Classy as ever, Democratic Party

[unixronin]

And yes, I mean that sarcastically.

http://carlyfailorina.com/ (paid for by the California Democratic Party).  What more is there to say?

Don't get me wrong, I'm no fan of Carly Fiorina, who to all practical purposes single-handedly destroyed Hewlett-Packard (with only minimal assistance from her interim predecessor Richard Hackborn, whom you've probably never heard of).  But this is a new low in pettiness in politics.  What's the next step?  Will the parties start publicly calling each other's candidates poopyheads?  Will the candidates themselves start flicking boogers at their opponents in televised debates?

Dear Democratic and Republican Parties:

Please to hurry up and finish self-destructing, so that the rest of us can pick up the pieces and get on with America.  KTHXBAI.

Comments

[ithildae]

Carly Fiorina was an abysmal failure at HP because she was completely tone deaf to the existing culture, and she lacked the force of personality to drive a new culture into HP. (Please note: I really liked the culture that HP started with, the one that made it a global company.) Hardly an asset in politics.

American politics have been this low since the 1780's. The midget presidents of the mid 1800's inspired some very juvenile political cartoons. (They would not be allowed in a public school classroom today.) American attack adds have a history of being crude, vulgar, profane, sophomoric, racist and in other ways offensive. The web just makes all of that available to all of us. There is a story of Andrew Johnson spitting his chew into a senator's hat just before handing it back to him after a government function. (There is a reason he was impeached.) I don't know if such lowball tactics are common in other countries, history is not a strong interest, and there is too much to know.

[ithildae]

She was just trying to chase cost savings. The problem was, she wanted to save costs by outsourcing engineering, at a company that only did engineering. I can see doing manufacturing elsewhere. I don't like it, but I can see it.

[unixronin]

It's the Harvard School of Business "All companies are interchangeable" problem. Harvard's MBA program has, I think, done more damage to American business than anything else I can think of.

[ithildae]

I think the phrase is reducto absurdum or some such. (I never took latin.) It started with some useful ideas, and then drove them off the edge of a cliff. We are just now hitting bottom. It is kind of like juggling chainsaws, when you miss one, that is only the start of your problems.

[unixronin]

Carly Fiorina was an abysmal failure at HP because she was completely tone deaf to the existing culture, and she lacked the force of personality to drive a new culture into HP.

And don't forget the part where she thought it would be a really good idea to turn an innovative tech company that had built a justly-deserved reputation over the course of forty years into a remarketing company that did nothing but slap its own brand on lowest-bid Taiwanese-manufactured hardware and try to subsist somehow on the margins in an industry where those margins are already razor-thin.

(Blast it, my Greasemonkey fix-the-quote-button script isn't working on Dreamwidth. Who on earth at LiveJournal thought it was a good idea in the first place to have the button generate different quote markup depending on what you selected to quote? Perhaps I can talk Dreamwidth into a proper fix...)

[smandal.livejournal.com]

Political parties are like sled dog teams. There's the alpha dog, who's main agenda is to retain power, the wild ones who care more about winning than policy, and then the rank-and-file who try to hold it together for the sake of policy.

The problem is that they're all dogs.

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

And, unless you're the lead dog, the view is always the same . . .

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

This comment is officially made of win. :)

[smandal.livejournal.com]

Except, "who's" should be "whose." :P

[paxed.livejournal.com]

Except sled dogs are friendly (to humans).

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

After years of being called things like "traitor," "terrorist sympathizer," by conservatives and so on, I don't think this is exactly a new low. And, personally, I'm for anything that ends California's Republican-led spiral into darkness and poverty.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

uuuh, wait a minute ... the California legislature has been overwhelmingly Democratic for HOW long exactly...?

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

The Democrats don't have the 2/3s majority, though, that's required to change the laws to respond to an economic downturn. The Hooverists who wrote the supermajority "balanced budget" rules, and who are now blocking changes, apparently have never heard of a cyclical deficit, and the state is hurting now.

