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You are here: Home / Epitaph for an era

Epitaph for an era

by DougJ|  October 7, 201510:05 am| 216 Comments

This post is in: I Reject Your Reality and Substitute My Own, Looks Like I Picked the Wrong Week to Stop Sniffing Glue, Technically True but Collectively Nonsense

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McMegan provides it:

People are far too prone to confuse outcomes with good decision-making.

The context is Fiorina’s tenure at HP. You see, it doesn’t matter that Fiorina blew up HP, because she was a serious person with good decision-making skills, outcome be damned!

Likewise, it doesn’t matter that the Iraq War was a disaster, its supporters were serious people with good decision making-skills, while its opponents were unserious hippies who needed to learn from a 2×4 how very effective violence can be when it’s applied in a firm, pre-emptive manner.

When historians look back on this era, this will be amazed by how little elite media cared about reality.

(h/t reader A)

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216Comments

  1. 1.

    Snarki, child of Loki

    October 7, 2015 at 10:08 am

    “When historians look back on this era, this will be amazed by how little elite media cared about reality.”

    For any future historians, I suggest they label this era The Age of Derp.

    Sort of like The Dark Ages, but with more “stupid”.

  2. 2.

    Eric

    October 7, 2015 at 10:10 am

    The best part is that it is a prescient observation, but for the converse point. That is what makes it an even more fitting epitaph

  3. 3.

    David Koch

    October 7, 2015 at 10:11 am

    are you sure this isn’t from a fortune cookie or daily horoscope??

  4. 4.

    Kathy

    October 7, 2015 at 10:12 am

    Remember this: “You were wrong to be right and we were right to be wrong” (Richard Cohen)

  5. 5.

    DiTurno

    October 7, 2015 at 10:12 am

    I’m not sure you can call McMegan a member of the “elite media.” Sure, there are plenty of hacks, dolts and high-Broderists in that clan, but her innumeracy, utter cluelesness and resistance to empirical reality show that she’s a garden variety wingnut with a happier veneer.

  6. 6.

    David Koch

    October 7, 2015 at 10:16 am

    Problem is no one thinks she made good decisions.

    From economist Josh Barro to Jeffrey Sonnenfeld of Yale School of Management to even corporatist douche bag Andrew Ross Sorkin – they all say she was a disaster.

    And the proof: no one ever offered her another job.

  7. 7.

    amk

    October 7, 2015 at 10:16 am

    heh, when up is down and war is peace …

  8. 8.

    Anonymous At Work

    October 7, 2015 at 10:18 am

    The problem with mocking that quote is that in many fields, the process of decision-making is important but the outcomes are uncertain and can turn badly. In research, many studies are risky in terms of what will happen. The best you can do is make the underlying rationale solid and based on the best-available science. That bad results happen is something you can’t avoid.

  9. 9.

    chopper

    October 7, 2015 at 10:18 am

    it’s too early in the morning for this shit. seriously.

  10. 10.

    EconWatcher

    October 7, 2015 at 10:19 am

    When Fiorina’s ouster was announced, HP’s share price soared. http://money.cnn.com/2005/02/09/technology/hp_fiorina/

    The market spoke rather clearly. Surely McArdle doesn’t think the market was wrong, does she?

  11. 11.

    waspuppet

    October 7, 2015 at 10:19 am

    That would maybe fly if Fiorina’s take on her time at HP was “Look, the company was doomed and I did the best I could, and I dare someone to explain what I could have done better, and look at all these OTHER reasons you should vote for me.”

    But of course that’s not what she’s saying. She’s saying “I made HP an enormous success YES I DID YES I DID SHUT UP YES I DID.” Which is good enough for McMegan.

  12. 12.

    Gin & Tonic

    October 7, 2015 at 10:19 am

    @Eric: That’s exactly the way I read it: “I’m rich” doesn’t imply “I’m smart.”

  13. 13.

    Gin & Tonic

    October 7, 2015 at 10:20 am

    @EconWatcher: The free market has continued to speak by the fact that in the intervening ten years Fiorina has not been offered a job anywhere.

  14. 14.

    drj

    October 7, 2015 at 10:21 am

    Actually, McMegan is entirely right about this:

    Failure doesn’t always mean that you made the wrong decision. It might just have meant that there were no good options, or that you got unlucky. It’s very easy in business analysis to commit the fundamental attribution error — to think that success or failure is due to some innate quality of the CEO, rather than the market they’re in or the entrenched problems of the company they have to manage.

    Now let’s wait and see how she’s going to apply this lesson to CEO compensation (or the need for a social safety net for the poor).

  15. 15.

    Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)

    October 7, 2015 at 10:22 am

    @Kathy:

    Did he really say that? I mean, I can believe the sentiment, coming from him, but would even he be dumb enough to put that in so many words?

  16. 16.

    MattF

    October 7, 2015 at 10:22 am

    Actually, this explains a lot. Outcomes are unrelated to decision-making, and you can make decisions and not be responsible for the outcome. I really have to think some more about this. It has profound implications for the causal structure of space-time.

  17. 17.

    Snarki, child of Loki

    October 7, 2015 at 10:25 am

    “Actually, this explains a lot. Outcomes are unrelated to decision-making, and you can make decisions and not be responsible for the outcome.”

    Except for poor people. THEY are completely responsible for their bad decisions.

    Starting with their poor choice of parents.

  18. 18.

    Skippy-san

    October 7, 2015 at 10:25 am

    McMegan: Still the dumbest blogger in the world, bar none

    P.S. Ask Custer if outcomes don’t matter……….

  19. 19.

    benw

    October 7, 2015 at 10:25 am

    Actually, McMegan is already an unserious hippie liberal if she’s arguing that Iraq and HP were disasters. I thought serious people all knew that Iraq was a success (we got Saddam and spread democracy!) and HP was a private enterprise boom (huge revenues!). Anything less is betrayal.

  20. 20.

    kindness

    October 7, 2015 at 10:26 am

    “Elite Media”. Only in their own minds are they elite. The rest of us are just along for the ride it seems.

  21. 21.

    Roger Moore

    October 7, 2015 at 10:26 am

    @David Koch:

    Problem is no one thinks she made good decisions.

    And this isn’t something that people are making up after the fact to slime her with. There was vigorous opposition to her plans at the time, which is why there was such a nasty proxy battle over the Compaq merger. Which, I guess, in no way distinguishes it from the Iraq war or any of the other disastrous decisions were the decision makers break out the “hoocoodanode” when they go south.

  22. 22.

    Bobby Thomson

    October 7, 2015 at 10:27 am

    @Anonymous At Work: correct. Also, too, sometimes bad choices still produce results that look good, at least without knowing what the alternative would have been. Thing is, rightly or wrongly, everyone gets judged on results, and some decisions are objectively bad ex ante.

  23. 23.

    debbie

    October 7, 2015 at 10:28 am

    People are far too prone to confuse…

    They also mistake well-spokeness for substance.

  24. 24.

    SFAW

    October 7, 2015 at 10:29 am

    @Skippy-san:

    McMegan: Still the dumbest blogger in the world, bar none

    Somewhere, Jim Hoft is crying at the loss of his crown.

  25. 25.

    EconWatcher

    October 7, 2015 at 10:29 am

    @drj:

    McArdle’s argument rests on the notion that the merger with Compaq was only a failure in hindsight. But it was pretty much industry consensus at the time that HP was making a giant and probably disastrous leap into a lower margin business. So nice try, but no.

    Again, kind of like the Iraq War: No hindsight needed. Brent Scowcroft, of all people, warned of the looming disaster in the editorial pages of an obsure rag called the NYT. About two dozen Senators said an emphatic no. So there are no excuses for those (cough, cough) who caved.

    ETA: Roger Moore beat me to the punch, but did not include a gratuitous political jab.

  26. 26.

    Bobby Thomson

    October 7, 2015 at 10:29 am

    @drj: ftw

  27. 27.

    Amir Khalid

    October 7, 2015 at 10:29 am

    A statement of the obvious:

    Decision-making processes are only as good as their outcomes. When a “good” process run by “skillful” deciders consistently yields outcomes that stink, you need to reevaluate both the process and the deciders. They might just be overrated.

  28. 28.

    chopper

    October 7, 2015 at 10:30 am

    @Anonymous At Work:

    it’s one thing to look at someone’s failures and say “well hey it was a hard job and she gave it the best”. It’s another to say “well, results don’t really matter anyways”

  29. 29.

    chopper

    October 7, 2015 at 10:32 am

    @drj:

    this rule is only true for rich white conservatives. they get a pass. everybody else “made poor life decisions”.

  30. 30.

    Patrick

    October 7, 2015 at 10:33 am

    But at the risk of seeming to suck up to a colleague, I find Fox more persuasive when he says that if Fiorina wasn’t the best CEO in history, she certainly wasn’t the worst, either.

    This is mind-blowing. Does she really think that’s a good argument for making her the leader of the free world? “She wasn’t the worst CEO in history – Elect Carly Fiorina!”

    Likewise, it doesn’t matter that the Iraq War was a disaster, its supporters were serious people with good decision making-skills,

    And these serious people have cost our country trillions of dollars, wrecked an entire region, and God knows what much else…

  31. 31.

    SFAW

    October 7, 2015 at 10:34 am

    @Roger Moore:

    There was vigorous opposition to her plans at the time, which is why there was such a nasty proxy battle over the Compaq merger.

    Well, it was only Walter (?) Hewlett, and all he cared about was his family name, or feathering his own nest, or he was a misogynist, or maybe because of veeblefetzer.

    And to all you haters who point out that she hasn’t been a CEO (or anything approaching CxO since then: she just wanted “to spend more time with her family,” while she “pursued other options” and “investigated other opportunities.”

  32. 32.

    Mr. Longform

    October 7, 2015 at 10:35 am

    “When historians look back…”

    Did you not hear that the world is ending today? Context, outcome, whatever. I’m having a donut.

