Does Arnold's latest commercial hurt more than help?

[AP]

He has been accused of not having a plan, so he runs a commercial in which he says, basically, "my plan to save California is that, the first thing I'll do is open all the books, and then the defecit will disappear."

Huh? Unless Pete Wilson was hiding a couple billion dollar bills from Gray Davis between the pages of "the books", I have no idea how opening books is magically going to reduce the defecit.

OHHHHHH. No I get it. He's going to open the ENRON book, and Ken Lays checkBOOK, and that's where he's going to find the billion dollar bills.

Yeah, I'll vote for the person who opens those books.

[Clete]

1. Bush's speech writer must have written the script

because he sounds just like Bush. He is also sending a message. What is the message? They never tells us what the message is? Stupid empty words, which is what the GOP are all so good at.

[tom_paine]

11. Exactaly...in Imperial Amerika nearly all Bushevik candidates are

Bushevik clones. Programmed to speak what comes out of the Totalitarian National Committee and Karl Goebbels (v2.0) Psychoengineers.

Norm Coleman, that woman who ran against Mary Landrieu in LA, and a host of others.

It is as grotesque as the Roman Imperial Senate and it has just gotten started.

But as Grand Moff Tarkin once said regarding HIS empire, "soon the last vestiges of the Old Republic will be swept away..."

Ahnold, is behaving, excalty as I predicted.

Most of my predictions come true nowadays. But that is no great feat. Totalitarian Societies like Imperila Amerika and Stalinist Russia are easy to predict because they aren't free and they are rigged to the gills.

Sad but true prediction: Goevrnor Facelift Molester Nazison will be the next Imperial Gouvernour of Kalifornia.

[Bandit]

2. If the "Books" were closed how would we know they were in deficit?

:crazy: Why the recall if no one knows the finances? I hope Californians are smarter than this.

[AP]

3. And, c'mon, it's the government, not a privately owned corporation

If the books are closed, they don't have a lock on them. The public owns the books. Maybe Arnold just hasn't bothered to try to read them.

[Hanuman]

4. I think Ueberroth is saying essentially the same thing.

And both of them assert that they haven't had the time to fully inspect "the books" yet. I would guess that these "books" are probably big and extremely complex and not something that one could grok in a few nights of casual reading. You'd probably need a large team of CPAs to go through it item by item and give you a digested report.

[paulsbc]

5. exactly right

just like the federal budget mess, california's budget is equally screwed up. both parties are guilty of this, IMO, with the Republicans being the worse of late

[AP]

8. The Republicans are responsible, almost entirely. When you

require a super majority to pass the budget, you're not going to get a budget passed that doesn't have shit in it the Republcans want.

And what do right wingers want when a liberal governs? Economic chaos. Check out Chile in 72 and 73, the US in 94, and Venezuela and California today.

The RW runs on the notion that they're the responsible button-down people who will bring in the slide-rules and the fiscal discipline. Fuck them. They're the onese who created energy deregultation, and who fill budgets with shit that will cause absolute misery because they're more interested in power than compromise and doing good things for people (oh, and they have this long term project to undo everything FDR ever achieved so that the fascists can rule America with a huge profit margin).

[AP]

6. Every aspect of the government has several sets of eyes, both

critical and supportive, keeping a close on everything that happens with a government agency from the mimute the budget drafters strat proposing budgets, every step of the way through the legislature, at every vote, and all the way through to implementation.

There are thousands of RW and LW non-governmental organizations, lobbyists, not-for profits and for-profit industry groups who are looking at everything the government does every day.

There are no surprises in the books and opening books which are already open to the public isn't going to make money fall out of the pages.

Camejo and Bustamante have already said what is going to create a better economy. California can no longer have an economy that serves only the interest of HUGE corporations HQ'd in LA and SF -- CA needs to spread the burdens fairly -- removing it from the poor and middle class and asking the super rich large corps and wealth individuals to just pay their fair share.

You know who Arnold is running on behalf of, don't you? Big energy and the entertainment industry. NBC is about to become a huge company once they buy Universal. They're going to be looking for some protection from the government, and any one of those Republicans will be giving it them, but Arnold will especially be willing to give it to them. That's what's going to be in the books for Arnold.

[ljm2002]

9. Right you are!

"You know who Arnold is running on behalf of, don't you? Big energy and the entertainment industry."

What's going on here is an agenda, and a serious one. The guy who financed this whole fiasco already got the boot so the Republicans could go to "Plan B" (probably "Plan A", really) and run Ahhnold with all his name recognition and charisma, thinking this gives them a chance to win. He certainly does have some of that Hollywood flair and brings glitz to the race. But make no mistake, the Republicans want "their guy" in there, someone who will support their policies. They can't run on the issues, because most people don't agree with their actual policies (which makes sense, because most people's interests are not served by those policies). So they try and run on personality: if their guy has a lot, they play that up. If their guy doesn't have much personality, they go derogatory on the Democratic opponent.

But now we've got an excellent chance to turn that dynamic on its head. Because we have years of quotes, both printed and broadcast, from these guys regarding the importance of morality, family values, and the like. And we have a self-described gang-banger who is running under the Republican banner. So just run clips of what they said 5 years ago about (say) Clinton, versus what they say now about Ahhnold. Play them side by side, directly exposing their hypocrisy. No commentary, maybe; or, something like this: "They told you that character and morality were the most important things"..."and you believed them"..."Maybe you were right"

or "They told you that character and morality were the most important things"..."But that was then"

or "They told you that character and morality were the most important things"..."But did they mean it?"

Yes, yes, I know: what about the issues? But (a) we need to get into office to have any actual *effect* on the issues of the day; and (b) we can have issues ads too.

[mumon]

7. And they have

text in them!

And even worse, NUMBERS!!!

[Bandit]

10. Maybe Bush* should do the same thing

Open the Books. All the books, Cheney's energy meetings, Presidential papers, etc. etc. Do these folks Ever listen to themselves. Open the books and make all the bad stuff go away. LOL.

[sandnsea]

12. And put children first

That was in the commercial I saw. Open the books, wipe away deficit spending and put children first. Good grief. How can anybody take this joker seriously. The depths to which we've sunk in this country are truly incomprehensible. Gephardt hit that one right last night too.