Diggapedia

Dead beat dad Joe Walsh “The most important amendment in that Bill of Rights is the Second Amendment,” Walsh said, sound every the concealed carry enthusiast.  “It protects every other amendment. It is the last line of defense between us and our government.” Really? I am not a gun advocate, but I’m thinking a sane non-pandering right minded balanced thinking individual would choose from: ·          1 st Amendment: I guess freedom of the press, speech, and religion would be number 1.   After all it is the 1 st Amendment. ·          4 th Amendment: I guess protecting citizens against improper and illegal search and seizure isn’t important to a Tea Partier since he can simply shoot anyone he comes to search. ·          13 th Amendment: Abolishing slavery.   Enough said. ·          19 th Amendment: Women can vote...

The challenge to the third of three new Kansas anti-abortion laws was thrown out today by U.S. District Judge Wesley Brown. The law originally took effect July1st and prohibits insurance companies from offering abortion coverage as part of their general health plans, except when a woman's life is at risk. Those who want abortion coverage would have to buy supplemental policies, known as riders, covering only abortion.      The ACLU challenged the new state law on the grounds that the new law was imposing further obstacles for woman to get an abortion.   Supporters of the insurance restrictions for abortion argue that people who oppose abortion shouldn't be forced to pay for such coverage in a general health plan. The ACLU also argues that the law is discriminatory because men can buy a general health plan for all of their reproductive needs. The fact is Governor Sam ‘Every Sperm is Sacred’ Brownback, the evolution denier, is showing once again what is wrong with Ka...

The proposed amendment to the Mississippi   constitution defining the term personhood as "The term 'person' or 'persons' shall include every human being from the moment of fertilization, cloning or the functional equivalent thereof” is a dangerous precedent setting definition.   These right wing social conservatives are now equating an embryo with a person.   Clearly this is an attempt to ban abortion in any form or matter.   Jon Stewart is right, it’s not the politicians; it’s the electorate.   Did you know moment: the State of Mississippi has never officially ratified the 13 th Amendment abolishing slavery. Sarah Palin puts on a Star of David when she visited New York City, Michele Bachmann goes all Yiddish with some Chootspah, and now we have a video of Rick Perry dancing with some rabbis at a menorah lighting.   Do me a favor Evangelical politicians, chose another people because the Chosen people don’t want the attention.   Now I better not see Ri...

1 st anniversary is paper.    Ironic as it is a paperless activity. Why diggapedia? Short answer:   Purely as a cathartic pressure relief valve.   I was getting fed up with what I was seeing on TV and disgusted in what I was reading in the print and e-media,   and felt that I needed some avenue and vehicle to vent my opinions, frustrations, observations, and more opinions.   Knowing how sensitive people are about politics and religion on facebook, four out of five dentists defriend someone because of political postings, I turned to the blogosphere.   As a complete neophyte I set up http://diggapedia.blogspot.com/ without a clue regarding the how of blogging.     I also moved a lot of my political commentary to Twitter, I feed blog posts to the Twitter account and feed my tweets to my blog page in some sort of Excel circular Dante’s inferno function… what was I saying?   Oh yeah, I like Twitter too, but as anyone who knows me will attes...

Tough stretch for gold prices confirming again that gold is not liquid and when it is all said and done, people need dollars.   Now the question is whether we are headed for a serious commodity correction.   This week’s get a life shout out goes to the group One Million Moms, a project of the American Family Association.   These uptight twits are protesting Ben & Jerry’s new Ice Cream flavor Schweddy Balls, a play on the hilarious SNL sketch featuring Alec Baldwin as Pete Schweddy.   Hey Moms if you want to protest something, why don’t you protest dead beat dad Tea Party congressman Joe Walsh of Illinois.   Do you need further evidence that President Obama is as big a friend to Israel as any of his predecessors?   Look no further than the recent arms sale to the Jewish State.   Obama approved the sale of GBU-28 Hard Target Penetrators or bunker busters, a request that Israel originally made to President Bush in 2005.     What would Israel...

Thanks to the Magnificent Moshe for pointing out that PLO President Abbas made a serious mistake in his submission to the UN for statehood.   Abbas has refused to acknowledge the existence of Israel as a Jewish State because that would nullify the Palestinian plans to establish a presence in Israel through their much sought after ‘Right of Return” for all Arabs forcefully removed from Israel in 1947-48.   Abbas’ problem is he specifically referenced UN Resolution 181 aka The Palestine Mandate as part of the Palestinian application to be recognized as a nation; 181 specifically unequivocally, and unambiguously mandates a two state solution one Arab and one Jewish.   So there you go, the Palestinian Authority wants a settlement based on Resolution 181 which ends the right of return debate. Watched Fareed Zakaria’s interview with Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan today and was left with the following: (1) Erdogan believes Iran should be free to pursue nuclear aspirations becaus...

