How can someone be an ostrich, a worm, a sheep, a jackal and a dodo all at the same time? It's no zoological mystery. Trump supporters in Congress - the House particularly - do it every day, even those who criticize him privately. So too do most of the other Republican Presidential candidates, most of …
Continue reading GOP Trump defense: performative art or stupidity?
As my followers can tell, I do love reading, which served me well during my recovery. But this finishes my current reviews. Happily, I have returned to normal life, seeing friends, going to restaurants, trying to outwit the oversexed rabbits in my garden, salving wounds inflicted by the Bruins and Celtics, keeping hopes alive with …
Continue reading Books for late spring, pt. 4- fiction, the last tranche for now
Recently defenestrated Chris Licht is now the former CNN chair and CEO. He had been successful in his previous roles, including show-running the Stephen Colbert show, but he was in over his head - running one of the the three major cable news networks. Licht's initial goal was right on target: avoid the hyper-partisanship of …
Waking Lions by Ayelet Gundar-Goshen is a fascinating story about a highly regarded Israeli neurosurgeon, Eitan Green, transferred from Tel Aviv to Beersheba because of hospital politics. Driving his SUV at high speed in the desert late one night, he hits an Eritrean immigrant walking by the side of the road, causing fatal head injuries. …
Global warming is no longer an abstract theory. Forget about the hockey-stick-shaped graph correlating the rapid rise in temperature with the fossil fuel-based increase in carbon emission in recent years. The data have real-life implications for every single one of us, and we all need to see it that way. That was the dire message …
Rachael Rollins seemed to have such promise. She was a gutsy woman, highly articulate in a no-nonsense way. Willing to stand up to hardened criminals. Eager to challenge a cookie-cutter system of justice with an ingrained preference for incarceration for low-level crimes when diversion and other alternative punishments could work even better. The rate of …
Continue reading Rachael Rollins mucks up more than her promising career
Painfully recovering from seven broken ribs wasn't all bad. It enabled a ton of reading. The following represents a few of the books with which I busied myself. More will be posted soon. A Burning by Megha Majumdar is a powerful first novel about three individuals in contemporary India trying to claw their way into …
I remember when the U. S. Supreme Court was held in high esteem.Today less than a third of Americans polled view SCOTUS even somewhat favorably. Justice Clarence Thomas is a poster boy for why that is so. With a blind eye to propriety, Thomas has accepted millions of dollars worth of luxury vacations from Harlan …
Continue reading Clarence Thomas helps the Supreme Court soil itself
Toxic politics, anti-democratic nativism, uncivil behavior and willful stupidity - all dominate our sense of life in the United States today. But every once in a while, something happens that renews one's faith in the human condition. One example was Saturday's ribbon-cutting at a new park in Newton called Waban Common. For as long as …
Continue reading Comity and caring still found at the community level
Lots of time for reading when you're waiting for broken bones to heal! Fiction to follow. After the Last Border:Two Families and the Story of Refuge in America by Jessica Goudeau tells the often-checkered history of American treatment of refugees, the lofty national identity promised by Emma Lazarus’ poem on the Statue of Liberty and …
Continue reading Books for early spring, pt. 1 – non-fiction
Marjorie Arons-Barron 