Help me out here. I’m struggling with conflicting messages about Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA and inspirational leader especially to young, college-age conservatives. In our ever-escalating culture of violence, his horrific assassination has become the latest prominent expression of solving political disagreements with the trigger or the blade. What perplexes me is the …
Continue reading Myth building around slain conservative activist Charlie Kirk
"All politics is loco," Senator Ed Markey told a gathering of the New England Council on Monday, paraphrasing a favorite saying of House Speaker Tip O'Neill of Cambridge. Just part of the craziness this week is the President's unilateral decision to activate the California national guard and use active duty Marines to control crowd protests …
Continue reading Markey fights Trump assault on Massachusetts – and beyond
This time the pollsters were right. They had held all along that the election outcome was within the margin of error. It could go either way. And so it did. But in the wrong direction. Donald J. Trump won on a campaign of lies and grievances, fear and loathing. We’re a deeply divided nation, preferring …
Continue reading Margin of error won. We lost. A first look.
Jack Rennie, Chairman and CEO of Pacer Systems, Inc, was a genial and successful businessman in Massachusetts who found his purpose in life not infinitely expanding his corporate interests but in educating the workforce necessary to grow the state’s economy. During the 1980’s, he became increasingly distressed that young people were leaving school inadequately prepared …
Continue reading VOTERS SHOULD FLUNK THE NOVEMBER MCAS REFERENDUM
Our phone has been ringing off the hook; our electronic mailboxes flooded. Friends, even staunch supporters of Joe Biden, have come to accept the idea that he is not well enough to serve another term. Worse, that he didn't have the stamina even to win a second term. The stakes could not be higher. Now, …
It wasn't long ago that I wrote that I thought there was nothing to be gained by a Trump-Biden debate. Knowing that presidential debates are usually more about style than substance, I said that, if there were to be a debate, there should be real-time fact checking. Without it, I feared that Trump's repeated falsehoods …
You all know the cliche - "if it bleeds, it leads." Local news, and increasingly national networks, promote stories off the police scanner. As a result, for decades, the perception of crime has exceeded the reality of crime across society. Naturally, if you've been mugged or a neighbor's house broken into, crime is indeed a …
How Minds Change: The Surprising Science of Belief, Opinion, and Persuasion by David McRaney offers what could be an eye-opening look at how to talk to “the other.” It’s about much more than when every day becomes Thanksgiving Day and seemingly reasonable people turn out to be crazy Uncle Harry. McRaney shares what he has …
Former Ambassador Nikki Haley and Governor Ron DeSantis were like two playground kids pretending to be scorpions in a bottle in Wednesday night's debate, jabbing at each other, oblivious to the big foot about to crush them both. You lie. Nah, you lie. Back and forth they went, with slanted opposition research about each other's …
Continue reading Haley and DeSantis – a So’s ya mutha! debate
Marjorie Arons-Barron 