Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

“The best laid schemes o' mice an' men/ Gang aft a-gley” -- Robert Burns We can no longer pretend, after the release of Attorney General William Barr’s summary of the findings of Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller’s investigation, that the more important findings mean nothing at all and may be safely ignored. The leaders of what Victor David Hanson called back in February a “dead coup” will of course seek to minimize the import of the concluded investigation in their rush to continue their coup. However, without scouring the details of the investigation, two things are indisputable: 1) that Mueller’s two year probe is over —future indictments are not in the offing -- and 2) that Mueller did not cite anyone in the Trump administration, including the president himself, with conspiracy, a crime, or collusion with the Putin regime in Russia to win an election against then Democrat presidential contender Hillary Clinton. Mueller’s two year investigation has been b...

In a recent editorial, the members of the editorial board of the Hartford Courant profess astonishment because – I am quoting from “ End Harassment At The Capitol ” -- “It is almost incomprehensible that legislators in this state, known for its progressive policies, fail to adequately police their own and ensure that the halls of the Capitol are safe places for everyone.” The editorial makes reference to a “survey conducted by the Office of Legislative Management" that shows – again I am quoting from the editorial – “Eighty six people who work in the state’s General Assembly said a legislator had sexually harassed them in a way that created a hostile work environment. Another 15 [per cent] said the harassment involved a quid pro quo for sexual conduct.” They should not have been astonished, because editorial page editors are grown-ups who should understand that Eros is no respecter of ideologies. Both conservatives and progressives sometimes yield to what moral philoso...

Some people, not generally Friends of Tim Herbst (FOH), think the Republican contender for governor is aggressive. He is, as has been noticed during the Republican primaries, somewhat less aggressive in his advertising than David Stemerman, but then Herbst commands a more modest campaign war chest.   Herbst disputes the slur; he says he is competitive. However, the former First Selectman of Trumbull does have a habit of fondling third rails that other Republicans running for governor fear touching. Some of those rails – a hearty defense of the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, every bit as inviolable as the First Amendment; peace and security in Connecticut; the socially disruptive effects of certain Malloy-Lawlor justice reforms; the abolition of Connecticut's death penalty on social rather than legal grounds by Connecticut’s constitutionally confused, left leaning Supreme Court; serious crime ripening in   Connecticut cities; a plenitude of illegal guns in a...

In politics, there are two kinds of riches: personal riches – Democrat Dick Blumenthal, weighing in at $67 million, is among the eight richest Senators in Congress – and campaign riches . Democrat U.S Senator Chris Murphy, who complains often enough that hustling campaign dollars wastes time he might otherwise more profitably spend demonizing the NRA – which recently signaled its support of a bill championed by Murphy and fellow NRA demonizer Blumenthal, the “Fix NICS Act of 2017”, that would reinforce requirements that federal agencies report all infractions to  the National Instant Criminal Background Check System -- currently has about $6 million in his campaign kitty . Most people could not name Murphy’s likely Republican challenger. None of them have yet hit the $60,000 mark.

The “Me too” movement is a long delayed reaction to libertinism, which is not ordered liberty, liberalism or even libertarianism. The father of libertinism was French revolutionist and eros anarchist the Marquis de Sade, an aristocrat gone bad.  His erotic works, many of them written while a prisoner in the Bastille, combine philosophical discourse with pornography and depict in an approving manner violence, crime and blasphemy against Christianity. A man much ahead of his time, de Sade was among the first notable Europeans to propose abortion as a means of population control. He favored unrestricted freedom free of morality, religion and law. In the 21 st century, he might have been richly rewarded as a Hollywood film producer.

Everyone in Hollywood wants to be a libertine -- like the Marquis de Sade, who also was an amateur revolutionist -- or perhaps they wish to emulate ex-Presidents John Kennedy and Bill Clinton. Kennedy was a tolerable Catholic because Catholic dogma did not live loudly in him, and the husband of Hillary Clinton was permitted indiscretions with cigars and interns because he was a hale fellow well met with a photographic memory, whereas ordinary politicians rely on Google and an expensive staff of brash know-it-alls. To be an artist, after all, is to be in perpetual revolt against the usual pieties, conveniently listed in the Decalogue. Marriage among the Hollywood elite, for instance, is considered but a temporary interruption of multiple liaisons, and adultery, sex outside the boundaries of marriage -- “You shall not commit adultery” -- is rampant.  Andy Rooney, whom everyone will admit was a nice guy, had eight wives, the same as Henry VIII, none of them executed fortunate...

