Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Americans barely caring about Afghanistan is so last month.

I was promised a recession.

The words do not have to be perfect.

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

Come on, man.

That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

Is it negotiation when the other party actually wants to shoot the hostage?

Fuck the extremist election deniers. What’s money for if not for keeping them out of office?

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

Motto for the House: Flip 5 and lose none.

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

We still have time to mess this up!

fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

This fight is for everything.

I’d like to think you all would remain faithful to me if i ever tried to have some of you killed.

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

A Senator Walker would also be an insult to reason, rationality, and decency.

Not so fun when the rabbit gets the gun, is it?

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Open Thread: Speaking of Clowns…

Open Thread: Speaking of Clowns…

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… the GOP is gonna need a bigger car.

Politico is happy to highlight another aspirant:

Michele Bachmann will not go gently into the night.

The divisive four-term congresswoman is leaving Capitol Hill in January, but she has no intention of fading into post-congressional irrelevance.

Instead, the Minnesota Republican is fiercely courting media and speaking opportunities, likely in Washington, New York or Los Angeles, and looking to burnish her credentials as a foreign policy expert ahead of the 2016 presidential election. Her hope is to emerge as the “anti-Hillary,” a female conservative foil to likely Democratic presidential contender and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton…

And let’s not forget last month’s new face:

She’s been to New Hampshire three times and South Carolina once. She’s heading to Iowa this weekend, and then North Carolina and Michigan after that. Clearly, Carly Fiorina is thinking about 2016…

“People ask me that a lot, so if you get asked that a lot you have to think about it—you have to consider it,” Fiorina told National Journal. “I’m flattered by the question and I have to consider it.”…

Demon sheep!
***********
Apart from that, what’s on the agenda as we start the weekend?

Reader Interactions

191Comments

  1. 1.

    Mike J

    Regarding Fiorina:

    Thus far, the super PAC has raised $1.1 million – propped up by a pair of $500,000 donations from Arkansas oil company executive Mike Murphy and his wife, Sydney Murphy.

  2. 2.

    dmsilev

    looking to burnish her credentials as a foreign policy expert

    Don’t you need to _have_ credentials before you can burnish them?

  3. 3.

    Corner Stone

    I’m really tired of dealing with people that have “mom & pop shop” level thinking.
    No, person, if I don’t physically appear in your office doorway it does not mean that I have ceased to exist, nor am I “out today”.

  5. 5.

    Amir Khalid

    the Minnesota Republican is fiercely courting media and speaking opportunities, likely in Washington, New York or Los Angeles, and looking to burnish her credentials as a foreign policy expert

    Come on, man. Who the fish considers Michele Bachmann a foreign policy expert?

  10. 10.

    scav

    @dmsilev: After the Whole. Entire. Trip. she made especially to Ikea, you mock! Used an Entire. Bottle. of Pledge she did on that credenza!!

  14. 14.

    Corner Stone

    @schrodinger’s cat: HP, you had one fucking job.
    I know we were recently talking about the glass cliff and all that, but CF so completely boondogglefucked HP that I’m not sure how they are still in business. For now.

  18. 18.

    geg6

    Oh please, please, please, let’s have a bigger clown car! Nothing could make me happier than to see Mittens, Christie and Jeb! dealing with Aunt Pittypat, the Girl with the Far Away Eyes and Demon Sheep along with the crazy doctor, Aqua Buddha and McCarthy’s Clone all throughout the primary season.

    As for me, I seem to have caught whatever crud Cole has through the internet. Fucking Cole.

  21. 21.

    Howard Beale IV

    Bill Maher’s trying to flip a district?

    FUCK THAT! Let’s ratfuck the GOP primaries! With Bachmann for 2016!

  25. 25.

    danielx

    Huckleberry Closetcase is catching the presidential bug? Oh please please please…..

    Memo to me: start stocking up on snacks for Republican primary debates. Or maybe they’ll only have one debate this time, for fear of “overexposing” the candidates. Don’t want to let teh crazy blossom too much or too soon on national television, after all.

    Edit: what am I saying, anyway? If Republican pols gave a rusty goddamn about how crazy they appear to the populace at large, a lot of the last six years would never have happened.

  29. 29.

