According to the Associated Press the video has been endlessly debated ahead of a runoff vote in the country. No-one can tell if he hit a kid deliberately, or in some kind of bizarre accident. Judge for yourself. Basescu squats at the edge of a stage, reaching out into the crowd. Then little Bogdan Istratoiu reaches up and puts his hand in the president's...

Contestant #1: Drudge sidekick Andrew Breitbart knows how to handle scientific disagreements.

Thank you. Contestant #2: Some crazy birther group, that put the following ad in the Washington Times about, I don't know, British monkey Obama something something.

Who is the biggest wingnut of this day? Choose, why don't you? [Pic via]

Oh, right, like half the population. Here's right-wing panic site World Net Daily's aghast summary of the game, via Wonkette:

The elf reveals he specializes in assassination, and the other character replies, "I bet you're good at a lot of things."


The elf responds, "Mmmm, that's quite an offer, especially coming from another man – if we are both speaking of the same thing."


If the player selects the response, "I suspect we are," the elf agrees to have homosexual sex with the character.

WND then quotes selectively from gay blogs ("Gay geeks rejoice, all your gaming fantasies have come true") and YouTube comments ("We're a bisexual nation living in denial") and provides a list of retailers (like Wal Mart!) presumably for boycotting. Because, you know, if there's one way to make gay sex look hot and appealing, it's by showcasing it with stilted dialog, jerky body movements and elf ears, in a role playing videogame like Dragon Age. Hottt.

As Politico noted last month, the White House Correspondents' Association, which runs the White House pool—a resource-sharing arrangement whereby all the news organizations that are supposed to bodily cover the president during all his waking hours rotate their reporters in shifts and share their notes with everybody else—has started letting Talking Points Memo, Salon, and the Huffington Post share in the pool duty. That's a major shift considering the fact that the pool report has historically been a just-the-facts-ma'am recounting of detail (with the occasional insider joke thrown in) that can be served up to all sorts of newspapers. Throwing avowedly partisan web sites into the mix is, well, interesting.

Christina Bellatoni, a senior reporter for Talking Points Memo's Washington, D.C., bureau, is today's designated pooler, marking TPM's first time in the regular rotation (she hasn't filed any reports yet). She also filled in for Salon's Mike Madden as the travel pooler on Friday, offering this accounting of Obama's day:

Travel photo lid called. We're thankful.

First Lady's Christmas tree event is open press.

(I'm filling in for Salon, who has the day off).

Predictable liberal cant.

Salon has been in the pool rotation since January (Mike Madden has drawn the coveted Dec. 31 shift), and the Huffington Post (next up on Dec. 20) and TPM were both added in the last month. Whatever issues may surround letting outspoken Obama supporters serve as purportedly objective chroniclers of his daily routine, the main motivation for the White House Correspondents' Association in opening the door to them appears to be manpower: As newspapers close or consolidate their Washington operations, Politico's Michael Calderone noted, web upstarts are there to take over shifts from overworked ink-and-paper types.

It's a good thing that non-institutional web-based outlets have continued to infiltrate the heart of the D.C. journalistic establishment, but there's something strange about the idea of the Obama Administration becoming a playground for people who support his policies. Not that we want Michelle Malkin writing pool reports to balance things out, but—actually, we really would like to see Michelle Malkin writing pool reports. That would be fantastic.

When we asked Salon's editor in chief Joan Walsh how long Salon had been pulling pool duty, she replied, "Certainly we were not in the pool during the Bush administration."

Gosh, why not?

Clinton was supposed to get married in Martha's Vineyard this summer, but that didn't happen, obviously. Maybe because she wasn't actually engaged yet to her dynastic boyfriend Marc "son of two former congress members" Mezinsky?

Jake Tapper broke the news on his blog, because that is basically how this news was destined to be broken. Chelsea and Marc sent out an email the morning after Thanksgiving, ensuring that no one would report on it until Monday:

"We're sorry for the mass email but we wanted to wish everyone a belated Happy Thanksgiving! We also wanted to share that we are engaged! We didn't get married this past summer despite the stories to the contrary, but we are looking toward next summer and hope you all will be there to celebrate with us. Happy Holidays! Chelsea & Marc."

Congrats, Chelsea. May your reception be free of aspiring reality show characters, and here's hoping Marc doesn't mind the title "First Dude."

