Bob Morris @ Oct 2nd 2003 23:59 - Category: Unfiled ;
Killing me softly with his song
A judge Thursday barred a rock band from holding an onstage suicide that its leader vows will occur this weekend during a performance to be broadcast over the Internet.
Bob Morris @ Oct 2nd 2003 23:58 - Category: Unfiled ;
Bailey Blue’s non-apology for rowdy past
Miss Monica had an interview yesterday with Bailey Blue, the only feline running for Governor in the recall. Bailey mocks those who wish he would apologize for past transgressions. Be aware Miss Monica is most emphatically not exaggerating Bailey’s past actions.
Bob Morris @ Oct 2nd 2003 20:26 - Category: Unfiled ;
Arnold praised Hitler in book proposal
From the Drudge Report, front page (Yes, the Drudge Report!)
An unearthed book proposal by Pumping Iron’s director George Butler is set throw the California recall race in to new levels of complete chaos.
The book proposal quotes Arnold Schwarzenegger naming monster Adolf Hitler as a hero!
ABC News, which broadcast the remarks on Thursday, said they were contained in an unpublished book proposal with quotes from what it calls a “verbatim transcript” of the interview.
Asked about his heroes, the young Schwarzenegger, in 1975, was quoted as saying; “I admired Hitler, for instance, because he came from being a little man with almost no formal education, up to power.
“I admire him for being such a good public speaker and for what he did with it.”
The actor was quoted as saying he wished he could experience being ..”like Hitler in the Nuremberg stadium and have all those people scream at you and just being total agreement whatever you say.”
Asked by ABC News to comment on the old remarks, Schwarzenegger said: “I cannot remember any of these. All I can tell you is that I despise everything Hitler stood for. I despise everything the Nazis stood for … everything the Third Reich stood for.”
The author of the book proposal told ABCNEWS that the quotes needed to be seen in context of Schwarzenegger’s admiration of powerful men.
The book proposal contains other stunning passages, which ABCNEWS is preparing to reveal.
Mercy, why just yesterday Arnold was rashly giving speeches saying what his first 100 days in office would be like. What a difference a day makes. Thank you Code Pink, thank you Oppo research. Keep it up. Let’s reduce him to smoking rubble.
Bob Morris @ Oct 2nd 2003 10:01 - Category: Unfiled ;
“Women say Schwarzenegger groped, humiliated them”
This story is front page LA Times, above the fold.
PoliZeros predicted this would happen, as campaigns always wait until the end to launch the really bruising attacks. Two reasons; 1) everyone is paying attention, 2) the target has less time to respond.
Update:
From the original LA Times article quoted above
Schwarzenegger’s campaign spokesman, Sean Walsh, said the candidate has not engaged in improper conduct toward women. He said such allegations are part of an escalating political attack on Schwarzenegger as the recall election approaches.
Now, no doubt faced with overwhelming evidence that he can’t lie or evade his way through, Arnold apologizes, sort of.
Arnold acknowledges `offensive’ behavior
Arnold Schwarzenegger apologized today for “behaving badly sometimes,” responding to allegations that he had touched six women sexually without their consent in incidents over the past decade, a stunning statement from the front-runner just five days before the historic recall election and on the same day news reports quoted six women who said the actor had touched them sexually without their consent.
“Offensive behavior”? If it happened today, he’d be arrested. We’re talking behavior that is far more than just “offensive.”
What a sleazy piece of shit.
Bob Morris @ Oct 2nd 2003 00:15 - Category: Unfiled ;
Mike Davis on the recall
Leftie author Mike Davis, author of several books about L.A., weighs in on the recall.
Liberal commentators have attacked the movie star for his singular lack of articulate positions on decisive issues. But the criticism is unfair.
The Terminator, in fact, has a long history of ideological commitment which, for tactical reasons, his campaign-minders want to downplay. Most striking has been his extensive involvement in the crusades to deny health care and education to undocumented immigrants, and to make English the exclusive official language.
Davis is one of the few commentators to make this point. Arnold isn’t even slightly moderate. Remember Bush and “compassionate conservatism”? Schwarzenegger is using the same ploy.
The poor boy from the Alpine boonies was a key endorser of anti-immigrant Proposition 187 in 1994 and, even more sinisterly, is a longtime board member of US English, a national organization with notorious ties to men in white hoods.
On ex-Governor Pete Wilson, who is running Arnold’s campaign.
But it would be a mistake, in any case, to think that Arnie is the real star of his latest and most lavish adventure. As all the punters in Sacramento have pointed out, the real title should be Return from the Grave: Wilson Part Three. The ex-governor is the spectre haunting the recall.
