From BBC news online here’s a report on yesterday’s sentencing of Khmer Rouge prison overseer Kaing Guek Eav or “Comrade Duch” to 35 years in jail. He may, however, only be required to serve 19 years. The public response in Cambodia was mixed, with some people saying they had expected…
Uncle Dave is stirring it up again over there at the NYT. Today he’s channeling his young liberal self in a green army jacket who got practical along the way older and turned “kinda conservative.” What’s really going on is that he admires President Obama. He wants to see him…
Is anyone surprised by today’s version of the “Pentagon Papers” released in New York, Berlin, and London? I once worked for a guy who had as one of his management aphorisms: “Be careful not to manage a mistake.” When Bush and Cheney took their eyes off the ball in 2003 and shifted…
It’s been a while since I dragged Frank Rich over from the NYTimes to rh.com, but his column published yesterday is one that has to be spread around. Rich keeps calling what’s going on out there in politics for what it really is—in my book. He stubbornly keeps connecting the…
Now available at Barnes and Noble Downtown, Welles Emporium, Guy Lefebvre’s Lowell Gallery, Brew’d Awakening, National Park Visitor Center Gift Shop, Monkey’s Ice Cream & Gifts, Dharma Buns, and online at www.loompress.com and www.amazon.com At many of these same fine businesses, readers will find Loom Press book titles, including those by Steve…
Paul Krugman in his NYT column today tells why we are not getting serious energy policy legislation out of Washington, D.C. Krugman lines up with Andrew H., if you’ve been reading this blog regularly. Read his essay here. Krugman’s colleague Ross Douthat takes a different view on the consequences in his…
Kudos to the City of Lowell, Greater Merrimack Valley Convention and Visitor Bureau, Lowell Festival Foundation, Lowell National Historical Park, and National Council for Traditional Arts for once again being the prime movers behind an inspiring and joyful Lowell Folk Festival. The Sunday crowd was much smaller than yesterday’s, but it…
The popular Franco-American singer-songwriter Michele Choiniere of Vermont this afternoon at Boarding House Park dedicated her final song at the Lowell Folk Festival to Jack Kerouac because, she said, “He was a Franco-American, and he was from Lowell.” I missed her additional comments about the song and the title, but it…
I’ve been to every Folk Festival since the first National Folk Festival in Lowell in 1987, and the 2010 Saturday was as good as I’ve seen it—the talent, the street life, the audience size, the urban energy. I spent a lot of time at Boarding House Park with the UMass…
The Associated Press reported on President Obama’s comments about making progress on the national economic front, including the new financial regulations law. He also called on Congress to send him a bill that is intended to assist small businesses through tax credits. Looming over these steps forward, however, was the…