What the Heck Happened to Arnold Schwarzenegger?
Book Description
Release Date: October 1, 2012
THE GREATEST IMMIGRANT SUCCESS STORY OF OUR TIMEHis story is unique, and uniquely entertaining, and he tells it brilliantly in these pages.
He was born in a year of famine, in a small Austrian town, the son of an austere police chief. He dreamed of moving to America to become a bodybuilding champion and a movie star.
By the age of twenty-one, he was living in Los Angeles and had been crowned Mr. Universe.
Within five years, he had learned English and become the greatest bodybuilder in the world.
Within ten years, he had earned his college degree and was a millionaire from his business enterprises in real estate, landscaping, and bodybuilding. He was also the winner of a Golden Globe Award for his debut as a dramatic actor in Stay Hungry.
Within twenty years, he was the world’s biggest movie star, the husband of Maria Shriver, and an emerging Republican leader who was part of the Kennedy family.
Thirty-six years after coming to America, the man once known by fellow bodybuilders as the Austrian Oak was elected governor of California, the seventh largest economy in the world.
He led the state through a budget crisis, natural disasters, and political turmoil, working across party lines for a better environment, election reforms, and bipartisan solutions.
With Maria Shriver, he raised four fantastic children. In the wake of a scandal he brought upon himself, he tried to keep his family together.
Until now, he has never told the full story of his life, in his own voice.
Here is Arnold, with total recall.
Comments from PJ Lifestyle frequent commenter Ari:
I bought his biography for _____ for Christmas, and then I spent two days reading it from cover to cover? What happened?
He’s got this life: 2/3 of this book is poor kid from the sticks learns business and makes his way in the world. The last 1/3, he becomes governor and literally forgets every lesson he learned from his own experience and reading.
What happened? Really? I mean, he has bits in the last 1/3 that completely contradict what he lived through— AND NOTICED!– in the first 2/3. What happened?
He starts a bricklaying business, for $3.75 registration fee, with his immigrant buddy, because the union hall doesn’t have enough work. He works on movies in non- union nations. He chides Sargent Shriver for not relying on the free market to sort out milk prices. He gets elected………….and turns into a Mexican President- what can I build using public moneys that is a monument to MEEEEEE? He doesn’t connect rolling black-outs and skyrocketing energy prices to his policies, at all. Policies like, breaking down dams, requiring fuel mixes……….he gets upset when people question the content of his production- the violence in his movies- but he questions the production of someone else’s material- car engines. If he wants great green cars, why not open a company that makes green cars? He makes all sorts of companies to provide the things that people really want- sweat-stained weightbelts, is the gooniest example I can think of.
Conan is made for half the price, in Spain, than California, with union-workers. It’s even more half-price than Italy, with union workers.
He even cooks up an early Obamacare.
And, second, do the Kennedys viscerally hate all Americans? They keep reverting to ” You all killed my relatives.” Like, Maria having panic attacks when Arnold wants to get into politics. She also has this really strong divide between family and friends ( all her friends are high-achievers- Oprah Winfrey or her producer) and the servants, which, I think is everybody else in America. Do they really hate and despise us? We keep not electing them, Or maybe we elect them some places,
And what is with the slumming with Special Olympics and extraordinarily poor people? Is this some ” God Bless You, Mr Rosewater” moment? They might care, but they really need people who are entirely obviously never, ever going to compete with them in any fashion? I mean, there isn’t a single middle-class American in contact with the entire clan. Not one.
He could have proposed the system that gave him his first freedom: an apprenticeship while in high school: and California would be nearly 8 years into this, with extraordinarily trained young workers. That would be prosperous like crazy. Like, seriously, Summer School? The movie? Has an indifferent teacher seeking tenure, slow students, all that. But two of the students are special effects brilliant kids. Why aren’t they in an apprenticeship program? Why aren’t there apprentice-ships for building computers? or building buildings? or machining solar panels? or stores? or cooking?
