SarasotaSabre

so when you say "we", are you implying it's me versus the groupthink of this board ? Is there some type of boys' club that I'm not aware of and obviously not party to ?

again, no. "Liking a program" infers supporting it, siding with, or having an affinity towards it; whether I think it is an effective use of taxpayer dollars is a purely pragmatic evaluation. I'm starting to get that "running into a brick wall headfirst" kind of feeling

She is not answering the questions, she is parsing her language in different nuances and speaking in very carefully orchestrated technicalities to basically avoid entrapment. And her "answers" have nothing to do with any preconceived notions (....assuming you may be guessing at what mine are). If you could take off your rose-colored glasses, which you ideologically cannot, you would see her as almost 60% of Americans do; as fundamentally dishonest & untrustworthy. If that is the best candidate your party can field, and you continue to defend her, I feel sorry for you. http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/jun/2/liar/ (N.B. this is from June). I'd like to hear your proof point of HRC's knowledge as you have submitted. And do not put words in my mouth or misrepresent my opinion of Fiorina; I was not in any way suggesting we are hiring a tech expert as President. I was making a counterpoint to the criticism she received as CEO of HP. You are a piece of work. I agree with everything you posit except the bolded. It is entirely a fallacious, sweeping generalization. There are plenty of examples of wasteful programs and processes, including no-bid contracts on both sides of the aisle, I could cite as wasteful; that does not automatically infer I don't like that particular program. In fact., it has nothing to do with whether I like a particular program or not. It has everything to do with whether I believe said program is an effective use of my (and ours) tax money.

NO

Because she did it at HP (admittedly, not an apples to comparison) and she has committed to do it. I would have it on authority this will happen coming from a businessperson as opposed to a career politician who are often vacuous and full of empty promises. If it turns out she is elected and does not follow through with her commitment, then I will have a big egg on my face. On your side note, that's a point well taken, however, again, it has been in the context of the political class who have failed to reduce the size of the pigs feeding at the trough; sometimes aided & abetted by lobbyists, donors, and others who push to keep pork and associated staffs in place to support said pork .... (reminds me of a great Elvis song, "Pork Salad Annie"). It is my stated hope that someone outside the political establishment wins the Presidency and drastically changes the size, culture, and scumminess of the Beltway. I know it's a tall order .... if something as pervasive and metastatic as waste, fraud, & abuse is so well-known as such, how can it be very much in the eye of beholder? It's not like it's a different shade of gray we are talking about. perhaps a more relevant distinction would be no political experience vs. no legislative experience or leadership qualities. IMHO, the predilection toward a career politician means an enforcement of the status quo whether it is a Dem or Repub president.

I already said agreed with you about the misfire on her printer/PC decision, not sure why you are going back to that. I fully understand your background in Finance and it is duly noted. But if you take your Micro view out of the equation and look at the problems of DC from a Macro view, who could honestly argue the Fed is massively bloated, corrupt, and inefficient? I would gladly accept someone like Fiorina cutting the waste, fraud, bloat, and abuse. Comparing what she could do in this capacity to what she did at HP is not an apple to apples comparison.

and I forgot to mention, I am all for her stated goal of shrinking the size and scope of the Fed Gov't. Maybe that didn't work out so well at HP, but I've always advocated someone for the Presidency who is 1) not a career politician & 2) not afraid of running the Fed like a business, which means accountability & cutting the fat

I'm not parroting anything, Hillary is doing it for me. Her laughable spinning of the subject matter at hand is only rivaled by the infamous explanation of "it depends what the definition of IS is." And do you really want to open up the Pandora's Box that is Vince Foster? And do we want to trust/believe someone running for President that she didn't know she could run different email accounts on one device? How idiotic is that? Not someone I'd want with one finger on the button, or too dishonest and stupid to defend the indefensible.

your points are well taken but I would not necessarily base my opinion on anyone solely on bad reviews. It's fairly easy to make an argument around those and as we all know, it's far easier to post a negative review based on one's poor experience with a company or service rendered. Yes Fiorina may have made a couple poor bets but I worked for a Fortune 50 company who made a couple horrific decisions but still remained entrenched as the market leader. I suggest there could be a point/counterpoint in play with Fiorina. I am amazed at the article linked below FROM 2002. http://www.computerworld.com/article/2576830/carly-fiorina.html She correctly foresaw the realities of industry consolidation, the requirement for IT interoperability, solutions-based architectures versus point products, & security/connectivity/manageability. All of these are top of mind in spades with any IT senior leadership at any company. What I'd prepare for, if I was her team and she advances, is the penultimate question of "if you had it to do over again, would you make the same decisions at HP?"

agree 100%. She is in quasi-Trump mode now out of necessity to gain name recognition and a bump in the polls. If it goes as far as you suggest, the confrontation will be carefully managed. it's not merely "red meat", I's challenge you to think about her bona fides and the confident way she handles any line of questioning. She is extremely comfortable and well-prepared. And the claims of HRC may or may not remain hidden for the entire duration. Knowing the slimy behavior of Presidential politics and the legacy of the Clinton Dynasty, it's not hard to imagine this remaining buried (.....how convenient)

I work in the same space as HP, and it's easy to read bad reviews of her. But I will say the devil is in the details. HP was and still is way behind the curve of innovation in IT and was seriously lagging in parallel with the dot.com bust. If there was ever a company that needed a swift kick in the arse internally, it was HP. Whenever I competed against them I won, and it wasn't even close.

