Showing posts with label Arnold Schwarzenegger. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Arnold Schwarzenegger. Show all posts

Friday, December 21, 2012

Following NRA lead, Republicans now ban gun-toting action stars from party

Republican House Speaker John Boehner at press
conference ousting gun-toting action stars 
Republican House speaker John Boehner announced at a press conference today that the Republican Party would no longer accept campaign donations, acknowledge endorsements from,  promote as candidates, use as spokesmodels, or invite as guests on Fox News any celebrities who make movies or TV shows that glorify gun violence.

This followed quickly on the heels on NRA President Wayne LaPierre's press conference that said in response to the Sandy Hook shooting, "Guns don't kill people, TV shows and movies kill people."

"The evidence that media violence  on TV and in movies leads to violence in real life is overwhelming," Boehner said.  "Every single mass shooter that I know of has watched TV or been to a movie."

This represents a major policy shift for Republicans who have long touted the support of action stars like Clint Eastwood, Chuck Norris, Bruce Willis, Sylvester Stallone, Mel Gibson, and the late Charlton Heston, all of whom have high on screen body counts.  The GOP even successfully ran action star Arnold Schwarzenegger for governor of California, who won in spite of his inability to pronounce the name of the state.

"We can no longer even indirectly endorse their glorification of violence," Boehner said. "Nor will we accept the support of directors or producers of shows  and movies that glorify violence or accurately portray wars like the War on Terror and tactics within that war that our party voted for."

Boehner said the shunning will also extend to candidates and donors  who profit from the sale and distribution of violent movies like Mitt Romney, whose Marriot Hotel investments profited from cable and pay per view movies featuring violence and other objectionable content.

Boehner was quick to point out that the ban does not extend to all celebrities.

"There is still plenty of room in our party for David Spade, Drew Carey, Britney Spears, Jeff Foxworthy, that ball buster chick from Law & Order, and that funny gay guy who is still in the closet. He just brings me to tears.  And he makes me laugh too."

Boehner said the excommunicated action stars would be welcomed back into the GOP if they promised to make only non-violent movies in the future.

"There are several other kinds of movies besides shoot 'em ups," he said. "Chick flicks, coming of age movies, disease movies, movies about freaks, retards, and well-behaved minorities, comedies and romantic comedies."

"You know even Arnold Schwarzenegger has made comedies like Twins, Kindergarten Cop, Junior, and the Austrian version of The Birdcage.  I for one would love to see him star in a remake of The Notebook before another Terminator movie, or a remake of that wonderful movie about his home country, The Sound of Music."

Boehner was asked about the status of Republican celebrities who make violent movies that do not use guns as weapons like Sarah Michelle Gellar, who as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, drove stakes in the hearts of innumerable vampires.

"Staking, stabbing, strangling, bludgeoning, garroting, drowning, smothering, those are all acceptable family entertainment," Boehner responded. "But the minute someone picks up a gun for anything other than hunting, shooting a burglar, or a person of color who makes you feel uneasy, a moral line has been crossed.  So, yes, Buffy is perfectly acceptable."

Boehner was asked how the Republican Party decided this was the correct response to the tragedy in Connecticut.

"We did a lot of soul searching," he said, "and a little bit of math.  We get a lot more money from the NRA than celebrities."

NOTE: Within hours of the press conference, the Television Manufacturers association released a statement saying to their knowledge, no one has been killed by the new flat panel TV's but only by the older, heavier tube sets that crushed some people. They added that those who still have tube TV's can get an excellent price on a flat panel model this holiday season.

Friday, May 29, 2009

Arnold Schwarzenegger, be our hero again--leave the GOP

click pic to see flick:



I don't know if he will listen, but it's worth a shot:

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger
State Capitol Building
Sacramento, CA 95814

Gov. Schwarzenegger,

I am a community college instructor, and based on the previous round of budget negotiations, I believe you want to limit the harm caused by any budget cuts.

