"Joy and pleasure are as real as pain and sorrow and one must learn what they have to teach. . . ." -- Sean Russell, from Gatherer of Clouds

"If you're not having fun, you're not doing it right." -- Helyn D. Goldenberg

"I love you and I'm not afraid." -- Evanescence, "My Last Breath"

“If I hear ‘not allowed’ much oftener,” said Sam, “I’m going to get angry.” -- J.R.R. Tolkien, from Lord of the Rings

Monday, October 15, 2012

The Sociopath Edition (Updated)


It looks like it's time for another round of Disgusting People:

Let's start with a couple of CEOs of "small businesses" who are obviously Republicans of the worst sort -- you know, the kind who think they own their employees:

Westgate Resorts CEO David Siegel came under fire this week for sending an email to his employees demanding that they vote for Mitt Romney and threatening to downsize the company if they don't. But Siegel's email isn't an outlier. It fits a pattern of imperious CEOs attempting to marshal the support of their employees in pursuit of their own political interests.

Up w/ Chris Hayes has exclusively obtained an email sent by the CEO of a Florida-based software firm, ASG Software Solutions, to his over 1,000 employees asking them to vote for Romney for president and suggesting that their jobs may be at stake if Romney doesn't win. The subject line of the email, sent by ASG President and CEO Arthur Allen on Sept. 30, asks: "Will the US Presidential election directly impact your future jobs at ASG? Please read below."

Allen then suggests that the company may have to downsize, or be bought by a larger company, if President Obama is re-elected, and suggests that massive cuts and layoffs would ensue if that occurs.

I really can't think of anything to say about that -- it's pretty much self-explanatory.

Darrel Issa (R-Somewhere South of Reality) could be a regular on this kind of feature. He probably wastes more money with his "hearings" and "Congressional inquiries" than any bridge to nowhere ever proposed. Now it's Libya:
House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) says that President Barack Obama's response to the attacks in Libya that killed a U.S. ambassador is like former President George W. Bush's widely-mocked 2003 "mission accomplished" speech which suggested that the U.S had won war in Iraq even though violence was only escalating in the country at the time.

Issa, who held hearings last week over the attacks, on Sunday told CBS host Bob Schieffer that he had determined that the Obama administration had downplayed the attacks in Benghazi because it wanted the appearance that the country had been stabilized.

But Schieffer noted that Republicans had pressured the State Department to cut security by voting to slash about $500 million from the embassy security budget over the past two years.

"Quite frankly, we believe that they didn't want the appearance of needing the security," the California Republican insisted. "The fact is, they are making a decision to not put security in because they don't want the presence of security."

Issa, as usual, is full of it -- it was Republicans who cut the allocation for embassy security, not the State Department. What a weasel.

And the crowning glory, the sociopath supreme, none other than Mitt Romney, who can't let a good tragedy go to waste:

The father of Christopher Stevens, the U.S. ambassador to Libya who was killed in the attack in Benghazi last month, said his son’s death shouldn’t be politicized in the presidential campaign.

Mitt Romney, the Republican nominee, has criticized President Barack Obama for not providing adequate security in Libya, saying the administration has left the country exposed to a deadly terrorist attack.

You'll recall that Romney issued a statement slamming the administration over the attck in Benghazi before the dust had settled, and then caught hell for it from just about everybody.

John Aravosis has a good summary of this one at AmericaBlog.

And I've just started going through the news this morning. You really have to wonder what the country is coming to.

Update: I just ran across this little tidbit. I think an appropriate alternate titled for this post would be "Brazen."





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