Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

Merrill The last word, or the next to the last word, on Vermont socialist Bernie Sanders’ ill-fated run for the presidency may be that of communist evangelist Karl Marx. In  The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte  Marx writes, “ Hegel  remarks somewhere that all great, world-historical facts and personages occur, as it were, twice. He has forgotten to add: the first time as tragedy, the second as farce.” This is the second time Sanders has run for president, succumbing the first time to former Secretary of State in the Obama administration Hillary Clinton and this time to former Obama Vice President Joe Biden. This, his second and one suspects last run for the presidency – Sanders is getting on in years -- may be a tragedy to the youth of the nation, who hung on his every word, but it is a farce for most grownups.

Campaign money raised by DeLauro and challengers Those of us who paid close attention to the Republican presidential primary of 2016, which gave us President Donald Trump, and the current Democrat primary, which could give the country its first socialist president in Bernie Sanders, though this seems increasingly unlikely, have come away from these rough and tumble experiences thinking that political anarchy in the country’s two major parties is perhaps more ruinous than party bossism. Primaries, it is true, did get rid of the party bosses. Old news hounds will remember with some affection Connecticut Democrat Party boss John Bailey, the last of his kind in the state. All of the stink and corruption associated with party bossism remain, and incumbents are no more likely to be dispossessed of their power in the new system than they were under the iron rule of the bosses. “Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose,” the French say -- the more things change, the more they rem...

The impeachment of President Donald Trump has blotted out lesser news stories. Journalistically, the impeachment circus has become the sun that, early in the morning, hides the stars behind a veil of bright light. But the stars twinkle, never-the-less. According to most polls, former Vice President Joe Biden will eventually become the White Knight facing the Republican’s Black Knight, Trump, whom Democrats, during their somber impeachment process, hope to remove from office before the 2020 elections. This fugitive “hope” is doomed to be crushed by the numbers. Democrats simply do not have the numbers in the U.S. Senate to boot Trump out of office before the national elections and, in politics, numbers rule.

Blumenthal and Murphy U.S. Senator Chris Murphy appears to have gotten his twitters in a twist. On December 31, the last day of the old decade, Murphy wrote on twitter: “ The attack on our embassy in Baghdad is horrifying but predictable. Trump has rendered America impotent in the Middle East. No one fears us, no one listens to us. America has been reduced to huddling in safe rooms, hoping the bad guys will go away. What a disgrace.” Shortly after the destruction at the embassy, orchestrated by Quds Force thugs under the direction of Iranian General Qassim Soleimani, the general met an American drone near the airport and quickly assumed room temperature. Trump, spurred on, one may fancy, by Murphy’s hectoring, later boasted that his response to the endangering of embassy officials in Iraq would not be another Benghazi.

Democrats across the nation and in Connecticut’s U.S. Congressional Delegation, all-Democrat since 2009, are assembling their adjectives to describe a recent vote in the U.S. House on the question of an “impeachment resolution,” which is not at all the same thing as a vote in the House on a bill of impeachment. In an impeachment proceeding, the U.S. House of Representatives produces and then votes yes or no on a bill containing articles of impeachment. If the vote carries in the Democrat controlled House, it then passes to the Republican controlled U.S. Senate, which conducts a trial. If a sufficient number of senators, sitting as a jury, find the offender guilty of the charges specified in the bill, the offender is removed from office, the only punishment that can be visited upon an impeached government official.

Connecticut Democrats ran against Trump in the last off-year presidential election, and he was not on the ballot. There were no ringing defenses of Trump among Connecticut Republicans, who tend to be rather shy on the subject of Trump’s accomplishments, the most important of which involves jobs produced in Connecticut by Trump’s aggressive military procurement policy. Electric Boat, Sikorsky and Pratt & Whitney are producing jobs and hiring new workers at a record pace, all of which will, during the next 20 years, produce tax revenue for a state still mired in a recession that ended elsewhere in the nation about 10 years ago. Despite Connecticut’s 30-year-long descent into economic turmoil, Connecticut progressives did very well in the 2018 elections. Hard won Republican gains in the General Assembly were wiped out, and the progressive caucus in the Democrat dominant General Assembly is now approaching 50 percent. In 2020, Trump will be on the ballot in Connecticut, desp...