    Howard Beale IV

    @Corner Stone: Let’s see: The questionable acquisition of Compaq while CEO at HP, supporting Caribou Barbie’s Veep nod, and losing to Barbara Boxer for CA-Senate. Sorry, Meatloaf, but Two Out of Three IS Bad.

  31. 31.

    fleeting expletive

    One of my favorite movies is just now starting on TCM, 7 Faces of Dr. Lao, starring Tony Randall. I’m not a huge fan of his work, but I love this movie.

  32. 32.

    KG

    Count me among those that do not believe that the FSM love Jon Stewart enough for this to happen. I don’t care what Stewart did in his past lives.

  33. 33.

    Calouste

    Fiorina is the dictionary definition of failing upwards. She helped run Lucent into the ground, although that was covered up by creative accounting until she got hired by HP, which she ran into the ground without help. She ran a disastrous campaign for the Senate, which she lost by 10 points, and now thinks about running for President. And why the heck would you elect someone who hasn’t held a job for more than a decade?

  34. 34.

    I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet

    If I’m doing the math right, the Ruble lost about 9.4% of its value over the month of September. Good times! Putin’s gang is partying! Right??

    XE.com.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  35. 35.

    Howard Beale IV

    @Felanius Kootea: Both HP and IBM are amalagimation of acquisitions and spinoffs over the years, as well as some creative accounting and a whole lot of labor arbitrage. But I hear more PR from IBM labs that I do from HP labs.

  36. 36.

    geg6

    @efgoldman:

    Maybe. But just imagine Jeb!, Christie and Mittens trying to get through a debate with these nuts. On national tv. Remember the Republican debates of 2012? Cheering for people to die for lack of health insurance? Booing a veteran? Anyone on the same stage is tarred by their stupid venality.

    Plus, it’s good entertainment!

  37. 37.

    Howard Beale IV

    @Corner Stone: After Carly’s diasterous run, Mark Hurd was brought on and decided to turn HP into an IBM clone-he almost succeeded (EDS acquisition), but then some nasty sexytime shit and the pretexting scandal brought him down. and then the Leo Apthoeker/ Autonomy debacle brough in Meg Whitman.

  38. 38.

    GxB

    @Amir Khalid:

    Come on, man. Who the fish considers Michele Bachmann a foreign policy expert?

    The usual gang of idiots.

    As for:

    “People ask me that a lot, so if you get asked that a lot you have to think about it—you have to consider it,” Fiorina told National Journal. “I’m flattered by the question and I have to consider it.”…

    Give me a friggin’ break, how she was ever a CEO is beyond me, she’s Palin with an MBA. (not that that will be held against her.)

  39. 39.

    shortstop

    @efgoldman: they lack sane people’s moments of self-doubt. Plus, they surround themselves with yes (or, in Miss Lindsey’s case, yay-us) men and women.

    Years ago, Jane Byrne announced that she was going to run for mayor of Chicago after years out of the job. No one in the entire city had ever considered that she would run for anything again; everyone had completely forgotten about her. But she had been surrounded by people who said, oh yeah, Jane, you should run! And it never occurred to her to get out into a bigger circle and ask around before making a public fool of herself. She was stunned by how far her campaign didn’t go.

    And then there are the people who are absolute public jokes, just electoral poison, and yet they keep coming at us like Glenn Close in the bathtub because they think wanting an office badly is the same as voters wanting it for you. Anthony Weiner is my fave example of this.

    They’re so incredibly entitled in their thinking. And it’s fun to watch their faces on election night. I don’t think Mitt and Ann Romney have had a good night’s sleep since November 2012.

  43. 43.

    danielx

    The human anagram has already said there will be fewer debates during the primaries.

    Clearly a wise and prudent decision.

  44. 44.

    MattF

    So, they all wanna be Prezident. I’m sure they’re all figuring “If Obama could do it, why can’t I?” And not staying for an answer.

  45. 45.

    Roger Moore

    @Howard Beale IV:

    Both HP and IBM are amalagimation of acquisitions and spinoffs over the years

    And I am soooooo glad they decided to spin off Agilent. I can’t imagine how thoroughly they would have run that side of their business into the ground had they held onto it.

  48. 48.

    shortstop

    @Omnes Omnibus: Take a night off drinking.

    @efgoldman: Occasionally, one pulls it off, giving the rest of them — well, not hope, exactly, because they never lack that, but further feelings of entitlement.

