Frank Rich, on Ahnold Ziffel:

Mr. Schwarzenegger's credo was laid out quite specifically in his autobiography, "Arnold: The Education of a Bodybuilder": "A certain amount of people are meant to be in control. Ninety-five percent of the people have to be told what to do, have to be given orders."

This philosophy, which he has repeated elsewhere and never retracted, sums up his politics far more than conventional conservative-vs.-liberal, Republican-vs.-Democrat paradigms. The budget deficit? Failing public schools? Mr. Schwarzenegger will make things right by terminating the malefactors from on high; let the other 95 percent of "the people" get out of the way. What was the plan? "Hasta la vista, car tax!" Such know-nothingness is not Nazism; it's too idea-free even to qualify as fascism-lite.

And for those of you who were hoping that the election last Tuesday would bring an end to the scandals, here's a story about how the Schwarzenegger campaign, either deliberately or recklessly, made a false criminal accusation about one of the women who had accused him, and how local AM and internet scumbags repeated the slur.[link via Mark A. Kleiman]