Terry Cowgill

LJ 01.31.08

A bunch of good news stories this week. On the front page, Cynthia Hochswender has a preview of the state legislature’s upcoming session, while the state is buying the 300-acre DeLuca property on the Falls Village-Cornwall line, some East Canaan farmers are building what I call a cow-pie-to-energy plant and the SWSA ski jumps are slated for next weekend (we are hoping for good weather).

Inside, we learn from yours truly that a vintage car club will help 90-year-old auto racing legend John Fitch with his legal bills, there has a been change in bus policy at Salisbury Central School (thanks to my significant other) and the search for a new Salisbury-Sharon transfer station has been stalled again.

At least for the time being, Sharon residents voted down a proposed community center (also see letters to the editor in the print edition), Kent Center School is looking for a new principal and we’ve got a slightly snarky editorial on disgraced former Gov. John Rowland’s new job in Waterbury.

Continue reading LJ 01.31.08…

Hillary In Hartford

Don’t know who took this video of Hillary at Trinity College Monday. A friend of Colin’s? Who is the woman trying to clamp his mouth shut? His boss at The Courant?

From this clip, it doesn’t look like a very memorable speech. The most interesting part was the hug and kiss with Dick Blumenthal. As if to emphasize how forced it looked, the editor of the clip replayed the kiss. It doesn’t even look like his lips touched her cheek.

What are we to make of that, Dick? If that’s how you treat an old buddy from Yale Law School, what can Gov. Jodi Rell expect when you run against her in 2010? Broken fingers from a no-look handshake?

Scribblers Anonymous

For all those on the Falls Village Blog who prefer to hide their identities, look what I found. And no, I won’t tell you who started Anarachists Anonymous. S/he prefers to remain among the anonymice. Suffice it to say, however, that it was not yours truly.

History Lesson

Update 8:30 p.m. Tuesday: Gee. I guess some feminists are not happy with Teddy’s decision to back Obama. In NY, they’re calling it a “betrayal.” If Condi Rice were running and Teddy didn’t endorse her, would it be a betrayal? This is too delicious.

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There have only been a handful of times in my life when I was sure I was truly seeing history in the making: the twin assassinations of RFK and MLK in 1968; the 1969 moon landing; the Challenger disaster in 1987; the Berlin Wall tumbling down in 1989.

But yesterday seemed like one of those times. In his inimitably bombastic style, Bobby Kennedy’s little brother, Teddy, gave a full-throated endorsement of Barack Obama at American University in D.C.

Before that, his niece and daughter of the slain JFK, Caroline, gave a more subdued but equally important nod of approval to the first serious African American candidate for president.

Then Obama held the crowd in the palm of his hand as he gave another of his trademark speeches emphasizing unity. In case you missed it, click here to see all the video clips assembled on one page. After he finished, the sound system blared Stevie Wonder’s “Signed, Sealed, Delivered” while Obama and Teddy walked down a long aisle mobbed by adoring fans as if they were rock stars on a par with … Stevie Wonder.

Continue reading History Lesson…

The Rovian Effect

Update 4:30 p.m. Monday: Choate Headmaster Edward Shanahan has now told the school Rove has pulled out. Guess Ed’s Courant op-ed didn’t change many minds.
Update 8:30 a.m. Sunday: Choate Headmaster Edward Shanahan makes a case for Rove in this morning’s Courant.

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I’m always amused when I hear people (mostly Democrats) moan and complain about what an awful mean person Karl Rove is and how he’s one of the main reasons that decent working people everywhere were talked out of voting their own economic self-interests and into putting greedy Republicans in office.

Since Rove left the White House last year, he has continued to make his presence felt. Now he has been invited to speak at Choate Rosemary Hall, the toney, old-money prep school downstate in Wallingford, Conn.

Evidently, a large number of Choate’s 836 students has risen up in protest that the school’s board of trustees has invited Rove to be this year’s commencement speaker. Students have used words like “heinous” and “evil” to describe the man widely thought to be “Bush’s Brain.”

They cite his advocacy for the Iraq war and his role in the outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame as examples of his perfidy. Some students have suggested Stephen Colbert as a possible replacement. That tells you all you need to know about the state of popular iconography on the 118-year-old campus — and indeed in much of the nation.

Say what you want about Rove, but he is a serious person (and one of the premier political minds of our generation). Colbert is not. He is a gifted satirist with a rapier wit, but he is not Karl Rove (or Karl Marx, for that matter).

Continue reading The Rovian Effect…

Johnny II - The Movie

Regular readers know that I’ve long predicted that a certain convicted felon ex-Connecticut governor would soon enough return to his native city to become mayor. Well, it turns out I wasn’t very far off in my prognostication.

Just when you thought that the return of a political couple couldn’t get any more odious than the current reascension of Bill and Hillary, now we get word that Connecticut’s disgraced ex-boss, Johnny “Hot Tub” Rowland, will soon re-enter public life. Presumably, his wife Patty, pictured with Johnny above, will be a de facto part of the package.

The Nutmeg State’s blogosphere has been buzzing about Waterbury Mayor Sam Jarjura’s decision to put Johnny back in the middle of it all as the city’s economic development coordinator.

