The following are suggestions from when I wasn’t fleeing the daily news into real fiction, as noted in my previous blog. I Was Told to Come Alone: My Journey behind the Lines of Jihad, a memoir by Washington Post national security reporter Souad Mekhennet, takes us into dangerous territory to places she was uniquely qualified to …
Category: Politics
Elizabeth Warren: tribune for the downtrodden or capitalist to the bones?
"I'm a capitalist to my bones," Senator Elizabeth Warren this week told a New England Council audience of business leaders, adding, "We have to make markets strong so everyone can do better." Addressing an arcane and often dry subject, she made an impassioned pitch that good bankruptcy laws are essential to well-functioning markets. She was …
Continue reading Elizabeth Warren: tribune for the downtrodden or capitalist to the bones?
Civility and indignation can go together
Red Hen owner Stephanie Wilkinson asked Sarah Huckabee Sanders to leave her Lexington, Virginia restaurant , declaring it a moral issue. Wilkinson said her request was in the name of upholding "certain standards, like honesty, compassion and cooperation." Some of her gay employees had objected to Sanders' defense of Donald Trump's ban on transgenders in …
Trump a candidate for Nobel Appease Prize?
Remember Lucy pulling the football away just as Charlie Brown was about to kick it? Imagine if Charlie Brown, instead of being dejected, ran around the field with his arms stretched high shouting that he had just kicked the winning field goal. North Korea’s nuclear threat is gone!! We can now all sleep easily. Mission …
Hand-held cell phone ban for drivers long overdue
I had the right-of-way at 12:30 one day last week, protected by a Yield sign facing cars entering the main road. Already I can hear you laughing, as in, c'mon, girl. Do you really trust Yield signs? Well, no. But what was particularly irritating about this violator - woman in black SUV, MA license plate …
Continue reading Hand-held cell phone ban for drivers long overdue
Gonzalez brings liberal gubernatorial campaign to Newton
The nickname for any Massachusetts Secretary of Administration and Finance is “Deputy Governor.” Jay Gonzalez, A & F Secretary under Governor Deval Patrick, wants to remove the “deputy.” He’s working hard to defeat lifelong activist and minister Bob Massie in the September Democratic primary and go on to beat Governor Charlie Baker (himself a former …
Continue reading Gonzalez brings liberal gubernatorial campaign to Newton
Saving equal access to the internet
Net neutrality isn't just an issue for millennials and techies. The Federal Communications Commission's December decision to change the rules governing access to the internet will affect us all. Your eyes glazing over? Our attitudes won't be so "whatever" come June 11th when the change takes effect and internet service providers like AT&T, Verizon and …
Iran: Trump kills Plan A without a Plan B
The creepiest image from Donald Trump's announcement that he was withdrawing from the Iran deal was new NSA chief John Bolton’s looming presence as the president exited the podium. It's too soon to tell whether Bolton will get the Iran war and regime change he has lusted after, but Israelis were told to open bomb …
Remembering Barbara Bush
It was June 1990, Severance Green at Wellesley College. Blue sky, warm sunshine, graduating seniors and their families waiting to hear from two commencement honorees, Raisa Gorbachev, the wife of Russian premier Mikhail Gorbachev, and Barbara Bush, First Lady, wife of President George H. W. Bush. Local press and national networks were there to cover …
Opioid epidemic: a solvable crisis
President Trump hints he wants the death penalty for drug traffickers. (He's an unabashed admirer of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte.) Is the President calling for the death penalty for doctors prescribing Oxycontin, Percocet, morphine, and other pain killers? After all, an estimated 80 percent of people using heroin first got hooked by misusing opioids. On combating …
Marjorie Arons-Barron 