  50. 50.

    The Fat Kate Middleton

    So I’ve been asked to meet with Sherrod Brown here in Iowa next week. I don’t get why me, but WTH, I’ll go. Anything I should be asking/saying? Or should I just forget it? Organizers are saying it’s to show support for Braley, but I can’t help but think there’s more to it than that.

  51. 51.

    Gravenstone

    Michele Bachmann, foreign policy expert? In what fucking world is this remotely true?

  53. 53.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    @Gravenstone: They have a country place in Minnesota, so she can see turkey from her house?

    I can only guess of course but possibly that’s what she’s thinking.

  55. 55.

    Howard Beale IV

    @Roger Moore: Agreed. Thankfully. Carly was on the trailing edge of that activity when that was going down. The post-spinoff Agilent has had their ups and downs, tho.

  56. 56.

    mai naem mobile

    Either Hillary and Bill have something on these people theyre blackmailing them into running or theyre paying them to run. Lindsay, Carlie,Michelle??? Theyre missing token black clowns Allen West and Doctor Ben Carson and token rednecks Louie Goober Goehmert amd Ted Yoohoo.

  59. 59.

    Mike J

    @mai naem mobile: Perhaps the halfway sane Republicans (I know, I know, make that “the ones who can appear halfway sane”) are all hanging back so they can swoop in later and seem less crazy.

  60. 60.

    Tree With Water

    He not only looks like a ventriliquists dummy, he is in fact one. Powers-that-be average Americans are scarcely aware of have their arm so far up his ass that he drawls when they do. It actually explains a lot.

  62. 62.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @shortstop:

    Take a night off drinking.

    The thought of consuming anything (liquid or solid) other than tepid ginger ale causes my stomach to heave.

  63. 63.

    Turgidson

    Fiorina should definitely run. Watching Barbara Boxer her beat like a drum while riding a rented mule behind the woodshed was a very satisfying moment, and I’d be pleased to watch it happen to her again. Jerry Brown doing the same to Meg “You’ll watch my ads a trillion times and LIKE IT” Whitman equally so. Was proud to be a California resident when it resisted the red tide of total idiocy the rest of the country succumbed to in Nov. 2010.

  68. 68.

    Howard Beale IV

    @efgoldman:

    And yet there’s a better-than-even chance that twice-convicted felon and former mayor Buddy Cianci (once state, once Federal) is going to be elected mayor of Providence again.

    When it comes to corruption, Providence pols teach masters classes to the rest of state and local government pols.

  69. 69.

    Central Planning

    My dad’s town is having some Vietnam Veterans recognition ceremony or something like that this weekend. I’m swinging by there on my flight home from California. Corporate travel didn’t even blink an eye.

    We took a wine tour up to Sonoma. I’m going to have to make some radical changes to my wine acquisition and drinking habits when I get home. The cheap stuff isn’t going to cut it, but the expensive stuff will be few and far between. Maybe we need a thread on good cheap wines.

  70. 70.

    Corner Stone

    @Howard Beale IV:

    Let’s see: The questionable acquisition of Compaq while CEO at HP,

    Questionable? QUESTIONABLE?!
    Excuse me while I look for my hazmat suit before I explosively export bodily fluids out of my nose from laughing quite hard, indeed.

  71. 71.

    Hillary Rettig

    Thought people would like to know that the e version of my book The 7 Secrets of the Prolific: The Definitive Guide to Overcoming Procrastination, Perfectionism, and Writer’s Block is available for FREE from Amazon (only) until Monday night. It’s a great book for anyone interesting in productivity and time management, especially relative to writing. The last section is an intro to indie publishing, and the appendix (Publishing Without Perishing) is devoted to the needs of academic writers.

    Free copy here:
    http://www.amazon.com/The-Secrets-Prolific-Procrastination-Perfectionism-ebook/dp/B006J7BZ8E/

    If you like it please leave a review on Amazon! And please tell others! Thanks!

  72. 72.

    Corner Stone

    @Howard Beale IV:

    Both HP and IBM are amalagimation of acquisitions and spinoffs over the years, as well as some creative accounting and a whole lot of labor arbitrage

    HP actually had a viable business model at one point in the last 20 years.

