The SEC's inspector general conducted 33 probes of employees looking at explicit images in the past five years....I wonder what people who read about this are thinking. I'll bet a lot are outraged — and the GOP is banking on that outrage as it makes this an issue right now (because attacking the SEC is something they want to do for reasons utterly unrelated to porn). But I bet a lot of people — guys — feel really nervous about it because they are looking at porn at work too.
• A senior attorney at the SEC's Washington headquarters spent up to eight hours a day looking at and downloading pornography. When he ran out of hard drive space, he burned the files to CDs or DVDs, which he kept in boxes around his office. He agreed to resign, an earlier watchdog report said.
• An accountant was blocked more than 16,000 times in a month from visiting websites classified as "Sex" or "Pornography." Yet he still managed to amass a collection of "very graphic" material on his hard drive by using Google images to bypass the SEC's internal filter, according to an earlier report from the inspector general. The accountant refused to testify in his defense, and received a 14-day suspension.
• Seventeen of the employees were "at a senior level," earning salaries of up to $222,418.
• The number of cases jumped from two in 2007 to 16 in 2008. The cracks in the financial system emerged in mid-2007 and spread into full-blown panic by the fall of 2008.
Explain your answer in the comments, if you like. I have my answer, but I'll wait to say it so I don't over-influence the discussion.
Posts
104 comments:
I don't see a way to make political hay out of this. I'm betting some of those "official" bestrode two administrations.
The high-ranking officials are just as likely to be Republicans as Democrats.
No, because it just reinforces the image of conservatives as old fuddy-duddies. We'll end up being the next Tipper Gore. Just fire the idiots when they get caught.
VerWord: ingenu
It's not a porn issue. It's a typical government waste issue.
No to anti-porn for the simple reason that virtually everyone looks at porn. It would remind everyone of the GOP's worst busybody traits, ruining a golden opportunity to get everyone focused on the Dem's worst busybody traits.
They should focus on the waste and irresponsibility of these people, not specifically their porn watching habits.
I don't think one need make "political hay" out of this. If the GOP does decide to go all in on this, the Dems would be wise to make it a bi-partisan effort. Regardless of party, surfing porn on work time and on work computers (no matter whom you work for) is a HUGE no-no.
It's a win-win for both parties and the American people if government employees are required to be actually, you know, working on work time.
They shouldn't frame this as something specifically about porn; they should include other examples of misuse of time and resources. Maybe an SEC employee spent time on the Althouse blog, for example.
Or does that qualify as political/legal porn?
If the voters knew just how little they got for their tax dollars, there would be a reaction that would make the tea party movement insignificant by comparison.
Anybody dumb enough to look at porn at work has failed a basic IQ test...
Since porn star Stormy Daniels joined the Republican Party, why make a big deal out of it?
I think that I want the option of "both".
There are positives and negatives to either course of action. No porn at work: How hard is that? Do we or do we not expect people to be grown-ups?
But it's probably not so significant that it's porn. No blogging at work, works, too. Or surfing or shopping or whatever.
I figure that if a person is on a break or if the internet stuff is the equivalent of setting up your desk to work for the day, getting coffee and some chit-chat with the guy in the next cube... that's likely not a problem.
From the sounds of this, these guys were making major inroads on their productive time and significant impact on company resources.
Which is where the outrage is, isn't it? Sure, it's porn, but more than that its the "eight hours a day" part.
Sex at work is a bad idea. Any kind of sex.
"But I bet a lot of people — guys — feel really nervous about it because they are looking at porn at work too."
28% of visitors to internet porn sites are female.
I say no to being outraged about porn. Leave it alone and go after them for dereliction of duty and abandonment of their fiduciary standards.
I'm more outraged about them just wasting time and getting paid while NOT doing their jobs. I don't care what they were doing, watching porn, doing their nails, taking naps, watching South Park on YouTube....the fact is that they were derelict in doing what they were supposed to be doing.
As a result of their lack of job performance, many people were hurt through many scams like the one Madoff pulled off.
As a member of a profession that is 'overseen' by the SEC and FINRA it irks me to no end that they can spend time raking us over the coals on piddly shit at the lower levels (where I exist). Things like the freaking FONT on my letter head, the exact verbage of the message on my voice mail, looking at my personal bank account and questioning that I pay money to my beautician or my auto mechanic who also happen to be clients.....conflict of interest...you know..... and other minuscule crappola.
