Well, Hellooo World! Finally I've finally got the power again, after losing it on Saturday night in the Treepocalypse that hit Greenwich. Here's a few pics from my neighborhood.
These poor folks lost the back of their house - the little white bit sticking out is a mattress - luckily no one was in the bed at the time.
On the same street:
This poor person got a tree through the roof. Similar scenes of devastation all around town. Schools will be closed again tomorrow, as many roads are still blocked and most schools continue without power. Governor Rell visited town today and declared a State of Emergency.
Meanwhile, the IDES OF MARCH have come:
and it's time to get out your popcorn, because so have the crazies.Oh Lord, where to start? How about JD Hayworth, the GOP challenger to John McCain in AZ, who made the leap from Gay Marriage to to Marrying Mr. Ed.
The mind boggles. Really.
Then there's good old Michelle Bachmann, who called President Obama the first "Post-American" president and told her followers:
"Passing the health care bill and moving it to the president's desk in the same manner used by the last administration to pass tax breaks "sounds more like a Chavez tactic in Venezuela"
Um, what? So it's for Republicans to use reconciliation to give tax cuts, but it's an UNAMERICAN EVIL SOCIALIST PLOT for the Democrats to use reconciliation to pass healthcare reform because the Republicans are being completely obstructionist. I feel like I'm reading Orwell's Animal Farm. Bush does: Gooood! Obama Does: Baaaad! I reread Orwell's essay Politics and the English language recently after I'd read a piece by Frank Lutz had written for GOP candidates on the language to use when speaking about healthcare reform. Lutz is the king of massacring the English language with Orwellian political speak. But the dude is scarily effective.
Oh, and just in case we didn't have enough to keep us amused in our CT SEN race, with Linda McMahon and her yacht the "Sexy Bitch" guess who is back and has just entered the race? Our good friend Lee Whitnum! I'm not sure if she's actually filed papers, but according to her website, she announced her candidacy on March 10th. Just in case you've forgotten about Lee, here's an old post with links that sum up our history.
"The Ides of March have come..." "Ay, but they are not gone"
An e-mail dropped in my inbox earlier from CT State Dems.
I have to say, I was pretty taken aback. I don't expect e-missives in a multi candidate race on State Central letterhead, particularly when there is a message on the bottom that reads:
Paid for by the Democratic State Central Committee ~www.ctdems.org~ Not authorized by any candidate or candidate committee
I was obviously not alone in my disquiet. It was mere seconds before the e-mails started back and forth between my political peeps, all of us scratching our heads and asking a collective WTF? Was State Central endorsing Cam Staples ahead of the convention? Most unorthodox.
I put in a call to Hartford and eventually got through to Nancy Di Nardo herself, who told me that this was opportunity was being offered to all of the declared candidates running for office. ("Democratic candidates," she added. Thanks Nancy, I think I probably could have figured that out for myself.)
What concerns me is that not one person I spoke to at State Central (and that would be three, including Nancy Di Nardo) seemed to realized in advance that this could be misconstrued as an endorsement, despite the obvious "PAID FOR BY CT STATE DEMS" tag at the bottom of the e-mail and no reference to the party making the list available to other candidates.
To me, it appeared to be gross misuse of the listserv and if I weren't a columnist and blogger, I would have unsubscribed immediately. I told Nancy Di Nardo as much.
Shortly thereafter, I got another e-mail:
Ever heard that thing about shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted?
I actually had hope for State Central when Colleen Flanagan and Gabe Rosenberg were there. For reasons that are unclear, they weren't kept on. So now, in a critical election year and in an challenging environment for Democrats, State Central seems to have relegated their New Media strategy (if you can call it that) to the toilet again. Go figure.
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