Hartford Courant reporters Ed Mahony and Jon Lender got some astounding quotes from a Farmington town councilman, a Republican who was involved in the FBI investigation that caught Johnny with his hand in the tiller. Get a load of this:

“This is a disgrace,” said Farmington Town Council Chairman Michael Clark. “It is like kicking sand in the eyes of every hardworking taxpayer in Waterbury … John Rowland says he has had a spiritual rebirth. Well, the spiritual rebirth I want to see is when he puts his hand on a Bible and promises to tell the whole truth to a grand jury, honestly and completely, which he has never done.”

I couldn’t have possibly said it that well. To throw a guy like Rowland right into the middle of the very environment (money and politics) that got him trouble in the first place is disgraceful indeed. It’s like taking an on-the-wagon drunk and telling him to put on an apron and get behind the bar.

Continue reading Johnny II - The Movie…

A Group Therapy Session

One story on page A3 of this week’s LJ that probably caught everyone’s eye concerned a group of Salisbury petition signers who want to hold a town meeting in which residents would vote on whether to endorse a resolution calling on Rep. Chris Murphy to start an investigation of the Bush administration.

The Board of Selectmen rightly refused to hold a town meeting on the advice of the town’s legal counsel that state law does not permit Connecticut’s towns to pass resolutions on matters over which they have no authority or powers of enforcement. The selectmen did agree to a special board meeting (held Jan. 16) in which the signers could air their grievances.

Despite evident frustration on the part of the petitioners at the meeting, the selectmen held firm. Both parties were respectful and a few conservatives even spoke out against holding the meeting at all.

I know many of the petitioners. They are honorable, decent people who are upset at the Bush administration and its alleged misdeeds. The self-described “instigator” of the petition, Dr. Bill Gallup, clearly would prefer impeachment, but has settled for milder language in his resolution since he knows Murphy does not support bringing the president and vice president up on charges.

But I think the petitioners are missing the mark here. To get the town formally involved in these sorts of issues is, as Michael Walsh said, “simply a supererogatory exercise in Bush Derangement Syndrome.”

Continue reading A Group Therapy Session…

To Moms Everywhere

I’m watching the Democratic presidential candidates debate on CNN and getting bored. Blah, blah, blah. Wolf Blitzer has to be the single most irritating TV newsman on the planet …

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I ran across this video and at first thought I would put it in the bank until Mothers Day, when I would post it and look like I had brilliantly pulled it out of my hat. But, alas, that would not be fair, so I post it here now.

This will bring cackles of laughter to any mom or anyone who runs (or helps run) a household with children. The litany of tasks and admonishments is spot-on and LOL funny. And she gets all those words out without stumbling and sings them to the William Tell Overture.

Happy (early) Mothers Day.

Stormin’ Norman

Heard an interview on Hugh Hewitt the other day with Norman Podhoretz , the neo-con icon who recently wrote a much-talked-about piece advocating military action against Iran’s nuke facilities.

You know, it’s times like these that I’m grateful I don’t (and never will) command a huge military. My first reaction to Podhoretz’s piece (and indeed the whole notion of bombing Iran) was that it is a bit nutty and extremely dangerous. And most of me still feels that way.

But if you accept two logical premises in sequence (for both of which there is conflicting evidence, btw), then the choice about taking action becomes less clear: 1) If you think it’s obvious that Iran either has nukes or will develop them soon and 2) If you are convinced she will use them against Israel.

Now, Iran is major sponsor of terrorism, so I agree with Podhoretz  that it’s reasonable to conclude some of that nuke techonolgy could find its way into the hands of those who would use it to harm others, including us.

As for whether Iran would use nukes against Israel, I have no idea. But President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is on record as saying the Jewish state is “heading toward annihilation,” will soon “be liberated and “will be eliminated by one storm.” Apocolyptic rhetoric if ever I heard it.

Though officials there won’t admit it, Israel is also known to possess tactical nuclear weapons. If Iran attacked Israel and she responded, we could have a much more dangerous situation our hands than the simple political fallout from a U.S. attack on Iran’s nuke facilities. Indeed, the conflict could escalate well beyond the borders of the Middle East and have almost unspeakable consequences.

Now you see why I’m glad I’m not the guy with the security aid carrying around that nuclear football? Maybe what Podhoretz is hoping that if we don’t act (and despite all the saber-rattling, I’m not convinced Bush will) then Israel will.

The Drudge Hurts

This clip is illuminating on several levels but I’ll focus on two:

Mitt Romney revealed to Harry Smith that he reads Drudge, along with millions of others (like me) — only some of whom will actually admit to it. I say bravo. It helps break up his air-brushed persona, which I’m sure Mitt and his handlers had wanted to do anyway.

Second, did you see the reaction of Harry Smith? You would think Mitt had said he reads the National Enquirer every morning. When’s the last time Harry read Drudge? Has he ever, for that matter? At least 90% of Drudge’s home page is links to outside material.

Poor Harry is a real MSM dinosaur. He probably thinks the New York Times editorial page is still relevant. I’m sure he was shocked to learn someone as smart as Mitt doesn’t immediately leaf through the Washington Post or the Wall Street Journal — or cue up NPR’s Morning Edition (or Harry’s own dreadful show). Harry’s reax is a perfect illustration of why so many people are turning away from traditional news media organizations.

“Sometimes it’s true and sometimes it’s not,” Harry said of Drudge. Yah, sort of like your own network’s Rathergate report on Bush’s National Guard service weeks before the 2004 election, or Judith Miller’s reporting in the NYT in the run-up to the Iraq war. And how many CBS staffers have gotten story ideas from reading Drudge?

That’s right, dude: “Sometimes it’s true and sometimes it’s not.”