Luckily for Barack Obama, news of improper shenanigans at the IRS stole attention from the week’s biggest story: that the President’s Justice Department had secretly seized call information from at least 20 phone lines belonging to Associated Press reporters, including personal cell phones and the main switchboard of the AP’s Washington bureau. While Obama thundered on about “inexcusable behavior” at the IRS, he said he would “make no apology” for his latest foray into Nixonian dirty tricks.
Most people are more concerned with money and power than privacy and freedom. Therefore the word “impeachment” was never uttered, not even by the most impolite members of the press.
America’s sense of outrage at the IRS fiasco is misplaced. The real scandal at the IRS is that they allow hundreds – thousands? – of 501 (c)4 non-profit organizations to receive tax-exempt status as “educational” organizations. What these groups really . . . → Read More: The War on Leakers
Originally posted April 1st, 2013
By Michael Konik
Some professor type at an East Coast university just presented a detailed analysis of how much the Iraq and Afghanistan wars will ultimately cost the American people, when you figure in healthcare costs for wounded and maimed veterans. And all the other stuff: bombs and radios and what have you. Supposedly the price tag will eventually be about $6 trillion. Or, $6,000,000,000,000, if you’re not into the whole brevity thing.
Six trillion dollars! It sounds like a lot of money, and it is. Our current annual budget — like, to run the whole country and keep our brave military protectors well fed — is around $3.8 trillion. So, yeah, it’s going to take some time to pay for these two wars. Maybe around thirty or forty years, unless we find soon another resource-rich nation we can annex, perhaps Mexico. Some economists predict that America won’t feel the full cost of these wars for . . . → Read More: No Cost Too High in the Fight for Freedom
Originally posted February 17th, 2013
By Michael Konik
This will sound ridiculous. This will sound a little funny, sort of strange, not quite right. Like one of those “Modest Proposal” type satires we’ve been publishing lately.
But this time we’re not kidding, not inverting meanings and uncovering absurdities. We’re serious.
Here in Los Angeles – and probably in most major cities – there’s a political push for a new sales tax, some of which, the electorate has been assured, will be used to hire more police officers. More public safety. More security for our precious children.
We will be voting NO on this tax, listed on the ballot as Proposition A.
Why? We don’t need more police officers. We need fewer police officers.
We need fewer protectors of the status quo. We need fewer guards for the property of the privileged classes. We need fewer dollars spent on crime symptoms and more on crime causes.
Originally posted February 10th, 2013
By Michael Konik
The nerve of these people!
We are outraged. We are livid. This kind of barbarity cannot be permitted in civilized society.
Mahmoud Shaaban is an “ultraconservative” Islamic cleric in Egypt. “Hard-line,” “orthodox” – whatever. In the name of his great religion, he and his fellow cleric Wagdi Ghoneim have issued fatwas (edicts) calling for the deaths of Egypt’s opposition leaders. Shaaban said on a recently aired TV show that political opponents of the President should be punished. By death.
The reason? According to the Mullahs, Egypt’s opposition leaders, including former Atomic Energy Commission chief Mohamed ElBaradei, are seeking to “bring down” a publicly elected leader, the deeply religious Mohamed Morsi.
Ergo: these political opponents deserve to be eliminated with extreme prejudice.
Composing “kill lists” without judicial oversight — without any oversight — is an offense to human decency. Who do these Islamic clerics think they are, deciding . . . → Read More: Those Ridiculous Clerics!
Originally posted February 3rd, 2013
By Michael Konik
Guns are not the problem. People are not the problem. Young people are the problem.
They don’t listen. They play awful video game simulations of mass murder. They shoot six-year-olds.
And no amount of background checks or ammo-clip restrictions will change that. There’s only one way to solve the gun situation, one way to bring peace and civility back to our public areas while also not trampling on our inalienable American right to bear arms (as outlined with great clarity in the 2nd Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America).
The maintenance of civil order in our fragile society rests on a rock solid foundation of family discipline. A child who disrespects his parents must be removed from society. Permanently. So that other children will see the importance of respecting their parents.
Originally posted October 28th, 2012
By Michael Konik
Allow us to describe a country for you: Prisoners detained without charges. Prisons operating outside the legal system. Limits on free speech. Limits on the Internet. Legitimately entitled voters prevented from casting ballots. Government sanctioned kidnappings. Witch hunts against political enemies. Torture.
China, right? Or is it Russia?
Actually, this description, reported in the Los Angeles Times, is of the notorious human rights abuser the United States of America.
It’s part of a 56-page report “On the Human Rights Situation in America,” about America’s heretofore unexamined recent history of human rights atrocities. The scathing report’s main problem is that it was authored by the Russian Foreign Ministry, whose credibility and human rights track record run concurrently (into the Moscow sewers). One should not take seriously the human rights abuse complaints of a government that imprisons teenaged girls for the crime of audacity, . . . → Read More: America and Human Rights Abuse
Originally posted August 26th, 2012
By Michael Konik
The phrase “legitimate rape” is now a part of the American lexicon thanks to William Todd Akin, a U.S. Representative from Missouri. Todd, as he prefers to be called, has served in Congress since 2001, and this year he won the Republican primary for the U.S. Senate seat in a crowded field of similarly qualified candidates.
