NOW ALL THE KIDS ARE DOING IT

See what that Iraqi reporter started?

Then, referring to the authority’s chief executive, who was sitting about 15 feet away, he said: "Where is Elliot Sander?” He stooped, slipped off one of his shoes and shouted, “You made $300,000 last year.”

Immediately, authority police officers swarmed him and pushed him out of the room. He was clutching his shoe, a black, thick-soled oxford, in his hand.

“This shoe is for you,” he shouted as he was hustled out.

Still, I don't think the trend will take hold in the US media. Katie Couric's not going to be pegging anybody with thousand-dollar custom pumps, you know?

NEW YORK SERVES NOTICE ON SANTA

Oh, they may boo Santa in Philadelphia, but only New York City could slap him with a traffic ticket while he's delivering toys.

REASSURING OURSELVES

The Giants are falling apart, the Jets will break your heart and so will the Mets, the Yanks have thrown a bunch of money around with little to show, the hockey and hoops are dismal, but we're still number one in corruption...aren't we?

What color foam-rubber #1 finger goes with that, anyway? (Don't answer that.)

DITKA: TANNED, RESTED AND READY

Suddenly, Albany's got some catching-up to do in the grand corruption race. Client #9, meet Senate Candidate #5. At this rate, they'll have a retired-numbers wall going up by Christmas.

ICEBOX BILL JEFFERSON: DONE

50-47 means Jefferson (D-LA) can fully devote his attentions to all those indictiments, but had turnout not been driven down last month by Hurricane Gustav he'd be back - and comebacks are always possible. Even a certified nutter like Cynthia McKinney got her seat back, and she'd still be in DC if she hadn't gotten all slappy with that Capitol cop back in '06.

Congratulations in the meantime to Anh Cao. And with Jefferson and Ted Stevens both defeated the stage is set:

"Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure In Federal Prison" would be most totally awesome.

YOUR TIMING'S PERFECT, MR. PRESIDENT

My first full day on the air and look who's coming to West Point. As if there's not enough for me to stress about on that day.

MARTINEZ ACQUITTED

I haven't WTF'd over a jury verdict since the first OJ trial, but this one out of Fort Bragg is a serious headscratcher: the acquittal of Staff Sgt. Alberto Martinez in the fragging deaths of two Hudson Valley soldiers despite what looks to this untrained eye like something that should have been open and shut:

The prosecution said Martinez killed the soldiers after his anger at Esposito slowly rose from making threats to placing the mine. He had promised to "burn" and "frag" the captain -- and, after the killings, was seen laughing, happier than he had been in some time, after the killings, prosecutors said. He even asked a former supervisor if he wanted his old job back, they said. Staff Sgt. Amy Harlan, who also worked in supplies, had testified that she provided Martinez with Claymore mines in May, unaware of what would transpire...

THIS MONTH'S OVERWROUGHT JOURNALISM AWARD...

...goes to the New York Times reporter who compared last week's Black Friday Wal-Mart trampling death to the Spanish Civil War:

A Shopping Guernica Captures the Moment

Obviously ridiculous - unless my experience of having a new checkout line at Target open just as I was rolling up to it can be compared to Gandalf arriving with the Riders of Rohan just in time at the Battle of Helm's Deep.

OKAY, -NOW- CHANGE HAS COME

Because it's not truly change until you get...the commemorative plate:

MERCURY PROBLEMS FOR CATSKILLS BALD EAGLES?

So reports the Times this morning:

The Catskills region receives some of the severest mercury contamination in the country, in large measure because of prevalent wind patterns that regularly carry harmful smokestack emissions from the Midwest. The Nature Conservancy, which has protected swaths of the Catskills, financed this study as well as previous works on mercury contamination in the region.

Mercury comes from several sources, but primarily from coal-burning power plants. Mercury occurs naturally in coal and is sent up smokestacks when coal is burned. Wind currents blow the mercury eastward, where it eventually falls into lakes, rivers and streams to form methylmercury, which can cause neurological disorders in animals and humans.

