Arnold Schwarzenegger

As NewsBusters has been reporting of late, the Obama-loving media have been doing everything they can to play the race card as we head towards Election Day.

CNN's Candy Crowley did it on Sunday morning's State of the Union saying to Newt Gingrich, "Most people do look at Republicans going ‘They’re a conservative bunch of white guys who want to protect Big Oil’" (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):

As NewsBusters previously reported, CNN on Monday did a segment about recent sex scandals that conveniently ignored that of its own Eliot Spitzer.

On Sunday, "Reliable Sources" host Howard Kurtz took his network to task for this glaring omission (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Featured on Time Magazine's Web site is "The Misconduct Matrix."  Subtitled "Not all affairs are created equal," the graphic presents 19 men guilty of - make that allegedly guilty of in some instances- serious sexual misbehavior.

Dominique Strauss-Kahn is listed, as are Roman Polanski, Woody Allen, Tiger Woods, John Kennedy and, of course, the president who gave phone sex a bad name, the impeached Bill Clinton.  Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is also included on the matrix.

Sharing the same quadrant (Doghouse, Massively Hypocritical) with Justice Thomas are Arnold Schwarzenegger, who's admitted to fathering a child with a staff member, Newt Gingrich, who's admitted to at least one affair, and Thomas Jefferson, who "reportedly fathered six children with his slave."  Even if Thomas were guilty of what Anita Hill charged, his conduct was not nearly as egregious as the others.  Talking about pubic hair on a Coke can isn't close to adultery or fathering children out of wedlock.

Talking to Los Angeles Times reporter Robin Abcarian about the Arnold Schwarznegger scandal on Thursday, NBC Today co-host Matt Lauer wondered if the liberal paper was now justified in accusing the Republican of groping women as he ran for governor of California in 2003: "In some ways, eight years later, do you and other folks at the paper feel vindicated?"    

Abcarian argued: "We don't feel vindicated....We felt at the time we published those allegations in 2003 that they were important, they were verified....There was no question to us that he was a serial sexual groper at the least." Both Lauer and Abcarian seemed to miss the fact that Schwarzenegger admitted to a consensual affair with his housekeeper, not to sexually harassing and assaulting women.

Every hour but one of CNN's Tuesday evening news coverage featured at least a mention of former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's marital infidelity. Guess which anchor backed away from any mention of the scandal?

Schwarzenegger's revelation of his fathering a child with a mistress was one of the day's leading headlines, and merited a mention if not a segment on most every CNN news hour Tuesday. During its 5 p.m.-12 a.m. EDT coverage, CNN reported the story every hour except during the 8 p.m. EDT slot – the prime-time show In the Arena with Eliot Spitzer. Spitzer made no mention of the story.

4">backed away from any mention of the scandal?

Schwarzenegger's revelation of his fathering a child with a mistress was one of the day's leading headlines, and merited a mention if not a segment on most every CNN news hour Tuesday. During its 5 p.m.-12 a.m. EDT coverage, CNN reported the story every hour except during the 8 p.m. EDT slot – the prime-time show In the Arena with Eliot Spitzer. Spitzer made no mention of the story.

During coverage of Arnold Schwarzengger's admitted affair on Tuesday, members of NBC's Today promoted his wife and their former colleague, Maria Shriver. Correspondent Natalie Morales declared that despite "much public scrutiny" of their marriage, "Many say it was Maria's enduring support through it all that allowed them to become one of America's most powerful couples."

Morales described Shriver as, "a member of the Kennedy political dynasty who became a network news correspondent....[then] left her long-time job at NBC News to support her husband's political career." Morales touted how Shriver's "support then, led to his landslide victory," and remarked: "Since then, the Republican foreign-born action movie star and the liberal polished member of one of America's most prestigious families, became a formidable team."

With a supreme lack of irony or self-awareness, former Clinton operatives George Stephanopoulos and James Carville on Tuesday chided the "amazing" revelation that Arnold Schwarzenegger had an affair and a love child.

Appearing on Good Morning America, Carville said of the former California governor: "...He put himself out here, knowing there was all this scrutiny on his personal life. That was a really risky thing he did in even getting into politics, knowing this."

