Category Archives: Politics

American Malaise, the U.S. Malady! 240 —Robert M. Shelby, 10-1-14. [1020 txt wds]

This is being written from my wit’s end. It feels as if I write from the middle of Bedlam. These United States of America have become a madhouse. To some degree they always were, but, in the last thirty years, insanity has worsened acutely, dramatically, exponentially. Today we are poised in a moment of calm […]

Correct name?: Carbon Death Cult! 237 —Robert M. Shelby, 9-27-14. [511 txt wds]

Quite a number of otherwise intelligent citizens here in Benicia take so limited a view of life in this world that they mistake personal, near-term gain for lasting, universal good. To shore up a personal interest in the corporate carbon-fuel complex, they latch it on to community benefit, as if the town’s finances justify playing […]

A whimper, not a bang. 235 –Robert M. Shelby, 9-13-14. [335 txt wds]

In view of the legislative charade in this week’s Senate session on amending the U.S. Constitution to overturn Citizens United, I shudder at the travesty of its fanfare and abject failure. This is so deeply distressing I feel physically sickened. 
 (1) Our whole political life plays musical chairs on deck of the SS Leviathan, […]

The sorrows of “worthless.” –Robert M. Shelby, 7-19-11. [1065 txt wds]

“Attempting to debate with a person who has abandoned reason is like giving medicine to the dead.”  –Thomas Paine. Unless they can recognize what words actually mean in given instances, you cannot reason with them meaningfully. Many people exercise pseudo-reasoning based on clouds of loose association instead of by means of clear terms relating to […]

Dots connect as smoke clears! –Robert M. Shelby, 11-1-10. [211 txt wds]

For several weeks I’ve exchanged sporadic emails with a local real-estate & loan agent. His Tea Party advocacy has been astonishingly intense. He has vacillated erratically between defense and attack modes. It scrambled both his presentation and grammar to the point of seeming at times unhinged. At last, maybe I understand why he seemed to […]

Working Together For The Good? –Robert M. Shelby, 10-17-10 [269 txt wds]

Dennis Lund (Benicia Herald Forum, 10-17-10) is so slick he can use honest reporting of an  interview with Rep. George Miller to work covert purpose. He makes himself look fair while knowing full well his Republican readers will view Miller’s statements through screens of reactionary bias that convert them to the cynical stuff they expect […]

Unmasking “Tea Party Patriots”–R.M. Shelby, 8-10/12-14-10 [574 txt wds]

During every national election cycle, lately, I feel like Sisyphus all over again, trying to roll that great stone uphill, the stone of public, mass-ignorance and misidentification, dysinformation and brain-damage that results from apathy and the Con-servative Big Lie Machine that selectively distorts or falsifies the facts about nearly everything from popular opinion to the […]