hasta la vista baby

Our governator, Arnold Schwarzenegger, is packing his bags and hightailing it out of Sacramento this week. This gave me pause and made me think...why did we recall Gray Davis in the first place?

After the so-called "citizen's uprising" that removed Davis from his post (and truthfully, can you call the work of one congressman who personally financed the recall election a citizen's uprising?), we were assured that California was on the right path. Arnold Schwarzenegger, the body builder-turned mega-action star with no political experience and a penchant for grabbing the breasts of women he just met, would kick legislative ass. Our state's finances would improve, education would be reformed and there'd be fewer Mexican street merchants selling gum.

Let's flash forward to 2010. Aside from his series of embarrasing public comments ("She's either Puerto Rican or Cuban - I mean, they are both very hot"), Schwarzenegger did nothing to dig us out of our financial mess. Education did not get a significant boost. I continue to buy oranges from Manuel at the corner of La Cienega and Washington.

Gray Davis certainly wasn't our savior, but he couldn't have been any worse than Ah-nuld.

(Well, except for the off-color jokes. I'll give you that.)

is it really a good thing

To suppress your period with birth control pills? I like to think I am open-minded and far from traditional, but this concept eludes me. It seems like Mother Nature intended us to bleed monthly. Do we have the right to interfere with that? And what are the long-term effects of interrupting our natural cycle?

Faithful readers know I have a less than pleasant monthly visitor. I won't shed a tear once I hit menopause. However, I can't conceive of taking a pill to stop my period. I can't articulate why but it just seems like there is some reason - mystic or otherwise - that women go through this monthly.

Thoughts?

what to make of wikileaks

I've been a tad behind on world events and am just catching up to the uproar about WikiLeaks and its publication of American diplomatic cables.

Oh, where to begin.

Should someone assassinate Julian Assange, WL's editor-in-chief, as suggested by that standard bearer of ethics, G. Gordon Liddy? I love how there is zero outrage over illegal killings in Kenya, questionable Guantanamo Bay procedures or toxic waste dumping in Africa (issues all documented by WikiLeaks) but people want to publicly flog Assange.

Then there's the other side. Isn't Assange threatening our national security and diplomatic relations by publicly leaking unclassified cables? Perhaps, but our enemies had their beef w/ us long before WikiLeaks ever launched.

The most ludicrous claim has been that Assange is guilty of treason, since he's Australian. Sorry mate!

Where to land on this issue?

I would say that the debate is not about whether Julian Assange is irresponsible; we have to assume he is, although perhaps not as irresponsible as those individuals who tortured war prisoners at Abu Gharaib. Shouldn't the debate focus more on the the issue of journalism and what makes for investigative journalism in this age of the Internet? I read an interview with Assange and he mentions that WikiLeaks has released more classified documents than the rest of the world press combined. Isn't that a sad comment, when we look to journalists to raise issues and uncover things that are suppressed by governments, banks, corporations?

Very curious to see how this plays out...