Harry’s Place

as head of H-P, Fiorina authorized the layoffs of 7,000 employees during a business downturn in 2001.

What is it with the complete economic illiteracy of the left?

Gene is as bad as those French students protesting last year that when asked claimed that the whole purpose of private companies was to….provide jobs for life.

I went out with a girl from Channing. Never heard it called “…for select young ladies” or anything like that

Here is its website.

http://www.channing.co.uk/

It isn’t a bad school. I’d happily send a child there. Girls tend to do better academically in single sex schools, and are more likely to do science, than in mixed schools.

Except that the job cuts were due to the merger with Compaq which was so disastrous Fiorina got the sack too…

Gene, is that because you want to mislead the public into thinking that no one gets laid off when a Democrat is President? Might not work if Americans have memories than span beyond eight years.

So Fiorina’s management ended up getting her own self sacked or as we Yanks say, fired. That’s a great recomendation to be given responsibility for the entire economy either as Vice-President or more likely as Secretary of the Treasury!

Do schools like Channing publish their results anywhere?
Or is that just state schools.

In the interest of fairness to Ms. Fiorina, I’ve emailed Dana Milbank at The Post asking for a source on the name “Channing School for Select Young Ladies.”

She doesn’t feature in the betting markets for VP.

As for the Hewlett-Packard layoffs– I made a point of saying they may have been an entirely sound business decision. My reference to the difficulties this could cause the Republicans if Fiorina is on the ticket with McCain was based on the brutal (and possibly unfair) political realities of running during a recession. I suspect McCain’s people are smart enough to figure this out, and that she won’t be on the ticket.

Yes, for a woman in her 50s, she looks very svelte and well dressed.

Who’s that portly, balding bloke standing next to her?

Apparently, she’s a bit soft on immigration too, so that won’t go down with the vociferous segment of the GOP already pissed with McCain’s candidacy.

Gene: Please define “recession”

At the moment its a slowdown, not a recession. I think the UK has better chance of going into recession than the US.

Gene: Please define “recession”

An economic environment in which it would be extraordinarily risky to select as a running mate someone who layed off 7,000 workers.

Gene : I googled “channing school for select young ladie.” I think Milbank pulled that out of his ass.

I’m still trying to figure out what this post is all about, and what it has to do with the price of ink cartridges.

There used to be a joke about girls who went to went to Channing and a Kit Kat but I am not repeating it here!

Gene : I googled “channing school for select young ladie.” I think Milbank pulled that out of his ass.

I hope he’ll respond to my email about it.

Mikey

Did they do the same thing that Milbank did with the “select young ladies” suffix?

Most Kit Kat jokes involve four fingers.
The reshaping of the Kit Kat marked the death knell for that line in British comedy

David T,

Did they do the same thing that Milbank did with the “select young ladies” suffix?

You may very well think that; I couldn’t possibly comment.

A recession is two consecutive quarters of negative growth in GDP. Of course, there are localised recessions.

Gene really shows his colors here; he really doesn’t give a damn about those HP workers - they were mostly making 6-figure salaries, and almost all will be millionaires by the ends of their careers - exactly the kind of people his class-war politics regard as “the enemy” (and whom he believe should pay more tax, despite a marginal rate north of 40%).

It is/was the tech industry, more than anything else, that was the vehicle for the 80s/90s American economic renaissance, which rescued us from the economic catastrophe brought on, more than anything else, by the kind of economically illiterate politics that Gene exemplifies. Rarely is the gulf of understanding between the east coast “workerist” view of employment and Californian way of life more vividly exposed. The tech indutry is fuelled by this kind of creative distruction; it’s not a matter of whether or not it’s a sound business decision - a periodic reshuffling of the deck is the lifeblood of creative sectors of the economy.

As for Fiorina - I can’t imagine anyone more poorly alligned with McCain’s “straight talk” approach. HP has a neausiatingly PC corporate culture (which she strictly adhered to), where you can’t criticize anybody other than in the most convoluted code - a company that has a kindergarten-level of concern for hurt feelings, and where there must always be “prizes for everyone”, so that nobody ever feels left out; even asking difficult questions is frowned upon.

I’m not sure why being “ex-CEO of Hewlett-Packard” is considered a plus. She was fired from the job, where she implemented a disastrous merger and spend much time hanging out with Hollywood entertainers burnishing her image.

If I was fired from a job, I wouldn’t be holding it up as a reason to vote for me. Of course, only in the bizarro-world of CEOs can one be fired and still get an 8 figure payoff.

