spazeboy

Who watches the Watchmen? Well, I know that Bob watches the bloggers who slack off.

I was first exposed to Watchmen during my early college years (OK…last year), so imagine my surprise when I heard an 11 year old Smashing Pumpkins tune from a lousy Batman flick backing up the teaser trailer for the Watchmen movie.

I was surprised. It’s hard to imagine it.

Future 4th District Congressman Jim Himes is airing his first ad. Click here to share it with your family, friends and neighbors.

Himes has a lot of events coming up, and that walk across the district looks especially fun.

This past weekend I helped CT Bob film an interview with 5th district Congressman Chris Murphy at his New Britain campaign headquarters. After a weekend of editing, CT Bob has posted the interview, which clocks in at 22 minutes:

This is not the first interview that I’ve teamed up with CT Bob to shoot. There was also the great Ned Lamont interview of ‘07.

It was a dark and stormy night, but that didn’t stop the community members from coming out to the 100th House District convention in Middlefield Tuesday, where Democrats selected Matt Lesser to run against Republican Raymond Kalinowski.

I know Lesser from his long record of involvement in local politics and as a student at Wesleyan University — things that you can read about in Lesser’s extensive and impressive bio. All I know about Kalinowski is that he is serving his 3rd term in the 100th District, and based on what I saw in Middlefield last night, it will probably be his last.

Challengers to incumbents always face an uphill climb, but after attending the convention in Middlefield last night, I have compiled a list of the several reasons why I think Lesser is going to win:

• Turnout in November
  Turnout for Democrats in the November election will be huge thanks to candidates like Barack Obama and Ned Lamont encouraging so many new voters to register. As Lesser pointed out last night, of all the districts currently represented by Republicans, the 100th boasts the greatest number of Democrats.
• Turnout last night
  There were no shortage of reasons for people to skip last night’s convention: the weather was miserable; the nomination was uncontested; there was an important education budget/funding meeting going on in one of the district’s towns at the same time. Yet every seat at the modest convention was filled.
• Support

  Lesser has built an impressive coalition of supporters that is both wide and deep. This is evidenced not only by turnout at the convention, but by the fact that his nomination by Christine Bourne (of Middletown) was seconded three times — the first two by Ona McLaughlin and Mary Johnson (of Durham and Middlefield, respectively) and the third being offered extemporaneously by Middletown DTC Chairman Dan Russo.

  State Senator Thomas Gaffey also came out to support Lesser’s campaign, remarking that it will be nice to have a Democrat in Hartford to help him deliver for their overlapping districts. As if that weren’t enough to demonstrate the breadth and depth of support for Lesser’s candidacy, former 100th District Representative and present Secretary of State Susan Bysiewicz attended the convention to endorse Lesser.

• Public Financing
  Connecticut has new public financing laws that overwhelmingly level the playing field for challengers. Once a candidate meets a fundraising threshold of $5000 from 150 district residents, public financing kicks in a sizable grant. Lesser has already qualified for public financing, which means he can spend more time knocking on doors in the district than he will have to spend raising money. When you can spend more time listening to voters than asking them to open their wallets, you’re going to win.

I shot three videos at last night’s convention, which are included below. If you’d like to learn more about Matt Lesser’s campaign, be sure to visit his website at www.mattlesser.com.

Susan Bysiewicz

Matt Lesser Acceptance Speech

Matt Lesser Interview

I would apologize about the noisy background in this video, but it’s evidence that this convention was buzzing.

Happy fifth anniversary of the end of major combat operations in Iraq, I guess. MoveOn.org Political Action is highlighting the anniversary with a cake:

Jim Himes spoke today about the impact of the past five years in Iraq on the 4th CD:

“Five years later, it is clear that George Bush and Chris Shays have no plan to get us out of Iraq,” said Himes. “This war has cost our district alone more than $3.1 billion, or $4,700 of per household. The runaway spending on Iraq has meant that critical missions here at home are not accomplished. Imagine what we could accomplish if we invested this money where it is most needed. We should be investing in improving our schools, moving us towards energy independence, and creating a health care system that works for everyone.”

The war costs an unimaginable amount of money when you look at the total numbers, and the costs are still unimaginable at the district or even city level.

In the 4th CD where the war has cost $4,700 per household, that’s nearly $1000 per household per year.

How much is your stimulus rebate? Not enough to pay for your share of the war, I know that. And I contend that if half the money spent on this war were spent on accomplishing the missions at home mentioned by Jim Himes that the economy in which we find ourselves today would not be taking a turn for the worse.

Christine Stuart at CTNewsJunkie published a story today about a legislative intern’s interesting testimony Tuesday. From Christine’s story, Intern Gone Wild:

At a forum on Connecticut’s history of disciplining public officials Tuesday, an intern known for sporting a Fedora, made some wild accusations about what goes on at the Capitol.

“80 percent of the legislators here have some form of corruption whether in their background or right now,” the intern for three House Democrats said at Tuesday’s forum, according to this video footage from Connecticut Network.

The video is one of the most viewed on the Connecticut Network web site and has legislators talking about the short four-minute dialogue the intern had with the panelists, which begins one hour and 15-minutes into the video.

“From liquor and smoking in a state facility, from sex in actual offices to kickbacks from lobbyists…” the intern said.

The 90 minute video is at CT-N, but for your viewing pleasure and convenience, I’ve clipped the relevant portion from the stream and uploaded it to YouTube. Enjoy!