Seriously, “intellectual curiosity” is said to be one of the traits corporate America values in prospective employees. This precious nose gold of alleged wisdom — straight from the nostrils of the career help industry, always ready to dispense advice on how to survive make it in America.
The money quote (no link):
Intellectual curiosity (57%) is, fittingly, a curious trait for Harris, who says she generally advises clients to tightly edit the “hobbies and interests??? sections of their resumes. “I’d imagine that in looking for intellectual curiosity employers are looking for two things,??? she says. “The ability to problem solve and the ongoing dedication to learning new technologies or solutions that will continue to advance in the changing workplace.??? Employers are asking themselves whether new hires will be with the company for the long term, she says. An employee who will grudgingly adopt a new database is not as attractive as one who is truly passionate about learning new things.
Yeah, intellectual curiosity really describes what one needs to handle databases in corporate America.
The e-mail is quite something, something like the really long speeches of aggravation and whine the characters throw at each other in Atlas Shrugged when Rand stokes up the ranting about making successful business from the sinews of the mind and heart, while the moochers are doing everything to bring it all down.
However, let me share a few facts that might help you decide what is in your best interest.The current administration and members of the press have perpetuated an environment that casts employers against employees. They want you to believe that we live in a class system where the rich get richer, the poor get poorer. They label us the “1%” and imply that we are somehow immune to the challenges that face our country. This could not be further from the truth. Sure, you may have heard about the big home that I’m building. I’m sure many people think that I live a privileged life. However, what you don’t see or hear is the true story behind any success that I have achieved.
I started this company over 42 years ago. At that time, I lived in a very modest home. I converted my garage into an office so I could put forth 100% effort into building a company, which by the way, would eventually employ you. We didn’t eat in fancy restaurants or take expensive vacations because every dollar I made went back into this company. I drove an old used car, and often times, I stayed home on weekends, while my friends went out drinking and partying. In fact, I was married to my business — hard work, discipline, and sacrifice. Meanwhile, many of my friends got regular jobs. They worked 40 hours a week and made a nice income, and they spent every dime they earned. They drove flashy cars and lived in expensive homes and wore fancy designer clothes. My friends refinanced their mortgages and lived a life of luxury. I, however, did not …
Just think about this – most of you arrive at work in the morning and leave that afternoon and the rest of your time is yours to do as you please. But not me- there is no “off” button for me …
Now, the economy is falling apart and people like me who made all the right decisions and invested in themselves are being forced to bail out all the people who didn’t. The people that overspent their paychecks suddenly feel entitled to the same luxuries that I earned and sacrificed 42 years of my life for …
You see, I can no longer support a system that penalizes the productive and gives to the unproductive. My motivation to work and to provide jobs will be destroyed, and with it, so will your opportunities. If that happens, you can find me in the Caribbean sitting on the beach, under a palm tree, retired, and with no employees to worry about.
Signed, your boss,
David Siegel
Read the whole thing.
It’s from a “boss,” the reporter informs, who has a “villa” called “Versailles” where “[the] elevators are going in and they’re preparing to put in the marble.”
Obama! Redistribution! He’s looking funny at me! I deeply resent it! Class warfare! Commies! I’ll retire and fire you all if you don’t vote for the billionaire!
I’ll fire your ass and go to Grand Cayman, I tell ya!
This morning Ted Nugent accused the Obama administration of treason and referred to them as “enemies of America.” Tonight, the controversial Washington Times columnist and National Rifle Association board member will be the subject of a Discovery Channel special promoting “an inside look at gun culture” through his eyes.
“FUN” isn’t quite the word I’d use to describe anything Nugent. And it would be interesting to interview Discovery channel bigwigs over Nugent calling the administration “enemies of America” and accusing the president of “treason” right after advertising his show on “gun culture” on their network. Nugent knows who reads his words and he stops just short of advocating armed attack on the president and his administration.
Earlier this year Nugent received a visit from the US Secret Service after he issued public comments at an NRA convention appearing to threaten the president.
What is sort of depressing is the way Discovery’s presenting the special, and Nugent, as “a strong and vocal advocate for guns, hunting and all things America.??? I wasn’t aware that denigrating women in public life and engaging in violent fantasies about people you disagree with politically, both staples of Nugent’s rhetorical and on-stage arsenal, counted as “all things American.??? Nugent may declare, in promotional material for the show that appears on Discovery’s website that “Our American Dream is measured in ballistics.??? I’m not sure Discovery realizes how crabbed and depressing that formulation is. It would be unattractive for Discovery to work with Nugent under any circumstances, but if the network is going to do a special on him, it would be nice if they could find their way to a more limited characterization of him …
Actually, the modern Republican Party has made denigrating women, always famous leaders of the Democratic Party, and “engaging in violent fantasies about people you disagree with politically” a common hobby for many Americans. The Ted Nugent, or Psychopath Vote, is a strong constituent of the Tea Party/GOP.
