CNN loves the new Arnold Schwarzenegger story. On Tuesday night it covered the former California governor’s paternity scandal at least once every hour.
CNN loves the new Arnold Schwarzenegger story. On Tuesday night it covered the former California governor’s paternity scandal at least once every hour.
Well, that’s not quite accurate. We should have said “at least once every hour with the notable exception of one hour.”
The reason Eliot Spitzer doesn't talk about Arnold Schwarzenegger's sex scandal
NewsBusters delivers the specifics:
During its 5 p.m.-12 a.m. EDT coverage, CNN reported the story every hour except during the 8 p.m. EDT slot – the prime-time show In the Arena with Eliot Spitzer. Spitzer made no mention of the story.
Spitzer was embroiled in a scandal of his own just three years ago as governor of New York. A federal wiretap linked him to a high-end prostitution ring, and he resigned his office abruptly after the news was made public…
Spitzer did find time to offer extensive coverage of IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s rape allegations. He also hosted for a sympathetic interview the CEO of the NBA’s Phoenix Suns, Rick Welts, who has publicly revealed that he is gay.
Our best guess? Spitzer is offended that he had to pay for it, but Arnold didn’t.
The Governator Arnold Schwarzenegger claims that two terms of disserving the people of California cost him at least $200 million.
Arnold “The Worst Governor In History” Schwarzenegger went home to his native Austria to pat himself on the back because after seven years of his governorship, there’s apparently no one left in California who will still do it for him.
Awwww. The Governator claims that two terms of disserving the people of California cost him at least $200 million.
Consider these photos symbolic of California's condition before-and-after Arnold's governorship
Reuters has his odd combination of self-adulation and self-flagellation:
Counting expenses and lost income from acting in Hollywood films, “in all it is probably more than $200 million,” he told Krone when asked how much his two terms in Sacramento had cost.
“But I’m not sorry. It was more than worth it,” he said.
“What was much worse was the damage my time as governor did to the family. There is a lot there that needs to be repaired,” he said, recalling the many Sunday evenings when his wife, Maria, and children broke out in tears at his heavy work schedule.
“We hate your job,” Schwarzenegger quoted family members as saying during his early years as governor when he would leave his Los Angeles home every Monday morning for the capital, Sacramento, and not return until the end of the week.
“It was heartbreaking every time,” said Schwarzenegger, a Republican who served as governor from 2003 until early this month. “In my second term of office, I did better. I tried to fly home every evening.”
The people of California had such high hopes for Arnold when he entered office. He said all the right things and started off as a good, hard-ass conservative. But when he lost the first battle to control state spending and his personal approval rating plummeted, the Governator clearly decided that being popular was more important than being a good governor.
In the end, he was neither.
But give us a break here, Arnold. Who the hell was going to pay you $200 million dollars to make movies? You entered politics because your movie career was over. Finished. Through. Kaput.
In 1996, Eraser stunk up the joint. In 1997, Batman & Robin bombed. In 1999, End of Days was a huge failure. In 2000, The Sixth Day and Collateral Damage tanked. And in 2003, Terminator 3 barely paid for itself. By late 1993, politics suddenly looked like a brilliant way to gently ease yourself out of failing career in Tinseltown.
A little known fact is that Arnold has probably made far more money in real estate than he made in movies. He owns half of toney downtown Santa Monica. In fact, he was once the Editor’s landlord in a beautiful building above Schatzi on Main, his Austrian restaurant. We shared the floor with Johnny Carson’s and Antonio Banderas’ production companies.
In the end, the state of California would have been much better off if Arnold’s post-Hollywood career had been devoted to real estate instead of destroying a great state.
Mr. Schwarzenegger singled out environmental obstacles that are blocking construction of alternative energy farms in the Mojave Desert.
Arnold girds his loins to do battle with the dreaded economy-killing squirrels
There was a time when Arnold Schwarzenegger battled alien robots and Russian spies. After several years in politics, his enemies have come down a few notches. He now fights squirrels.
The worst governor in California history is upset with economic impact of the red tape the Democrat-controlled legislature has imposed on the state.
The Wall Street Journal reports the governor’s grievances:
“Right now the way it’s written, a lot of those laws, it’s an invitation to misuse them,” he told reporters last week. “And it holds up projects for too long a period of time, especially now.”
Mr. Schwarzenegger singled out environmental obstacles that are blocking construction of alternative energy farms in the Mojave Desert. Some of his green allies have become “fanatics,” he said, and “go overboard.” He then launched an extended riff explaining why he thought environmental objections to the Mojave Desert projects on the grounds they could hurt endangered species were, well, specious.
“So the environmentalists . . . are confused because they want to have renewable energy but then when it comes to the permitting process, creating that renewable energy and building the solar plants, they are then in the way.
