CALIFORNIA Sen. Jim Battin plunked down $45 for a “carbon offset sticker” for his barn-sized LINCOLN NAVIGATOR, that measures gasoline use in yardage not mileage (I know - years ago I had one), now wants any vehicle with such an absolution sticker to be able to roar down the “car pool lane” with impunity. To further flip the figurative bird at his critics, Battin issued a press release touting his joy at the thought of allowing “every owner of a polluting, flashy, fuel-sucking car” to use the HOV lane, adding “I feel great about my carbon credit indulgence and think many other Californians will, too, when they are driving guilt-free in the empty diamond lane.” All together now: HYPOCRITE!

Media Matters for America is attacking longtime “Meet the Press” host Tim Russert, saying he has “regularly smeared” Democrats on a variety of issues. It says Russert, as the host of Democratic presidential debates, has all but ignored important issues. In its “Weekly Update,” Media Matters list of long list of complaints against Mr. Russert cataloguing what it says has been biasa against Democrats ranging from questioning Dennis Kucinich’s UFO siting to Barack Obama’s endorsement by radical black activist Louis Farrakhan. Thelong report also accuses Russrt of tossing softall questions to conservatives.

Remnants of California’s once proud Reagan Republican Party head to San Francisco this weekend for what some are calling the “telephone booth” semiannual state convention. Attendees will debate a platform critics say is nothing more than rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. Perhaps the biggest controversy surrounds party GOP financier Larry Dodge’s refusal to bailout the bankrupt party, and his long list of complaints.

Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger will be conspicuously absent. Last September, he said the party was “dying at the box office”and he’s done nothing to revive it since as it continues to bleed nearly 10,000 registered voters a month. Schwarzenegger left the state and went to the National Governors Association meeting in Washington DC.

Billionaire State Insurance Commissioner, and champion of the defeat of Proposition 93 the scheme to extend terms of the current legislature, Steve Poisner will speak and be begged for money to avoid the bill collectors. Poisner is reported to be interested in running to replace a disappointing Schwarzenegger who will “term out” in 2010.

Echt (ekht) adjective, authentic; typical. [From German echt (genuine, typical)]

In an act of HYPOCRISY Planned Parenthood, which receives hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars every year, decided to waste a pile by delivering CONDOM-GRAMS to STATE legislators reminding them to be carefully with sex and the budget. There would be no argument if the symbolism was to remind legislators to stop screwing taxpayers.

California’s Republican Party is in disarray and under overt attack by loyalist many of whom who have simply lost faith in its leadership. It is broke – technically bankrupt and in Chapter 7. The man who would have bailed it out with a $3 million check has written a scathing letter demanding change but did not include a check.

Reports that an Australian citizen was hired by its beleaguered chairman to run the party’s day-to-day functions and may not even have legal status have created a firestorm.

The Sacramento Bee reports the president of the California NAACP has been paid more than $40,000 in consulting fees — and the NAACP itself has received $60,000 — from the coalition of Indian tribes at the same time the civil rights group has endorsed Propositions 94-95-96-97 pushed by its tribal benefactors.

Money if fungible and flows freely in the Democratic agenda as well as the Republican agenda.

California public employee unions have their collective underwear in a bunch over Governor Schwarzenegger’s proposed budget cuts to staunch the fiscal hemorrhaging and close a mammoth now $14.5 billion budget gap. For every seven dollars the state takes in it now spends over eight. The budget hole is three and one-half times the size of the $4 billion deficit that provoked then Governor Gray Davis’ recall resulting in the election of Schwarzenegger.

Conservatives are fuming that Schwarzenegger is talking about raising taxes and fees to bail out the state’s bureaucracy saying that will deepen and prolong the state’s coming recession. What is clear, as the officially projected deficit jumped half a billion dollars, is the usual hocus-pocus and slight-of-hand will no longer work.

Schwarzenegger made good on his promise to release as many as 50,000 prison inmates to save cash. Critics predict a wave of crimes will follow that will ultimately cost even more than any savings asking, “If these people aren’t a danger to society why were they imprisoned in the first place? Because some are a danger.”
Saturday’s SACRAMENTO BEEAndy Furillo profiled a heroin dealer, a drunken driver,

As predicted a few weeks ago California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) declared a “State of Fiscal Emergency” in Tuesday night’s State of the State speech. As expected the Governor said the Golden State either has to raise much more money or cut someplace. He is already shilling for an Indian gaming deal that allows select tribes with thousands more slot machines in exchange for a pittance of their profits albeit $9 billion over ten years.