  73. 73.

    kc

    l

    ooking to burnish her credentials as a foreign policy expert ahead of the 2016 presidential election. Her hope is to emerge as the “anti-Hillary,” a female conservative foil to likely Democratic presidential contender and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton…

    “Foreign policy expert.” LOL!

    Please, let her run.

  76. 76.

    Baud

    @Hillary Rettig:

    7 Secrets of the Prolific: The Definitive Guide to Overcoming Procrastination, Perfectionism, and Writer’s Block

    Do any of the secrets involve staying off Balloon Juice?

  77. 77.

    mdblanche

    @efgoldman: I knew it was a mistake not to drive a stake through Buddy’s heart, bury him at the crossroads at midnight, and then wear garlic around our necks just to be safe.

  78. 78.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    @Hillary Rettig: Oh god thank you.

    It’s definitely a sign, I just this afternoon decided that procrastination was something I couldn’t put off dealing with any longer (okay that was intentional) but really the cause of whatever ruination I face, which alright isn’t much, but still. I traced all of it today in a blaze of terrible clarity to this habit of putting things off.

    Now of course I’m thinking eh, I’ll go get the book later (see??) so instead will do it now. If I like it I’ll definitely send some words and $ your way. Thanks!

  82. 82.

    shortstop

    Poor Hillary. You knew someone wouldn’t be able to resist the fruit dragging along the ground.

    Isn’t Bachmann on the House intelligence committee? I know she’s always blathering away warning us that if the people of America knew the stuff she knew, we’d be peeing ourselves all day and night like she is. So have a little faith in her foreign policy cred, people, about which you could know if you were worthy, but you’re not.

  86. 86.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Hillary Rettig:

    Thanks, Hillary! It is being downloaded, even as I type, to the Kindle app on my iPad. Even though I’m retired now and have a different set of productivity aspirations than I did when I was working, I’m sure I’ll get some useful information from the book. Look forward to reading, using, and reviewing.

  87. 87.

    Roger Moore

    @Howard Beale IV:

    The post-spinoff Agilent has had their ups and downs, tho.

    I’m pissed that they closed Agilent Labs, which seems like one of the big things that made them different from Thermo or GE. It’s incredibly short sighted; an organization like that takes far longer to build than to destroy.

  90. 90.

    Baud

    @Hillary Rettig:

    I was going to download the book, then I read this on the Amazon site:

    You are not lazy, undisciplined, or uncommitted!

    It’s like you don’t know me at all.

  95. 95.

    Howard Beale IV

    @Corner Stone: Hey-Compaq had some IP that had some value outside of the cutthroat PC space (DEC, Tandem)-it’s what ya do with it once ya get it-and that’s where Carly screwed the pooch.

  98. 98.

    Julie

    @Central Planning: What do you consider cheap? Under $20? If so, and you like big California-style reds, check out Maryhill Winery. They have lovely, big, fruity Zinfandels, Cabs and Merlots (and more) at a fraction of Napa prices (they’re in Washington).

  100. 100.

    Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism

    @Hillary Rettig:

    The Definitive Guide to Overcoming Procrastination, Perfectionism, and Writer’s Block

    Good timing, with NaNoWriMo next month and all.

  101. 101.

    skerry

    @Corner Stone: I worked for Hewlett-Packard 30+ years ago. Dave and Bill were still around and their influence was strong. Wonderful company. Quite the “get” for a young engineer.

    Not to be confused with modern HP.

  102. 102.

    Davis X. Machina

    @shortstop:

    …they think wanting an office badly is the same as voters wanting it for you. Anthony Weiner is my fave example of this.

    Well, some voters, anyways.

    I remember the Weiner/Grayson (or was it Grayson/Weiner?) 2012 dream ticket from DKos….

  103. 103.

    Corner Stone

    @Howard Beale IV: Sure, that’s true. But in real time that was one of the most cringe worthy decisions possible. CPQ had dead market share, HP was better off staying in the printer space, and personal computing was being cannabilized as commodity pricing overpowered all the sourced components.
    There was zero, and I mean zero, business rationale to take that merger.
    Unless you, as an executive, had a great personal payoff coming for those kinds of decisions. It was a near deathknell for HP and how they have skimmed by to date is an absolute mystery to me.
    Awful, awful management team over the last decade+.

