Remembering

This past weekend and this coming weekend many towns are celebrating Memorial Day and taking time to honor those who have fallen preserving our freedom.

I hope all readers will take time to do so as well.

The above clip focuses on a soldier who guards the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier down in Arlington. It's a couple years old, but timely, informative and interesting.

God Bless America.

The Dickmobile

According to an AP article, Attorney General Dick Blumenthal is giving up his gas-guzzling Ford Crown Victoria as gas prices approach $4 a gallon.

The Attorney General will now be driven around in a Honda Civic hybrid.

According to the article, Dick Blumenthal claims that he asked DAS for a hybrid a number of times, but DAS says that never happened. Regardless, he will now be ditching the Crown Vic.

Blumenthal modestly pointed out that "Of all the distinctions that I have as a constitutional officer, the first to drive a hybrid will be a noteworthy one."

Indeed it will. Blumenthal is a skinny man but he leaves a gigantic carbon butt-print. He apparently clocks in 7,000 miles per month. As we all know, when he isn't driving to court, he is hoofing it all over the state to congratulate garden clubs and award Cub Scouts their wolf badges. Those miles build up.

And now, he will drive an automobile commensurate with the dignity he commands... a NyQuil cup with tires.

Should the vehicle need a lube job, Blumenthal can save the state further funds by rubbing his slickered scalp all over the car's engine block.

Vege-tarded

Animal rights enthusiasts and environmental absurdists are always good fun to watch. And CT News Junkie seems like they are always good at drawing a beat on these people.

Earlier this week I enjoyed their article on the two PETA chicks known as the "Lettuce Ladies" who stood in lettuce bikinis at a Hartford gas station giving out two free gallons of gasoline to anyone who took one of their "tofurkey" sandwiches, trying to promote veganism.

They are alternately known as Colleen Higgins and Ashley Byrne, and they are travelling across the region in their vegetable danskins with a cause. Byrne, according to CNJ makes a startling claim: "She said the United Nations reported that the meat industry is responsible for more green house gas emissions than all transportation combined."

I say blame Germany. They're the ones who make all that gassy sausage.

Then there is this tidbit: "Byrne attributed her beauty, which did not go unnoticed by the passing cars and gas station customers, to her vegan lifestyle." The modesty is disarming. Maybe a tofurkey sandwich is good for your complexion, but it looks like evidence now suggests it makes you retarded.

Perhaps the most fascinating aspect of this is that they were giving away GASOLINE. I know they are trying to make the point that sausage farts are apparently killing the Earth faster than car exhaust, but isn't gasoline supposed to be made up of ground-up squished dinosaurs?

Where the hell is PETA's love for the noble brontosaurus? They are ignoring the Paleozoic holocaust, and were squeezing countless pterodactyl corpses into motorists' gas tanks! Oh, the humanity!

Interestingly, these two aren't the original Lettuce Ladies. It's part of a larger soft-core vegetable porn campaign by PETA. Go here to see more dignified things such a tofu bikini wrestling and learn about how meat causes impotence. Here I was thinking it was the cure.

"No Dead People Voted"

"No dead people voted," proclaimed Secretary
"Sledgehammer" Susan Bysiewicz. This was the finding following an investigation by our Secretary of State into the business that was exposed by journalism students at UConn last month.

The journalism students determined that across Connecticut nearly 9,000 people who were deceased had been recorded as showing up to vote post-mortem.

This prompted Sledgehammer Susan to, just for a moment, hit the pause button on pretending to be our other attorney general by injecting herself into issues like Broadwater, which her office has no official role in, and focus on something that actually falls under the role of the office she actually holds. She launched what is clearly a comprehensive investigation into the allegations of how dead people were somehow being recorded as having voted.

Her results? "No dead people voted." Well. No shit. No actual dead human beings rose from their graves, sauntered into polling places and cast votes? You needed to launch an investigation to establish that? Well done.

The concern here obviously isn't that the dead are actually voting, it's that other people are voting using their names fraudulently. Bysiewicz claims that absolutely none of the votes cast in the name of the dead were fraudulent.

Certainly, as she points out, clerical errors and mistakes can understandably account for some of these. But a full 9,000 of them? Oh come on.

