Great is the new fantastic, and all those things

The place: Concord, California, "town hall" meeting on the state budget
The time: 10 a.m., Tuesday
The speaker: Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger

"Well, thank you very much, this is really great. This is better than 'The Tonight Show.' I like that, it's really great. ... It's really great to be here today, and I want to thank also the Concord Chamber of Commerce for helping us put this whole thing together. They have been really great and enthusiastic, and I know we have a lot of members here of the Chamber. I also want to thank the Mayor, Mark Peterson, for his great participation and his great leadership here. And I also want to thank the AARP and also the California PTA for helping us pull this together. They have been really great, great supporters.

"But let me just say that it is great for me to be here today, and it is wonderful to be your governor. I'm having a great time with this job ... but I'm having a great time. ... Just recently, for instance, we have done something very great, and that is to reform the prison system. ... Our health care, as you know, is really in a disastrous situation.  We have very bright doctors, we have great technology, we have all of those things, but the system itself is broken. 

"So this is why I wanted to go out and talk to the people, to just show to them that yes, the state is doing great, but there are a lot of great challenges that are still ahead of us, and we all have to work together to make this happen. ... But anyway, I just wanted to go and say it is great to have you all here. We're going to do a question-and-answer session, because what's important is that I hear directly from you.

"We have great hospitals, we have great technology. ... I want to know why is it that this school here has, for instance, a great graduation rate, a high graduation rate, and the other school doesn't. All of those things. ... Of course people are screaming and saying, 'You cut into my program,' or 'You didn't give me the increase that I deserve,' and all of those things. We have made great progress, may I remind you. ...

"So as you can see, there was someone there telling us that we were great, but we have to be disciplined, you have to do the work. ... No one is there saying, 'You're great, you're going to make it, you're a winner.' So what they do is, they join a family, the gang family, so they have someone telling them, 'You're great, but now you have to go and do this and that,' and do something really bad."

(Photo: Rich Pedroncelli/AP)