The subtext of the Times story is that Obama is classless, and that he snubbed the GOP in his first state dinner. Even though he did actually invite Minority Leaders John Boehner and Mitch McConnell, both of whom snubbed Obama by declining to attend. (He also invited Republican governor Bobby Jindal, who did attend. And Dick Lugar was there, for some reason. And Eric Cantor, who wasn't invited to the dinner, was invited to the pre-dinner reception.)

So it doesn't look like much of a snub to us, at all. But whatever—it is fair game for a basically openly conservative paper to publish a news story with a partisan premise, so long as it's factually accurate, which this one is.

Then, of course, Fox picks up on this breaking news. Suddenly, the headline switches from "Top Republican lawmakers not attending State Dinner" to "Top Republican Lawmakers Not Invited to Obama's First State Dinner."

"Top Republican lawmakers," taken literally, means Boehner and McConnell, who were invited, and chose not to attend.

But Fox doesn't even acknowledge that.

House Minority Leader John A. Boehner won't be there; he's on Thanksgiving break and home in Ohio. His deputy, Rep. Eric Cantor of Virginia, also didn't get an invitation to the dinner.

Cantor also didn't get an invitation? That's a weird word choice, considering that the guy named in the previous sentence did get an invite. But that fact is, weirdly, edited out.

This is why Fox is way more successful than the Moonie Times: a grown-up could read that Times story and, based on the facts presented in that story, end up disagreeing with its premise. In order to preclude that possibility, Fox just makes up the facts to suit the premise.

(Thanks to readers Ronald and James Allen for alerting us to this very instructional case-study in modern journalism.)

This is, obviously, the Washington version of a "rumor." The New York phrase for it is "some speculative shit someone said while drunk, probably at a terrible party."

The New York media version would be, like, some drunk blogger at Tom & Jerry's saying, "I bet Michael Wolff is going to buy the New York Press and turn it into a glossy wedding magazine." Not something with much of a chance of happening, but, you know, it's not outside the realm of possibility, if you are the sort of person who spends a lot of time thinking about these people.

Anyway. Hillary Clinton is not going to replace Smilin' Joe Biden on the ticket.

RNC member Jim Bopp and nine other committee members sponsored a resolution, to be considered at the party's winter meeting, outlining the nine essential tenets of the modern Republican party: calling Obama names and opposing everything he tries to do (besides escalating wars, unless he doesn't escalate them enough).

"THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED, that the Republican National Committee identifies ten (10) key public policy positions for the 2010 election cycle, which the Republican National Committee expects its public officials and candidates to support:

(1) We support smaller government, smaller national debt, lower deficits and lower taxes by opposing bills like Obama's "stimulus" bill;

(2) We support market-based health care reform and oppose Obama-style government run healthcare;

(3) We support market-based energy reforms by opposing cap and trade legislation;

(4) We support workers' right to secret ballot by opposing card check;

(5) We support legal immigration and assimilation into American society by opposing amnesty for illegal immigrants;

(6) We support victory in Iraq and Afghanistan by supporting military-recommended troop surges;

(7) We support containment of Iran and North Korea, particularly effective action to eliminate their nuclear weapons threat;

(8) We support retention of the Defense of Marriage Act;

(9) We support protecting the lives of vulnerable persons by opposing health care rationing and denial of health care and government funding of abortion; and

(10) We support the right to keep and bear arms by opposing government restrictions on gun ownership; and be further

RESOLVED, that a candidate who disagrees with three or more of the above stated public policy position of the Republican National Committee, as identified by the voting record, public statements and/or signed questionnaire of the candidate, shall not be eligible for financial support and endorsement by the Republican National Committee; and be further

RESOLVED, that upon the approval of this resolution the Republican National Committee shall deliver a copy of this resolution to each of Republican members of Congress, all Republican candidates for Congress, as they become known, and to each Republican state and territorial party office.

So. You are allowed to disagree with two of those, if you would like to be a Republican, but disagree with three of them and you will be shunned.

Wait, you might be saying, I thought "cap and trade" was a market-based alternative to a carbon tax? To you, the RNC says "go back to Russia."

This does open up the door for a Republican who is pro-gay marriage and anti-gun, as long as they hate immigrants and love war. So, you know, still a big tent!