Fredericksburg, a city in Texas, was settled by Germans. It has a system like that. Kids graduate ready to take the Medical Assistant licensing exam, or a hair-dressing exam, or become professional cowboys. They’ve already managed stock. I met one in Austin. He was married, with a kid by age 20. Not, poor, living on welfare, clueless, but actually working on a ranch, while his wife taught dance classes, which is what she had studied in school. Their parents, on both sides, approved. He had been very business-like about getting out of high school. He didn’t like one class, and rather than drop-out, he worked with the teacher and counselor to pass. He knew he had a life waiting for him. He was working at Michael’s, the craft store, the same Christmas I worked. His girlfriend, too. He got a friend hired, the kid didn’t show up, he called him and bawled him out for making him look bad. That’s what people want, right?
What happened?
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The same thing happened to him that happens to every honest, gung-ho ready to go, representative that we send to D.C. It’s a disease, and apparently it’s quite contagious.
Ahnuld was already showing the danger signs before he sought office. Remember his advocacy of extravagant state-run afterschool programs? However, he did seem to hit the ground in Sacramento on his feet and running in the right general direction. Unfortunately, he overreached for too much, too quick, with his initiatives and got his fingers burnt by the Cali unions. Instead of adjusting his aim, learning how to make the case for his reforms and laying the groundwork for a more patient, intelligent legislative strategy, he simply backed off and went hard left and it was all over.
In retrospect, I have no difficulty in believing that wife Maria (“Skeletor”) Shriver found out about the love child early on and from then on he was a sock puppet with the Kennedy hand up his bum. Only when it was clear his political career had petered out and he had become a pathetic caricature of his former self did he reveal the secret and even then he spent mucho dinero to have the housekeeper give interviews to claim that Maria only recently found out.
I still think back to his second big-screen performance in Bob Rafelson’s “Stay Hungry”…still his best, I think. In that he’s “Joe Santo” a shrewd, serene and ruthlessly determined young bodybuilder who never takes his eye off the ball and has charming, cold-blooded way with the ladies. His womanizing history was well-known to all before he ran for office and the Dems tried to make hay out of it but they got nowhere with it. Of course, we should have known better.
bribery? force? corruption? fear?
I mean, he fears unions b/c he won’t get a second term? Or, he fears unions b/c they are threatening him- like a union boss threatened to throw acid in Ronald Reagan’s face? Or, he really wanted to be liked, like he was with the movies?
Or, the kid. Mariah is more upset about the kid or the affair? It sounds like there were affairs all over the place while they were dating. She wasn’t living with him while he was governor. Was it Cali divorce laws- I don’t want to lose half my fortune? I’ll do what your mother says to do, legislatively?
To me, it sounds like the kid and the affair are a get-out-of-jail free card for Mariah. She grows up and moves west, to get away from her family. She slums, and dates this immigrant body-builder, who ends up making money hand over fist. But- they are far away. He does movies, and bodybuilding stuff, and then, all of a sudden, he turns into the family she’s trying to run away from. Her mom dies, she gets depressed, she finds out about an affair. I mean, it sounds like she’s decided to cut out all the power-mad people in her life, and, you know, eat the bottom half of the muffin with butter for breakfast.
And, again, what the heck happened? He knows how to balance books. He’s got real estate- why isn’t he solarizing the buildings he owns? Why doesn’t he do bodybuilding volunteer work with high-school athletes, or future competitors? Why is it always non-competitive types? Nothing against the Special Olympics- just- where’s the regular Olympics? Where’s training with people who could compete with him?
Or, say. the whole Kennedy clan? He points out that Mariah finds him interesting b/c she watches him make a million dollars, and that she hasn’t a clue how it’s done. She’s on the Kennedy trust. So, if she’s a normal Kennedy, why are they in charge of anything? They are all trustafarians. They don’t know, in any way, shape or form, how markets work.
And, Sargent Shriver, with all the non- profits, and volunteer stuff- VISTA- so he hangs out in Africa, teaching Africans agriculture? Don’t they already know agriculture? I mean, last time I checked, we all eat black-eyed peas at New Year’s. And watermelon and 4th of July. And, so, what agriculture are they learning, anyway? Missionaries teach agriculture, and they do it for subsistence farming. Commercial agriculture, they teach and buy the produce. Who buys what he’s teaching? And, why are they being missionaries for the government?
