A musical Tribute to Knopp and Poruban

by turfgrrl

November 13th, 2007 · 30 Comments

Tags: In the News

30 Responses so far ↓ “A musical Tribute to Knopp and Poruban”

• 1 Hah! // Nov 13, 2007 at 3:17 pm

  Knopp throws Poruban under the bus. Poruban deserves whatever he gets since he knows the viper is venimous.

  Poruban is a dope and proves it every time he opens his mouth. Knopp is his usual charming self. NOT!

• 2 anonymous // Nov 13, 2007 at 4:54 pm

  knopp knopp. whos there. alex. alex who ? Alex stabs his prodigy poruban in the back.

• 3 anonymous // Nov 13, 2007 at 4:57 pm

  While these may be interesting issues, and certainly really fun Knopp/Poruban bashing, they have nothing to do with the many real issues facing Norwalk and our newly elected officials.

• 4 All around the dullberry bush! // Nov 13, 2007 at 5:07 pm

  (Sing to the tune of “POP! Goes the Weasel!”)

  Pourubans mudslinging an ethics compliant
  Is he that smart? He truly ain’t!
  While Alex pretends to be a Saint!
  KNOPP! Goes the Weasal!

  “Foul!” cried Kevin the lil’ dem mouse
  “An ethics complaint!” said the rotten louse
  Kevin, you shouldn’t throw stones in a glass house
  KNOPP! Kevin you’re a weasel!

  We pray & pray Knopps gone away
  He always seems to come back with something to say
  Why can’t he just disappear? Oi Vey!
  KNOPP! Goes the Weasel!

  Election day, November 6th came & went
  the voice of the people has been sent
  Lets watch Kevin go and pack up his tent
  KNOPP! and Kevin are Weasals!

  Adieu! Here’s to the Future! As we tip our hat
  Good bye! Alex the weasel and Kevin the rat
  Please don’t return, there’s no more welcome mat
  KNOPP! You guys are Weasels!

• 5 Anonymous // Nov 13, 2007 at 5:10 pm

  #3 - I agree with you, but it is always an enjoyable event when you see a snake like Poruban get his day in court. What goes around comes around. With any luck he will slither back under the rock he came out from a few years ago.

• 6 anonymous // Nov 13, 2007 at 5:17 pm

  Oh, maaaaaaaan, number 4, tell me that wasn’t a collaborative effort! ROFLMAO!!

• 7 All around the dullberry bush! // Nov 13, 2007 at 5:20 pm

  Thanks #6 - Wrote that one in under 10 minutes! Kinda’ just flowed from my lips!

• 8 anon // Nov 14, 2007 at 9:46 am

  Hey’s who’s feet are those in the video?

• 9 I wonder // Nov 14, 2007 at 10:45 am

  I think it’s Kevin, Alex & Galen…in that order.

• 10 anon // Nov 14, 2007 at 10:50 am

  Ha ha #9…that is too funny…lol

  I bet you’re right!

• 11 anon // Nov 14, 2007 at 10:51 am

  Knopp Knopp Knockin on Kevin’s Door

• 12 Hello? No one's home // Nov 14, 2007 at 10:56 am

  Knopp, Knopp
  Who’s there?
  Alex Knopp & Kevin Pouruban
  Alex Knopp & Kevin Pouruban WHO??
  Exactly!

• 13 Anonymous // Nov 14, 2007 at 11:23 am

  The council meeting actually went quite well except for the nasty attitude of one Matt Miklave. Even when he was complimented he just sat there with a nasty smirk on his face and a mightier than thou attitude.

• 14 anonymous // Nov 14, 2007 at 11:40 am

  I noticed that #13. I was shocked that he just said “pass” when it was his turn to make any comments. He served 3 terms on the Council, and it is something to be proud of. I was hoping to hear him speak. Kevin didn’t say much, but Gwen and Mike did an excellent job last night, and it’s sad to see them go.

