say WHAT???????????????

i'm telling you the courant better hold on tight to hele ubinas. she's one HELL of a reporter or columnist

A Blight On Housing Director's Record
Helen Ubiñas
City officials have offered lots of reasons why they can't seem to get a longtime housing official I've written about to fix up her neglected property and pay hundreds of dollars in outstanding fines and penalties.

Weak blight laws. Weaker enforcement. Just plain arrogance.

Well, here's another: It's sort of hard to come down on delinquent property owners when Hartford's housing director owns a blighted house.That's right — turns out Yasha Escalera, one-time deputy commissioner of the state's former housing department and now Hartford's $103,000-a-year director of housing and property management, owns his very own eyesore at 39 Allen Place.

Not two years after the city pretty much gave the property to Dresca Construction, of which Escalera is part owner, the city was back putting a lien against it and billing him more than $3,600 for emergency rubbish and debris cleanup.

Over the years, a number of departments have cited the property, and in 2007, the Department of Development Services, the very department for which Escalera now works, sent him a notice of violation for the property, calling it a "menace to the public health" that is "seriously depreciating property values in the neighborhood."............

my pops lives around this hood

glad the robbers (2 of which/whom were FOURTEEN YEARS OLD. my goddess that's more than a shame)



Courant Editor Foils West Hartford Burglary
By DAVID OWENS |The Hartford Courant
WEST HARTFORD - A 23-year-old woman and two 14-year-olds were arrested Monday night after a Foxcroft Road resident arrived home about 10 p.m. and found them in his house.

The homeowner, Courant Business Editor Dan Haar, said he thought it was suspicious when he saw a bicycle that did not belong to him on his front stoop. "I [saw] two screen doors swung open, like people had been around," Haar said today.

Haar then went to his back porch. "I start to open the door and I hear people in the house," he said.
...................

funny (and i'm being sarcastic here)

why this appeared on the front page of the wapo (web edition) and yet i didn't see it on the front page of the courant. the MEN are all over the place, but the women weren't to be found (easily that is).

thanks to wapo though. THEY mentioned (in a place easy to find) the unconn women (i'm NOT a college basketball fan, but i'm making a point). congratulations to uconn women (and sure the men as well but MOSTLY the women).

uconn. where men are men and WOMEN ARE CHAMPIONS!!!

U-Conn. Earns No.1 Overall Seed for Women's Tournament
By DOUG FEINBERG
The Associated Press
Connecticut's quest for the fifth perfect season in NCAA history will begin at home.
The undefeated Huskies earned the No. 1 overall seed in the NCAA women's basketball tournament Monday night and will open against Vermont at Storrs.

Nine teams have entered the NCAA tournament unbeaten; only four have emerged unscathed. UConn and coach Geno Auriemma were the last in 2002.

Auriemma said he's not worried about the bulls-eye on his team's back.......

well here it is

we all know how i feel - and like i said yesterday, why not endorse him a WHILE AGO? why wait until now?

We Endorse Obama For President

INSPIRING, UNIFYING He would make the nation proud

In its 244-year history, The Courant has endorsed only one Democratic candidate for president, Bill Clinton. Today we endorse a second Democrat, Sen. Barack Obama, with the hope that if elected, he governs from the middle as Mr. Clinton did. Mr. Obama must resist serving only his party's interests and instead serve the greater interests of a worried nation.

America is starved for a leader who can restore pride and once again make the nation a beacon for the world, or in the words of Massachusetts Gov. John Winthrop in 1630, "a city on a hill — with the eyes of all people upon us."

Mr. Obama has the right qualities of leadership, the elevating, can-do message that "we are the ones we have been waiting for" and the calm temperament for these anxious times. He has the counsel of such trusted figures as former Republican Secretary of State Colin Powell and investment legend Warren Buffett...

our newspaper.........(it's ABOUT TIME dontcha know)

i don't follow who (or is that whom) papers endorse. connecticut is a notoriously democratic state. it's rather shocking they've only endorsed TWO democrats in 244 years. (wow, our paper is 244 years old!)

