When you’re trying to convince Iowa Republicans to come out in the cold and spend some time caucusing for you, it makes a certain amount of sense to say that you’re the most anti-abortion, anti-Planned Parenthood candidate in the race, particularly if you don’t think you have the luxury of worrying about how that will play in the general election. So, I get what Ted Cruz was doing last night. It makes me sick, but I get it.
However, Carly Fiorina is just a piece of work. I’ll admit, she fielded a pretty offbeat question:
Matt Johnson, an organizer with the group Direct Action Everywhere, was the last person Fiorina called on during her town hall at the Iowa Pork Congress, an annual event celebrating Iowa’s sprawling pork industry. Johnson read from a piece of paper to ask Fiorina how it could “ever be acceptable” to kill pigs “simply because they’re in a weak and vulnerable position.”
“These animals are individuals with unique personalities,” Johnson said. “They like to play, and oftentimes many of them are very affectionate. They have a vibrance about them and an emotional intelligence and a curiosity about them, very similar to cats and dogs, and similar to children. Knowing this, how could it ever be acceptable to unnecessarily exploit, harm, and kill someone simply because they’re in a weak and vulnerable position and they happen to be born differently than ourselves?”
Sounds like a playful way of using the language of the pro-life movement to support animal rights. Was he hoping to reach the audience’s moral compass or simply punking them?
In either case, Fiorina didn’t get the irony.
“I really wish there was that much passion in that young man for unborn children as there are for pigs,” she said. “We have to take back the character of this nation.”
To make the episode picture-perfect, as he was escorted out, Matt Johnson held up a poster of two cute little piglets.
If Fiorina had just declared that she’s pro-bacon she would have won the argument without looking like a humorless fool who doesn’t understand when she’s being mocked.
The only upside for her was that her response won’t earn her any more Pinocchios.
What especially makes you think the young man was making a play on words?
http://safehavenfarmsanctuary.org/
https:/casanctuary.org
http://www.farmsanctuary.org/
http://www.maplefarmsanctuary.org/
I’ve given thousands to these and others.
I don’t mean he was insincere. I mean that he made a presentation that self-consciously aped pro-life protests all the way down to the placard, and delivered it to the most ridiculous pro-life candidate a day after she was made to look triply ridiculous by the Houston grand jury and prosecutor.
ah.
My bad. I mis-read it.
Once again, my glasses make me stupid.
Well, I took it as a sincere anti-meat protest. There are people who have pigs as pets. (Not me)
stands out among the current GOP field is quite a feat. Somehow, against the odds, Carly keeps managing to pull it off.
Agreed. She is even more odious than the other candidates. Thankfully, Carly’s poor viability makes her less infuriating. Her lying is extreme in both quality and quantity.
to being caught red-handed lying about the fraudulent “Planned Parenthood baby-part-selling videos” (scare quotes obligatory) — i.e., just continued lying her ass off! was jaw-dropping.
That kid who murdered both parents, then threw himself on the mercy of the court as an orphan (classic definition of “chutzpah”) had nuthin’ on these GOPers, who top him and each other on a daily basis.
Pigs, to their great detriment, can be delicious.
Sad creature. She married well; just not well enough to measure the drapes for the Oval Office.
Her face transmits so much hatred and bitterness… weird for someone so privileged…
It’s difficult to rise to such (unearned, undeserved) professional heights (ten steps up a corporate ladder above one’s level of incompetence) and then suddenly have it all snatched away for no reason. Well, she would show them. She could start at near the top in US politics and voters would recognize how truly exceptional she is. Her face today exhibits the ten years she’s put into “showing them” with nothing but losses to show for her efforts.
heh — had she been more realistic about herself and opportunities she could crack open with money, she could have won a House and then a Senate seat by now.
Now you’ve gone and done it. Just keep her away from me.
but she lost big time (spending bags of her ill-gotten lucre) in her efforts to cop a Senate seat in CA. Despite GOPers praising her for her mad business skillz. Her campaign was almost as much of a joke as this present effort. Carly’s default is to look as mean, nasty and ugly as possible; lie as much as possible; and pay gobs of money for someone to create the absolute worst political ads ever made.
