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Clueless Carly - Crony Capitalist Warmonger With Flash Cards
Submitted by David Stockman via Contra Corner blog,
Carly Fiorina proved at least one thing last week. Namely, you don’t have to be a career GOP politician to come across as a war-mongering neocon and abortion-bashing statist demagogue. She took the stage fully formed as a frightul modern-day Torquemada, threatening to bring fire and brimstone down on anyone running afoul of her righteous indignation and crystal clear grasp of the Truth.
That included about everyone on the world stage, save for the presumably sainted Bibi Netanyahu. As for the others, Putin was to be given the silent treatment and a stiff dose of NATO encirclement, while Iran was to be occupied by US inspectors at “every military and every nuclear facility…….. anytime, anywhere……”
In trying to sound like she actually knows something about national security policy there was not a single neocon shibboleth that she didn’t name check, nor any possibility for bolstering Washington’s military might she failed to mention:
Having met Vladimir Putin, I wouldn’t talk to him at all. We’ve talked way too much to him…….What I would do, immediately, is begin rebuilding the Sixth Fleet, I would begin rebuilding the missile defense program in Poland, I would conduct regular, aggressive military exercises in the Baltic states. I’d probably send a few thousand more troops into Germany. Vladimir Putin would get the message…..We could also, to Senator Rubio’s point, give the Egyptians what they’ve asked for……..We could give the Jordanians what they’ve asked for…bombs and materiel. We have not supplied it…We could arm the Kurds.
Yada yada. If you thought Fiorina was actually running for CEO of the military-industrial complex, you would not necessarily be wrong. After the above riff, she was just getting warmed-up:
We need the strongest military on the face of the planet, and everyone has to know it. And, specifically, what that means is we need about 50 Army brigades, we need about 36 Marine battalions, we need somewhere between 300, and 350 naval ships, we need to upgrade every leg of the nuclear triad…….we need to reform the Department of Defense, we need as well… …to invest in our military technology, and we need to care for our veterans so 307,000 …aren’t dying waiting for health care.
Ok, Carly has a distinct facility for memorizing flash cards. But here’s one she missed. Contrary to her suggestion from the debate transcript below, the Russians did not just show up in Syria last week because Iranian General Suleimani recently flew to Moscow.
Actually, the Russians have been in Syria since the CIA’s abortive coup attempt in 1958. That was exactly one year after the General was born and while his country was being ruled by the brutal tyrant the CIA installed on the Peacock Throne to keep watch on the Persian oilfields:
By the way, the reason it is so critically important that every one of us know General Suleimani’s name is because Russia is in Syria right now, because the head of the Quds force traveled to Russia and talked Vladimir Putin into aligning themselves with Iran and Syria to prop up Bashar al- Assad……….Russia is a bad actor……. the only way (Putin) will stop is to sense strength and resolve on the other side, and we have all of that within our control……We could rebuild the Sixth Fleet. I will. We haven’t.
Had enough? It’s not just that Fiorina didn’t get the memo that the Cold War ended 25 years ago, and that the massive military build-up she name checked would blow the current generous $523 billion sequester caps on Pentagon spending sky high. By my estimate, Fiorina’s senseless armada and new force deployments would cost at least $800 billion per year.
But that is just plain nuts. After all, at the peak of the cold war in 1960, the great General Dwight Eisenhower not only warned the nation about the dangers of the military-industrial complex, but also affirmed that a defense budget of $400 billion in today’s (2015) dollars of purchasing power was more than enough to contain the Soviet Union.
And that’s when the latter was run by an erratic dictator who said he would bury us; had taken the lead in the space race; had 4 million men under arms, upwards of 50,000 tanks and an immense nuclear arsenal at its disposal; and had not yet eviscerated its economy during the final decades of socialist plunder and asphyxiation.
So why in heavens name would a quasi-bankrupt America need to spend 2X more than Ike’s budget? That is, in a world in which the Soviet empire is no more, and in which we have no industrial state enemy left on the planet, why would you propose to pour hundreds of billions more into that swampland of waste otherwise known as the Pentagon?
Surely it is not because Putin’s Russia is a threat to the safety and security of Lincoln NE or Worcester MA or any other place in America. For crying out loud, the Russian GDP at $1.86 trillion last year was 25% smaller than the $2.3 trillion GDP of California.
Moreover, the kleptocracy that Putin has built is every bit as disabling as the rickety façade erected by the Soviet commissars. In fact, nearly the entire Russian economy is a bloated artifact of the central bank driven global credit boom that is now coming to a screeching halt. Subtract oil and gas, minerals and metals, fertilizer and wheat, and like and similar natural resources and industrial commodities from the Russian economy, and you do not have much left.
Stated differently, the Soviet Union perished not because Ronald Reagan threatened a bad joke called Star Wars or wasted countless billions on a 600-ship Navy, 10,000 new tanks and fighting vehicles, 18,000 new aircraft and helicopters and hundreds of billions more on weapons of power projection like cruise missiles and amphibious landing craft.
