Schwarzenegger: a bigger twat by the day

[In Bloom]

The fact that the halfwit was even voted into office speaks volumes for American politics and a great deal of the US electorate...

Yeah, because in dear old Blighty, everybody is so much more sensible and takes voting so much more seriously.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/1965569.stm

 

[Dai Sheep]

Yeah, because in dear old Blighty, everybody is so much more sensible and takes voting so much more seriously.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/1965569.stm

a) I didn't say everyone in 'Blighty' was more sensible.

b) Your link refers to the post of mayor, which for the most part in 'Blighty' has no real power and is essentially ceremonial.

 

[The Old Sarge]

The fact that the halfwit was even voted into office speaks volumes for American politics and a great deal of the US electorate...I wonder what the coversation would be like between Bush and Schwarzenegger?...deeply philisophical I'll bet

Better than even chance it would be ...

over your head?

 

[Isambard]

Which "people of Graz"?

Read the story from the BBC; some politicians had made moves against the naming of the stadium after Schwarzenegger. Probably including Councillor Karl-Heinz Herper (SPÖ - Social Democrat) that your article mentions. They are democratically elected representitives.

A quick look at Google.at reveals that Graz Mayor Nagl (ÖVP - Austrian conservative) seems a nasty piece of shit - he claimed Graz has always been the last bastion of western Europe against Turkish domination which has endeared him to immigrants in Austria's 2nd city obviously.

Of course Nagl's gonna lick up to Arnie, but too late, the other councillors have made their point and prompted the question is Schwarzenegger a son the city can be proud of?

 

[bugsy7]

According to this site, Arnie's name was removed from the stadium in the wee small hours of Monday morning to "prevent people stomping around on the letters of his name".

http://focus.msn.de/hps/fol/newsausgabe/newsausgabe.htm?id=23015

Sounds plausible, I suppose.

MsG

 

[Isambard]

If I remember correctly, that area of Austria has moved significantly leftwards in recent elections.

 

[nino_savatte]

Is that film, per chance, made by Michael Moore?

Seriously. What film? Where can I get hold of it?

The Old Sarge

I see, when the shit hits the fan you shoot at the easiest target. This may surprise you Sarge but not all films critical of the Republicans and their corporate pals are made by Michael Moore.

I get the feeling that you actually approve of the questionable unseating of the sitting governor of California - oui? Enron were crooks and they used their position to influence politics.

 

[nino_savatte]

Which "people of Graz"?


December 21, 2005
latimes.com

Austrian Mayor Tries to Smooth Away Rift With Schwarzenegger

Graz official expresses regret that relations have been strained over the Williams execution and reassures governor he's still admired there.

By Peter Nicholas and Alissa J. Rubin, Times Staff Writers

SACRAMENTO — The mayor of an Austrian city wrote to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Tuesday expressing regret that relations between the governor and his homeland have become strained over the death penalty.

He sought to reassure the governor that people from the region, which includes Schwarzenegger's hometown of Thal, still admire him despite his support for capital punishment, which many of them oppose.

"I deeply regret that your relationship with your hometown has suffered so much at the hands of the provincial actions" of local officials, wrote Siegfried Nagl, a political ally of Schwarzenegger's and mayor of Graz, a city near Thal.

"It only makes sense to stand up for a friend and great citizen of our city," the mayor wrote, "and oppose those who would drag your name through the mud."

His letter, translated by the governor's staff and made public Tuesday, was in reply to one from Schwarzenegger the day before insisting that his name be removed from the Graz soccer stadium.

Schwarzenegger was preempting a move by the Graz City Council to strip his name from the facility in protest of the recent execution of Stanley Tookie Williams. The governor's refusal to commute Williams' sentence provoked an outcry across Europe, including the governor's homeland. Another death row inmate, Clarence Ray Allen, 75, is scheduled to be executed Jan. 17.

Nagl's letter asked Schwarzenegger to reconsider his decision to return an honorary ring that the city awarded him in 1999.

"I … hope you will keep the high award from our city, and that we will soon hear 'I'll be back' in Graz again," the mayor said.

