After 37 minutes of deliberation, a jury today found Scott Roeder guilty of first-degree murder in the shooting death of Wichita abortion doctor George Tiller.
The judge let him testify about his anti-abortion beliefs, but apparently the jury wasn’t buying.
Unbeknownst to me, I have become a member of the media, and as such I received an emailed press release from the Farmer’s Cow, which will soon be releasing a line of locally made ice creams. Since I love ice cream, and since I approve of local foods, I thought I’d pass it along, despite the fact that it has nothing to do with politics. Without further ado:
THE FARMER’S COW HOLDS NAMING CONTEST FOR NEW ICE CREAM LINE
Lebanon, Connecticut, January 27, 2010 – The Farmer’s Cow, local dairy farmers providing Connecticut-produced fresh milk, cream and other products, is inviting area residents to help name the flavors in their own locally-made ice cream. There are ten different flavors to name and one lucky entrant will win a summer’s supply of ice cream.
“We’re very excited about our upcoming ice cream line,” says Robin Chesmer, managing partner with The Farmer’s Cow. “The cream and milk for the ice cream will come straight from our farms and the ice cream will be made right here in Connecticut. Our goal is to make a rich and creamy treat, which is the freshest you can buy.”The ten flavors that need names are:
· Vanilla
· Chocolate
· Chocolate Chocolate Chip
· Mint Chocolate Chip
· Strawberry
· Cookies & Cream
· Black Raspberry Chocolate Chip
· Peanut Butter Cup
· Cherry Vanilla
· Coffee“The flavor choices were narrowed down by those who responded to a survey conducted on our website and at our appearances throughout Connecticut in 2009,” says Chesmer. “The response was so positive that we want to further include our fans in this fun, exciting product launch. We’re hoping even more people will put their creativity to work and come up with some great names.”
Names will be accepted during a two-week period from February 1 until midnight on February 14 at www.thefarmerscow.com/icecream. All entries will be reviewed by the farmers at The Farmer’s Cow and considered as names for the flavors. One lucky entrant will receive a summer’s supply of ice cream beginning on Memorial Day and lasting until Labor Day.
“All of the naming guidelines and rules are on our website,” says Chesmer. “We’ll announce the winners at the end of February. Our first ice cream will be available for your purchase by Memorial Day.”About The Farmer’s Cow
The Farmer’s Cow is a group of six Connecticut dairy farms that produces fresh, hormone-free milk, half & half, and heavy cream for Southern New England. They also sell Connecticut-sourced, all-natural eggs, apple cider, seasonal beverages, and coming soon – ice cream. The Farmer’s Cow products are available throughout Connecticut and are available at most major grocery stores and many independent markets. For more information visit www.TheFarmersCow.com or call (866) 355-COWS.
Let me add that while I approve of this endeavor, I wholly disapprove of their flavor selection, as just about all of my favorites are missing. However, if you don’t vote, you can’t complain, and I have to admit that I didn’t exercise my franchise when they were picking the flavors.
Last night we attended a fundraiser for the House Democrats at the Thames Club, in downtown New London. Denise Merrill, House Majority Leader, spoke to the assembled multitude. She is among those trying to take advantage of the falling dominoes, what with Richard Blumenthal heading to the Senate. She is going to run for Secretary of State.
Truth be told, if the actual members of the House had been subtracted from the attendees, the place would have been somewhat empty. From left to right: Betsy Ritter, Elissa Wright, Diana Urban, Tom Reynolds, Denise Merrill, Ken Ryan, Melissa Olson, and Ed Jutila.
Our Drinking Liberally Group was well represented. I did not take this picture, but am glad to report that the person who did managed to keep me well hidden.
A stopped clock is right twice a day, which is about 100 times more frequently than the United States Senate, which today did the right thing and turned down the “deficit reduction” commission, the brainchild (the child has been adopted by Obama, I’m sorry to say) of the people who believe in tax cuts for the wealthy and the destruction of social security for the rest of us.
Kudos to Chris Dodd, who voted against it. The roll call is here. One nice thing, I suppose, about not seeking re-election is that it frees one up to vote right, if that is one’s wish. The vote was 53-47 for the commission, but of course in today’s topsy turvy Senate world, it takes 60 votes to pass anything. It would be interesting to know how many of those “yes” votes were cover-your-ass votes.
I’m not sure what is more shameful: The Senate’s chronic dysfunction and inability to exercise its constitutional function, or the craven desire on the part of so many Senators to off-load their constitutional function so someone else can take the heat for making decisions they are supposed to make.
Considering the Supreme court’s decision equating corporate spending to free speech, and considering the court’s holding that a corporation is a legal person in the eyes of the law, bearing in mind Justice Roberts corporate bias and his desire to strike down laws regulating corporations, including those regulating corporate mergers, remembering that people have other rights that the court has recognized, including the right to marry, and that a corporate merger is much like a marriage, and seeing as corporations, while perforce sharing all rights that individuals have, including the right to marriage, are of uncertain sex, some saying female, others male, with most denying their sexual identity completely, but allowing for the fact that it must be said that when two corporations marry it is questionable that such a marriage is between a man and a woman, and recognizing that Roberts and his ilk want, whenever possible, to make their decisions appear to be intellectually consistent, is it possible that we can look forward to the court blessing same sex marriages so it can do the same for corporate marriages?
(Thanks to my brother Joe for passing on the picture).
Note: As I said in a recent post, I am cutting down on my blogging, to pursue other intellectual endeavors, primarily reading. I am also currently listening to a Teaching Company lecture series on “BUILDING GREAT SENTENCES” on the theory that since I inflict these things on others, I should at least learn to write. This post is my first attempt at putting my new found knowledge to work, the post itself being an example of what the lecturer calls a “suspensive” sentence also known as a periodic sentence, for reasons that make no sense whatsoever. He also advocates long sentences, which as you can see, that sentence certainly was, and this sentence certainly could be, if I didn’t feel like stopping right now.