  33. 33.

    dedc79

    October 7, 2015 at 10:36 am

    But at the risk of seeming to suck up to a colleague, I find Fox more persuasive when he says that if Fiorina wasn’t the best CEO in history, she certainly wasn’t the worst, either.

    That would make a great campaign slogan: “Not the best, but also not the worst”

  34. 34.

    RSR

    October 7, 2015 at 10:37 am

    ‘Wrong, but for the right reasons.’

  35. 35.

    Patrick

    October 7, 2015 at 10:40 am

    People are far too prone to confuse outcomes with good decision-making.

    So I assume McMegan will give Hillary Clinton and Obama the same easy way of making the grade…

    If there was any bad outcomes to what Obama has done, at least he decided well.

  36. 36.

    SFAW

    October 7, 2015 at 10:42 am

    @Patrick:

    This is mind-blowing. Does she really think that’s a good argument for making her the leader of the free world? “She wasn’t the worst CEO in history – Elect Carly Fiorina!”

    “Carly! At least she didn’t drive the Economy into a Huge Recession (by herself)!”

    “Carly! Hey, at least her Parachute wasn’t Leaden!”

    “Carly! Creating 30,000-plus ‘Entrepreneurs’ in one stroke!”

    I’m sure there are more/better ones to be had.

  37. 37.

    Ryan

    October 7, 2015 at 10:44 am

    Typically, you see it the other way. “Hey, he has money, he must be successful and worthy of praise.” I dunno, I think I prefer your world, where people blissfully ignore evidence at hand, than mine, where people sample on the dependent variable.

  38. 38.

    danielx

    October 7, 2015 at 10:47 am

    @Skippy-san:

    McMegan: Still the dumbest blogger in the world, bar none

    But there are so many contestants for the title!

  39. 39.

    Ryan

    October 7, 2015 at 10:47 am

    @SFAW: Oh if you ask her, I’m sure she’s received other opportunities. And I’m sure you’d be willing to take her word on that. She’s seen the letters man!

  40. 40.

    Cervantes

    October 7, 2015 at 10:47 am

    @Kathy:

    Remember this: “You were wrong to be right and we were right to be wrong” (Richard Cohen)

    @Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.):

    Did he really say that?

    Sort of.

    At the end of something Cohen wrote about the destruction of Iraq:

    I owe it to Tony Judt for giving me the French ex-Stalinist Pierre Courtade, who, wrongheaded though he might have been, neatly sums it all up for me: “You and your kind were wrong to be right; we were right to be wrong.”

    Here’s what Tony had written, also about the destruction of Iraq:

    The only people qualified to speak on this matter, it would seem, are those who got it wrong initially. Such insouciance in spite of – indeed because of – your past misjudgments recalls a remark by the French ex-Stalinist Pierre Courtade to Edgar Morin, a dissenting Communist vindicated by events: ‘You and your kind were wrong to be right; we were right to be wrong.’

    Naturally, having no other way to defend his own stupidity, Cohen latched on to Courtade’s ridiculous remark and waved it about.

    (Edgar Morin, by the way, is well worth reading: his six-volume La Méthode is a masterpiece of thinking clearly and comprehensively — about virtually anything.)

  41. 41.

    BGinCHI

    October 7, 2015 at 10:48 am

    Ha Ha, Doug.

    Everyone knows that if you get a big salary, THAT is the measure of your worth. Not the Job you do.

    WTF is wrong with you?

    Just look at the salaries of the Business School profs at your university.

  42. 42.

    GregB

    October 7, 2015 at 10:51 am

    Fiorina is so revolting she makes Ted Cruz look like Fozzy the Bear.

  43. 43.

    Mustang Bobby

    October 7, 2015 at 10:52 am

    People are far too prone to confuse outcomes with good decision-making.

    Hey, we got the Hindenburg to New Jersey, which is more than those losers on the Titanic can say.

  44. 44.

    EconWatcher

    October 7, 2015 at 10:53 am

    @SFAW:

    Not to be nitpicky, but it’s long past time to retire that phrase “leader of the free world.”

    It was always arrogant, but at least somewhat plausibly accurate during the Cold War.

    But it just sounds weird now. It’s a multi-polar world, and freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose…

  45. 45.

    Carolus

    October 7, 2015 at 10:53 am

    @Anonymous At Work:

    What’s forgotten is that Fiorina essentially ignored the advice of HP’s analysts, employees, and shareholders. She also threatened to divest Deutsche Bank’s business with HP if they did didn’t change their vote against the merger. She also went 180 degrees away from what her competitors were doing.

    So, yeah, sometimes good decision-making may not lead to the best outcomes. But in this case, Fiorina was making extremely poor decisions.

  46. 46.

    CrustyDem

    October 7, 2015 at 10:54 am

    At my doctor’s request, I’m still on McMegan moratorium, she’s just that perfect combination of stupid, innumerate, and still somehow smug that is terrible for my blood pressure.

  47. 47.

    Davebo

    October 7, 2015 at 10:55 am

    The wake of 9/11 brought some incredibly horrible effects.

    Megan is one of them.

  48. 48.

    J

    October 7, 2015 at 10:55 am

    @Anonymous At Work: To be sure, one can’t use outcomes as an infallible measure of decisions made under uncertainty. Even if one makes the choice best calculated to bring about bring about the goal, that goal may not result. But an effective defense of Carly Fiorina would have to conclude an explanation, going into at least a little detail, of why, in the circumstances in which she acted and with the evidence available to her at the time, her decision was a good one.

    Does McMegan to this? The charge, which still stands, is the Fiorina made bad use of the information she had, and made a bad decision with bad results.

    The kind of defense McMegan has in mind also works better in the ‘you can’t win them all’ form, where the person being defended has many successes to her name. There are, apparently, no successes to which defenders of CF can point.

  49. 49.

    BGinCHI

    October 7, 2015 at 10:56 am

    @CrustyDem: McMegan thinks DeNile is just a river in Jordan.

  50. 50.

    SFAW

    October 7, 2015 at 10:57 am

    @GregB:

    Fiorina is so revolting she makes Ted Cruz look like Fozzy the Bear.

    Not even close. Carleton Sneed Fiorina may be a liar, and may have selective memory about all the ways she fucked up Lucent and HP, but she’s not a Dominionist nutcase evil motherfucker willing to take the country/world down as long as she achieves the goals of her nutcase preacher father.

    I hate Fiorina, and her reign as Preznit would be a disaster, but she’s not a complete fucking loon. Cruz is.

  51. 51.

    jeffreyw

    October 7, 2015 at 11:01 am

    cookie for new win 10 install, please and thank you

  52. 52.

    SFAW

    October 7, 2015 at 11:01 am

    @EconWatcher:

    Not to be nitpicky, but it’s long past time to retire that phrase “leader of the free world.”

    Not to be nitpicky, but I was not the one who used it – I just blockquoted it.

    That said: I don’t have much of a problem with America being considered leader of hte free world – as long as it’s not a Rethug President.

  53. 53.

    NonyNony

    October 7, 2015 at 11:03 am

    @drj:

    Failure doesn’t always mean that you made the wrong decision. It might just have meant that there were no good options, or that you got unlucky. It’s very easy in business analysis to commit the fundamental attribution error — to think that success or failure is due to some innate quality of the CEO, rather than the market they’re in or the entrenched problems of the company they have to manage.

    Oh look – the patented McArdle “change the subject and hope my readers don’t pick up on it”. What she says here is true in the abstract, yes (and as you point out its truth has some ramifications for CEO pay that McArdle will never accept), but is emphatically NOT true about Fiorina’s case in particular. Fiorina made decisions that everyone in her company told her were bad and that a majority of shareholders had to be strong-armed into supporting that led to bad outcomes. These were bad decisions period – lots of people were pointing it out at the time and she not only actively ignored it, she bullied people to get them to shut up.

  54. 54.

    Roger Moore

    October 7, 2015 at 11:04 am

    @SFAW:

    Well, it was only Walter (?) Hewlett, and all he cared about was his family name, or feathering his own nest, or he was a misogynist, or maybe because of veeblefetzer.

    Of course you can flip that on its head. Maybe she made the right decision but was undermined by a bunch of backward thinking stockholders who refused to go along with her vision. But that’s situation normal in Washington, DC, and whoever we elect president needs to be able to cajole and convince the opposition to go along from time to time. If Carly couldn’t manage the political side of being CEO, what makes anyone think she’s up to managing the political side of being President?

  55. 55.

    SFAW

    October 7, 2015 at 11:04 am

    @BGinCHI:

    McMegan thinks DeNile is just a river in Jordan.

    Trying to figure how to tie that in with Michael, what with you being in Chicago and all. Can’t come up with anything.

    But, nice line. (Next, McMegan will be telling us Pink Himalayan Salt comes from Himalayastan?)

  56. 56.

    Davebo

    October 7, 2015 at 11:05 am

    @BGinCHI: Was that clever or stupid?

  57. 57.

    Cervantes

    October 7, 2015 at 11:07 am

    @SFAW:

    I don’t have much of a problem with America being considered leader of hte free world

    Being considered by whom?

  58. 58.

    Patrick

    October 7, 2015 at 11:09 am

    @J:

    Jeb Bush supposedly is making plans to campaign with George W Bush, apparently because conservatives were impressed by W during his presidency.

    Equity prices fell a whopping 46% under George W Bush. HP’s stock price dropped by an astounding 65% during Fiorina’s tenure, which was more than double the drop of the Nasdaq. So, at least Fiorina has that in common with W, ie being bad for the stock market and the economy.

  59. 59.

    SFAW

    October 7, 2015 at 11:10 am

    @Roger Moore:
    Not disagreeing with you, and it’s a good point, but that wasn’t my own point. I was just saying (or trying to say) that the key ant-merger/buyout voices were persons with an axe to grind, not sober, rational, high-minded persons. So, because their motives were suspect, she was perfectly justified in charging ahead.