But they really should've gone further.

(11) We support the right of people to assemble and demonstrate peacefully, as long as they have guns and racist signs.
(12) We support keeping government out of Medicare.
(13) We support being oddly terrified of a loosely organized network of community organizers.
(14) We support claiming that everyone who accuses us of racism is a reverse racist.
(15) We support pretending we didn't support the bank bailout and purposefully conflating it with the stimulus bill.
(16) We support believing that angry southern white males are all the votes we'll ever need.

The clip above is of Obama on the campaign trail nailing McCain for economic Pollyannaism. Here, according to the AP, is what he has to say about the economy today:

President Barack Obama said Monday the nation's economy is in good shape for the long term thanks to "core strengths" such as its universities, its innovation and a dynamic workforce.

[snip]

"There are core strengths to the American economy that will put us in good stead over the long term," Obama said. He said the key is bridging that gap toward a more prosperous time and promised the gathered reporters he won't let up "until businesses are investing again and businesses are hiring again."

You could make a case that McCain's "fundamentals" line is probably more responsible for Obama's victory than anything else either candidate said during the campaign. Candidate Obama's rhetorical response to McCain was, "Senator McCain, what economy are you talking about?" We're inclined to ask President Obama what "core strengths" he is talking about. The AP cites universities, innovation, and a dynamic work force—"fundamentals of the economy" that existed back when Obama was pillorying McCain for his misstep last year. In fact, the workforce considerably larger then. Today we're at 10.2 percent unemployment.

For Obama to utter a similarly thoughtless remark at a time when more people are out of work, and when the economy—as a function of how it's actually experienced by human beings, as opposed to a grab-bag of statistical indicators—is arguably worse than it was a year ago doesn't speak well for his ability to inspire confidence in the recovery. We'd be shocked if the Republicans, who have lately found traction in hitting Obama on the lack of job creation, don't attack him over the "core strengths" line with the same vigor that he directed at McCain for the "fundamentals" line. He deserves it. We just hope it doesn't resonate as strongly as it did last year.

Granted, McCain was clueless enough to make his comment on the day that Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy, and the fact that he could offer sunny, optimistic language in the midst of a financial panic that threatened to derail the global financial system spoke volumes about his comprehension of the problem. Obama is speaking at the beginning of an anemic recovery, when it makes sense for the president to adopt a boosterish stance. But Obama ought to know better than anyone exactly how disconsonant such happy-talk can sound when people are actually suffering, and living off food pantries, because they can't get jobs.

Fred Thompson had Dobbs on his radio show today, and asked him if he'd given thought to a presidential run. Dobbs said "yes," adding that he's engaging the services of all sorts of experts to give him the best advice.

Which means that the 2012 primaries—even if Dobbs runs as an independent, his campaign will be perceived as an adjunct of the festival of white rage that will determine the GOP's standard-bearer—will, god willing, be nothing short of a phantasmagorical Hunter Thompson-esque fever-dream populated by snake-handlers, idiots, Mormons, and fat, chain-smoking television hacks. Between Dobbs, Sarah Palin, and whatever Glenn Beck's 100-year-war "plan" has in store for us, the wingnut beat will be a life-changing event for those reporters lucky enough to chronicle it in 2012. The New York Times' David Kirkpatrick famously pioneered the paper's "conservative beat" in 2004, but it was largely a survey of the intellectual undercurrents of neoconservatism and seems to have been abandoned. Whoever picks up the mantle from him in two years will be richly rewarded. It's never too early to start strategizing.

What is even going on, when "liberal columnist" Maureen Dowd writes a column about how Obama should govern the country the way Sarah Palin promotes books, and token conservative Ross "still at least definitely not Bill Kristol" Douthat patiently explains that Huckabee and Palin are both ridiculous jokes.

Well, what is going on is that Ross "cares" about the "credibility" of the Republican party, and also he knows, as a grown man who reads books and remembers history, that these clowns will not be president of anything, ever.

Whereas Maureen is, as always, internalizing and repeating the dumbest talking points of the Cheney wing of the Republican party (a world where "bowing" is a scandal and "dithering" is a resonant critique) (and also "mom jeans," because, you know, it's not a Maureen Dowd column without a crack about how a Democrat is embarrassingly feminine). Obviously Obama should just act more like a petulant, polarizing moron, screeching for attention and repeatedly castigating the various people who have wronged him, because that would definitely take care of this Afghanistan mess.