Personally, I would say my sentence is “built”, but great it ain’t.
My wife has urged me to link to this column by the estimable Dave Collins, one of the better columnists over at the Day. The Day carried much water for Rob Simmons, but Collins was not one of the water bearers, and he does a good job making the case in this column that Simmons is a typical “moderate” Republican, reliably in the pocket of his right wing masters.
Simmons comes to the race as a longtime Bush loyalist, who for years toed the line with the Republican majority in Washington on a variety of issues that put him at odds with mainstream political thinking in Connecticut.
He supported the war in Iraq, a decision he arrived at, he said, after reading thousands of pages of classified documents about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. Never mind that, in the end, there weren’t any.
He talked down the Bush tax cuts for the very rich, calling himself a political moderate and fiscal conservative, then voted for them anyway. He also called himself an environmentalist and then voted for drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
He also voted for cuts to Medicaid and student loans, after he said he wouldn’t.
In the developing primary race against wrestling mogul Linda McMahon, Simmons has all but abandoned any pretense to moderate credentials, taking increasingly rightist, tea party positions on everything from stimulus spending to tax cuts.
As to the last point, we veteran Simmons watchers can easily predict that his plan is to pivot the moment he gets the nomination, distancing himself from the whackjobs, taking that teabag out of his pocket, and touting his moderation yet again.
Collins makes the point that Simmons is now out of his league. As I’ve said before, he “won” in 2000 because Sam Gejdenson beat himself, and he was planning on Chris Dodd doing the same this year.
Meanwhile, Merrick Alpert is getting a lot of free press in this neck of the woods. A front page article in the Mystic River Press (no link available) and a front page article in the Day. On first blush, the overriding impression is of a very delusional guy. He’s doomed to lose, but we may not have seen the last of him. This observation by Jonathan Pelto pretty much sums up the impression I’ve always had about him:
Some of Alpert’s less charitable observers say they’re not surprised to see him unwilling to wait in line. Jonathan Pelto, a former state legislator for whom Alpert worked as an intern while in college, then later when Pelto was managing the gubernatorial campaign of former state Rep. William Cibes in 1990, says Alpert was planning a political career from the beginning.
“He set out to build himself a resume, and you’ve got to give it to him,” Pelto says. “I remember him sitting around there (on the Cibes campaign) saying, ‘I want to serve in the military so I can build credentials so I can go after conservative candidates.’ He set out the things he needed to do to be the perfect candidate.”
In addition, I’m told that he’s charming. I’m also told by someone I trust (my wife) that I’m impervious to charm, so I can’t tell, but since I’m also told by my wife that he is charming, I believe that he is. He is also, as was Caesar, but with far less reason, ambitious. My guess is that we’ll be hearing from him again in 2012, and unless Joe Courtney decides to retire, he’ll set his sights on Lieberman’s seat. He’ll have to go through Chris Murphy, if not others, and my own thinking is that, charm or not, he’ll fall short again.
By the way, although the article states that he “has yet to file a quarterly campaign financing report”, in fact he has. Of all the announced candidates,his proportion of out of state contributions is highest.
A reasonably good editorial in this morning’s Day, decrying the recent Supreme Court decision that handed the government over to the corporations. One quibble and one more serious caveat.
While it’s true that the decision also gave the unions the right to spend unlimited amounts on campaigns, that fact is not worth mentioning in the same breath as the fact that this “right” was extended to corporations. The financial resources of unions pale to insignificance next to that of the corporations. Consider, for instance, that the banking industry alone will be handing out bonuses this year that would, all by themselves, pay for the health care needs of the entire country. It is beyond doubt that had this ruling applied only to unions, it would have been nine to zero against what is now a spent force in our political system.
The more serious caveat involves this paragraph:
We renew our support for public financing of campaigns. While such laws cannot, and should not, force candidates to use public financing, a candidate’s decision to forgo it and turn instead to corporate and other special interests to bankroll a campaign will send a message to voters as to where that candidate’s true priorities stand.
The justices took care of public financing as a tool to clean up the system, with the same stroke of the pen with which they freed the oppressed corporations. The decision involved independent expenditures, not money given directly to candidates. A candidate could accept public financing secure in the knowledge that his or her corporate masters would be bankrolling a separate but more than equal campaign, a campaign for which the candidate could disclaim responsibility. We Second District residents remember Rob Simmons doing exactly that in a small way a few years ago, when he maintained that he simply couldn’t control what the RNC put in their ads. Given this ruling, any system of public financing would be a sham, since the Supreme Court has already created a loophole the size of the Grand Canyon. (And, why, by the way, should a candidate not be forced to participate in a system of public financing, were it possible to create an effective system? Why do we worship the wealthy so much that we insist that they have a god-given right to rule us? Why can’t we as a nation exercise our right to defend ourselves from the oligarchs?)
This has been one of the more depressing weeks on record, what with the people of Massachusetts having an episode of decompensation, the Democrats having several, and the Supreme Court giving democracy the coup de grâce, though, truth to tell, the week has not been entirely yuck free on a personal level. Still, it seems only fitting that a depressing week should be capped off with a depressing song, albeit with an anti-depression title. Who does depression better than Neil Young?
Postscript: Last Friday or Saturday, my wife read somewhere that someone or other had done a study, and determined that Monday, January 18th, would be the most depressing day of the year. Even at the time I was pretty sure Tuesday would beat it (who know that both Wednesday and Thursday would beat Tuesday), but still, I must give that expert credit for coming so close, presumably sort of far in advance.
