Category: Politics

I’ve tried not to rant too much about the whole election boondoggle, confident that other bloggers have done it to death better than I could hope to. But it’s the night before, and I’m feeling genuinely frightened. Also genuinely bummed that I can’t vote for Arianna. Feel the need to say to anyone out there who is still undecided (fat chance) that this is not a game, not a joke. This is the world’s sixth-largest economy (not that I feel states should necessarily be run like businesses). This is your life, fo’ shizzle.

Arnold may be half-liberal, but that doesn’t make him human. In fact, after browsing welovearnold.com for a while, I think I’d rather see a plain vanilla Republican in office than this train wreck of a man.

[discussing a scene in T3, in which he pushes the female cyborg’s face into a toilet bowl] “I saw this toilet bowl. How many times do you get away with this — to take a woman, grab her upside down, and bury her face in a toilet bowl? I wanted to have something floating there … The thing is, you can do it, because in the end, I didn’t do it to a woman — she’s a machine! We could get away with it without being crucified by who-knows-what group.”

There are so many frightening quotes on the site, it was a challenge to select just one. He’s named the press buses that accompany his campaign Predator 1, Predator 2, Predator 3. A fourth campaign bus is called “True Lies.” Sense of humor, or seriously messed up? I hope it’s the former, because I think politics could use a serious injection of humor, and a lot of humorless people could use a good goosing. But Arnold’s flavor of “humor” scares the hell out of me.

If its a celebrity you want, Gary Coleman is still in the running. Unfortunately, everyone thinks of Coleman like a little freak, assuming that his presence in the race is just part of the circus. But read an interview with Coleman and tell me who has a better political head — Gary or Arnold? No contest.

As for the recall itself, if this one works, get ready for this process to become the norm. Give Arnold three months, and wait for some rich liberal to start the process all over again, but in the opposite direction. California will be in a state of perpetual recall. Every time approval ratings dip we’ll turn the state upside down. This is a dangerous precedent. You don’t have to like Davis to oppose the recall. Just have the huevos to live with your decisions. We’re living with our decision to keep Davis right now. By the end of tomorrow you may be living with your decision to turn our state into celebrity special ed.

Meanwhile, don’t let the swiss cheese security of the new electronic voting machines stop you.

The news was somewhat buried — reading page 8 or 9 of USA Today — Rumsfeld sees no link between Saddam Hussein, 9/11 and Bush: No proof of Saddam role in 9/11. Well, it’s really big of them to come clean on this, two years after the fact, and long since it was shown that 70% of Americans thought that Hussein was responsible for the attacks. Exactly why would the people have thought that? Because the Pentagon dropped Afghanistan like a hot potato when the going got non-productive, and pursued Saddam instead? Because the insinuation was made over and over again that there absolutely was a connection?

I’m frustrated that this is page 8 news because the war could not have been fought without support of the American people. Therefore it didn’t behoove the pimps in power to come clean on the non-connection, though Rummy says he knew all along that there was no connection. So remind me again what the supposed goal of the war was? (“Removing a terrible dictator from power” is the wrong answer, sorry).

p.s.: U.S. weapons hunters find no evidence Iraq had smallpox and Senator Edward Kennedy says the case for war against Iraq “was a fraud.”

None of this related to the recent disocvery of ancient Venezuelan Buffalo-sized rodents, of course.

Regarding Bush’s request (or was it a demand?) for an obscenely thick wad to fund ongoing occupation, TrueMajority asks:

How much is $87 billion? For that amount of money, America could:

Solve the school budget crisis in every one of our communities,
OR
Provide health insurance for every uninsured American child for 15 years,
OR
Provide food for all 6 million of the children who die from hunger around the world for 7 years.

A day of protest is being planned for October 25 in Washington D.C. and Los Angeles and places in between.

Update: costofwar.com provides a visceral, real-time tabulation of what this involvement is costing us.

Arnold is all about the Hummer. Mileage: 9 mpg.

Arianna drives a Toyota Prius. Mileage: 52 mpg.

Nuff said, though this cartoon says more.

Jon Carroll writes for The Chron about blogs coming out of Iraq — not American journalists blogging from abroad (though some of those are quite excellent, but Iraqis telling the story from their perspective.

One of the cited blogs quotes an Iraqi construction engineer, whose very experienced construction firm estimated the cost to repair a bombed-out bridge at around $300,000. Allowing for overruns and excess, just to be really really safe, quadruple that to $1.2 million. Then the American bid on the same job comes in: A cool $50 million.

Iraqis need the work, need the cash circulation. But Iraqi firms aren’t allowed to bid on jobs to repair their own country. Only American firms — Halliburton and Bechtel, right? — can do that. And they get to write a blank check. With your money.

Foul beyond description.

As we learned during the run-up to the recall, there are NO requirements to be governor of California, other than being able to plonk $3500 on the barrel. And sure enough, Arnold has NO experience. It does not bother me that Arnold is an actor. I could really care less. But I would like to know why so many people think he’ll be a good governor just because they liked his movies.

More importantly, does Arnold actually believe that the duties of the office are so easy, so trivial, that he can carry them out better than politicians with a lifetime of experience? Arnold: Why should I believe that you can do anything related to running a state, let alone do it better than the incumbent, or other contenders? Most analysts agree that anyone in that office would have had the same budget problems Davis has had. I don’t get it.

Meanwhile, John Kevin Fabiani points out that conservatives may not be so impressed with Arnold once they get a closer look.

The Lone Cheerio post, which started as pure whimsy, is now nursing a discussion on the relative merits of the ongoing boycott against Nestle for their (alleged) practices of pushing formula over breast milk in the third world. The pro-boycott position says that Nestle’s corporate greed hurts — and possibly kills — mothers and babies, and that we should vote with our wallets until it stops. The anti-boycott position says that formula is probably healthier than breast milk if the mother has low immunity, that the World Health Organization is probably warped by uneven political pressures, and that the boycott is an example of political correctness run amok.

Personally, I think that Nestle, like all corporate giants, will get away with whatever it can if unchecked. If the allegations are true, its practices are foul, and definitely boycott-worthy (well-organized boycotts do work). On the other hand, I know that we can’t lift a finger in this world without some of our actions supporting bad karma on one front or another. That organic onion in your stir fry tonight? Maybe picked by an underpaid, exploited immigrant farm worker. Breast feeding is too important to play games with. Even if formula has some advantages (Amy and I use it as an occasional substitute), it’s not worth the risk to the child’s health or later intelligence (breastfeeding.com references seven separate studies showing a correlation between IQ and breastfeeding — in the range of 3-8 IQ points difference between breast- and formula-fed children).

If you have strong feelings about this, do the research — find out whether the allegations are true or whether Nestle’s practices have changed in the 20 years the boycott has been running, and think carefully about the counter-arguments — will not buying Cheerios really make a difference to the parent company? Are there health benefits to formula (in the 3rd world) that in part offset its downsides? Is Nestle’s behavior pure greed, or something else?

Amy and I are still trying to figure out what to do.

A piece in The Chronicle this morning says that U.S. Marines dropped napalm on Iraqis during the war. The Pentagon has claimed that they destroyed all their napalm stockpiles two years ago, and that this wasn’t napalm. Turns out all they’ve done is tweak the benzene concentration. The director of Physicians for Social Responsibility says that trying to distinguish between these incendiaries and traditional napalm is “pretty outrageous.” Said one Marine, “The generals love napalm. It has a big psychological effect.”

Bonus surprise: The U.S. has not agreed to an international ban against using incendiaries against civilian targets.