While they are busy fucking around with small potatoes like me, they are watching porn and totally ignoring the big criminal actions of individuals like Ma doff and companies who are breaking the laws.
To focus on the porn aspect of it would be a distraction and also reinforce that the GOP is full of a bunch of religious fundamental types.
Focus on the core of the matter, which is they were screwing around on our DIME while they let criminals bring down companies, our financial system and people were bankrupted by criminal actions.
Lance said...
"Sex at work is a bad idea. Any kind of sex."
Well, if you're looking at porn at work, you're probably having sex with yourself.
Since anything they might have done would have probably made the crisis worse, I'm thinking buy 'em all subscriptions to Hustler (do they still publish Hustler?).
"Anybody dumb enough to look at porn at work has failed a basic IQ test..."
Welcome to Idiocracy.
i can see how they might want to link 'big gov't regulators' to useless/lazy/porn watching waste of govt money overspending liberal policies. i dont know. get the 'social conservatives' to jump in w/ the tea partiers i suppose.
but i wonder if most americans are tired of this... tired of the spin; ready to deal with the real issue that the financial crisis was caused in part by a lack of real regulation. i sure as hell am. the porn loving regulators are an example of regulators asleep at the wheel, not the lack of need of regulators.
i think the GOP is already suspect for game playing, and no one like when you eff with their money, so my final answer is no, it wouldnt be good politics.
(I have never gone to an internet porn site -- not at work, not at home, not anywhere. I'm not interested in looking at bad video of other people having sex.)
I've known of people at private companies getting fired for looking at porn at work.
It is generally unacceptable, and anyone doing it is asking for trouble.
Maybe it's different in the academic world, where people are protected by tenure.
See, here's the problem: suppose - just suppose - that porn corrupted its viewer's natural feelings for other people and deadened their compassion for their fellow man - reducing all fellow women into nothing more than objects of lust and consumption.
If that were the case, then what Government solution would ever overcome the resulting social ills?
So that would suggest that it is a political issue that must be dealt with somehow.
On the other hand, let's face it, any politician or party that could garner the porn viewer vote would do well in most elections.
(I personally think porn pretty destructive stuff to a lot of people and families, and is obviously very addictive to many, when a lawyer at the SEC spends 8 - 10 hours a day and can't stop looking at it.)
Given the above, I say that the issues with porn are probably best left, for the time being, to ministers, psychologists, and scientists to handle, at least until we can get more consensus and data on its effect and social cost.
"Welcome to Idiocracy."
I thought your head would be bigger.
Comrade X said...
It's not a porn issue. It's a typical government waste issue.
Fraud, waste and Abuse is always in fashion. Let's do a check at CMS and HHS, after all, hasn't Obama promised to save $500 Billion from Medicare by finding Fraud, waste and abuse.
"...when a lawyer at the SEC spends 8 - 10 hours a day and can't stop looking at it."
Looking at it isn't so bad. It's the filling up hard drives and CDs that seems to me to be a little... mental.
Ann Althouse said...
(I have never gone to an internet porn site -- not at work, not at home, not anywhere. I'm not interested in looking at bad video of other people having sex.)
Never done a search or clicked on a link that turned out to be a porn site?
Never seen an "art film"?
Not interested in watching "Other People"?
I've read a lot of trashy romances.
Now imagine sitting at your desk at work with a paperback open and it's not lunch break.
How do you know it's "bad" video?
Last time I checked, Bush was President in 2007 and 2008.
I really want to push back on this idea that virtually everyone looks at porn. I know there was some "study" recently where they wanted to see the effects of porn on male college students, and they couldn't find any who didn't watch it. But they only asked 20 guys! It was a bogus study!
I just have a really hard time believing that, for example, all the nice Mormons around here are wanking off to porn as soon as they get home from mission and put their bike helmets away.
I think it's a mistake for Republicans to focus on the porn aspect of this situation. The real problem is that these very highly paid people weren't doing their jobs, and no one seemed to notice. That guy "agreed to resign"? How about, he agrees to return the salary that he didn't actually earn?
Who was managing these people? Why was this allowed to go on for so long? That's what really upsets people. If we found out the guy was writing his memoirs eight hours a day, we'd be upset about that, too. The porn aspect makes it a little sleazier -- and there's sure to be a company policy that was violated, too -- but from the public's perspective, it's all about the irresponsibility.
