Sarah Palin

[rgraham666]

When was the last time you were accepted for a job without a face to face interview? Or more than one?

 

[sr71plt]

When was the last time you were accepted for a job without a face to face interview? Or more than one?

The point of acceptance is way down the road from the initial point of job hunting, Rob. You can do a whole hell of job searching via the Net--at 3 in the morning, in your bathrobe. Millions of people are zeroing in on jobs via the Internet and there are vigorous and successful Web-based job search--catering to both prospective employees and employers--businesses in existence. And it isn't new. One of my sisters established a Web-based Doctor-community matching service on the Web fifteen years ago with a colleague when her company wouldn't make use of the Internet--and she put the former company out of business. Has the cyberspace revolution passed you by?

And to respond directly to your question:

Ummm. The last week of October, when I landed a major mainstream publisher as a book editing client. Virtually all of my sign-ons with mainstream publishers have been via e-mail--and I've had a face-off with very few of them even subsequently.

I coauthored a mainstream book on publishing with a woman I met in cyberspace and never have met in person. (And I've never met face to face within anyone at the publishing house that published and sold it either.)

My writing partner for erotica I met in cyberspace only--I live in the States and he lives in Australia.

You can make much greater use of your Internet connections than just catting on a porn board. (And if you restrict your job hunting to face-to-face contact in the modern world, you're not going to make much headway in finding a job barring a miracle of coincidence.)

 

[DeeZire]

Good points Rob. In my idealistic society, community service work would happen in the neighborhood where the recipient lived. It would take organizational skills, but that's supposed to be one of the things government does well.

 

[cloudy]

When was the last time you were accepted for a job without a face to face interview? Or more than one?

My last two jobs were landed based strictly on phone interviews, based on resume's I sent in through a website.

It happens.

 

[sr71plt]

Good points Rob. In my idealistic society, community service work would happen in the neighborhood where the recipient lived. It would take organizational skills, but that's supposed to be one of the things government does well.

Community organizing? Isn't that sort of . . . Commie activity, with maybe a twist of terrorism?

 

[DeeZire]

Community organizing? Isn't that sort of . . . Commie activity, with maybe a twist of terrorism?

Would you expect anything less from a liberal?

 

[Guest]

Community organizing? Isn't that sort of . . . Commie activity, with maybe a twist of terrorism?

Hey, that's pretty good!

You got a whole bunch of those talking points in one sentence!

 

[Boxlicker101]

Quote:
Originally Posted by rgraham666
Okay, let's look at the idea.

Five to ten hours a week doesn't sound like much, until you realize that the job hunt is pretty much limited to the forty hour work week.

Hmmm. Never heard of the Internet and e-mailing, I take it?

It has been a long time since I was job hunting, but I have four people in my household who just arrived in the country and are looking for work. Almost everywhere they have been has said to submit an application online. This may or may not be followed up by an interview.

I would assume that a job seeker would be excused from steet-sweeping etc. duty in order to go to such an interview.

 

[Boxlicker101]

Community organizing? Isn't that sort of . . . Commie activity, with maybe a twist of terrorism?

That depends on what community you are organizing.

 

[DeeZire]

That depends on what community you are organizing.

As long as we're talking about an American community, I don't see how there would be a difference. Care to elaborate?

 

[SlickTony]

On public transit a few hours a day became an all day thing

Tell me about it. Here's the deal on my commute, and I'd say it's an ideal one: the morning and afternoon walk to and from the stops near my house are no more than 10 minutes, tops, at an easy walk. From my downtown stop to my work is about a block. The bus ride is a dollar, each way, with no transfers.

BUT--!

My work is about, oh, 12 miles away from my house. It would be about a quarter of an hour by auto with light traffic and if I could park next to the building, which I cannot; I have to stash my car in a parking garage and take the trolley.

By bus, it takes an hour each way.

A lot of people who ride the bus have much longer distances to go, with transfers. Some cities charge for transfers, some don't. Mine does.

 

[SEVERUSMAX]

Brave and admirable.

Thank you, but from this end, it's almost as scary as the first time I became an apostate from a faith. Actually, the first time was a double. I renounced social conservatism and Christianity at the same time, because without the religion, the ideology no longer made sense.

That's when I became a Libertarian, though the past 3 years have seen a gradual shift from that ideology to the point where I am today. This election was the last hurrah for my membership in the Libertarian movement. I didn't join it as a Randite, after all. It was simply the next logical ideology for one who had discarded his parents' social agenda but still embraced their basic view of the role of government and didn't want to throw out the baby with the proverbial bathwater.