  105. 105.

    Roger Moore

    @skerry:
    My father started working at HP almost 50 years ago when they had just recently expanded away from their first site in Palo Alto. He has stories about Bill and Dave coming by to see what was happening; they really practiced what they preached with the “management by walking around” philosophy. I’m always happy when I visit Agilent for an instrument demo and see they still have a volleyball net outside the cafeteria so people can play during lunch. It seems like a symbol that the old corporate culture hasn’t been completely crushed.

  106. 106.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Roger Moore:

    It seems like a symbol that the old corporate culture hasn’t been completely crushed.

    Current management might just be leaving it there to taunt the staff.

  108. 108.

    dmsilev

    @Roger Moore: Agilent recently spun off the instrumentation division. The original core of HP is now known as Keysight Technologies.

    We actually had a couples of sales reps from them descend upon us out of the blue this afternoon at work. Cold-calling “hi would you like to buy a $10K source-measure unit?”.

  109. 109.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Corner Stone:

    Unless you, as an executive, had a great personal payoff coming for those kinds of decisions.

    Never underestimate the Ferengi mindset of the MBA culture. No vision aside from that of their on personal greed.

  110. 110.

    Corner Stone

    @Omnes Omnibus: I worked at a professional environment one time where they moved locations and put a foosball table in the new break room.
    I told them they might as well have hung a neon sign above it with an arrow pointing down that read “Fire Me!”.

  111. 111.

    shortstop

    I want to go to an art opening but it’s cold and super windy, I’ve been out every night this week and the couch is looking really come hithery. Y’all, say something to make me go. I never regret going, only staying.

  112. 112.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @shortstop:

    Isn’t Bachmann on the House intelligence committee?

    My mind reels from all the sarcastic things I could be saying about this sentence.

  114. 114.

    Corner Stone

    I have no idea how Dallas executives think they are going to charge the ebola guy with a crime.

  122. 122.

    Roger Moore

    @Corner Stone:

    There was zero, and I mean zero, business rationale to take that merger.

    I think there was at least some reason to want to do so. The idea, as I understand it, was that there was going to be a big shakeup in the industry and only the biggest companies would survive. Therefore they wanted to grow, and the only way to do it was to gobble up a competitor. There’s also the whole thing about market power and how bigger companies could squeeze subcontractors for better deals. There might even have been something to it, given that HP still exists despite their management mistakes of the past decade.

  123. 123.

    Felanius Kootea

    @Corner Stone: Because Texas. And they have successfully prosecuted people for spreading HIV before.

    Looks like he is facing jail time in Liberia if he survives and is returned.

  125. 125.

    Corner Stone

    @efgoldman: I am of the firm opinion that a huge majority of large enterprises continue to exist on inertia alone, and survive in spite of who the CEO and exec committee are, not due to who they are.
    More and more these days the job of a CEO is active job destruction in the futile effort to satisfy asshole institutional shareholders.

  127. 127.

    cckids

    @Central Planning:

    Maybe we need a thread on good cheap wines.

    I’d go for that. Though we’d have to have some sort of threshold for “cheap”. Was telling my Mother in Law that we’ve been buying wine at Costco because their prices are good. She said she didn’t, because “they never have anything under $3.00.”

    I just slowly backed away. I’d rather drink way, WAY less wine than go there.

  128. 128.

    Corner Stone

    @Roger Moore:

    Therefore they wanted to grow, and the only way to do it was to gobble up a competitor.

    But CPQ was declining market share. They weren’t growing, they were dying.
    Why swallow a product the market was rejecting?
    That space was being commodified so hard and fast that anyone even peripherally involved could see it if they wanted to.

  130. 130.

    shortstop

    Okay (hauls self out of chair and points feet toward closet where something a little cooler can be climbed into), here I go. Because, as Mr. Irving would say, life is serious but art is fun!

  131. 131.

    Corner Stone

    @Felanius Kootea: That’s different, IMO. The HIV cases were malicious. This guy was tested, got on a plane and landed here. If he’d been puking in the lounge pre-flight I could see something.

  132. 132.

