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Ventura County Star: Gallegly says he won’t run again

Rep. Elton Gallegly, the Simi Valley Republican who parlayed a successful real estate career into a 20-year stint in Congress and became one of the nation’s most ardent conservative voices on illegal immigration, announced Friday that he will not seek re-election this fall.Gallegly said he was bowing out because of a potential medical condition. He declined to elaborate.

The Congressman’s Press Release is here.

But, will he be forced to run anyway?

Probably.

He will NOT be able to take his name off of the ballot and Gallegly is too much of a politician to throw this SAFE Republican seat to the wind.

Look for Gallegly to run in the June primary and again in November unless health concerns force a resignation.

The most likely scenario:

Gallegly runs for re-election, wins and then resigns allowing the next California Governor to call for a special election.

It is a shame that Elton’s distinguished Congressional career comes to an end in this fashion. However, nothing comes before your own health.

And the Stricklands…….does crass political opportunism come to mind?

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger gives his ‘state of the state’ address in Sacramento, California, January 5, 2006. A year after picking a bitter fight with legislators that he ended up losing at the polls, Schwarzenegger unveiled a massive 10-year spending plan on Thursday aimed at winning back Californian support ahead of his November re-election effort.

San Francisco Chronicle: BOLD AGENDA FOR STATE
BIGGEST BUILDING PLAN SINCE ’60S: Some lawmakers are skeptical Schwarzenegger can pull it off

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s ambitious 10-year plan to invest an additional $222 billion in California’s aging transportation system and other public works is the first major commitment by a governor to rebuild the state since the 1960s.

During that decade, primarily under the administration of Democrat Edmund G. “Pat” Brown, California created university campuses, the state water project and a network of highways that helped fuel the state’s economic growth.

“This state was built on those big water projects and highway projects. Since then we haven’t done anything on a scale like this,” said Dennis Oliver, a spokesman for the California Alliance for Jobs, an Emeryville organization that represents highway construction companies and unions and has backed increased public works spending for more than a decade.

Over the next five election cycles, beginning next June, Schwarzenegger wants to parcel out bonds for highways, transit systems, flood control projects, port improvements, jails, courts, levees, and construction and modernization of public schools and universities.

Lawmakers reacted with caution to such an overwhelming proposal.

The reaction to Governor Schwarzenegger’s is NEGATIVE. Some will wait for the budgetary details next week but………

Dan Walters: Schwarzenegger may be putting himself into a political pitfall

Clearly, however, it was ginned up as a vehicle to restore Schwarzenegger’s popularity. He is, in effect, putting his political eggs into a single basket, hoping that he can move the “strategic growth plan” through a Legislature dominated by those who really want him to fail and then persuade skeptical voters to accept the massive debt that it involves.

John Fund of the Wall Street Journal

It is striking to watch a governor who called for ‘blowing up bureaucratic boxes’ a year ago now say that the answer to the state’s problems is to “build it” and the solution will come. The governor’s new tack may indeed get him through the 2006 election but the contrast with last year’s State of the State speech is so dramatic that the Los Angeles Times was moved to note that “a central question (of the coming campaing) is apt to be whether Schwarzenegger is motivated more by core beliefs or a quest for personal success.” The early evidence isn’t encouraging.

“I applaud his grand vision,” said Assemblyman Mark Leno, D-San Francisco. “But sometimes too much is less valuable than focusing on a few doable issues.”

“He talked about putting out a framework for the next 20 years,” said Assembly GOP leader Kevin McCarthy of Bakersfield. “Now the whole debate will be, what reforms can there be so that the money gets used efficiently, and then how do we pay for it?”

Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata and other lawmakers expressed skepticism at putting many bond measures on ballots for several election cycles.

“It’s impossible to grasp,” the Oakland Democrat said. “People are so skeptical — if you don’t tell them specifics, they don’t believe it. They have earned the skepticism about our ability to improve things. I would much prefer to put something reasonable on the table that they believe in that outlines what they are interested in.”

Mark Williams of KFBK (1530 in Sacramento) called the Governor a liar, someone who can’t be trusted–that he wasted the last two years and was going to waste this year.

John Ziegler of KFI (640 in Los Angeles) called it a “surrender speech” and that the Governor sounded like a Democrat, not a Republican.

Inga Barks of KMJ (580 in Fresno) wanted Senator McClintock to run instead of Schwarzenegger, saying this is not the guy we supported in the Recall–that he sounded more like Gray Davis.

