This is an article I've been working on for a while, and the timing seems more than appropriate.
I did a fair amount of research on Ms. Fiorina when she ran for the Senate in California and got beat like a mule by the likes of Barbara Boxer, an incumbent with approval ratings in the low 40's. Carly Fiorina has an interesting history.
Thanks to a well delivered monologue comparing Iran to planned parenthood and several rehearsed zingers directed at Donald Trump, former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina is getting a lot of kudos from various pundits and the RINO establishment as the antidote to Donald Trump's popularity, since Jeb Bush obviously isn't up to the job.
Trump, of course, was the main target of the event anyway, and Ms. Fiorina's performance and the amount of time she was given lends credence to rumors that she was given the assignment of taking out Trump to prove her bonifides as the new GOP establishment hope.
I found this Iran screed particularly interesting, in which she described the first two things she would do as president:
On day one in the Oval Office, I will make two phone calls, the first to my good friend to Bibi Netanyahu to reassure him we will stand with the state of Israel."
"The second, to the supreme leader, to tell him that unless and until he opens every military and every nuclear facility to real anytime, anywhere inspections by our people, not his, we, the United States of America, will make it as difficult as possible and move money around the global financial system."
It was a nice applause line, but it makes me wonder what kind of reality we're talking about.President Barack Hussein Obama did everything short of offering Iran's Supreme Leader the Ayatollah Khamenei some of America's nukes and the beer concession at Yankee Stadium as an incentive to get Khamenei to speak to him directly, and he failed.The idea that Khamenei is going to suddenly take a direct call from an American president, let alone a woman is ludicrous. That's especially true after her ridiculous remark at another point in the debate that she would cease talking to Russia's Vladimir Putin, who at least is a rational actor.
The bit about moving money around is curious too. Did she mean making it difficult for
Iran to move money around? Assuming that's what she meant, the obvious follow up question is, 'and then what?'
The sort of sanction President George W. Bush put on any countries or financial institutions harboring or doing business with al-Qaeda to prohibit them from using the US banking system worked very well, and reduced them to relying on the snail's pace of the hawallah money changer network. It would have been massively effective had Barack Hussein Obama seen fit to use it. He didn't, and at this point with the EU and other countries literally fist fighting among themselves to do business with Iran, it's iffy whether it would work as well now, especially since this president has beefed up their foreign currency reserves by $150 billion plus. So 'and then what?' applies, and that's especially rele4vant when it comes to Carly Fiorina.
What's her record with Iran?
For instance, while she was head of HP from 1999 to 2005, the company made millions selling Iran high tech equipment
using a distributor they lined up to side step American restrictions on trade with the Islamic Republic. It's difficult to believe she didn't know about this as CEO, especially since the distributor openly advertised its connections with HP and issued a press release saying sales topped $100 million and that "the seeds of the Redington/Hewlett-Packard relationship were sowed six years ago for one market - Iran."
CEO Fiorina also bragged to stockholders about how Middle East sales were defying global trends, and HP maintained a huge sales office in Dubai free-trade zones notorious for winking at U.S. law and selling American goods to Iran. And while HP may have stayed in the gray zone regarding the letter of the laws on US sanctions, there's no question that the spirit of the law was cheerfully ignored while she was CEO.
Ms. Fiorina's tough talk on Islam likewise doesn't jibe with her past. Here's part of a speech she made two weeks after 9/11 at an IT conference in Minneapolis Minnesota that was highlighted by al-Jazeera:
"There was once a civilization that was the greatest in the world.
"It was able to create a continental super-state that stretched from ocean to ocean, and from northern climes to tropics and deserts. Within its dominion lived hundreds of millions of people, of different creeds and ethnic origins.
"One of its languages became the universal language of much of the world, the bridge between the peoples of a hundred lands. Its armies were made up of people of many nationalities, and its military protection allowed a degree of peace and prosperity that had never been known. The reach of this civilization’s commerce extended from Latin America to China, and everywhere in between.
"And this civilization was driven more than anything, by invention. Its architects designed buildings that defied gravity. Its mathematicians created the algebra and algorithms that would enable the building of computers, and the creation of encryption. Its doctors examined the human body, and found new cures for disease. Its astronomers looked into the heavens, named the stars, and paved the way for space travel and exploration.
"Its writers created thousands of stories. Stories of courage, romance and magic. Its poets wrote of love, when others before them were too steeped in fear to think of such things.
"When other nations were afraid of ideas, this civilization thrived on them, and kept them alive. When censors threatened to wipe out knowledge from past civilizations, this civilization kept the knowledge alive, and passed it on to others.
"While modern Western civilization shares many of these traits, the civilization I’m talking about was the Islamic world from the year 800 to 1600, which included the Ottoman Empire and the courts of Baghdad, Damascus and Cairo, and enlightened rulers like Suleiman the Magnificent.
"Although we are often unaware of our indebtedness to this other civilization, its gifts are very much a part of our heritage. The technology industry would not exist without the contributions of Arab mathematicians. Sufi poet-philosophers like Rumi challenged our notions of self and truth. Leaders like Suleiman contributed to our notions of tolerance and civic leadership."
"And perhaps we can learn a lesson from his example: It was leadership based on meritocracy, not inheritance. It was leadership that harnessed the full capabilities of a very diverse population–that included Christianity, Islamic, and Jewish traditions."
Rather an interesting appraisal of the pillage and genocide of Islam's period of conquest and expansion, isn't it? Certainly I could tell her
a few things about the 'tolerance' given to Christians, Jews and Hindus during that time.
The Indian genocide alone is estimated at about 20 million under the 'tolerance' of Islamic conquest and rule. And that number could be low balling it.
As for meritocracy, given the large number of caliphs who were deposed by coups and assassinations...well, maybe there's a more accurate word for it.