To truly do that though, you need to take a bold step: sever your ties with the Republican party so you will be free to modestly increase taxes on the wealthy, large retail corporations, extraction industries, and other large businesses that cannot threaten to pull up stakes and go elsewhere as factories can. As a very wealthy person yourself, you know that if your taxes went up say 5%, you would not have to sell one house, pull your kids out of private school, or even give up a Hummer. At worst, some future descendant of yours will have to get a job a year or two sooner instead of coasting on the fruits of your labor.

The Republican Party has not appreciated the fact that you are the governor of a mostly Democratic state and therefore are limited in how radically you can apply their tax and budget priorities.

By contrast, as a Democrat, you would have the overwhelming majority of the legislature behind you, and just as you used your early popularity to cut the budget, you could use your renewed popularity as a Democrat to get California out of the race to be the new Mississippi, and make it an example for other states to aspire to imitate again.

More importantly, you can see and probably have heard from far more people than just me the serious damage deep budget cuts will cause this state, making it more difficult for middle class kids to get a good K-12 and college education, and possibly costing some of the poor their lives because of cuts in medical care.

You still have a chance to be California’s hero. But to do that, you have to admit that the party that brought you to power is morally bankrupt and a danger to most Californians.

Sincerely,





Professor Smartass



Sunday, May 24, 2009

2 Questions for Governor Schwarzenegger



Digg Dialogg is taking questions from the public that California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger will answer on CNN Tuesday.

Here's my two.

Vote them up on Digg if you like them(with linked first line of each question):

  • Arnold, why are you and your rich friends such crybabies about paying your taxes?If your taxes went up say 5%, how would your lifestyle change at all? Would you have to sell a home or a hummer or pull your kids out of private school? Why are you so willing to make cuts to education and social programs that will hurt average Californians, but not raise taxes on wealthy individuals and big businesses who would not be hurt at all by paying more?
Those are pretty simple, but I doubt that he could answer either honestly.

Tuesday, September 11, 2007

A California Democrat says no to corporate footsy on health insurance reform


State Senator Sheila Kuehl represents me, and does so in a far more literal sense than anyone else I vote for, even Henry Waxman.

Here she says what few Democrats at the national level have the guts to: that healthcare reform that includes the insurance industry is doomed to fail because THEY ARE THE PROBLEM.

I wish she had run for governor and kicked Arnold's bikini-waxed bunghole out of Sacramento.

She would be a good replacement for DINO Feinstein in the Senate too.

This starts a little polite, but after the first 3-4 paragraphs, the gloves come off.

It would be nice if all elected officials represented us like this instead of us having to bombard them with a barrage of emails and calls to get them to make a token effort at doing the right thing before caving in to corporate interests.

Senate Floor Statement from Senator Sheila Kuehl

Re: Assembly Bill 8

9/10/07

Mr. President and Colleagues: As you know, I have been working to secure real healthcare reform in California for a number of years now. Along with my continuing authorship of SB 840, the single payer universal health care bill, I’ve also actively participated with other authors trying to craft incremental attempts to reform the health insurance market.

This year, as the chair of the Senate Health Committee, I’ve seen my mission as making certain that everything got appropriately vetted and discussed, while at the same time, continuing to build support for 840.

Activists, supporters, organizations, and the panoply of more than 700 organizations, those that the press refers to as the "grassroots", have done a magnificent job in building support for single payer.

This year, as I watched leadership and the administration try to craft a plan different from SB 840, an alternative health reform plan that might expand coverage this year, while preserving the role of insurance companies, the experience taught me why health reform has actually been so difficult to do over the past few years, and why every proposed solution just seems to bring out new and often even bigger problems.

The attempts fail because, until we squarely face the fact that premiums imposed by the insurance companies are rising 3-4 times faster than wages every year, all the reforms that keep those insurance companies firmly in place are doomed to failure. The same is true of AB 8, which we are considering today.

As currently drafted, it doesn’t pencil out in terms of money, it doesn’t pencil out in terms of who’s paying what, and, frankly, it definitely doesn’t pencil out for consumers.

