Twins

Like Bush, Schwarzenegger has succeeded in failing.

Ah, no ld will go down in history of California’s version of W. With glee he stood before the press to announce the budget impasse was fixed. It takes an idiot or a conman to do that. He is probably both.

Why is California filled with Democrats who have no backbone to take their argument to the people and stand up for what is right?

Schwarzenegger’s recent knife as-a-symbolic-prop video will be looked upon with scorn and ridicule in a few years, when the full effect of his selling out of the citizens of California in favor of gutting education, corporatizing pensions and giving away off-shore drilling rights and robbing local governments of their money is realized. Why is the mainstream media not more critical?

Schwarzenegger has set California on the path to becoming a third world country. In ten years, California will be in such bad shape even Mexico won’t want it back. Just wait until Californians rise up.

Schwarzenegger’s California will be seen like Bush’s America—robbed. When are Californians going to realize that thieves like Schwarzenegger should never be elected because of stardom and false promises?

He and his do not have the interests of California in mind, only corporations and the rich.

I know what he can do with that knife.

One Governor Stupidly Resigns, Another Governor Stupidly Doesn’t

Palin claims she’s a fighter and not a quitter, despite having quit her job. Painting herself as a victim stirs up the emotions in the base she is appealing to. She says she is summoned by a “higher calling”. I don’t think she means god.

She says she is going to work to change politics from the outside. The reason she is quitting her governorship is because the responsibility hinders her from traveling around the country stirring up the base. Another reason she is quitting her job is she does not want anyone to point at the lousy job she is doing which puts her on the defensive. As I said, she is playing victim to get the base to listen to her and cheer. But I think she sees herself as a conservative hero. Maybe her ego leads her to believe she has enough power to save Republicans and turn America around single-handedly.

She is convinced she can mobilize enough people to bring conservative values back to the forefront of American politics at the grass roots and kitchen table level in America. She thinks she can convince those Americans who may regret having voted for Obama to join her in tearing down Obama in 2012

Her eyes are on the bigger picture when she says she is a fighter. Her eyes are not on Alaska and have not been since her campaign-induced ego orgasm last fall when she began seeing herself as greater than she actually is.

Do I think she will run for president in 2012? Although that remains to be seen, my immediate answer is I doubt she will be able to.

She made big mistakes during last year’s campaign while she was under the control of others. She made mistakes as governor with Troopergate, etc.while she was under the watchful eye of her constituents, the opposing political party and even Alaska Republicans.

Palin is the psychology type who shoots herself in the foot. And she will. Unsupervised and unfettered in her “higher calling”, she will be able to do what she wants. And she will get herself in trouble because her ego’s voice continually tells her she is right and everyone who disagrees with her is wrong.

In giving speeches and appearing at Republican re-election rallies for 2010, as she will no doubt go around the country and she will eventually say or do something stupid and the media will focus on it and focus on it and focus on it. Palin will make the same, tired media elite persecution claim.

Republicans will begin to distance themselves from her especially when embarrassing details of how she governed Alaska begin emerging and/or from the tell-all book from Levi Johnston.

Palin has passed the Alaskan ball, as she said. As she rushes to the basket for the goal, to adopt her metaphor, when the ball is passed back to her, it will be a national ball because the basketball goal is a national political one, especially if Obama is unable to turn the economy around, which may be what she and others are counting on. Obviously he and his guys misread some things.

Palin is a fighter not a quitter. She just didn’t say how and where she would be fighting. And she’s not that great a fighter either.

And I predict…!

I predict when she begins, she will come out strong. But as time goes on (a month at most) she will stumble and falter and embarrass herself and embarrass others and when she has failed at everything she will have tried in 2012, she will be given a show on Fox where she will remain to criticize Obama’s second administration until her embarrassing interview with Joe the Plumber makes them both the biggest laughing stock ever in American politics and she is forced to resign.

Okay, maybe not the Joe the Plumber interview. And she may not resign Fox for reasons of embarrassment. But she will not be important, only annoying.