And, then he goes from Africa, to hanging out with Russian rulers. Where’s hanging out with democratically elected Westerners? There isn’t a middle. Honestly, he sounds like the quote from Ann Coulter, from some letter to a visitor to Monticello talking about Thomas Jefferson’s younger brother- he hangs out in the slave quarters, and then he dines with his brother and the government, but he’s not useful for anything.
Seriously- why aren’t they hanging out with German manufacturers? Or Bollywood film producers? Why is it always the despotic top, or the grinding poverty bottom?
And, I think I get the after-school body-building thing. He keeps bumping off the unsatisfactory, violent, poor, drunken father he had. And how he got nurtured by owners of body-building gyms, and Jim Weider. So, it’s like he’s trying to be the gym owner for all of California’s kids. It’s a “who’s your daddy?” sort of thing.
For that matter, he doesn’t sound like a sweetheart. He gets taken in and raised by all sorts of people. Does he ever turn around and help someone? Ever?
Power corrupts …. etc.
He married into the evil Kennedy clan. What does anybody expect?
Lie down with dogs, get up with fleas.
Happens to most people, really.
Ya work your way up the ladder…and forget about what it was *really* like when you worked on the line or as a janitor, and busted your butt every day. Yeah, you think you know what it’s really like. You tell yourself and everyone else that you remember. You’ll brag about it. You’ll tell others, “If I can do it, so can you!” You’ll complain about people who can’t do what you did. You’ll talk mean about them behind thei backs.
Now, you’re *that* guy. The one you used to complain about. The Asshole. Because you’re the one putting all kinds of roadbloacks in tother people’s way, making things harder than they need to be. You’ve actually become one of those guys you once worked for…and swore to god that you’d never be like *that* asshole.
Now, you’re the asshole that other people swear they’ll never emulate, once they’ve got *your* job.
In the parlance of the military and of Veterans, you’re just another REMF.
That’s where Arnold’s at in his life, and that’s what happens to most of our politicians. …and that’s where many of you are at in your lives.
Human beings. People. Can’t get along with them and can’t use them for target practice, so what ya gonna do?
For that matter, seriously? The apprentice program? I know he gets up about weight-lifting, but the first job he had with any money was his apprenticeship at a shop. He learned to sell stuff, any stuff. He got paid, he bought a track-suit, he paid his parents for room and board.
He knows Cali schools suck. He tries to talk about work, rather than student loans. But what about sponsoring apprentice-ship programs? That’s a pool of people from 16- 26, that right now are being turned into low-information debt slaves to college- with no skills, few abilities, no market connections- nothing- on the Obama go to school machine. Well, Cali was built on manufacturing- all sorts- screen-doors, houses, movies,- and agriculture- and who knows what else. That’s ten years worth of skill-building.
It’s not like people stay where they get apprenticed. How many stars started out as carpenters? video game designers- the first one I met was a house-framer who liked games.
There’s one town in Texas that does it- it works for the town. I think the kids move away, and maybe have a hard time getting that first job- it’s hard to picture a responsible 20 year old, since we’ve been colleging everyone. I’ve worked with three of them, that I know of- sensible, hard-working, young.
But, the district here, has community colleges built right next to high schools, so that high school kids can take college classes. So it’s practically an apprenticeship for students- they graduate high school having stowed away their liberal arts requirements for college. Some high schools, usually the bad ones, set up professional programs. If normal schools did it, I’d send at least one of my kids.
Arnold is PROFESSIONAL actor, so I don’t presume that I would ever know the real Arnold, because I assume that everything he does is an act. But I have enjoyed many of his movies.
Arnold merely became the very thing he worked for all those years. Rich, elite, powerful, famous, etc… and in the end detached himself from the 99 percent he used to be.
Now everything he views is unrealistic. Finance, government, infrastructure, social mores, guns, crime, etc… his views now just reflect the status quo of the rich and powerful.
They just want to stay in power, stay in control, no matter what.
So does he.