Schwarzenegger said in his letter to Nagl on Monday that the ring had already been sent back.

Schwarzenegger told an Austrian newspaper Tuesday he is "deeply disappointed" that his support for the death penalty has soured relations with his homeland.

In an interview in Kronen Zeitung, the governor said he wanted to stop Austrian opponents of capital punishment from using the Graz stadium for death-penalty politics.

Schwarzenegger said he was "sorry that it did come to a rupture between the politicians of the city and myself."

He suggested that he feels betrayed by some of his countrymen. "Let's put it this way: I just have another notion of friendship," he told the newspaper. "Friends should stand up for each other also during hard times. That's the way I've always handled it."

The governor noted that the death penalty is supported by a majority of Californians and said he found no compelling reason to stop Williams' execution.

"I would have pardoned him if there had been convincing reasons," Schwarzenegger said.

In an interview with The Times on Tuesday, Graz City Councilman Karl-Heinz Herper called Schwarzenegger's reaction to the dispute "not exactly nice."


Nicholas reported from Sacramento and Rubin from Vienna.

This amount of C&P is a little reminiscent of pbman. You don't even bother to post a link to this text.

 

[In Bloom]

a) I didn't say everyone in 'Blighty' was more sensible.

Yet you have no problem with tarring the whole of the American population with the same incredibly broad brush

 

[Dai Sheep]

Yet you have no problem with tarring the whole of the American population with the same incredibly broad brush

Wrong. I referred to

"...a great deal of the US electorate"

i.e. the ones who voted Schwarzenegger (and Bush) in, not the entire American population.

 

[FridgeMagnet]

Thank you for the calm, rational, intelligent reply. Do you know where (in the US) I can see/rent this thing? I've tried Yuwipi's link and a few others I've googled but the load times are forever, or they refuse to run on my machine unless I download another player.

The Old Sarge

Small techy point, but I recommend VLC as a program that will play pretty much anything you find on the net: http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

If VLC doesn't play it it's almost always either Windows Media (closed format, shouldn't be used IMO but people do) or just corrupt. It's played everything I've downloaded, weird AVIs, DVD rips.... If you use that you only need one player.

 

[X-77]

Watch a movie called "The Smartest Guys in the Room." Its about the fall of Enron. Part of the film detailed his backroom deals with these guys with the idea of going into politics.

There was one part where the controllers at Enron deliberately shut off power to a part of California. Someone had tape of them laughing and saying "there's grandma, sitting the dark." It was largely due to the power crunch that Grey Davis lost to him. All of it orchestrated by Enron.

when I was over there at the time of the recall/elections there were people saying that there was lots of dodgy Arnie/Enron deals going on behind the scenes, the reason for him running. When Arnold & co came to my uni to do the televised hustings there were anti-Arnold protestors giving out info about this... all went a bit over my head at the time although I've still got the literature indoors.

 

[X-77]

Yeah, because in dear old Blighty, everybody is so much more sensible and takes voting so much more seriously.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/1965569.stm

phew, glad to see someone picking up on that - I detest all that 'we're so much more superior to those thicko Yanks' attitude - it's such tedious bullshit!

 

[Streathamite]

Which "people of Graz"?


December 21, 2005
latimes.com

Austrian Mayor Tries to Smooth Away Rift With Schwarzenegger

Graz official expresses regret that relations have been strained over the Williams execution and reassures governor he's still admired there.

By Peter Nicholas and Alissa J. Rubin, Times Staff Writers

SACRAMENTO — The mayor of an Austrian city wrote to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Tuesday expressing regret that relations between the governor and his homeland have become strained over the death penalty.

He sought to reassure the governor that people from the region, which includes Schwarzenegger's hometown of Thal, still admire him despite his support for capital punishment, which many of them oppose.

"I deeply regret that your relationship with your hometown has suffered so much at the hands of the provincial actions" of local officials, wrote Siegfried Nagl, a political ally of Schwarzenegger's and mayor of Graz, a city near Thal.

"It only makes sense to stand up for a friend and great citizen of our city," the mayor wrote, "and oppose those who would drag your name through the mud."