Our failing health care system has often been compared to the Titanic, and I’ve said in the past that attempts at reform are nothing but attempts to rearrange the deck chairs. AB 8, for a change, is actually trying to turn the boat. But some of you may know that, in fact, had the Titanic faced the iceberg head on, it would have survived, at least long enough to save most of its passengers. Turning the ship only partially was actually its downfall. It’s clear to me that that is also the problem with AB 8.

Our health insurance company driven system has responded to runaway health care spending by dismantling the entire system. The only questions they ask are "How many people can we turn away; how many of our clients can we kick out, how many people can we underinsure?" Rather than working to contain spending in a patient centered manner, they’ve created huge profits for themselves by raising premiums, cutting benefits, and limiting access in countless ways
.

So the governor was quite correct to say "Let’s have a year of health reform." Unfortunately, however, it became more of a Year of Magical Thinking, with apologies to Joan Didion for stealing her title. All the Governor has really done is to say, "I am sure we can solve this in nine months. Let’s hurry up and do it".

To the credit of the authors of AB 8, they have worked and worked to try to do a good bill within the context of keeping the insurance companies in place.

They have said we will cap what employers have to pay and we will cap what employees have to pay. What remains uncapped are the premiums that the companies can charge for all this reform.

We have been told there is no individual mandate in this bill, but that is incorrect. If an employer pays into the pool, as their choice of how to spend their 7.5% of payroll contribution, then their employees must buy insurance from the pool. Only if the healthcare costs of those same employees would exceed 5% of their gross income can these employees be let out of the requirement to buy it, and what happens then? They are simply either uninsured or they can "choose" to pay the inflated premiums that might be heaped on them. For those employees whose employer puts 7.5% of payroll into insurance for his or her own employees, those employees are then required to"take up" the employer’s insurance offer.

And again, if "accepting" the employer’s insurance plan will cost them more than 5% of their wages, they don’t have to take up the offer which means they’re not going to be insured either if they can’t afford the higher premiums.

The bill has come a long way, even since it went through the health committee, and I can understand why many of the unions are now in support of the bill because of the affordability provisions added to the bill.

But there are still also major problems with the coverage provisions. Your employer might offer you a plan that costs you a little bit less than 5 % of your gross income for the year, and you would have to buy it, but it might not cover what you need. It might be a minimal plan, a catastrophic plan. It might not have the drugs that you need for the condition you have - for cancer, for AIDS, etc. As we’ve seen in the last few months, it might not even cover pregnancy.

AB 8 also has an entirely separate insurance pool for an undefined group of people with "serious" conditions. We don’t know if that’s chronic conditions, we don’t know who will be in that pool. And frankly there’s no protection for them in terms of what they might have to pay.

So I see a number of real flaws in this much improved bill.

I continue to believe that the movement that’s been building for single payer, a movement that has seen support for a single payer universal healthcare system more than double over the last six months alone, will continue to build in ’08 in‘09 in 2010. Then, with a new governor, perhaps there might finally be a chance to get a signature on the bill that is actually the best solution for businesses, for employees, and for all the people in California. Because if you take the insurance companies out of the system, and they are the only entity that adds no value at all to the provision of healthcare, the overall costs for healthcare in California drop $19 billion in the first year alone, simply because we’re finally not paying their inflated overhead and profit.

So I am a no vote on this bill.

I praise those who have been working on this bill for trying. But I encourage those who believe this bill is deeply flawed to join me in voting no.

I know that my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have problems different from my own and will not vote for it. For those who will vote for it on my side, I understand you are voting your hopes. Many of you also have told me you know that 840 is the only real solution.

So I’m also asking you to stay with me on SB 840; it’s not going to the Governor for a veto. Next year we’ll continue to develop it, hold it up as the right standard for California, and work with everyone we can, until the day when we understand that facing the iceberg head on is the only way we are going to save everyone on the ship.

For more, see Health Care for All—California


Sunday, October 29, 2006

PHOTOSHOP: Arnold Schwarzenegger's resume

While the guy running against Arnold here in CA is doing the best he can, some of the big dogs in the Democratic Party (with the exception of Kerry, Boxer, Dean, and a few others) seem content to let the terminator run loose until '08.