For much of the year, bald eagles live on brown trout, smallmouth bass and other fresh water fish that can be contaminated with methylmercury. Adult eagles feed the fish to their nestlings. Studies of common loons have shown how mercury can affect behavior. The loons become lethargic, which can affect their ability to gather food or sit on a nest long enough for eggs to hatch. Reproductive rates in loons contaminated with mercury can drop by as much as 40 percent...

Yet another argument for less coal and more nuclear power.

HI DE HI DE HI DE HI

Congressman (and user of hair-care products last favored by Cab Calloway) Charlie Rangel's got yet another tax scandal on his plate. How strange that so many of these should come to light after the election.

...OR IS SHE?

A technicality known as the emoluments clause may prevent Hillary Clinton from being named Secretary of State. Emoluments...didn't Bill used to have a tube of that in the glove compartment of his El Camino back in the day?

LET THE MERRY-GO-ROUND BEGIN

Now that Hillary's off to State, the decision falls to Gov. Paterson as to who's filling that seat. Suffice to say ain't no Moynihans in this crowd:

On the other hand, the New York State chapter of NOW wants a woman to succeed Clinton. That could boost the chance that New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn could become the first openly lesbian member of the U.S. Senate. And if all that speculation weren't enough, the New York Post reports that Paterson and Senator Chuck Schumer may already have a deal to appoint a relative nobody to the spot. It seems that Schumer's priority is that he get recognized as New York's senior Senator, and Andrew Cuomo would be the only contender for the Senate seat to threaten that status. Schumer apparently wants a less high-profile junior Senator -- someone like Buffalo Representative Brian Higgins, or Congresswoman Kirsten Gillibrand. Whoever ultimately succeeds Clinton, both the successor and Paterson will be up for re-election in 2010. Waiting in the wings are New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg (whose popularity has dipped since he announced his plan to seek a third term), and former Mayor Rudy Giuliani.

A relative nobody? Shoot, I'll apply.

SEN. MARIANO RIVERA (D-NY)

Every time I get thinking it's time to ditch the New York Times for good, they dig up a juicy little news nugget like this one, on what happened forty years ago the last time a New York governor had to appoint a replacement US Senator:

His first choice turned him down. That was John Gardner, a liberal Republican who had just quit as Lyndon Johnson’s Health, Education and Welfare secretary — in part because he considered the cabinet too preoccupied with Vietnam to fulfill the Great Society domestic agenda. Rather than accept Rockefeller’s offer, Gardner remained chairman of the Urban Coalition, a private campaign to transform America’s cities.

Next on the list was Mayor John V. Lindsay, although his appointment to the Senate would return City Hall to Democratic control. The job was widely believed to be his for the asking. But Lindsay was too stubborn — and committed to his own urban agenda — to ask, especially without a firm commitment from Rockefeller. The governor never directly made the offer.

Rockefeller even considered his nephew Jay — a transplant to West Virginia (where he was later elected to the Senate), and a Democrat no less.

Five other names were on a list forwarded by Bobby Douglass, the governor’s counsel: Joseph Wilson, the chief executive of Xerox; Jackie Robinson, the retired Brooklyn Dodger, who was being promoted by Rockefeller’s pollster; former Senator Kenneth Keating, whom Kennedy had defeated; and two congressmen, Ogden Reid of Westchester and Charles Goodell of Jamestown upstate.

And if you're thinking Jackie Robinson? Nah...consider this: how cool would it be to have a senator whose campaign theme song was "Enter Sandman"?

On the other hand, Mo's got at least a couple more good years left. So what's Bernie Williams up to?

ROMANES EUNT DOMUS

It just came to me:

Barack Obama is the Messiah, but the problem is he's the Messiah from Monty Python's Life of Brian and over there on the other end of Capitol Hill are a whole bunch of Biggus Dickuses who will be calling the shots. And you thought the original Jesus had it rough with Judas.

Wewease evwybody at Gwantanamo!

EVER BEEN IN A TURKISH PRISON?

Or failing that, ever been a Turk mailed out of a prison?

The 42-year-old Turkish citizen - who was serving a seven-year sentence - had been making stationery with other prisoners destined for the shops. At the end of his shift, the inmate climbed into a cardboard box and was taken out of prison by express courier. His whereabouts are still unknown.