Last time I checked, Bush was President in 2007 and 2008.
You had to check that out to be sure?
It's the filling up hard drives and CDs that seems to me to be a little... mental.
Well, people do not look at porn for its purely aesthetic properties, but as a means to an end. So, I can understand downloading porn at work more than watching porn at work, because I don't see how you can play "pocket pool" at work. Unless you had an office with a locking door, and no co-workers, bosses, or subordinates who'd want to drop by. Workplaces lack the necessary privacy.
On the other hand, if work had a high speed internet connection, while your house did not, or if you didn't want your significant other to see your browsing history, or if you simply felt you had more privacy regarding your work computer than your home computer, you might want to download porn at work for future perusal.
just have a really hard time believing that, for example, all the nice Mormons around here are wanking off to porn
No indeed. According to my friend D, when he was interning on the Navajo Indian reservation, the Mormon missionaries were boinking the young Navajo women.
It's not a porn issue. It's a typical government waste issue.
Exactly. Which is why neither party will touch it.
"Is it good politics for the GOP to go on an anti-porn rampage?"
It's really not so much pure anti-porn (certainly not in the sense that Tipper Gore used to go on about it) as it is an attack on the assumptions behind the regulatory state, using these 'porn' cases as the starting point. With that spin to the question, the answer seems to be clearly yes.
The issue is coming up in the context of the fight over the Dodd bill, and more generally Obama's attempt to demonize Big Business to justify Act II of his Remake America show. The Republican argument against the Dodd bill is, in part, that there is already more than sufficient authority for regulators to police the excesses in the financial markets, if the regulators would only do their jobs. The 'porn' stuff is graphic (!) evidence to support the 'not-doing-their-jobs-now' meme.
Second, it also answers the Democrats' politicial argument that the Rebubs are just knee-jerk apologists for Big Business. The knee-jerk response here (the Repubs would say) is in the Dems' consistent and wholly misplaced belief that more regulations and bigger armies of regulators are the cure for the economy's problems, even in the face of evidence (that's the porn) that they're not doing their jobs. Even if they were, our problem right now is how to get the economy moving, business to start hiring and all that (remember Obama's promised pivot, which doesn't seem to be on his agenda). This isn't a great time to increase the problems that businesses have if solving the country's main economic problem is the objective. The 'porn' meme supports the argument that the apology is due, instead, from the gov't's vast regulatory apparatus (the SEC is only a small part of it) and the Dems as apologist-in-chief for it. That theme also melds well with the SEC's epic failures in dealing with the Madoff fiasco, even after Madoff's fraud had been brought to the SEC's attention more than a decade ago.
Third, it plays into the Repubs' policy argument that (a) 'too big to fail' is bad for the economy and (b) 'too big to succeed' is just a description of what the federal gov't has turned into. The Dodd bill is wrong on both counts -- it seeks to make permanent the 'too big to fail' approach to financial markets, and does so by making worse the 'too big to succeed' problems with the regulatory state that were so instrumental in causing the meltdown of 2007-8. Big Gov't is even more distrusted than Big Business, and the 'porn' cases against senior SEC regulators makes the second point in a way that's hard to miss.
All in all, not that hard a question to answer.
Synova said:
"From the sounds of this, these guys were making major inroads on their productive time and significant impact on company resources."
Gender stereotype violation. :-) One of the worst offenders was a gal, according to ABC. She accessed porn sites 1,800 times in two weeks and downloaded more than 600 pictures.
I vote "Yes."
Because the fucking moron kids will accuse Republicans of being prudes no matter what.
It's sort of like being accused of murdering your most hated enemy. If everybody thinks you're guilty, you might as well murder the son-of-a-bitch.
This "Republicans are prudes" meme is so ingrained, and so stupid, that you might as well go with it.
Why anybody believes this shit... who knows?
I lived in Manhattan for decades, and it's gospel that nobody outside of the Big Apple knows how to fuck. How they yokels have continued to get laid without assistance from the liberals in the big city... who knows?
This all distracts from the real question of: Who really wants to force their way into your bedroom?
The answer: the extreme left. The feminazi left wants in your home, in your family and in your bedroom. They want to be the arbiter of your marriage or your relationship.
It is the feminazi left that we have to fear in terms of sexual behavior.
I've often tried to tell sophisticates in the Big Apple that fucking is actually taking place in small town midwest, but they won't hear of it. My teeny town in central Illinois has a porn shop on the edge of town. And votes Republican.
