Skip to content

Context? We don’t need no stinkin’ context!

Sunday, May 23, 2010

This piece from the New York Daily News admirably illustrates the sloppiness of the press these days

There was a special election in Hawaii yesterday, and the Republican won-with 39.4% of the vote; the balance split between two Democrats, neither one of whom had the grace to withdraw and give the other a clear field. Perhaps that’s because each figures they can come back in the fall, when there will be a single Democratic candidate, and take the seat back. The percentages of votes are set forth in the article, as is the Democratic confidence. But how explain this:

Republicans see the victory as a powerful statement about their momentum heading into November. They already sent a Republican to the U.S. Senate to replace the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts — a place that was once thought to be the most hostile of territories for the GOP. Now Republicans can say they won a congressional seat in the former backyard of the president and in a state that gave Obama 72 percent of the vote two years ago.

Yes, they can say that, but shouldn’t it also be pointed out that they won’t say that this particular victory is pretty meaningless, and that it is their first House special election victory this cycle, including a recent loss in Pennsylvania that they had high hopes of winning? If you are going to pass on someone’s spin, oughtn’t you place it in some sort of context?


Filed in Media | | Comments (0)

Convention, final chapter

Saturday, May 22, 2010

We are now back, weary to the bone, from the 2010 Connecticut Democratic Convention, a convention that will surely go down in history because-well, because it just will, that’s why.

I am still somewhat piqued at the fact that I did not have access to wireless at the convention hall. I could have pecked stuff onto my Iphone, but I confess to having no patience for that.

So, everything that happened is now old news, so I’ll confine myself to some pictures and a little inside baseball stuff.

This picture of Blumenthal is a bit grainy, as it was taken Friday night with a wide angle lens on my little Lumix, and it’s severely cropped.

I brought my Canon with a telephone lens today, so the pictures from today should be better.

One suggestion for Blumenthal, something he might consider incorporating into his speeches, should the necessity arise: “The New York Times isn’t going to choose the next Senator from Connecticut, the people of Connecticut are going to decide that for themselves” or something along those lines. I’m convinced the Times has every intention of taking his scalp, if they can get it.

We Grotonites lucked out. We had front row seats, consequently I was able to get fairly close to the podium and could get some good shots of the eventual nominees, only one of which I actually voted for. They will be depicted in the order of their coming, starting with State Treasurer and fellow HPHS alumni, Denise Nappier.

Dan Malloy and his running mate.


Unfortunately, I missed George Jepsen.

Now we come to the most inexplicable event of the day, at least from my point of view. Maybe someone with a better appreciation for political strategy can help me out. Right about the time balloting started for Secretary of State, a rumor swept the hall (or at least made it’s way to our backwater) that Jonathan Harris had cut a deal with Gerry Garcia. Harris had, purportedly, agreed to pad Garcia’s vote count with his own delegates on the first ballot, thereby assuring Garcia would get to the primary, in return for which Garcia would drop out of the second ballot and throw all his delegates (Harris transfers and non-Harris transfers) to Harris, thereby giving Harris the endorsement. After the first ballot, Denise Merrill had, if memory serves, about 45% of the vote, Harris about 30%, and Garcia 25%. Garcia did, in fact, withdraw from the second ballot, urging all his supporters to back Harris as the second best candidate, as a result of which we see here the endorsed nominee:

Just to be clear, this is not Jonathan Harris. Here’s what I can’t understand. Why would Harris want to guarantee that there would be a three way primary? It appears to this weak minded individual that he stands to lose more votes to Garcia than Merrill. In any event, if the purported deal was made, it appears to have backfired on Harris. It happens that I voted for Garcia on the first ballot. Like, as it turned out, a great number of Garcia’s delegates, I wasn’t about to take orders from anyone about how I should vote on the second ballot, and switched to Merrill as did quite a few others, apparently.

There are, however, some people who are more than willing to take orders. The lock step voting of some towns, New Haven in particular, was, to me, appalling. That delegation unanimously turned on a dime on this vote, and voted unanimously on all other votes. It was heartening to see that these mass conversions weren’t enough to give the endorsement to Harris. It appears that the politicians are the last people to learn that the days of back room deals are pretty much over. The whole episode soured me on Garcia to the point where I’m now pretty certain I’ll vote for Merrill in the primary.

Anyway, if anyone can explain the logic of this deal to me, I’d love to hear it. If true, it was a great deal for Garcia, but what was in it for Harris?

The only first ballot vote I cast for a winner was for Kevin Lembo, who managed to please pretty much everyone by getting more that 50% of the vote in a four person race, thereby avoiding a second ballot. We got out of the place fairly early, hours before the Republicans finished.

So, here are my predictions, for what they’re worth. Lembo and Merrill win their primaries. As to the top of the ticket, in November we’ll be pulling for the Lamont-Wyman ticket.


