THE EARMARK

California Senate candidate Carly Fiorina has one major selling point for anyone who stays awake throughout her campaign rallies: She was CEO of Hewlett-Packard 5 years ago.

And there’s plenty of proof for that claim.  Just go find a back-issue of Portfolio magazine— specifically the one listing the 20 worst CEOs of all time— and you’ll see Fiorina prominently profiled.

Or you can ask…

• HP shareholders whose share values tanked under Fiorina.
• Compaq employees that got hosed in Fiorina’s failed merger.
• The board of directors that fired Fiorina in the wake of her hefty personal bonuses and middling performance.

They all remember her.

But maybe you should just ask Arianna Packard, granddaughter of the company founder, who can definitely attest that Fiorina worked for HP.  In the sense that she nearly destroyed the entire operation…

“I know a little bit about Carly Fiorina, having watched her almost destroy the company my grandfather founded. So, allow me to disillusion you of a few of your stated reasons for supporting her,” Packard wrote.

“Most business commentators consider Fiorina’s tenure at HP to be a disaster,” Packard continued. “The stock price dropped by 50% only to rally 10% on the announcement of her firing. She fired 28,000 people before she herself was fired, departing with the 21 million dollar golden parachute that is financing her campaign.”

So if Fiorina’s tenure at Hewlett-Packard was a disaster and got her unceremoniously fired, why on Earth is she going around touting her time there as her top qualification to be a United States senator?

We’re not sure, but it might have something to do with the fact that her #2 qualification is getting unceremoniously fired by the McCain campaign in 2008.

A year ago, Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Congressional Country Club) rode back into her native Texas vowing to take the Governor’s office away from her nemesis and fellow Republican, incumbent Rick Perry.  After five terms in the Senate, she had much to prove to voters skeptical that she had gone soft while in Washington.  Well, hundreds of stock shows, chili cook-offs, and hog-slaughterings later, Hutchison’s hard work finally paid off yesterday.

With a massive defeat in the primary.

Having been embarrassed by an opponent whose main campaign tactic was to dispatch Ted Nugent to threaten to kill voters, Hutchison now has no choice but to fade away into retirement.  Because after all, she resigned her Senate seat in order to enter the governor’s race.

Oh wait, she didn’t! Turns out she accidentally forgot to resign back in November, conveniently leaving her with nearly three years left in her term. So she has the option to return to her beloved Washington, exchanging her bolo tie for a power suit and her Old El Paso salsa for an understated Bernaise.  Or she can do the right thing: fulfill her promise, bow out, and allow her successor to be appointed by … Governor Rick Perry.

Did somebody say Senator Nuge?

Quickly, what do Carrot Top and U.S. Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) have in common?

That’s easy enough.  Both men…

• Perform in public using props.
• Have appeared on Comedy Central.
• Must have been beaten mercilessly by their childhood companions.

But that’s not all!  If Cantor has his way, they’ll also have this in common: Neither man will have any of his ideas included in Barack Obama’s health care bill…

House Minority Whip Eric Cantor released a statement today attacking President Obama for including four Republican ideas in his new health care proposal, which will be released tomorrow…

“If the President simply adds a couple of Republican solutions to a trillion dollar health care package that the American people don’t support, it isn’t bipartisanship - it’s political cover.”

The nerve of President Obama!  When Cantor and his fellow Republicans were imploring him to include Republican submissions in a health care resolution, they didn’t actually mean he was supposed to include Republican submissions in a health care resolution!  What about the prop comedy??

See while Cantor the legislator might want conservative ideas included in a new health bill, Cantor the prop comedian will suffer in a bipartisan Washington.  Will he still get to perform that “southern accent” he spends countless hours perfecting in the mirror?  What about a new routine based around his favorite punchline– “the Democrat party”?  And what’s he going to do with that giant stack of paper he likes to mug with for cameras?

And most importantly… how can a struggling comedian afford to buy health care in this climate?

For those of you who keep letting unwatched CSPAN-2 broadcasts pile up in your DVR, we’ll now fill you in on the past week of Senate proceedings:

• Thursday: Irascible Senator Jim Bunning (R-KY) stages a one-man legislative blockade, thus eliminating 400,00 people’s unemployment benefits, choking off COBRA payments, halting hundreds of federal transportation projects, cutting doctors’ Medicare payments by 21%, and furloughing 2,000 federal employees.
• Friday: Bunning tells furloughed workers “tough shit” and then names the true casualty of his blockade: His having to miss a basketball game on TV.
• Monday: Pressed by reporters, Bunning gives them the finger and gets territorial about an elevator.
• Meanwhile, the GOP’s national image takes a hit, and their “party of no” reputation is reinforced.
• Tuesday: Satisfied, Bunning drops his objection.

The way we see it, this was never about jobs.  Rather, Bunning’s main objective all along was to make the GOP squirm.

That’s because the Kentucky reactionary blames Mitch McConnell and other GOP leaders for forcing him from his 2010 reelection campaign.  (Although some would say his horrible poll numbers and advanced dementia also contributed.)  And since suing the Republican Party wasn’t viable revenge for Bunning, trashing our fragile economy was the next best option.

Now McConnell and company must absorb notoriety for Bunning’s mess while trying to mount a powerful comeback in the November election.  And that’s just fine by Bunning, who has nothing left to do but relax and count the days until he leaves the Senate for greener pastures…

Specifically Green Pastures Nursing Home.

There’s something about the sex lives of Nevada politicians that recalls a traffic accident you just can’t look away from.  And no, we’re not talking about Sen. Harry Reid enjoying a little missionary position with the missus.  (We’ll pause 20 minutes for you to flush that horrible image out of your mind.)

