Fishwrap For July

Salon Weighs in on Connecticut’s U.S. Senatorial Race

Alex Pareene, who writes about politics for Salon and is the author of "The Rude Guide to Mitt [Romney]," has weighed in on the Chris Shays-Linda McMahon Republican primary contest for the U.S. Senate in an article titled “Chris Shays has no respect for Linda McMahon: The last Yankee Republican shares his honest opinion of his primary opponent.”

Mr. Pareene, formerly of Gawker, is likely not from the nutmeg state, but this is no impediment to Mr. Pareene, who writes:

"Shays is pro-choice, pro-gun control, an environmentalist, pro-gay rights, pro-campaign finance reform — basically your classic New England Yankee Republican. Or as we call them now, 'Democrats.”'This helps to explain why he’s having so much trouble defeating someone as ridiculous as Linda McMahon, whose sole asset as a politician is her great wealth, which she earned off the labor of poorly treated 'independent contractor' wrestlers who were not even offered health insurance as they destroyed their bodies with drugs in other to retain their dangerous jobs with her company, World Wrestling Entertainment. She is a rich ‘outsider’ who repeats dumb Tea Party lines about the Fed and the deficit, and he is a “career politician” who represents a long-dead faction of the Republican Party.”

Sam Gejdenson Finds Death Of Cuban Dissident Suspicious

Mr. Gejdenson, the first child of Holocaust survivors elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, was for 19 years the U.S. Representative for the 2nd Congressional District of Connecticut. He was preceded in office by Former U.S. Senator Chris Dodd, now a Hollywood mogul, and succeeded by former U.S. Representative Rob Simmons, who in turn was displaced by current U.S. Rep Joe Courtney.

According to CTMirror:

“Cuban authorities Monday said Payá and fellow activist Harold Cepero Escalante died in a one-car crash in eastern Cuba. A Spaniard and a Swede who were also riding in the car survived but were injured.

“Gejdenson called the accident ‘a suspicious turn of events,’ but said he had no proof of wrongdoing.

“In a statement, the White House Monday called Payá ‘a tireless champion for greater civic and human rights in Cuba.’

"’He remained optimistic until the end that the country he loved would see a peaceful and democratic transition,’ the statement said.”

Communist dictator of Cuba Fidel Castro and his brother Raoul have in the past been adept at concealing proofs of all sorts, but killing dissidents never has dimmed the ardor of businesses in the United States and elsewhere who hope to ply their trade in Cuba, despite the Castros’ penchant for nationalizing corporations and dispersing the proceeds by giving them to Cubans made poor by applied Marxist-Leninism.
Mr. Gejdenson, now involved in international trade with his own company, Sam Gejdenson International (SGI) – not yet nationalized by the Obama administration -- resides in Branford and presumably is still a Democrat.

Multiple Murderer Awarded Prestigious Grant

WNEW News reports that Batman Holmes, the orange headed mass murderer was awarded a prestigious grant from the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md.

“James Holmes, the alleged gunman in the recent theater shooting that left 12 dead in Aurora, Colo., was previously awarded a $26,000 federal grant.”

U.N. Let’s Legalize Prostitution

Please don’t tell U.S. Health and Human Services Commissioner Kathleen Sebelius that the New York institution Charles Krauthammer described as a “sandbox of tyrants” would like, with or without your input, to legalize prostitution – in a good cause, of course.

The report--“HIV and the Law: Risks, Rights &Health”--cites a recommendation by the International Labour Organization, which recommends that “sex work” should be recognized as an occupation in order to be regulated “in a way that protects workers and customers.”

What Middle?

Depending upon which audience he happens to be addressing –business groups, unions -- U.S. Representative Chris Murphy of Connecticut’s 5^thDistrict puts on one of two faces, one appealing to the left and another to the right.

Some in Connecticut’s media are beginning to catch on to the trick, among them Chris Keating of the Hartford Courant, who reports on Mr. Murphy’s efforts to claim middle position in politics by reason of his membership in something called The Center Aisle Caucus.

Deputy Editor of the nonpartisan Rothenberg Political Report Nathan L. Gonzales, Mr. Keating notes, “said the caucus is more of a social group than one that gets involved in the nitty gritty of writing complicated legislation on major issues.”

If Mr. Murphy were a moderate, it might not be a plus for him in any case because “’I don't know that voters reward moderation,’ Gonzales said. ‘If you're a member who talks with somebody from the other side of the aisle, you are immediately met with a primary challenge because you are viewed as compromising.’”

Mr. Murphy already is engaged in a primary battle with the redoubtable former Secretary of State Susan Bysiewicz, who has been attempting to convince progressives in Connecticut that Mr. Murphy is the plaything of Wall Street malefactors of great wealth, a slur Mr. Murphy quite properly resents.

Mr. Murphy is the plaything of arch progressives in his state.

Gone is the day when the middle in Connecticut politics mattered. What used to be called “the vital center” of Democratic politics in the state has moved very far to the left.

Following the election of Dannel Malloy as governor, all the firewalls have collapsed, and everyone knows it. In Mr. Malloy’s short time in office, Democrats have written a budget that many believe was never in balance. The budget battle, for the first time in living memory, was shaped without any Republican input, leading Republicans having been shooed out of the room while Dominant Democrats in the General assembly pre-approved a budget that was substantially changed after the governor’s confabulations with SEBAC, a coalition of unions authorized to bargain with the governor on state contracts. One witty commentator at the time– it might have been me – claimed that SEBAC had become in the course of the seemingly endless negotiations Connecticut’s fourth branch of government.

The union friendly budget, the largest tax increase in state history, the abolition of the death penalty, the candidacy of Speaker of the state House Chris Donovan as the Democratic Party’s choice for the U.S. Congress in the 5^thDistrict, the somnolent response of the governor upon learning that Mr.Donovan’s hand-picked finance director had been arrested by the FBI for fraudulently accepting campaign donations, the governor’s facile response to the nomination by his party of former convict Ernie Newton to his old state senate seat -- all this and more suggest that the vital center of the state Democratic Party has been somewhat corrupted. This kind of corruption is the handmaiden of the one party state oblivious to its political responsibilities. Unless there is a voter reaction to one party rule, it will not be long before the entire state goes the way of its one party urban centers.

In any case, there is no middle in Connecticut politics any longer. We are all progressives now.

All In The Family

And finally, we learn from a report in the Hearst papers that the head of a new SuperPAC, Future PAC, devoted to electing U.S. Representative Chris Murphy to the U.S. Senate was a “member of Murphy's wedding party five years ago.”

Linda McMahon spokesman Tim Murtaugh snorted, upon hearing the news, “So they're not going to coordinate and communicate for six months. I'm not sure that passes the laugh test." SuperPACs and the politicians they boost are not supposed to consort with each other while in the process of scratching each other’s backs.

“On Aug. 18, 2007,” according to the Greenwich Times, “Murphy married Catherine Holahan at the Wake Robin Inn in Lakeville, according to the couple's wedding announcement in the New York Times, which noted that the ceremony was officiated by Ellen Ash Peters, a retired chief justice of the Connecticut Supreme Court…

“Murphy mouthpiece Ben Marter dismissed the McMahon campaign's notion of collusion, characterizing it as nothing more than innuendo.

"’Chris didn't ask these guys to do this, and we don't have any control over what they do," Marter said. ‘We're focused on the things we can control: our campaign, our message, and our unparalleled and growing grassroots organization.’"