Filed in Local issues | | Comments (5)

Friday Night Music-Mr. Bojangles

Friday, May 21, 2010

I always loved this song, which has been covered by quite a few people, but it was written by this fellow, Jerry Jeff Walker:

I’m not crazy about this performance, but it’s the best of his I could find on youtube.

Here, by the way, is the real Mr. Bojangles, a fellow named Bill Robinson, who was paired many a time with Shirley Temple. This particular clip is from Stormy Weather, so that makes two weeks in a row for that film:

He was 65 when he performed this number.


Filed in Music | | Comments (0)

From the convention, Part 1

Friday, May 21, 2010

Well, my hopes that I could “live blog” the convention have been dashed. The convention was held at the Expo Center in Hartford. That would be the poor man’s convention center; the Republicans having scored the good one. In any event, my Ipad detected at least three wireless networks in the area, to which I was able to connect, but which were not themselves connected to the net. No pop up box appeared to log on. My wife talked to CtBob, who told her that only the media gets Internet, and it wasn’t not really working for them.

By now all political junkies know that Alpert withdrew shortly after his former home town (Colchester) gave him zero votes and just before his current home town, Groton, was about to do the same thing.

As I write this, the Republican convention is still up in the air, though it looks like McMahon will get it.

It’s going to be a tough race. Blumenthal can expect to be slimed from beginning to end. If this bizarre “news” article in the Times is any indication, the paper of record will pursue its vendetta throughout (it is on the news page, but is nothing more than an anti-Blumenthal screed), while leaving Linda’s sordid past uncovered. It will be up to Dick to to that, so we can only hope he’s up to the task.


Filed in Local issues | | Comments (1)

Off to the convention

Thursday, May 20, 2010

Well, my wife and I are off to the convention tomorrow, along with our good friend Ruby. Now, if I were a twitterer, I would tweet from the convention. I actually do have a a twitter account, which I never use. Consequently, other than my wife and one local Democrat, my only “followers” are random people, of whom I know nothing and who apparently know nothing about me, that declare their fealty and then apparently move on.

So, I’m going to try to go back to the dim and distant past and “live blog”. I’m going to see if I can do it with an Ipad, just because I have one, want to look cool, and want to see if it will work.

Speaking of the convention, can it be that after all his grandstanding, Merrick Alpert isn’t going to try to qualify for the ballot by petition? Even if the Blumenthal dustup moves some delegates toward him, he didn’t know that was going to happen, and it looks like he still lacks 15%. What made him think he had a chance before Blumenthal’s woes? If he lacks the money to do a petition drive, what makes him think he can mount an effective campaign against Linda McMahon?


Filed in Local issues | | Comments (3)

Disparate treatment

Thursday, May 20, 2010

A few days ago I pointed out that Blumenthal had done something only Republicans are allowed to do. I noted a few examples of Republican malfeasance without discernible consequence, but it turns out that there’s an example much closer to the situation, featuring Lindsey Graham, John McCain’s soon to be successor as the media’s darling “moderate” Republican.

Long before he was the Senate’s most powerful sometimes-moderate who won’t support the climate bill he helped draft because of personal pique, Lindsey Graham was just another politician who repeatedly lied about fighting in a war overseas.

According to his (current) official bio, “Graham logged six-and-a-half years of service on active duty as an Air Force lawyer.” After he left the active duty force, he joined the South Carolina Air National Guard. During the first Gulf War, Graham was called up to act as staff judge advocate at McEntire Air National Guard Base in South Carolina. As staff judge advocate, Graham’s duties “included briefing pilots on the law of armed conflict, preparing legal documents for deploying troops, and providing legal services for family members of the South Carolina Air National Guard. ” His service never took him out of South Carolina.

And so, naturally, for years afterward, Lindsey Graham referred to himself in his official biography and elsewhere as “an Operation Desert Shield and Desert Storm veteran.”

Even after he was exposed the information remained on his website. As we can all see, the consequences were devastating for Graham. The press has hounded him about it ever since, right?


Filed in Politics | | Comments (0)

Bysiewicz decision

Tuesday, May 18, 2010

Susan got beat badly. It’s a shame that this happened to her. From any point of view she’s qualified both intellectually and professionally to be Attorney General, but as I’ve said before, the legal questions were serious. Since the court ruled against her, it stands to reason that the court rejected both her claims-that she was engaged in the active practice of law, and that the “active practice” requirement was unconstitutional. On the latter issue, it will be interesting to see if the court’s reasoning, which we won’t know until later, tracks the reasoning that Blumenthal’s office used in coming to the same result.


Filed in Lawyer stuff, Local issues | | Comments (1)

The dust begins to settle

Tuesday, May 18, 2010

Excellent piece by Colin McEnroe about the Blumenthal kerfuffle. Is Raymond Hernandez the new Judith Miller?


