No, Charlie, we do not need more Senators like Maine's Susan Collins. We don't even need Susan Collins. What we do need is to flip the Senate and deal responsibly with Covid-19 impacts, revitalize environmental standards to halt climate change, launch an infrastructure jobs bill, reform voting laws, redress economic inequities, protect the Affordable Care …
Continue reading Charlie Baker – big mistake with Collins endorsement?
News of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's death Friday hit hard, but it did not come as a surprise. She had been diagnosed with cancer five times since 1999 and fought back fiercely. When she succumbed, at the age of 87, she left hundreds of millions of people indebted to her for her lifelong battle for …
Neighborhood barbecues, beach gatherings, blockbuster movies, Fenway Park. Well, that didn't happen. But the few remaining lazy, hazy, crazy days could still pluck summer from COVID and politics with the pleasures of well crafted novels. There's still time to pick up one of the following before the leaves turn color. FICTION News of the World …
Continue reading Not too late for end-of-summer reading, pt. 2 fiction
When you're done reading James H. Barron's new sweeping biography and political thriller, "The Greek Connection," (shameless plug!) here are some other non-fiction possibilities for the last weeks of summer. Not everything has to be about Donald Trump! The Yellow House by Sarah Broom is a memoir of a New Orleans writer, the youngest of …
Continue reading Not too late for end-of-summer reading, pt. 1 non-fiction
The most discordant note in Joe Kennedy's elegiac concession speech on Tuesday night was his observation that, even knowing the outcome, if he had to do it all over again, he would do it "in a heartbeat." Giving voice to the frustrations of tens of thousands of working-class voters living in Massachusetts gateway cities is …
Continue reading CO2 not DNA shapes outcome of Markey/ Kennedy race
In what universe do Trump Republicans reside? The world embraced by their national convention is the kind of horror show I'd never pay to see, and couldn't sit through if it were free. Cue threatening music: the Democrats will bring carnage. They will kill the suburbs. They are the radical left and will create anarchy. …
It's all right to exhale. The Democrats delivered four well-produced creative and nearly seamless nights, and Joe Biden did extremely well. The four days were a huge success, from Michelle and Barack Obama to Kamala Harris to unknowns like Kristin Urquiza, whose late father died of COVID-19. He was, she said, a Trump supporter whose …
I voted Saturday. I responded to a universal mailing from the Secretary of State's office, indicating I wanted a mail-in ballot. The pandemic has blunted my decades-long pleasure of going to the local polling place and participating with others in my community in one of the greatest gifts of living in a democracy. I filled …
Two genuinely decent men and upstanding elected officials got really unpleasant in Tuesday night's U.S. Senate debate. Four-term Congressman Joe Kennedy III had a more polished and coherent presentation than in previous debates. Four decade former Congressman, now Senator Ed Markey, after a slow start, finished strong. But the whole event just made me want …
Continue reading Markey, Kennedy fight nasty with 20 days left
I was never a big fan of Kamala Harris when she was running for President. Yet I am surprisingly pleased by her selection to be Joe Biden's rnning mate. The former California Attorney General and San Francisco district attorney, she was a tough-on-crime prosecutor (too tough, say some), and is a seasoned campaigner. As US …
Continue reading Biden chooses Harris, an unexpectedly pleasing choice