    Of course, that’s all bullshit, as plenty of others here have already pointed out. But I imagine that’s at least part of the Fiorinistas tell themselves.

  60. 60.

    SFAW

    October 7, 2015 at 11:10 am

    @Davebo:

    Option #1

  61. 61.

    Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)

    October 7, 2015 at 11:11 am

    There’s something else here that other people have brushed up against, but haven’t put into so many words, at least as far as I’ve seen so far, and that’s that people like McArdle and the other Serious People really do have two standards. The standard for themselves, and others like them–rich, influential, serious–is that the outcome never counts for anything. All that means anything is that you’re smart–and they are! Of course, they are! Look at all the important jobs they hold! They write columns for the Post and the Times! They get hired by Republican presidents to fuck shit up! They must know what they’re doing!–and rich (and they all are), and you’re the right kind of people–and all it takes to be the right kind of people is to be smart (see above) and hate the fucking hippies–then you can never be wrong. You can never make mistakes. Or, if things turn out badly, and it looks like you’ve fucked up, well, that was only bad luck. It was only a bad outcome, but that could happen to anybody, right?

    Well, no. No, it couldn’t. ‘Cause, you know, that’s the other side of the coin, right? If you’re the wrong kind of people, then everything is your fault. You lost your job? Should have made “better decisions” in life. Who cares that you got fired because HP went bankrupt or some shit? You should have known better than to work for them. When you aren’t like Fiorina or Richard Cohen or some other asshole like that, then every bad thing that happens to you is your own fucking fault, and you deserve whatever shit comes your way because of it. Got cancer? Should have taken better care of yourself. Your kid got cancer? Hey, you should have made more money so you could afford to get him taken care of. House got struck by lightning and burned down? Fuck. You bought that house, right? Nobody made you choose it. If you’d chosen another, it wouldn’t have gotten hit by lightning, and you’d be safe and sound. Live with your choices, man, and stop asking for handouts. All you’ll do by demanding “free shit” is punish successful people. People like Carly Fiorina and Richard Cohen.

    If I sound bitter, it’s only because I am.

  62. 62.

    SFAW

    October 7, 2015 at 11:13 am

    @Cervantes:

    Being considered by whom?

    By whomever.
    I also don’t have much of a problem with USA not being considered leader of the free world. I tend to fall on the side of “IS,” but it’s not like it matters a ton either way.

  63. 63.

    Southern Beale

    October 7, 2015 at 11:14 am

    You know, Doug, this has just made my day. Hand to goddess, I’ve been thinking for weeks now, “Whatever happened to Megan McArdle?” I wondered if she’d been relegated to the dustheap along with annoyances like Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh. No one seems to give them airtime anymore.

    So glad to see McArdle is still out there to annoy us.

  64. 64.

    drj

    October 7, 2015 at 11:15 am

    @NonyNony:

    …but is emphatically NOT true about Fiorina’s case in particular.

    That’s rather obvious, isn’t it?

    See #29 (or #61) for the point I was trying to make.

  65. 65.

    CrustyDem

    October 7, 2015 at 11:15 am

    @BGinCHI:

    Thanks, I needed that.

  66. 66.

    benw

    October 7, 2015 at 11:15 am

    @Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.): Well said.

  67. 67.

    Patricia Kayden

    October 7, 2015 at 11:15 am

    “People are far too prone to confuse outcomes with good decision-making”

    So why are they harassing Secretary Clinton about Benghazi and the email “scandal”?

  68. 68.

    Anoniminous

    October 7, 2015 at 11:18 am

    @Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.):

    Exactly

  69. 69.

    SFAW

    October 7, 2015 at 11:19 am

    @Patrick:

    So, at least Fiorina has that in common with W, ie being bad for the stock market and the economy.

    Well, the stock market (which I guess means the Dow and NASDAQ) dropped because it was concerned that a blackity-black black man might become President.

    So, once again, it was Obama’s fault.

  70. 70.

    Rommie

    October 7, 2015 at 11:22 am

    People are far too prone to confuse outcomes with good decision-making.

    Well OF COURSE I was a Good Captain; I simply had incompetent followers, they didn’t trust me enough, *they* made bad decisions. I was ahead of the curve; unlucky timing is to blame, I had the right idea all along and no one else could see it. I was RIGHT, and history will prove me RIGHT.

    I guess the buck stops over there somewhere. Responsibility is for the little people.

  71. 71.

    Doug!

    October 7, 2015 at 11:25 am

    @dedc79:

    Yeah, it would be a great one.

  72. 72.

    Anonymous At Work

    October 7, 2015 at 11:26 am

    I think the charge against Fiorna is pretty serious but not that the merger went poorly but that Fiorna’s only big decision at HP was to merge with Compaq and she did it with poor decision-making skills and a total lack of leadership that would serve a potential President. She bullied opposition with threats bordering on extortion, she ignored all analysis and expertise that told her she was flat out wrong (important because it wasn’t couched in weasel-speak), and refused to accept responsibility for making the decision alone and against opposition.
    If it had worked, for some reason, she rightly could have accepted all the credit. If everyone had lauded and supported it, but then failed, she could spread the blame. But going alone and strong-arming the decision through means she stands alone for the blame.

    My defense of the process of decision-making is that I work with regulatory committees that look at the process of creating and starting research studies. Bad results happen, and the researcher gets blamed, even though the decision-making process accounted for this possibility and informed stakeholders that this could happen. It’s a bad form of second-guessing after the fact. I can defend McMegan’s comments to the extent and only that extent that it covers such second-guessing.

  73. 73.

    Jeffro

    October 7, 2015 at 11:26 am

    @SFAW: seconded times a billion

  74. 74.

    Patrick

    October 7, 2015 at 11:28 am

    @SFAW:

    Well, the stock market (which I guess means the Dow and NASDAQ) dropped because it was concerned that a blackity-black black man might become President.

    Which is funny considering the SP has gone up 156% since Obama took office.

    I remember in the fall of 2012 when the market had a temporary surge upwards. An analyst (obviously fairly biased) at Morgan Stanley claimed it was because the market was anticipating a Romney victory. Well, Obama won and the market has gone up even more since then. I never heard that analyst explain himself since then.

  75. 75.

    RenoRick

    October 7, 2015 at 11:29 am

    I feel dumber after reading this. Why do people give her $ to write such dribble?

  76. 76.

    trollhattan

    October 7, 2015 at 11:29 am

    Today’s local paper carries a WaPo piece about Carly’s stiffing her senate campaign staff and vendors while lavishly spending on over-produced campaign events. Don’t have a link, but get a load of this from her senate operations director, Jon Cross:

    “People are just upset and angry and throwing her under the bus. If we don’t win why do you deserve to get paid? If you don’t succeed in business you shouldn’t be the first one to step up and complain about getting paid.”

    Get that? Only be a vendor for winners. Coffee’s for closers! What a putz.

    Article also notes she began paying off some of these debts as soon as Boxer announced her retirement. Somebody said they assumed she was running, but got the office wrong.

  77. 77.

    Patrick

    October 7, 2015 at 11:30 am

    @Anonymous At Work:

    She bullied opposition with threats bordering on extortion, she ignored all analysis and expertise that told her she was flat out wrong (important because it wasn’t couched in weasel-speak), and refused to accept responsibility for making the decision alone and against opposition.

    She sounds an awful lot like Chris Christie and all the bullying crap he has done with bridgegate etc etc etc. She would be scary with that much power.

  78. 78.

    Doug!

    October 7, 2015 at 11:33 am

    @Kathy:

    I like that in the article where he says that he conflates Brent Scowcroft with Michael Moore.

  79. 79.

    ? Martin

    October 7, 2015 at 11:35 am

    The real mystery will be why looking back at this era, why the press gave so much latitude to a party that was bent on government overthrow. If you look at what the Tea Party seeks to do – from armed resistance to selective readings of the constitution, to backing fringe candidates, it’s pretty apparent that’s their aim.

    That the GOP is more afraid of the Democrats than those plotting a coup tells you a lot about establishment Republicans.

  80. 80.

    SFAW

    October 7, 2015 at 11:37 am

    @Patrick:

    Which is funny considering the SP has gone up 156% since Obama took office.

    Nothing to do with Obama. It’s all, completely, totally because “the Market” expects President Romney Bush Fiorina Carson Bush will do wonders for the economy.

  81. 81.

    SFAW

    October 7, 2015 at 11:40 am

    @? Martin:

    That the GOP is more afraid of the Democrats than those plotting a coup tells you a lot about establishment Republicans.

    Why would/wouldn’t they be? When the bulk of Rethug candidates proudly tell their supporters how they’re going to destroy the Government from within, why should the hint of a coup bother them?

  82. 82.

    catclub

    October 7, 2015 at 11:42 am

    @Gin & Tonic:

    The free market has continued to speak by the fact that in the intervening ten years Fiorina has not been offered a job anywhere.

    I would guess it is the free market combined with a good old boys club that likes to give the top job to women or minorities when everything is hopeless ( Obama in 2008 also comes to mind), and then blame them for any failures. Result: Fiorina does not get another job. neither does the black guy who was president of Merrill Lynch.

  83. 83.

    Patrick

    October 7, 2015 at 11:42 am

    @SFAW:

    It’s all, completely, totally because “the Market” expects President Romney Bush Fiorina Carson Bush will do wonders for the economy.

    The “Market’ being Republican pundits.

  84. 84.

    SFAW

    October 7, 2015 at 11:43 am

    @Patrick:

    Whatever works, right?

  85. 85.

    SFAW

    October 7, 2015 at 11:44 am

    @catclub:

    HP was not “hopeless” when Fiorina took over.

    ETA: Although a case might be made that GM was in that state when they gave the position to Mary Barra – how many billions will they have to pay out for the ignition-switch debacle? Or is it a fiasco? She’s just the lucky one who get’s it dumped on her.