Filed in Local issues | | Comments (0)

Blumenthal’s brilliant move

Tuesday, May 18, 2010

There are only two ways to explain Blumenthal’s political brilliance in claiming to have been in Vietnam, when he wasn’t, since this should certainly attract a lot of Republican voters that would otherwise have voted for McMahon.

First, he may have a rich fantasy life, and actually believe he was in Vietnam. In this respect, he is akin to the godlike Ronald Reagan, whose own fantasy about liberating concentration camps in WWII never became an issue, much to no Democrat’s surprise. Surely the Republicans will flock to vote for any candidate so similar to this mythical figure, who was the greatest president of all time, aside from the fact that his greatest achievement was beginning the destruction of the American economy.

The other possibility is that this is a merely cynical move to attract Republican votes by merely appearing to be like the sainted Ronnie. Surely no non-deluded person could have any other reason to have lied so frequently about something that was, more or less, a matter of public record. If this theory is correct, we must question his timing. We are, after all, only days from the convention, but he has that sewn up, since he has no opposition to whom Democrats not impressed with his brilliance can turn, other than an individual more deluded than Ronnie ever was. Why waste this type of good stuff now, when you can wait until just before the election?

Of course, this may be just part of a long term plan. For his second act, Blumenthal might try leaking word that he also frequents whores while wearing diapers, which appears to be a move that also enhances one’s standing among Republican voters, although it appears to draw almost no media attention, and may thus not advance his cause as much as one might think.

And if that doesn’t work, there are any number of other proven Republican tactics for trolling for votes that he might care to emulate. The trick is, you have to know how to pull it off. Either you or your surrogates should blame the press, or your political enemies. It works great for Republicans.

But despite what appears on the surface to be a brilliant move, I nonetheless suspect that this might not work for Blumenthal. There’s a rule of politics that he might have forgotten. What was it again? Oh, yes IOKIYAR (But, oh my God, even that rule appears to have exceptions!).


Filed in Local issues | | Comments (0)

I don’t control those Bishops, says the Pope

Monday, May 17, 2010

A couple of days ago I expressed a bit of amazement about the fact that the Cardinal of Boston didn’t just order a Catholic school district in his jurisdiction to reverse a decision to discriminate against a child whose parents are lesbians, despite the fact that the Cardinal said he disagreed with the decision. This seemed to run afoul of time honored Catholic teaching, recognized in our law, that the Church is a hierarchical institution-indeed, perhaps the most hierarchical major institution in the present day world.

Well, it looks like the Church is officially abandoning that hierarchical status, at least when it doesn’t suit its purpose (via Truthdig, from the London Times Online):

The Vatican will today make its most detailed defence yet against claims that it is liable for US bishops who allowed priests to molest children, saying bishops are not its employees and that a document from 1962 did not require them to keep quiet.

The Vatican will make the arguments in a motion to dismiss a federal lawsuit on jurisdictional grounds filed in Louisville, Kentucky, but it could affect other efforts to sue the Holy See.

Jeffrey Lena, the Vatican’s lawyer in the US, said the Vatican would assert that bishops are not its employees because they are not paid by Rome, don’t act on Rome’s behalf and are not controlled day-to-day by the pope — factors courts use to determine whether employers are liable for the actions of their employees.

Mr Lena said he would suggest to the court that it should avoid using the religious nature of the relationship between bishops and the pope as a basis for civil liability because it entangles the court in an analysis of religious doctrine that dates back to the apostles.

“Courts tend to avoid constructing civil relationships out of religious materials,” he said.

Well, actually courts often have no choice but to construct civil relationships out of religious materials. Consider questions that arise when a local church decides to break away from the mother ship, as happened with the Anglicans here in Groton recently. The Anglican Church, like the Roman Catholic, is hierarchical, so the courts have generally ruled, as the court did in the case of the Groton Church, that regardless of who holds paper title the land belongs to the Mother church. Contrariwise, if the Church is congregational in nature. And, at least according to this Catholic website, the church’s hierarchical structure was laid down as a matter of religious dogma by the Big Guy’s son himself1 .

The opposing lawyer, by the way, says he doesn’t have to prove that the Bishops were “employees”, merely that they were wholly controlled by the Pope and his co-conspirators, which they undoubtedly are. I wonder…if this gets to the Supreme Court, do Scalia, Thomas and the rest of the Catholics have to recuse themselves, and leave it to the Jews to decide if the Pope can be deposed?

  1. The Catholic Church teaches as a doctrine of faith that Christ gave the Church, in his apostles, a hierarchical structure of an episcopal nature and that within the hierarchy and the Church he established a primacy of authority in the successor of St. Peter.?


Filed in Religion | | Comments (0)