Politics

Despite a series of credit-rating cuts by all three of the major ratings agencies earlier this year, Connecticut still boasts a higher rating than Illinois and New Jersey. But that could soon change.

Lawmakers are squabbling over how to close a massive deficit expected to stretch to $3.5 billion over the next two years, which has left Connecticut as the only state in the US without a budget for the current fiscal year. And if lawmakers fail to pass a budget by the end of the month, it could trigger further cutbacks and in essential services.  

President Trump congratulates Moore for his victory...

Congratulations to Roy Moore on his Republican Primary win in Alabama. Luther Strange started way back & ran a good race. Roy, WIN in Dec!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 27, 2017

As Hillary Clinton tours the country desperately trying to explain "What Happened" during the 2016 election, she aggressively ramped up her rhetoric game to an 11 during a recent interview with Charlie Rose.  After saying that Trump has authoritarian tendencies, Clinton went on to compare him to Putin and said that she can only hope he hasn't "ordered the killing of people and journalists and the like."

Clinton: "I don’t think he really values democracy, Charlie."

 

Just in time for the weekend, the Associated Press reported on Friday that the Department of Homeland Security had notified 21 states earlier that day that their election systems had been targeted by malicious cyber actors. The states and DHS quickly jumped to the conclusion that Russia had ordered the cyberattacks, even though it was reported that the identity or identities of the perpetrators were inconclusive Yet, the news spread like wildfire after readers had been primed as reports of possible infiltartion of state election systems had circulated for nearly a year.

On Tuesday, as President Trump imposed another round of meaningless new sanctions on North Korea's banks, Trump said that while he encouraged the world to work together to end the country’s nuclear program, the U.S. is “totally prepared” for a military option, which he said would be “totally devastating” for North Korea. Which at least provides some additional detail to what H.R. McMaster meant, when he said overnight that the U.S. has prepared "four or five different scenarios" for how the crisis with North Korea will be resolved, adding ominously that “some are uglier than others."