When he 'won' last time, a quarter of the instructors at one of the community colleges where I teach were fired, and tuition doubled.

I'd say Arnold is nearly as big a threat America and the Democratic Party as the GOP Congress. But I guess they'll figure that out the same way they did when they forgave and forgot Iran Contra, the October Surprise, election 2000 & 2004, and...



click to see full sized


Sources:

www.arnoldexposed.com

arnoldwatch.org

www.rotten.com/library/bio/entertainers/actors/arnold-sch...


CA governor Arnold Schwarzenegger
CA governor
california governor

Wednesday, April 20, 2005

HEAD EDITOR OF LA TIMES REPLIES

Mr. Carroll,

Thank you for taking the time to reply.

As I mentioned in an earlier letter I mailed to you, I would like to know why you haven't covered the Bush administration's plan to privatize and sell off, essentially steal, Iraq's oil, and the subsequent revision of that policy.

You guys did a great series recently on corruption in reconstruction contracting, which wastes a lot of tax payer dollars, but this privatization scheme probably contributed directly to the insurgency and was why the Bush administration made no plans to pull out and in fact is constructing over a dozen major military installations there.

This is the very heart of the story in Iraq, and Americans need to hear to decide knowledgeably whether to support what our government is doing in our name.

To the degree that the media fell for and printed uncritically the administration's lies about why they went to war in Iraq, you have an obligation to print the real story.

Professor Smartass


__________________________________________

On Apr 19, 2005, at 4:08 PM, Carroll, John - LA Times wrote:

Thanks for the thoughts. I attended the Murdoch talk in Washington and found it interesting. As for our "info-tainment" strategy, I'm not sure what you're talking about. The front of our paper is packed with serious news from all over the world. Calendar does cover entertainment, but in a sophisticated way -- could you imagine a paper based in Los Angeles not doing so? Regarding our fear of scaring away advertisers: We just lost GM because of a Dan Neil column, which we have no intention of correcting or retracting. And no, we don't care about Rush Limbaugh. I agree with your general sentiments about what a newspaper should do, but I believe the L.A. Times is doing them as well as any paper in the country. Yours truly, John Carroll


[Carroll, John - LA Times]





-----Original Message-----

From: Professor Smartass
Sent: Thursday, April 14, 2005 10:19 AM
To: John.Carroll@latimes.com
Subject: Rupert Murdoch on why newspapers are dying (not why you think)

Rupert Murdoch says 18-34 year olds don't find the news media trustworthy OR entertaining, which means you are not only failing at your reason for existence, providing news, but also at your misguided info-tainment strategy.

Two of the successful British internet news sources he mentions, the BBC and the Guardian, differ markedly from their American counterparts in reporting the news regardless of whose ox is gored in the case of the BBC, and printing opinion pieces that are factual, written by the real players (not think tank PR hacks) and question the essence of the policy of those in power.

Real news and real, reasoned dissent.

I would buy a newspaper for that, and trust that I would hear about what's on Bush's iPod and what kind of bikini wax Arnold Schwarzenegger uses on his nipples on Entertainment Tonight.

I know you guys are in a bind; you don't want to scare away advertisers or get that flood of angry letters from toothless, hillbilly Rush Limbaugh fans and that nasty call from Karl Rove, but timidity makes you bland and bland doesn't sell.

You should make it your goal to get those angry letters and consider them a gauge of your success as long as your story is accurate and serves no interests other than giving the public NEWS they actually need to know for democracy to function.


KEY EXCERPTS:

He said consumers wanted "control over the media, instead of being controlled by it", pointing to the proliferation of website diaries known as "blogs" and message boards.

And newspaper editors simply cannot afford to ignore this, he said, or to look down on readers or ignore what they actually wanted.

He said consumers between the ages of 18-34 were increasingly using the web as their medium of choice for news and neglected more traditional media.