  86. 86.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    October 7, 2015 at 11:48 am

    I saw this last week, reminded me of the rich old man (he was loud, we were in a bar in a ski resort, and he was talking about his place on the beach in San Diego, and his ranch –“well, really a lake house with a few horses”– in Texas) I overheard in ’07 or early ’08, George W Bush made all the right decisions, he just put the wrong people in charge of executing them. I was curious to know if that was just Rumsfeld, Rice and Powell, or if the chain of incompetence reached, in rich old man’s mind, all the way up to Cheney. But I didn’t ask.

    Jack Welch has a similar moment, probably around the same time, on the Tweety show, saying as I remember it, “President Bush did everything right, I don’t know who things went so wrong.” He looked really old and confused, I half expected him to start pleading for his pudding.

  87. 87.

    Matt McIrvin

    October 7, 2015 at 11:49 am

    It’s absolutely true that sometimes, success and failure have nothing to do with the quality of somebody’s decision-making. Discounting contingent environmental factors in an outcome is the famous fundamental attribution error.

    But this becomes a dishonest observation when you have your thumb on the scale, and discount only the failures of people you like and the successes of people you don’t.

  88. 88.

    ? Martin

    October 7, 2015 at 11:50 am

    @Cervantes: We are considered by everyone to be leader. Even the way that China, Russia, and Iran react to the US broadcasts that they acknowledge that the US has the greatest capacity for influence on the outcome of world events. That doesn’t mean we necessarily succeed, or do good things, or even step up, just that the US has the greatest amount of financial, political, and military capital to work with.

    I think we generally do a pretty good job on those three fronts. Where I think the US fails the hardest is on moral capital. We are really overshadowed by a lot of the world there. That’s fairly inexcusable. That, by the way, is where I think Obama is most distinctive, as Carter was. Not consistently, mind you, but he does it a lot more than anyone since Carter.

    For example, Obama justified a large part of the Iran deal with the simple assertion that the US can afford more than any other country to be generous as part of a deal. We can afford to trust Iran because we know they cannot meaningfully damage us and because we know that we have enough capital in those other areas (politically, militarily, financially) to put Iran back in line. That’s my biggest gripe with the GOP – they are morally bankrupt because they cannot bear to be generous. It’s not that the US needs to give things away, its that we have the ability to lead and bring the great nations together to accomplish something and they simply do not believe in that. They believe in the opposite, that we should do things despite that. Just look at the death penalty for the clearest example.

  89. 89.

    SatanicPanic

    October 7, 2015 at 11:50 am

    Fiorina’s whole pitch is that she was a CEO. It’s not my fault, I was stuck in a bad situation isn’t a good pitch, even if it’s wrong. Megan can’t be such a dunce that she doesn’t know this, can she?

  90. 90.

    catclub

    October 7, 2015 at 11:51 am

    @Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.):

    Got cancer? Should have taken better care of yourself.

    Do you know that Fiorina had cancer?

    I agree with much of your comment. My guess is that Fiorina is actually an odd mix of those two types of people.
    She will never be hired again because she is blamed for the mistakes she made, but she has Mcmegan now going to bat to put her in the class where results do not matter.

    interesting.

  91. 91.

    amk

    October 7, 2015 at 11:52 am

    @catclub:

    many women ceo’s big corps. some brought in as firefighters, mary barra, marissa mayer. some were there from the beginning – indra nooyi, meg whitman

    http://www.catalyst.org/knowledge/women-ceos-sp-500

  92. 92.

    maya

    October 7, 2015 at 11:52 am

    I take what McMegan says with a grain of pink Himalayan salt.

  93. 93.

    Patrick

    October 7, 2015 at 11:54 am

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    Jack Welch has a similar moment, probably around the same time, on the Tweety show, saying as I remember it, “President Bush did everything right, I don’t know who things went so wrong.” He looked really old and confused, I half expected him to start pleading for his pudding.

    Jack Welsh is the one who accused President Obama of cooking the numbers when the jobs numbers started to improve. Anything Welsh says should be taken without a huge grain of salt.

  94. 94.

    ? Martin

    October 7, 2015 at 11:54 am

    @SFAW: Well, ask Boehner. Just the latest victim of the coup. The Tea Party is just as determined to overthrow the GOP as they are to overthrow the rest of us. Not sure why the GOP believes they can bargain with them.

  95. 95.

    Cervantes

    October 7, 2015 at 11:54 am

    @? Martin:

    We are considered by everyone to be leader.

    Tom Friedman’s taxi driver may tell him that. Some of Friedman’s more avid readers may even believe it.

    Actual human beings who have borne the brunt of our foreign policy may disagree. I can think of millions.

  96. 96.

    jacel

    October 7, 2015 at 11:57 am

    @dedc79: Yeah, but Jonathan Schwartz isn’t running for President. (Actually, post-Sun, he seems to be doing something worthwhile with starting up CareZone.)

  97. 97.

    singfoom

    October 7, 2015 at 11:58 am

    The best part about this entire thing for Fiorina is that anyone who knows/knew anything about computers could tell you that Compaq was a shitty brand and that it was a horrible business decision to buy them. There was absolutely 0 upside to that purchase for HP other than stock inflation.

    Anyone else here ever had a Compaq computer back in the day? They were DESIGNED so that you had to take them in to get upgraded. If you wanted to increase the memory, you had to remove other components just to get at the memory slots on the motherboard.

    And to go along with the choir, McMegan is an idiot. Unfortunately, she seems to be a contributor to KCRW’s Left Right and Center often, which makes me haz a sad.

  98. 98.

    Just One More Canuck

    October 7, 2015 at 11:59 am

    @SatanicPanic: You have to ask that?

  99. 99.

    Matt McIrvin

    October 7, 2015 at 11:59 am

    @? Martin: The reports on the bombing of the MSF hospital are starting to look really bad, like Obama intentionally approved bombing the hospital knowing what it was.

    That makes him a war criminal, though arguably he was one for several reasons already (including not prosecuting the previous administration’s war criminals, which likely makes all future American presidents to the end of the republic war criminals by induction).

    These kinds of stories leave me not knowing what to do. The United States is basically a monster regime, and nothing is ever going to change that. If I vote, especially if I vote for anyone who has a chance of winning, I’m complicit in that regime. But not doing that means that things get worse.

  100. 100.

    gene108

    October 7, 2015 at 12:02 pm

    @catclub:

    I would guess it is the free market combined with a good old boys club that likes to give the top job to women or minorities when everything is hopeless ( Obama in 2008 also comes to mind), and then blame them for any failures. Result: Fiorina does not get another job. neither does the black guy who was president of Merrill Lynch.

    Meg Whitman went from CEO of Ebay to CEO of HP. She had a short break between jobs and a failed CA Senate run, but she’s actually a good CEO and has been hired in that roll again.

    Fiorina ran both Lucent and HP into the ground.

    Why people still take her seriously, I do not know.

    You don’t see anyone running after John Corzine for his opinion, after the shit show at MF Global. And he had more success, both politically and in the business world than Fiorina has ever had. He was the CEO that took Goldman Sachs public, had a short stint as Senator and was an O.K. governor for NJ. The cluster fuck at MF Global has rightly made him a pariah.

  101. 101.

    Just One More Canuck

    October 7, 2015 at 12:03 pm

    @Patrick: @Patrick: Jack Welch would know all about cooking numbers

  102. 102.

    Another Holocene Human

    October 7, 2015 at 12:03 pm

    Somebody around here said the UK was a more violent culture than than the US. I lost the cite, but in looking for it, I found this:

    Dispelling the Myth: Why the UK is NOT more violent than the US

    https://dispellingthemythukvsusguns.wordpress.com/

  103. 103.

    Roger Moore

    October 7, 2015 at 12:09 pm

    @trollhattan:

    If we don’t win why do you deserve to get paid?

    Funny that they never ask the same question about Carly’s golden parachute at HP. I guess she was smart and negotiated that in advance.

  104. 104.

    Matt McIrvin

    October 7, 2015 at 12:11 pm

    @Another Holocene Human: The last time I looked into this, I recall getting the impression that crime rates in the US and UK were really roughly the same, with the glaring exception that far, far more people ended up dead in the US. To me, that doesn’t speak well for guns, since that’s an obvious difference.

    That page does add another wrinkle, with the calculation that attacks causing grievous bodily harm are far more common in the US. But that may well be about guns too.

    My impression is that the gun peoples’ myths about the UK are connected to the idea that guns are some kind of anti-rape equalizer for women, which isn’t borne out by experience.

  105. 105.

    Roger Moore

    October 7, 2015 at 12:11 pm

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    George W Bush made all the right decisions, he just put the wrong people in charge of executing them.

    Because picking your subordinates isn’t a decision.

  106. 106.

    gene108

    October 7, 2015 at 12:12 pm

    @? Martin:

    The real mystery will be why looking back at this era, why the press gave so much latitude to a party that was bent on government overthrow

    You and DougJ, in the OP, presume the proles win in the long run. If the elite win, we will have history telling us about the hurdles the new rulers had to overcome, in order to put things in order, like dismantling Social Security, abolishing the estate tax,etc. and how it could not have been accomplished without the Tea Baggers leading the vanguard of the revolution.

  107. 107.

    Villago Delenda Est

    October 7, 2015 at 12:12 pm

    @Just One More Canuck: More projection by a shitstain. Welch will probably die peacefully in bed without ever suffering the pain he inflicted so casually on others.

  108. 108.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    October 7, 2015 at 12:13 pm

    @David Koch: orporatist douche bag Andrew Ross Sorkin – they all say she was a disaster.

    Good god, if that preposterous little courtier has nothing good to say about an MOTU, even a wanna-be MOTU, she must be pretty bad indeed. Which I pretty much already knew. Blaming her failures on boardroom politics, hinting at sexism, is clever, but I doubt it will be enough (in the eventual Senate campaign that I still think is her longer term goal*) to overcome the scary/indignant voiceover noting that she ordered five corporate jets while laying off more than 20,000 people.