No, the Evil Empire collapsed on its own weight; it was a victim of the very central planning and socialist statism that Fiorina claims to oppose.
Yet Putin’s kleptocracy is now falling victim to just another form of statism and its deflationary aftermath. That is, monetary central planning as it has been practiced by the Fed and most of the world’s central banks for the past two decades. The fact is, the Russian ecomomy is sinking like a stone, and has no prospect for recovery in a world in which $35/bbl oil and $0.70/ lbs aluminum are here for an extended duration.

Besides that, if Fiorina wants to wonk it up about alleged “aggression” she needs to review her flash cards on Russian history. The fact is, Catherine the Great paid the Ottomans good money for Crimea; and that was 65 years before Washington “annexed” California at the end of some bayonets in 1846.
The Russian “black sea fleet” has been home ported in Crimea ever since at the Russian built naval base in Sevastopol—–under czars and commissars alike. It ended up in Ukraine only after Kruschev gifted it to his fellow Ukrainian apparatchiks during a drunken night of map-jiggering in the old Soviet Union.
And Putin appeared to be happy to make payments on his 40-year rental agreement on Russia’s naval equivalent of San Diego until he was unexpectedly called from his box at the Sochi Olympics in February 2014. Thereupon he learned that a Washington funded coup had deposed the constitutionally elected President of the Ukraine, and that the latter had been replaced by a putsch consisting of anti-Russian, neo-fascist political adventurers, ruffians and plutocrats.
There was surely some “aggression” involved in all of this, but it originated with Fiorina’s neocon tutors, not the current incumbent of the Kremlin. Indeed, the flash cards which apparently fell out of Fiorina’s briefing deck also failed to mention that Crimea has been the epicenter of Russian nationalism since the Charge Of The Light Brigade in 1854, and was 90% populated with Russian speakers who were not about to be ethnically cleansed by the upstart regime in Kiev.
Likewise, another missing flash card failed to note that the Donbas was Russian, not Ukrainian, and that the history was painted in iron and blood.
The Donbas was Russian after the 1930s because Stalin sent its native Ukrainians and Cossacks to the Gulag in order to make room for “reliable Russians” in the coal mines, steel mills, chemical plants and machinery works located there and which were the backbone of Soviet heavy industry. And it was temporarily Nazi controlled after Hitler’s Wehrmacht, along with the Ukrainian nationalist collaborators, brutally occupied it on the way to Stalingrad—–only to have the carnage revisted upon the west of Ukraine when the Red Army came through in hot pursuit of the retreating Germans.
The inhabitants of the Donbas and Crimea thus have reasons for enmity and distrust of the Ukrainian nationalist who have seized power in Kiev—-deep historical reasons that couldn’t have been put on a simple flash card, even if Fiorina had memorized it.
Indeed, the dangerous untruth of Fiorina’s bluster—–and that of the rest of the GOP candidates except for Rand Paul——is that Moscow has invaded an innocent neighbor. In fact, the Ukrainians and their Russian-speaking countrymen have resumed a civil war that has been underway for centuries, most of which time no such nation as the Ukraine even existed. It could be solved with no more risk to America’s security than the partition of the Czech Republic and Slovakia are few years back.
So in proposing that American spend itself silly arming-up for threats that even Eisenhower couldn’t have imagined, who else did Fiorina have in mind?
Surely, not the red capitalists of Beijing. They long ago gave up Chairman Mao’s doctrine that communist party power comes from the barrel of a gun in favor of Mr. Deng’s theory that it can be better had from the end of a printing press.
Having pursued Mr. Deng’s path for 25 years now, they have succeeded in erecting the greatest Ponzi in human history. The resulting $28 trillion pyramid of debt and the vast excess of everything which it funded will collapse on itself as surely as did gray statism of the Soviet Union.
In any event, the suzerains of red capitalism may have no compunction about stealing intellectual capital from Intel or constructing pointless artificial islands in the South China Sea, but they are not even remotely stupid. They know that were they to bomb America’s 4,000 Wal-Marts, China would plunge into an economic dark age, and not before the entire central committee of the CPC was hung from the rafters of the Imperial Palace Museum.
So exactly who is it that is threatening to invade the Mediterranean Sea and that necessitates the “rebuilding” of the 6th Fleet? On the order of the President any day of the week, it can already be pulsed to an armada of two aircraft carriers, 40 escort ships, 175 aircraft and 21,000 people, which is to say, a mini-navy with more lethal power than any other navy in the world, except for America’s eight other carrier battle groups.
What is this soap-box warrior talking about? And hasn’t the 6th fleet already done enough damage in its purportedly under-funded condition? The failed states of Libya and Iraq are among its recent accomplishments—–so what other middle eastern nations need to be bombed and tomahawked into anarchy?
Surely not Syria. There is already nothing left after the regime-changing neocons in Washington and their allies in the Persian Gulf financed and armed the sundry armies of the Sunni jihad. That is, savage fanatics who promise to rid the world of Bashar al-Assad, his Alawite heresy and the sundry Christian, Druse, Kurd and Yazidi minorities, among others, that have been aligned with Syria’s secular rulers for 40 years.
