…ate my last line.
I meant to add that the groping stuff indicates that Arnold has not, in fact, learned how to handle power responsibly.
Actually, the whole impeachment thing came about because he lied under oath at the Paula Jones trial. You know, the one where he allegedly invited her into his room and then waggled the little Governor at her and asked her to play with it?
Didn’t see a lot of consent there. But hey, Paula Jones was “trailer trash”, and therefore an awful person, right? Or so the spin machine at the time would have had us believe. Besides, she was ugly. Probably a Republican put her up to it. See what dirt you can dig up, boys.
And remember all those victims’ rights feminists who used to talk about how awful it was that the woman’s private life always gets brought up in trial? They were remarkably silent when Paula Jones got dragged through the wringer.
And as for consent, I also seem to recall a lot of people before then claiming that it was wrong for the boss to sleep with underlings, because it was a disparity of power and therefore not truly consensual. Who has more power than the freakin’ president? But all those people who used to claim that were awfully silent on that issue as well.
When Bob Packwood was caught leching women, this is what the Senate Ethics Committee said: [the women harassed] were effectively powerless to protest in the face of his position as a United States senator."
Well now… If they were powerless in front of a Senator, imagine what it must be like to be propositioned by a president! But whoops - he’s in the wrong party. So he gets a pass.
Let’s face it - these days, partisan politics trumps everything else. Republicans do it, Democrats do it. In fact, Republicans are doing it now. There are an awful lot of people running around now saying that what Arnold did with women 20 years ago is irrelevant, who used to claim that even just being unfaithful to a wife was behaviour unbecoming a president because the president is the ultimate role model. But for them, this is only true if that person is a Democrat.
Sexual politics are just a cynical way of attacking one’s opponents these days.
Hey, Clinton was a scumbag too. Move on.
Valgard, I don’t recall Cleese’s father serving in the SS or openly praising Kurt Waldheim. What’s more, Cleese, Chapman et al pretty routinely made the Nazis out for exactly what they were, a bunch of despicable crazed bloodthirsty loons. Ahnult’s goosestepping doesn’t seem to project quite that same tenor.
Sam, Ahnult seems to have persistent problems (both decades ago and now) in how he views and treats women. Be it gang sex or inappropriate touching, there is a pattern of forcing himself upon the fairer sex. If this lug was a 120 pound weakling it would be entirely different, but such is not the case. We’re talking about a physically powerful man who arrogates himself the right to sexually impose upon weaker victims.
It is precisely this sense of entitlement that has no place in the halls of power. Not that it does not manifest already and conspicuously at that. I just fail to see why on earth the electorate should willingly surrender its right to self-rule over to such a bully.
Sam, I was going to reply, but Zenster has already ably made every rebuttal necessary. Except for the one about your difficulty with being shown factually wrong - one might think you’d have had enough practice at that by now, or would have accepted more responsibility before the fact. Whatever - the reactions you get here are the results of your own actions.
Re the repetition of the Paula Jones “allegation” which you are onetheless repeating as if it were true, there is no evidence to support that it ever happened, but there is evidence that Clinton wasn’t even in town on the alleged date. We do deal in facts here, and the facts are other than what you’d like them to be. If you’d like to be believed when you go on to deplore use of sex as political rhetoric, it would be best not to engage in it yourself, eh?
Voodoochile, your cynicism about any and all persons who enter public service is understandable, but ill-advised. Not everyone who gets into government does so for venal purposes; many really do feel a calling to it. You, oddly, are not cynical about the possible motives of Schwarzenegger for wanting to get into it, though - why not? What makes you think he’s really any different from what you believe to be the general reality?
The system is larger than any one person, and making it work requires working with it, like it or not. There is no real precedent for simple personal charisma being strong enough to make big things happen that weren’t already about to happen, in the face of contrary interests with established institutional power. There are many examples of rapid failure and defeat, though.