The Molotov cocktail was named after Vyacheslav Molotov, the Soviet foreign minister during the 1950s. It is a general term used to describe improvised incendiary devices.
The Molotov cocktail, contrary to the beliefs of some US news ninnies, was used in World War II and a bit before, getting its name in the Russo-Finnish conflict, as described in William L. Shirer’s “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.”
This came at the end of a story on the ridiculous gone real — how a kid’s magazine — think Highlights for Children, only Tunisian — put the above how-to for fire bombs in its current issue.
The editor was compelled to apologize for his lapse of judgment on television.
Perhaps they will give him a public whipping, it not obviously being an issue of the Tunisian edition of MAD.
Morons are much cheaper than a dime a dozen worldwide. Stan Lee, who — overall — always believed in setting a good example for young readers, if he’s seen it, must be appalled.
In a post titled ‘James Bond’s Dry Erase Marker,’ hotel hacker Matthew Jakubowski [demonstrated] how anyone can build this pocket-sized device which will open the lock on an estimated 4 million hotel rooms.
‘I guess we wanted to show that this sort of attack can happen with a very small concealable device,’ says Jakubowski …
The device exploits a vulnerability in Onity locks, a cheap lock used on millions of hotel room doors.
Onity’s site boasts their locks are used in 22,000 hotel worldwide.
He guesses “we wanted to show,” did he? Was he not sure? Or did “they” just kinda accidentally coincidentally develop a jimmy to get into hotel rooms?
Boy, who knows what you could do in the service of mankind with a box of these and a crew on the evening of the BCS National Championship Game in Miami this bowl season!
Amid a chart packed with erotica and romance, novelist Ray Gorham cracked our Self-Published Bestsellers List this week with a $1.99 thriller [77 Days in September] about an electromagnetic pulse attack (EMP) on the United States.
On a Friday afternoon before Labor Day, Americans are getting ready for the holiday weekend, completely unaware of a long-planned terrorist plot about to be launched against the country. Kyle Tait is settling in for his flight home to Montana when a single nuclear bomb is detonated 300 miles above the heart of America. The blast, an Electro-Magnetic Pulse (EMP), destroys every electrical device in the country, and results in the crippling of the power grid, the shutting down of modern communications, and bringing to a halt most forms of transportation.
Kyle narrowly escapes when his airplane crashes on take-off, only to find himself stranded 2,000 miles from home in a country that has been forced, from a technological standpoint, back to the 19th Century …
“Well, it’s over. Or almost over, thank God. It looks like Obama will probably win, which I guess is good news, compared to the alternative – a Mitt Romney presidency would have felt like four straight years of waking up with a naked Lloyd Blankfein sitting on your face.”
“A decision that in reality takes one or two days of careful research to make is somehow stretched out into a process that involves two years of relentless, suffocating mind-warfare, an onslaught of toxic media messaging directed at liberals, conservatives and everyone in between that by Election Day makes every dinner conversation dangerous and literally divides families.”
Pretty much, although it doesn’t get at the huge splits and chasms that exist between the tribes of America.
I lost a friend recently because he and his upper class pals could not stop harping about the evil of the income tax, the 47 percent of the country — lazy moochers without the talent or work ethic to survive without entitlements — got out of paying it and how food stamps were bad.
A woman from Los Angeles who was a tree hugger, a liberal Democrat, and an anti-hunter, purchased a piece of timberland near Colville, WA .
There was a large tree on one of the highest points in the tract. She wanted a good view of the natural splendor of her land, so she started to climb the big tree. As she neared the top she encountered a spotted owl that attacked her. In her haste to escape, the woman slid down the tree to the ground and got many splinters in her crotch.
In considerable pain, she hurried to a local ER to see a doctor. She told him she was an environmentalist, a democrat, and an anti-hunter and how she came to get all the splinters. The doctor listened to her story with great patience and then told her to go wait in the examining room and he would see if he could help her.
She sat and waited three hours before the doctor reappeared. The angry woman demanded,???What took you so long???? He smiled and then told her, “Well, I had to get permits from the Environmental Protection Agency, the Forest Service, and the Bureau of Land Management before I could remove old-growth timber from a recreational area so close to a waste treatment facility. I’m sorry, but due to Obama Care they turned me down.???
Great stuff, gratuitously nasty to more than half the population, too. And now we ain’t pals.
“Politicians are much to blame for this, but we in the media have to take responsibility for the damage we do to the American psyche in the name of election coverage. At this very moment, there are people all over the country who are stocking up on canned goods and ammo for the apocalypse they believe will come if Obama is re-elected.”
The media isn’t responsible for the Ted Nugent voter, it just often covers them poorly, as if being a bigot is simply a difference in respectable opinion. It’s the property of the GOP. Taibbi knows it.