She isn’t mistaken in her seemingly contradictory statements about being a fighter/not a quitter and leaving the governorship before the end of her term, the media just didn’t ask the right questions.

But speaking of someone who should resign….


Hey, Master of Disaster, a woman has done right by her state and resigned, but you haven’t? What’s the matter, you don’t have the balls she has?? If you don’t resign, you are a girlie man governor because you are don’t have the balls to admit you are wrong and step aside.

Of course, the legislators are no better, but your policy of taking away money from education, the elderly, health care, law enforcement, etc., rather than raise revenue to cover the budget deficit is about to ruin California.

It is reported you want to gut welfare. Sure there is welfare fraud and it should be cleaned up. But is it enough to have any positive effect on the budget now? What about corporate welfare and corporate welfare fraud? Is that in your sights?

You are about to bankrupt, in the minds of voters all across California and America, the fiscal conservative ideology regarding taxes just as you are about to bankrupt California.

By that I mean, when all is said and done, you will have made many Californians realize they were wrong about taxes. But because of your cowardice, not your leadership.

Are you going to spend any money to help the new class of homeless men, women and children and the unemployed you will create with your budget cuts? Or is that not your responsibility? Get government off their backs? Is that your Nixonian-conservative philosophy?

This may be a long, hot summer. Do you have in your budget the extra cost for law enforcement and emergency services with all the civil disobedience that may well arise in protest to your cuts?

I have mentioned in this space that I manage a building with an elderly day care facility. Two days ago they stopped accepting seniors and their space has been without any activity. In fact, it has been empty.

The Tea Baggers wanted to recall you. Obviously Cornyn and Perry are not the only Republicans in their sights. But the Tea Baggers are reactionary, not thoughtful. Their thinking and the whole conservative philosophy of reduced taxation is the sinister culprit behind much of the problem. You only rode the wave of citizen cynicism about Gray Davis. All you had to do was offer movie catchphrases and Californians elected you.

I hope Californians learned their lesson, which is: if we get out of this with any kind of political and economic structural integrity, from now on, Californians cannot just think of themselves. They must also exercise wisdom. Democracy only works if the people are informed and smart, not if they are only thinking about themselves.

You, Schwarzenegger, will forever be remembered as the guy who sank California. Your accent was to your acting as your thinking is to your governing—bad, bad, bad.

Is it too late to deport you back to Austria for having violated the terms of your visa so long ago?

Don’t Forget When Celebrating America Tomorrow To Also Celebrate the Fact That Schwarzenegger Cannot Be President

I filed my California State taxes today, even though I filled out the form and signed it back in February. I just never got around to mailing it because I owed $84 and didn’t have it back then. Then I kept forgetting it. So, I guess I have contributed to the $24 billion budget deficit and I am a hypocrite.

Because of the failure to pass the budget, news this week has not painted Schwarzenegger in a positive light. Schwarzenegger is obviously only a bad action film actor and not a political leader. He is also a die-hard conservative. While I agree on finding ways to trim the budget, I do not believe one of those ways is cutting benefits to the elderly. Does Schwarzenegger believe he can bully the elderly whom he should be serving?

In the building I manage, elderly tenants are under siege. They have had their benefits cut twice with a third cut expected in September. That means a very difficult time ahead. What happens when their benefits are cut so severely they cannot pay the rent? Am I supposed to evict them and put them out on the street?

As Governor, Schwarzenegger is a metaphorical father. What he is doing now is sitting at home, refusing to bring in any more income and expecting his family not to spend any money on housing, food, medicine, clothes and other necessities.

In doing so Schwarzenegger has become his father—the stern disciplinarian. According to the book True Myths of Arnold Schwarzenegger by Nigel Andrews, Schwarzenegger has said his father had “no patience for listening or understanding your problems…there was a wall; a real wall.” It seems California is suffering the same with Schwarzenegger.

But Schwarzenegger’s psychology has also been influenced by child abuse, as he told Fortune Magazine in 2004, “"My hair was pulled. I was hit with belts. So was the kid next door. It was just the way it was. Many of the children I've seen were broken by their parents, which was the German-Austrian mentality. They didn't want to create an individual. It was all about conforming. I was one who did not conform, and whose will could not be broken. Therefore, I became a rebel.”