The woman is CLUELESS from having slept her way to the top and then being given very generous golden handshakes to go far, far, far away after totally trashing two very healthy corporations.
Nah, she’s toast and could never make it in politics, no matter how self-aware she becomes, which is highly unlikely. Carly’s an exceptional legend… in her mind and nowhere else.
Didn’t go off as well as anticipated – CNN – Inside Chelsea Clinton’s Soul Cycle fundraiser
Difficult not to have some empathy for a child in her position, but she is making it easier.
OMG pitiful, pitiful. and she married a hedge fund manager and produced grandchildren at the appropriate campaign times. sorry, that’s the way i see it
Hillary:
Unstated — “unlike my opponent who only has step-grandchildren and adopted grandchildren from China.” Levi Sanders children are simply too cute. They won’t have the same opportunities as children that grow up in $10 million NYC apartments, but that’s probably a good thing. Better chance that they’ll grow up to be interesting and independent.
they are adorable. Claremont NH is a great place,
I used to like that kid. Too bad she wasn’t put up for adoption by some childless working family. She might have grown up to be a decent person. Or maybe blood will tell, still debating Nature vs Nurture.
Agree that she did seem likable. Because she seemed like a regular kid with personality and character and a bit shy. IMHO she was more attractive before she started having “work” done and went the glammed up route and hanging with others of wealth and privilege living off the family money. Understandable that anyone that doesn’t have or can’t find a vocation or avocation of one’s own would retreat to the family business.
“the family business” Thinking of The Godfather.
Oh dear, didn’t intend that reference at all. Or anything sinister or nefarious. Legacy hires aren’t uncommon. They don’t get much public attention because those hired rarely stand out in any way on their own merits. Among the super wealthy, it’s practically accepted that the kids follow their parents footsteps. It’s a bit hit or miss as to whether or not the inclinations, talents, skills, etc. are a match for the fam biz/operation. For example, with the Kochs two were good fits, one not interested, and one completely different.
I know. It just popped into my mind,though.
Also reminds me that Bush senior worked after college in his family’s brokerage house in the bond department. In that era the bond department was where all the useless idiots were sent because it was impossible to screw up. Of, course now that the bond departments deal with derivatives, it is very easy to screw up, but back then it was just routine filling of orders, like selling Big Macs.
Legacy hires aren’t just common, it’s pretty much standard now.
Meritocracy was taken out back and murdered a few hundred years ago. It’s all nepotism, all the time. It may not always be blood, but it sure is about who you know, rather than what you know.
And the oligarchs won’t be satisfied until it’s an aristocracy. It’s all about being the founding member of a dynasty now adays. It makes me sick.
First they came for the piglets and I said nothing…
Carly Fiorina is a piece of something. I wouldn’t say work.
NYTimes – It’s Still Bill Clinton, but the Old Magic Seems Missing.
His remarks were always “plodding” and “rambling” to those that didn’t get “the magic.”
Would the opportunity to see former POTUS GWB speak on behalf of his little bro, generate an audience of over 300 in Iowa? Probably wouldn’t be any more competitive with Trump than Bill was with Sanders.
What is it about republican women who think that slaughter so attractive? I suspect cognitive dissonance.
Nothing innate about women being less violent than men. Smaller stature and less discretionary money with which to purchase weapons has probably kept us in check.
Mustn’t forget that FGM (female genital mutilation) is primarily administered by women.
Yeah; this has nothing to do with gender. Leave gender out of it.
(The only gender-relevant point about Fiorina is that several big donors have openly admitted that they’re funding her, not because they like her or want her to win, but because they understand the “need to have a woman” up there attacking Clinton, because of course her support has to be gender-based since we Democrats are such knee-jerk social justice warriors or whatever.)
