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Carly Fiorina, the former CEO of Hewlett-Packard Co., formally entered the race for the U.S. Senate seat now held by Barbara Boxer.
Those with an interest and memory for such things, will recall Fiorina's tenure at Hewlett-Packard. It was unmitigated disaster throughout. She almost destroyed the company, a flagship of corporate liberalism. There was the greed, of course, but there was also an element of spite; she taught the rentier heirs of the founders a lesson in schoolyard punking. She was, on a small scale, what Larry Summers was to Russia, the United States, Harvard, the United States again, etc. There's something about these people, I'll tell you. Nominally liberal or nominally conservative, their salient characteristic is a highly destructive looting rampage that is incomplete without an effort to shock the more staid bourgeoisie.
I doubt Fiorina will be able to unseat Boxer, who is pretty solidly entrenched in spite of Obama's best efforts to regain a legislative minority, but passage through the media shitstorm of Fiorina's horrible lumpen preppy rage, constantly irate ambition and sense of entitlement may make her sweat a little.
Aside from the appropriately mean-spirited glee at the prospect, this offers a fine example of the inter-party "worse the better" strategy. The Republicans will reliably come up with someone so vicious and nasty that even a time-serving, glad-handing corporate hack of a Democrat looks good by comparison; at least in the take-it-or-leave-it binary game. If she wins, after some judicious half-assed beautiful losing, the corporate hack will immediately return to engorging her sponsors, and everyone who matters to either of them is happy. Me, I get to use lots of emdashes, which yields its own happiness.
My prescription for those concerned is, as always: stay home. It's bad for you to engage this kind of this freak show. If you believe in anything at all, you've already lost.
Comments (9)
i know nothing of course
http://www.nndb.com/people/181/000032085/schultz.jpg
but frankly ...i'm excited
http://im.rediff.com/money/2003/sep/26sld1.jpg
i see myself in those well articulated hands of hers
about my neck
eager to romanize me
ah don't i wish i had something
she wanted enough to choke me for....
Posted by op | January 10, 2010 8:13 AM
Posted on January 10, 2010 08:13
Here's the UTF-8 for emdashes. Using that with your UNIX Command line bag of tricks like sed, perl, etc. will measurably enhance your pleasure:
\xe2\x80\x94
Just keep in mind to keep your skills from getting too high or you might get tapped on the shoulder for higher duties:
http://cryptome.org/0001/fbi010810.htm
Posted by sl | January 10, 2010 10:54 AM
Posted on January 10, 2010 10:54
Hag-o-machia! Woo-hoo!
Posted by MJS | January 10, 2010 2:09 PM
Posted on January 10, 2010 14:09
I'd like to believe the "InfraGard" would find me completely unsuited for participation, but to ensure this outcome my comments are as follows:
1) "[T]he proper performance of the functions of the agency" would be best served by the immediate resignation of all personnel which, if pursued according to the generally accepted understanding of the phrase, "immediate resignation of all personnel", would allow the following comments to apply:
2) Moot.
3) Moot.
4) Moot.
Posted by Al Schumann | January 10, 2010 3:45 PM
Posted on January 10, 2010 15:45
Wasn't "InfraGard" a Hong Kong tv show from the late '70s? Dumb monsters and pointless special effects and, oh wait, I'm thinking of "Avatar."
Posted by AlanSmithee | January 11, 2010 6:13 AM
Posted on January 11, 2010 06:13
My friend, former military intelligence agent, told me yesterday that a distant star, called Wolf - something, has exploded and is emitting gamma rays travelling at the speed of light and destroying anything they encounter, on schedule to arrive here in 2012. So, with luck, this contest between beedle and bum will never take place.
Posted by senecal | January 12, 2010 11:30 AM
Posted on January 12, 2010 11:30
Can we get a new post, so we don't have to see these two soul-killing visages when we cruise by?
Posted by Michael Dawson | January 12, 2010 5:22 PM
Posted on January 12, 2010 17:22
Coming right up. You may not consider it an improvement.
Posted by MJS | January 12, 2010 8:57 PM
Posted on January 12, 2010 20:57
Reminds me of a book I never read.
http://www.carlyfiorina.com/about_carly.html
Tough choices indeed, but I think Mr. Schumann's advice to stay home is correct. As a Lucent alumni, I don't think it a stretch to say that a win by Carly would, in the end, drive voters right back to another "lesser of two evils" Democrat. And that would take 6 years. Imagine all the golf I could get in during that time instead.
An interesting note in the link above for the UNIX guys here is that at least some responsibility for Fiorina's rise can be assigned to AT&T "...they thought enough about her promising future to send her there [Sloan, MIT]." Yes, I know, she's a real trooper and would have gotten that Business degree on her own anyway, but still, makes one wonder.
BTW, does anyone remember calling the backward leaning single quote (`) a "grave accent" or was that just internal AT&T?
Posted by hadji singh![[TypeKey Profile Page]](../../nav-commenters.gif)
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January 12, 2010 10:44 PM
Posted on January 12, 2010 22:44