"I hate the idea of the Republicans redrawing the district lines in Texas, as much as I hate what the Californians are trying to do. But I’m thinking now about California..."

"...and about the people of California. I promised them that we are going to create a commission that would be independent of the politicians, and there will be an independent citizens commission drawing the lines. So I’m not going to go back on my promise. I’m going to fight for my promise."

Said Arnold Schwarzenegger, quoted in "Newsom’s Gerrymander of California Has a Formidable Foe: Schwarzenegger/The actor-turned-governor helped overhaul how California draws political maps. In an interview with The New York Times, he said he would fight to preserve that legacy" (NYT).

Now, Mr. Newsom is asking voters to set the independent commission’s work aside for the next three elections in favor of a map drawn to help elect more Democrats.... Exactly how Mr. Schwarzenegger plans to wage this battle is still taking shape. It started with him asking an aide to design the T-shirt, which he wore to the gym Friday morning and then donned as he rode his electric bike to breakfast. As Mr. Schwarzenegger sat down in a private dining room filled with potted plants, a waiter brought him a dish of walnuts and raisins, and poured him a glass of watermelon juice....

If Arnold Schwarzenegger is eating walnuts and raisins and drinking watermelon juice, that's already part of the battle. It's a referendum. The people will vote. All either man can do is to advise the people how to vote. Arnold Schwarzenegger being Arnold Schwarzenegger and eating walnuts and raisins and drinking watermelon juice... that's persuasive!

"[Governor Greg] Abbott could not remove [the quorum-avoidant Democratic] lawmakers on his own and would need the courts to go along with his plan..."

"... according to University of Notre Dame law professor Derek Muller. While Abbott and other Republicans could argue that the Democrats had abandoned their duties, those lawmakers would have a chance to make the case that they were representing their constituents by denying the majority the quorum it needs to operate, he added.... 'Even if you go to a court, you’re going to have to make a showing that I think it’s going be tough to make.' Samuel Issacharoff, a professor at New York University School of Law who has observed Texas redistricting battles for more than 30 years, said the governor’s authority to order legislators to be arrested or to remove them from office, 'is at best, unclear.'"

From "Texas House Republicans vote to issue civil arrest warrants for fleeing Democrats/The Texas state House reconvened Monday without dozens of Democrats who left the state to try to stop the GOP from moving ahead with enacting a new congressional map that would give them five more safe seats" (WaPo)(free-access link).

57 of the Texas Democrats have absconded to Chicago, Boston, or Albany. It takes 51 to deny the Republicans a quorum. When is interfering with democracy characterizable as a form of democracy? Whenever the constituents you were elected to represent oppose what they majority elected to the legislature is trying to do?

ADDED: “Schwarzenegger ready to fight Newsom on redistricting/The Republican who helped pass California’s independent line-drawing commission wants to defend his legacy” (Politico).

"Eisenhower said that politics is like the road, the left, the right is the gutter, and the center is drivable."

"And it's exactly the way it is in politics. You have to understand that there's a sweet spot. You know, like the teaching in golf, hit the sweet spot, or in tennis to hit the sweet spot. All this, there's a sweet spot to find exactly so you can get a deal made... It's not exactly your way.... I wanted to wipe out, you know, the deficit. And I was not able to do that with all these Democrats around it. They, they love to spend money. So, so, so I was, I was stuck with it. So, but the fact of them is we could improve the situation and I was able to work together with the Democrats on environmental issues and infrastructure issues... education and all of this stuff. And we, we, we did really fine and had a great time up there being governor of the state of California.... You have to face reality. The trick is just to be, to not hate the other side because they think differently. It's just kind of like figuring out how can we work together and how can we do something that's really good for the people...."

Said Arnold Schwarzenegger, on Theo Von's podcast the other day.

"I’m watching your show, and I’m watching your butt sticking out there.... What is going on here? This is crazy."

Arnold Schwarzenegger jokes about seeing his son Patrick naked on screen in ‘THE WHITE LOTUS’:

“I’m watching your show, and I’m watching your butt sticking out there. And all of a sudden, I see the weenie. What is going on here? This is crazy.”

pic.twitter.com/okdNsYx5PE

— Film Updates (@FilmUpdates) June 3, 2025

"The F.B.I.’s increasingly pervasive use of the polygraph, or a lie-detector test, has only intensified a culture of intimidation."

