Ken Dixon's Blog-O-Rama

Thursday April 10, 2008

And Blog-o-rama returns to the Capitol after a few days counting robins and gauging slush slides amid the expansive confines and the pines of birches (and the murmur of the pines) in Maine’s Carrabassett Valley.
Having missed the big Capitol ethics meltdown of Wednesday (all you need to know is the only folks who have it right are minority Republicans – but not the governor – who want to strip the pensions of people like Johnny Johnola Rowland, but it’s not going to happen this year) after Senate President Don Williams said a nearly secret watered-down version was a fait accompli, Blog-o-rama felt a twinge of diligence and followed Gov. Jodi Rell down to Milford for her big celebration over New York’s rejection of the Broadwater LNG platform.
Why Milford, when the platform would be built way up the coast, 10 miles off Guilford? It can’t be because Guilford has a Democratic first selectman while Milford Mayor Jim Richetelli is a Republican?
Well, maybe.
Blog-o-rama liked the site because it was a gorgeous day, Milford’s in the Connecticut Post readership area and the perfect visual aid was virtually ignored by so many supposedly PR savvy pols like the governor, Attorney General Dick Blumenthal and Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz.
Right behind the governor’s portable podium, where the sound system failed miserably three minutes into the newser, sending TV and radio guys scurrying to plop their microphones in front of the governor, sat Charles Island.
Charles Island is maybe three quarters of a mile from Silver Sands. The reef heading out there is a sure bet for summer lifeguard rescues, when knuckleheads get stuck our there while the tide races back in.
A smart PR person in any of the aforementioned ambitious-pols camps, could have concocted a line about how the island would look about the same size as the evil, floating LNG terminal, a terrorist target four football fields long and about 80 feet high.
The trees on Charles Island probably aren’t 80 feet tall and the atoll (THERE’S a synonym for you) is probably longer than 400 yards. Rell, during a Q and A after the newser, couldn’t envision it and Blumenthal, chatting before the event couldn’t see it either, but Sen. Len Fasano, who actually did alot of fact-finding work over three years heading Rell’s LNG Task Force (plus he played football at Yale, so he knows what 100 yards looks like) could see the geographical symbolism.