Mexico, as depicted in a notorious Wilson campaign ad (”They’re coming!”), is invading Anglo-California and imposing huge burdens of taxes, crime and pollution upon its honest burghers. The true wretched of the Earth are long-suffering, overtaxed white guys in golf carts. Reason dies screaming in the face of such nonsense, but it is peddled 24 hours a day by the pitbull talk show hosts who dominate Californian AM radio and, increasingly, commercial television.
And that’s what Schwarzenegger the Governator will bring. Mindless racist attacks scapegoating the poorest and most defenseless as the Cause of All Trouble. However, three months of Arnold and ANSWER marches will probably quadruple in size. Dubya has been our best organizer so far, maybe Arnold can help build the Leftie ranks too.
And please, hand me a hankie, as I’m choked up over the plight of aging white men in golf carts.
It has been easy for many Democrats to dismiss incumbent Gray Davis as a singularly unfortunate choice — a charisma-less robot with an open palm who let the state be pillaged by Enron during the phoney energy crisis three years ago. But, again in fairness, Davis exemplifies precisely those qualities — pro-corporate, politically centrist and hard law and order — which the Democratic Leadership Council has so long recommended as the salvation of the Democratic Party.
Nor is his disintegration unique. Just look at the other “moderate” Democrats dead in the starting blocks of the presidential primary.
Another excellent point. Gray Davis isn’t an aberration from the Democratic Party, he is the logical conclusion of their years of craven collapse to the Right, of spitting in the face of base, of being mini-Me Republicans. And now the two leading Democrats for 2004, Dean and Clark, are in front precisely because they are talking like actual Democrats and are ignoring the DLC and their ineffective “centrist” sell-out blather.
This is why the labour wing of the Californian Democrats should have embraced the opportunity of the recall to push forward one of their own. Yet the State Federation of Labour, and almost no-one else, remained pathetically loyal to Davis and allowed his cunning and unprincipled lieutenant governor, Cruz Bustamante, to run off with the party endorsement.
Yet another example of the bumbling of the California Democratic Party. They put all their eggs in the Gray Davis basket and did nothing to field a strong candidate. What a bunch of dimbulbs.
Bustamante may be preferable to Wilson’s Trojan horse Schwarzenegger, but the difference is probably less than most Democrat voters imagine.
Regardless of the outcome in October, the recall battle has already clarified some of the new terrain of Californian politics. Republicans, on their side, have gained tremendous confidence in their ability to thwart any future legislative effort toward tax reform or economic justice. Liberal Democrats, on the other, have had their faces rubbed in the moral rot of their party.
This is a party so openly venal, lacking in conviction, out of touch, and lame it can’t even field a candidate capable of beating a testosterone-addled actor with no political experience. The California Democratic Party is almost comical in its ineptitude.
Bob Morris @ Oct 2nd 2003 00:06 - Category: Unfiled ;
The start of a peace march
Given my previous comments on the End the Occupation march and rally on Sunday in Hollywood, you might think we are calm cool and collected as the march is about to begin.
Well… no. A friend who watched the march get underway said he thought it looked like complete chaos. Organizers running around frantically, shouting at each other. “Who took my bullhorn”. “Is that a counter demo down the street?” “Where’s the rope, I need more rope”. “Are the police ready”? Much apparent chaos, indeed.
It’s actually more organized than that! However, a whole lot of stuff needs to be done very quickly in the 2-3 minutes before a march begins. The lead ropes have to be in place as well as a rope to keep photographers from getting to close to the main banner. Monitors, National Lawyers Guild, celebrities holding the main banner, volunteers on the ropes, they all need to be in place. A march is an organic thing with a pace of its own. When it wants to start, it will, and you’d best be ready.
There is no one person in charge. It’s a network. No head. Lots of nodes. And when the march starts it all comes together and functions coherently in what has been called a “hive mind” or as Howard Rheingold puts it, “Smart mobs“. He’s written a book on the topic and his blog of the same name is always fascinating.
Bob Morris @ Oct 2nd 2003 00:03 - Category: Unfiled ;
The 3rd Annual Green Reel Film Festival
Green Reel happens this weekend in Hollywood! Dozens of excellent films - shorts, animation, documentaries. Don’t miss it!
The Green Reel Film Festival is the antidote to the constant beating of war-drums we are faced with every day in America, from our leaders and especially in our media. The Green Reel is Democracy in action: a true forum for ideas, and an opportunity for the otherwise stifled voices of progressive filmmakers from across the country and around the world to get their message across.
Bob Morris @ Oct 2nd 2003 00:02 - Category: Unfiled ;
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