    *Unless she really has drunk the Bachmann-Gingrich-ade to its dregs and convinced herself that what started out as a stunt could now be a winning campaign, in which case I say “Go, Carly, go!”

  109. 109.

    trollhattan

    October 7, 2015 at 12:14 pm

    @gene108:
    I wouldn’t be so quick to crown Meg queen of the CEOs. We got a ration about her Ebay days during the governor campaign and a lot of it was pretty damning.

    And then there was shovegate. Which was before nannygate. Yeah, she ain’t all that.

  110. 110.

    Frank Wilhoit

    October 7, 2015 at 12:15 pm

    This is actually simple and important. “Good decision-making” is a form of performance art. Now extrapolate.

  111. 111.

    SFAW

    October 7, 2015 at 12:15 pm

    @? Martin:

    It’s not clear that Boehner is still considered representative of the GOP. Yes, I realize that he’s Establishment GOP, and yes, I realize that the TeaBagger caucus is only about 30-40 members. But if you look at the policies pushed by the Rethug Partei as a group, it’s hard to distinguish them from the TeaBaggers. So was it a coup? Or a purge?

  112. 112.

    Roger Moore

    October 7, 2015 at 12:16 pm

    @Cervantes:

    Actual human beings who have borne the brunt of our foreign policy may disagree.

    I think they’ll agree that we’re the leader; they’ll just disagree on the direction of our leadership.

  113. 113.

    EconWatcher

    October 7, 2015 at 12:21 pm

    @Matt McIrvin:

    “The United States is basically a monster regime…”

    You’ve lost it (assuming you ever had it).

    All decent people want an investigation of the hospital bombing, and punishments if warranted.

    But the US under Obama a monster regime? In this world? Bullshit.

  114. 114.

    Paul in KY

    October 7, 2015 at 12:24 pm

    @Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.): Sounds ‘realistic’.

  115. 115.

    Paul in KY

    October 7, 2015 at 12:25 pm

    @RenoRick: Because she writes the dribble they want her to write.

  116. 116.

    Paul in KY

    October 7, 2015 at 12:26 pm

    @? Martin: Because they were paid to do so.

  117. 117.

    ? Martin

    October 7, 2015 at 12:28 pm

    @catclub: I disagree with that. Ginni Rometty should be all the evidence we need of that. IBM was not in crisis, and Rometty is not some affirmative-action hire.

    And it’s not that they like to give the top job when things are hopeless, its that those with the fewest opportunities are most likely to be willing to take the greater risk. That doesn’t refute your point – just shades it a bit. I don’t think the boards are looking to set up women/minorities for failure, it’s just that when things look a big grim, the strong white male candidates run for the hills because they expect there will be other, safer opportunities.

  118. 118.

    Mike in NC

    October 7, 2015 at 12:29 pm

    Per MSNBC a few minutes ago, Trump maintains a wide lead in Ohio, Florida, and Pennsylvania. JEB! clings to fourth place in the state where he was once governor, and fails to even make fourth place in OH and PA.

    Have all the Brinks trucks run into a ditch?

  119. 119.

    Paul in KY

    October 7, 2015 at 12:30 pm

    @gene108: ‘History’ will not be completely written in the future USA or Panem. Other countries have historians too.

  120. 120.

    ? Martin

    October 7, 2015 at 12:31 pm

    @Cervantes:

    Actual human beings who have borne the brunt of our foreign policy may disagree. I can think of millions.

    I said quite clearly that we aren’t always better, but we are always the leader. Leader doesn’t say anything about outcomes, it speaks only to who has the largest say.

  121. 121.

    EconWatcher

    October 7, 2015 at 12:32 pm

    @? Martin:

    I have thought for a long time that Ginny Rometty deserves a heck of a lot more attention than she gets as a genuine example of breaking the glass ceiling. But unlike Fiorina, Rometty is a workhorse rather than a showboat.

  122. 122.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    October 7, 2015 at 12:34 pm

    @Matt McIrvin: like Obama intentionally approved bombing the hospital knowing what it was.

    Wow. I haven’t seen evidence of that. Can you back that up with something more substantive than Michael Moore’s twitter feed?

  123. 123.

    trollhattan

    October 7, 2015 at 12:34 pm

    @Mike in NC:

    jeb’s campaign manager: “We have so much CASH it’s filled the ditches, too!”

    Can fail be bagged and hauled? Because they’re going to need Trucks to haul all of jeb[yawn]’s Fail.

    Dump. Trucks. Fail.

  124. 124.

    Mandalay

    October 7, 2015 at 12:36 pm

    @Matt McIrvin:

    The reports on the bombing of the MSF hospital are starting to look really bad, like Obama intentionally approved bombing the hospital knowing what it was.

    Link?

  125. 125.

    EconWatcher

    October 7, 2015 at 12:37 pm

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    I’m hoping Matt McIrvin is an undergraduate. Many people (including me) flirted with radicalism at that age and said stupid s#!t like that.

    But if he’s a full-blown adult, he needs to grow up.

  126. 126.

    Matt McIrvin

    October 7, 2015 at 12:38 pm

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: Greenwald, but he’s quoting MSF:

    https://theintercept.com/2015/10/05/the-radically-changing-story-of-the-u-s-airstrike-on-afghan-hospital-from-mistake-to-justification

    Granted, there’s not a direct link to the President there, but the US military now seems to be justifying the strike rather than calling it an accident.

  127. 127.

    Gin & Tonic

    October 7, 2015 at 12:40 pm

    @EconWatcher: Somebody needs to fill the void left by Bob in Portland.

  128. 128.

    phoebes-in-santa fe

    October 7, 2015 at 12:40 pm

    @Davebo: Maybe it’s in the same style as the Germans bombing Pearl Harbor?

  129. 129.

    VOR

    October 7, 2015 at 12:41 pm

    “However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results.” – Winston Churchill.

  130. 130.

    ? Martin

    October 7, 2015 at 12:43 pm

    @SFAW:

    It’s not clear that Boehner is still considered representative of the GOP. Yes, I realize that he’s Establishment GOP, and yes, I realize that the TeaBagger caucus is only about 30-40 members. But if you look at the policies pushed by the Rethug Partei as a group, it’s hard to distinguish them from the TeaBaggers. So was it a coup? Or a purge?

    It’s a coup. The GOP knows full well that the policies they are pushing are losers. That’s why they do so many symbolic things and so few substantial ones. And remember, the Senate did approve comprehensive immigration reform – with support from the GOP members. The problem is that GOP gerrymandering in the states and the fact that house races rarely rise to national scrutiny has given the House a disproportionate Tea Party representation that is clearly driving establishment GOP members hard to the right. The Senate is more insulated from this and looks more moderate as a result. But the party knows damn well that this nativism will cost them national elections. They know that the gun and abortion issues will keep northeast, upper midwest, and west coast in Democrats hands in national races. They know these things, but what can they do about it? They’ve lost control of the Confederacy. They try and regain control after every election only to get outflanked because low-turnout elections like primaries favor bomb-throwers, and the low-turnout elections always precede the high-turnout ones.

    The best bet for the GOP to get their shit together would be to push for instant runoff voting and kill off the primary system altogether.

    But in the largest state in the country, the GOP and the green party carry equal power, and I’d bet that over time California with what is effectively a liberal sandbox to play in will prove to be more influential on national policies and politics than Alabama will. The GOP cannot be unaware of this.

  131. 131.

    Mnemosyne (iPhone)

    October 7, 2015 at 12:45 pm

    @Matt McIrvin:

    Granted, there’s not a direct link to the President there, but the US military now seems to be justifying the strike rather than calling it an accident.

    So you lied when you said that Obama personally approved an airstrike on a hospital, or do you have ACTUAL proof of your claim. Because it’s a very, very strong accusation that Obama personally committed a war crime.

    Present your proofs that Obama personally approved the airstrike on the MSF hospital in full knowledge that it was a hospital, or STFU.

  132. 132.

    catclub

    October 7, 2015 at 12:45 pm

    @Matt McIrvin:

    there’s not a direct link to the President there, but the US military now seems to be justifying the strike rather than calling it an accident.

    Just think if you had written this first, and included the link, rather than:

    The reports on the bombing of the MSF hospital are starting to look really bad, like Obama intentionally approved bombing the hospital knowing what it was.

    people might take you seriously.

  133. 133.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    October 7, 2015 at 12:46 pm

    @Matt McIrvin: Greenwald

    Good god.

    but he’s quoting MSF:

    if you’ve already slogged through that mess, why don’t you find the precise MSF quote that alleges Obama intentionally approved bombing the hospital knowing what it was., and share

  134. 134.

    Mandalay

    October 7, 2015 at 12:46 pm

    @Matt McIrvin:

    Granted, there’s not a direct link to the President there

    Right. You just fabricated the allegation against Obama. What a small person you are.

  135. 135.

    ? Martin

    October 7, 2015 at 12:48 pm

    @EconWatcher: Rometty is an engineer. Fiornia has a degree in Medieval History and earned an MBA. I think that lays out pretty clearly where their priorities are.

  136. 136.

    catclub

    October 7, 2015 at 12:48 pm

    @? Martin:

    The senate is more insulated from this and looks more moderate as a result.

    Ted Cruz, Tom Cotton, and Joni Ernst would like a word.

  137. 137.

    Matt McIrvin

    October 7, 2015 at 12:48 pm

    @EconWatcher: When I was an undergraduate I was way more reasonable.

    I don’t know. Sorry, people. Mostly I’m feeling depressed about living in the global hegemon country and having to tacitly support all the often-horrible crap it does. Also, overcompensating for stupid stuff I said 13 years ago.

  138. 138.

    Frankensteinbeck

    October 7, 2015 at 12:51 pm

    @Matt McIrvin:
    Greenwald is a serial liar, and the military reports he’s quoting are actually pretty consistent. ‘A mistake’ to ‘Enemy action was reported in that area’ and ‘Afghan troops asked us to bomb it in support’ are all the same thing. Bombing mistakes aren’t ‘We meant to drop our bombs miles away! How did they get here?’ they’re ‘We bombed something because the person bombing it thought it was a military target, and it turns out it wasn’t.’ Nine tenths of that article is Greenwald’s bullshit spin.

