Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

In a recent editorial , the Hartford Courant notes, “U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., has a well-oiled speech on the issue [of gun bans].  Considering his 14-hour filibuster after the Orlando shooting in the summer of 2016, he’s got his points together. And every time there’s another mass shooting, he drags them out again, as he did on Tuesday.” Murphy has had a good deal of practice fulminating at the U.S. Senate podium; most recently he accused his fellow legislators of being complicit in the murder of 17 students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida. “This scourge of school shootings,” Murphy said, “only happens here [in the United States].  It only happens here not because of coincidence, not because of bad luck, but as a consequence of our inaction.  We  [his fellow Senators] are responsible for a level of mass atrocities that happens in this country with zero parallel anywhere else.”

When former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton hobbled out of President Barack Obama’s cabinet, Mr. Obama found the perfect replacement in John Kerry, who believes that one cannot be both a patriotic Israeli Jew and a democrat; the reader will please note the lower case “d” in democrat. Mr. Kerry would not wish to suggest that individual Jews cannot be Democrats, because that would cost the Democratic Party of which he is a member both patronage and votes. Saying just the right thing at just the right moment is not Mr. Kerry’s strong suit, nor for that matter is diplomacy, effective in foreign policy only when it is attached to strength and honor. In this, Mr. Kerry is a chip off his chief’s block. Having failed diplomatically in Iraq, Mr. Obama withdrew American troops from the country, creating a vacuum that eventually was filled by what Mr. Obama called “a JV team.” That would be ISIS, which now has a presence in multiple countries in the Middle East and the North African...

The state of Israel must survive, and this is not a walk in the park. Israel is surrounded by noxious Arab powers that long for its utter destruction, the most ambitious of which is Iran, now on the path to becoming a nuclear tipped hegemonic power in the Middle East. Once the enemy of the United States, Iran is a fierce and energetic enemy of both Israel and the United States, which it regards as “The Great Satan.” Since the fall of the Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the country has become both more Islamic and belligerent. These two, a puritanical reform of Islam and an increase in theologically inspired violence, seem to walk arm and arm together in this sorry veil of tears.

At least one Briton thinks President Barack Obama is rude and arrogant . How quickly is the bloom off the rose. The James Carville/Stanley Greenberg/Barack Obama attack machine has found a sumptuous target in Rush Limbaugh, according to Politico . President George Bush having retired, Beltway Democrats, not entirely shunning the politics of fear, are in desperate need of a new face to grind beneath their boots. Carville is the author of “And The Horse You Came In On,” an attack on the rude attackers of former president Bill Clinton. Greenberg is a Clinton era pollster who now provides info to President Barack Obama’s administration. Both Greenberg and his wife, Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, have been generous in the past to Rham Emanual, chief sniper of the Obama administration, having provided Emmanuel with a free Washington DC rental for many years. A Miami abortion clinic doctor is in trouble, according to a report in the Sun Sentinal , for having killed a baby. And Secretary of...

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...

A green color, passed through a bias prism, is seen as red. We all have biases, but some cherish them more than others. U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman has become a target in the blogsphere for progressives who wish to advertise themselves as such by sporting their biases. Rejected by his party in a primary, Lieberman ran as an Independent in the general election – and won, much to the dismay of left wing Democrats who favored Ned Lamont, an anti-war Democrat from Greenwich nudged into the race by ex-Senator and Governor Lowell Weicker. At bottom, all politics is personal because, unsurprisingly, it involves persons, many of whom are unwilling to lay aside their biases for the public good. Weicker was defeated by Lieberman in a hotly contested senate race. A few years later the sleeping bear was back again wielding a bludgeon, a left wing fellow from his old hometown, against his former rival. Since Lieberman’s defeat of Lamont in the general election, progressives in Connecticut and its envir...