The entire speech can be seen
here.
Another interesting associate of Carly Fiorina that perhaps shed some light on her position on radical Islam is one Khalid al-Mansour, whose name regular readers of this site will recognize. The two have had a long term business and social relationship.
Carly Fiorina sat on the Foundation Board of the World Economic Forum with al-Mansour, which has observer status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council. The board,among other things, heavily champions 'sustainable development' and
Agenda 21, both of which involve global socialism through global governance.
Fiorina also sits on other Boards with al-Mansour, such as the African Leadership Academy. They've been on friendly terms for some time.
Who is Khalid al-Mansour?
Al-Mansour, AKA Don Warden is one of the founding fathers of the Black Panther Party. He later converted to Islam and became the chief adviser to our old friend Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal.
Al-Waleed, some of you might recall, is one of the prime movers behind the Wahabi takeover of America's mosques and madrassahs through his funding of the Islamic Society Of North America(ISNA), was a major funder of the Al Qaeda charity al-Haramain and was the Saudi prince who's $10 million dollar donation to New York City after 9/11 was spurned by then mayor Rudy Giuliani after after the prince made a public comment that the U.S. relationship with Israel were responsible for the attack.
Khalid al-Mansour is a notorious racist and
Jew hater, among his other attributes. It was he who became Barack Obama's mentor
and recruited Percy Sutton, Malcolm X's lawyer and a Borough president in New York City to use his influence to get Barack Obama into Harvard.
Another of Khalid al-Mansour's close associates was the late Herbert Muhammed, Elijah Muhammed's son and later head of the Nation of Islam. There's a fair amount of evidence that al-Mansour was Barack Obama's direct connection to both the Panthers and the Nation of Islam, which is immensely influential in Chicago politics. Barack Obama not only attended but actually helped the Nation of Islam organize the Million Man March for Louis Farrakhan, one of the worst public exhibitions of anti-Semitism in American history.
I've never bought the whine so popular with the Left about 'guilt by association.' In most cases, people pick whom they associate with, just as Barack Obama picked Jeremiah Wright and Trinity United. Buy the ticket, take the ride.
Given her history of trading with Iran, her paeans to Islam and her long association with people like Khalid al-Mansour, a lot of the tough rhetoric we now hear from Carly Fiorina is highly suspect to say the least.
Let's move on to another of Ms. Fiorina's strong points, her career in business as head of Hewlett Packard.
The fact remains that her record was poor at best. While there have been some articles from the usual suspects attempting to show that HP's problems weren't her fault, the fact remains that while revenues doubled during her tenure, (mostly due to mergers) HP's net income
stayed static during a period when the S&P 500 net income
gained over 70%. A big reason for that is that she ran up HP's debt from $4.25 billion $6.75 billion and its stock price fell by 50%,
far beyond index declines in the S&P 500 Information Technology Sector index and the NASDAQ.
Even worse was the way she led the company.
As soon as she arrived, she made changes to corporate culture at HP, changing it from a corporation that nurtured talent and innovation and had profit sharing for its workers into a place where the only thing that counted was her whims and the bottom line.
She fired thousands of American workers in order to off shore their jobs to places like India and China, and was a serial H1B program abuser, bringing in lower priced foreign workers to replace American workers of long standing and forcing them to train their replacements. It was Carly Fiorina in full Cruella DeVille mode who said, in 2004, “There is no job that is America’s God-given right anymore."
She demanded voluntary pay cuts, supposedly to prevent layoffs that were followed by the largest layoffs in HP’s history. In 2002, while Fiorina cut workers salaries by $130 million she collected $90 million for herself.Other CEO’s during the dot.com crisis took pay cuts. But Carly Fiorina took a 231% raise according to
Executive Excess of 2003.
Imagine how
that's going to play with the 'economic inequality' crowd and with Americans out of work struggling to make ends meet. The attack ads practically write themselves.
Carly Fiorina was dramatically unpopular at HP, a company that used to be ranked at one of the highest in job satisfaction in America. Company productivity plummeted along with the morale of its workforce.
In the end, Hewlett-Packard was so anxious to get rid of her that they gave her a massive buyout of $42 million to get her to leave immediately. HP's stock
rose more than 10% in a matter of hours once the news reached Wall Street she was history.
If you're wondering why no other major corporation has been banging on Carly Fiorina's door trying to hire her as CEO, now you know why.
Oh, and for a bit of icing on this rancid cake, let's look at Carly Fiorina's views on amnesty and illegal migration, shall we? She's aggressively for both.
Back in 2010, when she ran for senate
she avidly announced how much she supported the DREAM Act, which became President Obama's wedge for his amnesty by executive order. In 2013,
she led the cheering for the infamous Gang of Eight's farcical excuse for an 'immigration' bill. On Meet The Press, she said, “I applaud and salute the Gang of Eight`s proposal. Let`s move forward and vote on that.”
Her biggest donor? Jerry Perenchio, the former CEO of the Spanish language station Univision and finance director of John McCain's 2008 run, at $1.6 million. Most of the rest are Silicon Valley types chafing at the bit for more low wage H1B employees from overseas.
What Carly Fiorina is saying about amnesty and illegal migration isn't much different from what Hillary Clinton is saying. And given her fondness for tossing American workers off the payroll in exchange for lower wage migrants, rest assured that if Carly Fiorina were president, people who thought they elected a conservative on this and other issues would be in for a rude awakening.
And that's
if she gets elected. If I'm able to find this much out with just a few searches, imagine what will happen when the Leftist press gets their teeth into this?
The bottom line is that she's Jeb Bush in a dress, but without his honesty and fiscal management skills as an executive. Frankly, if you like the idea of President Fiorina, you'd be better off voting for Jeb Bush.