"Mr. Patel has wielded the polygraph to keep agents or other employees from discussing a number of topics, including his decision-making or internal moves. Former agents say he is doing so in ways not typically seen in the F.B.I.... Jim Stern, who conducted hundreds of polygraphs while an F.B.I. agent, said... that if someone violated policy, the F.B.I. could polygraph them. But if an agent who legitimately talked to the news media in a previous role had to take one, he said, 'that’s going to be an issue.' 'I never used them to suss out gossip,' he said. At a recent meeting, senior executives were told that the news leaks were increasing in priority — even though they do not involve open cases or the disclosure of classified information. Former officials say senior executives, among others, were being polygraphed at a 'rapid rate.' In May, one senior official was forced out, at least in part because he had not disclosed to Mr. Patel that his wife had taken a knee during demonstrations protesting police violence...."

From "Unease at F.B.I. Intensifies as Patel Ousts Top Officials/Senior executives are being pushed out and the director, Kash Patel, is more freely using polygraph tests to tamp down on news leaks about leadership decisions and behavior" (NYT).

I've made a new tag — "lie detector" — and gone back and applied it to old posts. Interesting to see how many times the topic has come up:

April 2004: "[E]ven if the lie detector was not to be used on [Omarosa], and, indeed, even if lie detector tests are not reliable, if she believed it was to be used on her and believed it was reliable, her running off at the sight of it is some evidence that she had lied in her accusation about the other contestant....."

April 2005:  "Everyone on TV was into analyzing why [the groom-to-be of the Runaway Bride] would take a private lie detector test, but wanted special conditions before he'd take the police test. He wanted it videotaped, and the police refused...."

July 2005: "Some researchers attached sensors to 101 penises and then showed the possessors of these penises either all-male or all-female porn movies. It was kind of a lie detector test, because the men had all professed to being heterosexual, homosexual, or bisexual...."

October 2008: Ashley Todd, the woman who claimed a black man had carved the letter "B" on her face.

June 2012: "'$1.1 million-plus Gates grants: "Galvanic" bracelets that measure student engagement.'... [I]sn't this basically a lie detector? And if so, won't students train themselves to fool the authorities?"

April 2013:

"Vietnam Offers to Drop U.S. Tariffs to Zero. Will That Be Enough for Trump?"

A New York Times headline reports the good news for Trump but the good is not enough for the New York Times. The good news must be balanced with bad news, even if it's just a nudging toward amorphous doubt. You know that Trump. There's always more disruption and chaos coming. 

What will the NYT say if Trump's tariffs have this effect across the board and all countries drop their tariffs? Will the NYT credit Trump for his success — for his audacious, clever move?

I see that yesterday, the NYT had this headline: "Musk Says He Hopes Europe and U.S. Move to a ‘Zero-Tariff Situation’/The billionaire adviser to the Trump administration appeared to part ways with the president in a videoconference appearance with Italy’s far-right League party." I give the Times credit for slipping in that weasel word, "appeared." The 2 men appeared to part ways. And it appears different today. Now that Vietnam has responded to the incentive — oh, look at that! — the 2 men seem to be going the same way.

Well, they looked like that yesterday too, but the NYT needed to continue on its way, making trouble for Trump. There's always bad news inside any good news.

I need a phrase that's the reverse of "Every cloud has a silver lining." Maybe: "Every pong-pong fruit has its deadly poison seeds." I mean, to hell with the agitation in New York Times headlines! Tonight is the finale of Season 3 of "The White Lotus." Those seeds are getting into one of those protein smoothies Patrick Schwarzenegger keeps whipping up, right? 

"But it’s time to catch up with a new batch of mopey millionaires who apparently didn’t do any due diligence to confirm..."

"... that the White Lotus is a luxury hotel where they could relax in peace and without any homicides on the premises."

I'm reading "The White Lotus Kill-or-Be-Killed Report: Chattering Monkey Minds" (Vulture)(analyzing, after Episode 1, who might be killing whom, this time around).

The article goes through a number of options. I'll cherry pick one, just because the actor is Patrick Schwarzenegger (as Saxon Ratliff, who went to Duke):

"Duvall dancing at Studio 54. She lived the life of a celebrity in the 1970s and 1980s, dating Paul Simon and Ringo Starr...."

"The film critic Pauline Kael called her the 'female Buster Keaton.' On casting Duvall in 'The Shining,' Stanley Kubrick told her, 'I like the way you cry.'... Sitting between Paul Simon and James Taylor, Duvall greets Arnold Schwarzenegger at a screening in 1977."

From the captions at "Shelley Duvall: A Life in Pictures/With her gossamer frame and toothy smile, she was one of the biggest film stars of the 1970s" (NYT)(free-access link).