A recent Hartford Courant-Sacred Heart University poll demonstrates that Governor Ned Lamont, as well as Democrats in the General Assembly, have intractable policy problems. Lamont’s policies are largely the same as those of former Governor Dannel Malloy, whose poll ratings were abysmally low when he left office after two terms. The latest poll results blow out of the water an always dubious theory that Malloy’s disapproval poll numbers, hovering around 25 percent during his two-term administration, were low because the former governor was a bristly character. Lamont, Malloy without the quills, everyone will agree is far more eupeptic than Malloy. Lamont’s approval rating remained at 24%,” the Courant story   notes, “but 47% of respondents said they disapprove of how he is handling his job, a seven-point increase from a poll conducted in May. Twenty-nine percent said they were unsure about how Lamont is doing.”

There will be time, there will be time To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet… In a minute there is time For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.   -- T.S. Eliot, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock The title of the story, “ As Democrats drift left, liberal firebrand Rep. Rosa DeLauro finds herself squarely in the center ,” was unintentionally confusing.

It is no longer true, as your mother may once have told you, that you are judged by the company you keep. Former President Barack Obama had a few diamonds in the rough on his friends list. There were the Chicago terrorist bombers Bill Ayers , a former leader of the Weather Underground, now an American elementary education theorist, and his wife Bernadine Dohrn, responsible for bombings of the United States Capitol, the Pentagon, and several police stations in New York, as well as the Greenwich Village townhouse explosion that killed three of its members. Dohrn left a position in 2013 as “Clinical Associate Professor of Law" at the Northwestern University School of Law. Far from being a repentant sinner, Ayres told the New York Times in 2001 "I don't regret setting bombs. I feel we didn't do enough." Ayers and Obama served together on the board of directors for the Woods Fund of Chicago, their terms overlapping for three years, and Ayres is credi...

Blumenthal and DeLauro To impeach or not to impeach? That is the question? Speaker of the US House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi has said no. And US Representative Rosa DeLauro, congresswoman for life in the impregnable 3rd District in New Haven County, last held by a Republican 36 years ago, has seconded the motion. DeLauro has occupied her seat, unruffled by Republican challengers, for 28 years. DeLauro is married to Stan Greenberg, a pollster and consultant whose opinions on things Democrat are held in high esteem by Democrats DeLauro invites to their plush digs in Washington DC. Who says you can’t enrich yourself supping at the public trough?

Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont traveled to New York the other day to convince Wall Street Journal editorial writers that his state is in the grip of a turn-around, thanks to the Lamont administration. The business oriented WSJ is not at all the same media gang that covers the Lamont administration at home. Most Connecticut news outlets are willing to allow Lamont a loose tether; not so the WSJ, which has been critical of the direction of the state for the past few decades.

Someone should nudge awake Connecticut U.S. Senators Dick Blumenthal and Chris Murphy. The FISA warrant used to secure the services of special prosecutor Robert Mueller was defective from the get-go, we learn in a series of stunning opinion pieces in The Hill written by John Solomon . It appears there is an after-story to the Mueller investigation after all, and the second act will almost certainly disappoint the two Trump-slayers. One of the stories’ ledes probably should garner Solomon a Pulitzer for commentary eye-candy: “The FBI’s sworn story to a federal court about its asset, Christopher Steele, is fraying faster than a $5 souvenir T-shirt bought at a tourist trap.” And the second graph might be a close runner-up: “Newly unearthed memos show a high-ranking government official who met with Steele in October 2016 determined some of the Donald Trump dirt that Steele was simultaneously digging up for the FBI and for Hillary Clinton’s campaign was inaccurate, and lik...

