Killer robot

Hans and Franz go to Sacramento: Arnie will run after all, forcing me to add “Schwarzenegger” to my WordPerfect spellcheck dictionary. The Arnold, the LA Times notes, is best known for playing a killer robot. Yeah, and he was in those Terminator movies too.

The paper also refers to his “trademark Austrian accent.” I didn’t know you could trademark those. Could I take a copyright out on sarcasm? On the Leno show, he said “There is a total disconnect between the people and the politicians.” As opposed to the very real connection between the people and multi-millionaire Austrian weight-lifters. It’s unclear just what happened here. Everyone said he would announce that he wasn’t running. If nothing else, you would have thought even Der Arnold would have known how un-serious using the Tonight Show for this announcement was, right up until you heard him quote every crappy tag-line from every movie he ever made--honestly, who ever thought “Hasta la vista, baby” was clever?--during the announcement and press conference, showing that he does have one clear connection with the people of California, who can’t tell the difference between politics and show biz either.

Democratic discipline reverted to type, shrinking away like Arnie’s testicles under the influence of steroids, as Loretta Sanchez, Lt Gov Bustamante and maybe John Garamendi are joining the race.

Speaking of wrecks, a giant cargo ship is wrecked on the coast of Cornwall after, and I quote the Guardian, “the chief officer got his trousers stuck on a lever in the wheelhouse, fell over and was knocked unconscious.”

The Iraqi scientist who turned over to the US those pieces buried in his backyard since 1991, who thought he had an asylum deal, has actually been kept since then in house arrest in Kuwait, because while he told the US everything he knew, he didn’t tell them what they wanted to here about there being an ongoing program.

What the Guardian calls a conference of Dr. Strangeloves, scientists & Pentagon officials, will meet today at an air force base in Nebraska to discuss nuclear strategy. Hopefully there will be leaks. But if you think about it, this statement by a Pentagon spokesmodel is scary enough: "We need to change our nuclear strategy from the cold war to one that can deal with emerging threats." In other words, they want to figure out how to use nukes, or the threat of nukes, in new and exciting ways.