The point is, there is already massive 6th Fleet firepower off the coast of Syria. What is missing is any reason of American national security whatsoever to bring it to bear in a civil war between the Sunni and Alawite/Shiite confessions of Islam, which have been warring for 13 centuries. And most especially not in behalf of the grasping gluttons of Qatar, who are looking for gas pipelines across Syria, or the Wahhabi coddling tyrants of Riyadh, who behead citizens for insulting the King.
Then there is always Iran. Never mind that its entire defense budget is just $14 billion or the amount that the Pentagon spends in a week, not counting Sunday. Ignore the fact that even the US intelligence agencies confirm that it has had no nuclear weapons program since abandoning a small research effort in 2003, and that its entire defense force and doctrine is strictly defensive. And forget that Iran has invaded no one in the last 100 years and has supplied fewer lethal arms to its Shiite allies in Syria and Hezbollah-Lebanon than the Pentagon left behind in Mosul and elsewhere for ISIS.
No, Carly said that on day one in the White House she would tell the Aytollah and Planned Parenthood a thing or two and all in the same breath:
I would like to link these two issues, both of which are incredibly important, Iran and Planned Parenthood……..One has something to do with the defense of the security of this nation. The other has something to do with the defense of the character of this nation.
No they don’t—not in the slightest. In linking rank demogouery about an issue the Supreme Court settled 43 years ago, and which is a matter of personal liberty, not state edict, with a mindless trashing of the Iranian nuclear deal, which is the best chance for peace in the middle east in a generation, Fiorina proved why she was an abysmal failure in business. Namely, that she is a whiz at memorizing flash cards, but has no clue as to what they really mean.
And that gets to her flimsy reason for even being in the race for the White House. Fiorina claims to be roaring business success and thereby the very CEO that America needs.
C’mon. Fiorina was a bubble finance rider at both Lucent and Hewlett-Packard, and to this day has no clue about the reasons for the carnage she left behind.
But in what is surely an unintended bit of irony, she explained to Jake Tapper during the debate why her business experience is exactly the last thing America’s debt and bubble besotted economy actually needs. Like the politicians she ridiculed, she didn’t know she was a fish, either.
Jake, I’ll tell you — I’ll tell you why people are supporting outsiders. It’s because you know what happens if someone’s been in the system their whole life, they don’t know how broken the system is. A fish swims in water, it doesn’t know it’s water.
The truth is that Fiorina was a once and failed CEO only because she rode the Lucent Bubble to undeserved fame during the blow-off phase of the massive 1990s tech bubble. Its peak market cap of $250 billion at the time of her departure for Hewlett-Packard in 1999 was not due to her business prowess as head of its major division or that ATT’s gussied up maker of prosaic equipment like switchgear had invented anything new under the sun.
Lucent’s giant but fleeting market cap was entirely a product of the Greenspan Bubble and the fact that its leadership including Fiorina had no compunction about goosing its sales by lending billions to its customers, many of who were tech era start-ups rapidly burning off their VC supplied cash.
In any event, Lucent’s stock crashed and eventually plummeted to less than $10 billion after it took multi-billion write-offs for its bad debts, laid off more than 50,000 employees and confessed to the SEC that it had doctored its accounting. More importantly, Fiorina had gotten out of dodge just in the nick of time.
In a book about her disastrous tenure at HPQ, Rakesh Khurana, a Harvard professor who studied her Lucent years minced no words:
“It’s unlikely she would have been considered for the HP job once it became clear that Lucent’s success had more to do with loose credit terms and creative accounting than any reinvention of the company as the Second Coming of Cisco”.
But it was at HPQ that her immersion in the destructive financial engineering that has become endemic in the C-suite of corporate America went full frontal. Even Donald Trump called Fiorina on her phony claims about the company’s spectacular growth during her tenure—–claims which the company’s SEC filed financial results don’t remotely support.
Despite those difficult times, we doubled the size of the company, we quadrupled its topline growth rate, we quadrupled its cash flow, we tripled its rate of innovation.
As shown below, what the company actually doubled on Fiorina’s watch was its debt. By contrast, its net income remained dead in the water for five years:
HPQ Total Long Term Debt (Quarterly) data by YCharts
But the above mismatch is not the half of it. Fiorina was a C-suite huckster, constantly appearing on CNBC and elsewhere in the financial press touting HPQ’s stock based on its non-stop financial engineering and deal-making. As her most trenchant critic, Yale Professor Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, noted,
It was Fiorina’s failed leadership that brought her company down. After an unsuccessful attempt to catch up to IBM’s growth in IT services by buying PricewaterhouseCooper’s consulting business (PwC, ironically, ended up going to IBM instead), she abruptly abandoned the strategic goal of expanding IT services and consulting and moved into heavy metal. At a time that devices had become a low margin commodity business, Fiorina bought for $25 billion the dying Compaq computer company, which was composed of other failed businesses. Unsurprisingly, the Compaq deal never generated the profits Fiorina hoped for, and HP’s stock price fell by half. The only stock pop under Fiorina’s reign was the 7 percent jump the moment she was fired following a unanimous board vote. After the firing, HP shuttered or sold virtually all Fiorina had bought.