It strains credulity to imagine the Clintons – Bill and Hillary, who was Bill’s co-president for eight years – as victims, and yet there it is. James Carville, for many years the Clinton’s back-yard attack dog, really does think that FBI Director James Comey has victimized Mrs. Clinton. After having declined to prosecute (persecute?) Mrs. Clinton for having placed thousands of unsecured confidential emails on her private unauthorized server, exposing America’s underwear to anonymous hackers, Mr. Comey’s FBI team discovered thousands of additional unsecured emails while rifling through Anthony Weiner’s hamper. Mr. Weiner, married to Huma Abedin, Mrs. Clinton’s closest aide, was kicked to the cub by Ms. Abedin for sending salacious emails to internet paramours.

Bill Buckley was once asked what the real Dick Nixon was like. “Which one,” he responded? “There are about four of them.” There are a few Hillary Clintons jostling against each other in her capacious public persona. The Great Email Spill of 2016 has tossed on the shore a few dead personas.

Democratic sappers in Connecticut have devoted themselves to undermining the re-election efforts of State Senator Art Linares, who is running on the Republican ticket in Connecticut’s 33 rd District, by tying him to Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump. A group of women has stepped forward to accuse Mr. Trump of having molested them some years ago. Will the gambit work? Possibly. Democrats committed to returning to the White House a First Husband plausibly accused of rape seem to think so, and they have invested some money in the project.

Some people think Hillary Clinton and her now faltering husband Bill, both products of the Silly Sixties (SS), are too Machiavellian for their own good . Others think Mrs. Clinton has never shed her admiration for Saul Alinsky, the political guru of the SS and author of “ Rules for Radicals ," whose own ideal of a perfect political and social radical was Lucifer, AKA The Devil, to whom Mr. Alinsky dedicated his hand-book on cultural destruction. A senior at Wellesley College, Mrs. Clinton wrote a 92 page thesis on Mr. Alinsky.  Later at Yale, a nursery bed for U.S. politicians and presidents in the modern age, Mrs. Clinton bent her knee to the radicalism of the day and, some think, began plotting an unobstructed path to the presidency. It’s been a long slog. Her meandering but methodical course has led through hubby Bill, past a few bimboes, through the Secretary of State office by way of  the U.S. Senate, over the smoldering ruins of Benghazi, over the prostrate body...

Since the sixties sexual revolution, which overthrew the pre-silly sixties traditional morality of the Western World, everyone has become an expert on the subject of sex. The moral questions that tormented St. Augustine – who was not, by his own admission, a saint – are easily answered today by asking the question, what would I do in circumstances A or B? In the era of unorganized religion, we all have out private codes. If I were President of the United States, would I have seduced an aide in the White House when, on one occasion, I was chatting with a high Israeli official on the phone? Probably not. Would I have bitten Juanita Broaddrick’s lip in the process, so she says, of raping her? Not in the cards. If I were a self-infatuated real estate mogul in New York, would I have bragged about my conquests of married women to Billy Bush, then the host of Access Hollywood, little thinking that my every word would surface eleven years later in a Presidential campaign? Nope. If I wer...

Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders’ choice for President, is not only the most experienced candidate for President in – to take a cue from her handlers – the world; she is also the most clever campaigner for president, far more clever than the duffer Donald Trump. Well, perhaps a touch less clever than soon to be ex-President Barack Obama who, when he dished Mrs. Clinton in the 2008 presidential primary, was certainly not the most experienced presidential candidate in U.S. history. The historical muse reminds us that Ulysses Grant is one of the few presidents who had less political experience than Mr. Obama – and it showed when the Grant presidency fell into the Whiskey Ring and other multiple scandals. Lack of experience tells, but so does experience.

We all know how it works: If you are a politician who outpaces your opponent in money and lustrous fame, you hide-out during elections, contextualize yourself by feeding the media tons of approving releases put together by a faithful staff -- and await reelection. Dick Blumenthal, presently Connecticut’s Senior U.S. Senator, is such a person. A millionaire by marriage and an incumbent, he has the riches of King Croesus in his campaign kitty. His Republican opponent, Dan Carter, is the poor boy of the current campaign for the U.S. Senate. According to a recent report in CTMirror , “Blumenthal’s campaign reported having more than $5.3 million in its war chest as of June 30, after having spent more than $1.6 million, while Carter’s campaign reported only about $70,000 in cash on hand.”