His letter, translated by the governor's staff and made public Tuesday, was in reply to one from Schwarzenegger the day before insisting that his name be removed from the Graz soccer stadium.

Schwarzenegger was preempting a move by the Graz City Council to strip his name from the facility in protest of the recent execution of Stanley Tookie Williams. The governor's refusal to commute Williams' sentence provoked an outcry across Europe, including the governor's homeland. Another death row inmate, Clarence Ray Allen, 75, is scheduled to be executed Jan. 17.

Nagl's letter asked Schwarzenegger to reconsider his decision to return an honorary ring that the city awarded him in 1999.

"I … hope you will keep the high award from our city, and that we will soon hear 'I'll be back' in Graz again," the mayor said.

Schwarzenegger said in his letter to Nagl on Monday that the ring had already been sent back.

Schwarzenegger told an Austrian newspaper Tuesday he is "deeply disappointed" that his support for the death penalty has soured relations with his homeland.

In an interview in Kronen Zeitung, the governor said he wanted to stop Austrian opponents of capital punishment from using the Graz stadium for death-penalty politics.

Schwarzenegger said he was "sorry that it did come to a rupture between the politicians of the city and myself."

He suggested that he feels betrayed by some of his countrymen. "Let's put it this way: I just have another notion of friendship," he told the newspaper. "Friends should stand up for each other also during hard times. That's the way I've always handled it."

The governor noted that the death penalty is supported by a majority of Californians and said he found no compelling reason to stop Williams' execution.

"I would have pardoned him if there had been convincing reasons," Schwarzenegger said.

In an interview with The Times on Tuesday, Graz City Councilman Karl-Heinz Herper called Schwarzenegger's reaction to the dispute "not exactly nice."


Nicholas reported from Sacramento and Rubin from Vienna.

Well done for the most useless, worthless post of the year! A late entry, sure, but a worthy winner.
1. herr nagl is a 'person'. Not a 'people'. he is one person, and a near-racist one at that.
2. Of course he'd 'deeply regret' people in graz slating Arnie; HE'S A 'POLITICAL ALLY' OF HIS, YOU NUMBSKULL!
next breaking news; Dubya 'regrets' anyone in texas criticising Rummie
HERE are the 'people' who've protested at Arnie's actions;This, btw, is how we do a link. care to try it?

Sigi Binder of the environmentalist Green party in Graz says that in just two days more than 1,500 people signed her party's online petition to rename the stadium. The appeal was closed to further signatures when Schwarzenegger himself demanded that his name be dropped.

Thousands backed a separate similar petition, and hundreds of supporting phone calls came in from Germany and German-speaking parts of Switzerland, she added.

d'oh!

 

[untethered]

This amount of C&P is a little reminiscent of pbman. You don't even bother to post a link to this text.

So why quote it in its entirety?

 

[Streathamite]

But according to the facts of the case and the law as it stands, I can't see any reasonable grounds for granting clemency.

I can; firstly, he's just about the most reformed, repentant crim you could possibly find, jimmy boyle x1000000.
2) IN a country where - IMO - there was at the time of his conviction (1979) a high chance of finding racism permeating its' institutions (such as the courts), and there were huge question marks raised after the trial concerning due process.

 

[nino_savatte]

So why quote it in its entirety?

Why indeed.

 

[untethered]

I can; firstly, he's just about the most reformed, repentant crim you could possibly find, jimmy boyle x1000000.
2) IN a country where - IMO - there was at the time of his conviction (1979) a high chance of finding racism permeating its' institutions (such as the courts), and there were huge question marks raised after the trial concerning due process.

Williams claimed that he was innocent of the crimes for which he was convicted. I have no way of knowing whether this is true or not and neither do you. Neither does Schwarzenegger. Therefore, as he says in his decision, it isn't his job to second guess the decisions of the courts. The governor has to work on the assumption that the verdict(s) are correct, otherwise there would be no legitimate reason for punishing him at all, let alone executing him.