Laboratory of democracy, example #1. And some experiments yield results that are no good.
The current Republican Party has mainstreamed all the tropes of “The Turner Diaries,” the premier piece of race hate fiction in this country. I don’t say this lightly.
But after the last four years of the Obama presidency, it’s quite clear. One cannot ignore the mindless stockpiling of weapons in the absence of even the slightest moves toward gun control legislation, or even enforcement of exisiting rules.
And you would had to have been living in Antarctica to have missed all the common heroes of the right, portrayed as patriots, who generally and loudly profess to stand ready to revolt against the tyrannical government, warn of the alleged creeping menace of shariah law, people who wish and fantasize about the tossing out, reduction and destruction of others who’ve allegedly made the society corrupt — the blacks and browns (in “The Turner Diaries” called “mud people???) the millions of moochers, the poor, government bureaucrats and elites. The list of enemies of the good people of the place we live in is long.
Indeed, the entire survivalist moment, now calling themselves “preppers??? in an unsuccessful attempt to achieve distance from the old designation because of its association with neo-Nazis, is all of the extreme right.
There are no progressives or Democrats in the prepper patriot bunkers. No, the modern patriot drills in camouflage clothes and on gun ranges, honing shooting skills to stop crime, to make society more safe by peace through strength, but later needed when they must defend their families, stuff and bug out homes after society collapses.
Who will they be defending against?
Why, of course, all those on the enemies list: The non-whites who didn’t stockpile food, who lived on the government teat, those on the food stamp rolls (especially the food stamp EBT carders!) the corrupt and lazy progressives, any voters for the other side, a horde predicted to come boiling out of its urban warrens to take what all the good white people have.
The continued reality of this imagery, in political campaigns, as entertainment reality television, in daily news stories, in vanity press prepper civil war fiction (take a look at this mind-numbing collection at Amazon), is as morbidly depressing as a first, and only, reading of “The Turner Diaries.”
Only you can put the book back on the shelf or into the trash.
Americans are unable to come together to solve common issues of public concern because political elites–the Right is preeminently guilty here–have developed a concerted campaign to “otherize??? and marginalize those Americans with whom they disagree.
In all, the Right-wing media apparatus feeds conservatives a daily diet of misinformation, distortions, and hate speech in which their foes are described as insects to be crushed, mentally defective, traitors, and people not fit to live. Such rhetoric is not harmless political theater: seeds do indeed bear fruit.
In September, the conservative website the Free Republic published a hypothetical scenario about how the American economy will collapse and “urban??? riots by black people will need to be put down by white suburban vigilantes.
Devega excerpts from “a hypothetical scenario about how the American economy will collapse and ‘urban’ riots by black people will need to be put down by white suburban vigilantes.”
A new social contract has been created, where bread and circuses buy a measure of peace in our minority-populated urban zones. In the era of ubiquitous big-screen cable television, the internet and smart phones, the circus part of the equation is never in doubt as long as the electricity flows. But the bread is highly problematic. Food must be delivered the old-fashioned way: physically. Any disruption in the normal functioning of the EBT system will lead to food riots with a speed that is astonishing. This will inevitably happen when our unsustainable, debt-fueled binge party finally stops, and the music is over. Now that the delivery of free or heavily subsidized food is perceived by tens of millions of Americans to be a basic human right, the cutoff of “their??? food money will cause an immediate explosion of rage. When the hunger begins to bite, supermarkets, shops and restaurants will be looted, and initially the media will not condemn the looting. Unfortunately, this initial violence will only be the start of a dangerous escalation …
In order to highlight their grievances and escalate their demands for an immediate resumption of government benefits, the [black or brown] MUY flash mobs will next move their activities to the borders of their ethnic enclaves. They will concentrate on major intersections and highway interchanges where [white] non-MUY suburban commuters must make daily passage to and from what forms of employment still exist …
The results of these clashes will frequently resemble the intersection of Florence and Normandie during the Rodney King riots in 1992, where Reginald Denny was pulled out of his truck’s cab and beaten nearly to death with a cinder block.
This extremely deadly trick was developed by our war fighters in Iraq and Afghanistan, taking advantage of the significant effective range and firepower of our scoped 5.56mm rifles. Tactics such as the sniper ambush may not be seen early in the civil disorder, but they will surely arise after a steady progression of atrocities attributed to rampaging [blacks] MUYs.
The Tea Party promptly showed up in force to vent in the comments section:
Those who would actually need to invoke the Insurrecton [sic] Act would already have conducted the affairs of their offices in such a patently un-American, unethical, illegal, unconstitutional and treasonous manner (anybody we know?) that the elected official should uave already been arrested and put on trial. Only if for a protracted period the citizenry feels patriotically obligated to follow the constitution (the part about abolishing a corrupted government) to the point where knowing the US military will become involved, do it anyway.