    Roger Moore

    @Anoniminous:
    That’s more or less the view that the insiders (including my dad) who I’ve talked to have about the company. They see Agilent as having inherited the HP spirit but having been forced to give up the name to the computer company because name recognition was more important in the computer business. Agilent seems to have kept some of the old corporate ideals about building good stuff and hiring and keeping good people to do it; they seem to have a lot more old hands than the other scientific instrument companies I’ve dealt with.

  134. 134.

    shortstop

    @Felanius Kootea: I don’t know what Texas’s legal rationale would be, but in Liberia, it’s currently illegal to lie on official forms about having been in close contact with ebola patients, right? And he had been caring for an actively sick person who died. At least that’s what I read last night. Okay, night!

  136. 136.

    Central Planning

    @cckids:

    Though we’d have to have some sort of threshold for “cheap”

    That’s cool. Maybe we can do ranges. Under $10, under $20, under $50, and then too expensive to drink on a regular basis. I’m in the under $20 crowd

  137. 137.

    cckids

    @Corner Stone:

    I have no idea how Dallas executives think they are going to charge the ebola guy with a crime.

    I know, right? I snickered when he kept calling it “Eboli”, and talked about the problems with contamination/communicability in court or in jail.

    It was like he had no frickin idea what he was talking about.

  138. 138.

    Roger Moore

    @Corner Stone:

    I am of the firm opinion that a huge majority of large enterprises continue to exist on inertia alone, and survive in spite of who the CEO and exec committee are, not due to who they are.

    IOW, top executives aren’t as powerful as they think, and their failure to destroy their companies is proof. It seems like a strong argument. The most likely alternative theory is that so many companies have awful management that it mostly cancels out.

  140. 140.

    Corner Stone

    @efgoldman: Until the edit I was not sure if you were refuting my contention.
    What do you think? Bad guys chasing the short buck or something else?

  141. 141.

    cckids

    @Corner Stone: I’m thinking 3-buck chuck, but she rarely shops at Trader Joes because “its to Jewish”.

    Don’t ask, I have no idea what the bigoted old bag is talking about.

  142. 142.

    MomSense

    So our Chinese student left today and I am missing him already. Such a good kid with the best smile. I talked to his mom this morning and she really wants me to send my youngest to stay with them. They had so much in common and it would be an incredible experience. My son is asking for Rosetta Stone for his birthday and wants to make plans to go to China and Japan (to see our previous exchange student).

  143. 143.

    tybee

    @efgoldman:

    back when i worked for a “too big to fail’, they did a study on dell vs hp regarding reliability and costs.
    hp was more reliable. dell was cheaper. hp took less man hours to keep up. dell took more. since the maintenance budget came from a different purse, “too big to fail” IT took the dell route.

  145. 145.

    Anoniminous

    @Corner Stone:

    Roger Moore has it right. At the time everybody knew only the biggest of big players would be able to compete in the, by then, low margin WinTel market. Rather then spend $$$ on Research and Development and build better machines that justified a premium everybody spent the $$$ buying each other.

    One result is we are still using machines designed when 80 megs of storage cost tens of thousands when we can purchase 181 terabytes for eight thousand.

    SillyCon Valley is a silly place.

  146. 146.

    cckids

    @Anoniminous

    an aversion to Three Buck Yuck?

    Yes. I like my taste buds a bit more than that.

    Edit to add: I’m not talking super expensive, most of the stuff we drink is in the $8-$12 range. I have some standards, though.

  147. 147.

    glocksman

    I don’t work at Millennium Steel, nor was I able to see the President’s motorcade leaving Evansville because of security, but I just now heard one loud roar of engines that had to the the 747 that serves as Air Force One.

    Obama may not be the best President we’ve had, but he’s light years ahead of the asshats that would have been his replacements.

  149. 149.

    jl

    If Major General of the O’Reilly / McCain Foreign American Exceptionalist Expeditionary Task Force of Shock ‘N” Awe, Might and Right can spare the time in between campaigns, why not?

    O’l Lindsay riding into town on his white horse waving his vorpel blade will scare up a few votes.

    I like the idea. Let it be Lindsay (which would be a good slogan, I’m copyrighting it to make some major bank!).

  150. 150.

    skerry

    @Roger Moore: I worked in Cupertino. It was probably the best work environment I ever had. Yeah, I remember seeing Dave and Bill (that’s what we called them) walking around on occasion. Friday afternoon cookouts with beer/wine, employee fishing trips from Monterey (on the clock), and the work was fun and I learned so much. People worked hard and always felt appreciated.