Has Schwarzenegger twisted these emotional issues deep inside himself so that he is rebelling against the needs of those he should be serving? Does he equate political compromise with conforming? That question should be put to Republicans and Democrats. As the world gets more tenuous, our way forward more rocky, we need to know our leaders serve through wisdom not twisted hypocrisy or greed or blame or the need to be loved. We need better quality leaders. The word politician cannot be used here because it already denotes a corrupt idiot.

Money was also an issue for young Schwarzenegger. According to Arnold: An Unauthorized Biography by Wendy Leigh, the day the Schwarzenegger family got a refrigerator was a big day. Is it possible Schwarzenegger has slipped into the psychology of what was good for me is good for you—meaning suffering—except on a state-wide scale? In other words, because he had to go through tough times and he recovered from it all with his “mind-over-body power” to go on to international fame and success, he believes everyone else has to suffer and pull themselves up the way he did? Does he really expect the elderly in California to do that?

All of this from a man who, reportedly, violated the terms of his H-2 visa when he started a bricklaying business. So, in essence, the man who took advantage of benefits he did not deserve, as governor, is denying benefits to born-and-raised Californians.

Does this not remind one of the raw deal Indians were given by European invaders 400 years ago? This hemisphere belonged to Indians until the Europeans came and began restricting their lives and telling them that all they once knew they could no longer have.

Conservative fiscal policy has gotten us into the present mess. No tax, no spend, small government except when it comes to enabling corrupt politicians and the lobbyists and businesses whose teats they suck to flourish unrestricted and unregulated, is no basis for a system of government. As a wise man once said, “Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical conservative policy.” Okay, he didn’t say “conservative policy”, but you know what I mean.

While Schwarzenegger is obviously revealing himself to be in no way compassionate, his failure in California is another example of Republicans showing themselves to be completely out of touch with the current needs of Americans and Californians.

But even conservatives with "compassion" are fundamentally out of step with reality. How could George Bush take a $127 billion surplus and turn it into the mess we’re in if conservatism is so close to Divine Law (or aquatic ceremonies), as many conservatives seem to profess. Oh, yeah, a war based on lies, oil supply and war profiteering. Don’t get me wrong, liberal excess is obviously just as backward. However, why is Schwarzenegger so brutal to the elderly?

There are nearly 37 million people in California. There must be millions of businesses. Is it not possible that all of us carrying the weight—Schwarzenegger should understand that—so we could get California through this mess by paying a little extra?

It never had to get this bad. Republicans and Democrats in the state legislature, both of whom blame Schwarzenegger, are also to blame. And, according to Rob Burnett’s Huffington Post post last week entitled, “Who Ruined California?”, Californian’s are also to blame. In 1978, Californian’s passed Proposition 13, the “People’s Initiative to Limit Property Taxation”. With Prop. 13, property tax, which was previously used to generate budget funds was taken off the map.

Reducing taxes and limiting spending have long been staples of conservative fiscal policy. And it was two conservatives, Howard Jarvis and Paul Gann, who co-authored Prop. 13. However, while it has benefited California taxpayers, what good is that benefit in a bankrupt state?

So, Californians are partly responsible for this budget armageddon. They wanted lower taxes, which removed any cushion for tough times like these. Californians—but not me—also voted for Schwarzenegger twice. They bought the bullshit.

The celebrity culture in America is so strong, too strong. That’s why an idiot like Joe the Plumber can become famous based on his ridiculous opinions and statements. That’s why Sarah Palin can have a following. We the People need to understand our country better and make tough decisions, not the easy ones. By making easy decisions, Schwarzenegger has put us all at maximum risk.

There is a principle among the Iroquois called the Seven Generations which says, “Make decisions today which benefit the seventh generation to come.”

We as a supposed “superior culture” cannot even make decisions that benefit us in seven months to come, let alone whole generations.