She now claims 80% of the dead voters cited by UConn have been erased from the voter rolls. Why not 100%? Are her investigators still checking some pulses?

The way something like this happens is when a politician who is unhappy and unsatisfied with the office she holds lusts for other offices (ie: attorney general or governor) and pays more attention on attaching her name to issues she is uninvolved with than she does with running the office she has been charged with.

Bysiewicz, as a result, has made herself reactive to a simple book-keeping matter where she ought to have had a proactive policy in place. School students did her job for her. We call that incompetence.

On the other hand... there is this footage from last year outside the polls in New Haven...

Also Ran

If there's a place to get unfiltered news in the Connecticut political blogosphere, I think we all know it's the glorious Corner Report.

They have an interesting look at someone else who is running for the 5th Congressional District seat other than incumbent Chris Murphy and Republican challenger David Cappiello. It's Harold Burbank II. Not to be confused with Harold Burbank I, who is equally well-known. And he is running as (surprise!) a Green Party Candidate.

You can read the sonorous gassive by going to the source, but I warn you... its length and subject matter are both unpardonably beyond their scope.

Burbank is giving the 5th district a choice other than Republicans and Democrats. Among the sensible policies he advocates is the impeachment and trial of President Bush and Vice President Cheney for treason and war crimes.

Burbank has offered a "Kennebunkport War Crimes Model Indictment Ordinance." This basically conveys powers to a municipality to "investigate, arrest, prosecute, sentence and refer for further action any known or suspected war criminal in a town or city." Naturally, I am sure Burbank would oppose the authority of city police to check if someone is an illegal alien, but now he wants municipalities to arrest and prosecute war criminals.

Burbank then offers us this classic in raving egghead moonbat chatter: "It clearly can be if a proper ordinance is passed. It would be remarkable if Fifth District towns passed local ordinances against war criminals, making towns and cities war crimes and war-criminal free zones, which obviously could be applied to Bush and Kissinger."

America is a great country. Anyone can run for public office, even if they are a disillusioned, obsessive, pseudo-intellectual who has done WAY too much acid in the 60's.

Also running for Congress in the 5th District are a pairof size nine shoes, a Dachshund named Fred, and a magic elf who refuses to give his name or he can be forced to give up his treasure.

NOTE: The above photo was stolen by me from CT News Junkie, who apparently stole it from the Corner Report, who I suspect may have lifted it off of eHarmony.com. But I can't be certain about that.

Something to Think About

My Left Nutmeg posted this video calling Lieberman an embarassement to Connecticut.

But if you ask me, Lieberman makes a good point. You decide for yourself.

The Congressional Conundrum

The conventions to choose Republican Congressional candidates took place over the weekend. In the 3rd District, Boaz Itshaky was selected to challenge Democratic Rep. Rosa DeLauro.

With all due respect to Itshaky, who does contribute fairly frequently to the CT political blogosphere, it's a token candidacy. And that's unfortunate.

Itshaky, a Bethany acupuncturist who managed 52 votes in his run for First Selectman there, also previously challenged Democratic State Senator Joe Crisco.

While Itshay's weak political pedigree does not help, most of the factors that make him token are out of his control. In the Congressional redistricting that took place after the 2000 census, Connecticut was reconfigured from six districts to five, due to population loss.

At the time, the Republicans held the upper hand in this redistricting, as Jim Maloney's district was eliminated, pitting him in a failed bid against Republican Nancy Johnson. After the 2002 elections, Republicans held three of the state's five Congressional seats.

To achieve this, the First District of Democrat John Larson and the Third District of DeLauro were sacrificed, as their composition was arranged to virtually ensure no Republican had a shot there. It was a plan that worked well for the GOP at the time, by making the other three districts better ground for Republicans. Of course, in the sweep against Republicans in 2006, the arrangement was little help.

While I wish Itshaky well with his race, the real focus by Connecticut Republicans needs to remain on the 2nd, 4th and 5th Districts. Incumbent Chris Shays in the 4th will have his work cut out for him in against Democrat Jim Himes, a man who gives the leftwing blogosphere painful priapisms. State Senator David Cappiello is a good candidate to oppose Chris Murphy in the 5th District. Unfortunately, the Sullivan campaign in the 2nd District against Joe Courtney seems stillborn.