'Hartford Courant' To Endorse Obama, Only 2nd Democrat Ever
By Dexter Hill
NEW YORK The Hartford Courant will endorse Sen. Obama this weekend, making it the newspaper’s second endorsement of a Democratic presidential candidate in its 244-year history. The pro-Obama editorial will appear on the newspaper’s Web site late Saturday afternoon and in the print edition on Sunday, E&P has learned.

The St. Petersburg Times in key swing state Florida also endorsed Obama in an online posting today (see excerpt below).

The Hartford endorsement selects the Democratic candidate because of his leadership qualities. It calls America “starved for a leader who can restore pride and once again make the nation a beacon for the world,” and argues that Obama is the candidate who could do it. The editorial projects that the Illinois senator would govern from the middle and maintain a calm temperament if elected president.
.................

we've come a long way baby!

STEAMPUNK makes the hartford courant
rather shocking............

Steampunk Bedecks Contemporary Techno In Victorian Togs
By WILLIAM WEIR | Courant Staff Writer
What would happen if the future went as early science-fiction writer Jules Verne had imagined it? It would look a lot like Steampunk.

It's a term that has been getting a lot of play lately. So what is it?

The curious science-fiction offshoot has been around for some time as a genre of fiction and has since expanded into its own subculture. Even before the term was coined, there was the 1960s TV show "The Wild Wild West" and its 1999 movie version, which mixed its traditional Western setting with flying machines, mechanical spiders and other outlandish contraptions.

Steampunk is essentially a blend of the futuristic with the steam-powered past, a way of melding modern technology with the opulence of long ago. In most cases, "the past" is represented by an elaborate 19th-century Victorian style. Top hats and motorbike goggles are common fashion accessories, as are cellphones refashioned to look like antique items from an alternate history.........

a big ol' shout out to bill earls

i was reading buzzflash when i came across an article he wrote. a GREAT, ON THE MARK, SINCERE, INSIGHTFUL article. a truthful and sad article.

the only thing i would have done differently is cram in the article SOMEWHERE, 'da liebs is a GIANT STEAMIN' PILE O' SHITE'. the end


Bill Earls: Joe Lieberman's hypocrisy and the Hartford Courant's irony
Credit the Hartford Courant's layout editors with a sense of cruel irony.On Monday's front page, there was a four column photograph of Mrs. Autumn Letendre helping her son Dillon, 4, press his hands into cement at the dedication of a New Britain, CT park named in honor of his father, Captain Brian Letendre, who was killed in Iraq.Just to the right of that was the headline "Lieberman's Pain." It was a tie-in to a story about how badly our junior Senator feels about today's political climate.I wanted to reach for the airsick bag and, had Joe Lieberman been nearby, I'd have been tempted to hit him with a rock and say, "Feel some real pain, you hypocrite."Let's walk through it slowly, using short words so that even people who think Lieberman speaks for decency, honor, or common sense can understand.Go online and punch in "Marine, Brian Letendre," and read the many stories and tributes; you'll be awed, impressed, and incredibly saddened. Letendre was a genuine hero, a genuine patriot. We do not have enough people like this. We never will. Letendre was popular in high school, a college soccer star, the kind of boys other boys are drawn to, that girls with values -- honor, integrity, decency -- are drawn to. And he joined the Marines, maybe the world's finest fighting force, because the Marines, above, all represent and live by that warrior code that stresses brotherhood and integrity. He married his college girlfriend, and their son Dillon was born while his dad was on his first tour of Iraq during the invasion of 2003.Go online and punch in "Lieberman." An early track record of supporting Democratic issues - education initiatives, programs to lift people out of poverty, government that helped people -- and then sometime around 9/11, he went dark. By fall 2002, when the Bush Administration began lying about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein and wrongly connecting Hussein with the 9/11 attacks, Lieberman was one of the most prominent people buying into it. (Hillary Clinton bought into the same nonsense, and so did John McCain -- so, unfortunately, did most newspaper editors.)...................

my original posting on Captain Brian Letendre