Schwarzenegger is a man with an intense psychology that is geared and modified over years and years to benefit him and his, not a whole state of other people. His running for governor was wholly ego, not out of concern for people, which is the basis of the American government and, therefore, California’s government. What else was an aging bad actor dwindling at the box office supposed to do?

Is he angry because he knows he failed as governor and his failure will prevent him from becoming president of the United States?

I leave that question in a paragraph unto itself because I think it deserves some consideration.

Ronald Reagan allowed drugs to be brought into this country to fund the Contras--that was his psychosis at work.

In fact, I think Michele Bachmann should do a penetrating expose to answer my prior question. I think politicians should be given psychological tests by a panel of non-partisan experts to see if they want to become a leader for personal gain or to help further corrupt government and business, or for the betterment of the people. We need to weed out the Bushes, the Nixons, the Schwarzeneggers, the Palins, the Bachmanns and the Cheneys, not to mention the Democrats (who I did not mention) that suffer from the same corrupt and immoral drive.

Schwarzenegger’s career before governor was playing a series of action heroes who would save innocents by walking, carrying or driving them through dangerous circumstances and many close calls to the happy ending. Why can he not do that now? Oh, because there is no script? Our state’s ruined credit rating, which only makes the situation worse, is not the only collateral damage his stubbornness has caused.

He cannot think his way through this without a writer or director? Well, he’s the director and producer now, and the elderly in California are all just extras in a scene he believes makes him look good.

Schwarzenegger’s 2004 campaign financial advisor, Warren Buffet, recommended repealing or modifying Prop. 13 as a measure to balance the budget. Schwarzenegger’s reaction was that if Buffet kept talking about repealing Prop. 13 it would be the end of his career as governor.

This is not Schwarzenegger being a leader. This is Schwarzenegger being a girlie man. With regard to the budget crisis, he has yet to make a good executive decision. He is exhibiting the same lack of leadership and decisiveness he accused Gray Davis of exemplifying. The reason for this, I believe, was that Schwarzenegger was only using the governorship as a stepping stone to the first foreign born president—his ego is that big.

Given the conservative conspiratorial fervor of Obama’s birth certificate, California legislators can bet good budget funds (through IOUs) that in a year or two these same conservatives will trumpet Schwarzenegger’s presidential aspirations. When asked why the double standard, they will perhaps say that while Schwarzenegger is foreign born—and Obama is as well, they will say—Obama tried to cover his up. That’s American politics.

Schwarzenegger needs to lead Californians through these tough times, not be afraid of them. He is being the girlie man that he so arrogantly accused Gray Davis of being. One thing that can be said is that Schwarzenegger is not improving the lot of the Republican Party right now when they so desperately need it. Traditionally, when Senators and Representatives in a party are in trouble, it is to the governors that they turn. Schwarzenegger, Sanford, Palin, Jindhal and Rick Perry are damaging Republicans on a state level as well at a time when they certainly don’t need it. Now, the Republicans have nowhere to run.

Schwarzenegger as president of the United States would only be George Bush with an accent—not very bright, looking good in a flak suit on an aircraft carrier with a deceptive banner behind him, and exuding a false aura of fatherly protection at press conferences. During his bodybuilding days, Schwarzenegger earned the nickname of “Austrian Oak”. Today it seems many may consider “Austrian Oaf” to be more appropriate.

Schwarzenegger’s approval rating as of May 7, 2009 was at 32 percent, comparable to George Bush’s at the end of his presidency as the worst president in U.S. history. He and Bush are twins.
His ego is so big, and the mental prowess of many American voters so small, that in a few short years when Schwarzenegger gets the selfish, egotistical itch, he will sit with Karl Rove to figure out how to make girlie man fun of whoever the president is, unless its Hillary in 2016, and surround himself with a lot of brain power whose advice he will ignore, and run.

On July 30th Schwarzenegger turns 62. That’s the early-retirement age. Schwarzenegger should retire. He is not a political leader. He is an elected bad action film actor.

And he needs to stop believing he can scare the elderly into accepting him effectively killing them slowly by simply flexing his muscles.