Diggapedia

He’s baaaaaack.  Yes after months of personally imposed sequestration, Digg is back.  The last few months of inane absurdity by the media, government, and the general public has brought me back.  It’s not about you, it’s about me and my need for catharsis.  Now, let’s hit the pressure relief valve: Ebola: Any disease with no known cure and a mortality rate approaching 70% can be frightful.  But it is not easily transmitted.  If it were, the dozens of people who interacted with Thomas Eric Duncan before he died would also have contracted the disease.  The calls to ban flights from West Africa are a panic-driven response as there are NO direct flights from the hardest hit nations in West Africa.  Should we ban flights from Brussels, London, Paris, Frankfurt too?  These restrictions have never worked in the past.  To  combat the disease, WHO states “ Community engagement is key to successfully controlling outbreaks. Good outbre...

A famous quote in Shakespeare’s The Tempest and a colloquialism to describe today’s fiscal policy impasse.   And while pollsters take polls to find out who the uninformed ill-informed and often misinformed public blames for the government shutdown and the media rushes to share these shiny new data sets with the very same public, we are stuck in neutral with a sputtering engine.   I refuse to believe that our sclerotic government is at its worst right now, not when you look at the first hundred years of our nation’s history, and anyone who compares today’s situation to the Civil War has stretched credibility.   No today is bad, but not as bad as the ratings searching media and talking heads would like you to believe.   No, we just need to deal with these devils. These usual suspects: For starters, the mainstream media, especially the beltway brand that is more interested in playing the blame game and deciding which party or politician is winning or losing. ...

This is by no means an expansive review of the 2012 political year.   Nor is it a top ten list, as every cable news station and talk radio show has created their lists and checked them twice.   Instead, here are my thoughts on what was the political year. Let me start by saying that political tricks and shenanigans are like most movies and television shows: there is very little original material or innovation.   Pick any time in American History   and you will find the same wheeling and dealing, the same attack pieces, the same gamesmanship, the same special interests, and the same political manipulations.   In 2012 we were worried that the Citizens United decision would cause such an influx of special interests’ money that and that government of the people, by the people, for the people would no longer exist.   Irrespective of Citizens United, our government is unduly influenced by special interests and their lobbyists.   Every industry spends ...