Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

The press today – and by that I suppose we shall have to include such organs of the media as YouTube and MyLeftNutmeg – is exceedingly concerned with moral reprobation. For those who do not know, MyLeftNutmeg is a hard hitting leftist blog site in Connecticut. It’s good to be hard, bad to be soft. I do not mean to single out my honorable brothers on the left here for… well… moral reprobation; all this is merely by way of example. MyLeftNutmeg receives the bulk of its political ethic, such as it is, from other blog sites, MoveOn.org and the Huffington Post, for example; proving, once and for all, that the press – or the media, as some would prefer – is 10% thought and 90% repetition. It is important not to underestimate the power of repetition -- as a propaganda tool. Lenin said that if you label something effectively, you do not have to argue with it; this includes both people and propositions. People who have been labeled effectively within the past month include the not-so Reverend ...

First, the anonymous author of “Courant Asks If Shays Is ‘Too Shaky To Serve,’” CaptCT, quotes from a comment made on the Courant site by the anonymous “Ex-cop.” “Ex-cop,” a moniker that may lead the casual reader to assume that the author is, you know, an ex-cop, said on the Courant site, according to the anonymous CaptCT, “…if any of you displayed this type of juvenile behavior, you would have been stuffed and cuffed and placed on the Capitol police nut list.” The behavior to which “Ex-cop” refers is noted in David Lightman’s story on Chris Shays: “To critics, the erstwhile gentle, patient Shays seems to have been replaced by someone who has trouble controlling his anger. In July, he confronted the Capitol officer and touched his name tag after getting angry - and spewing profanities - because constituents were left standing in the rain, unable to enter the building.” Next, the anonymous MyLeftNutmeg author, CaptCT, characterizes the Lightman story as a “puff piece that attempts to d...

Q: After the Democrat primaries, who are the winners and losers? A: It hardly matters if Lieberman wins the primary. The Lamont campaign represents a significant win for progressives, as they style themselves, in the Democrat Party. Q: Who are they? A: The anti-war crowd and various hanger’s on. The Lamont candidacy was launched from the epicenter of Connecticut and national politics. You can’t go further left than anti-war protestor Lowell Weicker and the proprietor of Daily Kos, Markos Moulitsas Zuniga. The Democrat establishment would have been satisfied with Lieberman, mostly for self serving reasons. Democrats control pretty much the entire political barracks in the state, but the governorship has eluded them. According to the polls, Rell continues to be strong, and the Lieberman/Lamont primary has prevented Democrats from launching a concerted attack on a governor widely regarded as a moderate (read: safe Republican). Rell may be best understood a stand-alone political party. Tha...

It didn’t take long for the snake to rear its corrupting head in progressivism’s Garden of Eden. Sadly, it would appear that everyone – even the white knights of Daily Kos, like their patron, billionaire supporter George Soros -- are in it for the money. The Hartford Advocate , a sister publication of the Hartford Courant, has noted in a story, “Just Kos?, that the struggle between the New Republic, a center left puiblication, and Daily Kos, the epitome of far leftism, parallels closely the division within the Democrat Party between primary challenger Ned Lamont and sitting Senator Joe Lieberman. The flare-up between the New Republic and dailykos.com has parallels with the Connecticut Democratic primary race between incumbent Senator Joe Lieberman and Greenwich businessman Ned Lamont. First, it exemplifies the conflict between the hawkish, centrist wing of the party (the New Republic /Lieberman) and the anti-war left (liberal blogs/Lamont). “But besides ideological similarities, allegi...

Over at Slate magazine , not a conservative publication, Christopher Hitchens, not a disreputable neo-con, speculates that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the target of two 500 pound bombs, was not an innocent bystander in the war against the West being prosecuted by Islamic Salafists. The guy who sawed off the heads of two American prisoners, Hitchens writes, …contributed enormously to the wrecking of Iraq's experiment in democratic federalism. He was able to help ensure that the Iraqi people did not have one single day of respite between 35 years of war and fascism, and the last three-and-a-half years of misery and sabotage. He chose his targets with an almost diabolical cunning, destroying the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad (and murdering the heroic envoy Sérgio Vieira de Melo) almost before it could begin operations, and killing the leading Shiite Ayatollah Hakim outside his place of worship in Najaf. His decision to declare a jihad against the Shiite population in general, in a document o...

The average Democrat voter – Joe Sixpack as he is sometimes called – may be excused for his confusion this year. On the one hand, he has been asked by First Selectwoman of Westport Dianne Farrell to rally to her cause because her opponent in the race for the U.S. Senate, Chris Shays, is a war hawk; on the other hand, Farrell herself has endorsed the candidacy of current U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman, who is -- a war hawk. "Joe is a longtime friend,” Farrell has said, “and he has endorsed me and my campaign in the past. We'll have to agree to disagree on the war . . . but we agree on so many other issues," women's privacy rights, the Family Leave Act and fair wages among them. Lieberman has come under fierce criticism from party activists for adopting a position on the Iraq war that seems to them supportive of President George Bush’s Mid-East policies, and yet Farrell has accepted an endorsement from the leper, hoping to escape the leprosy. Can she embrace the Lieberman with...