The dirty on Southbury vandalism

26 September—This morning’s Hearst RepublicanAmerican has a story on the local news page headlined “Former student admits egging teacher’s Southbury home after repeated vandalism.” The story mentions that “the warrant also noted five individuals had previously been caught for throwing eggs at the home.” Evidently the vandalism had been going on since 2024 because the perps didn’t like the Pomperaug High School teacher they victimized.

Not mentioned in any coverage of the vandalism is that one vandal—also a recent Pomperaug graduate—had been able to avoid arrest by getting himself killed (and nearly decapitated) when his motor scooter collided with a pickup truck in Middlebury just after midnight on 11 July, several hours after he had bought some unspecified alcohol—probably beer—at a local booze emporium by flashing a phony ID.

Sources are mum on the alcohol content of the personable and popular 18-year-old decedent’s blood and urine or whether they were even tested. Nor can we confirm that his backpack contained a quantity of vapes—electronic cigarettes, verboten to under-21-year-olds—or where he may have obtained them.

There’s always lots of graduation and school-vacation partying in early summer. Especially by teachers. And raising the legal drinking/smoking age to 21, like all too many laws here, there, and everywhere, was absolutely ridiculous, counterproductive, and largely unenforceable. Still, it’s the law and it’s enforced in Connecticut. And that’s worth noting because, while it may not be relevant in the late Pomperaug grad’s death, a retired cop is known to have stood by while booze was consumed by partying minors in his home. And no one did a thing about it.

It’s interesting—and in the circumstance ironic and sad—to note, moreover, that some photos of the decedent displayed at his wake showed him holding alcoholic beverages . . .

Trump impresses Xi

25 September—Despite a court order by a federal judge Donald Trump himself had appointed during his first reign of terror (which, it’s turned out, was only practice for the second), reporters from CNN and MS NOW weren’t allowed to observe Trump’s White House dinner for one of his two BSFs (best scumbag friends) and fellow dictators, Red China strongman Xi Jinping. You know who Trump’s other BSF is and that Trump envies them both and kisses all four of their iniquitous posterior cheeks whenever he feels the urge.

The dinner to welcome Xi was in the White House’s East Room rather than the State Dining Room because the East Room is twice the State Dining Room’s size and Trump had invited scores of hypocritical, self-interested ass-kissing oligarchs like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg to impress Xi.

The Monitor’s Washington correspondent wasn’t banned from the dinner but had more important things to do last night as well as no credentials. But she was able to slip unnoticed into the East Room before the dinner. Don’t ask how. Although sorely tempted to take souvenirs of the vermeil flatware and bone china, she was able to control her kleptomanic impulses, unlike the dinner host and most of his guests, who, however, have more lucrative aspirations.

So our DC correspondent didn’t even take a menu for the meal Trump took pains planning in order to make his Chinese BSF feel right at home. But she did photograph one for the edification of Monitor readers:

Poor Kosta Indeed

24 September—It’s not enough of a distinction for Kosta Diamantis to be a fugitive convicted felon, so now we learn he’s also a deadbeat. Three banks have sued Kosta in what’s fondly remembered as the little grey Litchfield Superior Court but is now the big Litchfield Judicial District Courthouse at Torrington. Kosta lived in the Hartford JD before skipping to Greece, so the banks’ lawyers likely chose the Litchfield JD for expediency.

According to the three civil suits, filed separately and by different law firms, all told Kosta owes Capital One, Wells Fargo, and Synchrony Bank about $42,000 between them, after failing to make payments on a personal loan and two credit cards. That’s chicken feed in the great scheme of things.

Without comment or intimate knowledge of Kosta’s personal finances, then, here are some facts relevant to his financial predicament:

When Kosta was arraigned on federal corruption charges in 2024, U.S. Magistrate Judge Thomas Farrish set bond at $500,000 and allowed it to be secured by equity in Kosta’s real estate in Farmington, which was and is highly mortgaged, rather than cash up front.

Kosta’s 2024 retainer agreement with celebrated zealous defense lawyer Norm Pattis was for a total of $250,000. Kosta paid Norm $80,000 the day after signing—likely thanks to his hoard of ill-gotten pelf as well as his handsome state pension and social security—and came up with another $105,000 in six installments, leaving an unpaid balance of $65,000 as of August 2025, which led Norm to move to pull out of Kosta’s defense because continuing representation without taxation, as it were, would, according to Norm, cause a financial hardship for Norm’s law firm. Absolutely. Entirely understandable. That’s not a comment.