"What Harvey Weinstein’s Overturned Conviction Means for Donald Trump’s Trial."

A good title. It's something I was trying to parse on my own yesterday.

The article is at The New Yorker, written by Ronan Farrow. Subheadline: "The legal issue behind Weinstein’s successful appeal is also at the heart of the former President’s hush-money case." The subheadline in my head was: Big man brought down by sex. Or should it be: Pile everything together and the monster will be visible?

Consider this: Farrow's book about Weinstein was called "Catch and Kill" (commission earned), and in Trump's trial, David Pecker has been testifying about the National Enquirer’s "catch and kill" scheme. 

From a CBS News story about Trump's lawyer's cross-examination of Pecker:

Pecker said he first gave Trump a heads up about a story in 1998.... [Trump's lawyer Emil] Bove had Pecker walk through negative stories that he had killed about other figures, including Arnold Schwarzenegger and Tiger Woods.

It's difficult for Arnold Schwarzenegger to get old, because he was was in perfect shape, but...

"... most of the people never have been in shape. So what does it mean — 'getting out of shape'? They've always looked at a shitty body, so therefore it gets shittier as time goes on." You can't know what it's like for Arnold, who looked in the mirror and saw "the supreme body."

A TikTok embed:

"Don't start creating a generation of wimps and weak people... Let's not over-baby people."

"Let's go and teach kids to be tough, to do sports, to study and struggle and go through these kind of painful moments sometimes."

Said Arnold Schwarzenegger, on "The Howard Stern Show," quoted in "Arnold Schwarzenegger, 76, warns against creating a 'generation of WIMPS'... after admitting he burned daughter's shoes when she misbehaved" (The Daily Mail).

"First of all, I know Bobby from the time I met Maria. I always liked him. But when I look at him being suspicious of certain things, I ask myself..."

"Can anyone really judge him in a fair way? Because here’s a guy who has had an uncle assassinated, a father assassinated. No one wants to open up the files. So you must say to yourself, What is the reason for that? You start not trusting governments. I don’t live with this kind of suspicion, because nothing ever happened to me that makes me feel like that. But a lot of things happened to him, so this is where he is coming from. I’m not saying rightfully or wrongfully. I’m just saying I can see why someone like him is the way he is."

Said Arnold Schwarzenegger, responding to a NYT interviewer, in "Arnold Schwarzenegger Is Here to Pump You Up (Emotionally)." 

Schwarzenegger is promoting a new book (which has a Jordon Petersonesque title: "Be Useful: Seven Tools for Life").

The interviewer, David Marchese, had asked "what do you make of R.F.K. Jr.’s anti-vax, conspiracist turn?"

Marchese follows up — evoking the Moynihan meme you are not entitled to your own facts — "But we can be sympathetic to someone and what happened to them and also say facts are facts." 

Schwarzenegger seems unaware  of the old meme. He says: "His facts are different. I understand what you’re saying, but there’s people out there who have their own facts."

Before blogging, there were proto-bloggers, and I have encountered another example: Rose Kennedy.

I have commemorated proto-bloggers before. For example, something John Keats did in 1816. And, in the first year of my own blogging, I told you about my grandfather, Pop. And though I can’t find where I've blogged about it, there's something I myself used to do in the 1990s. I'd read the paper NYT at the dining table in the morning and if I found something distinctly interesting, I'd tear it out and put it on the other side of the table, where my sons would see it when they eventually came into the room.

Anyway, the proto-blogger I discovered today was Rose Kennedy. As a consequence of reading that Rebecca Traister article about RFK Jr. — blogged here — I started reading his book "American Values/Lessons I Learned from My Family." 

Here's what I consider to be like blogging:

Excellent presentation by Arnold Schwarzenegger.

I love the Russian people. That is why I have to tell you the truth. Please watch and share. pic.twitter.com/6gyVRhgpFV

— Arnold (@Schwarzenegger) March 17, 2022

ADDED: You can read the transcript here. Excerpt:

[My father] didn’t like Russians, because of his experience in the Second World War, when he was injured in Leningrad. (The Nazi army that he was part of did vicious harm to that great city and to its brave people.)...

When my father arrived in Leningrad, he was all pumped up on the lies of his government. When he left Leningrad, he was broken physically and mentally. He spent the rest of his life in pain: pain from a broken back, pain from the shrapnel that always reminded him of those terrible years, pain from the guilt that he felt.

Russian soldiers already know much of this truth. You’ve seen it with your own eyes. I don’t want you to be broken like my father. This is not a war to defend Russia like your grandfathers and your great-grandfathers fought....

