Our intrepid Iowan -explorer and Senator, Chris Dodd spoke in Stamford about infrastructure. Yep, my fave topics, roads, trains, bridges and the the stuff that makes them happen. The good part: He wants the federal government to start focusing on infrastructure. He says he gets it that all these local politicians spend much of the time fighting over crumbs. This is what we call identifying the problem, which gets us halfway there, on the road of good governance. Alas, Senator Dodd took a detour through a seedy truck stop somewhere along the line.

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When we last reviewed School House Rock, we saw that it took a lot of political flunkie talking to get bills through congress into laws. So it goes for getting appropriations through Congress to become funds for local municipalities. Norwalk has, according to the Hour, about $60 million in appropriations working through the system.

“Realistically speaking, nobody knows where it’s going to go,” said Mayor Richard A. Moccia. “Again, I think it boils down to the fact there are good earmarks and there are bad earmarks. If you call it an earmark, if you call it an appropriation, if it’s a bridge to nowhere in Alaska, it’s a bad appropriation. If it’s the $400,000 we received several years ago for the filter project, it’s a good appropriation.”

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I really like Chris Dodd.

He’s been my Senator for pretty much my entire adult life. But more than that, I enjoy his performance on the national stage.

He is articulate and funny, he connects with the people in the room with him, and it comes across on TV.

I’m kinda, y’know, proud he’s from Connecticut.

He’s my idea of a Connecticut politician - personable; urbane without pretension; sophisticated yet practical; substantive without losing his sense of humor; principled yet pragmatic; and silver-tongued.

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One of the great many things that always bothers me about Congress is that no one actually reads the final bills that are passed. Too often, language gets inserted that introduces completely unrelated provisions. Or something is added to chip away at the intent of the bill. Or earmark funds to something ridiculous.

So I am pleased to see some grassroots group out there funneling some energy into the Read The Bills Act. In addition to the requirement that Congress reads the bills it votes on, it also allows a provision to require a waiting period of 7 days after it is posted to the Internet, so that the public can go over the final proposed bill.

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Senator Joe Lieberman has a long track record of fighting for* reform of the US healthcare systems. His recent focus has been on Community Health Centers. He believes that community health centers play a critical role in our public health infrastructure.

Senator Lieberman thanked local community leaders and Common Council President Michael Coffey-D and Council member Herbert Grant-D for accompanying on his tour of the Norwalk Community Health Center. “The consistently number one concern of the people of Connecticut,” he said, “is about healthcare and health insurance. Its from the hundreds of thousands in our state who don’t have it, but the million plus who do [have health insurance] are paying too much and more and more as employees or employers.”

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Anti-war activists were all atwitter this week over Senator Lieberman’s public comments of support for President Bush’s call for increasing troops. The blogsphere, naturally, was the fulcrum for pushing the message that Lieberman was sucking up to the GOP and not a true Democrat. Many example of this line of thinking can be found at My Left Nutmeg. The Iraq occupation has become to many, the litmus test position, that supposedly decides where political philosophies can be gaged. The reality is that what to do with Iraq, theocratic Islamic states, terrorism, foreign oil dependency and propping up defense contractors have all become a knot of conflicting interests that aren’t so simply defined, and more importantly solved. As long as President Cheney Bush calls the shots as commander in chief, there’s not much bloviating senators can do to change things. Unless of course they follow the money and take away the checkbook from the reckless spenders in the white house.

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Iraq is a quagmire, and that leaves little room for serious debate about what the US interests really are in the Middle East. Everything distills to either “pull the troops out” or “add more troops to win it.” There are a few blogs out there that dissect the real issues in blunt terms that reflect the actual reality of the precarious position of not only our military, our foreign policy and our role in the middle east and a few of them are Belgravia Dispatch and Juan Cole and Steven Clemons. Today’s WashingPost Op-Ed by Joe Lieberman has certainly ignited the blogsphere to rehash arguments that have been hashed and hashed and hashed.

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Today’s Courant delivers the usual fear mongering headline to accompany the Joe Lieberman position on children and video games; Lieberman Defends Video-Game Money. The article goes on to describe all the donations that Lieberman received this past election cycle, and what a surprise to find not a single video game company listed! Instead David Lightman cites WWE, which is a promotion company based in Stamford that excels at selling the shock and awe of large wrestling personalities strutting in spandex. They package this spectacle in various media, including toys and the occasional video game. But to say the WWE is a video game company is like saying that The Courant is in the interactive media business since they manage to occasionally put out an interactive piece.

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