• 15 anonymous // Nov 14, 2007 at 12:08 pm

  Isn’t that funny about Miklave. For years, we couldn’t get him to shut up, always bloviating on & on & on. This guy really loves to hear himself talk, yet, he had nothing to say yesterday…not even a thank you or it’s been fun or whatever. He can’t come to terms that Serasis beat him out or even worse Bonnefant beat him out. After watching Miklave & Pouruban’s antics, I happy the voters told them good bye. I really enjoyed seeing Pourouban sent home. His pompous attitude toward fellow dems who were working in a bi-partisan manner that were chastized by him. So happy for Fred Bondi - He was “expelled” by Pouruban to punish Fred for his bi-partisanship and because He wanted to run for his district seat and he probally thought Fred would be gone because he’d permitted him to run at-large. Glad to see it all back fire in Kevin’s face. Now go back to your “peeps” Kevin.

• 16 norwalkphil // Nov 14, 2007 at 2:18 pm

  Council Democrats should emulate Democratic Legislators at the state level by working together.

  Democratic Legislators successfully re-introduced the bond package which passed both chambers of the House and was signed by Gov. Rell. Highlights include, NORWALK: 1 million for harbor dredging, 3.005,000 million for flood control, $400,000 for Marine Aquarium, $153,000 for Norwalk transit, $878,050 for Norwalk Hospital, 100% reimburement for school construction projects, $250,000 Grant to Norwalk Transit District to construct bus depot.

  Congratulations!!! to Norwalk Democratic legislators Bob Duff (State Senator, 25th) Bruce Morris (State Rep. 140th) and Chris Perone (State Rep. 137th) for their relentless efforts and hard work on behalf of the People of Norwalk.

  Republican Mayor Moccia continues on a path of partisanship and against the best interests of Norwalk’s citizens. Mayor Moccia turned his back on city homeowners and taxpayers when he supported Republican Gov. Jodi Rell’s prior VETO to the statewide schools system bonding package.

  Detrimental Results of Gov. Rell’s VETO. Stamford, Norwalk, Greenwich and other municipalities welcomed the bond package passed by the Democratic majority. But the lack of a bond package interrupted the flow of state grants for school construction since summer. The fiscal year began July 1, but it was late September before the General Assembly’s Democratic majority passed a $4.6 billion borrowing plan. (delay was due to continued opposition by Gov. Rell and Republican legislators)

  Republican Gov. M. Jodi Rell vetoed it (bond bill) in early October, saying it was too expensive. To make amends for the long delay, the General Assembly and Rell estimated how much municipalities lost in interest payments and pledged to provide compensation. The result was adding $2 million to the final package. Some towns were forced to seek “expensive short-term loans” to keep projects moving forward while the bond bill was in limbo.

• 17 anonymous // Nov 14, 2007 at 2:36 pm

  Read the attached article on ethics. Does anyone know why our state senator is opposed to this ? when do voters decide ethics issues ?

  Also, did anyone read the waste of our money for his mailing that spoke about the thirty grand he brought to the city ? Save our money and stop sending this wasteful mail to our houses.

  Typical democrat. The republicans need to throw him out of office next year. Someone like Doug Hempstead would easily beat him.

  Some lawmakers call for a permanent ethics committee

  By Brian Lockhart
  Staff Writer

  Published November 14 2007

  HARTFORD - With state Sen. Louis DeLuca’s scandal fresh in their minds, lawmakers from both parties this week said they want the General Assembly to establish a standing committee to review and discipline members.

  “There’s no doubt we need an ethics committee,” said state Sen. William Nickerson, R-Greenwich.

  Advertisement

  Nickerson was one of six senators appointed by their colleagues to a bipartisan committee in August to review DeLuca’s dealings with an alleged mobster and consider a fitting punishment.

  Senate President Pro Tempore Donald Williams, D-Brooklyn, and Minority Leader John McKinney, R-Fairfield, broke new ground in establishing the committee because the General Assembly has no policy for censuring, reprimanding or expelling members.

