Just by watching this short video of a segment from CNN last Thursday, you can see which of the two women vying to represent California in the United States Senate could be a more effective advocate for the Golden State in Washington. One woman is confident and poised. The other is babbling, almost incoherent, making things up.
I mean, the 28-year-Washington veteran needs Wolf Blitzer to send her a lifeline:
Where do you begin with this? Boxer has to go back to the Clinton era — when Republicans were a majority in Congress — to talk about balanced budgets she supported. If Blitzer hadn’t stepped in, the three term Senator may have gone on making up facts. And on. And on.
Noting how “confused” the career politician gets in this segment, the San Francisco Chroncle‘s Carolyn Lochhead finds “Blitzer straightening out her arithmetic.” 28 years in Washington and she needs a cable news anchor to straighten out her math. Maybe it’s spending over a quarter-century in the nation’s capital that has given her such trouble with numbers.
Boxer, as Allahpundit quips, has “zero idea what she’s talking about.” She rambles, is confused, doesn’t seem prepared for the interview, as if she just takes such things for granted. At a time of great crisis for California, how can such a woman advocate for the Golden State in Washington?
And this isn’t the first time she’s come unprepared to an interview with a journalist. If she’s so unprepared when the cameras are rolling, how much less focused would she be when no one’s paying attention?
Well, Carly is ready to roll up her sleeves and help tackle California’s problems. And you can help he out by supporting her energetic, ballsy campaign.
I really respect your enthusiasm for Fiorina. Hopefully CA voters will make the right choice come Election day.
That was hideous. The whopper porky pie was so huge even the safe, easy journalist couldn’t swallow it.
Boxer is one of those politicians I’m weary of having to see over and over again. Whether Fiorina is better for the Senate or not, 18 years is enough and it’s time for Ma’am to retire.
Dan, while I am not a supporter of Boxer’s and hope Fiorina wins, I have to say that Fiorina did an equally poor job on this weekend’s Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace.
http://www.foxnews.com/on-air/fox-news-sunday/index.html#/v/4376339/carly-fiorina-on-fns/?playlist_id=86913
In case you missed it, Wallace repeatedly asked Fiorina to identify a single area of the federal budget she’d be willing to cut… especially in the entitlements arena.
At first Fiorina railed against the Democrats’ use of a bipartisan commission to address the issue, then, incredibly, she found herself later arguing in favor of exactly that option –as well as doing a better job of building consensus through an ongoing dialogue with voters/taxpayers– to avoid answering Wallace’s fair question.
Blabbering? No. Incoherent? No. Bad math? No. Confused? No.
Evasive? Yes. Unprepared to answer a “set” or likely question of an experienced journalist? Yes. Appeared shifty and flustered? I thought so. Fiorina’s trademark $1m smile was vanquished by the end of the brief segment. I hope a very few independents saw it in CA-land.
Fiorina’s answer: let’s cut fraud, waste and inefficiencies. Wallace’s point: that cliche has been out there since Reagan. What are you going to do, Fiorina? Uhhh, ummm, uhhhh, ummmm.
Fiorina should have been able to argue in favor of cutting foreign subsidies, fly-specting the top heavy Pentagon staffers out of a job, eliminate farm subsidies to agri-biz not present in CA’s economy (tobacco, sugar beets, etc) or other answers… thankfully, she didn’t do the policy wonk’s easy-out of arguing that a “real cut” would be to stabilize the fed debt at 60% of GDP by 2018 -or something equally sexy. Oh yeah, real vote grabber there.
She needed to be able to cite at least three areas –other than waste fraud and abuse– that she would support cutting in the fed budget. Maybe the Commerce Dept subsidies? Maybe the entire Commerce Dept? That’d be a compelling argument for someone from the biz leadership community to make.
I didn’t think she did very well in the interview with Wallace. And that was cream puff city. I hope she’s stayed away from hostile, probing journalists.
I do not like Boxer, no I don’t. Ergo, Florina is the alternative. I am not able to vote in California, no I can’t. Therefore, unless Acorn comes up with something to change my status, I am just a random opinion. At best. But if this were a contest between Florina and a true conservative, I would darn straight be backing the conservative.