Elizabeth Warren tells a joke... tells the truth...

I didn’t write the loopholes you exploit, @amazon – your armies of lawyers and lobbyists did. But you bet I’ll fight to make you pay your fair share. And fight your union-busting. And fight to break up Big Tech so you’re not powerful enough to heckle senators with snotty tweets. https://t.co/3vCAI93MST

— Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) March 26, 2021

Via "Elizabeth Warren Wants To Break Up Amazon So It's 'Not Powerful Enough To Heckle Senators With Snotty Tweets'/She said the quiet part out loud" (Reason).

How much do powerful people enjoy their power? Ah! I have crushed my enemies!! How much of that sort of thing goes on in their head? 

I feel rather certain that they must get emotional thrills, because — unless they came into their power by birth — they have to go through so much struggle to get their power. I would never do it, and I know I don't get pleasure from exerting power. I have a distaste for it. I know these people who pursue it are emotionally different from me, and I wonder how does it feel? I'm saying this on the occasion of Elizabeth Warren's tweet because I'm certain that if I were a U.S. Senator — if somehow that awful role were foisted on me — and I thought of that wisecrack, I would never write it out and publish. 

But Warren thought it was good — openly triumphing at power. I think of this:

"I grew up in the ruins of a country that suffered the loss of its democracy..."

My message to my fellow Americans and friends around the world following this week's attack on the Capitol. pic.twitter.com/blOy35LWJ5

— Arnold (@Schwarzenegger) January 10, 2021

"I know a predator when I see one," said Kamala Harris.

At the Democratic Party convention last night. Transcript.

I found a clip of it:



And YouTube thought I'd like to see this next:

"In 2020, among political controversies, Elon Musk and several political figures, including Ivanka Trump made a reference to the red pill concept."

That's the last line of the Wikipedia article "Red pill and blue pill" — which is full of great stuff. In addition to explaining the original meaning in the movie "The Matrix," there's the earlier movie, "Total Recall," in which the Schwarzenegger character is offered a red pill and told "it's a symbol of your desire to return to reality." And:

The choice between taking a blue or red pill is a central metaphor in the 2011 Arte documentary film Marx Reloaded, in which philosophers including Slavoj Žižek and Nina Power explore solutions to the global economic and financial crisis of 2008–09. The film also contains an animated parody of the red/blue pill scene in The Matrix, with Leon Trotsky as Morpheus and Karl Marx as Neo.

Ha ha. I want to see that. Aha!



I love cartoons. Are they real life? Are they just fantasy?

Anyway, yesterday, Elon Musk tweeted: "Take the red pill." That's the whole tweet. What did he want to take the red pill about?

And Ivanka was right there:

Taken! https://t.co/Ng0S2OFC93

— Ivanka Trump (@IvankaTrump) May 17, 2020

Does she know? I mean, there is no pill to take to get you exactly to reality. If you use the metaphor, you're simply insisting that YOU know where reality is and that other people are living in a fantasy world. It's just a pop-culture, cheeky way to assert that YOU know what is true and those other people are wrong. But Elon Musk's tweet doesn't specify the thing that is asserted to be true. And Ivanka is signaling that she's in on the truth and it's the same truth that Elon Musk is pushing.

You can look at his Twitter feed and try to get a sense of what he's talking about. My previous post is about another Elon Musk tweet — one that rages against the extenuation of the coronavirus lockdown — but this "red pill" tweet isn't close to that in the feed. The lockdown protest was back on May 14th and this "red pill" business was on the 17th.

Now, maybe he's just saying, Let's all look at what's really real. Turn away from the fantasy life that might make you feel good, but the truth is better.

That makes me think of the Jesus catchphrase: "You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free."

ADDED: The director of "The Matrix" responds to Elon and Ivanka: "Fuck both of you."

"You got to go and follow those orders. Just remember: Stay at home. Don't go to crowds. Put that cookie down!"

Stay. At. Home. That means you, too, spring breakers. pic.twitter.com/jUOgjLaOGN

— Arnold (@Schwarzenegger) March 18, 2020

Now, he should not be smoking, but, as many tweeters are pointing out, he seems to have a special privilege to smoke, explained here:

Tiny horses help Arnold Schwarzenegger show you how to stay home.

Stay at home as much as possible. Listen to the experts, ignore the morons (foreheads). We will get through this together. pic.twitter.com/FRg41QehuB

— Arnold (@Schwarzenegger) March 16, 2020