The headline on the Chicago Tribune story, “Obama calls Iran threat to U.S, Israel,” was a little ambiguous;that Iran is a threat to Israel no one disputes, but Barack Obama’s message, delivered before a the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a major pro-Israel lobbying group, was a little more complex than that. "One of the most profound consequences of the administration's failed strategy in Iraq,” Obama said, “has been to strengthen Iran's strategic position, reduce U.S. credibility and influence in the region, and place Israel and other nations friendly to the United States in greater peril.” Some people will dispute the claim on both historical and strategic grounds. Iran’s antipathy to both Israel and the United States precedes the arrival of President George Bush in the White House. The Iranian revolution, which followed the deposition of the Shah of Iran, began during the administration of former President Jimmy Carter . One of the key participants in that ...

To say that war is a continuation of diplomacy by other means is to say that diplomacy may be, when circumstances are ripe, a continuation of war by other means. The object of both war and diplomacy is – to get what you want in the long run; the short run is often tactically confusing. What does Israel want? Immediately, it wants an end to the death and destruction showered upon it from military emplacements in the southern part of Lebanon, land from which Israel withdrew as a part of a peace process several years ago because a) a long Jihad with Hezbollah, a terrorist organization supported by Syria and Iran, had exhausted it, and b) Israel had bought into “peace for land” arguments advanced by diplomatists who are now suggesting that further diplomacy is the solution to recent attacks by Hezbollah launched from territory surrendered to them. The highlands in South Lebanon were swapped for an illusive peace, and before you could say “diplomacy is war by other means,” missiles were rai...

About 2,000 Democrats showed up at the Palace Theatre in Waterbury to cheer on ex-President Bill Clinton and re-welcome in the Age of Aquarius. Fleetwood Mac’s hypnotic verse “Don’t stop thinking about tomorrow,” Clinton’s signature song, filled the air, and the revelers certainly were focusing on tomorrow. Recent poll figures show Ned Lamont edging Senator Joe Lieberman among likely Democrat voters, which betokens a tomorrow unwelcome by former Democrat Leadership Council presidents Clinton and Lieberman. The DLC’ers are moderate Democrats; the insurgents now laying claim to Lieberman’s senate seat are, shall we say, immoderate. A Hartford reporter covering the event wrote, “The former president said no Democrat should be held responsible for the war in Iraq, the issue that polls say is driving Democrats away from Lieberman and to his anti-war challenger, Ned Lamont.” Not exactly: In Clinton case, one has learned to pay attention to fine print qualifiers. Any assertion boldly made by ...

Address of Grand Ayatullah Sayyid Muhammad Husayn Fadhlullah On the Birth Anniversary of Imam al-Mahdi (aj) Allah says in His Glorious Book: {Allah only wishes to remove uncleanness from you, members of the Family, and to purify you} [3:33]. The first member is Imam Ali ibn Abi Talib ('a), while the last is Imam al-Mahdi (May Allah hasten his relief) whom Allah, the most exalted, has prepared to fill the earth with justice having been filled with wrongdoing. The struggle between Israel and Hezbollah – the Islamists would call it a jihad – probably will affect state campaigns only slightly. In Connecticut, where anti-war candidate Ned Lamont is challenging incumbent Senator Joe Lieberman, some subtle shifts in emphasis may be expected. Lieberman’s opponents have been unusually quiet of late. The conflict has been going on for more than a week and promises to continue much longer than that. Just as a picture is worth a thousand words, so is this portentous silence. The left in Connec...

Four years ago, the Daily Times reported that former U.S. President Bill Clinton would have been more than happy to put his life on the line for Israel. “The Israelis know,” Clinton told a crowd at a Toronto Jewish charity fund raising event, “that if the Iraqi or the Iranian army came across the Jordan River, I would personally grab a rifle, get in a ditch and fight and die.” Clinton’s remark, the paper noted, shocked many Arabs who may have thought he was “more even-handed on the Palestine question than his predecessors.” Since that time, the Iraqi army has undergone (ahem) reconstitution, but a Hezbollah army of terrorists backed by Iran that has found sanctuary in Lebanon and Syria recently pounded Israel with rockets, with predictable consequences, causing some in Toronto and elsewhere to wonder whether it might be time for the former president to leap into an Israeli foxhole. Former President Clinton’s wife, the artful and agile Hillary Clinton, is defending her seat as a New Yo...