In a show of civic pride, folks in Missouri are discussing a change of the state motto from “Show me!” to “We’ll vote for anyone!”
Todd Akin is actually a lot smarter than most people think. He shrewdly calculated that by espousing his astonishing ignorance of biology, anatomy and physiology he could deflect attention from his comb-over.
It worked. Now everyone’s talking about the legitimate rape phenomenon and not Akin’s hair.
What no one is discussing is that Akin’s views on abortion, which mirrors the Republican Party’s . . . → Read More: Legitimate Rape, Legitimate Abortion
Originally posted August 5th, 2012
By Michael Konik
I was young like you once. Don’t laugh. It seems impossible, I know. An old codger like me of 77! You probably can’t picture when I was only 47 and healthy, with all my own teeth and a libido that didn’t yet require boner pills.
Sure, that was three decades ago, and I look a lot different, what with the thinning hair, sloping shoulders, and cute little pot belly. But my memory is still sharp, even with all the weed I smoked. I remember perfectly what we were like 30 years ago, back in ’12, and I’m glad your professor asked you to do this project. I’m glad you’re talking to the older generation. Folks like me know what America was like back then, back in the time of Obama. The USA was different.
Apologies in advance if this gets all Orwellian right quickly. We try hard not to sound like a nut-job or Coast-to-Coast Radio conspiracy fetishist — is that redundant? — especially when examining the lengths some folks will go to control the lives of others, but this stuff is real, man.
Old George – or, Mr. Eric Blair, if you’re not into the whole brevity thing – coined the term “doublespeak” to describe a fictional phenomenon in his novel 1984. But we repeat: this stuff is real, man.
What’s in among the dictatorial set? The new Hot Trend in authoritarianism is controlling the future by not permitting dangerous thoughts about the future.
The urge to purge cuts across demographic categories. The crazy Muslims are just as wacko as the crazy Christians, and it’s not just benighted foreigners doing the oppressing, it’s benighted domestics, too.
Originally posted April 22nd, 2012
By Michael Konik
If you’re reading this essay on MichaelKonik.com, you know that this is a reliable place to find “me,” the me who shares his ideas with the world, whether or not any part of the world is interested. This is where I unilaterally invade my privacy, allowing strangers to read my mind, exposing my beliefs and my doubts, keeping very little secret. You want to know what I think about something? It’s pretty easy to know. My Thoughts are even searchable. Hiding is almost impossible when you’re trying to be unflinchingly honest.
Yet if you’re looking for me on Facebook, I’m not there.
There’s an official Michael Konik Author page, which serves as a publishing conduit for my Thoughts. Dozens – dozens! – of people “like” it. Facebook also offers several Michael Konik Community pages, the equivalent of digital flypaper, where people who are looking for me . . . → Read More: Free to Be Disconnected
Luckily for Barack Obama, news of improper shenanigans at the IRS stole attention from the week’s biggest story: that the President’s Justice Department had secretly seized call information from at least 20 phone lines belonging to Associated Press reporters, including personal cell phones and the main switchboard of the AP’s Washington bureau. While Obama thundered on about “inexcusable behavior” at the IRS, he said he would “make no apology” for his latest foray into Nixonian…
News comes from Dhaka, the capital city of Bangladesh, that a disastrous fire swept through a garment factory there, killing eight people. A factory fire in November killed more than 100.
The garment industry in Bangladesh is euphemistically called “loosely regulated,” so, regrettably, these things (fires and so forth) tend…
Were you aware that bottled water is “bad for the environment,” “bad for public water sources,” and “bad for your wallet”?
Neither were we! It’s pretty funny to think of something so obviously good – so amazing, when you think about it – as inherently evil, or something. Bottled water…
The commonly understood reason why terrorists wish to kill and maim Americans is because they hate our freedoms. That’s what’s behind all the civilian violence: they hate our freedoms. You can go ahead and enumerate all the freedoms the terrorists hate, but it doesn’t really matter which ones –freedom to…
The whole world is worried about North Korea. We’re not. We think locally. The area around which we can walk or ride our bike is our concern. We’re civic-minded that way.
Hollywood Boulevard is nearby. We walk on its sidewalks almost every day, often to access the subway, which serves…
Author James Goodale was chief counsel for the New York Times during the Nixon era. His new book, “Fighting for the Press: The Inside Story of the Pentagon Papers and Other Battles,” outlines our government’s pernicious (and ongoing) threat to media freedom. Some prescient authors get all the luck: Every morning it seems we’re greeted to [...]