Government begins to be a bother when it uses the power of the state to prohibit normative behavior. The primary instrument of compulsion in this case is – and should never be – the tax code. Ordinary people who would not know a political ideology from a lamppost may be forgiven for reacting normally to a government that uses the tax code to shape behavior. And yet this practice has become as common as table salt, which some people believe should be taxed exorbitantly because it isn’t good for you.

CTMirror tells us that President Donald Trump has “attacked the credibility of Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal and several other Democrats, warning television networks against booking them on their news shows.”                                Tim Murtaugh, spokesman for the Trump campaign, wrote to the television networks, “You should begin by asking the basic question: Does this guest warrant further appearances in our programming, given the outrageous and unsupported claims made in the past? Murtaugh pointed to “reckless” and “outlandish, false claims” made by Blumenthal; among them “was Blumenthal’s statement in October on MSNBC that ‘the evidence is pretty clear that there was collision between the Trump campaign and the Russians.’”

“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...

Antifa : The Progressive Party in action. Autocrat : A member in good standing of the reigning power. Bipartisanship : A political ploy. Political parties that have been deposed by voters cling to demands for bipartisanship with all the fervor of a drowning sailor grasping at a straw. Border : A largely irrelevant demarcation line on a map indicating the presence of a largely irrelevant nation.

Hillary Clinton, who lost the presidential election to current U.S. President Donald Trump, has been effectively sidelined as a national leader of the Democrat Party. Clinton, whose emails the Chinese were reading in real time when as Secretary of State she typed them out on an unsecured private server, likely will not make an appearance in Connecticut as a supporter of Democrat gubernatorial hopeful Ned Lamont. But all is not lost. Lamont, running against Republican gubernatorial candidate Bob Stefanowski, has received a fulsome endorsement from former President Barack Obama, whose political star still twinkles in the dark heavens.

Some time ago, a Connecticut Trumpeter confessed to this political writer that he had been having a recurrent nightmare. Military procurements during the Obama administration have been slender. Connecticut is still referred to in some corners as “the provision state” because, since the Revolutionary War, Connecticut has provided the national military with provisions. It continues to do so; Pratt&Whitney, Electric Boat and Sikorsky are very much going concerns. Obama’s military budget was considerably more modest than Trump’s, as the President never tires of reminding the country. Dollars spent on the military are, to no one’s surprise, good for Connecticut. Federal dollars spent on military procurements produce Connecticut jobs, which produce funds that replenish the state’s treasury -- all good, all the time.

C hris Powell begins his column on Nelson "Oz" Griebel  with a backhanded compliment: “Griebel is a substantial guy and more familiar with state government than the gubernatorial nominees of the major parties, Democrat Ned Lamont and Republican Bob Stefanowski,” followed by a backhand, “But Griebel has gone completely establishment now and it is hard to distinguish his positions from Lamont's. They both support raising taxes again to avoid offending influential interest groups that deserve offending. They argue that economic growth is what Connecticut needs most though the state will never have it as long as those interest groups keep first claim on state government's revenue.” The pursuit of the elusive unaffiliated vote has destroyed more politicians in Connecticut than the usual and expected corrupt political activity.

Connecticut’s Republican Party Nominating Convention has in its wisdom nominated Matt Corey to run against U.S. Senator Chris Murphy who, along with his compatriot in the Senate, Dick Blumenthal, has been "efforting," as the leftists say, during the entire first year of the Trump presidency, to subvert a national election.  To date, they have been far more successful in their efforts than the Russians. The hangman, special counsel Robert Mueller, has been for months braiding a noose behind the scenes. Both Murphy, up for re-election this year, and Blumenthal have pilloried nearly all of Trump’s cabinet appointments, including recently installed Mike Pompeo as Secretary of State, a position once occupied by Hillary Clinton, whose campaign for the presidency was, we are invited to believe, torpedoed by Russian spooks in league with Trump.