California: San Diego Union-tribune

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has landed himself on yet another national magazine cover.

Except this one isn't so flattering: "Girly-Man Ruins State," is how the National Review headlines the piece.

The full story is not available online, but Chris Reed, editorial writer for the San Diego Union-Tribune, excerpts parts of the piece.

Key line: "Conservatives were cheap dates and missed the subtle signals that Arnold lacked the fierce spirit of liberty that characterized (President Ronald) Reagan's approach to governance."

Meanwhile, the GOP governor is still getting praised by some in the national media. The New York Times held up the governor in a Sunday editorial as someone who "acted in the best interest of his state when he announced that he would accept the same federal stimulus aid for the unemployed that some of his fellow Republicans have threatened to reject."

75 years ago, the last time California was in an economic crisis this dire, one of the groups that suffered the most was the elderly. Too old to work, with no jobs available even if they could, with savings wiped out in the collapse of the banking system and with no pensions whatsoever, poverty among the elderly reached epidemic proportions, burdening their children and grandchildren with the cost of care.

So a Long Beach doctor named Francis Townsend proposed to do something about it, and through a grassroots movement built a nationwide mass base for the Townsend Plan - which we now know as Social Security.