Opinion

Essay
Don’t blame me

by Arnold Schwarzenegger
actor, bodybuilder and governor of California, the eighth largest economy on the globe.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. We live in the greatest state in the greatest country in the world. In fact, I told my friend Jay Leno this back in the good old days, before “the pig and the pony,” when I first decided to run for governor.

But things have gone from bad to worse for Cal-ley-fon-ee-yuh.

First of all, the budget has been a disaster; if we ever manage to close a gap, like the $60 billion one from last year, another giant one just opens up again. It’s crazy.

Next, you have the schools. The education system is a disaster all the way from kindergarten through college. The funding system is totaled. Just this month, 20,000 pink slips were delivered to young teachers who now have to go try making a living at Pizza Hut. Can you imagine? Thirty years ago, a big chunk of the state’s money went to higher education and a small piece went to prisons. Now, it’s the other way around.

You get what you pay for, yah?

State workers? They’re a bunch of girlie men. I tried furloughing them, but they keep dragging me into court. Why don’t they get a life?

Then there’s the Legislature.

The Democrats say “yes” to everything.

The Republicans say “no” to everything.

How can I be expected to blow up boxes under these conditions?

Finally, here come these idiots from my own party—Meg and Steve—who want to ruin my legacy of being the green governor. Both of them say if they win, they’ll immediately freeze my major accomplishment, Assembly Bill 32—the global-warming law that got me on the cover of Newsweek in a green tie.

Who are these idiots? They can both take a hike off a cliff with a T-1000 in pursuit.

Anyway, since I’m leaving office soon, and since I won’t be able to move on to something like running for President, because of being born in a foreign country, I’ve decided to go a different way.

Let me quote myself: “I won’t be back.”

I’m going to leave politics and head back to Los Angeles and maybe make another movie with James Cameron. He’s very hot right now. Also, I want to go visit Austria and do some yodeling with Maria.

The bottom line is this: Don’t blame me for what’s happening to Cal-ley-fon-ee-yuh.

I’m the good guy.

And I tried.

It’s like the end of the movie Terminator 2, when Sarah Connor dumped me into a giant vat of molten steel.

I was the good guy. I tried. And everybody liked that movie.

Hasta la vista, baby.

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Editorial
Turn back the worm

SN&R has long hailed the film Tremors as one of the most underrated films of the 1990s. But with all apologies to Kevin Bacon, and Frank Herbert, for that matter, Soil Born Farms has gone too far with its controversial Dune Project.

To recap, Soil Born, located right here in Sacramento, alleges that its mission is to reconnect urban dwellers with healthy food and farming through programs such as urban farm stands and weekly produce boxes. Perhaps by day, but by night, Soil Born scientists, in conjunction with the Department of Genetic Manipulation at UC Davis, have been busy splicing the DNA of Lumbricus terrestris, the common earthworm, with that of Riftia pachyptila, the 7-foot long tube worm that makes its home a mile deep in the Pacific Ocean.

At first, the experiments at the SBF labs yielded promising results. During this first phase of the Dune Project, representatives from SBF defended their scientific splicing proudly, saying the creatures’ extra-large size made them helpful at aerating soil and creating high-quality fertilizer in the form of worm castings.

That’s when dogs and cats in the neighborhoods surrounding SBF began disappearing.

As we all know now, quarantine controls were sketchy at SBF, and several of the 8-to 9-foot-long genetically manipulated tube worms escaped. The subterranean creatures proceeded to construct a latticework of tunnels beneath the city, causing massive sinkholes that swallowed cars whole, along with their owners. The giant worms seem to have a particular taste for fat, juicy babies.

Here at SN&R, we’re in emergency lockdown at our headquarters on Del Paso Boulevard, safe behind green-friendly, 10-inch concrete block walls, concrete flooring and motion detectors. Yesterday, the giant squigglers began encasing the building in a cocoon of feces. It’s time to take decisive action, if it’s not too late already.

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Editorial
O Danny boy

Longtime readers of the SN&R are keenly aware that we appreciate leaders who stick to their principles, and no local politician exemplifies this ideal more than Rep. Dan Lungren.

The former attorney general’s conservative credentials are impeccable; no one has been tougher when it comes to fighting taxes, crime and the general welfare of the people. He’s loathed by liberal, labor and environmental groups. He’s against gay marriage and wants to make the Patriot Act permanent. Plus, his dad was Richard Nixon’s doctor.

Lungren doesn’t just eat red meat, he excretes it.

Just last week on the floor of the U.S. Congress, Lungren bravely stood by his conservative principles again, as he and the entire Republican congressional delegation united in a last-ditch attempt to derail Obamacare. As his colleagues rightfully compared the health-care bill to Hitler’s Holocaust and the purges under Stalin, Lungren valiantly tried to halt the process with arcane parliamentary procedures pulled out of his ass.

He failed, but nevertheless, all of us owe a debt to Lungren for his guts. Way to go, Danny boy!

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Cut & Paste
Matsui’s opponent goes nuclear

Compiled from Snog.
Alex Cox contributed to this report.

It’s been tough for Paul Smith—the presumptive Republican nominee against incumbent democrat Doris Matsui in the Congressional 5th district—to get any attention.

Not for lack of trying. He sends out e-mail blasts, he’s got his own YouTube channel, and he posts regular communiqués on the conservative talk-radio personality Eric Hogue’s Web site.

Recently, Smith’s been making nuclear energy a major issue in his campaign. Smith is pro-nuke, and so passionate about the issue that he recently went all the way to deserts in New Mexico to prove that the biggest challenge facing safe, clean, nuclear energy—disposing of all that nuclear waste—is really a piece of cake. And we don’t mean yellow cake.

“This country has never had a nuclear-waste storage or disposal problem,” Smith explained in a recent blog post.

That’s because the country has access to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M., a vast underground salt mine with room for all of the country’s nuclear waste and then some for at least 10,000 years.

“As a result of not using the WIPP site for commercial reactor waste, the U.S. is now behind the rest of the world by 20 to 30 years in developing nuclear technology. The place is truly the best place to dispose of nuclear waste, be it military or commercial,” Smith explained.

Why didn’t anybody think of this sooner, you ask? Anti-nuclear fanatics, like Matsui, have been in control for too long, says Smith.

Also during his Southwest tour, Smith picked up the endorsement of noted nuclear expert J. Frank Parnell. Parnell joins the Sacramento Young Republicans and The Sacramento Union newspaper in supporting Smith’s campaign.

You can see the entire video of SN&R’s interview with J. Frank Parnell at www.newsreview.com/snog. During that meeting, Parnell said, “Radiation. Yes, indeed. You hear the most outrageous lies about it. Half-baked goggle-box do-gooders telling everybody it’s bad for you. Pernicious nonsense.”

Parnell explained that everyone could withstand up to one hundred chest x-rays a year, “They ought to have them, too.”

Parnell worked for years on the neutron bomb, which destroys people, but leaves buildings standing. “Fits in a suitcase. It’s so small, no one knows it’s there until, blammo! Eyes melt, skin explodes, everybody dead! So immoral, working on the thing can drive you mad. That’s what happened to this friend of mine. So, he had a lobotomy. Now he’s well again.”

Matsui did not return calls for comment.