I wonder what the state's ability to respond to a major disaster is at this point? Like, say, an earthquake.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Honestly, how many other states are in much better shape right now?

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

California has been caught up in the collapse of two bubbles, and then the Republican minority decided to hold its breath and stamp its feet until its policies were implemented--extensions of the policies that got the state into trouble in the first place. &, thanks to bad initiatives, the Democratic majority can't do a damn thing about it. As of last July, their bonds were rated Baa1 by Moody's--lowest of any state and two levels above junk bonds. California laid off 26,590 teachers last year.

[ithildae.livejournal.com]

When you don't have the supermajority needed to overwhelm your governing partner, you need to compromise. If you are not willing to bend to a less partisan budget plan, you can expect exactly the sort of train wreck that Kalifornia is experiencing right now.

Right now, hard partisan politics are not playing well to the party in power anywhere in the country.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

And even with partisan problems aside, when you have a controlling majority in BOTH houses of Congress, AND you hold the White house, and you're still having to make deals that do things like exempting entire states from particular taxes just to get your own party to sign onto your agenda and you STILL can't get it passed, perhaps you should be asking yourself whether you're doing the right thing.

But I digress.

[ithildae.livejournal.com]

They are looking at Medicare and the imminent retirement of the baby boomers as part of the federal budget. If they do not stop the growth of medical costs, the whole budget explodes. Creating a better insurance environment will not do it. They must take control of the entire cost structure in medicine to eliminate cost increases. That is the imperative. No one is ever going to like it. But they are trying to be responsible.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

I'm not disputing the necessity of fixing the problem. I'm just questioning whether Congress is even CAPABLE of fixing it when everyone wants their back scratched to go along with it, even if we make the (IMHO entirely unjustified) assumption that Congress even understands what's wrong with the existing system, let alone how to fix it.

[ithildae.livejournal.com]

Congress is obviously incapable of fixing the problem, even assuming they understand it. They are too beholden to their special interest constituencies to make the tough choices that would penalize their supporters.

Make a simple comparison: Does your car insurance cover repairs? Tune-ups? Oil Changes? Gasoline? Parking charges? Some medical insurance plans do the equivalent of all of those things. (Mostly union plans.) That kind of skews the costs for the rest of us. If your car needs a repair, does the mechanic charge you one price if you have their preferred insurance, and five times that rate if you don't? That is the way medical practice works. Is the price the mechanic charged controlled by a government agency based on the list price for the service? People would go ballistic if that were true. Yet we accept it for medical. Why?

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Precisely.

[lablldmsnsmerci.livejournal.com]

I lurve the gif, may I "borrow" it sometime?

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Feel free.

[lablldmsnsmerci.livejournal.com]

Thanks:)

Meanwhile, on the other side of the aisle...

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

"Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) has put an extraordinary "blanket hold" on at least 70 nominations President Obama has sent to the Senate, according to multiple reports this evening. The hold means no nominations can move forward unless Senate Democrats can secure a 60-member cloture vote to break it, or until Shelby lifts the hold."--TPMDC report (http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/02/report-shelby-blocks-all-obama-nominations-in-the-senate-over-al-earmarks.php)

That is like Mexican political news. The Democrats are weak and corrupt, but they aren't this out-and-out crazy and corrupt.

Re: Meanwhile, on the other side of the aisle...

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Can't we just fire the lot? They're not even trying to govern, they're just trying to score points off of each other.

How?

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

without that is, mass starvation, civil war, etc., etc.

BTW, Shelby is doing this on behalf of Airbus, a non-US corporation.

Re: How?

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

And that should be grounds for removal from office.

It's for national security

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

Or so says Shelby (http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/02/shelbys-office-confirms-holds-lashes-out-at-obama.php?ref=fpblg). Who needs satire?

Re: It's for national security

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

These days, I think the government uses "National Security" to mean "Someone in Congress would be embarrassed if we told you the real reason."

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

Meantime, Fiorini "speaks (http://seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/28137)"--attacking her opponent for suggesting that taxes be raised to balance the budget.

Personally, I think filkertom should sue.