That’s the patented story of corporate America in the age of cheap tax-deductible debt and the serial falsified stock market bubbles generated by the Federal Reserve. Trillions of M&A deals are made at vastly inflated prices that provide Wall Street’s fast money traders with 25-50% windfall rips on takeover announcements—–market moving events which they have an “uncanny” ability to sniff out in advance.
Then in a few years the advertised synergies are lost in the shuffle and the expected economies of scale become diseconomies of clashing corporate cultures, product and market incompatibility and countless other frictions and shortfalls.
But never mind. Giant goodwill and asset write-offs are taken and the CEO is paid $100 million to disappear and flush his or her failed acquisition strategy down the corporate memory hole. Meanwhile, Wall Street’s sell side analysts dismiss the resulting destruction of corporate resources as non-recurring expense, and get on with their two-year forward ex-items hockey sticks that everywhere and always point steeply higher.
That’s exactly what happened with Fiorina’s disastrous tenure at HPQ, including the $100 million walkaway. What’s worse she also pioneered the toxic financial engineering strategy which is rampant in corporate America today. Namely, the expedient of flushing more cash into the stock market than companies actually earn in order to goose stock option winnings in the C-suite, especially through massive stock buybacks with borrowed funds.
Thus, during the approximate six years of her tenure between 1999 and 2005, HPQ earned net income of $12.6 billion, but pumped $16.4 billion back into Wall Street in the form of stock buybacks ($11.7 billion) and dividends ($4.7 billion). Needless to say, distributing 130% of net income to shareholders is a mathematically unsustainable strategy, but most especially in the investment and innovation driven world of big tech.
Indeed, distributions to shareholders greatly in excess of net income are rarely a formula for long-term financial health, but in this case were especially counterproductive because Hewlett-Packard was also underfunding its fixed-asset base and sharply curtailing R&D expense relative to its acquisition bloated sales.
Thus, HPQ recorded $12 billion of depreciation and amortization charges during Fiorina’s tenure, compared to just $11 billion of capital expenditure, notwithstanding that it was the largest high tech equipment manufacturer in the world and faced brutal East Asian competitors who did not usually play by capitalist rules, and spent drastically higher amounts on CapEx relative to sales.
HPQ Total Depreciation and Amortization (Quarterly) data by YCharts
At the same time, R&D investment dropped by one-third——from 5-6% of sales to barely 4% by the end of Fiorina’s term as CEO. HPQ fell behind its ferocious global competition and never caught up.
HPQ R&D to Revenue (TTM) data by YCharts
As it happened, the Board eventually got rid of Fiorina, but not the financial engineering strategies by which she launched one of America’s storied tech companies on the road to Wall Street driven ruin. In fact, HPQ became a serial M&A and stock buyback machine that rewarded executive with periodic options winnings and fast money traders with endless opportunities to front-run stock buyback and deal announcements.
To that end, HPQ spent $76 billion on stock buybacks and dividends during 2005 through the most recent quarter of 2015, but that amounted to nearly 160% of what it earned. Not surprisingly, rising debt and under-investment in its operating business made up the shortfall.
In all, America’s once premier technology engineering company was ruined by corporate fish swimming in a bubble they did not even recognize, which enabled financial engineering strategies that defy logic and common sense.
During the entirety of the period 1999 to 2015, HPQ spent $93 billion on stock buybacks and dividends, but only earned a cumulative $61 billion in net income. At least it can be said that Fiorina comes from a corporate deficit finance school that is well suited for Washington duty.
Likewise, during those same 16 years HPQ spent upwards of $70 billion on M&A deals including the allegedly giant transformative deals in the form of Compaq, Electronic Data Systems and a British company called Autonomy.
The abysmal failure of Hewlett-Packard’s serial M&A deals became starkly evident, however, when it was recently forced to write-off nearly $20 billion of goodwill and assets for just the last two of these acquisitions. What was also evident is that in massively overpaying for bad deals, the company had wrecked its balance sheet.
During the last decade long spree of financial engineering, Hewlett Packard has spent nearly $120 billion on shareholder distributions and M&A deals, but has generated only $83 billion in operating cash flow after capital expenses.
Notwithstanding all this destructive financial engineering enabled by the falsified financial markets of modern central banking, the proof is in the pudding. The market cap of Hewlett-Packard is no greater in nominal terms than it was 17-year ago in 1998——even before Fiorina showed up to launch its relentless decline as a leader in the global technology market.
HPQ Market Cap data by YCharts
Here is powerful testimony against the Fed’s “wealth effects” policy and the consequent propping and juicing of the stock averages attendant to it. Owing to these machinations, the stock markets are now crawling with speculators capable of powerful hit-and-run forays that encourage CEOs and boards to do their bidding; that is, feed the speculative mob with another stock buyback or M&A deal. Great companies like Hewlett-Packard are now being run not by adult professionals but day-trading punters.
