WZZM 13 Grand Rapids - Governor Prepares For State of State Address
Catch Jen tonight at 7pm. Watch Ken Sikkema makes funny faces at her behind her back.

LANSING, Mich. (AP) - Governor Granholm plans to focus her 2006 State of the State address tomorrow (today) on familiar themes.

She'll address ways to improve the state's economy to create more jobs and ways to strengthen education so more workers can get high-tech jobs.

She'll deliver the speech to a joint session of the House and Senate, starting at 7 p-m, in the House chamber of the State Capitol.

Senate Majority Leader Sikkema and House Speaker Craig DeRoche, both Republicans, will respond to the governor's hour-long address during a Capitol news conference following the speech.

Brian Dickerson of the Free Press has a speech prepared for Granholm. Nice to find someone with a sense of humor.

Speaker DeRoche, Majority Leader Sikkema, and the rest of you sniveling Republican finger-pointers conspiring to lay the death of American manufacturing at my doorstep:

Welcome!

Many of you may recall that I began last year's State of the State address by paying tribute to Republican state Supreme Court Justice Elizabeth Weaver, who had just announced her intention to resign.

I don't think I have to tell you what the prospect of appointing the first Democratic state Supreme Court justice in 15 years did for my administration's fund-raising efforts in the legal community. Talk about being the most popular gal in the bar!

Yet tonight, a year later, as I scan the distinguished roster of judges who have honored me with their attendance, I am dumbstruck to see that Justice Weaver is still here. Some nonsense about promises to keep, miles to go before she sleeps, yada, yada, yada. Not that I'm bitter.

I know that some of my Republican colleagues who have expressed outward concern about the auto industry's troubles are secretly salivating at the prospect of hanging this week's plant closings around my pretty, little neck.

To them, in the spirit of bipartisan cooperation, I say: Go ahead, you hypocritical, corporate-sponsored surrender weasels: Make my day!

Remember that Republicans preside over three of the four states in which Ford announced plant closings this week. Hang this one on my administration and I'm taking a boatload of GOP governors down with me.

It's not any governor's fault the U.S. auto industry is taking on water faster than a New Orleans trailer park.

Nor, I hasten to add, is it the industry's fault. I have every confidence that American auto executives and American workers can build cars that will compete with anything Toyota has to offer.

But if Toyota wants to backstop us while the Big Three are getting their act together, my administration is prepared to offer its stockholders Ann Arbor, the Upper Peninsula, exclusive casino rights on Mackinac Island and three Michigan counties to be named later.

Meanwhile at DeVos Election Headquarters Channel 8, Rick "Mr. Impartial" Albin has Dick all lined up for his reaction. When DeVos starts in on his standard "blame the governor" rhetoric, I would hope that Rick would remind him of this statement taken from the "Principles" section of his now defunct PAC "Restoring the American Dream", a lovely group that included such moderates as Robert Bork, Haley Barbour and JC Watts. Anyway, it went a little something like this-

The government must adopt policies that encourage people to accept responsibility and become accountable for their actions. The explosion of litigation and culture of blaming others, including government, must change.

That link takes a while to load- had to dig through the web archives as the site no longer exists.

Lots of interesting tidbits on that site, I'll publish more as the situations warrant.