There’s a good old-fashioned bashing of her here:

http://tombomb.typepad.com/tombomb/2006/10/by_michael_s_ma.html

P.

None of the Channing old girls I know are very ’select’. And I wouldn’t call them ‘ladies’ either. Or young.

I hate just posting links but honestly these are are good reading:

http://news.cnet.com/Fiorinas-fuzzy-vision/2010-1071_3-5569685.html
http://news.cnet.com/A-meritocracy-of-dunces/2010-1071_3-855883.html

P.

Youngest son once had a lady friend from Channing. He says its for thick rich people, but that is just his opinion.

I worked at hp during that time and whilst most people I know did not blame Fiorina for the initial redundancies (a lot of which were inevitable given the combination of the merger & subsequent slowdown) people did blame her for her inability to make the business execute. i.e. she kept on coming out with ideas but was unable to provide the structure or environment to make these ideas happen.

Have we established that Dana Milbank ‘embellished’ the name of the school to make it seem more highfalutin than it actually is?

It seems so.

I went out with a girl from Channing. There are a lot of very attractive Jewish ladies that go there (she was one of them). It’s not as good academically as some private girls’ schools, but probably nicer than some too. Plus, excitingly, the only other person I know who went there was Ashley Cole’s ex.

The Republican right-wing hates McCain’s guts because he insists on living in something approaching reality rather then their fanatsy world. On immigration, McCain is frequently called McAmnesty by the deport-them-all-back-to-Mexico xenophobes because of his support for Bush’s plan for dealing with illegal immigration. Also there are nutty creationists with their “intelligent design” nonsense along with various other lunatics. McCain will probably end up with a VP who supports at least of some of this nonsense such as “intelligent design” in order to get right wing support.

McCain will probably end up with a VP who supports at least of some of this nonsense such as “intelligent design” in order to get right wing support.

I don’t know where people get the idea that there is a huge Republican constituancy for “intellgent design.”

(BTW, if people enter my country illegally, they should be deported. Immediately.)

Well for one, the Republican Governor of Louisana who has been mentioned as a possible VP, is a supporter of “Intelligent Design”.

Note: Do not underestimate strength of the fundamentalist Bible thumpers and their followers and McCain’s need to appease them in order to get their support.

“As a Democrat, I would welcome this choice; as head of H-P, Fiorina authorized the layoffs of 7,000 employees during a business downturn in 2001. Now this may have been an entirely sound business decision, but it would be interesting hearing her try to justify it to the tens of millions of voters who fear for their own jobs in the current recession.”

-was this post-Sept11 when there major layoffs in a lot of industries due to the post-attack market instability?

I once participated in a London Schools fencing competition, where some Channing girls were present. They only fenced foil (not epee or sabre) in those days, but I can confirm everything Muppet says from my very selective assessment of their potential as antagonists at that time. Shayne Punim seems to be engaged in a bit of self-promotion, so I suspect the name “Tsvibl Punim” might be more appropriate.

Well for one, the Republican Governor of Louisana who has been mentioned as a possible VP, is a supporter of “Intelligent Design”.

Jindal won’t be the VP candidate. The ID scandal and the recent payrise have put paid to his chances.

They only fenced foil (not epee or sabre) in those days

That explains everything though. Back in University, when I fenced (I was actually on the University team for a few years), I couldn’t stand foil, with its prissy “right-of-way” rules and the whole “torso only” scoring nonsense. I mainly did Epee (being left-handed helped a lot in that regard) with a side-order of Sabre (where being left-handed didn’t really help)

Interesting - one of my friends tried fencing and ended up getting right into it, in fact she loved it.

As to the woman standing next to McCain - I’d vote for her, she’s a babe! (Note as not a US voter, and a believer that there isn’t a lot of difference between the whole scurvy crew, thats as good a reason as any!)_

Morgoth - can’t say I agree with you about foil being a prissy girls’ sport. Most of the girls against whom I ever fenced were extremely accurate, fast, lithe and athletic foilistes. This was a prerequisite in any event for foil fencing with its limited target area and Channing girls always appeared to do their bit to contribute. Anyway, they were prevented from fencing the other two weapons because it was then thought that the whipping effect of a sabre stroke and the heavier thrust of the epee might damage their breasts, although they wore protective cups. Certainly that might have been the case if they had come up against some of the male hackers and pokers I sometimes encountered on the sabre and epee pistes. No, ladies from Channing are, doubtless, still enhancing the elegant ballet of the sport and doing their best to follow my old fencing professor’s exhortation; “angulation, elevation and penetration.”