16
Sep
Surrogate Fail
Someone needs to submit this to failblog, because Carly Fiorina is off message:
Carly Fiorina, a key surrogate for John McCain on economic issues, said on Tuesday that Sarah Palin does not have the experience needed to run a major company like the one that Fiorina formerly headed.“Do you think [Sarah Palin] has the experience to run a major company, like Hewlett Packard?” asked the host.
“No, I don’t,” responded Fiorina. “But you know what? That’s not what she’s running for.”
What the hell is Fiorina talking about? Just last week, Sarah Palin drove by a mall, so clearly she can run a big business.
cleek
what the hell does Fiorina know about running a big company ?
Ben
The wheels are starting to come off the bus… You knew it was coming…
Noah
Sarah Palin is already vice-president so it doesn’t matter.
Jeff
That was payback for the golden parachute comment.
Paul in Boca
Earlier today I drove past a church, does that mean I can be God?
Ned Raggett
Halcro on Palin today is pretty rich stuff. Sounds like things up north are, how you say, getting all the more interesting:
http://www.andrewhalcro.com/test_0
(And yeah, the URL reads funny, but trust me, worth a scrounge.)
JL
Before the Palin nomination came about a local church had a sign that read “Jesus used nails, man uses duct tape.” My son immediately knew that his name must be Jesus.
Tsulagi
Plus Palin saw an ATM in Alaska so she’s already good to go on Freddie, Fannie, banking and financial markets, domestic and foreign. Jesus would confirm.
amocz
OT - just now at CNN.com:
Bush lands in Texas; Residents urged to leave
Uh… Hurricane Bush? WTF??
gbear
RNC delegate tryst fail.
rob!
it takes a special kind of skill to fuck up at a big company like HP, so Fiorina certainly knows what she’s talking about.
and as you glean from the quote, she revealed the deepest held belief of Republicans: government isn’t nearly as important as Big Business—let the fuck ups work in government.
Incertus
Well, technically, all she has to know how to do is break ties in the Senate, so as long as she can vote the way her boss tells her to, she ought to be fine in the gig. That’s the Dan Quayle model, and we all remember how well he did that.
Of course, there is the whole “might have to take over if McCain eats it” part of the equation, but I’m guessing Fiorina wasn’t focusing on that.
Scott H
I suppose it takes one to know one. Carly Fiorina didn’t have what it takes to run a major corporation like HP.
And, since the Federal government is, more or less, a conglomerate of major corporations, I don’t see how I can approach Palin as a viable candidate. Thanx, Carly.
SGEW
By the way, remember how ex-McCain sweetheart Richard Cohen divorced Johnny Boy McCain, ‘cause that rapscallion ran off with some new trollop?
Well, Mr. Cohen has now descended (ascended? transcended?) into outright snarky satire.
This is the Sadly, No! election.
Ned Raggett
Another bridge? Wh knew?
Thelonious
Fiorina was on MSNBC a few minutes ago. She was asked about that quote and anted up on it. She said McCain wasn’t qualified to run a Fortune 500 company either. She then followed up and said neither was Obama or Biden. Not a rousing endorsement of her ticket.
gbear
Ahh, I see John was writing up his post about it just as I was posting this comment.
DrDave
According to a friend of mine who used to do regional server support for HP, not very much.
Fiorina is just another perpetually full of shit McCain surrogate who makes you want to throw your shoe through the TV. Their mendacity is now legendary, there are no ethical boundaries and there is no sense of shame.
SGEW
What kind of political climate* have we sunk to when I read headlines like “Tanning Association Defends Gov. Palin”?
I can’t take it anymore! Someone unplug the Matrix, it’s been cross-wired with Mad magazine.
*No pun intended. Really.
Krista
That alone tells you everything you need to know about McCain and how he’d run the country.
scott
Nothing but she knows lots about ruining a company.
Paul L.
Why are you being such a misogynist.
You will call down the wraith of Amanda Marcotte.
Mothers Don’t Go on Strike
Joshau Norton
The Campaign to Nowhere.
Elle R.
Good thing the annual budget of the United States is way smaller than Hewlett Packard’s.
PeterJ
Fiorina is trying to come to terms with the fact that Palin got picked as VP candidate and she didn’t.
And she’s found a way to do it, by believing that the qualifications for being VP or POTUS for that matter are less than the qualifications needed to run a Fortune 500 company.
It was either this or her brain would have melted.
thomas
What was Fiorini’s buy-out? How many millions was she paid to walk away from HP?
The good news is she walked to McPOW’s side to cast these pearls before swine in lipstick.
The gods seem to be on our side this week.
OriGuy
I read a lot of blog comments from people who complain about their co-workers being McCain supporters. I work at HP; I don’t hear so much of that. (Of course, I’m also in California, but no one here has a good word for Carly.)
thomas
sorry about the double – thought I’d stopped the 1st to correct misspells (didn’t even accomplish that)
speaking of lipstick – a pitbull, with or without lipstick, can be a dangerous and unpredictable animal.