    However, MSF’s claims that they warned the military ahead of time about their civilian facility, and asked the military to stop during the bombing, are relevant. That at least makes me interested in corroboration, but Greenwald’s wild dishonesty makes me cautious. He has a tendency to leave out crucially important facts that disprove his points.

    @? Martin:

    Well, ask Boehner. Just the latest victim of the coup.

    Deciding he was sick of this shit and resigning is pretty different from a coup. The Tea Party has wanted him out for years, and never had the power to force the issue. Including now. Similarly, the Tea Party never had the power to force government shutdowns. That was all Boehner, exploiting his power to keep anything that would pass with Democratic support from coming to a vote. It’s ironic that he was the best friend the Tea Party ever had.

  139. 139.

    Amir Khalid

    October 7, 2015 at 12:51 pm

    @Matt McIrvin:
    I just read GG’s story. I concur with the commenters upthread who note that nothing in it suggests that Obama himself approved the strike on the hospital.

  140. 140.

    David Koch

    October 7, 2015 at 12:51 pm

    @Matt McIrvin:

    Is this the same Griftwald who said the 2012 polls were skewed and Romney would win?

    Or this the same Griftwald who pushes the Trey Gowdy conspiracy theories on Ben Gazzara?

    Or is this the same Griftwald who pushes Trump’s racist talking points on immigration?

    Or is this the same Griftwald who had to leave the country because he hadn’t paid taxes in 13 years on his hair fetish pornography business?

  141. 141.

    Turgidson

    October 7, 2015 at 12:52 pm

    McMegan owes her entire career to the notion that it is possible to continually, lucratively fail upward. She even wrote a fucking book about it. So of course she can be counted on to rally to Carly’s defense.

  142. 142.

    Frankensteinbeck

    October 7, 2015 at 12:53 pm

    @David Koch:
    I haven’t heard anything about the tax evasion until now. What’s up with that?

  143. 143.

    Mnemosyne (iPhone)

    October 7, 2015 at 12:53 pm

    @Matt McIrvin:

    You can argue that Obama is ultimately responsible without inflating the claim to him being personally responsible. Those are two *very* different arguments.

  144. 144.

    ? Martin

    October 7, 2015 at 12:53 pm

    @Matt McIrvin: I don’t see any justification there. The Afghan military are justifying it, not the US military.

    The read I get off of that is that the Afghan military probably lied to the US military, the US didn’t do due-diligence in verifying the Afghan military claims, and now we’re going to have to pay for that failure. We can try and cast some blame on the Afghans (which we won’t do publicly) but bottom line is that it was our plane, our decision, and we fucked up, and that’s what was testified to yesterday.

  145. 145.

    catclub

    October 7, 2015 at 12:54 pm

    @David Koch:

    Or is this the same Griftwald who had to leave the country because he hadn’t paid taxes in 13 years on his hair fetish pornography business?

    The only one where I ( um, a friend) was interested in any links. And no linky.

  146. 146.

    Denali

    October 7, 2015 at 12:54 pm

    I can deal with it being Campbell’s decision – and Obama sacking him. I really can’t handle Obama approving bombing a hospital. Pease no.

  147. 147.

    MattF

    October 7, 2015 at 12:54 pm

    @Roger Moore: Thank you. Just look at the people that W selected– starting with Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Rove. And going on and on and on from there.

  148. 148.

    ? Martin

    October 7, 2015 at 12:56 pm

    @catclub: I’m not saying there aren’t extremists in the Senate, just that overall it’s more moderate than the House. I would also agree that the Tea Party is winning this battle and the Senate GOP is getting more extremist with each election, but it’s a harder strategy to succeed at the state level than the local level.

  149. 149.

    Matt McIrvin

    October 7, 2015 at 12:57 pm

    @? Martin: That’s fair.

    I want to apologize to everyone: I read some shocking summaries of the Greenwald article and shot from the hip.

  150. 150.

    phoebes-in-santa fe

    October 7, 2015 at 12:57 pm

    @trollhattan: Link to the Wapo article http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/carly-fiorinas-first-political-campaign-had-a-surprising-problem-money/2015/10/04/c4bdcdd2-50be-11e5-933e-7d06c647a395_story.html

  151. 151.

    SFAW

    October 7, 2015 at 12:58 pm

    @? Martin:

    We could probably have a good discussion/debate over this, especially over a beer or two (assuming you drink beer). I think I understand most of your points, not sure I agree with all of them, although there are some which I (obviously, I hope) do.

    But, at some point, it becomes a case of “They are what they do, not what they say they are.” If they’re pushing policies which some of them believe are losers, those are still the policies they’re pushing.

    Be that as it may: I think if Boehner cared as much for the institution as countless pundits have said he does, he would have thrown out the “Hastert rule,” and worked with Nancy Pelosi, rather than treating the Dems like shit. Probably would have saved his job as Speaker, too. That he did not throw out Hastert tells me/us just how weak he was, and how in thrall to the Baggers he was.

  152. 152.

    Mnemosyne (iPhone)

    October 7, 2015 at 12:58 pm

    @Frankensteinbeck:

    There was a very obvious fuckup, and there are enough people in the area with a vested interest in making the US look bad that I wouldn’t rule out a deliberate omission or outright lie that led to the MSF hospital being targeted, but it’s a huge leap from that to Obama personally ordering an airstrike on a hospital knowing full well it was a hospital.

    Someone or multiple someones need to be relieved of their command over this, and IMO it makes continuing the drawdown even more imperative.

  153. 153.

    David Koch

    October 7, 2015 at 1:01 pm

    @Frankensteinbeck:

    The New York County Clerk’s office shows Greenwald has $126,000 in open judgments and liens against him dating to 2000, including a $21,000 from the state Tax Department and the city Department of Finance.

    There’s no record of those debts being paid, but Greenwald said he believes he’s all caught up — although he’s still trying to pay down an old IRS judgment against him from his lawyer days.

    Records show the IRS has an $85,000 lien against him.

  154. 154.

    Mnemosyne (iPhone)

    October 7, 2015 at 1:02 pm

    @Matt McIrvin:

    That’s the trouble with Greenwald — he writes things that can easily be interpreted in the worst possible way, and when someone catches him, he claims it’s not his fault that he was interpreted that way. Which is why I don’t trust him or his slanted reporting.

  155. 155.

    catclub

    October 7, 2015 at 1:02 pm

    @Mnemosyne (iPhone):

    it makes continuing the drawdown even more imperative.

    But every disaster is reason to keep more troops, even longer – it makes perfect sense!

  156. 156.

    joel hanes

    October 7, 2015 at 1:04 pm

    @SFAW:

    veeblefetzer

    What, me worry?

  157. 157.

    Frankensteinbeck

    October 7, 2015 at 1:04 pm

    @Mnemosyne (iPhone):
    I agree that there was a fuckup. I also agree that it’s ludicrous to suggest Obama knew anything about it until well after it happened. The man doesn’t order all the bombings in a military action zone. I am interested in whether whoever ordered the bombing had credible information from the hospital that it was not a valid target. It’s a question of who is to blame and what kind of mistake was made. Did the person giving the order know it was a hospital with no military value, in which case he needs to be in military jail for a long, long time, or was he just lied to by the Afghans, in which case it’s a question of whether it’s reasonable to fire him for trusting them? Or something in-between we haven’t thought of?

  158. 158.

    Mandalay

    October 7, 2015 at 1:04 pm

    @Matt McIrvin:

    I want to apologize to everyone

    Kudos. You have more than made up for your original comment by doing that. I don’t think I have ever seen anyone do that here.

  159. 159.

    David Koch

    October 7, 2015 at 1:04 pm

    @catclub: linky

  160. 160.

    trollhattan

    October 7, 2015 at 1:06 pm

    @phoebes-in-santa fe:
    Yay, thanks! It’s nice to see WaPo engaging in…what do they call it…journalism! She’s exactly who we think she is and is clearly able to find like-minded folks to man her campaigns.

  161. 161.

    Frankensteinbeck

    October 7, 2015 at 1:06 pm

    @Mandalay:
    I agree. It takes a big man/woman/child/other to admit jumping to conclusions. But slanting articles so people jump to conclusions is a major part of Greenwald’s schtick and why we hate him.

  162. 162.

    SFAW

    October 7, 2015 at 1:06 pm

    @joel hanes:
    Exactly.

  163. 163.

    trollhattan

    October 7, 2015 at 1:10 pm

    @catclub:
    And why the hell is McCain running publicity laps right now yelling at us to keep troops in Afghanistan forever (no, really) and how Obama coulda shoulda kept us in Iraq to capitalize on the “success” of the surge and also, too, never mind al-Malaki and Bush had already inked an agreement to pull us out. (NOBODY brings that document up when he delivers his Iraq talking points.)

    Is he hoping to be drafted?

  164. 164.

    benw

    October 7, 2015 at 1:10 pm

    @? Martin:

    we’re going to have to pay for that failure

    Plus all the dead, who’ve already paid in full.

  165. 165.

    Mnemosyne (iPhone)

    October 7, 2015 at 1:11 pm

    Anyway, it sounds like most of us are horrified by the MSF bombing. I can send them $100 when I get paid tomorrow (plus I can have the Giant Evil Corporation I work for match that donation). Who else?

  166. 166.

    Daulnay

    October 7, 2015 at 1:12 pm

    Why are we discussing/linking to GG, the McMegan of the left? (OK, that’s a very teeny bit unfair to Glenn.)

    Fodder for a different topic (and more pertinent to the OP, since McMegan of course supports the TPP):
    The TPP’s One-Way Ratchet.

    We have to help Congress make a good decision about this, because the outcome of Congress passing it looks pretty bad.

  167. 167.