Schwarzenegger argues that the basis for redemption is an admission of guilt and an apology. Williams did not do this for reasons we will now never know. Williams may well have been sorry for many of the things that he admitted to doing, but not for the crimes he was convicted for. In this sense, how can he possibly have redeemed himself?

I appreciate that if the verdicts were wrong and Williams was innocent, he was in a Catch 22 situation: admit to something you didn't do and reinforce the errors (and perhaps racism) of the courts or the justice system, or get executed. But the case was reviewed many times and unless there was a self-evident glaring error in the process I can't see any defensible way that Schwarzenegger could have granted clemency in this case without being compelled to do so in every case.

The State of California and by extension, its citizens, execute people. I think they're wrong to do that for both moral and practical reasons. There may well be good reasons why this case is yet another example of why capital punishment doesn't work. But the flip side of the coin is democracy, separation of powers and the rule of law. If the state permits capital punishment through democratic choice, if the courts come to a guilty verdict and impose that punishment, then it's not for the executive to overturn that entire process without good reason. Schwarzenegger was elected to uphold the law, not to pick and choose the bits he likes and dislikes (assuming, of course, his personal inclination might be to clemency here) and distort the entire system through executive privilege.

To summarise, the point is to argue the case and change the system, not to expect those playing the game to bend the rules in a tacit acknowlegement that the system is wrong.

 

[FridgeMagnet]

The fact that "that's the system" is not really a compelling argument why somebody should be killed. If the law is unjust, then acting on it makes you unjust.

And as far as I understand it he *could* have granted a pardon if he'd wanted to without setting a precedent, regardless of any other factors (those are the rules) but he didn't. He had the choice but he didn't take it.

 

[untethered]

The fact that "that's the system" is not really a compelling argument why somebody should be killed. If the law is unjust, then acting on it makes you unjust.

And as far as I understand it he *could* have granted a pardon if he'd wanted to without setting a precedent, regardless of any other factors (those are the rules) but he didn't. He had the choice but he didn't take it.

Well I don't believe that there ever is a moral justification for killing someone in cold blood. But at the same time, I don't see how Schwarzenegger could have granted clemency in this case (not a "pardon") in any defensible way. Either the verdict was wrong (and it's not for him to make that judgement) or Williams should have apologised for his wrongdoing.

If you're interested in morals, I'd say you shouldn't be holding any kind of office in a state that kills prisoners. But that's a different argument from the one you're making.

 

[Fong]

The fact that "that's the system" is not really a compelling argument why somebody should be killed. If the law is unjust, then acting on it makes you unjust.

And as far as I understand it he *could* have granted a pardon if he'd wanted to without setting a precedent, regardless of any other factors (those are the rules) but he didn't. He had the choice but he didn't take it.

It is your choice to think the Law is unjust, I don't think it is unjust. I don't think its a blanket law that applies to every case, but there are certainly people on this planet I think should be executed for their crimes.

Your opinion doesn't make a law unjust.

As to the choice he had, he made it clear why he did not. Because there was no admission of guilt or remorse.

If you feel that the man is guilty, as the courts decided and looked at on appeal several times. Then if he refuses to even admit he did anything wrong or apologise.

Why should you give him clemency?

 

[FridgeMagnet]

Well I don't believe that there ever is a moral justification for killing someone in cold blood. But at the same time, I don't see how Schwarzenegger could have granted clemency in this case (not a "pardon") in any defensible way. Either the verdict was wrong (and it's not for him to make that judgement) or Williams should have apologised for his wrongdoing.

If you're interested in morals, I'd say you shouldn't be holding any kind of office in a state that kills prisoners. But that's a different argument from the one you're making.

The thing is, Schwarzenegger doesn't need to legally justify his decision - he can just say "I grant clemency". He always has that choice. He's not restricted by the verdict or anything else, though he has to take the political consequences - but he has the power to do so.

 

[FridgeMagnet]

Your opinion doesn't make a law unjust.

Your opinion doesn't make it just.

 

[untethered]

The thing is, Schwarzenegger doesn't need to legally justify his decision - he can just say "I grant clemency". He always has that choice. He's not restricted by the verdict or anything else, though he has to take the political consequences - but he has the power to do so.