Sigh. I did not SAY it was true. I used the word ‘alleged’, and I wasn’t even talking about the behaviour of the president! I was talking about how feminists and others who claimed to support victim’s rights changed their tune when the ALLEGED victim turned out to be someone going after one of their own.
Your reading comprehension is severely lacking, Elvis. You do this all the time - skim my messages, pull out a word or two, and then go on the attack over my ‘lies’ and ‘errors’. You should stop doing that. It makes you look bad.
Uh, what consent is there between an employee and her employer? Not to mention what consent is there between a political aide and the pres…
Im sorry, but how much of an ass someone was in their 20s has nothing to do with what kind of person they are in their 40s or 50s. Show me someone who has remained the same throughout their whole life and Ill show you a turnip.
Voodoochile, your cynicism about any and all persons who enter public service is understandable, but ill-advised. Not everyone who gets into government does so for venal purposes; many really do feel a calling to it. You, oddly, are not cynical about the possible motives of Schwarzenegger for wanting to get into it, though - why not? What makes you think he’s really any different from what you believe to be the general reality?
My cynicism is reserved largely for those who make a career out of politics. Im sure Arnie does have selfish motives for wanting to get in office; of course he does, hes a human being. Anyone who claims to be doing something for purely unselfish motives is lying, perhaps to themselves as well as others but lying all the same. No, my cynicism is for those who think government is some kind of career path, like being an electrician or something.
The concerns I have about arnie in office are the same I have for anyone running for office who spouts the ‘create a better business climate’ shtick. Yes, it is very possible to create a better business climate here, but often that phrase is code for altering the single largest contributing factor to Cals economic ability: the right to work clause in the state constitution. So far, arnie hasnt touched on anything to do with that, hes only mentioned the obvious things such as the screwball workmans comp system.
**The system is larger than any one person, and making it work requires working with it, like it or not. There is no real precedent for simple personal charisma being strong enough to make big things happen that weren’t already about to happen, in the face of contrary interests with established institutional power. There are many examples of rapid failure and defeat, though. **
Well, I mean c’mon; all one has to do is claim things were going to happen anyway and so dismiss anyones contribution to anything. Yes, things are going to happen, but sometimes they would have happened further in the future than they would have if not for the catalyst of one person.
Your claim of no real precedent cannot be proven either true or false in a non subjective manner, since all one has to do is say ‘it was going to happen anyway’.
As far as ‘making the system work by working within it’, well then if the system only works based on the willful determination of people, that would seem to indicate it is a faulty system and needs to be fixed. Any system that reqires a certain willful behavior/morality on the part of the people is a system built to fail.
I was extremely disappointed when Peter Ueberroth pulled out of the race. I have been waiting for him to endorse another candidate, but so far he hasn’t done it. I’m going to vote against the recall, but not sure who I’m going to vote for in the second election. I may vote for Ueberroth anyway.
Perhaps you’ve forgotten who flashed the thong panties at whom. Consensual all the way, i.e. nobody else’s damn business outside the family.
There are indeed, sadly, those who stopped growing in or even before their 20’s. Agreed that who and what people are now is what they should be judged by. But how do we know what that is?
The cynicism discussion isn’t getting anywhere useful, I fear.
Right on. There is no substance to this guy at all; he’s an empty shell. I love his movies, but I don’t see how that’s a reason to vote for him. He says he wants to shake up the government, but he’s real low on specifics; all he’s got is platitudes and sound-bites. Running a restaurant may be helpful experience, but I think you need a little more than that to be a successful governor.
As was especially revealed in Mr. Hilter’s dastardly attempt to take over Minehead by running as the National Bocialist candidate.
I have to agree it’s kind of creepy for the son of a former Nazi to be playing at being an SS guard. And for him to own recordings of Nazi marching music.
Unless it’s actually Wagner, of course.
Um, some of the allegations have been from incidents in the last 5 years.
