Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

The New York Times , not generally regarded as the Doctor Strangelove wing of the Republican Party, is reporting that “Senior staff members of the United Nations nuclear agency have concluded in a confidential analysis that Iran,” which repeatedly has promised to destroy Israel, has “acquired sufficient information to be able to design and produce a workable” atom bomb. The Iran bomb is an implosion nuclear device. According to the Times, “Weapons based on the principle of implosion are considered advanced models compared with the simple gun-type bomb that the United States dropped on Hiroshima. They use a blast wave from a sphere of conventional explosives to compress a ball of bomb fuel into a supercritical mass, starting the atomic chain reaction and progressing to the fiery blast. Implosion designs, compact by nature, are considered necessary for making nuclear warheads small and powerful enough to fit atop a missile.” And, not good new for peace lovers here in the United Stat...

It’s difficult to fool a man who feels the knife at his throat. The Associated Press is reporting on the reaction to President Obama’s decision to abandon a defense shield in Poland and Czechoslovakia. "'Betrayal! The U.S. sold us to Russia and stabbed us in the back,' the Polish tabloid Fakt declared on its front page. "Polish President Lech Kaczynski said he was concerned that Obama's new strategy leaves Poland in a dangerous "gray zone" between Western Europe and the old Soviet sphere."

To please Russia's Vladimir Putin, President Barack Obama has decided to shelve anti-missle defenses in the Czech Republic and Poland on the 70th anniversary of Poland’s invasion by the Soviet Union: " Fears of Moscow run especially deep in Poland, highlighted by a key anniversary Thursday. Exactly 70 years ago — on Sept. 17, 1939 — Poland was invaded by the Soviet Union at the start of World War II."

A commentary on “Major Cuts, Tax Increases Will Only Accelerate Downturn,” by Demetrios Giannaros , D-Farmington, deputy speaker of the state House of Representatives and a professor of economics at the University of Hartford specializing in macroeconomics and public finance. When your car is skidding on ice, the first reaction is to slam on the brakes. But experience tells us that a lighter touch will actually keep us from careening off the road. This is the dilemma facing state officials as they confront rising budget deficits and consider drastic spending cuts. I suggest we take a more deliberate approach to keep on course, avoid inflicting more pain on state residents and give us the best chance for economic recovery. Connecticut legislators hadn’t considered a deliberate approach to spending control until right now. And now the fierce urgency of now is knocking at their door. In the past, free spending legislators slurped down surplus after surplus, thus adding to bottom line spe...