Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

Harris, Getty Images Asked during an address he had given at Western Connecticut State College shortly after President Richard Nixon had returned home from a triumphant visit to China, “What was Nixon really like?” Bill Buckley replied, “Which one? There are at least three, maybe four.” American politicians do like to change faces, especially during election periods. There are at least four separate faces of Kamala Harris – attorney general ( hard bitten prosecutor ), U.S. Senator, Vice President of the United States, and soon to be the Democrat National Convention’s choice for president. Current President Joe Biden, who lame ducked himself by declining to run for reelection, has worn out nearly all his many faces. Over his own strenuous objections, “elites” within Biden’s Democrat Party pushed him out of office to make room for the canonization of Harris, to the disappointment, Biden has said, of the 14 million Democrats who voted for him in the Democrat presidential primary. ...

Netanyahu (Photo by Kent Nishimura/Getty Images) If the proposal for peace in Gaza supported by President Joe Biden and his probable successor, soon-to-be Democrat presidential nominee Kamala Harris, is ever implemented, it will be the second time Israel has withdrawn all military forces from Gaza in hopes of securing a “two state solution” to Iranian supported violence in the heart of Israel. The first attempt, prospective Democrat president Kamala Harris well knows, did not succeed. Israel completed its unilateral disengagement from the Gaza Strip after 38 years in September 2005. In pursuit of an elusive “two state solution” for peace in the Middle East, Israel withdrew all its troops and Israeli settlers from Gaza. Following the withdrawal, Hamas displaced the Palestine Liberation Organization and proceeded to prosecute its war on Israel, with what results we have seen on October 7, 2023. There is no reason to suppose that a second or third attempt at a “two state solution” wi...

Machado Socialist-Communism has been the camel’s nose in the South American tent from Fidel Castro forward. But the body of the camel, as everyone now knows, was a Stalinist political creature that made its way through South America by the usual means: state socialism, terror, and propaganda. The propaganda has worn very thin in Venezuela, once the Venice of South America, now a communist-Stalinist ash heap. The country’s current Stalin, Nicolás Maduro, the president of Venezuela since 2013, is holding on to power, but a vigorous populist opposition led by Maria Corina Machado, is inching forward. Maduro has his terror and his bullets and his jail cells, still effective methods of persuasion within South American communist countries. But Machado, called the Iron Lady of Venezuela, has her rosary beads and a truly revolutionary message. According to a report in The New York Times, “On the campaign trail, she has promised to ‘bury socialism forever’ and create a nation where ‘the crimi...

Netanyahu, Biden According to an Associated Press report printed in the Hartford Courant on 7/25/2024 under the title “ Netanyahu defends push for ‘vIctory’ ”, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “defended Israel’s war in Gaza and condemned American protesters in a scathing speech to Congress Wednesday that triggered boycotts by many top Democratic lawmakers and drew thousands to the Capitol to condemn the war and the humanitarian crisis it has created.” The above lede to the story contains a logical impossibility. Netanyahu’s “scathing speech” could not have “triggered the boycotts” because the boycotts preceded the speech. We say A caused B only when A precedes B. The boycotts, it is apparent, were intended to deflate points made in the speech by Netanyahu, principal among them that peace can only follow the extirpation of Hamas in Gaza. Democrats protesting the speech by their absence feel that a negotiated peace between Israel and Hamas and Hezbollah and the Houthis in ...

Logan George Logan, who lost a campaign against present 5th District U.S. Representative Jahana Hayes in 2018 by a slender 1% of the vote, is once again challenging Hayes. Republicans, who have not won a seat in the present all-Democrat U.S. Congressional Delegation since former U.S. Representative Chris Shays surrendered his seat to Jim Himes in the 2008 election, are hopeful that Logan may be able this November to snatch the seat from Hayes’ tightly clenched jaws. The Democrat Party appears to be somewhat in disarray. President Joe Biden, after much pressure had been applied to him by leaders in the Democrat Party, recently announced he was shelving his presidential campaign. Supporters of President Biden, judged by leading Democrats unfit to run for a second term in office, have been discreetly silent on a series of important questions. If Biden is not fit to run for a second term as president – not, it has been supposed, because of his advanced age, but rather because of evid...

The elites, Political Insider “ Where have you gone Joe DiMaggio? A nation turns its grateful eyes to you …” -- from Simon & Garfunkel’s classic song “Mrs. Robinson.” Now, that was an insurrection, this one spearheaded by what President Joe Biden labeled Democrat Party elites. The overused word “insurrection” comes to us from the Old French “insurreccion” or more directly from Late Latin “insurrectionem,” meaning “a rising up.” Only a few days before he threw in the sponge on his reelection prospects, Biden insisted, not without reason, that he would not withdraw from the race and that his candidacy for the presidency had been authorized by Democrat Party primary voters. More than 14 million Democrats cast their votes for Biden in the Democrat Party primary. No one had voted for the “party elites” clamoring for his withdrawal from the presidential race. The elites proceeded cautiously. Some leading Democrats – among them U.S. Senator from New York Chuck Schumer and former ...