These two fellas here are mighty impressed:

MASSACHUSETTS BAILS OUT NEW YORK

New York's lawmakers may be making a morass out of themselves up in Albany yet again, but so far none of them have threatened a lien on a 74-year-old blind woman's house over a one-cent balance on a water bill. Note the tone of humble concern on the part of our:

The city sent Wilbur a letter dated Nov. 10 stating that if the 1 cent balance is not paid by Dec. 10, the city will assess a lien of up to $48 on Wilbur's next property tax bill.

"They wasted taxpayer money on the letter," Wilbur said, noting the 42-cent charge for a stamp.

City Collector Debora Marcoccio said the bill was sent out along with more than 2,000 others as the city tries to recoup outstanding balances before resorting to putting liens on property. A computer automatically printed the letters for any account with a balance remaining, and they were not reviewed by staff before being sent out, Marcoccio said."It would be fiscally irresponsible for me to have staff weed through the bills and pull out any below a certain amount," Marcoccio said. "And what would that amount be?"

Staff, schmaff. These people never heard of interns, let alone simple accounts-receivable software that can sort bills by amount and write off the ones that aren't worth the cost of collecting? And as for amounts, how's about any amount smaller than the cost of a stamp means you get on the horn and make a phone call instead, ma'am? Continuing...

According to the letter, the outstanding balance stems from a water and sewer bill from fiscal year 2008, which ran from July 2007 to July 2008. Marcoccio said that before lien notices are sent out, the city sends out bills for the outstanding balance."My question is, how come it wasn't paid when the bills went out?" she said.

In the meantime, the city is holding firm on the amount due. Marcoccio, who called the whole situation "ridiculous," said the city will not waive the balance. "If there's a bill, it must be paid," she said.

Y'know, she's right...so how's about she checks up on the various unpaid balances owed by other municipal officials, state legislators, and so on and so forth. Meanwhile, a former member of the city council has taken care of the bill...and even that came with headaches:

Antonio Viveiros, 62, a former city councilor from Attleboro who never met Wilbur, acted on his own. He marched into the city collector's office yesterday, but the clerk at the window didn't recognize him. When he said he wanted to pay Wilbur's bill, he said the clerk asked whether he had the bill. "I said, 'I don't need a bill to pay a bill.' " After the clerk checked with a colleague about whether he could pay Wilbur's bill, he wrote the city a check for a penny. "I understand these things are computer-generated, but there has to be more compassion in government," he said. "Arrogance is never appreciated."

Except in Massachusetts and Albany, where arrogance and thickheadedness are requirements for positions of governmental authority.

SOON IT'S GONNA BE IN BLOOM UP IN ANNANDALE

The chairman of the economics department at Bard has been busted for growing some illicit smokables at her home.

Brings a whole new meaning to the term "department head", does it not?

SURPRISING ABSOLUTELY NOBODY

New York's budget-cut talks are...wowsers!...stuck.

DOG BITES MAN (AND OTHER NEARBY MEATLIKE SUBSTANCES)

Rudy Giuliani says he's thinking about running for governor in '10.

A lot depends on how Gov. Paterson handles this budget-cut fight, especially with Democrats taking over the whole show in January. If Paterson is perceived as having gotten rolled by Shelly Silver et al., Rudy swoops in as The Guy To Give Albany The Kick In The Teeth They Deserve (Plus A Few Gratuitous Knees To The Groin).

Big-name wise, it's not like there's a whole lot else the state GOP has to choose from - without Rudy they'd be thisclose to rummaging through old rolodexes looking for Pierre Rinfret's phone number only to realize he died two years ago. (They asked 19 people before he said yes? Sheesh, I woulda done it back then just to meet girls, but then I was pretty pathetic in 1990. Not like now, oh no.)

LOOK WHO'S BACK

Bow-chicka-bow-chicka-bow-bow. It's the Steamroller!

And third, as Eric R. Dinallo, the superintendent of the New York State Insurance Department, has wisely pointed out, we will have to step back from the current environment in which government has become a guarantor of all major risk.

So says the former governor of the state with the $60 billion Medicaid budget, the gold-plated pension system for government employees, and the ironclad incumbency-protection plan for members of the state legislature.