    Great times.

  151. 151.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @MomSense: Thanks for the suggestion and sympathy. Unfortunately, I have no apple juice. I may have some mint tea – I’ll give that a try.

  152. 152.

    Corner Stone

    @Anoniminous: I’m not sure if there is a “right v wrong” here. My contention is that it was obvious to observers that the low margin field was diminishing due to commoditization, no matter the scope, and whatever any other contention, CPQ was a dead letter product.

  153. 153.

    Mike J

    @efgoldman:

    My employer had a brief flirtation with Dell in the late 90s-early 00s, but for all of my 18 years here, I’ve had an HP on my desk.

    During the merger I was conslutting for both HP and the Q. While in Texas, I was required to cover up the Dell insignia on my laptop.

    Both sides in the merger hated the other and thought it was going to be a disaster.

  154. 154.

    dmsilev

    @shortstop: No, we were polite. They do make some instruments which we might at some point be interested in buying, so pissing off the local sales rep isn’t really that great an idea…

  156. 156.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    @glocksman: I saw that 747(well, one of them) in downtown LA on approach to LAX during the Clinton years. It sounds very different than a normal 747.

  157. 157.

    drkrick

    @JPL:

    @shortstop: He carried a neighbor that he thought was having a miscarriage. I do think he probably knew though.

    She was dead a few hours later. There’s no way he didn’t know.

  158. 158.

    Central Planning

    We were drinking Barefoot red zin in the 1.5L bottles since it’s a little cheaper. There was a Ruby Red box wine which was maybe 2.5L for $15 or something crazy like that. I suppose we might have to qualify sizes too :o

    My FIL gives us a bottle of Parallele 45 pinot noir every time we have them over for dinner. Someone told him that was the best pinot noir, so we’re stuck with it now. It’s in the under $20 range, but closer to $10

  161. 161.

    Felanius Kootea

    @Corner Stone: HIV prosecution was the precedent the Dallas County DA mentioned in the article I read. Doesn’t mean it will work in this case but that’s the path he says he’s planning to take.

    Edited

  163. 163.

    Tokyokie

    @fleeting expletive: My father was in Tony Randall’s high school graduating class at Central High School in Tulsa! Of course, that was back when Tony was Ira Rosenberg. And I don’t think my father ever had any idea who Tony Randall was. And yes, Tony did a better job of covering up his Okie origins than just about anybody I can think of.

  164. 164.

    VOR

    @Calouste: During her Senate race, the national media kept saying Fiorina’s real base of support would be in the Tech community in Silicon Valley. I cannot recall ever meeting anyone in the computer industry with a positive view of her time at HP.

  168. 168.

    Roger Moore

    @skerry:
    The thing I respect the most about HP is that they had the old-fashioned idea that success depended on having good people working for them, and their good employees were more likely to stick around if the company treated them as if they were valuable. They had a relaxed, friendly workplace, and they shared the company’s success with a generous company stock plan. HP was one of the key founders of Silicon Valley as a tech hub, and their attitude toward employees has spilled over to the whole area. All the crazy things you hear about tech companies doing for their employees are the logical continuation of the employee friendly environment at HP.

  172. 172.

    Anoniminous

    @Corner Stone:

    I agree the CPQ deal wasn’t good and turned sour for HP. And not merely in a strict bottom-line business sense. It was the first overt step towards turning HP into Just-Another-PITA-to-Work-For Company.

  174. 174.

    Origuy

    I was with Tandem when we were bought by Compaq. The guys in Houston didn’t know what to do with us California geeks. We were happy with the HP merger, even though we were suspicious of Carly, because Tandem’s founders came from HP. The cultures (pre-Carly) were more in synch. I’m still with the NonStop Division, which is what remains of Tandem. A lot of the Compaq IP is in the servers business, which most people don’t have any contact with. The consumer and printer businesses aren’t as big these days.

    I don’t see Meg getting back into politics. She’s smart enough to have learned her lesson, unlike Carly.

  175. 175.

    Tommy

    @Howard Beale IV: Well Lucent. Or AT&T before they spun off. Bell Labs. They did this:

    Researchers working at Bell Labs are credited with the development of radio astronomy, the transistor, the laser, the charge-coupled device (CCD), information theory, the UNIX operating system, the C programming language, S programming language and the C++ programming language. Seven Nobel Prizes have been awarded for work completed at Bell Laboratories.

