Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

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?

“The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of a passionate intensity”  – WB Yeats The Politico story came as a shock to no one: “ California Democrats decline to endorse Feinstein .” Connecticut has been blue roughly forever; ditto California, the political eagle’s nest of moderate Democrats turned progressive. Senator Dianne Feinstein, long a Democrat moderate, did not convert quickly enough. Then too, progressives, full of a passionate intensity, find protestations of progressivism dripping from the lips of moderate, long-serving Democrat political fixtures sadly wanting. If tomorrow Feinstein said she was backing a recent move to withdraw California from the union – a prospect eagerly awaited by national conservatives -- no one on the progressive side of the political barricades in California would believe her. Lions want red meat, not well cured moderate puff pastries.

Politico ,  not a raving right news site, offered some hope to Republicans in Connecticut on the last day of the old year: “Deep-blue Connecticut is actually one of Republicans' best opportunities in 2018. Malloy’s approval ratings were some of the worst among any governor in the country, and he decided not to run for a third term. But Republicans hope that environment in the state will clear the way for their candidate next fall. There are almost a dozen candidates running in the Republican primary and it’s unclear who will emerge as the nominee. A Tremont Public Advisors LLC poll conducted in mid-December found a generic Republican candidate beating a generic Democratic candidate — 35 percent to 23 percent, with 42 percent undecided — despite the fact that Connecticut has not voted Republican at the presidential level since 1988.”

U.S. Senator Dick Blumenthal, Connecticut’s consumer protection Congressman, might have been speaking of the Clinton Foundation, a mare’s nest of government-corporation entanglement, when he mused, “Time is not on our side. We really need to move quickly, because the longer it goes without some scrutiny or oversight, the more general acceptance there will be. We need to create this sense of outrage and alarm that pieces of the government are being sold and compromised.” But of course, he wasn’t.  Mr. Blumenthal was drawing a bead on President-Elect Donald Trump. Apparently, there is to be no honeymoon during this post-election season. It used to be considered seemly to wait a few weeks into a Presidency before the political opposition began to seed the political theatre with their Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs).

Detained by two reporters before he entered a closed door session of the Democratic caucus, U.S. House Democratic Caucus Chairman Rep. John Larson let loose a string of metaphors on the Tea Party movement. Politico described the interview as “…an 11-minute, metaphor-laced talk.” Mr. Larson, who runs the Democratic caucus in the House, was identified by Politico as “the top communications arm for the party in Congress.” Some of Mr. Larson’s metaphors were meteorological: "And this week we're told that the tea party will bring yet another cold front to Washington, D.C. And in doing so, it's our understanding that the Republican leaders are standing back and looking to see what kind of shadow is cast to see whether or not we'll have six more weeks of continuing resolution." Republicans, the Democratic caucus leader said, haven't created "one single job." Their attitude, since recapturing the U.S. House in the last elections, owing partially to...

The salient points of an interview with Governor Dannel Malloy in Politico, “ Malloy talks of new reality of labor ," are here quoted as fully as possible: “Malloy assumed $1 billion in concessions from public employees for each of the next two years in his budget, but he also proposes a broad-based tax increase and $800 million in line-item cuts.” The operative word in that sentence is “assumed.” It should be noted in passing that the tax increases in Malloy’s budget are a reality, while his spending cuts are an “assumption.” Malloy’s whole budget package, it should also be noted, is subject to revision by the Democratic controlled legislature. The members of public employee unions and the union’s support staff in the Democratic controlled legislature, Mr. Malloy supposed in his interview with Politico, are “not happy at all since I’m a Democrat and I’m not supposed to be doing those kinds of things.” Republican Governor Jodi Rell is becoming a stock character in Mr. Malloy...

Lucian, the second century satirist, once wrote a dialogue called “The Sale of Creeds” in which he held up to ridicule such famous philosophers as Socrates, Diogenes and Pythagoras. In Lucian’s drama, some of the philosophers were a bit of a hard sell. Only a few weeks ago, to judge from commentary in Connecticut’s press, U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman might have been sold at bargain prices. But now comes a piece in Politico that raises his price considerably. Some leading Democrats and Republicans -- not among them Chris Healy, still the state’s Republican Party chieftain, though Mr. Healy himself recently sought to auction himself off as a National Republican Party Chairman – would be happy to purchase Mr. Lieberman, mostly for tactical reasons. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Politico reports, “is quietly urging the Connecticut lawmaker to run for a fifth Senate term in 2012 — and to stick with the Democratic side of the aisle.” Now that the House has fallen to Republicans and th...

Better late than never, but the extended pause that preceded President Obama’s statement during his last news conference suggests a compromised will. The next time Amadinijad appears anywhere in the West, he should be greeted with protestors bearing aloft the word “Neda” — that’s all, just that. We can no longer depend on presidents and White Houses anxious to rub noses with murderers to represent the best in us. Politico reports: “Obama borrowed language from struggles throughout history against oppressive governments to condemn the efforts by Iran’s rulers to crush dissent in the wake of June 12 presidential elections. Citing the searing video circulated worldwide of the apparent shooting death of Neda Agha Soltan, a 26-year-old young woman who bled to death in a Tehran street and now is a powerful symbol for the demonstrators, Obama said flatly that human rights violations were taking place. “‘No iron fist is strong enough to shut off the world from bearing witness to peaceful prote...