    Brachiator

    October 7, 2015 at 1:12 pm

    @Frankensteinbeck:

    I am interested in whether whoever ordered the bombing had credible information from the hospital that it was not a valid target.

    I recall listening to a BBC news story in which a MSF rep claimed that they had provided information.

    I found this Sky News link of another story:

    MSF says it gave the co-ordinates of the hospital to US and Afghan forces several times to avoid being caught in a crossfire – including earlier this week.

    “Precise location of our Kunduz hospital communicated to all parties on multiple occasions over past months,” the group said on Twitter.

    http://news.sky.com/story/1563203/nato-deeply-saddened-after-us-bombs-hospital

    In this story, a military spokesman claims that the bombing was nearby, and that the hospital was unfortunate collateral damage.

    But the bombing seemed to be much more direct:

    Medicins Sans Frontieres (MSF) frantically phoned NATO and Washington as bombs rained down on its staff working at the trauma centre in Kunduz.

    One medic described how patients unable to escape “burned to death as they lay in their beds”

    Officials need to get to the bottom of this tragedy as fast as they can.

  168. 168.

    joel hanes

    October 7, 2015 at 1:13 pm

    @catclub:

    to give the top job to women or minorities when everything is hopeless

    While not disputing your general point, I do protest that neither hp nor Lucent were anywhere close to the “everything is hopeless” stage at the times when Ms. Fiorina gained control.

  169. 169.

    Mnemosyne (iPhone)

    October 7, 2015 at 1:17 pm

    @Frankensteinbeck:

    Thirded.

    A lot of governments hate MSF for making them look bad and reporting on the actual conditions inside their countries, so I wouldn’t be surprised if it was deliberate on someone’s part. I just doubt it was deliberate on Obama’s part.

  170. 170.

    Paul in KY

    October 7, 2015 at 1:17 pm

    @Matt McIrvin: Accept your apology. I have said some stupid shit too.

  171. 171.

    catclub

    October 7, 2015 at 1:20 pm

    @Matt McIrvin: I also accept. Thanks for the correction.

    ETA: But unlike Paul in KY, I have never said somehting I regretted. ;)

  172. 172.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    October 7, 2015 at 1:20 pm

    @Mnemosyne (iPhone): so I wouldn’t be surprised if it was deliberate on someone’s part.

    That’s what I wondered about, someone in the Afghan gov’t looking to settle a score with someone in the hospital.

  173. 173.

    Brachiator

    October 7, 2015 at 1:21 pm

    @Mnemosyne (iPhone):

    Anyway, it sounds like most of us are horrified by the MSF bombing. I can send them $100 when I get paid tomorrow (plus I can have the Giant Evil Corporation I work for match that donation).

    You work for the company depicted on Mr Robot?

    More seriously, I have to check to see if my company would match any contribution to MSF.

  174. 174.

    catclub

    October 7, 2015 at 1:27 pm

    Oh, back to Carly Fiorina:

    If Carly Fiorina really wants to draw on the Middle Ages for inspiration, I do have some suggestions. Lesson one: support universities, scholars, writers and artists, as their contributions outlive us all. Lesson two: peasants, oppressed for too long, always rebel. Lesson three: don’t go to war in the Middle East without a good exit plan.

    medieval history at LGM

  175. 175.

    David Koch

    October 7, 2015 at 1:28 pm

    even in the best of circumstances friendly fire happens. us & nato troops have been shelled and strafed and bombed and shot down by their own forces.

    this never received much attention but in 2012 the us actually bombed it’s very own troop base in afghanistan.

  176. 176.

    BGinCHI

    October 7, 2015 at 1:28 pm

    @Davebo: What are you, new?

  177. 177.

    Mnemosyne (iPhone)

    October 7, 2015 at 1:29 pm

    @Brachiator:

    The GEC I work for is worse than the one on “Mr. Robot” — we seek to control children’s minds from birth. Doesn’t get much more evil than that. But they definitely match donations to MSF/DWB.

    I’ll re-post my proposal in the next open thread and we can all decide if we want to do an “in honor” designation of some kind. It looks like you can only honor an actual person who has a first and last name. Or, I guess, “Balloon” would be the first name and “Juice” would be the last name.

  178. 178.

    Grumpy Code Monkey

    October 7, 2015 at 1:29 pm

    Carly was indirectly responsible for my first layoff – the company I and RoonieRoo were working for wrote software for the HP3000, which was finally EOL’d under Carly’s tenure. We lost a third of our support contracts within a week; RoonieRoo was laid off in the first wave, I was laid off 90 days later*.

    But, to be entirely fair, HP had been trying to kill the platform for at least a decade before that, so it wasn’t Carly’s idea. She just happened to be driving the boat when it ran us over.

    The Compaq acquisition was entirely her fault, however. That decision was met with an almost universal “WTF?” – nobody could figure out the upside for HP. And it turned out largely to be the disaster that most everybody but Carly predicted.

    Yes, smart people sometimes take risks, but this wasn’t a smart risk.

    Some blame has to go to the HP board, though; they hired her (and Hurd, and Apotheker, who were even bigger disasters).

    —————-

    * I had a real talent for picking companies that were being driven into the ground like tent pegs when I was younger. My first job out of college was at Tracor, right after Bobby Inman had been ousted by the Westmark board for botching the LBO so badly. The next CEO, Jim Skaggs, managed to turn that situation around in something like two or three years, but not after Westmark had liquidated the most profitable divisions for some quick cash.

  179. 179.

    catclub

    October 7, 2015 at 1:30 pm

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    someone in the Afghan gov’t looking to settle a score with someone in the hospital.

    This was part of why the US did not want Iraqi militias able to call in US air strikes, when we do not know all the details of the fight.

    There will certainly be a grudge against MSF now, if there wasn’t before.

  180. 180.

    Mnemosyne (iPhone)

    October 7, 2015 at 1:32 pm

    @Grumpy Code Monkey:

    I have a friend who was in tech in Silicon Valley in the early 90s. Now she’s a nurse (RN). She finds it a lot less stressful.

  181. 181.

    Paul in KY

    October 7, 2015 at 1:33 pm

    @catclub: Let’s peruse your comment history, shall we ;-)

  182. 182.

    Paul in KY

    October 7, 2015 at 1:34 pm

    @David Koch: I guess they had their own Lt. Minderbinder! Hope they made some money off it.

  183. 183.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    October 7, 2015 at 1:35 pm

    @catclub: This was part of why the US did not want Iraqi militias able to call in US air strikes, when we do not know all the details of the fight.

    And why I think we should be wary of calls to arm and fight alongside “moderates” in Syria. Or Libya.

  184. 184.

    catclub

    October 7, 2015 at 1:35 pm

    @Paul in KY: Quoting me verbatim is hate speech.

  185. 185.

    Joel

    October 7, 2015 at 1:36 pm

    I love how McMegan can take even the simplest statement and make it wordy and obtuse.

    Apropos (4 minutes into the clip)

  186. 186.

    Turgidson

    October 7, 2015 at 1:39 pm

    @Matt McIrvin:

    He of course would vigorously deny it, but Greenwald long ago dropped any pretense that his work is the product of dispassionate investigation and now begins from the premise that Obama is an inhuman monster who takes great personal pleasure in the idea that innocent civilians are killed in US military operations and spends his leisure time reading American citizens’ private emails, which are provided to him by the NSA at his request. It’s too bad, because those are important topics in need of as much transparency as possible, but he’s no longer a useful commentator on them.

    But at least he eventually figured out that his former hero Rand Paul is a preening fraud who actually know a damn thing or give a shit about any of Greenwald’s pet issues. That’s something.

  187. 187.

    Chris

    October 7, 2015 at 1:44 pm

    @Frankensteinbeck:

    However, MSF’s claims that they warned the military ahead of time about their civilian facility, and asked the military to stop during the bombing, are relevant. That at least makes me interested in corroboration, but Greenwald’s wild dishonesty makes me cautious.

    My Occam’s Razor explanation/guess would be that MSF did indeed warn the military ahead of time, and that the warning somehow got misrouted, misinterpreted, not forwarded, or God knows however else, lost in transit through the bureaucracy. (I’d like to think that the bureaucracy of our armed forces doesn’t misroute things as regularly as that of my university or my health insurance provider… but… from what some veterans have told me, that hope might be misplaced).

    We’ll see what ultimately happens. I can only hope enough people in high places don’t adopt the McCain attitude of shrugging and going “but, duuude, war isn’t about precision! Hurr durr!”

  188. 188.

    Roger Moore

    October 7, 2015 at 1:49 pm

    @Matt McIrvin:

    I want to apologize to everyone: I read some shocking summaries of the Greenwald article and shot from the hip.

    It happens. At least you didn’t blow up a hospital based on your bad information.

  189. 189.

    Gin & Tonic

    October 7, 2015 at 1:49 pm

    @Mnemosyne (iPhone): I’ve been doing a monthly automatic donation for quite some time. I increased the amount during the ebola scare last fall.

  190. 190.

    Paul in KY

    October 7, 2015 at 1:51 pm

    @catclub: You lawyers!!

  191. 191.

    Roger Moore

    October 7, 2015 at 1:59 pm

    @Mnemosyne (iPhone):

    I wouldn’t rule out a deliberate omission or outright lie that led to the MSF hospital being targeted

    Even if that’s true, there’s still plenty of guilt on our side. Even if there was no malice on our side and malice by whoever gave the targeting instructions, we still have a positive responsibility not to hit hospitals. Our pilots and ground observers are supposed to know where prohibited targets are and to refuse to shoot them, even when asked to. Not knowing that the site is a hospital is criminal negligence, even if it wasn’t malicious.

  192. 192.

    Another Holocene Human

    October 7, 2015 at 2:00 pm

    @trollhattan: If that’s true, that goes five hundred times for the candidate, the most important person in the campaign, right? But Carly paid herself back first.

  193. 193.