  The group dissolved yesterday upon DeLuca’s announcement of his resignation. But Nickerson believes the panel’s methodology and research into how other states and Congress police their own could provide a useful template for a standing committee.

  “We need a committee like the one that adjourned today with equal numbers of Democrats and Republicans,” he said. “But it would be charged with investigating any ethical challenge.”

  While the idea appears to have bipartisan support among senators - McKinney and Edward Meyer, D-Guilford, are drafting proposals - it could prove a tough sell in the House of Representatives.

  “Do we need another layer of bureaucracy because one senator did something outrageously stupid and wrong?” said House Speaker James Amann, D-Milford. “I don’t think it’s a good idea.”

  Amann said the legislature’s Government Administration and Elections Committee oversees ethics.

  Connecticut also has its Office of State Ethics, overseen by a citizens advisory board.

  But Meyer, co-vice chairman of the Government Administration and Elections Committee, said that committee does not have the power to investigate misconduct and make recommendations to the full General Assembly.

  Meyer said he does not have much faith in the state ethics office.

  “To my knowledge, it’s not interested in misconduct of state legislators,” he said.

  In April, the office’s citizens advisory board ruled that Amann could not ask lobbyists for donations to his employer, the Connecticut chapter of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society.

  Nickerson said neither the Ethics Office nor any other outside body can remove a sitting lawmaker. Only the legislature can remove its own members.

  Many states have both an office of ethics and a separate legislative committee, Meyer said. The National Conference of State Legislatures has determined the governing bodies of at least 24 other states, including New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Maine and New Hampshire, have ethics committees.

  Many cities and towns have ethics committees, McKinney said; he served on one in Fairfield.

  “We didn’t have regular meetings,” McKinney said. “We’d be asked opinions or people would make complaints.”

  The DeLuca committee proved the value of creating a bipartisan ethics body, McKinney said.

  The Legislature’s GAE committee is dominated by whichever party controls the General Assembly - in this case, the Democrats.

  House Minority Leader Lawrence Cafero, R-Norwalk, said that leads to partisanship in addressing ethics issues.

  The DeLuca committee looked to other states to try to determine how to punish the senator after he had been convicted of misdemeanor threatening charge. DeLuca also lied to the FBI and failed to report a bribe offer.

  The group appeared heading for either censure or expulsion, but that became moot once DeLuca resigned yesterday.

  “So we’re in no better position than we were . . . prior to this happening,” Cafero said.

  State Sen. Bob Duff, D-Norwalk, said the idea of a standing legislative ethics committee is not a bad one but he is concerned it could be abused.

  Anytime lawmakers put themselves in a position to judge a colleague and strip them of office, they risk taking power away from the voters, he said.

  Copyright © 2007, Southern Connecticut Newspapers, Inc.

• 18 Anonymous // Apr 25, 2008 at 3:24 am

  I wonder if the blog will gloat and highlight something other than crime and put the city in a good light for a change.

  your very own past Mayor Knopp was appointed to head

  Yale University’s Center for Public Service and Social Justice -

  See what your critics can do with that I’m sure once Moccia goes Dick w/head something as well

  I Trust Yale is not a fly by night school that would be sucked into appointing a stool that Norwalks elite likes to paint him as?

• 19 Anonymous // Apr 25, 2008 at 9:53 am

  Who is running against Duff and Perone this year? Better yet, who is running against Morris?
  Need some new blood there.

• 20 Anonymous // Apr 25, 2008 at 10:04 am

  I think Mookie got a hat with horns to wear and a big medal on a ribbon from the local Hallowed Hall o’ Knuckleheads Klub. We don’ need no esteenkin Yale.

• 21 anonymous // Apr 25, 2008 at 10:48 am

  Yeah, 19: Who are the republicans going to run against Morris?

• 22 Anonymous // Apr 25, 2008 at 1:05 pm

  I’m sure they could find someone to put on blackface but then that means the R’s would be saying that diversity is part of their platform, when everyone knows it’s the party of white men.