Carly Fiorina was one of the latter. She excelled at mastering her flash cards and pitching financial bubbles from the time of the misbegotten Lucent IPO, to her campaign for the Compaq acquisition, to her final days at Hewlett-Packard.
What she didn’t excel at was learning a single thing that qualifies her to be President of the United States—-not the least of which is humility. Indeed, having helped to destroy two once great American companies based on flash card salesmanship, it is unthinkable that she should be given the opportunity to try her flash cards again—this time with charge of the lethal power of Washington’s massive imperial machinery of war and intervention.
Fiorina needs to shut-up, sit down and flush her flash cards. The furtherance of liberty, prosperity and peace are not what Torquemada’s do.
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personally, i think she was the scariest person on that stage...
and i like the way her name lends itself to alliteration...clueless carly crony capitalist...has a nice ring...
Scary is putting it mildly. The cheap bitch will nuke someone just to show how tough she is.
If we elect her, we deserve the bitch. Just like we deserve O’bupkis. ;-)
Looney
I'd like to see the size of her vagina, barry I mean
I just love her Tits !
That bitch should wear war paint to the next debate... Jeez talk about bloodlust.
It is scarier to see how she jumped in the polls after war mongering so loudly. Seems like lots of Americans never learn. I can tell ya, there is not one Vietnam Vet I know who supported Bush's Iraq War or any other war speech like hers.
Fuck the Republican party.
We all know what the Democrats stand for, but at no time since the 1950's has the Republican party been able to articulate what "it stands for". This is, however, completely natural, since they have no core beliefs whatsoever... at least not any that they would care to discuss in public.
Just prior to the debate, Lockheed-Martin, Boeing, General Dynamics, and Raytheon gave her a wish list of equipment and troop figures scribbled on a napkin for her to plug during the debate.
She jumped in the polls because most men now, even repubs , are R selected emasculated dipshits who think that if they are good to women, that they will do better with them.
All these macho women these days are cheered on by most men. It makes me puke.
Good thing there is still Asian women out there, who have not been beat upside the head with the western feminist bat.
No, it's to show every man in the world that she's got a set for balls between her legs. It's what every woman with power tries to do - show off how big her balls are to all the little dicks who Work for her.
a woman presidents M.O. would be to prove how non feminine and tough she is every day.
dont really need that in the job description of one who controls worlds most destructive WMDs...
plus I like putin more than any of these douche bag "candidates"
Putin for prez. of the USSA farm.
David please PLEASE keep writing about politics, I think your analysis and language around grotesque financial folly is awesome but aiming at the deadly mix of free money and American Know-Nothingism is incredible.
I support that proposition.
Two horses walk into a bar...
Sit down next to each and the Kerry says to Carly "did you hear about my Iran deal?"
Carly says "oh John, I was dealing and selling computer parts to Iran long before you..."
Then the bartender shows up and says "why the long faces?"...
It seems based on this article, she is the most likely candidate and meets all the qualifications.
Skilled self promoter.
Supremely ambitious.
Utterly self-confident.
No real value.
Sounds like a perfect POTUS to me.
You forgot exceptionally warmongery and bloodlusty.
Only a crony capitalist can fuck up not one but TWO companies and get rich in the process.
And then run for President.
Fascism.....pure and simple.
**YAWN**
since when has it been about humility, liberty, prosperity, and peace?
if you ask me she's extremely qualified just like hillary, obama, bush, etc
Why is it that the establishment GOPers are so scarrrred of Carly
What makes you think establishment GOP types are scared of her? She's a full-blown neo-con who would hit the supercharger on offshoring while further expanding the MIC (and therefore debt). And I'm pretty sure her answer to the TBTF bank problem is less regulation and more money for bankers.
...sounds like you're scared of her too
Since I am against all of the things I listed above, I see her as a horrible choice. Do you disagree with my outline of her policies?
If you know what ANY politician is going to do when in office...
then I'd vote for you
I am not voting for more of the same establishment types
never again...
40+ years of promise this and do that...
no more...
I've drawn the line in the sand!
...and as Yogi might say...if the Status Quo stays the same, I could vote for Carlie
when you see a fork in her tongue, take it!
RIP Yogi Berra
is this a hit piece by some of the great womyn of our time who disagree with her tenure at HP? Hillary!/Huma; Camile Paglia; Gloria Steinem;, Andrea Dworkin (whoops, she's no longer with us); Catherine MacKinnon?
At least if she'd get the nod I'm not sure she could lay off anymore in the usa than already are laid off. Perhaps cut benefits to look efficient. But she could put on that fake look of concern like all good HR people can manifest when they're letting people go right before Thanksgiving (after all, people don't commit suicide before the holidays--yes I've heard that from one HR asshole).
If you actually take a look at where her funding comes from it comes straight from Ted Cruz, check the pacs. Her talking points mirror his in the last debate.