Stephanopoulos agreed with his War Room pal, enthusing, "It is pretty amazing. That's a good point." Carville, of course, repeatedly defended Bill Clinton against "scrutiny" of his adulterous affairs and once said of accuser Paula Jones: "Drag $100 bills through trailer parks, there's no telling what you'll find."

[See video below. MP3 audio here.]

On Thursday's Parker-Spitzer, CNN's Kathleen Parker bizarrely and inaccurately claimed that Alexander Hamilton came to the United States illegally and drafted the Constitution: "Let's remember...a lot of Americans did come through the back door such as Alexander Hamilton. He got off the boat from the West Indies, and all he did was write the Constitution and become the first Secretary of the Treasury."

Parker raised this false history during a discussion at the end of the 8 pm Eastern hour about Pedro Ramirez, Fresno State University's student body president, who was outed as an illegal immigrant by a student newspaper. After playing clips from Ramirez and his opponent during the student election, who is also the president of the Fresno State College Republicans, the CNN host displayed sympathy for the college student: "This is kind of a classic though, isn't it, really? I mean, you've the college Republican versus the illegal immigrant, and it's kind of a classic clash, you know, that corresponds to this immigration debate we're having in this country. And clearly, when you put a human face on the illegal immigrant, it's a different story. I mean, nobody wants to punish this young 22-year-old."

[Video embedded below the page break]

On Election Day, the Supreme Court heard arguments in the case Schwarzenegger vs. Entertainment Merchants Association. The irony of this case name was obvious: the celebrated violent-action-hero governor of California had signed a bill into law in 2005 forbidding the sale of ultraviolent video games to minors, a law that lower federal courts prevented from ever going into effect.

Why should the Supremes care about this? After all, a year before that, Gov. Schwarzenegger signed a law making it illegal for anyone under 14 years old to tan indoors under any circumstances. (Children from 14 to 18 can tan – with parental consent.) The fine for salon operators for each violation is as much as $2,500 per day. Somehow this did not become a cause celebre, and was not fought all the way to the Supreme Court. Indeed, 32 states are inhibiting the freedom of minors to tan, and no one cares.  

But interfere with their right to fry their minds and there’s hell to pay. Video-game manufacturers don’t want politicians tampering with their sales to minors, so here comes the march of the First Amendment fundamentalists, who argue that the principle of freedom of speech covers the enthusiastic distribution and sale of every kind of child-corrupting media horror. For them there must be no helpful hurdle or brake for children to go around their parents and grab what Justice Samuel Alito called “the most violent, sadistic, graphic video game that can be developed.”

A new comic book launched this month presages California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's rise to the White House:

Is he the embodiment of the American dream? Or is he simply a man lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time? That's the question Bluewater Productions tackles in its newest biography comic, Political Power: Arnold Schwarzenegger.

As Patrick Gavin writes in Friday's Politico, the authors have his ascendancy all figured out including a change to the Constitution to make it happen:

The Los Angeles Times on Thursday published a blockbuster report concerning California welfare recipients using state-issued debit cards at casino ATMs to be able to instantly gamble with taxpayer dollars.

"The cards, provided by the Department of Social Services to help recipients feed and clothe their families, work in automated teller machines at 32 of 58 tribal casinos and 47 of 90 state-licensed poker rooms, the review found."

Despite this shocking revelation, America's media largely ignored the findings.

But before we get there, KTLA-TV logged a fabulous report on this subject Thursday evening (video follows with more highlights from the Times piece and commentary):

As the deadline for a new California budget nears, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is threatening to pay all state workers the minimum wage until legislators in Sacramento reach an agreement:

After enduring more than a year of unpaid monthly furlough days, state workers could see their pay cut to minimum wage until Sacramento strikes a budget accord this summer, according to a memo from Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's administration sent Wednesday...The memo from Department of Personnel Director Debbie Endsley to state department heads said that "absent a state budget," the governor would seek to slash workers' pay to minimum wage until the impasse is over.

Thoughts? 