• 23 Give me a break! // Apr 25, 2008 at 2:08 pm

  #22-The R’s are not all about whites. Contrary to what you would like people to believe R’s are just as concerned for blacks, spanish, asians and every other race. Why is it that the D’s always have to make people believe that the R’s are discriminatory and only see one color? This world is not white my friend, it is a melting pot of all nationalities and if we are to live in it we must all look at people without putting a color to them. This is the reason that Morris has managed to keep his seat in hartford while extracting a big paycheck from Norwalk and not even work a 40 hr work week and best of all not even when the kids are in school. Its because people are trained to believe that only a black person cares for the blacks and only a spanish person cares for the spanish etc. Its so very sad in this day and age that people continuously deal the race card for their benefit.

• 24 Anonymous // Apr 25, 2008 at 2:22 pm

  February 17, 2008
  Op-Ed Columnist
  The Grand Old White Party Confronts Obama
  By FRANK RICH

  THE curse continues. Regardless of party, it’s hara-kiri for a politician to step into the shadow of even a mediocre speech by Barack Obama.

  Senator Obama’s televised victory oration celebrating his Chesapeake primary trifecta on Tuesday night was a mechanical rehash. No matter. When the networks cut from the 17,000-plus Obama fans cheering at a Wisconsin arena to John McCain’s victory tableau before a few hundred spectators in the Old Town district of Alexandria, Va., it was a rerun of what happened to Hillary Clinton the night she lost Iowa. Senator McCain, backed by a collection of sallow-faced old Beltway pols, played the past to Mr. Obama’s here and now. Mr. McCain looked like a loser even though he, unlike Senator Clinton, had actually won.

  But he has it even worse than Mrs. Clinton. What distinguished his posse from Mr. Obama’s throng was not just its age but its demographic monotony: all white and nearly all male. Such has been the inescapable Republican brand throughout this campaign, ever since David Letterman memorably pegged its lineup of presidential contenders last spring as “guys waiting to tee off at a restricted country club.”

  For Mr. McCain, this albatross may be harder to shake than George W. Bush and Iraq, particularly in a faceoff with Mr. Obama. When Mr. McCain jokingly invoked the Obama slogan “I am fired up and ready to go” in his speech Tuesday night, it was as cringe-inducing as the white covers of R & B songs in the 1950s — or Mitt Romney’s stab at communing with his inner hip-hop on Martin Luther King’s birthday. Trapped in an archaic black-and-white newsreel, the G.O.P. looks more like a nostalgic relic than a national political party in contemporary America. A cultural sea change has passed it by.

  The 2008 primary campaign has been so fast and furious that we haven’t paused to register just how spectacular that change is. All the fretful debate about whether voters would turn out for a candidate who is a black or a woman seems a century ago. Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama vanquished the Democratic field, including a presidential-looking Southern white man with an enthusiastic following, John Edwards. What was only months ago an exotic political experiment is now almost ho-hum.

  Given that the American story has been so inextricable from the struggle over race, the Obama triumph has been the bigger surprise to many. Perhaps because I came of age in the racially divided Washington public schools of the 1960s and had one of my first newspaper jobs in Richmond in the early 1970s, I almost had to pinch myself when Mr. Obama took 52 percent of Virginia’s white vote last week. The Old Dominion continues to astonish those who remember it when.

  Here’s one of my memories. In 1970, Linwood Holton, the state’s first Republican governor since Reconstruction and a Richard Nixon supporter, responded to court-ordered busing by voluntarily placing his own children in largely black Richmond public schools. For this symbolic gesture, he was marginalized by his own party, which was hellbent on pursuing the emergent Strom Thurmond-patented Southern strategy of exploiting white racism for political gain. After Mr. Holton, Virginia restored to office the previous governor, Mills Godwin, a champion of the state’s “massive resistance” to desegregation.

