Your letter in Tuesday’s Forum expresses your feeling of unfair treatment very clearly. You seem like a nice lady. That you identify youself as conservative puts you into a category with some people who are much less nice than you are. I regard those people as extreme radicals who are not really conservative any more, […]
Recent criticisms of Benicia’s government disturb me. Critical questioning is usually in good order, but it should be both fair and responsible. It should provide cover neither for ignorance nor mean-spirited partisanship. Experience puts me with Roger Straw more than with our “statistics graphing” gentleman and that fellow who takes his name to heart, imagining […]
Is it amusing that the common acronym for the U. S. Supreme Court, SCOTUS, is Latin for the Greek scotos, meaning original darkness characterizing the god, Erebus? There is a question of humor in much around us, today, but the humor may not be very funny. Anger and the indifference of self-satisfaction are bad […]
Most people learn by their teen years the difference between superficial politeness and genuine courtesy. Pro forma manners so often mask indifference or contempt. They let “actors” pose as considerate and respectful while conveying scorn by clues sometimes blatantly obvious, sometimes too subtle for the scorned person to notice. True courtesy is less merely respectful […]
Suddenly, Republican agenda is revealed in a new meaning for the party’s name: Republicanism now means, REplace the PUBLIC with AN ISM amounting to a false image and representation of that public sector and its interests which will be made totally and exclusively subservient to the private sector’s corporate interests! We don’t need to hear […]
–Via Robert M. Shelby, 3-15-11. [1868 txt wds] [<http://alstefanelli.wordpress.com/2011/03/10/about-people-who-vote-against-their-own-interests/#comments> ] This tough, truthful rant was forwarded to me by my old college room-mate, retired Professor W. M. Denevan, former Chairman of the Geography Department, U. of Wisconsin at Madison and student of the great Karl Sauer, now living north of Gualala, CA. It was forwarded […]
Ref: “The High Cost of Premature Babies” —(article) By Kevin Drum| in Mother Jones, Wed Mar. 9, 2011 <http://motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2011/03/high-cost-premature-babies> Here’s the worst: U.S. government agency people and executives of a big pharma corporation bedding down with each other to bilk the public in another place where it will hurt vulnerable people, including taxpayers, the most!–Namely, […]
The ancient Greek philosopher, Plato, once defined man as a featherless biped. He did so as a rhetorical exercise in minimal but sufficient definition. Diogenes came back at him with a plucked chicken and claimed it was Plato’s “man.” Obviously, Plato’s minimal definition was insufficient. Things are usually more than we say about them. They […]
A local radical writer who clearly supports our military, right-or-wrong, complains of the ACLU’s (as he sees it) anti-American, unpatriotic “attempt … to end drone aircraft attacks against Al Qaeda in Pakistan and other locations throughout the Middle East.” He seems to forget drones are also aimed at Taliban insurgents and their leaders. The writer […]
At first, I couldn’t decide whether it was a fly trying to get up my nose, a flea biting my ankle or a toy dog yapping and nipping at my heel. Shortly, I saw that it was my fellow citizen of Benicia and contributor of letters to the local newspaper’s Forum page: Neal Iacono, whining […]