Nightline's Terry Moran on Wednesday profiled Arnold Schwarzenegger as a "Republican reformist" and never once referred to him as a liberal. Instead, the co-anchor tagged the California Governor as a "lonely figure" in the GOP.

Moran sympathized, "When you look at the way the Republican Party is going, here in California and around the country, rise of the tea party, candidates like Rand Paul, do you think there's still room in the Republican Party for someone like you?" He then prompted, "Or are you being squeezed out?" [Audio available here.]

Today was a same-old, same-old day in California.

For the second year in a row, a state official has proposed eliminating the former Golden State's "welfare-to-work" program, which the rest of us know as "welfare," or Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). Last year, it was left to a spokesman for the state's Department of Finance to bring out the idea. This year, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger fronted it himself.

As has been the case for the almost four years I've been following the situation, the press once again universally failed to provide anything resembling context. If it did, people would understand that this is a story about a decade-long shocking level of theoretically well-intentioned waste (the cynical observation would be that the good intentions are tempered by the likelihood that dependent voters are overwhelmingly Democratic voters).

The as up to date as possible context (through September 30 of last year for recipients and families, the latest available government data; some estimation was required because certain data fields are blank) is this:

Hosting a debate segment this morning between  Republican strategist Alex Conant and Democratic strategist Mo Elleithee that examined the political dimensions of the aftermath of the Gulf oil spill, MSNBC's Tamron Hall played soundbites from two politicians with rather divergent views on offshore drilling.

The first was liberal Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R-Calif.) opposing expanding offshore drilling to California, the second was conservative Rep. Gene Taylor (D-Miss.), who gave a rather dopey comment where he downplayed the devastation of the oil spill by comparing its appearance to "chocolate milk."

After playing those clips back-to-back, Hall asked for Conant's reaction, mistakenly referring to Taylor as a Republican.

We at NewsBusters quickly tweeted Hall about her error and she promptly issued an on-air correction, albeit mistakenly tagging Taylor as a "Michigan Democrat" [MP3 audio available here]:

Speaking to California Governor Arnold Schwarzengger on Thursday's CBS Early Show, co-host Harry Smith noted the success of the tea party movement, but spun it as a negative for the Republican Party: "There are winds of change blowing in the Republican Party. The tea party has met. There's a – it feels like a significant shift to the Right. Can the Republican Party exist without moderates?"

Prior to that, Smith asked if Schwarzenegger had any helpful advice for President Obama: "His approval ratings are dropping. He's under fire from all kinds of quadrants. If you're going to give him some advice as to how to stay his course, what would you tell him?" Schwarzenegger initially replied: "I don't think that...he needs advice from me." He then went on to praise the President's efforts on health care reform: "you have to give him credit for taking the risk. You have to give any leader credit for always going out on a limb and to go and fight for something."

Smith failed to wonder if Democrats could survive without moderates following the announced retirement of Indiana Senator Evan Bayh last week.

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger on Sunday accused Senate Democrats of illegally buying a vote to get healthcare reform passed.

Talking with NBC's David Gregory on "Meet the Press," Schwarzenegger blasted the California Congressional delegation for "representing Nebraska and not us" during December's healthcare deliberations.

Taking the matter further, the Governor said, "[T]he Senate just voted for a healthcare bill that is saying basically that California should pay for Nebraska so that Nebraska never has to pay any extra money." 

He added, "[T]hat's the biggest rip-off. I mean, that is against the law to buy a vote...if you do that in Sacramento, you know, you will be sued" (video embedded below the fold with partial transcript):

In keeping with the tradition of the holidays - the minds at MSNBC, the place for politics if you're of the lefty persuasion, decided rate the top 10 political stories of the decade.

And leading this gang of masters of the political journalism universe was "Hardball" host Chris Matthews, who on the broadcast of his Dec. 24 program, announced that conservative activism, mainly the tea party movement was the eighth biggest story of the decade - but labeled "angry white voters" (emphasis added).

"Welcome back to ‘Hardball' - our number eight political story of the decade, angry whites at town hall meetings across the country," Matthews said. "Lawmakers heard the wrath of angry voters."

