WASHINGTON — The success of Bernie Sanders’ insurgency is a marvel and an achievement. His showing is a mark of the anger and frustration felt by so many Americans over the abuses of capitalism that led to the crash of 2008. With the help of millions of voters, especially the young, he has broadened a […]
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Olympics become financial sinkhole for hosts
WASHINGTON — Brazil is suffering the worst economic slump in decades; its president may be thrown out of office; it’s contending with the zika virus. Now, to add to these indignities, come the huge subsidies to pay for this summer’s Olympics. The costs exceed $10 billion, with only a fraction to be covered by revenues […]
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Life in the U.S. has become a game of numbers
Numbers are how one keeps score. Those who engage in any competitive endeavor — business, sports, even weight loss — seek numbers to tell them how well they’re doing and how much better than how many other people. Tracking numbers also keeps us occupied and distracts us from the most concerning number of all, the […]
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Syrian death toll continues to rise
Some time this spring, the death toll in Syria’s grinding war surpassed 400,000. The number is an estimate. War is always chaotic, but Syria’s war is chaos incarnate. The government — the Assad dictatorship — attacks civilian neighborhoods with chemical weapons. ISIS, which still controls significant territory, razes captured towns and uses mass murder as […]
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The American truths that are lies
It was not enough just to kill Sam Hose. No, they had to make souvenirs out of him. Hose was an African-American man lynched by a mob of some 2,000 white women and men in 1899 near the town of Newman, Ga. They did all the usual things. They stabbed him, castrated him, skinned his […]
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Nation gripped by deep pessimism, cynicism
“If you won’t stand for something, you will fall for anything.” — quote attributed to numerous sources Historically, when our nation has transitioned from one way of life to another, there has usually been some optimism about what was to come. That was true at the time of the American Revolution and it was true […]
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Can’t blame Obama for Trump’s rise
WASHINGTON — Blaming President Obama for the rise of Donald Trump is popular among Republican leaders. They don’t want to take responsibility for the choices made by their own voters or their complicity in tolerating and even encouraging the extremism Trump represents. They also don’t want to face the fact that many Trump ballots were […]
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Trump sees government as little more than dealmaking
Prior to the 2012 election, Democrats had a theory: Republicans were in the grip of a “fever” that had led them to oppose and attempt to obstruct President Barack Obama at every turn. If Obama won a second term, the fever would break. President Obama himself floated the idea. It turned out to be completely […]
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Should U.S. apologize for Hiroshima?
The first flash came at 8:15 on a Monday morning. Eyewitnesses remember it as a bolt of soundless light as if the sun had somehow touched down to the Earth. And suddenly, Hiroshima was gone. The second flash came that Thursday morning at 11:02. Eyewitnesses recall two thumps — possibly the sound bouncing off the […]
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A tale of 26 towns, all of them named Farmington
With the advent of late spring in Maine, thoughts turn to vacation travel plans, or perhaps recollections of a special vacation taken at this time of year. Three years ago this month, Portland’s Peter L. Hall, a Farmington native, checked off an item on his bucket list: He visited all 26 communities in the country […]