CHEERS: to local Assembly members Teresa Sayward (R-Willsboro) and Janet Duprey (R-Peru), who attended an announcement by Gov. Eliot Spitzer at an invitation gathering in Plattsburgh last week, despite not having been invited. The gathering was also supposed to elicit ideas on generating economic development in the area. It seems anomalous that neither Sayward nor Duprey were invited, they being the closest state representatives to the people of Clinton, Essex and Franklin counties. They both told the Press-Republican they wouldn't fail to show up at a meeting so crucial to their constituents' well-being, invitation or no. They brushed the perceived snub off to politics, citing a recent squabble between Democrat Spitzer and the leader of the Assembly Republican minority, James Tedisco of Schenectady, who called the governor a bully. Sayward and Duprey believe the spat also provoked Spitzer to ignore them during introductions of key attendees on the rostrum at the meeting, as it would have been common political courtesy to at least acknowledge their presence. Later, at the Press-Republican, Spitzer dismissed the role of politics, not in this matter, as we didn't know about it at the time, but in the governor's own confrontations with Republican Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno. Spitzer emphasized to us that he has gotten a lot accomplished as governor, in spite the "distractions" of politics. He said "I sleep very well at night" because the politics are peripheral in his world, at best. Not according to Sayward and Duprey.

JEERS: to a woman working in the office of one of the medical professionals in Plattsburgh, who left a very distinct foul taste in the mouth of at least one resident of the area. He had stopped into her office complex to ask for help finding another office nearby, whereupon she rebuked him in the harshest of terms for even asking. As he retreated from the berating, he noticed a sign on the door that warned callers not to ask for directions. That's a strange order in a community that takes great pride in how it opens its arms to tourists and to each other. It's a behavior that stands out for its uncommon contrariness. Even if, for some immediately unimaginable reason, the person is so disdainful of offering aid to a passersby, it would seem a less vitriolic delivery could convey the same reluctance without the hostility.

JEERS: to slow movement on the problem of Chinese contamination of products aimed at the United States, particularly in the area of pet toys. As one local pet advocate pointed out, "With all that lead paint imbedded in our children's toys, ladies' lipstick, along with the poisoned fish they recalled, etc., why would not our dog toys also have this problem? (The dogs) spend half their lives chewing on these things, and most likely the massive majority came from China."