After Kosta’s alacritous and predictable conviction last October, then, a federal magistrate allowed Norm to dump his convicted (and presumably now indigent) client. But despite or because of Norm’s competent and zealous defense of Kosta, U.S. District Court Judge Stefan Underhill, the kind-hearted trial judge, prevailed on Norm to stick with Kosta, but at the piddling federal public defender rate of $177 an hour—paid for by taxpayers rather than Kosta, by the way—for Kosta’s second corruption trial that was supposed to start in December but won’t—unless, of course, Kosta returns voluntarily or otherwise.

If you’re wondering why Judge Underhill didn’t raise or revoke Kosta’s half-million-dollar bond or require electronic monitoring after conviction, it’s because the presumably Trumpified remaining federal prosecutors of questionable competence didn’t ask for it. Even better, Kosta assured Stefan, whom you figure would have known better than to trust a convicted criminal like Kosta, that as a fellow lawyer he’s never defy court orders. And better yet, Stefan also took Kosta’s word that his new Greek passport was in Greece for property inheritance matters.

And Norm is still representing Kosta diligently and zealously. For only $177 an hour . . .

Banning Ronald Reagan

23 September—President Ronald Reagan told a group of journalists on 18 April 1985, “One of the first institutions to be attacked by tyrants, whether they’re dictators of the left or the right, is the press.” Not that it matters, but the statement had been drafted by Reagan speechwriters Dana Rohrabacher and Ben White.

Sure, Reagan’s relationship with the press and comments for public consumption were carefully, skillfully—and, with few exceptions, successfully—managed, largely due to his personal charm and acting skill. And what else could he tell the press anyway? In all events, the observation is absolutely true.

We were reminded of that truth the other day by Donald Trump’s latest illegal, tyrannical attack on the press, depicted in a cartoon by Paul Duginski. One half of the panel depicts a typically affable, smiling Reagan. The other half depicts a typically petulant, dyspeptic Trump. This is the other half:

But Trump finally appeared to be on the right track to a Nobel Peace Prize when he boasted to the United Nations General Assembly yesterday about his war with Iran, “We’re going to have a tremendous relationship, a secure relationship, and we look forward to it.” After wondering out loud, “Do I drive them into hell with no chance of survival and no hope of future greatness or generations?”

Only 850 days until 20 January 2029 . . .

Hail to Hale!

22 September—They’re nothing to celebrate, but autumn falls in tonight at 8:05 EDT and 250 years ago today, sometime in the morning, somewhere near what’s now Third Avenue and 66^th Street in Manhattan, the Brits hanged 21-year-old Coventry, Connecticut-born Capt. Nathan Hale for spying.

Hale had been a classmate at Yale of Benjamin Tallmadge, who is remembered as George Washington’s spymaster and owner of the North Street manse he bought from Thomas Sheldon in 1782, which more recently was the home of Chandler Saint, who, it’s thought, still has the keys to the dismantled house Harriet Beecher Stowe was born in that nobody really gives a damn about that’s stored in three semi-trailers in North Canaan.

After graduating from Yale, young Nathan Hale taught school in Moodus and then New London, before enlisting in the Continental Army in 1775. It’s possible he had bone spurs, but he didn’t know about them. And he was a volunteer anyway.

It should go without saying that patriotic eager beaver Hale wasn’t a very good spy. He was too honest—and likely naïve—as well as inexperienced. For instance, why was his cover story that he was a Dutch schoolteacher? And why did he keep notes and drawings of of British fortifications on his person?

Nathan Hale is best known for his heroic statement on the Gotham gallows, “I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country” or “I only regret that I have but one life to give for my country.” But here’s no concrete record of either memorable exit line.

Or any exit line at all, although it’s pretty certain that classically educated Hale of Yale would have uttered something heroic, like the line from Joseph Addison’s popular 1713 tragedy Cato that he must have remembered from Eng Lit 101, “What a pity it is that we can die but once to serve our country.”

In all events, as Frederick MacKensie, a British Royal Fusiliers brigade major who witnessed Hale’s execution, wrote this diary entry for the day: “He behaved with great composure and resolution, saying he thought it the duty of every good Officer, to obey any orders given him by his Commander-in-Chief; and desired the Spectators to be at all times prepared to meet death in whatever shape it might appear.”

Yes, Virginia, there is a Trump

21 September—It was on this day in 1897 that New York Sun editorial writer Frank Church anonymously told eight-year-old Virginia O’Hanlon, “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.” That’s before the welfare state really developed. And The Sun was a conservative rag in all events.