This is the modern Republican Party, the party of Mitt Romney. If you think there’s little difference between the two current candidates for president or that voting in November is an exercise in holding your nose, you couldn’t be more wrong.
Yesterday, the serial liar known as Mitt Romney went back to his astonishing nitwit’s claim about the current US Navy, in relation to the battleship navy of WWI.
Today, the mainstream media stopped overlooking this idiocy from the Republican Party’s intelligence-insulting candidate for President. Only because Romney used it in his much-publicized speech on foreign policy and alleged US military weakness.
Still, we were interested in his assertion about the size of the Navy. Is the Navy really in the worst shape it has been in 96 years?
The Facts
The historical records of the Navy show that in 1916, the Navy had 245 ships. This was also the year that President Woodrow Wilson signed into law the Naval Act of 1916, which put the United States on a crash course to build a world-class Navy.
But take a look at the types of ships on the list. Yes, there are cruisers and destroyers but also:
In 1917, there were obviously no nuclear-powered carrier strike groups, no nuclear attack or ballistic missile submarines, no cruise missiles, no nothing associated with the modern US Navy. (Number of capital units in the modern USN: 11 supercarriers, 18 ballistic missile subs, nuclear attack submatines — lots, etc. Number of “capital,” ahem, ships in 1917 USN: 16 battleships and another 23 pre-bb antiques.)
Further:
To go further into destroying Mitt Romney’s weird comparison would be the same as wasting one’s time chatting with a cinder block. It’s as dumbfounding as everything else in the secret video. And while Romney’s vignette may have been effective with hedge fund wealth at the secret dinner, it leaves one wondering just how he came up with it.
Kessler:
This is an apples-and-oranges comparison. Romney’s line reminds us of a similar strained comparison he made last year … But in this case he goes even deeper back into history. After all, 1916 is not only before computers, it is before television — even before regular radio broadcasts.
Kessler adds the Romney campaign informed that the candidate got his argument from “now-retired Adm. Gary Roughead” from a 2010 speech.
Whatever. Stupidity is hardly rare and acquisition of it from someone else does not magically transmute the lead into gold.
Kessler consults John Pike of GlobalSecurity, yes — the same place I write and do media for:
John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, notes that it is difficult to make comparisons between ships that are even much more recent. “Today’s aircraft carrier has about 10 times the lethality of an aircraft carrier of 20 years ago …
“The current level of ships, 285 in fiscal 2011, is actually not even the lowest since 1916,” informs the Post’s fact-checker. “The historical list shows that the lowest ship force was reached during the Bush administration …”
And he, and I, have already spent way too much time on Romney’s ridiculous, and — as usual — factually challenged and inept, claims.
Is there anyone, at this point, who doesn’t understand why Mitt Romney needs to be treated with total contempt?
Pay attention to the lyrics, they scroll: “He’s big and rich and always lyin’/And if it don’t stop we’ll all be dyin.'”
Lots of journalism on terrorism qualifies only as nuisance reporting. It’s purpose is to either titillate an audience, pitch the journalist’s faux bravura, or both. Nuisance journalism has no relationship with reality.
If groups have supporters overseas, then the internet allows communities all over the world with similar goals to unite and share knowledge – it enables, for example, far-Right White Power groups in the US to give online weapons training to their colleagues in the UK. It was this sort of online advice that led father and son extremists Ian and Nick Davidson (aka “The Aryan Strike Force???) to manufacture the poison gas Ricin in their kitchen.
Taking their lead from US groups, and working from Terror manuals produced in the USA, the Davidsons managed to not simply manufacture the gas, but also they were able to home make explosives, recruit a network of almost 350 like-minded people and plan attacks on Blacks, Muslims, Asians and Jews. They funded their activities by selling Nazi-themed mouse mats and key rings.
Ricin is not a poison gas. And the “recipes” on it, as simplistic as they are on the Internet, do not even state that.
“Thus, the internet has made terror much easier,” concludes the Telegraph piece by Wllard Foxton, “an investigative journalist & television producer [who] writes on skulduggery wherever he finds it, especially in the world of technology.”
Foxton gets the name wrong of the Brit neo-Nazi in this case — it was the father/son team of Ian and Nicky Davison.
A thorough reporting job, by a UK newspaper, is here, in the rather cleverly entitled, “Keyboard warriors, or threat to the republic?”
What the two produced was an unrefined mixture of ricin and liquid in a jar. The case revealed it had been made in 2006 and stored in a jam jar for four years.
“It is thought the ricin had been produced in 2006 and had remained undisturbed in Davison’s kitchen ever since,” reads the newspaper report. “Although it was fairly crude and had not undergone the purification necessary to turn it into an effective weapon …”
In the kitchen.
Castor powder mess, including ricin, in a jar. Does it look like an easily made poison gas to you?