The epitome of this "Republicans don't fuck right" crap is the Palin hatred. Obviously, she's fucking. But, it's the wrong way. Exactly why the Democratic way of fucking is better, I don't know. Somebody explain.
According to my friend D, when he was interning on the Navajo Indian reservation, the Mormon missionaries were boinking the young Navajo women.
Since most Mormon "missionaries" are generally young men and women in the 18 to 26 year age group, this isn't surprising.
Where did you get the idea that Mormons were against sex? And what does this have to do with pornography?
I just have a really hard time believing that, for example, all the nice Mormons around here are wanking off to porn as soon as they get home from mission and put their bike helmets away.
Even Mormons are not immune, as this April 2010 General Conference address shows.
the Mormon missionaries were boinking the young Navajo women.
Such things happen, but once it is found out the missionary is immediately sent home, and often without his church membership.
That's one of the reasons the missionaries are required to always be with their companion, to take advantage of odds that both of them won't be false.
SEC employee: "Thank God it's Friday. I'm so tired of looking at porn, that I'm about ready to go blind."
"Exactly why the Democratic way of fucking is better, I don't know. Somebody explain."
I don't know but beginning with Thomas Jefferson and ending with William Jefferson C., sex with slaves and subordinates seems to have been a theme.
From the GOP standpoint, speaking as a lapsed Republican, this is definitely NOT the time to be trumpeting social issues...at all. It is the time to be focusing on the deficit and runaway government spending...period.
Facing down the barrel of an all but inevitable debt crisis smacks of fiddling while Rome burns.
Maybe Democrats require a power differential to get off.
Yes, for two reasons:
1. This is what highly-paid government employees are doing instead of their jobs, on the taxpayers' dime. (waste)
2. Firing these people is exactly what would happen if they worked in private industry. Government employees should be subject to most of the same law as the rest of us.
"Gender stereotype violation. :-)"
My bad. :-)
I dont think the GOP should go on a rampage. I think they should approach this by tugging on heartstrings, etc.
"Why does it have to be this way" etc.
It would be more effective.
Evidently the US Government with all its so called technology cannot figure out how to block porn sites or limit access to anything else. How many other government employees are doing stuff on our dime- selling on ebay, running internet businesses, or just plain fucking off- reading blogs, writing blogs, or just searching around?
This is not a political issue. It is a typical government work rule issue. The rules are lax or non-existent. Access is open to anything. No one is tracking employee usage.
Hey, who tracks the people who work in the White House, Senate, or House? Love to see what they do all day on their computers.
Look on the bright side:
If they're watching porn and jacking off, they aren't:
1. Thinking of new ways to regulate and tax;
2. Trying to find ways to interfere in our lives; or
3. Fighting to expand their agency.
I'd rather they yanked off. Less possibility of doing harm.
@Peter
Speaking of which, can someone explain to me why the porn industry in general has such a problem with using an .xxx extension on their links?
Is there a technical reason why this can't be done? Seems like a no-brainer in regards to filter controls. Is it because of a "slippery slope" argument that doing so would spread to other industries like .gun (all things guns) or .pus (all things liberal)?
WV - abullin - "An earth-friendly notice posted on 100% tin-free cork"
Porn is bad, and what they did or did not do about the Wall St. misdeeds is bad, but this is still all about mis-direction; divert attention from Chris Dodd and Barney Frank and their committees' responsibility for creating the system in the first place, and above all, prevent any attention to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
porn at work...happens all the time.
Ive caught people looking at it, how dumb.
Companies need big time blockers for this stuff.
Men look at porn, women look at facebook
The boys in Washington were jacking off while we were being fucked by Wall Street.
Sounds about right.
The SEC, the Department of Education, the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Energy (except the boys working on new nukes) should all be given unlimited access to porn sites. The more time they spend there, the better off we all are.
I'm unsure on extending this to the State Department but they already don't actually appear to do anything at the current time.
Someone needs to write up a government and bureaucratic version of lean manufacturing principles.
Something succinct and practical.
Then this should become a Constitutional amendment.
I bet it would get approved rather quickly in today's climate. It's time to stop trusting government employees to regulate their own efficiency.
(1) And these gummint types are the ones what gonna run healthcare for us, is that right?