Steve Frank of the California Political News and Views

This much I know and believe, that while the Governor was correct in his vision and needs for the future, the financing is no where near complete. To be complete it must also include the enforcement of immigration laws along with the needed changes in pension funding–otherwise this will be a vision without a possibility. And time is running short. With the explosion in the costs of illegal immigration and the crisis in government pension plans, a complete re-financing of the State, not just the infrastructure, is needed now. Hopefully, the budget will provide the answers next week.

Orange County Register: What was he thinking?

EDITORIAL: Gov. Schwarzenegger wants to spend more – but where will the money come from?

But with state bond debt already stretching a prudent limit and the state still stuck in a rut of a $4 billion yearly structural deficit, how can the state sustain so much more spending and maintain fiscal discipline?

He noted that this is the state of the California Dream. Yes, but which one?

Developing as budgetary details details are released………

Previous:

Arnold Schwarzenegger Watch: California 2006 State of the State

Arnold Schwarzenegger Watch: Toll Roads in California’s Future?

Arnold Schwarzenegger Watch: Infrastructure Bond Trial Balloon – $25-27 Billion

Arnold Schwarzenegger Watch: Governor Expected to Propose College Fee Freeze

Arnold Schwarzenegger Watch: California Infrastructure Bond Will NOT Include Tax Increases

California Taxes Watch: Builders and Politicians Pushing Bond Package

Arnold Schwarzenegger Watch: Here Come the Tax Increases

Technorati Tags: ArnoldSchwarzenegger, CaliforniaElection2006, California, AllianceforJobs, Californiabondissue, CaliforniaTollRoads, GrayDavis

The stadium at Graz, Austria, on Monday Dec, 26, 2005, after the name of California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger was removed from the stadium overnight. Officials in Arnold Schwarzenegger’s hometown Graz, removed his name from the soccer stadium overnight, complying with the California governor’s demand in a bitter dispute over his death penalty stance. Schwarzenegger had written to the mayor of Graz a week ago, asking that his name be removed after local activists called for the stadium to be renamed because of Schwarzenegger’s refusal to block the execution of convicted killer Stanley Tookie Williams in California.

The ASSociated Press has Schwarzenegger Deleted From Web Sites

The Terminator has been terminated in his hometown. On Tuesday, a day after officials in Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Austrian birthplace of Graz removed his name from a soccer stadium to comply with the California governor’s wishes, they deleted references to him on the city’s Web sites. Schwarzenegger earlier this month wrote to Graz officials asking for his name to be removed from the stadium and ordering the city to stop using it for promotional purposes.

He was reacting to fierce criticism from opponents in his hometown who denounced him for refusing to block the Dec. 13 execution in California of Stanley Tookie Williams.

Late Sunday or early Monday, Graz officials took down the large metal letters spelling out Schwarzenegger’s name on the 15,300-seat arena. On Tuesday, the mayor’s office said references to the actor-turned- politician were scrubbed from Graz’s main Web site and from a sister site devoted to the region’s sports scene.

“It’s all settled,” Thomas Rajakovics, a spokesman for Graz Mayor Siegfried Nagl, told Austrian media.

Although special folders and presentations devoted to Schwarzenegger were expunged from Graz’s official site, http://www.graz.at , the site still carried a news account of the renaming of the stadium, which had borne the governor’s name since 1997.

Graz officials are as immature as the Governor.

Good Grief!

Previous:

Arnold Schwarzenegger Watch: Graz Removes Schwarzenegger’s Name from Stadium

Stanley “Tookie” Williams Executed: The Austrian Retribution – The Response

Stanley “Tookie” Williams Executed: Goodbye to a “Homeboy”

Stanley “Tookie” Williams Executed: The Austrian Retribution

Stanley “Tookie” Williams Executed: The Funeral

The Execution of Stanley Tookie Williams: Tookie Saves Lives?

The Tookie Files Collection

Technorati Tags: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Stanley Tookie Williams, Crips

WorldNetDaily has Sheehan thrashing ‘war hawk’ Hillary

Cindy tears into Clinton for Iraq support, compares her to radio’s Rush Limbaugh

Cindy Sheehan, the so-called “peace mom” on a crusade to end U.S. involvement in the Iraq war, is publicly blasting Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., for her continued support of the ongoing conflict.