Which comes undercover from Goldman.
Not a Fiorita supporter, but if we don't stand for the unborn, then we deserve the hell that is coming. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, unless one of those is inconvenient? Quit denying science. The unborn are human and they deserve defending.
Operation Hummingbird:
Op-Hummingbird was executed exactly as it was predicted in the days leading up to the CNN debate. The Rovian GOPe strategy was quite successful as executed. In the next phase, Fox News becomes a big part of Op-Hummingbird because the target audience is Republican Primary Voters.
The ‘Op-Hummingbird’ goal is to promote Carly Fiorina and Marco Rubio, and get them on either side of Donald Trump. Once that positioning is achieved they will use their very specific political skill-sets to take Trump down with the full assistance from a U.S media which thrives on the tearing down part. Isolate – Ridicule – Marginalize.
Australian billionaire Rupert Murdoch wants the Trans-Pacific Trade Deal approved. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is constructing the trade deal. TPTA controls 40% of global manufacturing. Murdoch is Mr. Wall Street. Murdoch is supporting Bush to get his deal.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce Lobbying Efforts 2015:
Both Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush support these legislative priorities. They, along withMitch McConnell et al, have been lobbied (campaigns paid) to support them. Failure is not an option. The game has been rigged. Wall Street will not be denied. Period.
Exactly- I completely agree.
The Trump issue isn't so much that Trump is an ideal leader; we will never get one even close given the framework of our exceptional American system.
Rather the issue is that Trump cannot be counted on to deliver for basic, core initiatives of the powers that be. Trump shows genuine bravado and had to his credit worked with complex projects, start to finish. This is not the type of person that the real people in charge want to have occupy the ceremonial head of state position that still retains de jure control of the military.
They want some sort of gelded nobody who would simply be an order taker. The obvious and open means of how one theoretically runs for president proves this by way of the funding circuit that these people have to run.
Trump can bypass that and as it were be his own man.
The unborn are human and they deserve defending.
women are human and they deserve defending...if men got pregnant, abortions would be available at the local atm...
...and it still would be indefensibly, morally wrong.
Maybe, but I bet you and all these other little ayatollah wannabes and misogynists wouldn't be saying a word about it. If it's your "rights" and property, then by God you will go down fighting. Why would anyone think you would have a different attitude if all of a sudden you learned you were pregnant? Would the mighty Black Warrior turn his life upside down and start painting the nursery & picking out the baby bed? Don't bother answering. I already know the truth.
How many waifs have you adopted, by the way?
Irregardless, a child before it is born is a hostage inside its mother. And while the circumstances of its conception may be tragic it wil always remain blameless.
It is not a child until it is born. Until then, it is a part of the female's body, and properly known as a fetus, and of no business of anyone's beyond the woman, her doctor, and whomever she decides to consult. That is the law, and it is morally correct from my perspective.
And pelase don't get all biblical on me. I might have to remind you what Jesus said about judging others.
Scientifically incorrect. Why do you hate science?
Gee, it's not a part of the woman's body?
Why do you hate women?
Is War 'Pro-Life'? Sounds hypocitical to me. At what age is it OK to kill other human beings. Do answer. I'm sure many are wondering...
Cry on someone else's shoulder sister. Stow those false presumptions.
what a fucking sheldon adelson controlled, horse-faced cunt, she wants her code name to be "Secretariat" lol!
Secretariat is perfect...a dead horse
... a Male dead horse.
Carly Fiorina is a sick, clueless, ugly bitch.
That said, banging on war drums always brings out the crazy folks. They like to call it being "patriotic"
John McShitstain will start drooling over her very soon!
John almost chose her for his running mate. He's been drooling for years.
But... But But
Blah, blah, blah, more sensationalist ramblings filled with misspellings and grammar errors. Maybe that's why no one takes this drivel seriously?
anytime a poster points out spelling and grammer, I know they are an asshole. did i spell "asshole" correct?
not everyone has all day to peck out some thought, draft it, spell check, and then gloat for a while.
I think you meant to say "did i spell "asshole" CORRECTLY?"
;>)
this cunt is nuts, that is all.
Flakey Fiorina is just another pain-in-the-ass(ets) dumb broad - a clueless-with-hubris walking disaster.... with a sour-puss mug to match.
Lord Deliver Us!
still better than anyone in the demoshit party.
Right on Teh Finn. How can you understand a public that supports Planned Parenthood human vivisection and denounces beheading? And could we add to the game: Begin woman bashing following Palin plan. It is not possible to make more mistakes and hire more incompetent people than our present POTUS.
I totally agree with Stockman regards this Fiorini clown (Sarah Palin on roids?)
BUT this paragraph cracked me up...
"Moreover, the kleptocracy that Putin has built is every bit as disabling as the rickety façade erected by the Soviet commissars. In fact, nearly the entire Russian economy is a bloated artifact of the central bank driven global credit boom that is now coming to a screeching halt. Subtract oil and gas, minerals and metals, fertilizer and wheat, and like and similar natural resources and industrial commodities from the Russian economy, and you do not have much left."
