Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

Stories like this open a window into sealed rooms in which the usual favorable campaign propaganda is produced by the truckload. This one, which ran in the Washington Post , is not good news for U.S. Representative Elizabeth Esty, most recently seen bobbing her head in assent to a vigorous attack on the National Rifle Association (NRA) by a teenage rabble rouser in Washington DC. The Post story begins with a knock-out lede: “The threat from Rep. Elizabeth Esty’s chief of staff arrived in a voice mail. “’You better f-----g reply to me or I will f-----g kill you,’ Tony Baker said in the May 5, 2016, recording left for Anna Kain, a former Esty aide Baker had once dated.”

The Washington Post – generally not considered to be either conservative or tea party friendly – puts the hard truth bluntly in the lede to a front page story in a Hartford paper: “Economists generally offer three theories for what’s hampering the still-sluggish U.S. economy: the Keynesian theory, which would like to see lower taxes or more government spending; the spending/debt theory, which would like to see both of those reined in; and the uncertainty theory. Under none of them can the White House-Congress deal to avert the ‘fiscal cliff’ be considered an economic success.” And then, of course, there is your mother’s theory: “Don’t spend more than you take in, and try to tuck away a little savings for the inevitable rainy day.”

Former Governor of Alaska Sarah Palin, as everyone knows by now, is a lightning rod for progressive dissatisfaction. At some point during her campaign for the Vice Presidency on the Republican ticket, one of her more enterprising critics produced a tea shirt emblazoned on the front with a misogynistic, not to say rude, message: “Sarah Palin Is a c**t.” Some were dissapointed when the tea shirt was not roundly denounced by Mrs. Palin’s usual critics, many of whom were graduates with advanced degrees from the feminist school of politics. There is no sign of a let-up of Palinphobia among her more respectable critics. A Freedom of Information request having been submitted more than a year ago for the release of e-mails written by Governor Palin, the Washington the Post on Sunday morning offered to its on line readers “a full searchable text… [of] Sarah Palin's e-mails from her time as governor of Alaska from 2006-2008.” For the politically prurient, here is a partial list of topics...

In the wake of the collapse of Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac, not to mention derivate failures such as Wall Street and Main Street, the conflict of interest prize of the decade must go to New York US Rep. Barney Frank. “It’s absolutely a conflict,” said Dan Gainor, vice president of the Business & Media Institute. “He was voting on Fannie Mae at a time when he was involved with a Fannie Mae executive. How is that not germane?” The Fannie Mae executive was Frank’s domestic partner Herb Moses. Frank met Moses in 1987, the year Frank uncloseted himself as a gay, and the two lived together in a Washington home until they broke up in 1998. Moses was not without a sense of humor. In 1991 he wrote in the Washington Post, “I am the only member of the congressional gay spouse caucus. On Capitol Hill, Barney always introduces me as his lover.” Both Frank and Moses assured the Wall Street Journal in 1992 that there was no funny business going on, conflict of interest wise, but skeptics were doub...

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...

A “high official” (read: scandal monger) in the Hillary Clinton campaign, according to the Washington Post , has warned that Barack Obama may be attacked for his drug use but not, one hopes, by Bill Clinton, himself scarred by charges of drug use and philandering. The ex-President and future First Husband's Chris Kringle nose is mute testimony to past usage. Update The bacillus was eradicated almost as soon as the words were out of his mouth. He extended a handsom apology too.

More depressing news for the anti-war crowd. An Oct. 14 report in the Washington Post , not generally known as a hotbed of neo-cons, has revealed that the surge is working. “A congressional study and several news stories in September questioned reports by the U.S. military that casualties were down. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), challenging the testimony of Gen. David H. Petraeus, asserted that "civilian deaths have risen" during this year's surge of American forces. “A month later, there isn't much room for such debate, at least about the latest figures. In September, Iraqi civilian deaths were down 52 percent from August and 77 percent from September 2006, according to the Web site icasualties.org . The Iraqi Health Ministry and the Associated Press reported similar results. U.S. soldiers killed in action numbered 43 -- down 43 percent from August and 64 percent from May, which had the highest monthly figure so far this year. The American combat death total...

According to Israeli intelligence, more intelligent usually than American intelligence, the clock is ticking on efforts to persuade or force Iran to give up its effort to produce nuclear weapons. Time is running out. According to Brigadier General Yossi Kuperwasser, Iran is “very close” to crossing the technological threshold that will allow it the capability of enriching uranium at an industrial level. Having mastered the technology, Kuperwasser predicts Iran will be able to manufacture a nuclear device within two or three years. Sanctions alone, Kuperwasser says in a report entitled " Halting Iran's Nuclear Weapons Program: Iranian Vulnerabilities and Western Policy Options ," will not be sufficient to persuade Iran to abandon its program. The sticking point, as always, is Russia. Because Russia is unallied with the United States, sanctions alone would be ineffective, said Kupperwasser. "For significant sanctions to be effective the world needs to at the same time ...