President Barack Obama has returned from Europe empty handed. If he had gone there to persuade friendly heads of state in Europe to lend a fighting hand in his new military venture in Afghanistan, the trip must be counted a failure, according to the New York Times , one of the president’s innumerable media cheerleaders: “With protesters raging outside, NATO leaders on Saturday gave a tepid troop commitment to President Obama’s escalating campaign in Afghanistan, mostly committing soldiers only to a temporary security duty… “Despite a glowing reception and widespread praise for Mr. Obama’s style and aims, his calls for a more lasting European troop increase for Afghanistan were politely brushed aside, as they had been in negotiations leading up to the meeting. “As expected, European allies agreed to provide up to 5,000 new troops for Afghanistan, the White House said Saturday. But 3,000 of them are to be deployed only temporarily to provide security for the August elections in Afghanist...

Writing in Politico , Rep. Darrell Issa of California, the ranking Republican on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, reveals that only 7% of the so-called American Recovery and Reinvestment Act will be “injected into the economy by the end of fiscal year 2009. More than $200 billion of “stimulus” funds will be spent between fiscal year 2010 and fiscal year 2019 — long after the recession is projected to be over.” “Instead of injecting new life into the economy, we’re seeing a massive expansion of government. The bill by Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Appropriations Committee Chairman Dave Obey contains $137 billion for the creation of 32 new programs — that’s 38 percent of all spending in the current bill. Seventeen of these new programs have never been authorized by the Congress. This is on top of the $76 billion being spent to expand 60 existing government programs — 19 of which have been described as ‘ineffective’ or ‘results not demonstrated’ by the Office of Manageme...

Politico is reporting that some of Greg Craig’s lobbying connections are questionable. Mr. Craig has been newly named by President-elect Barack Obama as his White House council. As a top Washington lawyer, newly named White House counsel Greg Craig has represented high-profile clients, from Bill Clinton to John Hinckley to Alexander Solzhenitsyn to Elian Gonzalez’s father. But less well known is Craig’s work in the 1990s for at least four foreign governments or leaders facing a variety of tricky situations in Washington. Craig represented Argentina, Bolivia, Panama and the prime minister of Haiti as a “foreign agent,” basically a lobbyist for foreign governments and businesses with issues before the federal government. But those governments, which paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to Craig’s power law firm Williams & Connolly, got more than just traditional lobbying from him.

Michael Calderone of Politico reports that the media coverage of Republican presidential nominee John McCain and Democrat presidential nominee Barack Obama is now even. Up to this point, Obama was far ahead. That’s the good news. The bad news for McCain is that the Republican’s coverage is way negative: “Just 14 percent of the stories about John McCain, from the conventions through the final presidential debate, were positive in tone, according to a study released today, while nearly 60 percent were negative — the least favorable coverage of any of the four candidates on the two tickets. “The study, by The Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism, a nonpartisan journalism watchdog organization, examined 2,412 stories from 43 newspapers and cable news shows in the six-week period beginning just after the conventions and ending with the final presidential debate.” And you thought perhaps that the media was non-partisan. Ha!

How odd it is that one has to look to blog commentators rather than the US House or Senate, the greatest deliberative bodies on earth, for permanent solutions to future financial crises. From a Politico commentator on the eve of The Great Pickpocketing: “Subprime mortgages will never be mandated by the US government again. Subprime mortgages will never be guaranteed by the US government again. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac loans will no longer be guaranteed by the US government. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will be broken up into smaller companies and auctioned within 12 months. If a company or entitiy decides to fund mortgages to the poor who cannot afford it, it will be done without the support or guarantee of the US government. Let liberals fund all subprime mortgages and lose a trillion dollars. The FBI will look into the relationship between leading congressmen and Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac for possible criminal charges. A panel will be formed (like the 9/11 commission) that will document...

Barack Obama has decided to forgo public financing in the general campaign against John McCain. Is anyone surprised? Obama has been a money magnet for some time. Forgoing public financing, he likely will outspend McCain by a ratio of two to one. More money means more advertising; more advertising means more spin. Advertising dollars are a protective wrap that keeps the candidate far from the prehensile grasp of inquiring reporters. Obama also has decided not to appear with McCain in town hall settings, where both candidates might have a go at each other, opting instead to rely on canned public speeches. Some of the leads in newspaper stories mentioned that Obama “turned down $84.1 million in federal dollars” by opting out of the federal system, not exactly a selfless act. Well, if any of us could triple or possible quadruple the amount to money we would receive by waving away $84 million, what would we do? There are no surprises here. Why should it surprise anyone that the candidate of...

Behold – the great left wing conspiracy to overthrow the Clintons begins to unfold. John Kerry on the Clintons: “Well, I think you had an abuse of the truth, is what happened. I mean, being an ex-president does not give you license to abuse the truth, and I think that over the last days it's been over the top. Things have been said about Barack Obama's positions that are just plain untrue. It was said in Nevada, it's been said about Social Security, it's been said about Yucca Mountain, and it's been said in South Carolina. I think it's very unfortunate, but I think the voters can see through that. When somebody's coming on strong and they are growing, people get a little frantic, and I think people have seen this sort of franticness in the air, if you will. My sense is, Barack Obama offers a better opportunity to pull America together than any other candidate in the race.” The New York Times catches Ex-President Bill Clinton in a revealing Freudian slip. R...

Concerning the strike authorized by CBS News writers this week, four questions quickly rise to the surface: 1) Will the Democrat candidates for president support the strike by refusing to cross picket lines? Yes. Who among the candidates has lent their support to the unionists? Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barack Obama, Bill Richardson, Chris Dodd and John Edwards all have pledged their support, though it may be a measure of the esteem in which Connecticut’s own Dodd is held that the story from Politico , “CBS strike could put debate in disarray,” mentions Dodd only fleetingly. Dodd has yet to rise much above 3% in most polls, and his coverage in the national media is correspondingly slight. 2) Will the strike and the reluctance of leading Democrats to cross picket lines affect the debates? Yes. Clinton, the front runner, has issued a statement that said, “It is my hope that both sides will reach an agreement that results in a secure contract for the workers at CBS News, but let me be ...