Hilarious garbage from Stockman and just as ridiculous as anything Fiorini has been blathering aboutOne has to be smart when attacking rabid dogs.
That paragraph was a defensive bone of distraction which prevented a false argument being provided to the dysfunctional brains of the neo-con variety.
Subtract oil and gas, minerals and metals, fertilizer and wheat, and like and similar natural resources and industrial commodities from the Russian economy, and you do not have much left."
amerika
That wrmongering bitch isn't getting my child.
From today's National Enquirer:
Upstart Republican candidate Carly Fiorina is a homewrecker who tried to score votes by playing the sympathy card at the Sept. 16 national debate by dramatically declaring that she “buried a child to drug addiction.”
The National ENQUIRER has exclusively learned that Lori Ann Fiorina, who died in October 2009, was in fact Carly’s stepdaughter … and she was brought up not by Carly but by her biological mom, Patricia Fiorina, whose marriage allegedly was wrecked by the 61-year-old White House hopeful who is determined to knock Donald Trump from his superior front-runner status!
The ENQUIRER uncovered that Carly’s first husband, Todd Bartlem, charged that Carly cheated on him with Lori’s dad, Frank Fiorina, who at the time was married to Patricia.
Carly is a “pathological” spin artist, he claimed.
Bombshell divorce documents obtained by The ENQUIRER reveal that Frank filed for divorce from Patricia in 1981 — the year he met Carly!
The records show that Carly sued Todd for divorce two years later. She married Frank in 1985, when public records give Lori’s age as 10.
When The ENQUIRER reached Todd for comment about Carly, he raged: “I got rid of that liar in my life. You can have her!”
LOFL - now the National Enquirer is being quoted as journalism?
What fucking planet am I on and what the hell did they do with earth????
in the land of newspeak - National Enquirer = Real journalism
Yes - aliens have landed
And they have free run of the place as well.
Why don't you ask John Edwards about the National Enquirer?
If you recall, their little expose of him, his lady friend, and their heat child ended his Presidential ambitions in 2008. Looks like they may be teed up to have a rerun with Carly.
Hey David;
Occasionaly read your rants and you have some great data. BUt unless you actually want to put your big boy pants on and get in the race, shut up. We're dealing with an outrage right now and Carly would be a 100% improvement. I have no idea who will win and don't have a favorite, but just shut up and stick to books.
Stockman should run - I'd vote for him over anyone else running.
Just another hit piece by one of Karl Rove's ass-boys!!
MSM has no clue how to judge people as they have no depth of experience themselves.
https://thinkpatriot.wordpress.com/2015/09/23/state-of-play-finding-lead...
The queen of H1B visa jobs.
She tried to be a human being ...and failed!
Fiorina is well spoken and well researched, however,
http://www.floppingaces.net/2015/09/20/can-fiorina-change-and-become-a-c...
. . . . . her close relationship with Wall Street makes her barely better than Obama.
Both she and Trump are FUCKING DANGEROUS! It's not funny, it's SICK, sicker than Hillary.
This kind of reminds of the inner workings of her moral and political aspirations......
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-NzFJxX8yoY
(Sorry Arlo)
Funny how she differentiates between humanity and their unborn.
OK, so ARTICLES LIKE THIS we are being funnelled into Jeb Bush...WTF....I want ANYONE the GOP or the DEMs don't want...Fuck them!
So we are being funneled maniacs as the only alternative to the staus quo.
What else is new? Same as it ever was.
Pretty much agree with what he says about Fiorina's corporate career being one of failure. TL;DR but I glanced at it anyway, and it's a good document to keep handy.
However I do mostly agree with what she said about not talking so f'ing much, have to remember this is in the context of the Obama regime that talks and lies and never does anything, leads out of their behind. Obama has been destroying US armed forces, using stuff up without replacement, and other than the vampire F-35 not developing much new stuff either. And we won't even talk about his gender politics in the armed forces. So a little bit of "put up or shut up" is fine by me, it is not quite an argument to actually drop a bomb on anyone.
If you don't talk, nobody can call you a liar.
What a concept. Just do stuff.
Please explain what "put up or shut up" means to you. Or better still, what would it mean to Putin, or any other nuclear armed country's leader? Put up or shut up. That's funny.
And if the military needs more of our tax dollars, they should just start auditing contracts and going after waste, fraud, and abuse. I hear there is a lot of that stuff going around.
Wow....David Stockman - mysoginist.
If you have all the fucking answers David, put your skin in the game or STFU.
Do you even know what the word means? I read the article, and the only woman discussed was Fiorina. Big difference between a woman and all women....thank God, cause I would hate it if they were all like her.
Oh, and what skin do you have in the game, Mr. STFU?
Damn her - should have just let them produce their awesome high end calculators, you know, the ones everyone is still buying now days.
I own an Hp85A Computer AND an Hp1631D Logic Analyzer. Both obsolete since the mid-1980s, but still working fine.