This time, I have moved even further away from my upbringing, and I have no new ideology immediately ready to take its place. I can totally form my own political philosophy, but it will take time. And having seen the failure of both previous worldviews, I'm not eager to rush into something equally rigid and artificial.

And by failure, I mean exactly that. First to seriously confront my ideas was my friend Tim, a self-described "Scoop Jackson" Democrat. Then I began to see the evident fact that technology wasn't going to replace pollutant and ecologically unsound industries with cleaner ones anytime soon. Also, the outsourcing issue increasingly bothered me.

Then I began to notice the disintegration of infrastructure in many ways. Add to this some negative experiences with a health care industry that often refused to provide any health care at all or charged people bills that they simply could never pay in their lifetime, and then top it off with the whole business of the recent housing bubble, and the issues have combined to present me with the refutation of my political persuasion, until it reached a breaking point recently.

Also, I have recently read a very interesting dystopian novel called First Citizen, which made me question the Libertarian worldview. How? It presented a very believable account of a hypothetical America where the Libertarians got their way. It wasn't presented that way, per se, but the similarities between the fictitious Constitutional Amendments in the narrative and the basic agenda of the Libertarians/neo-cons/anarcho-capitalists on economics is too much to be a coincidence. The result: a government that can't even pay for a standing army. It has to use mercenaries to provide most of its needs, and this leads to civil war and dictatorship.

So, in the end, the drive for more liberty leads to less. I'm not opposed to the ideals behind the Libertarians. Who doesn't want more say in their daily lives? But to have a government that barely functions and can't perform even its most necessary roles, such as national defense, let alone roads or postage, is kind of chilling. It's not far removed from anarchy. The ideals are fine, but the methods and policies necessary to pursue their objectives are not particularly wise.

When it comes to civil liberties, they and I have no real quarrels. Libertarians are often as liberal on social issues as the rest of us. I should know, having been one of them. But on some issues of regulation and necessary governmental functions like highways and others, they have gone a bit too far for me not to part company with them. Then again, I think that even Barry Goldwater realized that he had gone too far to the right toward the end, for which I applaud him. Proof of this is his joining the Republicans for Environmental Protection and his willingness to give the Clintons a chance before actively opposing them.

Where I differ from my former comrades is on the following key points:

1. Infrastructure. We do need to repair roads and bridges now in a bad way.
2. Immigration. Sorry, but open borders are not a good idea.
3. Trade. Free trade up to a point is wise, but beyond that point, it's national suicide. We have to be able to keep our national sovereignty and our industrial base.
4. Environment. Companies won't police themselves, and they often fight the technological advances useful to making pollutants unnecessary and obsolete. Big Oil being a case in point.
5. Drug approval/ R &D- when it gets to the point that some drugs are being approved that are bad ideas and others that are necessary are suppressed because they might cut into certain companies' profit margins for obsolete drugs, then it is time to rein it in.
6. Health care. If private insurers won't cover or actually insure some people, they can't complain when someone else does it instead. Even when that's the public sector.
7. Securities- look, the stock market is not going away, and I don't want it to. I just want to curtail the excesses and prevent ordinary investors and depositors from being penalized for the incompetence and dishonesty of certain executives. Capitalism is good, but gambling with other peoples' money against their will and wishes is not. Especially when you stick them with the bill.

That's really it in a nutshell. When the Libertarians are right, I'll say so. But when they aren't living in the real world, I have to point that out as well, just as others have done me the favor of pointing it out to me.

As to what ideology I have, it's hard to say yet. But I'm not far from the center, if you balance all of my views and average them out, I suspect.

 

[freshface]

The point of acceptance is way down the road from the initial point of job hunting, Rob. You can do a whole hell of job searching via the Net--at 3 in the morning, in your bathrobe. Millions of people are zeroing in on jobs via the Internet and there are vigorous and successful Web-based job search--catering to both prospective employees and employers--businesses in existence. And it isn't new. One of my sisters established a Web-based Doctor-community matching service on the Web fifteen years ago with a colleague when her company wouldn't make use of the Internet--and she put the former company out of business. Has the cyberspace revolution passed you by?

And to respond directly to your question:

Ummm. The last week of October, when I landed a major mainstream publisher as a book editing client. Virtually all of my sign-ons with mainstream publishers have been via e-mail--and I've had a face-off with very few of them even subsequently.

