Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

Biden and Obama It would take a Voltaire to do justice to America’s meandering foreign policy. Voltaire is the satirist who penned Candide, or Optimism , 1759. Thomas Jefferson sported a bust of Voltaire near his writing desk at Monticello. It probably would not be a stretch to say that the hallowed founders of the American Republic were, like Voltaire, skeptical of politics and mistrustful of their nation’s foreign policy. None of them were optimists like poor suffering Candide. The message of Candide is that a false optimism may sometimes be more dangerous and threatening than frank but disturbing appraisals.   The United States, it is fair to say, will never enjoy a rational foreign policy unless its leaders can agree that states which have effectively shown the world by their deeds to be enemies – indeed boastful enemies of the United States -- are treated, formally and informally, as enemies of the United States. Iran is an enemy state that has put itself beyond the reac...

On Christmas Eve, and then again on Christmas morning, I open a small book entitled “ In Praise of Mary: Hymns from the first millennium [thousand years] of the Eastern and Western Churches .” A hymn is a prayer, an early Christian rendition of a poem.   This one is from “The Scroll of Ravenna” and is accompanied, as are all the hymns, by miniatures: small, intricate, elaborated, highly decorative paintings on vellum made to adorn the hymns.   O true light, our Lord God, who from the depths of your heart have voiced the saving word we pray to you: as wondrously you descended into the pure womb of the Virgin Mary, grant us, your servants, to await with joy the glorious nativity.   For the accompanying miniature, see above.   Pope Benedict offers us a clarifying elucidation of the Annunciation:   “In one of his Advent homilies, Bernard of Clairvaux offers a stirring presentation of the drama of this moment. After the error of our ...

Marissa  Gillett Credit Yehyun Kim  ctmirror.org A Hartford paper on Wednesday led with a story titled “ A grim outlook for more utilities .” The utilities in Connecticut are energy distributors, not energy producers. Their operations are overseen by PURA, the Connecticut Public Utility Regulation Authority.   “Overseen” certainly is too weak a word. PURA exercises life and death powers over Connecticut utilities because the oversight agency, under the direction of PURA Chairman Marisa Gillett, is able to deny energy distributers   cost increases that, like all business taxes, are passed along to its customers – virtually everyone in Connecticut.   Three principal rating agencies have downgraded Connecticut’s energy distributors and, as the paper headline suggests, this news is “grim” for both energy consumers and energy distributors.   A rating downgrade increases prices because it increases the cost of borrowing money. Companies borrow money t...

Victor Davis Hanson “Years ago,” Victor Davis Hanson tells us in his latest column, “[President Barack] Obama invited the Russians into Syria, empowered dictatorial Syria, berated Israel nonstop and all but ignored the violence of Iran’s surrogate terrorists: Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis.   “But after Oct. 7, Israel retaliated to the mass slaughter of Jewish civilians with all-out war against Hamas and Hezbollah — rendering these once-feared terrorists nearly impotent.”And then, hauling us before a present historical tribune, he notes, “The 2024 anemic Democratic campaign and the Trump Electoral College and popular-vote victories — combined with record defections of Hispanic and African-American voters from the Democratic Party to Trump — proved a resounding rejection of the Obama legacy and his surrogates’ left-wing visions.”   This is, to be sure, fairly rough handling, but then history is a rough handler, and Hanson’s view of Obama’s “lost mystique” likely is ...

Energy users in Connecticut – all of us, poor and rich alike – must feel as if they had stepped into a mice roundabout. It is becoming nearly impossible in the “state of steady habits” for most people, including the vast middle class that absorbs the brunt of taxation, to get out from under costs directly related to 1) taxation, 2) the cost of regulations passed on by businesses to their customers, and 3) the solicitous and smoldering heap of empathy extended to all by politicians who are there “to help.”   Luther Turmelle, a business reporter with Hearst Connecticut Media Group, tells us in the Stamford Advocate , “Standard & Poor's Global Ratings on Monday downgraded the credit rating of a pair of Eversource Energy subsidiaries, according to officials with the utility.” The credit rating agency had “downgraded Connecticut Light & Power, from an ‘A’ to an ‘A- while the energy company's natural gas subsidiary, Yankee Gas, saw its rating [plummet] from an ‘A-‘ to ‘...

Netanyahu and Biden Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu is on trial, Fox News tells us, for “accepting gifts from Israeli Hollywood producer Arnon Milchan in exchange for advancing his interests, failing to report a bribery attempt from newspaper ‘Yediot Aharonot’ publisher Arnon Mozes, who wanted Netanyahu to allow a bill to pass outlawing free newspapers and offered him favorable coverage in exchange, and accepting an offer in which Shaul Elovitch, the owner of Israeli telecom conglomerate Bezeq, would grant Netanyahu favorable media coverage in exchange for favorable regulatory changes.”   Netanyahu has asserted that the charges are false, highly inflated – and political. Netanyahu’s political enemies have been gunning for him for decades.   It will all come out in the wash, political cynics believe. But there is a great deal of dirty linen in the wash tub. Consider the title and then the lede to the Fox News story: “ Netanyahu knocks Obama, John Kerry in...

  Murphy No one in Connecticut, a deep blue state, will be surprised to learn that U.S. Senator Chris Murphy survived the recent presidential election washout.   President-elect Donald Trump structured his campaign mostly on policy: patch and restore the suppurating U.S. Southern border; reduce inflation; cut excessive government spending where possible, the chief contributor to inflation;   concentrate on small businesses that do not have the political heft to survive a cumulative inflation rate of 20%; use tariffs as a political tool to redress economic imbalances that – to choose but one egregious offender, China --   have been deployed by foreign states that traditionally have been enemies of the United States to undercut pricing on the home front and thus   drive important US businesses out of business… and so on. Everyone knows the Trump political product song, often delivered with hyperbolic missiles directed at his political foes.   Democrat...

People who know President Joe Biden well knew that, when push came to shove, Biden would pardon his son, Hunter Biden, before he left office. Biden is due to leave office in less than two months.   Among those in Connecticut who know Biden well are current Attorney General William Tong and past Connecticut Attorney General for 20 years U.S. Senator Dick Blumenthal.   The “ Full written statement from President Joe Biden on his decision to pardon his son ” supplied by the Associated Press may easily have been written by President Elect Donald Trump’s legal staff concerning the President-Elect’s many trials and tribulations.   “Today, I signed a pardon for my son Hunter. From the day I took office, I said I would not interfere with the Justice Department’s decision-making, and I kept my word even as I have watched my son being selectively, and unfairly, prosecuted,” the President wrote.   That sentence cannot be fairly parsed. Biden is assert...