Schwarzenegger Is A Has-Been

We here at A Yobbo’s View have been silent for too long on the forthcoming election of the new Governor of California. It’s time to break that silence and announce our proud endorsement of political newcomer, Mary Carey!

The star of quality flicks such as “Boobsville Sorority Girls” and “New Wave Hookers 8” is demonstrating that expertise in porn translates easily to expertise in politics. Just check out some of these policies:

4. If I?m elected Governor, I will wire the Governor?s Mansion with live web cams in every room. We will create a pay site, and all money collected will go toward reducing the deficit. Californians will get to see their government in action – literally! (Also, we will have people from around the globe helping to pay off our debt, so it doesn?t all fall on the shoulders of Californians.)

Brilliant! But fundraising ventures aren’t the extent of Mary’s policy-making acumen. Check this out:

7. I will coordinate the state?s unemployment and jury systems, so that anyone who applies for unemployment will instantly be called for jury duty. This will save California state and local governments millions of dollars, because we won?t have to pay for jury duty. It will also relieve those with jobs from the stress of serving on lengthy juries.

Only unemployed people on juries! Strange that nobody thought of that before.

Big Arnie had better watch out, especially since he can no longer hold the moral high ground against fuck-flick stars. The always-brilliant The Smoking Gun has unearthed an old interview with Mr. T-100 in which he admits, among other things, to having group sex:

Arnold Schwarzenegger once told a magazine interviewer about participating in an orgy with other bodybuilders, noting that “everybody jumped on” the woman involved and “took her upstairs where we all got together.” The California Republican added that not every muscleman participated in the gang bang, “just the guys who can fuck in front of other guys. Not everybody can do that. Some think that they don’t have a big-enough cock, so they can’t get a hard-on.”

It’s doubtful whether this will hurt him, even as a Republican candidate. This is, after all, California.

Thinking Clearly

Philosopher’s Magazine UK has a website with a number of philosophy related games and quizzes. Some of them are a waste of time, but The Philosophical Health Check, Battleground God and Taboo are worth a look if you’re bored. In philosophy there is obviously little agreement on what the “right” answers are, so the focus of the quizzes is on uncovering internal inconsistencies and contradictions in your philosophies.

Screensavers Galore

If anyone needs a Wicked Screensaver, let me know. I have about 700 in my inbox.

In other news, does anyone know how I can stop receiving these fucking emails?

Marxism Update

ChrisV loves Marx so much, he wants a complete list of the questions they are asking at UWA. There are 10 questions in all, and I don’t feel like typing the entire list. I’ll blog one per day until they are all gone. If anyone knows the answer to any of them, go right ahead…

Question 2:

“There is no doubt that development has benefitted women, though the advantages have not been unambiguous.” (Roces and Edwards 2000:4) Discuss with reference to one Southeast Asian country.

Get to work!

Childhood Dream Achieved

Last night I accomplished something that I previously thought was beyond my capabilities. An entire 750ml bottle of Jim Beam disappeared in one night, without any assistance.

True grog afficiondos will be disappointed that I did mix it with a certain black syrup from an evil multinational, but that’s the price of glory. I don’t particularly like the taste of bourbon, I just like the effect.

It’s sure to annoy a lot of people, but I don’t have a hangover at all. In fact, I feel great! Go Dockers!

Remember kids, drinking alcohol makes you cool. Like me!

Gratuitous Reagan Pic

I’ve done this political test before, and came out as libertarian. It seems that my ideological centre has shifted lately, because I now come up as “republican”!

This is hardly important news, but any excuse to put a picture of Reagan on the blog, eh?

Republican – You believe that the free market will
take care of most things, but that the
government should be there with moderate
taxation to provide for national defense and
enforcing morality. Your historical role model
is Ronald Reagan.

Which political sterotype are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

Hitler Was Right!

Sorry, I couldn’t resist that headline.

I want to take issue with the currently fashionable assertion that Hitler was a leftist. If “left” and “right” were defined simply economically, that would be a fair characterisation. Social factors also come into play. Neither wing of politics has a monopoly on social authoritarianism. Left-wing social authoritarianism is also called political correctness, and is characterised by attacks on others for being judgemental about people – in the world of the far left, judgementalism is the only sin. Everyone is of equal merit and only those who say otherwise are evil.

It should come as no surprise, then, that right-wing social authoritarianism stems from the opposite extreme of excessive moral judgementalism. In this view of the world, people living a certain lifestyle, or of a certain racial or cultural group, are judged immoral or inferior. Crucially, not only is this judgement made, but the social rightist goes on to say “and something should be done” – by, for example, criminalising homosexual sex, or banning Asian immigration. Islamist terror attacks also fall under the heading of right-wing social doctrine. Such dogma cannot be categorised as left-wing, despite its interventionist tendencies, because it is directly opposed to the leftist religion of equality and relativism. This is not simply an argument about interventionism versus non-interventionism, or authoritarianism versus libertarianism. BOTH sides want intervention, the far left to establish the equality of minorities and the far right to force minorities to conform.

Hitler was the most ruthless proponent of right-wing social doctrine in world history. Stalin, Mao and others massacred people in the name of equality, the common good and socialist dogma (the engineered famines, for example) and were social leftists. Hitler massacred people because he thought they were vermin and was a social rightist. The characterisation of Hitler as right-wing is fair because his genocidal crimes were committed as a result of his right-wing social ideals. That he was economically leftist is true but irrelevant.

The base problem is that (and this is of course old news) left-wing and right-wing are not adequate to describe the full range of political opinion. Social and economic leftism, for example, are lumped together by correlation – a lot of people who believe in forced social equality also believe in forced economic equality, but the two are logically distinct. If Hitler must be described as one or the other, then right-wing is the correct choice.

Note

A short note to Norman Hanscombe and ChrisV. If your comments are longer than 2 lines, it’s probably better to blog them instead. This will help to alleviate the problem known as “Not Blogging, Ever“

Marxism 101

It’s essay time for the young marxists and unfortunate exchange students who are studing a course which claims to be “Asian History”

Question 1.

Examine changing birth practices in two societies in South East Asia. What do changing birth practices tell us about gender relations? Do you see the medicalization of birth as a source of empowerment for women or a way of increasing control over women?

I had no idea how to attempt to explain this one. I assume that “control” of women would be related to the quaint Western Belief of “Not dying like an animal during childbirth” which obviously has to be balanced against the “empowering forces of women-only midwifery”.

The sad thing is that there are 9 other things you could write about apart from this one. This is the only question I could even begin to formulate a response to.

Nevertheless, Yukari is actually managing to do fairly well in the course, mostly due to a 8 hour a day study regime. I find it very distressing that I am required to search the web for explanations of Marxist theory in order to help my flatmate with her homework. And, just in case people think I am exaggerating, some of the questions specifically state to explain the problem “in Marxist terms”.

Nobody here really knows what that means, so we are attempting to throw in a few catchphrases whenever possible. Assistance with some cool Marxist catchphrases in the comments below would be appreciated.

AFANA Blog

US readers and local Aussie Rules fans can now get all the goss from footy in the USA from the new blog of the Australian Football Association of North America (AFANA).

I went to watch a game organised by these guys when I was living in New York. The New York Magpies vs the Washington Eagles.

The best thing about this particular match was that the Washington team included a few diplomats and embassy workers, who were in the position to import real Australian beer for the post-match celebrations. Awesome stuff.

American readers who are too small or too lanky for American football may be interested in Aussie Rules. All body sizes from leprechauns to ogres are catered for. There are teams all over the country (and Canada too) – try this list to find the team nearest to you.