Originally posted June 16th, 2013
By Michael Konik
“I welcome that debate.” — President Barack Obama, reacting to the disclosure of a secret domestic surveillance program operating under his watch.
“I welcome that debate,” I said to my wife. She had just discovered that I’d been having — actually, that I am currently having and intend to continue having — an affair with one of the hot flexible chicks in my yoga class.
Some bitter friend of my wife’s knows the girl I’ve been cheating with, and she informed my wife by disclosing dozens of private emails, texts, and intimate photos that I thought were being held securely. It was quite embarrassing. I come off as a real jerk. It looks bad. Especially to my wife.
“You selfish, disgusting pig! This wasn’t a ‘mistake.’ This wasn’t a one-night stand with some stranger you met in Las Vegas. This was ongoing! You’ve . . . → Read More: I Welcome That Debate
We’re like every other patriotic American: when our beloved country is under attack, as it is at this very moment and every other moment of every day, we’re delighted to sacrifice our constitutional rights.
Whatever gets the job done, that’s our view. And if beating Islamic terrorists means being spied upon by our own government, well, then, sign us up. In the grand scheme of things – freedom versus a good night’s sleep undisturbed by Al Qaeda worries – it’s not a close call. It’s a bargain.
What else can we give up in exchange for peace of mind? Whatever it is, we’ll trade.
We didn’t know it for the past seven years, but we’ve already turned over our phone and Internet records to the National Security Agency, and look what happened! We were kept safe from bearded jihadis. So now what can we . . . → Read More: Freedom for Security: Let’s Trade!
The time we’re living in is being called the Technology Revolution. It’s given us personal computers and cell phones and devices that, we all agree, make our lives altogether better. Everything is more efficient, more connected. Things can be ordered to appear at your door, getting lost in your car is almost impossible, and you don’t have to wait a whole day (or even hours) to find out what a celebrity thinks about something.
But while life has become more “frictionless,” old-fashioned concerns like wages and buying power haven’t been helped by Tech. On the contrary, they’ve been hurt. Unlike the Industrial Revolution that preceded it, the Technology Revolution has not lifted the mass of humanity out of poverty.
The Technology Revolution has coincided with an extended period of American economic decline. It’s coincided with the systematic evisceration of the Middle Class. It’s coincided with a period of . . . → Read More: Tech Solutions
Great news, America! Despite decades of war fighting and tax cutting, and despite a national deficit of nearly $1 trillion, we’re not broke!
Well, we, the citizenry and its treasury, are collectively broke. But we, the collective earning power we, are most definitely not broke.
American corporations, those paragons of civic virtue and societal responsibility, have collectively stashed $1.7 trillion overseas. Apple, the greatest company ever, has about $145 billion in cash on hand, $102 billion of it parked in foreign banks. There’s an excellent reason our very best companies have all their money sitting overseas instead of here in America, where it might give the national economy a nice boost. By parking it in places like Ireland, rich corporations such as Apple – and Google, and just about all the rest of the biggies – avoid paying American taxes!
They’re very clever, these . . . → Read More: We’re Not Broke
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
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 to happen with alarming regularity. An entire building collapsed there not long ago, killing more than 1,000. It’s a delicate balance, isn’t it? Between protecting human life and encouraging business investment? You don’t want thousands of people dying every year in preventable accidents, but on the other hand you don’t want to add a few cents to the price of a finished t-shirt.
It’s only polite to take a moment to recognize the dead Bangladeshis. And it’s terribly impolite to call them “slaves,” since slaves don’t earn $1.80-a-day. Also, unlike slaves these Bangladeshis had a choice! So, . . . → Read More: Mourning the Real Victims of the Bangladesh Garment Factory Disasters
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 is, like, one of the greatest innovations of the last thirty years. Before bottled water was introduced in the marketplace, people had to drink out of taps, or “water fountains.” (This water was more or less free, but, hey, you get what you pay for.) Instead of having a conveniently disposable plastic bottle, people used to have to drink out of cups and thermoses and such, which, you can imagine, was very inconvenient.
Bottled water = convenient. And if that’s not a good enough reason to embrace a life-improving product, we can’t think of a better one.
Originally posted April 28th, 2013
By Michael Konik
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 assemble publicly with unmarried members of the opposite sex; freedom to participate in an electoral charade; freedom to watch nudity on television. The very concept of freedom is an affront to these heartless killers.
After the Boston Marathon bombs, there might be another reason worth considering, a reason that some unpatriotic thinkers have been suggesting since September 11, 2001.
Maybe terrorists don’t hate our freedoms. Maybe they hate our policies.
The surviving suspect in Boston indicated that his brother and he were outraged at U.S. involvement in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Other captured evildoers have indicated . . . → Read More: Why Terrorists Hate America
Originally posted April 14th, 2013
By Michael Konik
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 our neighborhood with a Hollywood & Highland stop. If you’ve not been to Hollywood & Highland, picture a summer-stock version of Times Square, with fewer lights, people and energy, but the same frantically commercial vibe, the same “souvenirs are mandatory” ethos.
The “Walk of Fame,” a sidewalk with inlaid pentagrams and the name of someone famous or formerly so, has a high weirdness-to-cheesiness ratio. But at certain spots, such as where Stevie Wonder’s star touches Miles Davis’s – right near that venerable Hollywood landmark Buffalo Wild Wings – you’d swear universal harmonic convergences are possible.
“I welcome that debate.” — President Barack Obama, reacting to the disclosure of a secret domestic surveillance program operating under his watch.
“I welcome that debate,” I said to my wife. She had just discovered that I’d been having — actually, that I am currently having and intend to continue having — an affair with one of the hot flexible chicks in my yoga class.
Some bitter friend of my wife’s knows the girl I’ve…
We’re like every other patriotic American: when our beloved country is under attack, as it is at this very moment and every other moment of every day, we’re delighted to sacrifice our constitutional rights.
Whatever gets the job done, that’s our view. And if beating Islamic terrorists means being spied…
The time we’re living in is being called the Technology Revolution. It’s given us personal computers and cell phones and devices that, we all agree, make our lives altogether better. Everything is more efficient, more connected. Things can be ordered to appear at your door, getting lost in your car is…
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…
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…
Finland’s Don Johnson Big Band is an ironically named collective of modern hip-hop artists. They’re not big and they’ve got nothing to do with the former star of “Miami Vice,” but they are a band. A funky one. With percussion and a flute-and-sax man. They’re extremely groovy and unabashedly weird — klezmer gangsta rap, anyone? The best [...]
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