ANOTHER REASON WHY I♥NY

There is a horse running in the Belmont named "Luv Guv". And if he wins (the odds are 40:1), who's giving out the trophy? Could be Governor Paterson.

BONUS: the New York Times called Eliot Spitzer for comment. That is beautiful.

"WE'RE SCREWED"

That word comes to me from a state legislative source with knowledge of the now-revived MTA mobility tax on Hudson Valley employers. More fun news in today's NY Times.

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.)

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.

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?