Here at the Earmark, we’re much more interested in Nevada’s philandering set.  And that group is chaired my Sen. John Ensign (R-Christian Group House), and the state’s governor, Cheatin’ Jim Gibbons.

Ensign, who has a taste for his staffers’ wives, will never get in trouble so long as his parents are around to bail him out.  Contrast that with Gibbons, who dates everyone from Playmates to podiatrists’ wives, and mostly just needs someone to let him into his governor’s mansion.

But while Senator Ensign has recently shifted his focus from getting laid to sabotaging healthcare, Governor Gibbons continues to embarrass himself in the field of sex.  Here’s the latest:

• This week, Gibbons lied about bringing a mistress with him on a recent visit to Washington, even though video existed of the two of them together on the trip.
• He also said with a straight face that he hasn’t had sex since 1995, despite conducting public extramarital affairs with at least 3 separate women during that time.

If Gibbons has really been cut off since 1995, he’s the most inept gigolo since Bill O’Reilly.  That’s because there’s a trail of 867 text messages indicating that Gibbons was certainly trying to get laid sometime in the last 14 years.  He also propositioned a cocktail waitress for a night of non-consensual sex in a parking garage, although apparently that was also a failure.

If you find it ironic that the governor of the union’s most brothel-intensive state has been abstinent since the first Clinton administration, we’d argue this sort of thing happens everywhere.  For instance, Vermont has become the most reliably liberal state in the US, but they’re governed by a Republican. And New Jersey is the eggplant capital of the world, but their governor looks like he eats nothing but bacon cheeseburgers.

And also, Gibbons is lying.

Let’s be honest, patriots.  Ronald Reagan was the greatest American since Jesus Christ, and he deserves as much named after him as possible.  Countless freeways and schools, an airport, an aircraft carrier, and a missile test range are not nearly enough!

We must now turn our sights to natural wonders– those landmarks created by God to set the stage for the Great Communicator’s 93-year visit from heaven from (1911-2004).

Thankfully, a San Francisco Bay-area Christian is on the case– and he’s eradicating Satan in the process!

Arthur Mijares never saw it coming when he filed the federal paperwork to change the name of Contra Costa County’s most famous landmark from Mt. Diablo to Mt. Reagan…

“I just happen to be an ordinary man that worships God,” Mijares said by way of explanation. “He gave me this task in my prayer time. I said, ‘Lord, they’re going to think I’m a loon.’”

But only because they’re in league with Satan, Arthur.  Judging from public comments, naming a San Francisco-area mountain for Reagan would be about as popular as renaming the Daytona Motor Speedway for Nancy Pelosi…

In less than a month, more than 80,000 people have joined a Facebook group called “People AGAINST Re-naming Mt. Diablo to Mt. Reagan!!” The Contra Costa County Board of Supervisors, which will vote on the name change Tuesday, has been flooded with e-mail; the heated response runs nine to one against the idea.

Although the Board won’t vote until this afternoon, it’s already clear  the Bay Area has cast its lot with the Devil, and the Reagan movement will have to pick a more auspicious locale for their Messiah’s resurrection.  (We suggest Grover Norquist’s jacuzzi.)

If it’s any solace to the pro-Reagan crowd, it may be impossible for Republicans to get public recognition in greater San Francisco.  In a town where George W. Bush can’t even get a sewage plant named after him, the time may have come to cut bait and just embrace Satan after all.

They said it couldn’t be done.  “They” were either wrong or didn’t know there was an election last week.

Dean Murray, an organizer for the Tea Party movement and winner of a special election, takes office today in New York’s state assembly.

Now some of you hear “tea party” and think of a bunch of fringe activists hyperventilating into bullhorns on state house lawns, pausing only to force their elected leaders to recite the pledge of allegiance. But starting today, the movement’s members can finally shed that image and let us see them for what they really are:

Republicans.

Today is also a big day for the New York legislature, which is excited about any news that doesn’t involve domestic violence by its members.  And who could forget Murray himself– soon about to experience life on the other side of an unruly mob.

But most importantly, this inauguration cracks the door to every fringe movement that wants a voice in government.  With the Tea Party now ensconced in New York’s 3rd district, who on Earth could deny power to…

• Incompetent corporate executives?
• Plumbers making over $250,000 a year?
• Robots?
• The legally insane?

We say bring them all on board.  It doesn’t matter who they are or how little they know about government.  In fact, the less experience the better!  It’s well worth it to watch novice after novice leapfrog Alan Keyes in the quest to actually win an election.

On the same morning that Tiger Woods apologized for instigating his wife’s golf club attack, Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty told the Conservative Political Action Conference that the golfer’s spouse had it right all along.

Now he wants to set her loose on the federal government…

Joking about Woods’ looming press conference, Pawlenty said. “I think we can learn a lot from that situation. Not from Tiger, but from his wife.”

“She said she’d had enough, and we’ve had enough,” he said. “I think we should take a nine iron and smash the windows out.”

True to the spirit of his golf metaphor, Pawlenty then teed off on Democrats, slicing piles of red meat into a CPAC audience that aptly resembled a golf bunker… all white.

Pawlenty also took time to articulate the two positions one can take in American public life: Patriot or Liberal.

“Patriots in this room and patriots across the country are rising up, and we have a message for liberals: If you plan to take out freedoms we will fight back!” Pawlenty exclaimed.

Patriot or liberal?  Those are our only options?

Well then don’t tell the Kennedy family, a family known as much for their military service, Special Olympics sponsorship, and social justice initiatives as for their liberal politics.

And don’t tell CPAC’s own Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX), who certainly isn’t a liberal, and probably isn’t a patriot either… unless wanting to secede from the country counts as patriotic.