I don’t see what anybody’s dad has to do with it - Gen. John Shalikashvili’s dad was a Nazi too and he became chairman of the joint chiefs of staff. I’m not in favor of Arnold for governor but I don’t see anything that holds any water at all on the “he’s some kinda Nazi” charge. His friends say he wasn’t, the Simon Wiesenthal Center says he isn’t, lots of people in his hometown say he isn’t, people from way back in Austria say that he and his bodybuilding buddies helped chase neo-Nazis out of town, etc. I can see him making some statement when he was younger that comes down to “Hitler was a hell of a speaker” but there’s nothing in his behavior (past or present) that suggests he has fascist sympathies. For the record, a lot of people have said similar things about Hitler - he was a raving psycho monster but he did know how to captivate a crowd.
What is far more relevant to me is his (a) self-admitted inappropriate behavior around women, stretching from 20+ years ago until very recently and (b) his complete lack of details in his campaign.
Maybe this is more of a General Questions-type question (and maybe it could have been posted a bit earlier than the day before the vote – mea culpa), but I’m more than a little interested in a particular nuts-and-bolts question. A question about the so-called Davis car tax.
Forget Hitler. Forget Grope-a-dope. Hell, forget what revenue sources Arnold (or Tom) would tap to make up the shortfall, or what programs he would cut to eliminate the shortfall. How, precisely, does any governor or putative governor go about rescinding the restoration of the vehicle registration fee to the level it was set at by the Wilson administration?
It is my understanding that the fee was lowered by two thirds on a contingency basis, that contingency being that the state had sufficient revenues from other sources to allow it to distribute money to the counties and municipalities, to help pay for public safety workers (police, firefighters, etc.). It is also my understanding that when other sources of revenue fell away, the restoration of the fee to pre-Davis levels was pretty much automatically triggered (and I seem to reca – err, remember, Governor Davis taking a position earlier this year to the effect that he wanted to prevent the restoration taking effect).
Does Arnold believe he can reverse this action by executive order, by edict, or fiat or ukase (I’m pretty sure it can’t be done by the stroke of a pen)? Can he? Do most of his supporters who are cheering at the rallies where he symbolically drops a wrecking ball on an old car that represents the “Davis” car tax believe that he can undo the fee restoration by saying the word?
So educate me, somebody, if I’ve got it wrong about the genesis of the “tax,” and/or about the practical ability of a governor to “undo” it, once it has been duly inserted into the tax codes and fee schedules.
The gangbang was consensual, so I have no problem there. The serial groping is moer troubling. Some sort of frat boy attitude there.
But more troubling could be his ties to Ken Lay
A-yup on all counts. The vehicle license fee rebate was signed into law by former governor Pete Wilson ®, with the provision that it be revoked if the state found itself in a fiscal mess that needed the revenue. Most news reports of the “tripling car tax” have glossed over this, however.
Maybe not, but it’s good for getting the crowds to support him. He could easily get into office, find that the rebate can’t be reinstated, then blame it all on “bureaucrats and lawyers.”
It pains me to say this, but at this point I think the typical Schwarzenegger voter thinks he’ll be able to resolve California’s budget mess by simply walking into the State Capitol building and saying “Hasta la vista, deficit.” :rolleyes:
So what if he admires hitler? Weren’t Hitler’s speaking skills admirable? Yes he committed disgusting atrocities however his genius was undeniable.
As far as all these women claiming harassment go, we have a beautiful court system in this country that claims that we are innocent until proven guilty.
What sort of question is that ? That rather obviously depends on the specific facts of the relationship between the employer and employee. As long as there’s no blackmail involved, the concept is known under the term “consenting adults”.
Your cite that whatshername was coerced ?
Thanks, rjung. I still harbor a miniscule ray of hope that the subject won’t come up, but in the event that we have a Pubbie in Sacramento come Halloween, I wonder what his backup plan is?
I too was disappointed to see Uberroth drop out. If CA voters have to pick a non-politician, he at least possesses fine organizational skills. I’ve yet to see if Arnold can organize a piss-up in a brewery, much less a runaway economy.
All I can say is, I left CA at about the right time, I think.