As to Kennedys and servants, I read something in a biography of LBJ (can’t think which one right now) that I thought was revealing.
When Bobby Kennedy was still AG he was in the kitchen at the LBJ ranch discussing some policy, and he wondered if he and Johnson should be discussing this topic in front of the servants. “I don’t have servants,” Johnson replied. “I have employees.”
I think this encapsulates the Kennedy attitude–towards those to whom they can feel beneficent, the poor and minorities, they are gracious and caring, or at least show themselves to be. To the average citizen who cannot make them feel so uplifted and bountiful, it’s a different story.
yep. In a more civilized time, in the US, the help would punch an employer in the face and walk out if you called them a servant…
I have known a few wealthy people. Worked for a couple of families, actually, when I was younger. Some are pretty cool, Beverly Hillbillies sort of cool. They didn’t forget what it was like to be on the backside of money. Others, however, are like Streisand and Stallone. They fire “servants” for daring to look them in the eye, of all things (thou shalt not look Sly in the eye). Many wealthy people fear their household staff and will not discus anything around them, always from fear they are being spied upon. If you’re gonna be rich and paranoid, why be rich? Treat your people better and maybe they won’t run straight to the National Enquirer with iPhone video every time you pass gas.
I didn’t know that the iPhone had a Smell-o-vision app!
The guy was an enigma as Governor. Very difficult to pin down just what he was about.
I would guess there is one of two things going on. Either the steroids got to him over time and he lost track of the world he lived in, or someone had something, something really big on him. Given the Kennedy history, there are some in his wife’s background that know how to work that angle very well. Pregnant maid is penny-ante in the circles he runs in, so there is probably something a lot bigger out there.
Sort of forgot about Ahnold since Moonbeam reappeared on the scene.
This is why our country is in such bad shape. Good, decent, honest people with integrity are no longer the norm. Those who have replaced them are petty, vile, short sighted, and dishonorable. Since our elected officials are pulled from this tainted pool, they are no better.
Good, decent, honest people will not run for office. Politics is now a bad word. I believe we should do away with elections and choose people like you do for jury duty – from the list of registered voters. Send them off for ONE term. I’d also create a special branch of the FBI that did nothing except keep an eye on politicians. I want politicians so afraid of said FBI branch that they won’t take a Happy Meal from a lobbyist, let alone a “fact-finding junket” to Tahiti.
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
I know that this isn’t what you mean but having just finished the Expendables 2 I was appalled at how bad Stallone and Schwarzenegger looked. They looked like wax manikins…but not as lifelike.
On the night of recall election I watched on TV as Arnold announced he had been chosen to replace Gray Davis. As the camera pulled back from the dais, this epiphany entered my mind:
“Too many Kennedy’s on stage.”
Despite his (now dystrophic) muscles, Arnold is an emasculated person. Very sad, but he fooled us into believing him to be a Mensch.
He is the Austrian Oak of egos.
Having access to a world of experience without being able to think in terms of principles, is the intellectual equivalent of being served a huge banquet of food while lacking a digestive system.
My guess, “Within ten years, he had earned his college degree”. There’s nothing like post-modernism / nihilism / skepticism to wash reality and cause & effect out of your skull.
The InstaPundit nailed it. Maria Shriver happened to him.
Exactly. I’ve seen it happen with acquaintances. They marry a liberal woman and pretty soon they seldom get to see their conservative friends.
How does that work? I mean, really, it’s like this plot point in all these different movies: scruffy liberal guilts business guy into being a better human being? Sandra Bullock does one, with Hugh Grant. She’s scruffy, and abrasive, and somehow more “authentic” than other women? Am I missing something?
#ari, In Arnold’s case, he wasn’t merely married to a leftist woman. He was literally surrounded by the vermin known as the Kennedys. They carry a highly communicable disease and unfortunately, Arnold fell victim to it.
#NC Mountain Girl, Your point is spot-on. I’ve seen it happen as well.
He married her for the financial, social, and political connections.
She married him for the celebrity.
I’m glad I’ve never met either one of them, and I hope I never will.