Economist Paul Krugman has every right to let out a big “I told you so!”   As the world heads to a likely double dip global recession, Krugman was the first to sound the alarm that the stimulus was too small and relied too much on tax cuts.   He further warned that deficit cutting and austerity measures were premature and would kill the recovery just like what happened in the 1930’s.   And you may ask yourself, well how did I get here? Imagine this ominous possibility: consumer and business to business demand crashes and the globe enters a second recession at the same time another round of Arab dissidence increases but this time it hits hard in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Kuwait while global food shortages of corn, soya, and rice worsen.   This perfect storm will lead to potential stagflation that will make the 70’s look mild.   The supply shocks in fuel and food test the mettle of the world’s central bankers and leaders. Listening to the Rush Limbaugh show in th...

Israelis do not want an independent Palestinian state.      Fox news, Perry, Romney, and the rest of the conservative movement will tell you that Israelis oppose Palestinian Statehood.   Far from it.   In a recent Jerusalem Post, a right leaning daily, poll nearly 70% of Israelis said they welcome an independent Palestinian state.   The ConJob being played by the right is to make President Obama look anti-Israeli. Ronald Reagan never raised taxes and Obama will raise Capital Gains Tax rates because he is a tax and spend Democrat.   In reality President Reagan raised the Capital Gains tax rate for the highest earners from 20% to 33% when he realized the deficit he created was untenable.   George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton dropped the rate to 28%, only to see W drop it to 20% and then 15%.   President Obama is only asking to bring it back to the sound days of Clinton.   Fox and its millions of fact-challenged watchers love to say that 49% ...

Let us be honest with ourselves: Israel is surrounded by neighbors that have waged repeated wars against it. Israel’s citizens have been killed by rockets fired at their houses and suicide bombs on their buses. Israel’s children come of age knowing that throughout the region, other children are taught to hate them. Israel, a small country of less than eight million people, look out at a world where leaders of much larger nations threaten to wipe it off of the map. The Jewish people carry the burden of centuries of exile and persecution, and fresh memories of knowing that six million people were killed simply because of who they are. Those are facts. They cannot be denied.  - President Obama at the United Nations General Council September 21, 2011

The latest trend from Republican Governors is mandatory Drug testing for any person receiving welfare and unemployment benefits.   Talk about class warfare!   I guess Lou Reed summed it up best: “ Give me your hungry, your tired your poor I'll piss on 'em That's what the Statue of Bigotry says.”   It never ceases to amaze me that during tough times people will seek to punish those that we fear and loathe.   Republican governors in Arizona, Florida, and most recently South Carolina are doing just that.   Drug testing welfare recipients only benefits the company that wins the drug testing contract.   Deny them benefits helps society how when they end up in jail for some crime? Of course South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, the Palmetto State Palinista, recently took the cake when regarding the Savannah River nuclear site, she commented: “[of] everybody they interviewed,  half of them failed a drug test."  Haley went on to explain why she is so stupi...

Tea Party Congressman John Fleming (R-LA) was whining to MSNBC’s Chris Jansing about President Obama’s tax plan that will increase taxes on investment income for the nation’s rich.   Fleming, is a business owner, so Jansing asked, “If you have to pay more in taxes, you would get rid of some of those employees?” Fleming responded by saying that while his businesses made $6.3 million last year, after you “pay 500 employees, you pay rent, you pay equipment, and food,” his profits “a mere fraction of that” — “by the time I feed my family, I have maybe $400,000 left over.”   Oh my, how is the poor Fleming family going to survive? Arizona’s Maricopa County Sheriff and media hog Joe Arpaio knows the best defense is a good offense.   So as his reputation and legitimacy is being torn down one block at a time, he does what any cornered rat would do: he bites back.   Facing internal investigations for misallocation of funds and failure to pursue cases, a federal civil rights in...