I coauthored a mainstream book on publishing with a woman I met in cyberspace and never have met in person. (And I've never met face to face within anyone at the publishing house that published and sold it either.)

My writing partner for erotica I met in cyberspace only--I live in the States and he lives in Australia.

You can make much greater use of your Internet connections than just catting on a porn board. (And if you restrict your job hunting to face-to-face contact in the modern world, you're not going to make much headway in finding a job barring a miracle of coincidence.)

But I suspect that most of the chronically unemployed do not have your education or experience. I have a nephew with a GED who is almost illiterate when he writes and scores low in reading comprehension. If he had to rely on the internet for job searches and interviews, he would never have a job.

And, of course, you assume that these chronically unemployed have both a computer and internet access at home. Internet access might be much more of a luxury if you're unemployed and struggling to stay in your home. When you have to rely on the library and unemployment offices for computer access, you are restricted to the hours they are open.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

When was the last time you were accepted for a job without a face to face interview? Or more than one?

The last job I was hired for was all done over the internet and phone up until the final interview which was done face to face. Most of my job searches originate via the web. Resumes are emailed. Phone calls are received. Interview via the phone or via the internet (video conferencing). The final interview is usually face to face but by that time they have narrowed the field down to one or two candidates.

The current process I am involved in I was contacted by a headhunter. Emails exchanged, resume forwarded. The next step is phone interviews. Then the face to face, if I make it that far, will occur. They will fly me down and either interview me that day and then I fly back or they will allow me to rest over night, then interview me. Most likely it will be a one day down and back.

 

[rgraham666]

It has been a long time since I looked for a job so I see I'm out of touch. But as a high school dropout barely a decade from retirement age with a long history of mental illness I'm never going to have a decent job again. So I've not been looking for a job.

I'd never survive it anyway.

Still, my basic objection of 'work for welfare (or employment insurance)' stands. I don't like seeing people forced to do anything. Especially not when 'it's for their own good'. And if the job they're forced to do is important enough to be done, it's important enough to pay them a decent wage.

 

[Boxlicker101]

Quote:
Originally Posted by Boxlicker101
That depends on what community you are organizing.

As long as we're talking about an American community, I don't see how there would be a difference. Care to elaborate?

A community can be a city or village or neighborhood. Community organizers working with such a group would almost certainly have no connection with terrorists.

However, a community can also be a group of individuals with common interests or characteristics. You probably see or hear references to "The gay community" of "the black community" or "the art community", etc. So, why not "the terrorist community" or "the racist community" or "the mad bomber community", which are also persons having common interests?

 

[ottohauser1977]

It has been a long time since I looked for a job so I see I'm out of touch. But as a high school dropout barely a decade from retirement age with a long history of mental illness I'm never going to have a decent job again. So I've not been looking for a job.

I'd never survive it anyway.

Still, my basic objection of 'work for welfare (or employment insurance)' stands. I don't like seeing people forced to do anything. Especially not when 'it's for their own good'. And if the job they're forced to do is important enough to be done, it's important enough to pay them a decent wage.

If it's important to have full employment, and I agree that it is, a better approach is not to make busy work, but do things that need to be done, and both hire, train, pay well those who do them. A living wage would go a long way to cutting down on poverty, as would public works. But, I know, that's socialism, right?

 

[Boxlicker101]

If it's important to have full employment, and I agree that it is, a better approach is not to make busy work, but do things that need to be done, and both hire, train, pay well those who do them. A living wage would go a long way to cutting down on poverty, as would public works. But, I know, that's socialism, right?

Actually, that sounds a lot like FDR's New Deal.

 

[ishtat]

if only

If this thread was a moose I could shoot it and put it out of its misery.

 

[ottohauser1977]

Actually, that sounds a lot like FD's New Deal.

Which to conservatives is socialism, right?

 

[sr71plt]

If this thread was a moose I could shoot it and put it out of its misery.

At least you brought the thread back to some relevance to Sarah Palin.

 

[Guest]

At least you brought the thread back to some relevance to Sarah Palin.

Misery?

 

[sr71plt]

Misery?

What? She's pregnant again--and picked out the name of the kid already?

 

[Guest]

What? She's pregnant again--and picked out the name of the kid already?

Just spit out my rum!




Edited to add -

Hubby just said any future children will be named Buck Urine or Tree Stand.

 

[cloudy]

Just spit out my rum!




Edited to add -

Hubby just said any future children will be named Buck Urine or Tree Stand.

I'm betting on "Pemmican" being the next little Palin.