By a continuing process of inflation, government can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens -- John Maynard Keynes In the coming political battle between Democrats and Republicans in Connecticut, Democrats will be laying stress on abortion rights, while Republicans will be pointing to the ravages inflation has imposed on the voting public in Connecticut. The political posture of Connecticut Democrats on abortion rights may be described, ironically, as brazenly libertarian. Broadly speaking, libertarians favor minimal governmental intervention, especially when the intervention aborts the liberties of the person. Broadly speaking, neo-progressives in Connecticut favor the intervention of government in the ordinary lives of citizens, especially when liberties contravene the public good as understood by neo-progressives. It is extremely unusual to find neo-progressives anywhere arguing that the purchase of a gas oven should be a matter...

Trump, Vance, globalastronaut Events have a way of vetoing certainties. “The best laid schemes o' Mice an' Men,” Robert Burns tells us, “Gang aft agley. An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain, For promis'd joy!” Or to put it in the modern idiom, the vicissitudes of life – what the Romans called the goddess Fortuna – can be a bummer. In a front page, above the fold story – “State Republicans laud Vance” -- Hartford Courant reporter Chris Keating managed to include some anti-lauds from prominent Democrats: “In a fundraising email, President Joe Biden asked ‘How does a guy [the Republican nominating convention’s choice for vice president, JD Vance] who used to say that Donald Trump and his policies were “reprehensible” become Donald Trump‘s running mate?’” Biden, of course, should know the answer to his own question because, during his primary campaign for president, he chose as his vice presidential running mate Kamala Harris, who had sharply criticized B...

Cannon, Smith, Getty Images Before he was shot at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania that preceded the opening of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, former President Donald Trump had been for years under unremitting attack from his political enemies. Some usually over-cautious news reports referred to the most recent attack on Trump as an “attempted assassination.” But there were some pedants . First reports tended to avoid the term “attempted assassination,” settling on the term “alleged assassination attempt.” This level of prudence was unnecessary, as unfolding events made plain. The assassination attempt failed – sort of. The victim, Trump, was left with a torn ear, and many commentators noted that, by the grace of God, Trump survived. As the shot was fired from a commanding height about 130 yards distant from the rally podium, Trump had turned his head slightly, spoiling the mark of the disappointed and, later, dead assassin. Trump was well protected at the podiu...

Obama, Biden and Hunter -- Vanity Fair As studious observers of Democrat Party politics should know by now, President Joe Biden’s hold on his party has become somewhat iffy, largely for the following reasons: 1) Biden for two full years, perhaps longer, has been stricken with some unnamed malady that leaves him confused and unable to focus mentally on important political issues. One neurologist has said the president may be suffering from vascular dementia related in some fashion to Biden’s brain aneurisms; 2) the wooden stake that was supposed to have dispatched former Republican President Donald Trump, a series of constitutionally dubious charges filed in numerous state courts, has failed, according to most polls, to slay the vampire; 3) given its past close scrutiny of Trump, what has been called the mainstream media has now more or less been forced to focus on Biden’s fragilities; and 4) the Biden administration, leaning far to the left, has failed on both domestic and foreign pol...

Biden and Obama, PHOTO, SHAWN THEW, SHUTTERSTOCK   Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for – Barack Obama campaign speech, 2008 Unable to make a difficult and effective decision concerning President Joe Biden’s future in the Democrat Party – is he in or out as a presidential contender? -- time quickly is running out for Democrats who hope to shape the future of their party. It’s pretty obvious at this point in the 2024 campaign for the presidency and so called downstream political offices that Democrats across the board intend to make former President Donald Trump a pivot point in their state and national campaigns. We know this because Democrats, including the seven members of Connecticut’s All-Democrat U.S. Congressional Delegation, have told us so in countless media availabilities and press interviews. Some Republicans have said that Democrats are clinging to this campaign strategy so fiercely becau...

Blumenthal At the same time the Hartford Courant printed its story, “Should President Biden drop re-election bid? What CT leaders are hearing from residents,” the Wall Street Journal printed a 2,500 word story, “How Biden’s Inner Circle Worked to Keep Signs of Aging Under Wraps,” detailing how Democrat Party operatives covered up President Joe Biden’s infirmities during the last few years. The infirmities, it would appear, were hidden in plain sight and could not have been suppressed without the eager cooperation of the nation’s pro-Biden media. With the advent of the first Biden-Trump presidential debate, the corpse under the bed was publicly exposed, and it became nearly impossible to defend Biden’s nationally displayed infirmities by the usual tricks of the political trade. A crowd of neo-progressive Democrat world saviors in the U.S. Congress threw up their hands in despair, shrugged their collective shoulders, or simply refused to acknowledge that a masterful attempt to snu...

Biden-and-Trump-2024-NBC News It’s pretty well known in Connecticut’s conservative Republican circles that the state’s media, aping the national media, is squarely in President Joe Biden’s corner and would be delighted to see former President Donald Trump, their bête noir, squiggling on a hook in political Hell. That is pretty much the refrain of former State Senator Joe Markley, who left the General Assembly to run for Lieutenant Governor of Connecticut in 2018 but lost the general election to Democrat Susan Bysiewicz, and current State Senator Rob Samson , who continues to torment neo-progressive Democrats in the state’s General Assembly by supporting sound conservative principles. Conservatives in Connecticut and the nation continue to be rattled by Trump’s political persona, bristly and somewhat solipsistic, but they support his policy prescriptions over those of Biden, who presided over a botched American withdrawal from Afghanistan, a southern border policy that has left border...