Although mistakes I made in my private life now prevent me from participating in these issues as I have in the past...

Mistakes? A mistake is when you use baking soda in the recipe instead of baking powder, not when you damn well know what you're doing is wrong on multiple levels and do it anyway.

I very much hope and expect that President Obama and his new administration will have the strength and wisdom to do again what FDR did.

What - extend the hard times?

SILLY TIME

Swedish Dance Bands of the 70's: the answer to the question "Wi not trei a holiday in Sweden this yer?" This is wi not.

Do not click if poor fashion choices offend your sensibilities.

I swear my mom sent me to Picture Day at school in a couple of those outfits.

HEY KIDS, GET OVER HERE AND START TYPING

Headline: 7-Year-Old Political Blogger Gets Obama Thank You Letter.

His name's Stas' for short, both parents are academics, so you can pretty much guess what his politics are like at this point. Now before you go tsking over parents pushing political dogma on their children, remember the old adage about what happens to one's political beliefs between the ages of 20 and 30. Take that concept to its logical conclusion, and so if he's a Obama supporter now at age seven he'll be a Fox News talking head by the time he's twelve, horrifying his parents with that Sarah Palin poster on his wall.

Heck, when I was Stas' age I was in the tank for George McGovern, and now look.

SECRETARY OF STATE CLINTON?

Hmm. She ain't talkin':

“I am not going to speculate or address anything about the president-elect's incoming administration,” she said. “And I'm going to respect his process, and any inquiries should be directed to his transition team."

Does anybody reading this ever remember a public figure actually stopping and giving a scoop to the press gaggle that shouts out the questions they know doggone well aren't going to be answered? What's the point? I've seen her at plenty of these wonky kinds of conferences, and this is where she's locked into full policy-geek mode - I doubt she'd answer these kinds of off-topic questions even if she was Senator Random Democrat who hadn't run in the primaries.

If Clinton were to join the administration, Gov. David Paterson would name a successor.

Nobody north of I-84 need apply. It's not like Pindars Corners is churning out any more Moynihans.

IF NOTHING ELSE...

...maybe our next president will be able to persuade the yoots of America to pull up their pants already.

AND WELCOME TO THE FOLD ONCE AGAIN

"Red Chapel", who frequents my other blogs, has joined us as a follower. Won't you do the same? C'mon in...

UM...UNO MÉDICAMENT DE DYSFONCTIONNEMENT ÉRECTILE, ПОЖАЛУЙСТА

CVS and Rite-Aid are agreeing to translate their pharmaceutical instructions into Spanish, French, Russian, Italian and Chinese for their New York customers. Which is fine, but I hope they'll be working on the plain English as well.

BULLET SNIFFED AT BUT STILL UNBITTEN

Gov. Paterson rolled out his budget-cut ideas today, trying to save two billion bucks without laying anybody off. Good luck with that. Let's see:

Medicaid/health care: Recommends $18 billion in Medicaid and other health care savings over the next two years by reducing reimbursement rates (8 percent in 2008-09, 2 percent in 2009-10) and eliminating "trend factor increases across all sectors." The insurance industry will contribute more in assessed fees. Also, the plan calls for cuts to the $100 million fund that offsets the costs of Timothy's Law, which requires parity for mental health treatment by health insurance companies, by $88 million in 2008-09 and $91 million in 2009-10.

And the Medicaid fraud investigators will continue to stagger along as best they can, meaning we'll get the occasional bust of the most obvious crooks but not the billions in savings that could be realized with simple competent oversight - but on the other hand, most of the legislature is unwilling even to take Paterson's baby steps.

Also making another appearance is the Bigger Better Bottle Bill:

He wants to expand the 5-cent deposit of beer and soda containers to include water and non-carbonated beverages to benefit the Environmental Protection Fund, which would suffer a countervaling $50 million cut.

I'm in favor of this mainly because it would make my sorting job a whole lot less confusing, especially since I'm trying to teach two small kids about recycling. I'd jack the deposit up to a dime and let redeemers keep some of the proceeds if they agree to set up their machines to take containers they didn't sell. It drives a guy nuts to roll into the Hannaford and realize those Stop & Shop bottles are going to have to wait until the next trip. Also, with winter coming it'll make for less stuff to schlep out to the road every Tuesday morning.