And they then talk about, ‘You cannot go and destroy this squirrel.'”
“I say, ‘What squirrel? I was out there, I didn’t see a squirrel.’
“They say, ‘Well, there could be a squirrel coming very soon.’
“So I say, ‘But there’s no squirrel there right now.’
“‘But you’ve got to protect things that could be there.'”
He’s right, of course, but it’s just difficult for any California resident to believe anything that comes out of this guy’s mouth anymore.
But by using squirrels, Schwarzenegger has captured the perfect metaphor for California’s dysfunctional government.
He vetoed the bill and sent Ammiano and his fellow legislators a veto letter. Not just an ordinary veto letter, mind you, but an oddly-worded letter with a Da Vinci Code-like message that reveals the Governator’s true feelings.
California Assemblyman Tom Ammiano introduced a bill to help the Port of San Francisco with some financing issues. It sailed through both houses of the California legislature with little opposition and went to Governor Schwartzenegger for his signature.
But Arnold had other ideas. He vetoed the bill and sent Ammiano and his fellow legislators a veto letter. Not just an ordinary veto letter, mind you, but an oddly-worded letter with a Da Vinci Code-like message that reveals the Governator’s true feelings.
To decode Arnold’s message, just read down the first letter in each line on the left side of the letter.
While we can’t help but admire Arnold’s sentiment and ingenuity, we long for the likes of Harry Truman, who would have just come out and said what he meant.
“The (California) governor (Arnold Schwarzenegger) is not against condiments. The governor’s not against fruits of any kind,” said spokesman Aaron McLear.
Arnold now has an overinflated opinion of himself. California voters know better.
No, this wasn’t a commentary on California’s Proposition 8. It was another example of California’s legislature fiddling while Sacramento burns.
White the state is $45 billion in debt with no apparent hope of balancing its budget, its legislature is debating the definition of condiments.
“The governor is not against condiments. The governor’s not against fruits of any kind,” said spokesman Aaron McLear. “But he believes we ought to be focused on solving our budget crisis first and foremost.”
Instead, the state Assembly spent Tuesday debating the creation of a commission to market the state’s blueberry industry and the definitions of honey and “100-percent pomegranate juice.”
“Look, we’re pro-condiment, we’re pro-fruit,” McLear said, “but the focus needs to be on the budget crisis.”
There was a time when Arnold Schwarzenegger called his political opponents girlymen. Now he’s become one of them, cowering in fear before the mighty force of the pro-condiment lobby.
Governor Arnold Schwartzenegger personifies the sad decline of the state of California
California’s sad excuse for a governor has come out in favor of a flat tax. Hah!
As the LA Times reports: “Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said today that he would like to see such ‘radical’ proposals come out of a commission now studying an overhaul of the state’s tax system. The governor told the editorial board of the Sacramento Bee that he hoped the commission would not be afraid to propose something like ‘a 15% straight tax.’”
“That’s the kind of radical, daring kind of a proposal that I want to see on the table so we can look at it and say, ‘Oh, let’s study this, maybe that is the way to go,’ ” Schwarzenegger said.
Don’t get us wrong. In theory, we love the flat tax concept: Everyone pays the same percentage of all income. Minimal or no deductions.
But here’s the problem with the Schwartzenegger’s scam. The current highest tax rate in California is 9.1% on taxable income over $91,000 (after all your deductions are considered), but under this bogus flat tax plan everyone would pay 15% with minimal or no deductions.
It’s going to be interesting to see how Schwartzenegger tries to convince the people of California that paying 15% with no deductions is better than paying 9.1% with deductions.
In the thoughts, if not the words of the Governor, “Keep your eye on the pea while I move these walnut shells around.”
Members of an illegal alien social club on their way to pick crops in California's fields
California Governor Arnold Schwartzenegger pounded the final nail in his own political coffin yesterday when he announced that he’s “happy” that illegal aliens get state services. Then he tapped the nail in a little further by saying they’re not to blame for the state’s $24.3 billion deficit.
Schwarzenegger noted that the state spends a mere $4 billion to $5 billion the state on illegal aliens each year, but said that’s just a “small percentage” of the deficit. And that’s true if you consider 20% a small percentage.
The soon-to-be former Governor told The Sacramento Bee that it’s easy to “scapegoat” illegal immigrants. The turncoat Republican insisted that the Feds requires the state to provide emergency health care and education to illegal aliens. And what the hell, he said, the illegal aliens pick crops and build buildings.
Perhaps the Governor hasn’t seen these grim statistics on illegal aliens (some people have nitpicked these stats, but they’re frightening if they’re only half true):
40% of all workers in L.A. County (L.A. County has 10.2 million people) are working for cash and not paying taxes. This was because they are predominantly illegal aliens working without a green card.
