Open the Pod Bay Doors, Democrats!

Democrats live in a parallel universe. The economy for intent and purpose has returned to recession status. Connecticut taxpayers are forking over more tribute to the government while recovering from record utility outages. No one is hiring, especially in the white collar world and the best the Malloy administration can do is pay a $20 million corporate ransom to UBS so they don't abandon their trading floor in the Governor's hometown.

In Connecticut, the new bread line is either a job fair or your neighborhood Starbucks, where middle-aged men and women joust for an open power outlet or table to scour for job leads on their I-Pads.

With this dour reality hanging in the air Tuesday, Congressmen John Larson, Chris Murphy and Joe Courtney, waived away the perception that political class was unable to provide solutions or ideas to ignite the economy. They appeared before 100 or so Hartford area business people organized by the Metro Hartford Alliance.

The word "unemployment" never crossed the lips of these elected leaders nor did the idea of tax cuts, reductions in spending or a fundamental restructuring of the role of government in American life. To Larson, Courtney and especially Murphy, the strength of this country lies in the government's ability to manage the opportunities that is creates through central planning and strategies.

Murphy, who has never put in an honest day's work in his young life, said in one breadth that the U.S. military should accelerate it's departure from Afghanistan and Iraq due to financial commitments, while at the same time, torquing up the foreign aid pipeline to manage true democratic reform in Egypt.

He didn't give a number, nor did he mention protecting Israel or supporting the overthrow of the murderous regime in Syria - this from a fellow who sits on the Foreign Affairs Committee and wants to wear the big boy pants of a U.S. Senator. One assumes this will all be decided after committee hearings and several fact-finding missions.

Larson loves to heap phony praise on everyone he sees or doesn't see in the room. Tuesday, it was Murphy's turn to bathe in Larson's blarney. He brought some groans during his introductory remarks by saying that Murphy would fill in seamlessly as heir to departing U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-CT. He may have forgotten that Lieberman has been vilified by Democrats for supporting a robust military policy while vowing to defend Israel at all costs. But it shows the entitlement attitude among Democrat elites that Larson feels he can trash talk before a non-partisan crowd.  It was tacky but at least we didn't get the usual Larson tribute to the wit and wisdom of the patrons of Augie and Ray's.

Murphy told an often repeated line that he wouldn't support free trade agreements pending between South Korea or Panama because the country didn't have a national manufacturing strategy. This sounds thoughtful but it is a disguised sop to the UAW and other leaning groups that are bankrolling his Senate bid. Rather than lower the cost of doing business by allowing for accelerate depreciation, repealing Dodd-Frank and Obamacare, Murphy believes that government planners can sit in a room somewhere in the basement of the Commerce Department and come up with output quotas and productivity benchmarks. This can be achieved through "strategic partnerships" and "synergies" or via "command management."

As Murphy puts his campaign into second gear, he has changed his patter and tone to appear worldly but takes no coherent or definable positions on the issues he raises.  For example, Murphy asked rhetorically if the country had "learned its lesson" by waging two armed conflicts "without paying for them." But he never answered the question himself or laid out how or where America should propel its military assets, how to pay for them or how what is a proper price for our security.

He did alert the audience to his Buy American legislation which requires defense contractors to purchase all parts from domestic producers, regardless it seems of quality or cost. Murphy's politically attractive position, is any part-component that is produced overseas is a lost American job, er, union job -  at home.

We all know where this is going. Murphy is assembling the same crew of union activists, or what is left of them, who drove away many Connecticut jobs from companies - Fafnir, the Torrington Company, Nidec south in the 1970's and 1980's. These are the same people who cheered when then Attorney General from Hell now U.S. Sen. Dick Blumenthal to sue UTC over wages this year. The union won the case but the jobs will eventually drift south or overseas.

Murphy can also count on the public sectors unions, the teachers, the environmentalists and the stray Luddites who believe their work will not be done until the inequities of the free market are properly balanced through synergies and planned outcomes.

For those two hours at the Bushnell Tuesday, it was hard to know how truly screwed we really are.