Young people's attitudes towards newspapers were "especially alarming", he said. "Only 9% describe us as trustworthy, a scant 8% find us useful, and only 4% of respondents think we're entertaining."

He described the shift in attitudes as "a revolution in the way young people are accessing news".

"They don't want to rely on the morning paper for their up-to-date information. They don't want to rely on a God-like figure from above to tell them what's important. And to carry the religion analogy a bit further, they certainly don't want news presented as gospel."

Mr Murdoch, who recently held a summit with his newspaper bosses about forging a new internet strategy, said the industry had "sat by and watched" as circulations had fallen over the past 40 years, complacent because of its historic monopoly on the news business.

A rise in population had masked a relative decline in the TV age, he said, while in the 1990s profitability had held up in spite of circulations falling, further lulling the industry into a false sense of security.

"But those days are gone," he warned. "The trends are against us...so unless we awaken to these changes, which are quite different to those of five or six years ago, we will, as an industry, be relegated to the status of also-rans."

Now, however, the Sun is, along with the Guardian and the BBC, one of the top 10 news websites in the UK but the online operations of the Times and Telegraph, which have not received the same investment, are not ranked in the top tier.

FULL TEXT:

http://media.guardian.co.uk/site/story/0,14173,1459697,00.html



Tuesday, March 29, 2005

BBC's Greg Palast gives me a message for LA Times editor on Arnold/Enron news blackout

On Mar 19, 2005, at 10:57 PM Professor Smartass wrote:

Greg,

I recently wrote a letter to the LA Times asking why they haven't been more aggressive in covering Arnold's relationship to Enron and the other energy scammers, and attached the project censored coverage of your story. The editor disputed some of the basic facts about Cruz Bustamante even filing a lawsuit, and Arnold having the ability to make it go away.

You can see the LA Times letter and my original letter at http://professorsmartass.blogspot.com/

-- Professor Smartass


______________________________________


From: contact@gregpalast.com

Subject: Re: LA Times disputes Arnold/Enron story
Date: March 29, 2005 12:54:51 PM PST

Hi Professor Smartass,
Greg has written a response which he would you to post or sent to this LA Times guy.
Thanks for making us aware of it.
Kindest regards,
LENI

Here's Greg's comment:


The LA Times editor misreads my exposé on your governor's undermining of the legal action against Enron and other power pirates (or, typical of editors, he commented without reading it).

I'm not surprised. This is a highly complex matter involving regulatory financial accounting and the nexus of regulatory and tort law. It is not the expertise one normally finds in a typical newsroom where almost all matter printed comes from simplified press releases and official statements.

While best known for my TV and popular writings, I am, in another life, an expert on electricity finances and law, author of a seminal work in the area, Democracy and Regulation, introduced by California Public Utilities Commissioner Carl Wood, based on my lectures at the Department of Applied Economics at Cambridge University, England, and the University of Sao Paolo.

The Times editor says his reporters have reviewed much energy-related "stuff" -- and could not find these stories. Indeed, the Times missed the entire Enron story until they could re-print the discoveries of the Wall Street Journal.

I sympathize with the Times limitations in this area; which is why it may be unfair that my team won a journalism award for this story from California State University and not the Times.

As one newspaper wrote in an embarrassingly glowing profile of my reporting, "Palast's ability to make sense of stacks of dense financial data earned him a reputation for doggedness (he holds an MBA from the University of Chicago)."

It was in the LA Times.

Greg Palast
Author, "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy." View Palast's reports for BBC TV at www.GregPalast.com









Wednesday, March 23, 2005

final rounds of Arnold/Enron debate with LA Times editor

David.Lauter@latimes.com
RE: Your defense of Arnold/Enron coverage
Date: March 21, 2005 3:14:50 PM PST

Re Bustamante's suit: He sued as an individual, not on behalf of the state, so there's not much that Schwarzenegger could do to settle the case, whether he wants to or not. (There also may not be much to come of the suit since it's not on behalf of the state.) Lockyer has a number of proceedings in which he's been pursuing the energy companies and has actually gotten some large settlements. No one's likely to get much money out of Enron since it's bankrupt.