  Today Anne Holton, the young daughter sent by her father to a black school in Richmond, is the first lady of Virginia, the wife of the Democratic governor, Tim Kaine. Mr. Kaine’s early endorsement of Mr. Obama was a potent factor in his remarkable 28-point landslide on Tuesday.

  For all the changes in Virginia and elsewhere, vestiges of the Southern strategy persist in some Republican quarters. Mr. McCain, however, has been a victim, rather than a practitioner, of the old racial gamesmanship. In his brutal 2000 South Carolina primary battle against Mr. Bush and Karl Rove, Mr. McCain’s adopted Bangladeshi daughter was the target of a smear campaign. He was also pilloried for accurately describing the Confederate flag as a “symbol of racism and slavery.” (Sadly, he started to bend this straight talk the very next day.) He is still paying for correctly describing Jerry Falwell, once an ardent segregationist, and Pat Robertson, a longtime defender of South African apartheid, as “agents of intolerance.” And of course Mr. McCain remains public enemy No. 1 to some in his party for resisting nativist overkill on illegal immigration.

  Though Mr. Bush ran for president on “compassionate conservatism,” he diversified only his party’s window dressing: a 2000 Republican National Convention that had more African-Americans onstage than on the floor and the incessant photo-ops with black schoolchildren to sell No Child Left Behind. There are no black Republicans in the House or the Senate to stand with the party’s 2008 nominee. Exit polls tell us that African-Americans voting in this year’s G.O.P. primaries account for at most 2 to 4 percent of its electorate even in states with large black populations.

  Mr. Obama’s ascension hardly means that racism is kaput in America, or that the country is “postracial” or “transcending race.” But it’s impossible to deny that another barrier has been surmounted. Bill Clinton’s attempt to minimize Mr. Obama as a niche candidate in South Carolina by comparing him to Jesse Jackson looks more ludicrous by the day. Even when winning five Southern states (Virginia included) on Super Tuesday in 1988, Mr. Jackson received only 7 to 10 percent of white votes, depending on the exit poll.

  Whatever the potency of his political skills and message, Mr. Obama is also riding a demographic wave. The authors of the new book “Millennial Makeover,” Morley Winograd and Michael D. Hais, point out that the so-called millennial generation (dating from 1982) is the largest in American history, boomers included, and that roughly 40 percent of it is African-American, Latino, Asian or racially mixed. One in five millennials has an immigrant parent. It’s this generation that is fueling the excitement and some of the record turnout of the Democratic primary campaign, and not just for Mr. Obama.

  Even by the low standards of his party, Mr. McCain has underperformed at reaching millennials in the thriving culture where they live. His campaign’s effort to create a MySpace-like Web site flopped. His most-viewed appearances on YouTube are not viral videos extolling him or replaying his best speeches but are instead sendups of his most reckless foreign-policy improvisations — his threat to stay in Iraq for 100 years and his jokey warning (sung to the tune of the Beach Boys’ version of “Barbara Ann”) that he will bomb Iran. In the vast arena of the Internet he has been shrunk to Grumpy Old White Guy, the G.O.P. brand incarnate.

  The theory of the McCain candidacy is that his “maverick” image will bring independents (approaching a third of all voters) to the rescue. But a New York Times-CBS News poll last month found that independents have even a lower opinion of Mr. Bush, the war, the surge and the economy than the total electorate and skew slightly younger. Though the independents in this survey went 44 percent to 32 percent for Mr. Bush over John Kerry in 2004, they now prefer a Democratic presidential candidate over a Republican by 44 percent to 27 percent.

  Mr. McCain could get lucky, especially if Mrs. Clinton gets the Democratic nomination and unites the G.O.P., and definitely if she tosses her party into civil war by grabbing ghost delegates from Michigan and Florida. But those odds are dwindling. More likely, the Republican Party will face Mr. Obama with a candidate who reeks even more of the past and less of change than Mrs. Clinton does. I was startled to hear last week from a friend in California, a staunch anti-Clinton Republican businessman, that he was wavering. Though he regards Mr. McCain as a hero, he wrote me: “I am tired of fighting the Vietnam war. I have drifted toward Obama.”