    Years ago I used to work for Lucent. Well a third party. They had a tag line of they make the things that make communication work. They were not joking I think.

  176. 176.

    Anoniminous

    @Origuy:

    Did some contract programming for a Real Time Information Processing application on a T/16 in ’79. Nice machine.

  177. 177.

    skerry

    @Mike J: I’ve seen AF-1 on the tarmac at Bolling and was once able to tour the back-up “flying white house” at Offutt – the one in case WW The Cold War happened

  178. 178.

    Roger Moore

    @Anoniminous:

    It was the first overt step towards turning HP into Just-Another-PITA-to-Work-For Company.

    Nah; spinning off Agilent was the first overt step in that direction. Everybody knew that Agilent was getting the spirit of the company, and the residual HP was going to be just another computer company.

  179. 179.

    Rich (In Name Only) in Reno

    I got dibs on the following campaign slogan:
    “Apocalypse Now! Bachmann/Palin 2016!”

  180. 180.

    HR Progressive

    Please, Liberal Jesus, let Bachmann, Fiorina, and Lindsey Graham run for the GOP Nomination for President in 2016.

    Along with Paul, Cruz, Carson, Rubio, Christie, Perry.

    Leave the “serious people” pining for Mitt Romney or Jeb Bush.

    The Democratic Primary will have, I think at max, 3-4 people in it…and even then, that might be a stretch.

    Hillary, Bernie (?), Martin O’Malley (?) and…Biden (?)

    Hell, Jim Webb’s name has been thrown out there too, but I’ll believe it when I see it.

    Honestly, if the Dem Primary consisted solely of Hillary and Bernie or Hillary and O’Malley, I think that’d be good enough.

    But the GOP Clown Car can’t be big enough for my liking!

  181. 181.

    Gin & Tonic

    @efgoldman: Thanks. Never been there. Doesn’t look overly expensive to me — well, unless you compare it to Mike’s Kitchen or something.

  182. 182.

    Cervantes

    What are the odds that Lauren French and John Bresnahan understand what their (attempt at) borrowing from Dylan Thomas actually suggests about Bachmann’s prospects?

  183. 183.

    Steve

    The republican party is a clown show, so it doesn’t matter what size car they have, you can always fit them all in.

  185. 185.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @VOR: Well, the media is made up of twits that the real Tiger Beat would have rejected for being too gullible and fannish.

  186. 186.

    Bill Arnold

    @VOR:

    I cannot recall ever meeting anyone in the computer industry with a positive view of her time at HP.

    Yeah, that was pretty clueless. Most techies, if they cared at all, hated her with a rare passion, still do.

  188. 188.

    moops

    @Felanius Kootea:

    The memristor is probably 5 years away from being product, and that seems to have been true now for about 5 years (persistently 5 years away). Even the CTO had to walk back big talk about memristor products.

    I doubt HP has the expertise in-house anymore to pull off the feat. You need about 5 billion in cash to break ground on a new fab facility these days. HP hasn’t had that much cash reserves in a while, and nobody will buy their current spin-off options for full price when they can get picked up in the debris of the bankruptcy court for a fraction of the cost.

    They will likely sell the patents at some point to keep the rest of the ship afloat a little longer so the main stakeholders can pillage the pension fund. Carly’s legacy of ruined businesses will remain legendary.

    You heard it here first.

  189. 189.

    SWMBO

    @Omnes Omnibus: One cup of water in the microwave. Heat to boiling. Steep one teabag for three minutes, no more. Add brown sugar (as much as it will hold–when it doesn’t dissolve anymore, that’s enough). (You can use white sugar but it isn’t as soothing) Take it one tablespoon at a time, resting between spoonfuls. My sister is a nurse and she said she learned it in nursing school. Will settle your stomach, help break a fever and help your stomach ease into food again. Best of luck.

  190. 190.

    pluege

    Her [bachmann] hope is to emerge as the “anti-Hillary,”

    lets see…Hillary Clinton: exceptionally smart, exceptionally qualified, broad experience, someone known for bridging divides among people. Yep,bachmann is exactly the opposite alright.

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