Item #1, the Arab Spring has produced a short summer and I fear Winter is Coming Ned Stark.   Tunisia, the first of the Arab revolutions, is still stuck in the crossroads between the stability from the military and the liberal secular/Islamist revolutionaries.   One thing for certain, everybody fears the Islamist movements.   News regarding Tunisia has been pushed from the back pages to oblivion as bigger and potentially more dangerous events unfold in Libya, Egypt, and Syria. Item #2, make no mistake about it, the Egyptian military is in control and after granting the new revolutionary council some space to form a new constitution, the military has resumed some of the same suppression tactics of the Mubarak government.   Is that a step backward:   Not at all.   The recent attacks on the Israeli embassy and the general lawlessness of the Sinai have demonstrated that the liberal secular revolutionaries are losing out the Islamists and the Muslim Brotherhood....

The link at the bottom of this posting is for a recent CNN/ORC Poll including specific questions regarding social issues.   The results are mixed: some shocking and some less so.   Let’s get started: 1)       Should we continue to have a Department of Education?   74% say yes while, while 24% say it should be eliminated completely.   Those that oppose the DoE are likely Tea Party members and social conservatives who believe in greater state autonomy and oppose federal education guidelines.   As for Diggapedia, we believe if you leave educational guidelines and content to the states we will end up with creationism in Kansas science classes with local activist school boards having too much power and influence.   While standardized testing is a key component of education, it cannot be a single plank in the platform; we need to go after the learning and educational process at the national level.   Every country ranked ahe...

As I am speeding off to Israel for another whirlwind trip, it seems circumstances involving the tiny democratic Jewish state cast in a sea of Islamic hate are changing ever again.   With the Palestinian Authority (PA) pushing for a vote in both the UN Security Council and UN General Assembly, Israel is facing increased isolation.   Even with strong US support and potential vetoes from Germany, Italy, and the Czech Republic, PA statehood, as granted by the U.N. is inevitable.   The question is exactly how the General Council phrases the statehood.   Will it include the right of return, borders, status of Jerusalem, and recognition of Israel?   Then there’s the increasing rift between Israel and Turkey stemming from the Turkish flotilla Mavi Marmara incident.    This rapid breakdown is a confluence of the expansion of the Tayyip Erdogan Islamic Turkish AKP party at the expense of the Turkish military and the increasing shift to the right of the Israeli g...

Where were you on September 10, 2001?   What were you worried about?   What occupied your thoughts, worries, hopes, and dreams?   What were you excited about?   What were you interested in? September 10, 2001 was a Monday. Cindy and I were still laughing about the recent visit from the Three Amigas: Leah, Roseanne, and Valerie, and the adventures of Sedona, a certain screen door, a forgotten carrot cake, and breakfast for champions.   We were also dealing with a 1995 Chevy Blazer that seemed to be on its last legs, surviving our first Arizona summer, thinking about what to remodel in the house, dealing with the concept of a Home Owners Association, thinking that my best shot at a World Series game maybe with the fledgling Arizona Diamondbacks, and looking forward to a visit from Scott, Lori, and the boys. But what about America?   We knew nothing about a tiny town in Pennsylvania called Shanksville; Guantanamo Bay was the setting for A Few Good Men, and we ...

Here are key elements of President Obama’s $447Billion American Jobs Act: EMPLOYEE PAYROLL TAX HOLIDAY Obama is proposing a $175 billion one-year extension and expansion of the employee payroll tax holiday that would halve the tax rate to 3.1 percent in 2012.   While this will put further burden on the long term solvency of the Social Security Trust Fund, this short term spending versus long term deficit reduction is exactly the type of trade off we need to do.   That being said, will this tax cut really be stimulative or will the extra money in pockets go to paying down consumer debt.   EMPLOYER PAYROLL TAX HOLIDAY Obama is seeking $65 billion to encourage small businesses to hire more workers. This includes halving employer payroll taxes to 3.1 percent for the first $5 million of a company's wage bill in 2012, which the administration says will reach 98 percent of small businesses. He also wants a complete payroll tax holiday for increasing the size of the payroll by u...

Let’s start with Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, who sponsored a bill threatening to cut off funding to the UN if that body votes to grant statehood to the Palestinian Authority.   Now, I am the first person to line up and defend Israel and I do not believe that a Palestinian state with Hamas in a position of power or influence is acceptable.   However, threatening to withhold funding is like the 8 year old who doesn’t like the game anymore and threatens to take his ball and go home.   Does she think her threat will sway Estonia, Venezuela, Benin, or Algeria?   Does she think that all the UN thinks about is the Israel/Palestinian situation?   She is willing to cut off funds to help starving children in African or fight tuberculosis in South America?   This “you’re either with us or against us” empty threat rhetoric may make you feel tough, but it is far from effective. The above notwithstanding, here are the ...