Maybe time for another Thatcher - f##k the jellyfish we have now
come across as a war-mongering neocon ....
truth there though. That is biggest reason not to support her.
The main reason I cannot vote Carly is that she shipped computer production and support from the US to China. This is exactly what Trump is barnstorming about. And while she criticized Trump for Atlantic City and taking advantage of bankruptcy laws -- she is the one who took advantage of off-shoring laws that made it profitable to move jobs and factories to China.
The adults are definitely not in charge anywhere in the USA.
No Stockman. Apparently you did not get the memo either. The USSR was collapsing on its own weight. But, we could not wait another 10 years or so, the Russian people starving, and some real mafiya Marxist madman to replace Gorbachev and push the button.
So, Operation Stillpoint (under EO 12333, NSD Directive 166) helped push it over the edge in due haste, saving lives that no other method/plan could accomplish. It was done in three phases:
1) SDI. [apparently Stockman, PCR, et al, did not have clearance) We outspent the Soviets in defense to bankrupt them.
2) We shorted the Ruble (SUR). 18 to 28 cents on the dollar (USD). Devaluing the SUR by 75%.
3) We offered Gorbachev $10 billion and a safe house at the Presidio to step down, and allow the RF to take over. Under the General Agreement of 1990, the USSR was officially dissolved.
Amazing Stockman, Paul Craig Roberts, et al that I know more than you do. Just how is that? Are you, et al that clueless on these matters, or is it just selective and willful ignorance? Not much difference from Joe-Six-Pack. And, you guys were supposed to have clearances and access. What exactly did you do with that? Okay, grant it, NSA NSD Directive 166 was just declassed from TS in 2010. Still, you did not get the memo, and I did? I'm just a lowly E4 with an inactive TS/SCI. But apparently I'm paying attention, and you're not.
Now some will complain about Reagan running up deficits and the national debt. In '92, at the end of GHWB's admin the National Debt Clock read ~$4 trillion. The dirty secret that GHWB himself (along with the Clintons, GWB, and possibly Barry) wants kept a "dirty secret," is that EO 12333, signed by Reagan in Dec. '81, created ~5000 Title 18, Section 6 corporations, each netting no less than $100 million each. Some netting nearly $1 TRILLION alone. So do the math, and see just how much EO 12333 made for the American People. At least ~$30 TRILLION will soon benefit the American populace and the greater free world at large.
Again Stockman, et al, you apparently did not get the memo ..
https://app.box.com/s/hfgvcqg7gqh7i27at6sv53ywu87lwarp
How much longer before that $30 Trillion shows up? It better hurry.
Some years ago, probably when she was at HP, at a well-attended presentation Fiorina joked that "a good rack will get you only so far." It was well received by the CNBC types. I'm surprised that clip isn't circulating.
Affirmative choices for CEO or president are for fools.
300 Million people in the U.S and we have dolts on both sides to chose from. God save us from ourselves...aaaaaarrrghhh
Where has common sense gone? Where are the people who feel connected to others and feel responsible for not only themselves, but their families, their friends, their culture, their world and their species? It ain't that hard folks. If we are not our brothers' keeper, then what are we really worth? ... and computer box full of numbers and a house full of things? Ego, fear, greed drives it... not what I want to be remembered for.
Yes, there is most likely an adversary force within our existence that challenges us so as to make us stronger. And they may have cheated, crippling our bodies and minds with chemicals and psychological warfare. But, there are more of us than them and we have something worthwhile to fight for ... our souls and the souls of everyone around us... even the souls of the fallen ones. They too can turn back from the edge of the abyss.
someone doesn't like Carly....
Not that I agree with her policies, I still think she is the best GOP candidate in the field... although Trump's madnesss does start to grow on you!
Amazing how much time is give to Trump in the debates....
this bitch scares me more than trump.
These cunts are out of control.
Stepford wives are hot!
Tell her, Clintoon and the others in Cervix Troop to STFU and try some Chin Nuts! Then go wash the dishes!
RE "Crony Capitalist Warmonger With Flash Cards"
Aren't the official candidates all like that?
That's why Ron Paul was mashed into the ground like a cigarette butt by the media.
Carly sucks
She almost has the lips for it.
Quote: The Donbas [eastern Ukraine] was Russian after the 1930s because Stalin sent its native Ukrainians and Cossacks to the Gulag in order to make room for “reliable Russians” in the coal mines, steel mills, chemical plants and machinery works located there and which were the backbone of Soviet heavy industry.
The inhabitants of the Donbas and Crimea thus have reasons for enmity and distrust of the Ukrainian nationalist who have seized power in Kiev—-deep historical reasons that couldn’t have been put on a simple flash card, even if Fiorina had memorized it.
That was an interesting article and I read the whole thing but I can't condon Stalin sending the Ukrainian population of the Donbas to Gulags. Eight million Ukrainian small farmers starved to death under Stalin to make way for collective farms. Ukraine owes Russia nothing over the Donbas.