Of course the better explanation is that Arnold continued in the last 1/3 of his life to be brilliant and insightful. What Arnold learned is what most business people and conservatives are too dishonest to admit: strategies for building personal cash wealth are entirely different from those required to build good communities. Indeed, strategies for building individual cash wealth may be entirely antithetical to building a vital economically strong community. Individuals forget about “public goods” and “externalities.” Governors need to clean up the messes made by individuals leaving piles of their externalities all over the floor. A good governor is concerned with the public good, not with his own personal profit. Arnold has shown us how an ambitious person can earn cash, and how a public-minded individual can govern a complex state like California. Nothing at all wrong with Arnold’s experience. The take away lesson for the rest of us is that we need strong government to fix the problems created by self-centered folks who think only about how to make more cash income for themselves.
Listen to Arnold in his interviews , he doesn’t give a damn . He will work hard but he wants to have fun. Somehow I think principles and theory are not his thing, except perhaps a few rules about body building . He never really cared who thought what about him, he just did whatever was amusing or profitable. I doubt he knows what externalities are , or cares . Hardly the guy to be a principled politician, or stand up to blackmail.
A skillful exercise in soothing, superior sounding, political techno-speak, which, when parsed, says nothing at all. The abject failure of socialism everywhere it’s been tried forced the left’s hand, and third way Keynesianism resulted. Keynesians feed themselves the kind of drivel the writer luxuriates in. He sees the “big picture.” Everyone else is out for themselves. In practice the position means, “Give me all your money. I can spend it better than you can.” It’s all about power and control. Ethical virtue does not transmogrify while passing from the private to the public sphere. It’s universal and ancient.
“The take away lesson for the rest of us is that we need strong government to fix the problems created by self-centered folks who think only about how to make more cash income for themselves.” You mean like the public-sector union employees who negotiate large wage and benefit programs for themselves at the expense of taxpayers? THOSE self-centered folks? And what about the politicians who have bankrupted municipalities like Bell and San Bernardino, California, and Detroit? The so-called “good-government” politicians have bankrupted states like New York, Illinois and California.
… or the biography he has responded to.
He never does.
He has canned speeches that he opens up and glops out over the keyboard that “prove” that he is right, has always been right, and will always be right.
He could write the same tripe about a Doctor Seuss book and not care.
Harry is a Blowhard. But then again, everybody in the world (but him) knows that.
Arnold had the entire State of California to contend with, and the voters refused to follow his key initiatives. See #17, above. He was hearing from a lot of people in California who worked for the state, and had a stake in continuing to work for the state: “strategies for building personal cash wealth are entirely different from those required to build good communities. Indeed, strategies for building individual cash wealth may be entirely antithetical to building a vital economically strong community.”
The quoted statement is BS. You can’t build good communities by working against the best interests of families and individuals. Shame on you, Harry. You are the problem.
The easy example is air pollution. You have a big state like California and it likely does not make much difference if just one factory belches out sooty smoke laden with toxic chemicals. But you fill the state with a bunch of factories belching sooty smoke and you have an environmental mess. Individual factory owners have every incentive to pollute. Only government can step in and stop the bad tendencies of the individuals. This same type of problem exists in other areas as well. It is not limited purely to pollution. The fact is that the collective actions self-interested individuals pursing self-interest are likely not good for the well-being of the community. Government needs to provide direction and guidance to insure self-interest is properly tempered to serve public good.
Seriously?
The worst environmental disasters are in collectivist societies. Ecocide in the USSR, for one example. Or, leaky pipes on pipelines in any third world country, the week after they throw out the capitalist bums. Or, say, river dolphins in China.
Not saying factories don’t pollute- ship channels have caught fire, for instance.
But thinking there’s some virtue in no one but politicians getting their way is kind of nuts.
Perhaps that is because those “collectivist” societies (as you call them) chose to spend scarce national resources on other important national goals, like defending themselves against US aggression. But here in the United States we have taken reasonable steps to stop self-indulgence. We call them the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act. We have similarly taken steps to stop employers from operating unsafe workplaces and to bar employers from sexually harassing workers. We could go farther. With time, I imagine that far-sighted political leaders will require employers to pay fair wages (the current minimum wage is a joke) and to prevent pollution no matter where in the world they manufacture things. LIkewise, we can hope this administration finally enacts sensible rules to stop global warming. Arnold was at the forefront of these efforts when he was Governor.