Here are the sort of people he could then welcome into his governing coalition, once he "goes rogue."

See, the White House budget office calculated that adding 40,000 troops would cost $40 billion a year. The Pentagon, amusingly, decided to calculate the cost per-troop, instead of a big yearly lump sum, and also their estimate was precisely half what the White House predicted.

But, whoops, one of those Pentagon memos, where they hide the "truth" about things, leaked to the LA Times.

But in a memo early this month, obtained by The Times' Washington bureau, the Pentagon's own comptroller produced an estimate that broke with the customary Defense formula and did include construction and equipment.

That memo said the yearly cost of a 40,000-troop increase would be $30 billion to $35 billion — at least $750,000 a person. An increase of 20,000 would cost $20 billion to $25 billion annually, it said — a per-soldier cost equal to or greater than the White House estimate.

As we all know, a bill providing health care to Americans must be deficit neutral. And even if it is deficit neutral and in fact it cuts the deficit, overall, you are still allowed to not support it because, like Joe Lieberman and David Broder, you just feel, in your heart, like it will probably add to the deficit. Those gut feelings are what make those men such admired and respected centrists. And we can only imagine that Lieberman, and Ben Nelson, and the Maine Senators, and Blance Lincoln, will all refuse to condone any troop increase in Afghanistan unless it is completely paid for and deficit-neutral, just like Iraq was, which is why they kept voting for that. Etc. (Oh, look, it's David Obey, a real-life Democrat, making the same point and threatening the riches with scary taxes.)

Politicians frequently use props to help the American people understand them if they happen to be watching CNN with the volume down in order to hear when their microwave pizza is done in the next room. In the health care debate, the sheer size of the Democrat's bill itself has made it a popular prop for opponents, and this weekend they dragged out huge blocks of paper in advance of the vote on whether to hear the bill in the Senate. (On Saturday, the Senate voted 60-39 to bring the bill to the floor.) Writes the Washington Times:

The real star of the health care debate this weekend has been the 2,074-page bill - a physical manifestation of the size and scope of what's at stake as senators consider the overhaul of one-sixth of the nation's economy.

"It's a massive increase in government, as shown by this bill," Mr. Ensign told a reporter off the floor later, spreading his arms wide as if to encompass the stack of papers that comes in at more than a foot tall.

Wow, over a foot tall! If only there was some way to make it exactly half that tall... Wait, Mr. Ensign, you did print double-sided, right? Because that's not what New Mexico Sen. Tom Udall says:

"You only have print on one side, which isn't even the way we print them up around here. I've had mine printed up on both sides, so I use both sides of the paper. So they've made an attempt here to make it look a lot higher than it is," he said.

Mr. Udall said when the official print of the bill arrives, the type will be much smaller as well, and said at that point it will amount to "an average-size book."

Republicans here are acting like desperate undergraduates trying to meet a page requirement for an essay about the Sociology of the Bicycle: MARGINS: 3.5"; FONT: 25pt; SPACING: 2.999. GRADE: C-

But still, Udall should really just let the GOP throw out their well-insured backs carrying a millstone they so giddily fashioned from printer paper, looped with twine and hung around their own stupid necks. Don't play the printing game; otherwise pretty soon the whole health care debate will descend into a never-ending stream of tricks meant to make the bill bigger or smaller depending on one's political affinity:

TO: All Democratic Senators
FROM: Sen. Tom Udall
SUBJECT: Health Care Bill Printing

Fellow Senators,

As you may know, Republicans are currently unfairly inflating the size of our health care bill via printing only on one side of the page, and using a ridiculously large font. This is such a good and clever idea that we must fight back.

Allow me to introduce Yiskah. Yiskah—who I met through my Au Pair—is skilled in the ancient Turkish art of rice writing. Tomorrow, each of you will be given a copy of the health care bill written on grains of rice, which should fit in a small Ziploc bag. Please display these grains to the media and constituents to reinforce how efficient, healthful and multi-functional our bill is. Shake the bag around a bit. Throw it high into the air to emphasize the compactness of the bill. If need be, cook the rice and feed it to a homeless person. (Photo op!) Just make sure you contact Yiskah for another copy.