Collectively, Republicans are going to need to do better than this if we expect to have a chance at regaining a majority of the Congressional seats in the state that we held such a short time ago. That process begins with good candidates and ends with not abandoning conservative principles.

Super Duper Special Session

The state legislature is finishing up "Doing Nothing" tonight in Hartford. And before they have even finished the hard work of doing nothing they are planning another session!

So says CT News Junk. What could make majority Democrats want to come back for a special session and why before this one is even done? Naturally they want to institute a tax! The real estate conveyance tax is scheduled to sunset this summer, and they can't let that happen. They also aren't calling it before the end of the session because the GOP will try again to attach an amendment with their version of the budget to it.

The session ends when the clock strikes midnight, and then it's game over. You can still catch the festivities on TV!

If you really want a treat, watch CTN, and you can observe for yourself your democracy at work. God knows that when Captain Joseph Wadsworth hid the colonial charter in that oak tree, he prayed one day our self-governance would evolve to the point of televised images of General Assembly members sucking down orange Fanta with whoopie pie crumbs all over their bellies.

Jefferson would be proud.

So here comes the special session to raise your taxes. Enjoy.

Do Nothing. Accomplish Nothing. Be Nothing.

The Democrats in the Connecticut General Assembly have apparently settled on "Do Nothing" a their mantra for the budget this year.

But it's more than that. It's their philosophy. It's their slogan. It defines their entire two years in the "supermajority."

As News Junk is reporting, Connecticut Mayors and First Selectmen swarmed the Capitol today to protest this "Do Nothing Approach."

The cast of characters showing up to criticize the plan included Democratic governors-in-waiting Dannel Malloy of Stamford, John DeStefano of New Haven, and Eddie "Bisque Bathroom" Perez of Hartford.

What does DeStefano think of the "Do Nothing" budget? He says it will lead to "tax increases, lay-offs and service reductions."

No one seems to like this alternative other than legislative Democrats and Governor Rell.

The legislative Republicans have an alternative that balances, gives gas tax relief, if only for the summer, and achieves savings through early retirement, a plan panned by comptroller Nancy Wyman, and OPM Secretary Bob Genuario. Both of whom, incidentally, have voted for early retirement proposal s before.

If I were a liberal, I would be very unhappy with what I have seen over he past two years. In 2006, Democrats rolled to victory with a supermajority. Liberals rejoiced.

Now, I await one of these liberals two years later to tell me the achievements of that supermajority that were worth the efforts, cash and time expended in earning their signal political victories.

We still have high taxes. Our energy prices are increasing. Our gas prices are increasing. Our economy is tanking. Population is leaving our state. Businesses do not want to relocate here.

Do nothing. It's not just a phrase... it's a political way of life.

When Children Vote

The State Senate passed a resolution allowing seventeen-year-olds to vote in primaries that are held for general elections they will be eighteen years old and eligible to vote in. And I am very pleased about it!

Let's be clear about why liberals want seventeen-year olds to vote in primaries. These are young, usually liberal minds, far more prone to radical nonsense than adult voters. At this age, most of them are little more than children who have had their first hormonal surge. They embrace the immature, fatuous tennets of liberalism and socialism with great zeal.

In Connecticut, there is an ongoing effort from within the Democratic party by the far left to purge its party of moderates. Doubt me? Look around the state and observe how many moderate Democratic state legislators face a primary opponent this year. There is a concerted, organized effort to purify the Connecticut Democratic party as a far-left entity.

This proposal fits snugly into the plan. Allowing seventeen-year olds to vote in primaries helps further radicalize their party base, and gives them added electoral power when it comes to nominating extremist left-wing candidates.

Republicans should embrace this. As Democrats make the internal decision to radicalize themselves, they are deciding to move further away from the mainstream moderate Connecticut voter. They are sowing the seeds today for tremendous ballot failure tomorrow. We should nurture this effort, and allow it to bear bitter fruit for them.

There should, however, be limits. If we start allowing thirteen-year olds or nine-year olds to vote in primaries the Democrats may end up nominating Batman, Count Chocula or Pokemon characters for office. That woud be too refreshing.