The Skinny

With vacation looming, we’ve been cleaning off our desks here at The Skinny, and we found some old quotes from 2005. My, how time has changed the way some of those things look. Back in ’05, when Phil Angelides was rounding up support to run against Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, he called upon a rising star in his party to provide a testimonial. Angelides touted an endorsement from then-New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, who said “he and Angelides are ‘joined at the hip,’” according to a press release from the Angelides campaign. Three years later, those words have an entirely different meaning. … And congrats to Vice President Bonnie Garcia! A local blogger claims that Garcia is among those being considered by GOP presidential nominee John McCain to share space on the GOP ticket. Garcia, who was a bit more realistic than the blogosphere about this possibility, put it in perspective with a laugh. “Wouldn’t it be something if I got Air Force One to land here in Palm Springs and pick me up?” she asked the Desert Sun. … And from our All Politics Is Local Files, Tom McClintock’s decision to run for a congressional seat hundreds of miles from his Thousand Oaks home may have raised a few eyebrows, but the GOP senator is going even farther afield with his latest bill — he’s getting involved in an environmental dispute in the ultra-liberal haven of Palo Alto. OK, his SB1493 doesn’t actually mention anything about the recent news stories about a man who wants to cut down his neighbor’s eight redwood trees he says are blocking the sun from his newly installed solar panels. But McClintock confirmed it was inspired by the Palo Alto case. “I thought that was outrageous,” he said. His bill would “exempt trees and shrubs that were planted prior to the installation of a solar collector.”