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.

We here at The Earmark are delighted to see Joe “The Plumber” The Plumber back in the news again.  It seems like years since we were reporting on:

• His B. Dalton-packing book tour.
• His ground-breaking research in the field of Early Republic scholarship.
• His hard-charging journalistic career.
• His narrow escape from Barack Obama’s Death Panel.
• And who could forget … his country music career.

Well, now he’s tossing us some more low-hanging fruit in the form of an angry diatribe against John McCain!  Yes, the same John McCain who plucked him from YouTube obscurity and made him the iconic embodiment of the typical American working man (who apparently makes over $250,000 a year).

Here’s Joe the Plumber on his benefactor:

John McCain is no public servant. … I don’t owe him shit.  He really screwed my life up, is how I look at it.

We’re not 100% sure why Joe is so mad at McCain - perhaps at some campaign event, the candidate got upset and threatened to give him a “switchin’.”  But we do know the best way to get revenge: meet McCain on his own turf.

By running for Congress.

A new Gallup poll released last week offers both good news and bad news for President Obama.

The bad news?  Obama is statistically tied with a generic Republican in the 2012 presidential election.

The good news?  Many Republicans surveyed believe that “generic” candidate should be either John McCain or Scott Brown.

To rephase: That’s one candidate who’s fresh off a 2008 loss, would be 85 by the end of his second term, and might lose his Senate primary to Atilla the Hun.  And a second candidate who has spent more time buck naked in the pages of Cosmo than he’s spent on Capitol Hill.

Among GOP frontrunners, McCain and Brown trail only Mitt Romney, whose entire governing experience consists of a single term as governor, and Sarah Palin, who didn’t even make it that far.

And that’s your top four: Romney, Palin, McCain, Brown.  This leaves us with just one question:

WHAT, no Ronald Reagan?  Or at least Curt Schilling, Barry Goldwater or Joe the Plumber– all right-wing heroes.  And what about Rudy?  It’s only been nine years since 9/11.  Hell, even Joe Lieberman should be on this list.

As for professional GOP campaigners like Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty and Louisiana Robot-in-Chief Bobby Jindal, the message is clear: They’d best either lose an election or irrationally quit their jobs pronto if they plan to be flipping pancakes in New Hampshire come January 2012.

Stop what you’re doing, call your broker, and put in a “buy” order on Honda, Hyundai, Toyota, Mercedes… any car company as long as it’s not American!

Allow us to explain: President Obama has named Ron Bloom as his new chief advisor on the automobile industry, and if past appointments are any indication, Bloom is going to be a walking, talking advertisement for a foreign-made car.  Just check the published stats and you’ll see that the road to Obama’s cabinet is full of speed-traps for anyone caught driving domestic.

Consider the cars of current administration members…

- Timothy Geithner: Acura TSX

- Larry Summers: Mazda Protégé

- Peter Orszag: Honda Odyssey and Volvo S60

- Austin Goolsbee: Toyota Highlander

- New auto task force leader Brian Deese: Honda Civic

- Steven Rattner, the financially-shady bureaucrat that Bloom is replacing: Mercedes-Benz 350

You’ll admit that although Ron Bloom’s ride of choice has yet to be publicly revealed, the odds are looking pretty good for Germany and Japan.  In fact, when all is said and done, the only two administrators still driving American might be Obama himself (Ford Escape Hybrid) and VP Joe Biden (1981 Trans Am with Night Ranger in the tape deck.)

Let the record stand that none of this would have happened under a John McCain administration.  In fact, all imports would have probably been cut off by this point due to the ongoing war with Spain.  And if party leaders had allowed McCain to pick Joe Lieberman as his VP, there would have been a whole fleet of colorfully adorned PT Cruisers in the White House parking lot as well!

[In the interest of full disclosure, none of us here at The Earmark drive American, either.  But if no one from our site is appointed to at least Secretary of Labor by the end of Obama's first term, we're just going to give up and finally indulge ourselves with one of those dreamy Pontiac Azteks we've been holding off on.]

If you’re surveying the political landscape in California these days, there’s plenty to cringe at.  A jaw-dropping deficit.  The lowest bond rating in the country.  An asinine ballot initiative system that allows the likes of Paris Hilton, Jim Belushi, and the Octomom to weigh in on everything from marriage laws to statewide budgets.

Now imagine that you’re Carly Fiorina, the onetime CEO that was fired by Hewlett-Packard and muzzled by John McCain.  You look at California in its complete and utter ineptitude and think: “Hey!  I could do that!”

Carly Fiorina, whose rocky tenure as chief executive of Hewlett Packard ended with her firing, is making serious preparations to run next year for the Republican nomination to challenge U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.)…

In a hypothetical matchup with Fiorina, voters favored Boxer 55% to 25%.

Fiorina’s qualifications for United States Senator are the following:

1. She took over HP, paid herself hefty bonuses while eliminating jobs, initiated a failed merger with Compaq, sent the company’s stock into a ditch, got fired and ended up being named Portfolio magazine’s 19th worst CEO of all time.
2. During last year’s election, she intimated that John McCain and Sarah Palin were too inept to run a computer company and thus would have to settle for leading the free world.
3. Nothing else.

And yet Fiornia slogs forward, prepared to endure a grueling campaign, the loss of her personal fortune, lists of reasons to hate her, and her own general ineptitude.

But it will all be worth it if she makes it to the Senate, because it’s there that she’ll be able to pursue her greatest goal of all…

Getting McCain to speak to her again.

Item! The word in Washington is that Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) is about to announce his pick for his vice-presidential running mate! This will be McCain’s most important decision of the campaign. Whoever serves as his #2 will have the responsibilities of:

* Serving as President of the U.S. Senate.

*Being dispatched to dinner functions in countries whose cuisine gives McCain gas.

* Running the country each night from 7 to 8 pm while McCain is watching Matlock.

Washington Insiders have narrowed down McCain’s choices to five front-runners and the Pages are pleased to give you our Official Vegas Betting Odds on each of them:

Name	Why He’ll Get It	Why He Won’t	Page’s Betting Odds
Tim Pawlenty Governor of Minnesota	Evangelical Christian from a potential swing-state.	Who wants a vice-president who can’t even score with his own wife?	2 : 1
Mitt Romney Former Governor of Massachusetts	Only candidate who can carry the hedge fund and polygamy votes simultaneously.	Americans might be intimidated by such a brilliant, accomplished, righteous, wealthy, handsome family man. (Source: Mitt Romney)	Six : Half-Dozen
Charlie Crist Governor of Florida	Having an obviously gay man on the ticket could help McCain cut into a traditionally Democratic voting bloc.	His dark orange tan clashes badly with the McCain campaign’s blue-and-white theme colors.	69 : 1
Joe Lieberman Senator from Connecticut	Brings valuable experience in the field of losing vice-presidential campaigns. Comes with his own theme song.	Dogged by insidious Washington whisper campaign that he is a Jew.	666 : 1
Bobby Jindal Governor of Louisiana	Introduced an Amber Alert for senior citizens in his home state, so he’ll be ready to respond when McCain wanders off during a G-8 Summit.	America may not be ready for a Catholic vice-president.	1.132 billion : 1