“I think she is a political animal who believes she has to be a war hawk to keep up with the big boys,” Sheehan writes in an open letter. “I would love to support Hillary for president if she would come out against the travesty in Iraq. But I don’t think she can speak out against the occupation, because she supports it. I will not make the mistake of supporting another pro-war Democrat for president again: As I won’t support a pro-war Republican.”

“I believe that the intelligent thing for Democrats to do for 2006 and 2008 would be to come out strongly and correctly against the botched, bungled, illegal, and immoral occupation of Iraq,” Sheehan added.

The open letter to Hillary is here on Michael Moore’s website.

She was granted a meeting with Sen. Clinton to discuss the war effort, but says the Democrat “apparently” didn’t listen, as the senator told a reporter for the Village Voice, “My bottom line is that I don’t want their sons to die in vain. … I don’t believe it’s smart to set a date for withdrawal. … I don’t think it’s the right time to withdraw.”

“That sounds like Rush Limbaugh to me,” Sheehan said. “That doesn’t sound like an opposition party leader speaking to me. What Sen. Clinton said after our meeting sounds exactly like the Republican Party talking points I heard from Senators Dole and McCain.”

Rush is busting a gut!

Flap will hold his breath for any Iraqi War pronouncements from Hillary.

In the meantime, Rush…….

“There’s trouble in paradise out there on the far left extreme which has become the Democrat base,” Limbaugh responded today on his national radio program.

“You don’t do this, folks. You don’t publicly as a Democrat disavow a Clinton and live to do it – well, you just don’t do it again and again without something happening. So she’s one gutsy lady or stupid, one of the two. But something’s going to happen to this woman. Something’s going to silence her.”

Rush has it RIGHT!

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov (R) and U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice shake hands as they meet in Moscow, October 15, 2005. Rice is in Moscow on a surprise trip to seek Russia’s support for a hard line policy against Iran.

The ASSociated Press has Rice: I Don’t Want to Run for President.

For Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, no means no — and no again — when it comes to whether she will run for president.

“It’s not what I want to do with my life, it’s not what I’m going to do with my life,” Rice said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

No means No for Condoleeza.

Flap sees no reason why the new Republican President would not wish to continue her in his administration but Flap predicts she will return to academia and a less public life.

Flap handicaps the 2008 Presidential Race as Giuliani-Allen Vs. Clinton-Richardson.

Technorati Tags: Hillary Clinton, Condoleezza Rice, Rudy Giuliani, George Allen, Bill Richardson

The New York Daily News has Condi vs. Hillary?

New book sez only Rice could keep Clinton from White House

There is only one force on Earth capable of preventing Sen. Hillary Clinton from winning the White House in 2008 – and her name is Condoleezza Rice.

That is the thrust of a new book by former Bill Clinton adviser-turned-nemesis Dick Morris and his wife, Eileen McGann. A copy was obtained by the Daily News.

In “Condi vs. Hillary: The Next Great Presidential Race,” Morris and McGann paint a potential presidential catfight as a struggle between good and evil – and New York’s junior senator is wearing the black hat.

“There is one, and only one, figure in America who can stop Hillary Clinton: Secretary of State Condoleezza ‘Condi’ Rice,” they write.

Rudy Giuliani will be the next President of the United States. George Allen will be the Vice President.

Condi will continue to be Secretary of State or return to Stanford.

Technorati Tags: Hillary Clinton, Condoleezza Rice, Rudy Giuliani, George Allen

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon (L) greets former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani during their meeting in Tel Aviv September 22, 2005 in this picture released by the Israeli Government Press Office.

The ASSociated Press has Giuliani: I Plan to Return to Politics.

Rudolph Giuliani said Wednesday that he plans to return to politics but that it is too early to say if that will be for the 2008 presidential campaign.

“I think I’ll return to politics,” Giuliani said in a speech to business leaders.

Understatement of the 2008 Presidential Election.

Look at how Rudy is doing over at Patrick Ruffini’s September Presidential Poll.

Main Ballot:

Giuliani	6183 (32.9%)
Allen	3521 (18.7%)
Romney	1779 (9.5%)
Undecided	1648 (8.8%)
Tancredo	1330 (7.1%)
McCain	1259 (6.7%)
Barbour	1125 (6%)
Brownback	493 (2.6%)
Huckabee	452 (2.4%)
Frist	415 (2.2%)
Pawlenty	381 (2%)
Hagel	138 (0.7%)
Pataki	84 (0.4%)

America’s Mayor will be the next President of the United States.