I believe she has already unofficially elevated herself to the big boy debate, but we shall see

I'd love to check it out, unfortunately I have DirecTV and they do not appear to carry OANN yet A Carly vs. HRC debate would be an epic throwdown. The more I see/hear Carly the more I like her. Did you see her on Chris Wallace's show yesterday? She looks amazingly comfortable answering any question, esp. the tough ones. Not only did she win the junior debate but she looks more confident at every turn. If she does progress to any degree, she will get slammed by attack ads for her tenure as HP CEO.

So what do you make of the other Democrats who have come out against the deal? Are they panderers as well? As to the bolded, I'm calling BS on you. You don't know me, and I'm not "pumping his tires"; don't misrepresent what I wrote. I simply said, in my OPINION, that he is not pandering to Israel. You're really taking my opinion and creating a false straw man. And I'm not taking your bait about your question. This exchange was not a policy debate on all things Schumer. But since you seem to be loaded for bear, I'll say I am not a resident of NYS so I am honestly not familiar with other things Schumer. IMHO, he had to think long & hard about going against the President of his own party to do what he felt was right. I'd ask you to think, if you're capable, of how conflicted, and how difficult it might be for you, if you were a Jewish senior state Senator trying to reconcile your party allegiances against supporting the native country of your religion. You seem very eager to pick a fight across ideological lines. Agree 100% - and I'll probably get lit up here for doing so.

Pandering to Israel? Not so fast Pastajoe; Schumer announced his decision well after a lot of careful consideration. It wasn't a knee-jerk reaction, so I'd hardly call his decision pandering. For ALOT of people, politicians and others, it is a terrible, frightening deal. Speaking out against it is not automatically pandering.

thanks for the quotes, I was not aware ....

Not trying to pick a fight with your bolded point; I am seeking to engage. Do you seriously consider all the R candidates to be crazy? If not, which ones specifically? Or were you just using a bit of groupthink to describe the candidates en masse? For example, I would agree there are crazy ideas (...i.e. making Mexico pay for the wall - how exactly?), but would you actually describe Ben Carson as crazy? The dude is a brainiac, very accomplished as a neurosurgeon, and very logical/measured in his responses thus far.

here's the CA lawsuit directly from the attorneys handling the case - looks like an automatic 17.5% discount before any haggling https://www.hefflercases.com/cases/nhl/ with the SundayTicket/DTV lawsuit in parallel, looks it's time for me to make that call to Customer Retention.... :flirt:

I thought it would never happen !..... :worthy: maybe we can create the R candidate to create appeal to those otherwise predisposed to vote elsewhere; the brains of Carson/Cruz, the business experience of Trump & Florin w/out the bombast, state executive experience of Christie/Walker/Perry, the libertarian/non-interventionst Rand Paul, the pragmatic Rubio, who sits on the on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Or maybe, to your point, we'll see an unknown dark horse arise. God knows we need someone on either side who will unify this country, for I see it as being more fractured than ever before.

I think we'll find out soon enough - the debates and and campaign vetting will separate the wheat from the chaff. It's an organic process and it's way too early, but I hear what you're saying. The difference this year is Trump - is he really Presidential material or just tapping into populist discord? Probably the latter. What's ironic is that for how many years have we all (left & right) been begging for someone outside of the career politician vein? Now we have one, and it's become a circus very quickly? This first debate is pretty much must-see TV; will Trump be a bomb-thrower or a statesman? He keeps saying how much he'll make America great again without much specificity, other than making Mexico pay for the wall.... :w00t: :w00t: The main problem as I see it is that all other R candidates have at least one flaw; there is no fully consistent/qualified candidate.

MattPie, your response about my news sources was well thought out and I appreciate it. It's no secret that I lean libertarian/right and in doing so, I am a minority (no pun intended) on this board. I try to make my points with logic and without throwing grenades. The fact is, I'd be the first one to call BS on Fox News for any overt grandstanding. Like a lot of us here it seems, I consume my "news" from a variety of sources, including UK & Euro web sites. Your take on reverse racism is very well-done, cheers.

oh really? what exactly is "my news source of choice"? I happen to get my news from a variety of sources, largely via the Internet. And your characterization of reverse racism I something I strongly disagree with. It does happen, and just because it happens less in anyone's view doesn't make it real. Can you cite a source which proves that only white people use it to as a means to show "they do it too"? That sounds very anecdotal at best. And we have already agreed way upthread that racism in all forms is wrong. This whole white apologist, pretend it doesn't exist in other forms is laughable.

I would love it, I have a feeling it would be a slugfest and Fiorina would win by TKO. She has everything to gain and nothing to lose, the exact opposite of Hillary.

you are making the mistake of putting this into strictly black/white terms. Plenty of Hispanic/Asian students are accepted before Caucasian students solely on their race/ethnicity. This is why some incoming attendees are checking the box "Other" when asked what race to define themselves as. Sad but true. And SAT prep accessibility is a very subjective measurement. Before the age of race-based quotas, I happened to be a straight A student with strong athletic & student government bona fides, but I also happened to be a very average standardized test-taker. I was fortunate to get in. I'm afraid if that was me now, there's no way I would get in.

If you care to characterize it as "white people using it as a term" to cry foul, then could you care to defend the practical application of reverse racism, i.e., educational admission quotas being dictated not by merit but on the basis of one's race? And your defense that "white people are hardly victims of any racism", etc. sure sounds like moral/practical relativism to me. I'd contend to call any racist event as racist without equivocation or qualification.