"Distraction Action": Arnold Hoisted on His Own Petard

- By Ian Ransom
*
Fine, I’ll admit it. My state (California) is a geographical miracle, a potent paradise of panoramic splendor, an oasis of almost outlandish opportunity, and a bedazzling beacon of American “Be All You Can Be” bravura.

It is also a befuddled frontier of fiscal fecklessness managed—-literally—-by boobs.

Yes, boobs.

Silicone and saline-inflated ones from San Luis Obispo south to San Diego (with a particularly critical-mass concentration in the Greater Los Angeles Area). Wine-saturated, sushi-stuffed and self-righteous “boobs-of-a-different-sort” from Paso Robles north to Sacramento.

Throughout the entire expanse, left-leaning hearts hemorrhage pools of vain ideological blood in perfect time to the arrhythmic beat of government crowbars atop the state’s dwindling coffers. Barbara Boxer bares Starbucks-stained fangs at military officials and brays her demands for titular homage. Sean Penn idly picks 500 thread-count lint from his belly-button and ponders new ways to render obsequies to Marxist dictators. A coven of Code Pinkies in San Francisco gathers 'round a Sarah Palin voodoo-doll, thankfully unable to lift their pin-sticking claws due to the onset of vegan anemia and misdirected ennui.

Meanwhile, Arnold the Governator observes it all from his terrifying, Terminating peak. He fiddles atop a perilous pedestal while the entire state continues its inexorable slide into the waiting Pacific—-crumbling away, though not due to any number of potentially predictable environmental disasters. Indeed, the power and possibility of California collapses under the mammoth weight of its own political subsistence.

In California, government is the “environmental disaster.”

Faced with his own, earnest failure to steer the world’s fourth largest economy in anything remotely resembling a “direction,” Schwarzenegger now opts, instead, to engage in the disturbingly familiar politics of deflection and distraction—-telltale signs of a pining Beltway bombast...signs of his own ruin. Arnold has attempted to belittle Palin, one of the nation’s most successful and energy-savvy governors and (whether he likes it or not) the de facto leader of his stated Party’s conservative movement. Yet, like many RINOs before, Schwarzenegger has been so utterly whipped by the vast liberal dismantling of his own back-yard that he’s starting to embrace bits of the enemy's doomed mythology! In the delirium, he besmirches a fellow leader on an ostensibly energy-related issue—-an issue concerning which she has far more first-hand knowledge and proven experience.

It's a sad day for California Republicans when Arnold slights Sarah, dear friends. Then again, if you were here, you'd realize that there are a lot of sad days to go around. More than anyone in this great state ought to endure, but perhaps more deserved here than anywhere else, due to rampant political idiocy. In this respect, Arnold Schwarzenegger has unquestionably hoisted himself on his own petard. By choosing such a silly, disingenuous, and specific stance against Sarah Palin on the global warming hoax, he has showcased his true agenda quite clearly in the great Wheat-From-the-Chaff separation game. To those of us who live in California and embrace common sense conservatism, this comes as no surprise.

Arnold certainly can’t preoccupy himself with any success of his own these days. Perhaps a jealous preoccupation with someone else’s success is—-amid his sinking political landscape—-the next best thing.

- Ian

Ian Ransom is the editor of The Ian Ransom Notes