Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

Hillare Belloc’s “Advice to the Rich” was lost on the Castro brothers: “Get to know something about the internal combustion engine, and remember – soon, you will die.” Fidel Castro, Cuba’s deathless tyrant, died full of years a  very rich man , his foreign bank account stuffed with other people’s money, though one would never guess it reading Jesse Jackson’s encomium.

Sounding a bit like Jesse Jackson in a bumptious mood, Ayman al-Zawahri, Tonto to Osama bin Ladin’s Lone Ranger, has pulled out all the stops and called President-elect Barack Obama a “house negro.” The reclusive second in command at al-Quaeda, using the Arab term “"abeed al-beit," which literally means “house slave,” sliced into his latest missive shots of Malcolm X fulminating against black leaders who had failed to standup to whites, according to an Associated Press report written by Maamoun Youssef and Lee Heath: “The 11-minute 23-second video features the audio message by al-Zawahri, who appears only in a still image, along with other images, including one of Obama wearing a Jewish skullcap as he meets with Jewish leaders. In his speech, al-Zawahri refers to a Nov. 5 U.S. air strike attack in Afghanistan, meaning the video was made after that date. “Al-Zawahri said Obama's election has not changed American policies he said are aimed at oppressing Muslims and others...

On the campaign trail, after examining polls that show him far ahead of Sen. John McCain, Sen. Barack Obama said the felt “a righteous wind at his back.” Over in Evian, France, Jesse Jackson felt the same wind lifting his sails. According to Amir Taheri , a New York Post opinion columnist, the message Jackson conveyed in the first World Policy Forum in France was: Prepare for a new day. He promised "fundamental changes" in US foreign policy - saying America must "heal wounds" it has caused to other nations, revive its alliances and apologize for the "arrogance of the Bush administration." The most important change would occur in the Middle East, where "decades of putting Israel's interests first" would end. Jackson believes that, although "Zionists who have controlled American policy for decades" remain strong, they'll lose a great deal of their clout when Barack Obama enters the White House. Is it possible that Jackson has seen...

While barrels of ink have been spilled over the New Yorker cover, not much has been said about the story that appeared in the magazine. From the point of view of the publisher, the cover was a clever device. It certainly produced a good amount of controversy. If you are a magazine, it’s always better to be noticed, and the cover was the equivalent of a bared breast. Cartoons of this kind always carry a mixed message. The partisans on the right were not unpleased, and for those on the left, the cover made their point: that much of the criticism issuing from the fever swamps on the right was silly, cartoonish. Michelle Obama is not, as pictured, a bomb throwing 60’s radical; Sen. Barack Obama is not a practicing Muslim but a Christian politician. Even Fox News, generally held up by the left as the simulacrum of right wingnut politics, acknowledged that this kind of criticism was unfair. The real problem with the cover was that it detracted from a fair and fulsome account of Sen. Barack ...

Jesse Jackson puts his foot in Barack Obama’s mouth. No big deal. All is forgiven.

Denouncing the nutty uncle in his closet, Barack Obama said in a recent news conference in Winston-Salem, North Carolina of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's statements that they ``offend me, they rightly offend all Americans and they should be denounced and that's what I'm doing very clearly and unequivocally today." It must have been the reference to “garlic nosed Italians” that did it for Obama. At some point -- later to be determined -- Obama figured it was time to throw the incubus overboard. No one yet has asked Jesse Jackson, one of Obama's supporters and also a Reverend, whether he thinks Obama did the right thing.

Gerard Baker of the Times – No,no, not the New York Times, but the Times of London – weighs in on Barack Obama and the eternal question: Have we become France? “There is a caste of left-wing Americans who wish essentially and in all honesty that their country was much more like France. They wish it had much higher levels of taxation and government intervention, that it had much higher levels of welfare, that it did not have such a “militaristic” approach to foreign policy. Above all, that its national goals were dictated, not by the dreadful halfwits who inhabit godforsaken places like Kansas and Mississippi, but by the counsels of the United Nations. “Though Mr Obama has done a good job, as all recent serious Democrats have done, of emphasizing his belief in American virtues, his record and his programme suggest he is firmly in line with this wing of his party… "He wants to tax the rich more to pay for [the programs he favors]. He is against companies using the opportunities of f...