THE WEEK OFF SURE WAS NICE

Mike Huckabee and Bobby Jindal are already campaigning in Iowa.

So where's Hillary? It's never too early to get rolling on 2016, right?

IN ON THE GROUND FLOOR

Knockatize.com Follower #1 is "e.f."

Welcome to e.f. and anybody else who's stopped on by, whether it's from one of my other blogs or just randomly. If you find yourself agreeing with too much of what I say here, go get that check-up from the neck up.

O'ROURKE HOLDS FORTH

We Blew It is the title of P.J. O'Rourke's latest rant. He's beautiful when he's angry (and that's not a sexist observation):

We've had nearly three decades to educate the electorate about freedom, responsibility, and the evils of collectivism, and we responded by creating a big-city-public-school-system of a learning environment.

Mm-hm. I do have a quibble with:

People are even more conservative if they have children. Nobody with kids is a liberal, except maybe one pothead in Marin County.

This is not entirely true. When you have kids you become half-conservative-firebreather, half-liberal-nancypants. So when somebody suggests that it might be a bit much to hire Padma Lakshmi for the grade-school lunchlady, we start in bleating on how They Don't Care About The Children^TM; on the other hand, some years down the road when the first young fellow comes to our doorstep calling on Noodle he will be greeted by me as Ted Nugent and my wife as Gunny Hartman, and woe betide any nanny-stater who dares challenge our right to make that boy dance to the tune of our combined weaponry.

Continuing:

And yet we chose to deliver our sermons only to the faithful or the already converted.

Yes, yes, a thousand times, yes. Once upon a time, in September, New York was actually kindasorta in play if you go by the Marist and Siena polls that had McCain down between 5 and 10 points, and yet the McCain campaign never even bothered to open a campaign office in New York, let alone campaign here - their Jersey operation, such as it was, covered both states. Pathetic.

Here in New York was an enormous opportunity for McCain to really let both parties have it - after all, the state GOP establishment was in the tank for Bush back in '00 and tried keeping McCain off the primary ballot even, so it's not like McCain owed them anything even if the NYGOP were Republicans in more than name. And as for the state's Democrats, it's time to turn in your vast right-wing conspiracy secret decoder ring if you can't make hay taking swipes at the likes of Hillary, Sharpton, Shelly Silver, the departed Spitzer, and father and son Cuomo.

All these sharp operators at Camp McCain and not a one of them saw the parallels between Barack Obama and Mario Cuomo circa '82-83 - soaring oratory joined at the hip to a legislature gone flabby, locking in unsustainable gold-plated benefits for preferred constituencies. How'd that whole taking-care-of-the-base thing work out for you again, lads?

The whole thing, you go read it, yes?

SO MUCH FOR MY CYNICAL BUSINESS MODEL

I'm about the last one on this earth to get all gushy about Barack Obama's election to the presidency this week, and then I come across this Washington Post piece on a man who served in the White House kitchen under eight administrations and yet couldn't use white folks' bathrooms when he went home to Virginia at night, and remember why it is people still read newspapers.

Excerpting it wouldn't do it justice, so read it in its entirety.

Some more writing like Wil Haygood's and the newspaper business wouldn't be in the state it's in.

A BOLD AND INNOVATIVE COST-CUTTING MEASURE

New York state officials have bravely defied the conventional wisdom and decreed that hundreds of kinda-sorta-maybe-okay-not-really-disabled LIRR retirees do NOT deserve lifetime free golf at Bethpage Black. Our "gee, ya think?" line:

Eileen Larrabee, a spokeswoman for the Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation, said on Thursday. “They made a leap at some point along the line.”

Greens fees at Bethpage Black are in the $50-60 range, which is mighty sweet for a US Open course.

IT'S NOT GOING TO BE LIKE THIS FOREVER, REALLY

Once I sort out my hosting issues we'll have a proper something-or-other going on here. But the kids are home today, so...

SAMPLE

Is this thing on?