Prospects for Obama-care just keep getting better and better. At least they are in the rather over-excitable world of New York Times health reporter David Herszenhorn. After Obama's address to Congress last month he confidently proclaimed the speech to be a "clear turning-point in the health care debate."

And then nothing continued to happen.

Yet Herszenhorn remains undaunted. On Tuesday morning he posted this story on the nytimes.com "Prescriptions" blog, "Obama Adds Schwarzenegger to His Republican Chorus for Health Care." The original headline, judging by the title of the URL, was even more triumphant: "Obama Adds Schwarzenegger to His Republican Trophy Case."

ABC anchor Chris Cuomo played the liberal emotion card and asked California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger during an interview on Wednesday’s Good Morning America if Republicans were “playing politics” with President Obama’s health care “reform” proposal, and whether this was turning into a “little bit of a reckless situation” on the part of the GOP. [audio available here]

Cuomo first put the health care issue in the context of California’s budget woes, and started out of the gate with his plea to people’s emotions in his first question to the governor: “Your state is somewhat of a window into the reality of health care. You’ve been pictured at your desk with a big knife, having to cut the budget- over $1 billion in health care cuts. It’s going to affect low-income families. It’s going to affect the coverage that children get. Is this absolutely necessary?”

After Schwarzenegger’s answer, the ABC anchor then turned to the president’s proposal for health care “reform,” and asked the liberal Republican governor why he supported it. The former actor clarified that he didn’t 100% support Obama’s plan, “because I don’t know exactly what is in that bill. It changes all the time, as you know.” Cuomo followed up by asking if he was leaning towards supporting it. Schwarzenegger again didn’t give a solid answer.

Every time voters face a ballot initiative of some sort that would raise their taxes, proponents of such measures will trot out any of the following components to champion the cause - school children, policemen, firemen or the release of criminals from jails.

But this time, the June 3 "NBC Nightly News" waited until after California voters denied passage of initiatives that would raise their taxes to say, "I told you so." NBC correspondent George Lewis followed up a dire, one-sided June 3 "Today Show" report with a "Nightly News" segment that blamed the budget cuts for one supposed hardship story - a California school district forced to cancel summer school, which in turn made it impossible for one child's mother to look for a job.

In a time when fiscal responsibility from politicians seems to be a thing of the past, NBC’s “Today Show”  and ABC’s “World News with Charles Gibson” criticized California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger for his proposed budget cuts in his effort to save California from reaching total financial ruin.

The June 3rd “Today Show” featured numerous opponents of Schwarzenegger’s budget cuts, but nobody supporting or defending them.

The segment began with a clip of the governor stating: “Our wallet is empty. Our bank is closed, and our credit is dried up,” a fact that does not seem to bother NBC, as they mourn the proposed solution to this problem: the cutting of what they deemed “essential services.”

A Tuesday story on ABC's World News, which ignored soaring state spending, reflected frustration with California voters for the anticipated rejection of ballot initiatives to raise taxes as reporter Laura Marquez blamed the Golden State's budget deficit on an “unwillingness to raise taxes” stretching all the way back to 1978's Proposition 13. In fact, though personal income tax collections “dropped 14% last year,” a Tuesday Wall Street Journal article noted they “soared 70% from 2002 to 2007.”  

In the story pegged to Tuesday's vote on a series of initiatives to raise or extend an income-tax surcharge, a big hike in the car tax and one point sales tax jump to 9 percent, Marquez fretted that “polls show five of six initiatives aimed at reducing the budget gap are likely to be voted down,” leading Schwarzenegger, Marquez relayed, to warn “the defeat of these measures will mean billions of dollars in cuts to social services and education, and will force thousands of layoffs from the state rolls.” From San Francisco, Marquez rued:

Coast to coast, state governments are swimming in red ink, overwhelmed by the tanking economy. Here in California, the problem is even worse because of its sheer size and an unwillingness to raise taxes. Thirty years ago, Californians passed Proposition 13, mandating an almost unachievable two-thirds vote by the legislature to raise taxes.