Theoretically, the Queen doesn't have to give Royal Assent to acts of Parliament, but we all know that she does, and why. It's the same with the governor.

If Schwarzenegger had granted clemency in this case without any explanation or any credible one, there would have been a huge storm. He would have been recalled in short order and the executive power of clemency would have been removed from the governor's office. Hardly a way to improve the system.

But I suspect some people are thinking that he opposes capital punishment. He clearly doesn't.

 

[FridgeMagnet]

It's not the same process; US governors have a lot more leeway. They really can say "I think this guy deserves a pardon" if they want to, it's not just a rubber stamp, and pardons take place without anyone being removed. They face being called soft on crime etc of course but that's not a sufficient excuse IMO.

 

[rogue yam]

The thing is, Schwarzenegger doesn't need to legally justify his decision - he can just say "I grant clemency". He always has that choice. He's not restricted by the verdict or anything else, though he has to take the political consequences - but he has the power to do so.

It is true that the California State Constitution grants the Governor unilateral power to commute a death sentence. And it would be reasonable to argue that the death penalty is in all cases immoral, so candidates for Governor should announce during their campaigns that they will commute all death penalties once they are Governor.

But the people of California support the death penalty. If a candidate promised never to implement the death penalty, presumably that candidate would lose votes in favor of some other that supported the death penalty. Neither Gov. Schwarzenegger, nor any of his major rivals in the last election campaigned against the death penalty.

After the election is no time to thwart the will of the majority. Some might call that "leadership" but others would see it as arrogance. You say that Gov. Schwarzenegger was not restricted by anything else, but he made it clear during the election that despite his personal opposition to the death penalty, he would not grant blanket clemency to just anyone whose case came before him. That is, he would enforce State law as duly constituted by the people, their representatives, and their courts.

So this particular case boiled down to Tookie Williams' claims of repentence and good works. The fact simply do not support Williams' claims in this regard, as the Governor's statement of his denial of the clemency petition made clear. Thus Gov. Schwarzenegger acted rationally and honorably, and according to law. Good for him!

 

[Isambard]

Tookey appeared to much of the world to repent for his crimes. Arnie made his money glorifying a bloodbath. Europe has given, gives and will give a lot to the "New World" - our languages are there, our humanity is obviously still on the boat.

 

[rogue yam]

Tookey appeared to much of the world to repent for his crimes.

Here's that same formulation again: "much of the world". Indeed! Well, certainly you and I can agree that ignorant, obnoxious leftists all over the world sound quite alike, right down to their sneering presumption of uniqueness.

 

[Yossarian]

...ignorant, obnoxious....sneering

Hey, kettle? There's a pot here with something to say to you...

 

[ViolentPanda]

It is true that the California State Constitution grants the Governor unilateral power to commute a death sentence. And it would be reasonable to argue that the death penalty is in all cases immoral, so candidates for Governor should announce during their campaigns that they will commute all death penalties once they are Governor.

But the people of California support the death penalty. If a candidate promised never to implement the death penalty, presumably that candidate would lose votes in favor of some other that supported the death penalty. Neither Gov. Schwarzenegger, nor any of his major rivals in the last election campaigned against the death penalty.

After the election is no time to thwart the will of the majority. Some might call that "leadership" but others would see it as arrogance. You say that Gov. Schwarzenegger was not restricted by anything else, but he made it clear during the election that despite his personal opposition to the death penalty, he would not grant blanket clemency to just anyone whose case came before him. That is, he would enforce State law as duly constituted by the people, their representatives, and their courts.

So this particular case boiled down to Tookie Williams' claims of repentence and good works. The fact simply do not support Williams' claims in this regard, as the Governor's statement of his denial of the clemency petition made clear. Thus Gov. Schwarzenegger acted rationally and honorably, and according to law. Good for him!

Nice try at switching the basis for the argument. Close but no cigar.

It isn't about campaigning on a ticket of "no death penallty", the argument was about the absolute power of the governor to gift clemency to whoever he wishes regardless of what ticket he came to power on.