Re the broader issue: You can only connect the dots, as you put it, if there's actual evidence. We've had a number of reporters scrub through all sorts of energy-related stuff several times, and we've published what we thought was provable.


_____________________________________________

Professor Smartass
Re: Your defense of Arnold/Enron coverage
Date: March 21, 2005 5:12:16 PM PST

Enron was just one of the named defendants in the suit. I talked to Bustamante's office today, and they said the suits are still in play. It sounds like you aren't too familiar with them, so I'm attaching the original complaints.

Enron was just one of the named defendants in the suit. I talked to Bustamante's office today, and they said the suits are still in play. It sounds like you aren't too familiar with them, so I'm attaching the original complaints.

_____________________________________________

David.Lauter@latimes.com
RE: Your defense of Arnold/Enron coverage
Date: March 21, 2005 5:39:04 PM PST

Thanks. I am familiar with the suits.








Monday, March 21, 2005

Arguing with LA Times editor about Arnold/Enron story



March 21, 2005

David Lauter
Deputy Editor/Daily
Los Angeles Times
202 W. 1st St.
Los Angeles, CA 90012

Dear Mr. Lauter,

Thank you for your quick response.

Since you are a professional journalist, I would expect you would know more about this stuff than I would.


But I was unclear on a couple of things from your response. By saying that it is the attorney general’s prerogative to file lawsuits on behalf of the state, does that mean that there is no suit filed by Cruz Bustamante on behalf of utility customers, as covered by the LA Times on page A21, May 3, 2001? To your credit, you did cover that story, but it was buried on page A21, even though the blackouts were front page news for those of us affected by it. I was giving a college final when a blackout occurred and had to decide between canceling it or having my students huddle under one dim emergency light to finish their essays.

You said you covered this issue prominently, but a search of the archives for Schwarzenegger and Ken Lay or Kenneth Lay turned up a handful of incidental mentions in campaign notebook articles, usually when another candidate or protestor mentioned it, and to their credit, in the columns of Steve Lopez and Patt Morrison.

Further, your Jun 30, 2004 story on page C1 seems to confirm what Greg Palast of the BBC reported the summer before: that Arnold would support the weaker FERC settlement rather than the civil suit filed by Bustamante. The article could have connected the dots to explain why a governor so fixated on slashing our budget wouldn’t be interested in recouping as much as possibly of money stolen from us.

To the Times credit, you have covered Arnold’s push to further deregulate electricity, but again, this was buried in the California section of the paper even though the consequences, further rate hikes and blackouts, would be front page news to most Californians. A scan of recent Arnold front page stories includes his visit to the La Conchita landslide, his proposal for a low budget bridge in San Francisco, and his proposals regarding Indian gaming. Are these stories really more important than our governor trying to help the criminals who screwed us out of billions of dollars and who turned out our lights?

You are right that the meeting with Ken Lay by itself might not mean much, but Arnold got substantial aid from President Bush, not the least of which was advice from Karl Rove, staff loaned from Jeb Bush, and a visit from the President to Gray Davis to say he WOULD NOT intervene to cap electricity prices. At the time, Ken Lay was still the lifetime top donor to George W. Bush (he may still be). It’s not exactly a conspiracy theory to connect dots that big, and if the press was taking it’s watchdog function seriously, Arnold should have at least had to give a good explanation why all those things lined up in his favor without this being racketeering before the election.

You did this kind of work on Arnold’s sexual harassment problems. You didn’t just mention a case as it came up, but did the research to connect the dots. That’s all I’m asking. Connect the dots on the front page of the LA Times far enough before Arnold runs for re-election that information becomes part of the public debate.

Given that television news has become a embarrassment focused on celebrities and murder cases, and the free ride Arnold gets on right wing talk radio, where he is fawned over and unlikely to get a tough question, you have an even greater obligation to give the voters of California the news they need to make an informed decision because they aren’t getting it from any other local media.