Best of Luck,

Tom Udall

Next week: We will read the entire Senate health care bill twice and conduct an in-depth, 20-year cost-benefit analysis of the proposals contained therein.

So: we got teased yesterday and this morning with two great pieces on Glenn Beck talking in his strange, voodoo-esque language on whatever way he plans to molest and exploit the minds of whoever will lend him an open ear to aim his ideological piss into. The first was the aforementioned Politico note, which quoted Beck teasing his big ideas on his show. But this was fun! Remember that scary 9/12 Project that was presumed to have gone away because only crazy people listened to crazy people and hey, there can't be that many crazy people who are that organized. We call those cults, and there are lots of them, sure. But they don't represent any kind of frightening majority. Because crazy people need crazy leaders with power and a platform and there aren't really any of those out there as completely insane as the 9/12ers are, right?

Christine Drawdy, a Florida event promoter involved in the tea party and 9/12 movements who is listed as the travel coordinator for the 2010 march, said the permit for the march is in the name of The 9.12 Project's administrator, Yvonne Donnelly. Though Drawdy stressed that Beck "is not the leader of" the 912 movement, she added "all he has to do is say something, and they'll jump."

And by 'jump,' she means, kill people.

Brian Stetler at the New York Times also talked to Beck before today. Stetler's a sizable dude, not someone I imagine can be easily intimidated, nice as he is. Really, he could probably bounce a guy Glenn Beck's size easily.

That said, I imagine he'll be sleeping in the fetal position tonight:

"We'll be looking for ways to get people involved in politics," [Beck] said. "I hear people saying, ‘O.K., now what?' They're calling their representative, but it's time to get more proactive."

Right. So. What was Beck's big plan? He unveiled it today, starting with his website, which is the image you see at the top of this post. One more thing before we get there, though. This video, taken at a Borders yesterday, of Beck teasing out The Plan.

"We're gonna be asking of you some big things." Funny, I've been told the same thing by my bosses, but the first thought that went through my head never involved any kind of civil war and/or revolution.

But hey, Beck: he's just passionate! No way could this entire rollout involve the guy cashing in.

No way could all of this buzz, this entire thing, all of this talk about "community organizing"—taking The Dirty Word of President Barack Obama's past and platform, and putting it to their own new, awesome, terrible uses—no way could Beck be leading his flock into spending some cash.

Funny, then, that they found out that The Plan was for them to spend more money on Glenn Beck, The Brand. Observe his two key points from the manifesto written on his website:

- I have begun meeting with some of the best minds in the country that believe in limited government, maximum freedom and the values of our Founders. I am developing a 100 year plan. I know that the bipartisan corruption in Washington that has brought us to this brink and it will not be defeated easily. It will require unconventional thinking and a radical plan to restore our nation to the maximum freedoms we were supposed to have been protecting, using only the battlefield of ideas.

- All of the above will culminate in The Plan, a book that will provide specific policies, principles and, most importantly, action steps that each of us can take to play a role in this Refounding.

Kinda sounds like a cross between Avon and the Left Behind series, right? Except with scarier salespeople who have drier hands.

Yeah, Glenn Beck's got a plan: for the next 100 years, he's gonna keep writing books and making TV shows, and his fans are going to keep buying into both of them. It's kind of genius. His entire multimedia empire is predicated on one, long, 100-year plot arc: that the main character will make viewers'/listeners'/readers' lives better so long as they're with him every step of the way. The man will make references to revolution, to change, to bringing everything back to a fundamental state. The beautiful irony he has to see and embrace—in order for this to have worked as long as it has—is that the only real movement he'll be making is into better cars and larger houses. The kinds that are far away from the rabid zombies who salivate at every vague allusion to blood and violence Mama Bird spits out like discarded pieces of chewing gum for them to suck every last grain of sweet flavor out of. The kind, if provoked, and unleashed, are as much as a threat to anybody as they are to him. A "random act of violence" is never really that random, is it? Especially when the word "radical" gets thrown around over, and over, and over.