As Californians go to the ballot box to vote whether or not to increase their taxes, government leaders in Sacramento are trotting out "the usual human shields" - kindergarteners, firefighters, policemen and nurses to frighten people into voting.

The ballot initiative, promoted by California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, has little to no chance of passing according to the Los Angeles Times. But that did stop the governor from using fear tactics, as Fox News Channel's Glenn Beck pointed out on his May 19 program.

"What's their plan to turn the state around? They have one?" Beck said. "Yes - the Governator, he proposed $15 billion in cuts. Wow. And he warned that if his, if his propositions failed, California will need to release 40,000 prisoners out on the streets."

After earlier this week defining what a moderate Democrat is, on Saturday CNN tried its hand at defining what a moderate Republican is.  CNN Newsroom featured a segment on governors who are refusing stimulus funds because of the inevitable Federal strings.  Anchor Fredricka Whitfield had this exchange with CNN deputy political director Paul Steinhauser:

WHITFIELD: Well, that's interesting, because perhaps one other Republican whose name has been tossed into the whole could he run for president, but he can't, he did accept money for his state, Arnold Schwarzenegger.

STEINHAUSER: Exactly. That is very -- a very different case there, too, because Arnold Schwarzenegger is very much of a moderate Republican. He's kind of on the different end of the spectrum from Sarah Palin and Mark Sanford and Bobby Jindal.

OK, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is a moderate Republican.  That may come as a surprise since he's widely been deemed a liberal by a variety of sources.  In 2003, the San Francisco Chronicle's Washington bureau chief titled a column "Schwarzenegger's liberal views leave GOP flummoxed: Actor is pro-choice, pro-gun control and pro-gay rights."  At about the same time, National Review editors determined "Schwarzenegger, it seems clear, does not merit conservative support."

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's three-year lurch to the left, with the enthusiastic assistance of Democratic majorities in the state's legislature, has sent the state's fiscal situation once again into Gray Davisland -- and this time, unlike in November 2003 when he took office, the Governator doesn't have a growing economy to make getting out of the mess easier.

The state's controller said earlier today that the state "the state will run out of cash in about two months" if the state doesn't close its current budget gap of $18 billion.

Finally, the state is attempting to do something about its disproportionately costly welfare (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families) program.

The howls are predictable, if somewhat understandable (which I'll get to). Excerpts from a Sacramento Bee story by Cynthia Hubert lay out the situation:

Though NewsBusters is normally in the business of critiquing the liberal media, not praising the conservative, I want to ensure that as many of our readers as possible have the pleasure and profit of reading Mark Steyn's recent column: We're in the fast lane to Bailoutistan.

With its mordant, don't-know-whether-to-laugh-or-cry take on our current fix, it's my nominee for best column of the year.

I urge you to read it all, and marvel at its insight and wit.  Let me tempt you with a few morsels:

The UAW is AARP in an Edsel: It has three times as many retirees and widows as "workers" (I use the term loosely). GM has 96,000 employees but provides health benefits to a million people.

The Terminator makes Gray Davis look like Calvin Coolidge. Care to terminate a government program, Governor? Hey, great idea! We'll hire 200 people to do an impact study on terminating the Department of Impact Study Regulation and get back to you in a decade.

On Saturday, Ben Stein accused the media of whipping the nation into a frenzy concerning how the economy is doing. On Sunday, ABC's George Stephanopoulos proved his point.

While talking to California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger on "This Week," Stephanopoulos actually said of the economy, with a straight face no less, "In the last four years it's gone more down than up."

I kid you not (photo courtesy ABC):

How different do you think Americans' take on the current economy would be if the business press picked up on the fact that the bad employment news is coming predominantly out of two struggling states -- and that most of the rest of the nation is holding its own?

That's the question that occurred to me as I looked at April's Bureau of Labor Statistics regional and state employment and unemployment report this morning.

Three things stick out:
- How big of a drag California is in the overall employment picture.
- How much of an outlier Michigan is.
- How Oklahoma continues to impress.

How much California and Michigan are affecting the overall picture is a real eye-opener: