Never mind the bears in Uxbridge. Massachusetts is three days away from the "Arrival of Brood XIV Magicicadas In Massachusetts," according to the website Massachusetts Cicadas. Mashpee seems to be […]
Almost as adorable as tribbles!
Posted inPolitics, The Download
Ted Kennedy as local hero
CommonWealth contributor Dan Kennedy has an unsentimental appreciation in the Guardian on what Sen. Ted Kennedy (no relation) means to residents of Massachusetts, where he’s a lot more than a […]
Posted inThe Download, Uncategorized
America is “right of center”
"McCain sees right-of-center nation as he moves against Obama" is the headline of an AP story, flagged by the Drudge Report, that begins: WASHINGTON (AP) – Republican John McCain’s game […]
Posted inPolitics, The Download
Is Menino sticking out his neck for Hillary?
The Boston Globe’s Political Intelligence blog is reporting today that nearly 50 Massachusetts supporters of the pro-choice group NARAL have signed a letter asking that the organization retract its recent […]
Posted inPolitics, The Download
In all fairness, Weymouth didn’t burn down during those five days
After retiring as mayor of Weymouth this January, David Madden returned to his old job as fire chief and served all of five days before retiring again. (The town replaced […]
Posted inEconomy, The Download
Revenue Dept. says film tax credit could cost Mass. millions
From CommonWealth editor Bruce Mohl: The Massachusetts Revenue Department says the state’s 25 percent film tax credit would not come close to paying for itself in terms of generating new […]
Posted inPolitics, The Download
What about Snowe?
Survey USA has released 17 different polls on how well John McCain and Barack Obama would do in Pennsylvania with different running mates. Not surprisingly, Obama does best when paired […]
Posted inPolitics, The Download
Dueling landslides by Clinton and Obama
The New York Times Book Review has a piece on the "clustering" of people with similar political views. The Big Sort, by Bill Bishop and Robert G. Cushing, explains (in […]
Posted inThe Download, Transportation
“Flip book” subway ads old news in Boston but a big deal in L.A.
The Los Angeles Times has a story on subway billboards that appear as videos to the passengers gliding by them: On Tuesday, commercial messages on mass transit in the Southland […]
Posted inEnvironment, Health Care, The Download
Night Shift (spoilers for those about to have extended hospital stays)
You have good reason to be afraid of hospitals in the middle of the night, suggests an article in the latest New England Journal of Medicine. Dr. David Shulkin, CEO […]
Posted inThe Download, Transportation
Why can’t we be more…European
Bashing Europeans — especially the French — for going soft on war in Iraq became a popular US pastime in the immediate post-9/11 era. French fries were renamed "freedom fries." […]
Posted inThe Download, Uncategorized
Vice-presidential picks don’t matter
At Bloomberg.com, Al Hunt puts forth an impossible-to-prove theory as pundit wisdom:Over the past 50 years, 17 men and one woman have been chosen by the major parties to run […]
Posted inPolitics, The Download
Elaboration, please: Sexist attacks on Hillary
The Boston Globe’s Joan Vennochi has a typically clear-eyed column on the refusal by many of Hillary Clinton’s female supporters to concede the race for the Democratic presidential nomination. But […]
Posted inPolitics, The Download
Elitist Republicans, rube Democrats
Over the past few decades, Democratic presidential candidates have done increasingly well in urban areas and Republicans have strengthened their hold over rural areas. The map below shows the major […]
Posted inPolitics, The Download
Obama’s rural peaks and valleys
As other bloggers have noted (see Al Giordano), Barack Obama’s weakness among rural voters seems most pronounced along the Appalachian Mountains, though the map below suggests that the anti-Obama region […]
Posted inEconomy, The Download
Tax breaks and transparency in Quebec
New Brunswick Business Journal columnist David Campbell notes the reputation of Québec as a "bad boy" in terms of stealing jobs from other provinces (and, presumably, the United States) by […]
Posted inPolitics, The Download
State of the Race: May 15
The Boston Phoenix’s Steven Stark says that if the presidential election were held today, Barack Obama and John McCain would each get 269 electoral votes, throwing the election into the […]
Posted inPolitics, The Download
Over?
The consensus in the mainstream media is that Hillary Clinton lost any chance for the Democratic presidential nomination yesterday, thanks to a big defeat in North Carolina and only a […]
Posted inThe Download, Uncategorized
Meta-post: Temporary lull in blogging
Monday, April 28, 2008 Sorry for the relatively light blogging over the past week. We are now in overtime mode at CommonWealth magazine putting together our special issue on the […]
Posted inPolitics, The Download
No exit (or, the sitcom campaign)
What more to say about Pennsylvania? The Democratic race has become a sitcom, in which all the stock characters — the sassy grandma, the dumb jock, etc. — go through […]
Posted inPolitics, The Download
Update: Democratic primary vote in the 10 regions
I’ve added the Pennsylvania results to the chart showing how Clinton and Obama have fared in our 10 political regions. For the first time, Obama leads in four regions, […]
Posted inPolitics, The Download
Conflict of interest: Where you stand depends on where your state legislature sits
The National Conference of State Legislatures features a good daily round-up of news from the state capitals, and today there are two good pieces about conflicts of interest among state […]
Posted inEconomy
What works
LOCAL GROWERS COMPETE IN COLLEGE CAFETERIAS It used to be a source of frustration in small towns in western and central Massachusetts that the contract for school milk would go […]
Posted inArts and Culture, Uncategorized
Your town, USA
walk into a bookstore almost anywhere in America and you’ll find a shelf full of thin paperback books with distinctive sepia-toned covers. Light on text, heavy on photos, numbingly similar […]