It’s more PC or palatable to the public to have a woman attacking another woman. It’s also familiar because in everyday life women can be vicious towards other women. Probably not too different for men, but when a woman discovers another woman with her man, who is she inclined to attack first, the other woman or her man?
Clinton’s, as was Palin’s, support is heavily gender based. Don’t see any reason to deny that. It’s the demographic that she has broadly targeted the most. Where she’s falling short is with younger woman. If we go back fifty odd years ago, woman feminists were cutting edge and in tune with young women. But their appeal was more than being women. It included principles of equality and fairness even if they themselves were for the most part middle and upper class and white. But the economic divide between the worker class and professional class and educational divide between elite universities and public colleges weren’t far less back then. Bernie is closer to what mainstream ’60-70s feminists were then than what the majority of middle-aged and senior feminists became and are today.
I’m not saying that Clinton’s (or Fiorina’s) voter appeal has nothing to do with gender.
I’m saying that the characterization of Fiorina as “humorless” or “fierce” is best regarded on its own terms rather than being reduced to expressions of cultural “women in business”/”women in government” stereotypes.
“…without looking like a humorless fool who doesn’t understand when she’s being mocked.”
Good heavens! Someone actually dare to mock someone as high and mighty and clearly talented and clever and and RICH as Lie-orina? iCarly doesn’t do irony, nor does she stoop to acknowledge those mocking and deriding her for her many many many many and numerous (and did I say MANY) failings? Why she’s just so exceptional and powerful and fabulous that the little people simply don’t know how to recognize true glamorous glory when it’s presented to them on a gilded trough (or dog dish or within a sheep dip).
Pearls before swine, doncha know??
Of course, in this instance, one may question who exactly is the pearl, and who exactly is the swine.
Odious doesn’t begin to describe how debased this creature is, but I’ll stop now. You don’t need me ranting. UGH. Thankfully, she is so foul & disgusting that even the heavily propagandized mostly cannot stand her either even though may they clap and cheer for her numerous lies about… everything.
You didn’t happen to work at HP, did you?
Hard to do entirely, because Salami, but since many pork products are loaded with nitrates and others like bacon are totally loaded with bad forms of fat, not eating pork is a logical health choice.
But none of that applies to a nice pork loin. So my avoidance of that comes right down the the principle of not eating anything that was smarter than the dumbest kid in your high school. And pigs score pretty high on that scale (in a least one of the three H.S.s I attended).
I would never eat one of the larger whales. Because they could have been valedictorians. Or dolphins. On the other hand Minke Whales seem a little dim. Not enough that I could see eating a whale steak but enough that I understand where the Japanese are coming from
Anyway you don’t have to go full Vegan or Vegetarian to grasp the concept “Don’t eat anything too smart”. Except even I am not consistent there. I love calamari and I wouldn’t dream of eating an Golden Retriever but I would be seriously afraid of a one on one intelligence test between your average octopus and a Golden. Color my sentimental on that one.
Fiorina’s part of a special group I reserve a particularly deep loathing for.
People like Cruz or Rubio are ideologues but also canny politicians; they have brains and they understand how the game is played (and, like many, they invoke Goldwater-style rationalizations to excuse their dishonesty in the pursuit of what they believe to be a greater or more pragmatic good). People like John McCain or George W. Bush are less smart, and are working more as Tom Hagen-style operators, knowing their place and working to make certain things happen according to an agenda they’ve been handed (and essentially accept). (And of course there are garden-variety evil, vindictive, narcissistic fools like Palin or Trump who’ve been elevated to monstrous status by the craziness of the times.)
But people like William Krystol or Carly Fiorina are a special breed. They actively fuck things up, on a catastrophic scale, and then somehow look at what they’ve done and see not failure but success. Their understanding of their own actions and beliefs on a basic cause-and-effect level is so blinkered, solipsistic, self-serving and idiotic that they can destroy one thing after another and somehow still believe that they’re the ones fixing everything; that they must continue to play a controlling role.
I’ve known people like this (in business and in personal contexts); I truly believe they’re the worst of the worst.