For your safety and convenience
Summary: Somewhere deep in Shaw's vault there's a tape of me screaming at a customer "support" representative that I didn't (and still don't) give a star blank star about his script, booting and cabling have nothing to do with the issue because I don't have wintel, and to get his supervisor on the line right f-ing now. I'm mildly embarrased by this because I let the frustration of dealing with bland indifference get to me, but there are deeper and wider lessons to be learnt from their retention of the tape.
Or, rather more truthfully: "We tape all calls: to protect ourselves, discipline our employees, provide marketing data, and just because we can."
It's not just calls, of course, that get this treatment: more and more employers have people who're sufficiently net savvy to check your on-line history before even talking to you. Ask yourself, for example, how likely a PC "journalist" whose email postings are peppered with references to stupid mactards and other juvenalia is to achieve credibility with potential employers searching for promotable professionals.
The genie isn't just out of the bottle on this - the Obama Whitehouse has smashed the bottle: just in the last two months they've been caught using public funds to make an enemies list, reacted by morphing it into a public policy snitch program and have now issued now a major contract RFQ on data mining public sites like twitter and facebook along with Whitehouse and other Democrat site web traffic and email to identify policy opponents.
So what's the bottom line? Pretty much what it's always been with respect to private opinion and the press: if you might later be embarrassed, fired, or just harassed, if something you say or write becomes public, don't say or write it.
More specifically, if you use a public network resource like a social site, discussion group, or somebody's free email account: keep your words clean and professional because it's not your safety and convenience potential employers reviewing this stuff are looking to protect or advance -and it's not just employers and corrupt politicians either: next time you offend somebody or just get caught as collateral damage in somebody else's courtroom drama, you can bet that the other guy's lawyers are going to be reviewing what you've said and how you said it.
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Talkback
So how would YOU do it?
Obama wants to change the way Congress "works" - by using reason and logic (things in short supply in Washington). Pointing fingers and raising Cain to distract people - instead of using intelligent discourse, dishonestly avoids making hard choices. With Republicans fixated on attacking Obama - and NOT working on problems - this country (not YOUR country) is in real trouble.
You are just as bad as "they" are Murph. By calling attention to the "second man in" - you are avoiding fingering the original instigator. Are you being constructive or destructive here?
Not intended as a political comment
The right way to deal with policy opponents is to defend your own policies and attack any dis-information they try to spread: not the person, the disinformation.
What Obama et al are doing is fundemenally an ad hominem response to policy disagreement: wrong morally, legally, and electorally.
The big issue here, however, is not the political illustration of what's going on but the fact that colleges, employers, and lawyers are all getting into the game - and the only answer (given that the genie's bottle is beyond repair) is to clean up what you say in any forum likely to become accessible to these people.
Douche Bag!
An Obama supporter, I presume?
Between filling his cabinet with tax cheats, violating his own "no lobbyist" rule oh, about 40 times, handing GM to the UAW, attempting to prosecute the CIA agents who were acting under orders, and on and on and on...Not only do I regret voting for Obama, I'm virtually ashamed to admit I'm a Democrat, and I've been a registered Democrat since I turned 18 in 1980. Even more so, I'm pretty sure my next letter to the White House will contain a copy of my registration form changing my party affiliation. It's Obama who is acting like a douche bag.
GM to UAW
http://www.deseretnews.com/article/705307815/The-20-largest-GM-creditors.html
Geez... this stuff really isn't that hard.
Health care reform
complete overhaul of government's role in health care, is necessary.
But that's about where the agreement stops...
Obama's objective is universal health insurance, and for him that
objective trumps cost.
Oh, and the list you cite lists the UAW as GM's second largest creditor,
not largest. The UAW was treated completely differently than GM's
other creditors, and you can bet that the government itself took
aggressive measures to ensure GM didn't take bankruptcy as an
opportunity to increase its competitive stance by breaking the unions.
Oh Geez
https://www.wilmingtontrust.com/repositories/wtc_sitecontent/PopUp_Content/2009/PR_06_01_09_gmcredcomrellet.pdf
But, whatever, I'll give you that one. UAW is the 2nd biggest creditor then.
So your next point is that the UAW was treated completely different than other creditors.
Of course they were.
GM has like 3 retirees drawing pensions for every active employee. So lets have a little what if session. Lets say GM's obligations to the UAW were completely negated, favoring the holders of unsecured bond debt. So all those pension obligations are obliterated. So do we throw pensioners out on the street when a company goes tits up? Of course we don't. There is a government organization similar to the FDIC called Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. that would be on the hook to bail out these pensions. Which would essentially translate this into a direct taxpayer bailout of the holders of UNSECURED General Motors debt.
The real dagger in the heart of GM was the US health care system. This saddles each and every car with about $1800 in overhead that most foreign automakers don't have to contend with. Take that cost out of the equation and US unionized labor and foreign non-union labor are nearly analogous.
Another one of your statements is very telling. "Obama's objective is universal health insurance" Shouldn't this be everyone's objective? But sadly some in this country think that only certain portions of society are worth insuring. An interesting stance by the purported most righteous among us.
OK, you addressed ONE of many...
Care to address any of my other charges?
RE: For your safety and convenience
I grew up in the generation where 2 wrongs don't make a right. I still believe that, and it still applies, no matter what generation, or what the technology.
How to change a culture?
Ah, this explains a lot
"journalist" whose email postings are peppered with
references to stupid mactards and other juvenalia is to
achieve credibility with potential employers searching
for promotable professionals.[/i]
I guess that is why you post under a pseudonym? After
all, most of your blog posts are full of juvenile slams
against stupid Windows users.
And no doubt you can cite examples
Years of abuse
Time to go.
I've read Murph for years
Murph, stop using your other name...
RE: For your safety and convenience
This is a scary world then, and not something we should allow to have happened or continue to allow.
We still have the original freedoms.
RE: For your safety and convenience
Just curious is all.
What conspiracy theories ?
Now as for Mr. Obama's eligibility: my guess is that he's technically an illegal alien because he never formally reclaimed American citizenship after his mother's renunciation of it in indonesia - it's clear, on the record, and unaffected either by his place of birth or his father's citizenship.
Citizenship
I remember reading somewhere that one of our presidents was born on a ship - and it was questionable whether it was in US territorial waters or not (the ship was not a US flagged vessel). Many of the first presidents were born in the Colonies before the USA existed.