The Frary Home Companion

By John Frary | Nov 17, 2009

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Recent Posts by John Frary

• A Democratic triumph?

  By John Frary - Jul 21
  Mr. Peter Beinart, a professional, habitual and incurable liberal Democrat, admits that his party is going to take a licking in November, but ...
  
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  The Thayne Ormsby I knew

  By John Frary - Jul 14
  I've given shelter to a number of strays over the years, not all feline. Some had pretty exotic personalities. All the same, I was surprised to ...
  

• Republican gubernatorial candidates make their pitch

  By John Frary - May 12
  The seven Republican competitors for nomination offer similar diagnoses of Maine's problems. All agree that our state's economic development is ...
  

• Care or catastrophe?

  By John Frary - Mar 31
  I spent all day yesterday gazing deeply into my crystal ball and am now prepared to prophesy. PelosiCare will result in longer wait times, fewer ...
  

• The mysteries of bipartisan shtick

  By John Frary - Mar 09
  "It's time to put an end to these partisan political games and get back to work." — Dan Pfeiffer, White House communications director. This ...
  

• A Hugo prophecy from Orono

  By John Frary - Mar 04
  A few years ago I was pottering around in my garden when Red Russ Christensen, Farmington's leading Bolshevik, toiling up Red Schoolhouse Road ...
  

• Complexity and nuance vs. 'lying, self-serving snakes'

  By John Frary - Feb 24
  Sen. Ted Kaufman (D-Del.), appearing on Fox 29 in Philadelphia, explains the problem: "Frankly, most Americans I talk to are really concerned with ...
  

• Obama as 'Bush Lite'

  By John Frary - Feb 03
  One of Barack Obama's very first acts as president was to announce the closing of the Guantanamo Bay prison. The first anniversary of this ...
  

• Colleges in decline

  By John Frary - Jan 27
  In my experience, the public reports and pronouncements of academic conferences, commissions, committees, task forces and workshops never, ever, ...
  

• Across the board and over the cliff

  By John Frary - Jan 20
  Here's the problem: You have just retired. Your social security, pension and savings income is 10 percent below the salary to which you have grown ...
  

• Forgetting socialism

  By John Frary - Jan 13
  Let me state my fundamental view at once. Socialism is to politics as coprophilia is to sex, a weird intellectual perversion which I find incompreh...
  

• Unchartered territory

  By John Frary - Jan 06
  Legislation to allow charter schools in Maine was first proposed in 1997. Nothing happened. In July 2003 the Charter School Study Committee of the ...
  

• Time for a holiday from hate?

  By John Frary - Dec 23
  The Washington Post columnist, Church of Obama deacon and faithful servant of the Democratic Party E.J. Dionne has let the wildcat out of the bag ...
  

• The man who would be king

  By John Frary - Dec 15
  You don't have to search very long, or hard, to find a person right here in Farmington, Maine who has never read a book, or even a page, of the ...
  

• Do you have 'faith' in government?

  By John Frary - Dec 09
  Forty-five years ago I read a campaign speech by Lyndon Johnson in which he called upon the voters to have "faith" in their government. That is ...
  

• Tune in, turn on, drop out?

  By John Frary - Nov 24
  The Maine Dropout Prevention Summit at UM Orono July 24 and 25 drew a mob of dropout prevention coordinators, principals, summer principals, ...
  

• Fat pride — A huge diversity deficit?

  By John Frary - Nov 19
  This month's election of Chris Christie as governor of New Jersey represents a kind of breakthrough and an important victory for Republicans in ...