The New York Sun as currently constituted is also conservative, but embarrassingly so, and just a particularly dogmatic website. As an indication of its bathetic decline, the online New York Sun’s email solicitations to non-subscribers regularly post Larry Kudlow’s admission, “It wasn’t long ago that The New York Sun, one of my favorite papers, became the exclusive publisher of my columns.” What legitimate, self-respecting publisher would want to?

So just when we thought Donald Trump had run out of unbelievable, let alone unthinkable stunts to endear himself to the bellicose lunatic MAGA fringe, he’s boastfully pondering whether to blow up “the entire nation of Iran.” Doubtless because Iran has made an even bigger fool of him than he’s made of himself.

But that’s not enough for the deranged demagogue-showman, because now he wants to make his disgusting, thoroughly tasteless Arc de Trump a “military complex,” incorporating a drone base, ammunition dump, and sniper nest. But will it have bathrooms and internet access?

The self-described stable genius claims the (remaining, severely compromised) military has requested what may be considered the enhanced use of that particular grotesque monument to himself. And you can bet the (remaining, severely compromised) military will back him up to the hilt even though military use of the Arc de Trump is obviously militarily more nuts and dangerous as well as politically more nuts and stupid than the arc itself.

But Trump and his equally deranged and narcissistic flunkies must reckon that the gratuitous military crap will get past disloyal opposition to this particular literally monumental boondoggle, just like the Führerbunker under the madman’s gilded boondoggle ballroom.

Not even Hitler . . .

Frankenstein’s AI

20 September—Very simply put, artificial intelligence, commonly known by its initialism AI, is technology that allows machines—specifically computers—to perform tasks that once required human intelligence—specifically learning, problem-solving, decision-making, and reasoning. Learning, problem-solving, and decision-making are nothing new for computers, of course.

In fact, computers and all that goes with them were invented and perfected to perform those largely human tasks artificially—i.e., for and/or better in some way than mere humans. So it’s reasoning that adds intelligence to artificial. Because reasoning requires some degree of intelligence.

Whether AI can actually reason like intelligent humans depends on the definition of “reasoning” and is open to question. (What’s not open to question is that unintelligent humans don’t reason by any definition.) In all events, some of the creators of AI now claim to have reservations about their collective creation. That’s because of AI’s ability to “reason,” whatever it may mean.

And that takes us back a couple of centuries to Mary Shelley’s delightful 1818 Gothic novel “Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus.” Mary was 18 when she started writing it and 20 when it was published.

So, very, very briefly, Victor Frankenstein imaginatively, creatively, and rather brilliantly assembled a mélange of stolen—make that rescued—body parts from divers cadavers into an admittedly grotesque humanoid being he later called the creature, fiend, wretch, demon, devil, and thing. Too bad Mary and Victor didn’t think of calling him (for he was male in gender) AI.

On second thought: Grotesque humanoid being, creature, fiend, wretch, demon, devil, and thing? Too bad Mary and Victor didn’t think of calling him Trump . . .

Pity poor Kosta

19 September—It appears now that thanks to the eternal self-interest of Connecticut’s elected politicians who have nevertheless lined up to decry the “shame” (the very word all the hypocrites haven’t waited to heap on him) Kosta Diamantis has brought upon the state’s political establishment (i.e., themselves, although they don’t actually put it that honestly), the convicted felon and fugitive may continue to collect his handsome state pension to support his new, doubtless extremely comfortable life in Greece.

Hardly a day after Kosta’s on-off-on-again mouthpiece Norm Pattis (who must have known his defense of the rogue public official was bound to fail) announced his delinquent client’s escape to Greece, Pattis filed suit to keep the scumbag’s $76,000-a-year pension going at least until certain due processes were seen to, which would have allowed Kosta to contest the pension suspension essentially on technicalities. Of course Pattis knew nothing about Kosta’s flight to freedom until Kosta phoned him from Greece with the revelation. Of course. And of course.

Even now Pattis is merely representing his disreputable client diligently and vigorously, because that’s what lawyers are required and paid handsomely to do. That’s precisely how Pattis was representing scumbag Alex Jones when he got himself suspended in 2023—originally for six months, reduced to two weeks on retrial, the latter upheld on appeal less than a year ago—for misconduct in Jones’s defamation trial.

