entities supported financially and ideologically by Iran, one of three permanent enemies of the United States. The other two are Putin’s Russia and Xi’s China. Not only is Hamas a terrorist fox in the bosom of Israel, it is the once and once-only elected government of Gaza-Palestine, supposedly one of the “two states” often mentioned by American politicians when they begin prating about a “two state solution” to problems in the Middle East. It has become clear in recent days that the Biden administration favors the much sought after, politically mystical “two state solution.” That is, the Biden administration looks kindly on the treacherous fox in the bosom of Israel that threatens to destroy it and had on October 7, 2023, through its aggressive military actions, very publically declared open war on Israel. Following the brutal surprise attack on Israel by Hamas, Prime Min

George Orwell State Representative Jillian Gilchrest, a Democrat from West Hartford, is vigorously supporting a legislative proposal that would, according to a piece in CTMirror , “ban religious objections to reproductive health care in Connecticut.” She is “one of several lawmakers who recently unveiled legislative priorities for reproductive rights.” Christians, anti-Christians and practical atheists will note the distortion in language here: Reproductive rights – that is, abortion rights – rarely result, when broadly exercised, in the reproduction of the species. The expression “reproductive rights” is used most often on the left as a euphemism for “abortion rights.” Gilchrest and a supportive group in the State’s General Assembly, the legislature’s Reproductive Rights Caucus and Reproductive Equity Now censors, are likely to be disappointed once their legislation, if passed, wends its way through appellate courts that regard the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution as more

Joe Ganim, (Ned Gerard, Hearst Connecticut Media) Henry Mencken reminds us that “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.” Welcome to Bridgeport, Connecticut’s most populous city. The current mayor of Bridgeport is ex-felon Joe Ganim. Ganim was Mayor of Bridgeport from 1991 to 2003, having been elected six times. He was convicted in 2003 on multiple corruption charges. The mayor was sentenced to nine years in prison and fined about $300,000 in restitution, in addition to $175,000 he had previously stipulated he owed. U.S. District Judge Janet Bond Arterton noted at the time that Ganim's crimes were "stuff that cynicism is made of" and she determined that Ganim had "lied to the jury when he denied any knowledge of fee-splitting deals and other incriminating evidence.” A 2001 New York Times piece, “ Bridgeport Mayor Convicted On 16 Charges of Corruption ,” noted that “today's conviction appea