(2) This all occurred during the financial crisis. We're in the best of hands. (....eeeew)
(3) I'd go after the fact that it's porn, but only for the comedy of it, or for the violence-against-women theme.
(4) I'll decline the handshake should i meet a federal regulator.
I'm a government employee too (DOD instead of SEC though).
If I, or anyone anywhere close to my position, had accrued 16,000 blocked access to porn site records on our browsing I'd be a Private making little rocks out of big rocks, not getting some wimpy non-judicial punishment (likely the military equivalent of a 14-day suspension).
I see the travel card abuse and internet abuse of other agencies and it boggles the mind to think the DOD seems to be the only one taking that accountability seriously.
@SFC B
Yeah, but these guys weren't at your position, it appears. They were most likely near the very top of the GS payscale. Those types don't break rocks unless something truly heinous happens. More likely, they get sent to some place like Eglin AFB and do weeds-n-seeds while getting plenty of time to relax and play sports...if they get busted for it at all.
The perennial problem with regulatory oversight:
Sed quis custodiet ipsos custodies?
Big fleas have little fleas
upon their backs to bite them,
and little fleas have lesser fleas,
and so ad infinitum
They shouldn't go after it, because Republicans are looking at porn, too. They'd make a fuss about it, some high ranking Republican would get caught with it and then it would backfire.
I worked at a state agency doing computer forensics, so I often was paid to...look at porn! The porn that other people were downloading/watching on their work computers. Anyone who was caught was fired or allowed to resign. I'm quite sure low level government people are treated like that - it is the higher ones that given suspensions and such.
All the people that were caught with porn where I worked were men, but men and women were comically eager to look at the 'evidence' after the investigation was complete. The agency attorney asked me to print the evidence pictures bigger.
ready to deal with the real issue that the financial crisis was caused in part by a lack of real regulation
what we need are real regulators to regulate the regulators who want to jack it at work.
I voted no. The GOP has an opportunity to get back on the freedom side of the ledger by undoing some of the moralistic nanying that they did when last they were in power (I speak partially of the online poker prohibition, but also regarding the general anti-individual liberty strains of the Bush administration) Making this an anti-porn crusade annoys libertarians and distracts from what Comrade X rightly calls the government waste issue.
@Meade:
"..28% of visitors to internet porn sites are female."
Who compiles these kinds of stats?
The GOP will likely try to make hay out of this, but they'll just be inviting charges of hypocrisy, because they're far from squeaky clean when it comes to "family values" issues like porn.
Big Business: Knock Knock
SEC: Go away! Batin!
Since no one is squeeky clean then we're all prohibited from aspiring to anything better?
"Who compiles these kinds of stats? "
I don't know but it sounded plausible to me.
wv: "tophoo" as in "TOPHOO!!! That tastes like tofu!"
The great thing about the tea party movement is that it's not as susceptible to charges of hypocrisy.
If Republicans are wasteful, fire them too.
Everyone wants change, but no one wants to go back to how Republicans ran Congress during their last era of control. No to Pelosi and no to DeLay.
Go after anything and everything and everyone that's causing the waste and fraud.
Even if there's no one perfect, we should be better.
We can be better. Charges of hypocrisy are excuses for mediocrity.
The Zero is the one who wants financial reform. The charge can be made that, if he's serious, he'd crack down on this sort of thing. The last half of that 2 1/2 year period is on his watch, so he's responsible for that much.
Meade said...
"Exactly why the Democratic way of fucking is better, I don't know. Somebody explain."
I don't know but beginning with Thomas Jefferson and ending with William Jefferson C., sex with slaves and subordinates seems to have been a theme.
In the interests of truth in advertising, most credible people don't buy the idea Tom and Sally were an item. She was about half his age and his fondness for her grew mostly from her resemblance to his recently departed wife, who was her half sister. The original allegation was a political smear and was revived by the media when Willie was caught with his hand in the cookie jar as another attempt to justify his conduct.
As for Willie, no doubt he regards most women as slaves.
Dust Bunny Queen said...
According to my friend D, when he was interning on the Navajo Indian reservation, the Mormon missionaries were boinking the young Navajo women.
Since most Mormon "missionaries" are generally young men and women in the 18 to 26 year age group, this isn't surprising.
Where did you get the idea that Mormons were against sex? And what does this have to do with pornography?
The Mormons have some interesting ideas on race (remember the time frame they were founded and look up the Sons of Ham), so I might be a little skeptical about fraternizing with the Navajos.