You’ve got to feel sorry for poor Kosta because, as he told Hearst columnist Dan Haar yesterday (by phone, of course), first, he’s innocent (of course), then: “It was knee-jerk and it was last-minute and it was hurtful. I didn’t like what I did. I want to come back to the country that I belong to and be with my family and my kids.”

For some reason, Kosta’s drive from Connecticut to Florida, cruise to the Bahamas, flight to London and then to Greece—all on the Greek passport he got after his conviction and neglected to surrender along with his U.S. passport—doesn’t seem like it was knee-jerk or last-minute. If he really didn’t like what he did, he shouldn’t have done it, any of it. And if he really wants to come back to the country he claims he belongs to, nothing’s stopping him. And aren’t his kids in his family?

Kosta also told Haar that he knew how to build stone walls and farm if he had to make money while in Greece. But the $76,000 state pension would be much easier . . .

Kudos for Kosta?

18 September—So Kosta Diamantis, former Connecticut lawyer, elected state legislator, and appointed state official, easily convicted a year ago by a federal jury on 21 counts of bribery, extortion, and lying to fuzz, did what was clearly a well-planned and brilliantly executed runner to Greece this month. We wonder, then, among many ponderables and in no specific order:

How was Kosta able to collect $355,000 in pension funds from the state by last year, especially what he got after his conviction?

Why and how was Kosta able to delay his sentencing for a year?

Pending actual surrender of both Kosta’s American and Greek passports, why didn’t Federal District Judge Stefan Underhill throw the convicted criminal and obvious flight risk in the slammer immediately after his conviction or at the very least make him wear an ankle monitor? Silly question, on second thought, because Kosta didn’t even apply for his Greek passport until after his conviction.

Is Kosta’s girlfriend joining him in Greece?

Were state, federal, and international fuzz so wound up in their daisy chain that they didn’t know Kosta had skipped? Or is it just that they didn’t care?

Are state and federal fuzz serious about extraditing Kosta from Greece? If so, lots luck.

Earlier this year Kosta formally applied to Donald Trump’s pardon attorney for a “Pardon After Completion of Sentence” (case #P336763) presumably so he could keep or reinstate his pension. But why didn’t he apply for a full, unconditional pre-sentence pardon? Or didn’t he offer Trump’s pardon attorney and Trump enough of an incentive for the whole schmear? Given Trump’s history of indiscriminately pardoning criminals of all varieties, it’s likely he’d have pardoned Kosta—and given him a job in his corrupt administration.

And to be fair, remember when Willie Clinton on his very last day as president in 2001 pardoned Mark Rich, a fugitive who had been indicted in 1983 on 65 counts of tax evasion, fraud, racketeering, and illegal oil trading (with Iran during that embargo) but skipped to Switzerland and Israel before he could be tried? Not that it mattered, but Rich’s ex was a Clinton friend and generous donor to Democrat causes . . .

USPS insults Morris

17 September—Morris residents should bow down and kiss the fetid feet of the United States Postal Service because after closing down the town’s post office last year the USPS in its infinite generosity next month is going to install a mailbox in the town hall parking lot. Of course, Morris’s new compact one-way postal facility is only for depositing stamped outgoing mail (with many restrictions, mind you) which likely will be collected only once a day, if that.

For any other business—like you name it—Morris postal customers will still have to travel out of town, with the Thomaston post office being the USPS’s suggested stand-in, as it’s been for Northfield customers since the USPS killed the village’s friendly little facility in the Northfield General Store many years ago.

It’s hard to believe that it took the intercession of U.S. Senators Richard Blumenthal and Christopher Murphy and U.S. Representative Jahana Hayes to get the USPS to agree, however reluctantly, to be sure, to allow a so-called “blue box”—a goddamn mailbox like we used to find just about everywhere without looking—to be installed in Morris.

You may not know that the post office which had been at 8 West Street in the town center, such as it may be, for decades closed on 31 August 2025 because the lease expired and the USPS wanted to renew it with landlord Steve Cook at a reduced rent. Of course, that was unreasonable and unacceptable. Given the USPS, however, it’s no surprise.

While the United States Postal Service claims—but neither insists nor promises—the closure of the Morris post office is only temporary, there’s good—make that excellent—reason to believe otherwise. For one, is the USPS really, seriously looking for a new location in Morris? And it is the USPS, after all, an agency of the executive branch of the U.S. government; and not only should we not trust or believe the U.S. government, but by now we should have learned never to trust or believe the blatantly mendacious executive branch as currently constituted . . .