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.

POLL: PATERSON HAS NO FRIENDS

Pretty much anybody polls better than David Paterson these days.

Maybe not Carl Pavano.

OH, FOR THE LOVE OF PETE

C'mon, Sweeney - get it right. It's the Democrats who drive drunk with girls on their laps. Republicans send creepy text messages to interns and go wide-stancing in public restrooms.

It's sad what things have come to...truly sad.

MENTAL HEALTH BREAK

I really don't want to read any more about the state budget any more. Here - it's Arthur Conley tearing it up for a Norwegian audience. Who knew they dug the sweet soul music way up there?

"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.

A SHOT IN THE SHORTS

Just...ouch.

OKAY (OKAY) JUST A LITTLE PINPRICK...

...but there'll be plenty more AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH when you see the state's price tag for the lancets and test strips provided by Medicaid to diabetics. Over $13 million frittered away over five years, just on excesses in this one small subset of medical supplies:

Auditors also found that DOH’s claims processing system, eMedNY, does not prevent providers (pharmacies) from billing for or recipients from obtaining more diabetic testing supplies than what New York guidelines allow. For example, one recipient received 9,650 test strips in a one-year period by going to multiple pharmacies, including 2,900 test strips in one month. The recipient would have had to test his or her blood sugar 96 times a day to use all of the 2,900 test strips in that month. Nine of the 10 states examined as part of the audit said they limit diabetic testing supplies by recipient, not by provider as New York does.

Next step, as always, is to follow the money - and see who in Albany is receiving largesse from the makers and marketers of the lancets and testing strips. Meantime, here's some Floyd to set the mood for all those needles we're stuck paying for:

ONLY IN NEW YORK

...would state leaders ask for stimulus money to replace highway guard rails that were only supposed to look rusty and not actually fall apart from rust.

FOR HIS NEXT TRICK...

...the governor will make $279 million appear out of thin air:

While Paterson swept some $1 billion in leftover cash from throughout state government to help close the current fiscal year's massive budget deficit, he conspicuously kept the leftover member-item money in place.

It's magic, Albany-style!

DORMANT NO MORE!

From the Department of Obvious:

New York ranks last among the 50 states in personal freedoms, followed by New Jersey, Rhode Island, Maryland and California. I do wonder what those states could possibly have in common. Hmm.

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.