Cris
Wasn’t the Republican party the one whose candidates used to say “government should be run like a business?” Wouldn’t that suggest that business acumen is an important qualification for the head of the government?
w vincentz
She knows how to run a company?
Yikes!
Might I suggest she take lessons form the “Palin School of Make-up” on how to put rouge on her cheeks, not to say that Sarah doesn’t know how either. Lipstick classes later.
LiberalTarian
Wow, doing exciting stuff (calculating half-lives), and from my random playlist Willie Nelson comes on with Hiatt’s Most Unoriginal Sin. I was really struck with how much it seems to me the GOP could be singing this to the public (and crying in their beer):
What there was left of us
Was all covered in dust and thick skin
A half eaten apple
The whole Sistine chapel
Painted on the head of a pin
A life long love’s work
Gone up in a smirk
And you didn’t even see her waltz in
Now this love is a ghost,
having played host
To the most unoriginal sin
At the wedding we smiled
While some devil played wild violin
Soon after the chapel
She offered me that apple
One bite and i was gone with the wind
And you needed no proof
Cause the whole naked truth
Was wearing only an infidels grin
And a proud school boys boast
For having left his post
For the most unoriginal sin
Now the juke box is hummin’
All the venal short comings of men
But I found me this drink
That can finally sink
All this guilt I been wallowing in
Buddy once you get started
Once true love’s departed
You do it over and over again
So tonight I will toast
Just who ever comes close
To the most unoriginal sin
Sigh. Well, if you get a chance to listen to it, you should. Love lost and buried in cynicism. OK, Back to work.
w vincentz
@SEGW,
I can’t wait until that tanning bed shows up on ebay. If’n I don’t get my bid in during the last 30 seconds, I might buy it from a private broker (if she decides to sell it at a loss).
I’ll do anything to increase my melalin, cause melalin is “hot”.
Notorious P.A.T.
That is a pretty damn good definition of fascism, right there.
low-tech cyclist
I took the White House tour once, so I’m qualified to be President!
Joy
Sarah also uses an ATM, therefore she knows about the financial industry. Presumably, she uses a toilet, therefore, she knows about plumbing.
Brachiator
This reminds me that Krista’s most excellent witticism has gone viral (Palin says she has foreign policy experience because she can see Russia from Alaska. I can see the moon from my house; doesn’t make me a fucking astronaut).
On this morning’s Stephanie Miller show, someone quoted a variation of this jibe, which then inspired callers to make their case for government jobs:
I’m a nurse and put a bandaid on my husband’s elbow. Can I be Surgeon General?
I’ve got two potted plants. Can I be Secretary of Agriculture?
I’ve got barbed wire around my yard. Can I be Secretary of Defense?
Shygetz
I actually walked into a library, so I’m a fucking Super-Genius!
w vincentz
I’ll admit it here.
I broke a loaf of bread in half and passed it around.
I uncorked a bottle of wine and passed it around for all to sip.
I’m the MESSIAH!
Krista
Excellent. Step 1 in my plan is complete.
Brett
I wonder to what degree McCain listens to Fiorina for advice and thinks of her. Here’s hoping she’s not his equivalent of Robert McNamara if he gets elected.
Whammer
Krista, I’ve been stealing/repeating your line, so I guess I’m a part of the “gone viral” crowd, but I didn’t know it was you. Glad to know you are the source….
From the NYT, we know that Gov. Palin puts her money where her mouth is—her high school friend had a “lifelong love of cows”, so she got a plum job in the agriculture department!
I’ve got a “lifelong love of scantily-clad women”, how can I get the editor of Playboy job???
Nikolita
Didn’t check to see if it was already posted, but if not:
http://thinkprogress.org/2008/.....r-from-tv/
She’s gone – from TV. ;) I wish someone had caught his reaction on film so we could see a more recent version of that temper I’ve heard a lot about.
Catsy
Krista, a variation on that line is presently my IM message.
crf
I wouldn’t attack Fiorina for what she said so much. It is a difficult job defending in an honest way Palin as a nominee.
Although her tenure at HP was not considered good, it is hard to say that she isn’t still enormously competent business-wise.
Also, I agree with her. Being President, or Vice President, is not like running a large computer company, so, assuming one were well qualified for one job, doesn’t necessarily make one qualified to do the other well.
It is just a measure of how awful the GOP has become that she was not supported by her own party for saying something moderately sensible. Pretty soon nobody intelligent will want to be in that party. It has, since Gingerich, been morphing into something quite awful. (Hopefully, losing the election and congress will send the far-right, anti-intellectual arm of the party into its deserved deathrows. Competent people like Fiorina or Whitman or Powell might make a comeback then in its reconstitution.)
I don’t think it is fair either for those opposed to McCain’s bid to attack her in the way many have. Better to attack the Republican party hard for what it has become, where people like Fiorina who dare to honestly think become axle grease for the straight talk express.