How are they not collectivist? Did I miss a detail?
Which part of defending themselves? When they invaded, like, 2/3 of the world? In less than a century? And, grain sales? That continued from 1917 to Reagan?
I’m not asking about Clean Water/ Clean Air. I’m just– the stories about hyper-regulators- the hardware store with a box of doughnuts- being told they’d have to have a license for that- even though it’s free? happened under Arnold. The weird stuff Professor Hanson writes about- Arnold, again. The guy started a business in a closet: is that possible now? He sold strange supplements. Again, possible? For that matter, he famously groped all sorts of wiling types. I know, not possible now, but still….he kept working…what happens to that guy, now?
Seriously, the book is written from recordings. He sounds “Cherman” in the early sections; “Always, we would do this….” He sounds active and concrete and engaged on his movie sections. He sounds sharp on his real estate sections- return on investment of this percent, remodel inspired by the pompidou center– and then the government sections have this flattened language, and it reads like it has a nasally whine. It literally does not even scan like the rest of the book, for a line-reading. Then, he retires, and it sounds like him again, the him in the rest of the book.
What an almost fantastic success story. Arnold became the greatest body builder of all time without ever taking one single steriod. Honest! Not one. Ever. Heh.
Arnold probably never did take steroids. Look up agromegaly then look at Arnold, especially his face. He took human growth hormones. Pictures of his hands would be revealing also.
He paid $3.75 for a license to start a bricklaying business. His partner was a Sardinian guy who dropped out of school at 13. They made a million dollars.
I’m really wondering- how much is it to start a business, today, in California?
He ran his first business out of his closet at his little one bedroom apartment. Can you do that today?
He got trained by Joe Weider on how to write copy, how to fulfill orders, all kinds of stuff. Does he do this for anyone else?
He’s got stuff in his book about making friends with New York artists, including the Wyeth family. Did he spotlight any California artists, go visit museums or galleries, or studios or anything while he was governor? Or as a private citizen, even?
The maid, that almost makes sense. His mom was a total hausfrau, and Mariah was raised by a woman who couldn’t even turn on the stove to boil water for an egg (that’s a quote in the book.) Mariah throws stuff on the floor- he mentions a dropped cashmere sweater, for the maid to pick up, while he says he’s most comfortable in a $10 sweatshirt. He’s got his mother visiting three months a year, and then she dies. I think, okay, the maid tripped and landed on his d***, but I think she reminded him of his mom. I don’t know that Mariah was comfortable to be around, while this poor immigrant woman scrubbing stuff and yelling at her boys feels more like home.
(oh, his mom got buried in her finest dirndl. I didn’t know what a dirndl was. I looked it up. Examples are on Pinterest. I am so totally shipping my sons off to Germany to find brides when they grow up.) ( How is Germany dying off? A culture where the traditional girls’ dress is a low-cut blouse, an vest that’s designed to push up her chesticles- and she’s German, so she’s got zeppelin chesticles- a full, pouffy skirt in a bright color, an apron, lacy socks, and braids? Oh, bright pink or red lipstick.. Bringing giant mugs of beer and platters of sausages? How is this not Man Paradise?) ( Add in that scrubbing the house clean, thrift, and precision engineering in sewing and knitting and who knows what else?) ( Really, shipping them off with some how- to-flirt with girls guide. Already told them. Got informed that I am a controlling mom. Sha-ah. I’d be controlling if I didn’t want them to be very, very happy.)
This whole future business? When there’s no rainy day fund? He had $27,000 saved up from his first movies and his bricklaying business, neither of which were high- money things. So, he’s got thrift for himself. He used the $27,000 to buy his first building with a partner and a bank loan on good terms. So, when he gets his hands on California’s money- he doesn’t set up any savings. He mentions a rainy day fund as an idea, but he doesn’t follow through? Why not? He knows it worked.