As to being against sex, how many Osmond kids were there? And that's a typical Mormon family.
See, here's the problem: suppose - just suppose - that porn corrupted its viewer's natural feelings for other people and deadened their compassion for their fellow man - reducing all fellow women into nothing more than objects of lust and consumption.
That's like saying "suppose -- just suppose -- that attending church turned people into child molesters". Why suppose? We know it isn't true.
Porn is a masturbatory aid, that's all. Masturbation satisfies the sex drive and makes people LESS likely to view other people as sex objects. If you're a guy and you haven't had sexual release in a long time, all women start looking like sex objects. If you're experiencing regular sexual release, not thinking about sex is a lot easier.
The most effective way to get past the "man, I'd like to f*** her" that's always lurking in the male subconscious when dealing with a woman is to replace it with a "I don't particularly want to f*** *anybody* right now". :)
28% of visitors to internet porn sites are female.
But 90% of all women on the internet are secretly dudes.
@revenant
"Masturbation satisfies the sex drive and makes people LESS likely to view other people as sex objects."
[citation needed]
"An accountant was blocked more than 16,000 times in a month from visiting websites classified as "Sex" or "Pornography." Yet he still managed to amass a collection of "very graphic" material on his hard drive by using Google images to bypass the SEC's internal filter, according to an earlier report from the inspector general."
If we assume four five-day work weeks a month, and a eight-hour work day, then this guy was blocked on average from exactly 100 porn sites each and every hour (1 and two-thirds each and every minute), not counting coffee breaks and not counting the time he spent when he did find something through Google.
I have to admire his persistence.
Guy goes to the doctor about his masturbation problem. Doctor sits him down and asks "do you remember the first time you masturbated?". The guys says "I don't remember the first time I masturbated TODAY!".
Porn is the gateway to financial regulation.
Accountants love porn. Just sayn'
Garage's jest about masturbation reminds me of the old saw about masturbation: "when I was young I used to masturbate all the time; now I am old and getting grey, I only masturbate once a day."
I think it was Robert Heinlein who said the only problem with masturbation is that it is lonely.
The girls I knew in high school were never impressed when I told them I was a master debater.
No it's not good for the GOP to go on an anti porn rampage because:
1. Inevitably their own petard will hoist them. The appeal of porn is nonpartisan.
2. There are more serious issues out there and people want those taken are of.
3. They probably don't know it when they see it.
It's not the porn, it's the abuse of the office etc.
The only thing worse than a Republican is a Democrat.
The only thing worse than a Democrat is a Bureaucrat.
The cluelessness of these "senior officials" is awesome. How can they possibly not know that their entire internet history on office computers is visible to anyone who investigates?
It's not the time they spent. It's that they are revealed as amazingly stupid people.
The usually skeptical Meade has bought into the erroneous conventional scandal mongering about Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemmings. He's not perfect after all.
I find porn boring and not "real".
thank you.
Therefore, Titus = porn.
Thanks Piggy for the acknowledgement.
I love you so much and wish you the most wonderful of weekends filled with lollipops, rainbows, beautiful scenery, music, food, and most importantly love.
Namaste my friend.
"when I was young I used to masturbate all the time; now I am old and getting grey, I only masturbate once a day."
Reminds me of the Woody Allen line: "Don't knock masturbation. It's sex with someone I love."
Also, if that number is correct, 16,000 visits per month, then that's a pretty sick dude. Really. That's an unhealthy obsession no matter what he/she is lookin' at.
No problem.
Just keepin' it real.
Am I right, or am I right?
This is slightly off topic, I guess but it involves gummint workers and sex. My first job was with the SSA, a seven year nightmare. The office manager was accused (correctly) of bonking the office nymphomaniac during office hours, in his office, on his couch. The IG came in, escorted him out with his sofa cushions wrapped in plain brown paper. Well, that's the story I heard anyway. I was long gone when that happened.
wv: cohysyme.
I clearly went into the wrong field.
On a good day, I get a bathroom break for mebbe 5 minutes at 2 p.m.
Does anyone actually work in the gummint?
If we assume four five-day work weeks a month, and a eight-hour work day, then this guy was blocked on average from exactly 100 porn sites each and every hour
Bear in mind that each image on the page is a separate request that is separately blocked. Add in pop-ups going to other (blocked) sites and you could easily rack up hundreds of "blocked requests" in less than a second, simply by visiting a single unblocked page that hotlinked to blocked sites.