95% of warrants for murder in Los Angeles are for illegal aliens.
75% of people on the most wanted list in Los Angeles are illegal aliens.
Over 2/3 of all births in Los Angeles County are to illegal alien Mexicans on Medi-Cal, whose births were paid for by taxpayers.
Nearly 25% of all inmates in California detention centers are Mexican nationals here illegally.
Over 300,000 illegal aliens in Los Angeles County are living in garages.
The FBI reports half of all gang members in Los Angeles are most likely illegal aliens from south of the border.
Nearly 60% of all occupants of HUD properties are illegal.
There are 21 Spanish language radio stations in Los Angeles.
In L.A. County 5.1 million people speak English. 3.9 million speak Spanish. (There are 10.2 million people in L.A. County ).
Less than 2% of illegal aliens are picking our crops, but 29% are on welfare.
Over 70% of the United States’ annual population growth (and over 90% of California, Florida, and New York) is from illegal aliens.
How’s that budget working out for you, Governor Schwartzenegger?
Mitch Daniels isn’t a riveting speaker. He’s short. And he has a bad comb over. But we understand why the people of Indiana have elected him governor twice.
“Despite the terrible national economy, Indiana remains in vastly better shape than most states and any of our neighbors. We have over a billion dollars in reserves and a triple A credit rating. Anywhere else, any reserves are long gone. They’re slashing education by as much as ten to fifteen percent. They’re releasing convicts from prison early. And worst of all, when families are struggling, they’re raising taxes.”
“There’s only one reason we are so different – because we have held government spending down to a level of our income. But if we lose our sense of discipline now, in no time we’ll look just like Michigan or Illinois or, heaven forbid, California.”
He sums it all up by saying, “Add a dollar, cut a dollar. And no tax increases.”
There’s no question which party he belongs to, is there?
As you can see in this video, a group of students has launched a hunger strike to protest Governor Schwartzenegger’s budget cuts. This seems short sighted, considering the fact that UC Santa Cruz has a well-deserved reputation as the marijuana capital of California.
The hunger strike vs the munchies. Which one will win?
Why did California voters overwhelmingly reject all those tax-and-spend ballot measures last week? According to California Speaker of the Assembly Karen Bass, it’s because they’re too confused to comprehend the opportunity that had been presented to them by Arnold Schwartzenegger and the geniuses in the state legislature.
“I would go into a room,” she said, “…and I found the basic fact that voters were very confused about what it is we were asking them to do and why we were asking them to help us solve the budget problem.”
They were confused alright, honey. They were confused by the state’s profligate spending. Confused by its ballooning budget. Confused by the millions spent mollycoddling illegal aliens. Confused by the willful waste of their hard-earned tax dollars. And confused by the labor unions’ stranglehold on state’s future.
We were confused, but we just had a moment of complete clarity. So how about if you shut the hell up, Ms. Bass. Slash the spending. Cut the unions down to size. Pass a responsible budget that stops driving business and people out of the state. End the mollycoddling of illegal aliens.
You lying, hypocritical piece of over-spending excrement.
We hate the media in general, but we love afternoon talk show hosts John & Ken of KFI radio in L.A. And if the media ignores their popular tax revolt, we’ll give them a hand.
The talk team drew 15,000 people last week to their “Revolt, Recall, Repeal Rally” to protest California’s $50 billion tax increase and to begin recall efforts aimed at the governor and several state legislators. it was covered locally, but did you see any national coverage? Ten NOW protestors on the on the White House steps makes news, but not 15,000 in a tax revolt? Of course, we’re not surprised.
During the rally, DVDs and VHS tapes of Schwarzenegger’s movies were enthusiastically trashed by the crowd. John & Ken provided “The Shredinator” to shred other Schwarzenegger memorabilia.
The KFI hosts also played recordings of Schwartzenegger promising he would never raise taxes, which elicited a loud, angry response from the crowd.
“This has been a complete disaster and it’s time to do something about it,” they said. “He should be apologizing to you and he should be resigning!”
John & Ken are the best talk show hosts in America. If you’ve never heard them rant and rave, check them out at KFI640.com.
Two-faced California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger declared a state of emergency Friday, urging urban water systems to cut usage by 20%.
“This drought is having a devastating impact on our people, our communities, our economy and our environment, making today’s action absolutely necessary,” the so-called Republican governor said.
According to Brietbart.com, “The drought has forced farmers to fallow their fields, put thousands of agricultural workers out of work and led to conservation measures in cities throughout the state, which is the nation’s top agricultural producer.”
In related news, California is increasing taxes and spending $8 billion more this fiscal year than last, despite the fact that the state is virtually bankrupt and the its budget deficit is nearing $42 billion.
We’re turning on all the taps, because based on that same twisted logic, the only way to solve the drought is for everyone to use more water.