Then, the whole government controlling supplies across state lines. Okay, so Sargent Shriver talks to him about milk prices from one state to another, and how he called various agencies, to smooth prices. Arnold says, if you let the market work, the price and supply will even out-a Wisconsin farmer will ship his milk to the high-price state, if you’d just get rid of this legislation. Well, he gets to be governor, and all of the sudden, gasoline and electricity can’t be shipped across state lines?
Or, say, he loses a water fight with the EPA? over a fish? California and the Federal Government have been at odds on property law as long as California has existed ( Hernando de Soto: the mystery of capital- fascinating book) So, why, under Arnold, is the state of California knuckling under to the EPA? It’s never lost before: why now?
And, again, where are the guys in the middle. He mentions struggling and failing actors, and he mentions superstars, but he never mentions mid=list actors. Ed Begley, Jr, has always worked.His dad worked. There are people who are professional extras. There are television studios. They never get mentioned. There are set carpenters, and there’s Skywalker Ranch. The sketch guys there make a living. Chuck Jones- Loony Tunes have never been not-screening, ever. Why this blank? It’s an industry, a big one. He never mentions unions, or tax breaks, or apprentice-stuff, or new studios, or anything. He just notices that non-union films go to non-union countries and spend, oh, $20 million dollars for one film. I think California could use $20 million worth of business in six months, right?
And, again, this future stuff: why the future, when the present’s potholes aren’t being filled? Is it because it’s boring? He’s best friends with a mayor in Germany- does that guy have pot-hole problems?
or, school stuff. He went to a blue-collar school right after world war 2, on the loser’s side. he got a good education. An unpleasant, violent, one, but a thorough one. Out of this, the whole country rebuilt. So, why didn’t he focus on taking the very diverse, extremely poor kids in his state, and making them literate and functional as fast as possible? Reading, writing, math? He mentioned his teachers had a basic curriculum, but that they went beyond that. Do teachers in California do that?
One friend said the problem with Mexico is that every president campaigns on doing the right thing, but then gets elected and builds a monument to his ego- a resort, usually. How did Arnold fall into this trap?
There’s not much left to say that hasn’t already been said, but I will say this, forget everything you know about Arnold. Go back and watch his 2004 speech from the Republican convention. I rank it as one of the most inspiring speeches I’ve ever heard. I watch it every once and again and get chills up my back. It’s the kind of thing that makes you want to jump out of your chair. I also show it to political neophytes to get them more involved.
Thanks! WOW!!!
Why isn’t that guy governor?
really? It’s that simple? He learned movie-making from capitalists, and politics from kennedys, and never noticed the difference in approaches?
He wanted to remain governor? So he failed at his Scott Walker project? He tried a Scott Walker break the unions project, and it failed?
He wants stuff named after him? He likes this better than repairing roads named after someone else?
He doesn’t get that other kids could be as bright and hard-working as he is? He really thinks he’s special? And therefore, every other kid needs hand-holding?
He doesn’t want any competition of any sort,ever, so half his state is on Welfare?
He had Mariah playing subliminal Kennedy speeches while he slept?
He’s actually a girly-man with a big body and a small mind? He really didn’t learn anything, even though it sounds like he did?
He thinks business-men are evil, so it’s okay to be sharp, profit-driven, driven, relentless, all that? But that social work is good, and government social work is best?
Mariah isn’t worried about the seatless bicycle racing, but she’s not thrilled with another kid with a claim on the family fortune?
He doesn’t want to split his 9 figure fortune in half with Mariah? Even though he could re-make it all in about five years, while she just lived on the proceeds of her half?
He misses hanging out with Kennedys? All the little white houses on the island compound? That’s what he dreams about at night?
I’m still stuck at- he had dams torn down, and then acted perplexed that energy costs went up. That technology has been around since the Middle Ages- it’s what opened the German forests up for development into nations in the first place- monastic water-wheels on rivers.
Or, say, not re-building roads. The main guy who inspired him to get into body-building was the captain of a road-crew. Obviously, the guy had spare money to lavish on himself. He wasn’t looked down on.