Sex, Lies, and Whatnot

The sexual antics of Frenchman Dominique Strauss-Kahn have thrown a monkey wrench into the politics of France, with the International Monetary Fund director and Socialist presidential prospect having been accused of criminal sexual conduct and, now, the need for the opposition Socialist party to find an alternative nominee to oppose President Nicolas Sarkozy in next year's French presidential election. Strauss-Kahn, of course, is accused of forcibly trying to have sex with a chambermaid in a New York hotel, and the fact that it was not consensual makes it more than a case of yet another Frenchman having a fling. This affair may have brought out the worst in Strauss-Kahn, but it brought out the best in the American jurisprudence, as he has been treated no differently than other criminal suspects in our legal system (which we got from the British).

When I found out that rumors of a setup abounded in France, I immediately suspected that it was a belief that the Americans framed Strauss-Kahn to prevent a leftist government from taking over in Paris. In fact, the French suspected it was the dirty work of Sarkozy's conservative party; they believe a Sarkozy operative first reported on it. But people in France give that theory much less credibility than they did when this whole business started. Strauss-Kahn himself is in Rikers Island awaiting further legal action and is under a suicide watch. He knows he's blown it.

Meanwhile, on the other coast, Arnold Schwarzenegger is seeing his own credibility in tatters. Praised for being a different kind of Republican as governor of California for his strong environmental record and his tough stand against Big Oil, Schwartzie is now getting his tenure as governor re-assessed in light of the revelation that he fathered a child out of wedlock. See, it turns out that he didn't just cheat on Maria Shriver. He cheated on everyone else in California, cutting the state's vehicle license fee when he took office and trying to plug the ensuing budget deficit with a $15 billion bond that amounted to borrowing against the future. When he did cut spending, he cut programs for disabled children, the kind of children his mother-in-law Eunice Shriver devoted her life to helping. The result is a mess that Governor Jerry Brown will possibly need a second consecutive term to clean up.

Schwarzenegger's sexual history came up in the 2003 recall election in which he was elected to replace incumbent Gray Davis, and Democrats attempted to make it an issue, but Arnold's media savvy and star power prevented pesky questions about his unwanted sexual advances toward other women. The rumors were brushed aside, like Davis would be. As Martin Bashir told Ed Schultz on Schultz's MSNBC show last night, Schwarzenegger has been lying and cheating since he began his bodybuilding career, when he took steroids on a regular basis in his competition. It's that sort of corner cutting that made him an unfaithful husband and an unfaithful governor.

California Split

I just heard that Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver have separated after twenty-five years of marriage. This was indeed astonishing news - more astonishing news than the split of Al and Tipper Gore.

Why? Because Arnold and Maria weren't just another celebrity couple, like, say, Valerie Bertinelli and Eddie Van Halen. They were the ultimate California power couple! Maria Shriver is the scioness of two powerful Democratic Party families and she made a name for herself in her own right as a broadcast journalist. Arnold Schwarzenegger became governor of California and was such a rising star in the Republican party - at least until he turned out to be a Rockefeller Republican - that the GOP seriously considered getting the Constitution amended so that the Austrian-born Schwarzenegger could possibly run for President.

Of course, Maria Shriver had reported for the news division of NBC, a network that has since fallen on hard times, and Arnold's popularity did the same in his last year as governor. So even though they're not likely to divorce - they're both Catholic - they've reached the point where they have to live separate lives.

This, my friends, is a power failure. Which, I understand, they have a lot of in California.

California Nightmares

The numerous wildfires in California that have threatened the Los Angles area, San Bernardino County, and parts of the Sierra Nevada - including acreage near the border with Oregon - probably couldn't have been prevented, but they could certainly have been foreseen. Much of the state is naturally dry, with most of its water supply brought in from the Sierra Nevada range or diverted from the Colorado River. The Los Angeles region is overpopulated after more than a hundred years of hyperdevelopment started by the first aqueduct built for the area.

When the Spaniards first settled the little pueblo of Los Angeles in the late eighteenth century, they found few if any native peoples in the region. That's because the Indians learned right away that the basin Los Angeles was settled in was dry and prone to fire. Before the opening of the Los Angeles Aqueduct in 1913, Los Angeles was a dusty little farm town, relying on what little water was available in the semi-desert area and sustaining a population in the tens of thousands. Now the Greater Los Angeles population is in the millions, and the challenge has been to keep enough water flowing for everyone, and in the face of a statewide drought (and a regional three-year drought) that has made the brush so tinder-dry in the first place. Winter rains along the coast have helped supply water in the past, but they have caused periodic mudslides in the hills. Even if southern California has managed to pull that off, they now have to deal with wildfires, along with earthquakes and the aforementioned mudslides, as an ongoing fact of life in the region.

This comes at a time when California is struggling under a $42 million deficit while its economy is in the loo. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger gets my vote of confidence for tacking the fires head-on by diverting resources to contain the blazes and putting public safety ahead of budgetary concerns, but he sure isn't going to go in an put the fires himself single-handedly. This isn't a movie!

A hurricane affecting Baja California in Mexico is not expected to bring any beneficial rains to the area, and it may even bring winds to fan the flames. In the meantime, temperatures have dropped and humidity has risen, allowing the fires to be put under greater control. But firefighters are keeping a close eye on Mount Wilson near Los Angeles, which is the site for an historic observatory as well as TV and radio antennas.

It never rains in Southern California. . . .

It pours.

Man, it pours!