“ Hillary, The Other Woman: A Political Memoir By Dolly Kyle ” is in part a Southern bodice ripper, so keep it from the kids. Ms. Kyle (well preserved and pictured to the left) very well may be Bill Clinton’s “first love.” According to a cliff-notes review of Ms. Kyle’s new book written for the Daily Mail by Caroline Howe, the two lovers got it on in high school and kept it on before, during and after Mr. Clinton’s marriage (sort of) to Hillary Clinton, who snatched his heart while the two were students at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut.

Donald Trump, the Attila the Hun of GOP politics, is not everyone’s cup of tea, and much has been said about him in what he might call, disdainfully, the Main Stream Media. Mr. Trump’s notion that libel laws should be “loosened up” likely did not go down well with the editorial board of the New York Times. Here in Connecticut, Democrats chomping at the bit are anxious to drape The Donald around the necks of newly nominated Republican hopefuls. Doubtless they will be assisted in this endeavor by the state’s left of center media . The prospect of Mr. Trump as a national Republican Party bellwether in the upcoming elections is, as Queen Elizabeth was reported to have said after Windsor Castle had been ravaged by fire, “awkward.”

Apart from being friendly to each other in the past, what do Hillary Clinton, the leading Democratic Party presidential candidate, and Donald Trump, Hillary’s counterpart in the Republican Party, have in common? Both are leading in the polls, and both are flawed candidates; Mr. Trump because he’s a shallow thinker, however entertaining, and Mrs. Clinton because both her distant and recent past are pockmarked with irregularities.

Governor Dannel Malloy, Democratic Party Bigwigs in Connecticut and the members of the state’s all-Democratic US Congressional Delegation are, at long last, in for Hillary Clinton as their Party’s presidential nominee. For weeks, the Democratic crowd had been indifferently plunging their big toes in the nomination pool. Now, in unison, all have jumped in, satisfied that Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, a fire breathing progressive, has earnestly decided to withdraw behind the nomination curtain. Fresh from having indicated he would not veto a progressive state budget that effectively violates every important promise he made on the gubernatorial campaign stump – no tax increases, no red ink budgets, no untoward budget gimmickry, and the like – Mr. Malloy now has found time to issue a generic endorsement of Hillary Benghazi.

US Senator Dick Blumenthal and Hillary Clinton were Yalies together back in the day. On Friday, April 10, Blumenthal “gushed” over his old Yale compatriot, according to an item by Neil Vigdor of the Hearst Group : “Blumenthal gushed Friday over Clinton’s political stock, ahead of the former secretary of state’s announcement Sunday that she is running for president in 2016. “’She literally can make history,’ Blumenthal told Hearst Connecticut Media. ‘How many people have been a presidential spouse, a senator in her own right and a distinguished secretary of state with a record of representing a major state (New York) and our nation abroad? By any measure, she is very seriously and significantly qualified, especially as compared to some of the other contenders.’

Bill Curry -- who lost an election, honorably I might add, to John Rowland -- is usually aggravating, in the good sense, and pushing his party with Archimedean fervor to the left. It was Archimedes who said “Give me a spot outside the world where I may place my lever, and I will move the world.” The Democratic Party, most especially in his own state, has obliged Mr. Curry in one respect; it has put up between itself and Mr. Curry a political Berlin Wall that, in a recent piece in Salon , he valiantly and sometimes confusedly attempted to breach.

When hit in the forehead with the news, Nick Merrill, spokesman for possible presidential aspirant Hillary Clinton, asked “There’s a book?” Indeed there is. This one, due out in August and written by Ron Kessler, the Secret Service agent who broke the story that some members of President Barrack Obama’s Secret Service detail had hired prostitutes in Cartagena, Colombia, thus imperiling the president’s safety, is titled “The First Family Detail: Secret Service Agents Reveal the Hidden Lives of Presidents.” Some of the details disclosed in Mr. Kessler’s book are eye-catching, if unsurprising. We discover that when “The Energizer” – not her real name – arrives at Chappaqua for an assignation with former President Bill Clinton, he of the “blue dress,”  her progress is not impeded by Secret Service agents, so called presumably because they are able to keep secrets in addition to protecting the president, delicately and  surreptitiously , from unwanted intrusions.