    Another Holocene Human

    October 7, 2015 at 2:02 pm

    @? Martin:

    That the GOP is more afraid of the Democrats than those plotting a coup tells you a lot about establishment Republicans.

    Which GOP? The pols ARE more afraid of the Tea Party than the Dems and it shows in their voting records and what they’re too terrified to say in public. You must be talking about that tranche of GOP voters who call themselves moderate or liberal. For some reason they are in denial about empowering the crazy. (The rest of the voters are the crazy.)

  194. 194.

    Villago Delenda Est

    October 7, 2015 at 2:03 pm

    @Chris: Not to worry. The military’s bureaucracy is every bit as fucked up as everyone else’s bureaucracy. Sometimes even more so.

  195. 195.

    Another Holocene Human

    October 7, 2015 at 2:08 pm

    @amk: Many women ceo’s big corps?

    Uh, yeah, percentage wise? Horribly low. And they get axed the minute there’s a hint of trouble. Look at what happened to CEO of Reddit. Actually was supporting the extortion brigade when they decided she was agin’ ’em and had to go in the wake of yet another stupid scandal. (Not supporting her, just pointing out the irony here.)

    Same thing with Black CEOs. And I wonder if a WASP would have been prosecuted as Mozilo was. Oh, wait, no need to wonder, Chris Dodd TOOK a bribe from Mozilo, well documented, and was NOT kicked out the Senate and did NOT go to prison!

  196. 196.

    Another Holocene Human

    October 7, 2015 at 2:09 pm

    @Patrick: Why anyone would listen to a damn thing he has to say after what he did to GE….

    I was reading some business book or essay and they held him up as a classic example of Narcissistic Personality Disorder, then spun that as a good thing.

  197. 197.

    Paul in KY

    October 7, 2015 at 2:12 pm

    @Roger Moore: There should have been some pretty visible crosses on buildings/tents.

  198. 198.

    Another Holocene Human

    October 7, 2015 at 2:12 pm

    @singfoom:

    And to go along with the choir, McMegan is an idiot. Unfortunately, she seems to be a contributor to KCRW’s Left Right and Center often, which makes me haz a sad.

    “Also joining us, MeMeMe McArdle, from the selfish party. MeMeMe, welcome.”

    “Thank you for having Me.”

  199. 199.

    Peale

    October 7, 2015 at 2:15 pm

    @Another Holocene Human: O.K. I can understand swiping an Fiorina and her ill-advised and costly take-over of compaq, but I haven’t heard that Jack Welsh ruined GE.

  200. 200.

    Another Holocene Human

    October 7, 2015 at 2:15 pm

    @gene108:

    If the elite win, we will have history telling us about the hurdles the new rulers had to overcome, in order to put things in order, like dismantling Social Security, abolishing the estate tax,etc. and how it could not have been accomplished without the Tea Baggers leading the vanguard of the revolution.

    You are wrong. The elite will bury any reference to there ever having been any such thing as Social Security. They already started on the textbook coverage of the New Deal in the 1990s.

  201. 201.

    Brachiator

    October 7, 2015 at 2:15 pm

    @Chris:

    My Occam’s Razor explanation/guess would be that MSF did indeed warn the military ahead of time, and that the warning somehow got misrouted, misinterpreted, not forwarded, or God knows however else, lost in transit through the bureaucracy.

    Actually, Occam’s Razor would suggest that any and all speculation in the absence of actual evidence is not meaningful.

    We do not know what happened. There needs to be a full investigation. That’s really all that can be said at this point.

  202. 202.

    Another Holocene Human

    October 7, 2015 at 2:21 pm

    @Matt McIrvin: That the Pentagon has rapidly shifted from one excuse to another (hello, they always have an excuse), which is indeed pretty damning, does not support a logical leap to “Obama personally called the airstrike in.”

    And Greenwald is a liar. Who hates Obama with the fury of a thousand suns. Maybe he thinks it enhances him to have such a man for an enemy. You know, if only Obama took notice of him. Probably stopped reading him when he left Salon. I could believe Obama used to read Salon. (It kinda sucks now?)

  203. 203.

    Brachiator

    October 7, 2015 at 2:23 pm

    @Peale:

    but I haven’t heard that Jack Welsh ruined GE.

    Well there’s this:

    The Man Who Destroyed GE

    http://www.businessinsider.com/the-man-who-destroyed-ge-2009-3

    And this

    Jack Welch’s Whitewashed Legacy Haunts Immelt

    http://www.thestreet.com/story/11239842/1/they-just-dont-get-ge.html

  204. 204.

    Gravenstone

    October 7, 2015 at 2:24 pm

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: How exactly can someone “make all the right decisions” if choosing the people to implement said decisions (upon whom your exemplar rich old fuck wished to cast blame) was also among those “right” decisions made?

  205. 205.

    Cervantes

    October 7, 2015 at 2:28 pm

    @Roger Moore:

    @Cervantes: Actual human beings who have borne the brunt of our foreign policy may disagree.

    I think they’ll agree that we’re the leader; they’ll just disagree on the direction of our leadership.

    The phrase in question was “leader of the free world.” How does your comment relate to that? Who is the “free world” that we’re leading? And in what “direction”?

  206. 206.

    Crouchback

    October 7, 2015 at 2:30 pm

    @Another Holocene Human: But what about London’s famous brutal drive by snarkings?

  207. 207.

    Gravenstone

    October 7, 2015 at 2:31 pm

    @Cervantes: And you’re ignoring Martin’s clear assertion that the GOVERNMENTS of those states are the ones who cede us our role as leader (warranted or not). The individual members of the populace (home and abroad) don’t exactly factor into that calculus.

  208. 208.

    Another Holocene Human

    October 7, 2015 at 2:33 pm

    @Peale: He just emptied it out from the inside.

    Oh sure, it’s still a going concern…

  209. 209.

    Cervantes

    October 7, 2015 at 2:33 pm

    @Matt McIrvin:

    I read some shocking summaries of the Greenwald article

    Never read “summaries” of anything Greenwald writes!

    Cheers.

  210. 210.

    Cervantes

    October 7, 2015 at 2:34 pm

    @Gravenstone:

    And you’re ignoring Martin’s clear assertion that the GOVERNMENTS of those states are the ones who cede us our role as leader (warranted or not).

    Not ignoring it.

    The individual members of the populace (home and abroad) don’t exactly factor into that calculus.

    My point exactly.

  211. 211.

    Roger Moore

    October 7, 2015 at 2:35 pm

    @Crouchback:

    But what about London’s famous brutal drive by snarkings?

    He used sarcasm.

  212. 212.

    Crouchback

    October 7, 2015 at 2:44 pm

    I get the sense McArdle memorized a lot of proverbs and cliches in business school but didn’t really understand them. So she trots out a concept like “good process, bad outcome” but doesn’t really get the meaning. Among other things, if the process is good it should usually lead to a good outcome. A bad outcome usually means a bad process.

    If you’ll pardon a sport analogy – Bill Belichick a few years ago made a risky play late in the game, going for it on fourth down. Had the team succeeded, it would have sealed the game. They failed and made it easier for their opponents to eventually win. Belichick got a pass from a lot of sports writers for his call because:

    1. There was enough data about similar plays to strongly suggest Belichick made a good gamble, even if he lost.

    2. Before and after, Belichick has a long record of success including some unorthodox gambles and so deserves the benefit of the doubt.

    Neither applies to Fiorina. It’s pretty hard to find any evidence that the merger with Compaq looked like a good idea at the time or that in general Fiorina took wise gambles that didn’t pay off. In addition, there is no record of success overshadowing the HP failure. She has not earned the benefit of the doubt. The best you can say is she might be a competent CEO that got very unlucky. No other company has been willing to take that gamble – why should we want to take that risk with literally the most important job on the planet?

  213. 213.

    Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)

    October 7, 2015 at 2:56 pm

    @Roger Moore:

    More than sarcasm. He knew all the tricks. Dramatic irony, metaphor, pathos, puns, parody, litotes and… satire.

  214. 214.

    Cervantes

    October 7, 2015 at 3:01 pm

    @? Martin:

    I said quite clearly that we aren’t always better, but we are always the leader. Leader doesn’t say anything about outcomes, it speaks only to who has the largest say.

    “Leader of the free world” was the phrase in question. Does it have a moral connotation? Can it be read without a moral connotation? To what end is “the free world” being led, by us?

    Is the US a powerful state? Sure. Do the governments of China, Russia, and Iran (your examples) acknowledge our power implicitly or explicitly? Sure.

    But having the largest say, by itself, doesn’t mean much, morally. For example, it is perfectly consistent with being the capo di tutti capi.

  215. 215.

    Grumpy Code Monkey

    October 7, 2015 at 3:08 pm

    @Mnemosyne (iPhone): I’ve worked my entire career in Austin. I’ve seen the Valley, and I want absolutely no part of it. Fucked up culture.

  216. 216.

    Brachiator

    October 7, 2015 at 3:16 pm

    The latest from the Guardian UK

    Doctors Without Borders: we received no advance warning of US airstrike

    Such action would be a violation of the US Defense Department’s own manual governing the rules of war, as President Obama calls MSF president to apologize…

    The US military never gave Doctors Without Borders prior notification of a deadly airstrike on its field hospital in Kunduz, the aid group said on Wednesday, in an apparent violation of the Pentagon’s explicit 2015 instructions on the rules of war.

    “We had not received any warning of the strike,” said Jason Cone, US executive director of the charity – also known as Médecins sans Frontières – five days after the Saturday morning US strike that killed 22 staff and patients and injured 37 more….

    A 2015 Pentagon manual on adherence to the rules of war explicitly requires such notification.

    “[P]rotection for civilian hospitals may cease only after due warning has been given, naming, in all appropriate cases, a reasonable time limit, and after such warning has remained unheeded,” reads a section of the June 2015 Department of Defense law of war manual.

    http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/oct/07/doctors-without-borders-bombing-no-advance-warning-aid-charity-says

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