  Similarly, Mark McKinnon, the Bush media maven who has played a comparable role for Mr. McCain in this campaign, reaffirmed to Evan Smith of Texas Monthly weeks ago that he would not work for his own candidate in a race with Mr. Obama. Elaborating to NPR last week, Mr. McKinnon said that while he is “100 percent” for Mr. McCain and disagrees with Mr. Obama “on very fundamental issues,” he likes Mr. Obama and what he’s doing for the country enough to stay on the sidelines rather than fire off attack ads.

  As some Republicans drift away in a McCain-Obama race, who fills the vacuum? Among the white guys flanking Mr. McCain at his victory celebration on Tuesday, revealingly enough, was the once-golden George Allen, the Virginia Republican who lost his Senate seat and presidential hopes in 2006 after being caught on YouTube calling a young Indian-American Democratic campaign worker “macaca.”

  In that incident, Mr. Allen added insult to injury by also telling the young man, “Welcome to America and the real world of Virginia.” As election results confirmed both in 2006 and last week, it is Mr. Allen who is the foreigner in 21st century America, Mr. Allen who is in the minority in the real world of Virginia. A national rout in 2008 just may be that Republican Party’s last stand.

• 25 Anonymous // Apr 25, 2008 at 2:30 pm

  your right #22 you just played the card yourself is that what they teach you i R101?

  Only R concern is at election time and the police presence in South Norwalk running plates as the voters when into the school was a poor display of election intimidation.

  the reason I brought back this thread was to see where the R heads were at and how they treated a former mayor who didn’t run again.He was painted as an ass a failure a stupid political person.

  What the hell is wrong with Yale don’t they read the blog?

  G

• 26 Anonymous // Apr 25, 2008 at 2:36 pm

  I think we all know where the R heads are and it ain’t where the sunshine is… Their platform is the Stupid White Moke platform, based on backroom favors for the GOBs (good old boys). For them to claim otherwise is hypocrisy. And by the way, I posted #22, and I approve this message because I’m of the caucasion persuasion myself.

• 27 Anonymous // Apr 25, 2008 at 2:40 pm

  So, what you are saying is that all R’s are alike and have no minds of their own? even the moderate to liberal ones? You just white wash the entire party and expect everyone to suck up this theory whether it is true or not. You fail to say whether Mr. Rich leans left or right and as we all know columnists write from their opinion and not always that of the average person.

• 28 Anonymous // Apr 25, 2008 at 2:54 pm

  You make a weak case for yourself. Why don’t you explain the difference between a Republican and a moderate or liberal Republcan?

• 29 Anonymous // Apr 25, 2008 at 3:00 pm

  #22’s comment is just downright rude, #23’s comment is basically true in that people have gotten away from voting the party line for just those reasons. They may belong to one party or other but you can bet they are not always voting that way. Look at the way Moccia got re-elected and the top of his ticket didn’t. that in itself shows that people vote across party lines. #25-not sure where you are coming from because R’s and D’s stay away from SoNo until election time. When was the last time you saw Bruce Morris in SoNo except maybe for his own agenda. #26, again-just plain rude and disrespectful.

• 30 Anonymous // Apr 25, 2008 at 3:21 pm

  #29 I do agree with you I’m #25 I guess i should of included both parties they don’t come to the lower half of Sono even during elections.The forgotten city.

  I’m not sorry I rekindled this thread I hate what has happened to Norwalk what people say about past mayors I simply wanted to show how explosive this city is.It was a chance to bury the hatchet and show the city what quality we have or at elast what others think about Norwalk people.

  The crap that is coming out of NY over the shooting simply shows as one official said poor tactical response of the police dept in a racially charged area of crime and poverty.

  Now does that sound like Woodward,So main st,Grove,Ely yes we have so much work to do while Norwalk is on the move.

  Mr G

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