Or the pot. (joke)
The main thing I came to say is… Guess what? Obama lied, the economy died: http://hotair.com/archives/2010/10/16/brooks-hey-obama-told-me-shovel-ready-jobs-didnt-exist-last-year/
On a sidebar, I’m pleased to see MM’s rant slamming Fiorina, complete with “concern troll”-ish reassurances of his support for her. Its presence slightly boosts my confidence in Fiorina. She is right about cutting waste, fraud and inefficiencies from government because there is a *LOT* of it. This weekend, I read the story of Allied Capital, which under 3 administrations exploited a willing SBA to make hundreds of millions in bad-to-fraudulent “business loans” (some to felons), then made campaign contributions to both parties which may have protected it from investigation: http://foolingsomepeople.com/main/ – That would be one example on the Waste front. The Bush-Obama bailouts of GM and Wall Street would be a much larger example. On the Inefficiency front: all Congress has to do is reset domestic spending programs and non-defense federal employee compensation (which are now significantly higher than private-sector compensation on average) to what we had in 2000, and the deficit would be nearly gone. To 2006, and the deficit would be cut in half. Would anyone seriously want to argue that in 2006 or even 2000, the federal government wasn’t big enough? Or that its employees weren’t paid enough? Reagan made a great point in the speech Dan linked on 10/17: even back then, even before I was born, the government would claim it had a program to do X – give money to poor people, say – and 80% or more of the allotted spending would be lost in government overhead. But I would like to hear a candidate talk about those things. MM has a point, that Fiorina has failed to – like many Republican candidates. I would hope that, as a former CEO, Fiorina understands compensation issues and when in office, would cut to the heart of that issue. But I do not like it, that I only have my ‘hope’ to go on, there.
ILC, I thought you’d like that line!
Yes 🙂 Honestly, I don’t “know anything” here, but when I saw her foggy stumble and knowing she’s from Marin, I did think “pot smoker”.
Yeah, Dude, Ma’am’s been a-taking, but, dude, she’s against Prop 19!
Supporting it would be too cute, even for her. It would be hitting herself too close to home.
“On a sidebar, I’m pleased to see MM’s rant slamming Fiorina, complete with “concern troll”-ish reassurances of his support for her. Its presence slightly boosts my confidence in Fiorina.” No rant intended.
You have to quit grinding that same ol’ rusty ax ILC. I’d be glad to see Fiorina win, ILC; I wrote that genuinely. It’s only a “concern-trollish” comment to someone with a Paul Bunyan sized ax to grind… sigh.
Waste, fraud and abuse is hardly a solid answer to the 5 time question to put to Fiorina by Wallace… that to you it satisfies, isn’t a surprise. Cliched, short, shallow is always preferred by the insatiably simplistic and politically naive lot. Faux-independent or not.
Fiorina didn’t do very well in her interview with Wallace; that’s a judgment that even faux-independents can embrace… if they step away from the grinding stone and pull their head out of the sand.
Boxer didn’t do well in the interview cited either. It’s a fair, honest assessment. That your envy, hatred or spite won’t allow you to see that is, luckily, your problem alone. But then, ostrichs love to stick their heads in the sand… I would prefer, when in sand, to chip out onto the green. Spite and envy are not conservative values, ILC… just saying it’s time for you to grow up a bit.
No idea what you’re talking about, MM. As usual, you don’t know what I said and address yourself to some different person.
Heliotrope, just curious, I have to ask. You used “Florina” twice, is that a typo? or a reference to something, maybe vegetation? 😉
This is an example of what happens when one’s brain doesn’t know if the words that one is about to speak should come from one’s lips or one’s ass. In this case, her brain decided it was best for Madame Boxer to speak from her ass.
What is this nimrod smoking? Complaining that Bush only created 1 million jobs? Does this historically ignorant has-been and never-was realize that the unemployment rate under Bush was typically 5-6%? And that’s despite 9/11 and 2 wars. It didn’t start going up until the 4th quarter of 2008 due largely to the CMO defaults (thank you Dodd and Frank).
http://www.forecast-chart.com/chart-unemployment-rate.html
She’s a blithering idiot.
ILC, you may have found it. Florina in the Macedonian/Greek corruption means green or fresh, but it is often used in a disparaging manner as: too green or too fresh. I really don’t know much about Fiorina. I suppose I feel about her in much the same way some feel about any newbie who comes with outside credentials, but can not quite express where they are in the libertarian-conservative-mush-liberal-progressive spectrum.
By the way, there is another wonderful word from that region. I will try it phonetically, as I do not know its spelling: Skah too ly. The “too” takes the emphasis: skah TOO ly. It means little turdlets that together form a turd. When you pull a page from a spiral bound notebook, all the little bits of paper you have to pick off are skah TOO lies if you just pitch them on the floor. A bully is backed by his skah TOO lies who will vanish if the bully is not out front. The closest I have heard in our slang is a dingleberry. And so forth.
Wish I new how to spell it. I have only encountered it in the Greek alphabet and the complications of taking it through the permutations to get it into our alphabet has challenged many Greek friends who know the slang word, but not the conversion.
I know a GP commentor who might help.
(seriously – asking him offline, we’ll see)
Heliotrope, well my correspondent at least confirms what you said, and suggests a spelling:
Thanks, ILC. I have been spelling it “skatoolie” for more than 40 years. I will continue to do so. I love the word. It is a complete mystery to most and therefore a wonderful way to communicate. More than once in my travels I have told my wife that we are “lucky” to have so many skatoolies at hand. It is a clear signal to leave. People who unabashedly litter are skatoolies in the skatoolie distribution business. It goes on and on, to your own great pleasure. Enjoy the word.