28% of visitors to internet porn sites are female.
They're either checking their man's browsing history or looking for ideas for their next tattoo.
One of my sister's friends went to "work" for the Dept of Energy when it was fairly new. Her whole office did nothing but play bridge her first year. Eventually she got bored (not a guilty conscience) and found some DoE lawyers who needed help with computers. She liked that enough to became one of Scalia's last students at UVa, before going around the bend a few years ago. She thinks Russell Crowe is speaking to her telepathically.
WV - rershead - worse than teabagging
I think if they're going to make hay about anything it should be the SEC took years to find out about something that would get you fired in a week at a private company. There's definitely a waste, fraud, and abuse angle here, especially in an organization with oversight as its charter.
As to the porn, I'm reminded of a news article which described an effort by academics to measure the effect of porn on the psyche. They had to abandon the effort when they couldn't find a single man who had never viewed pornography.
"Masturbation satisfies the sex drive and makes people LESS likely to view other people as sex objects."
[citation needed]
You need a citation that men are less interested in sex after achieving orgasm? Should I follow that up with a citation that people are less interested in eating following a big meal? How about a citation that people are less interested in sleep after a good night's sleep? :)
Yeah, or that they're less interested in having a beer after they've already had a beer. :-)
It's kind of encouraging that 28% of women visit porn sites. They should have a porn site that shows women in cubicles getting aroused by looking at women in cubicles looking at porn and getting aroused. It would appeal to a lot of guys, especially the ones that have to work in cubicles....Sadly, none of my female coworkers were addicted to porn. They were, however, all conversant with shopping sites and would fall into heavy, rhythmic breathing as they clicked away for hours at all the good things there were to buy in the world.
It's bad politics to go after porn because Republicans get killed in these debates over values. The values debate is best left to simmer in the undernews.
It's the economy, stupid. The economy and the latent fear that government is encroaching in every facet of our lives. Going after porn is just one more encroachment.
What do you say to this kind of story? I mean, what the fuck can you possibly say? No to the anti-porn question, but come on man. You make nearly a quarter a million a year and you spend nearly 8 hours of your day watching porn? WTF? What do you have like super testicles that produce super quantities of semen? How the fuck can you take 8 hours of porn a day? What is it that you are seeing for that long that just look at that says, "oh, yeah, i've already seen this... FAP, FAP, FAP..."
It's good for the argument that the SEC is useless and destructive (like Energy and Education) and should be dissolved. Not so good for the argument that "our guys won't be watching porn but watching your money. Really."
How the fuck can you take 8 hours of porn a day?
Probably, like anything else, it takes more and more to produce the same effect. The tipsiness one beer used to produce now requires a case, etc.
It doesn't have to be increased duration. I figure you have to work your way up to the hard stuff, like midget orgy porn.
You make nearly a quarter a million a year and you spend nearly 8 hours of your day watching porn?
Best job EVAR!!1!!
my answer is no because porn or no-porn is a personal issue and porn is self-defined. (eg my secret word is 'hiphymin' ie a cool virgin, ooh, ooh). I would, however, like to see all these SEC folks fired for wasting taxpayer money.
I hope the Republicans do not try to make an issue of porn -- that would mean the social conservative/fiscally profligate folks are still in charge and did not get the message.
But at least now we know why Bernie Madoff, and the other Ponzi schemes that have since come to light, were allowed to go on so long. I mean, who has time to unravel a complicated Ponzi scheme by a man whose money made for good political connections when there's all that porn out there on the web?
Is it good politics for the GOP to go on an anti-porn rampage?
Let me rephrase the question 'Is it useful politics for the GOP to pursue an antiporn agenda/platform'
Yes, it will activate a portion of their base, and will not increase the numbers of those who are neutral or opposed to the republicans.
If you don't want the taxpayer to fund $200K porn addicts, hire more women to be in elite positions.
I don't see this as a rep/dem issue.
so what's the consensus here ? did folks here all vote on the main page ? it would be interesting to know what Karl Rove thinks on this issue. didnt he write the book on wedge issues and political distraction used for electoral and policy gain ? Mark Penn wanted to be Karl Rove but failed miserably, leading Hillary off a cliff. That latter bit was fascinating to watch happen during the primaries. i hear hillary and patti solis doyle still dont speak.
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