More than anything, this guy is a threat to the proliferation of rational thought. Beck knows that there're people in the world who listen to this kind of nonsense without processing it any way but through their emotions, because they're tired, hungry, scared, or angry, and maybe, sometimes, rightfully so. Then again, so are most of us! But when you have an asshole like Beck running the con, one thing leads to another, and shit like this happens. Believe me, nothing would bring me more joy than to watch Glenn Beck get the Downfall-meme treatment after his empire of exploitative bullshit comes crumbling down under the weight of the inevitable rise of the truth: that this man is a crook, a fraud, a shyster, and a very skilled, sophisticated con artist. But who wants it to get that far?

Glenn Beck does have one up on Hitler in terms of likability: a decent Kermit impersonation. I'm pretty sure nobody with such an affection for Muppets can possibly be capable of anything too terrible.

Then again, evil, as we're all aware, is a scary, subversive force, and comes in all forms, at all times, with little to no discretion. Beware.

[Top image via Glenn Beck's website. Bottom image via Bert Is Evil.]

Thankfully Sarah Palin may now take her rightful place as America's "Commanderin' Chief" because Barack Obama is polling at 49% in the daily Gallup tracking poll. As Gallup notes, this is an unprecedentedly fast drop in presidential approval, not counting the three post-war presidents who dropped below 50% faster than him (Reagan, Ford, Clinton) and the one who also dropped below 50% after 11 months in office (Truman).

One of the fastest and most effective ways for any president to boost his approval rating (besides starting a war or botching his response to a terror attack) is to score a major legislative victory. So, with "centrist" and Blue Dog democrats spooked that Obama's low numbers will negatively affect their own reelection bids, look for them to attempt to obstruct and delay any legislation the president champions, in order to drag down everyone's numbers even further in the hopes that eventually elections will just be "called off."

The primary reason for the president's declining approval is, of course, the economy. Specifically jobs. Americans know an economic "recovery" without jobs is no recovery at all, so, once again, look for Blue Dogs and centrists to become incredibly terrified of the idea of spending any further government money on jobs programs of any kind, as we all know that's why FDR was a one-term president, because of his socialism, and how much it made Americans hate him. Jobless Americans are much, much more concerned with the abstract concept of "fiscal responsibility" than they are with material concerns like health care, regular employment, and "having enough money to feed themselves."

The new $11 billion operating budget is actually just an ominous warning that in a year—or maybe a few months—the Transit Authority will once again cite the need to hike fares in order to strong arm Albany in finding a newer, more regressive way of funding operating costs.

They have basically promised it already:

In addition to the 2010 budget, the MTA released a four-year fiscal plan. It envisions 7.5% fare and toll hikes in 2011 and 2013 as the agency tries to establish a pattern of regular inflation-based increases.

There is really not so much inflation right now, in America, is there? (But who knows what the future holds!)

But, yes, it is insane that our mass transit is operated by a rotating cast of idiot millionaires with free E-Zpasses for life (and beyond!) beholden to absolutely no one, at all, operating with two sets of books, and yet we have to actually sympathize with them because the people who profit from the way an efficient mass transit system allows for the mobility of cheap labor don't think they should be forced to pony up any money to keep transit affordable. Fares are simply taxes—incredibly regressive taxes, just like the sales taxes that New York City residents suffer to fund our own transit while suburban New Yorkers bitch about the prospect of being charged to clog our streets with their cars, and Jersey dicks bemoan the tolls they have to pay to enter the city where they make all of their money while contributing nothing back.

Meanwhile, though, the MTA lies, about everything, all the time. They are saving just enough of the money from the emergency bailout earlier this year to allow them to not threaten to raise fares again for one (1) year (while fighting transit workers' promised wage increase in court). And thanks to that bailout, we only had to endure a slight fare increase with no service cuts! Except that not a single goddamn line is running on schedule anymore, ever, and that's been the case all year and it only gets worse every week.

Track and signal work must be up 1000% across the board, because there's hardly a line that isn't out of commission on the conveniently poorer or less utilizied portions of the routes these days. The F just gives up at Jay St now. The service advisories, when they are actually correctly posted, which is rarely, grow longer every weekend. If you live outside Manhattan, you better catch a train home before 11 pm, because otherwise who the fuck knows when a train will show up and where it will actually take you. Lord only knows what the hell the G train was doing last weekend, and why. Everyone, anecdotally, has noticed this. But no one has just straight-up said that these are the across the board service cuts that they promised they wouldn't need to institute once we saved them from disaster a few months ago.

It is time, now, immediately, to do a few things:

• To end the insane federal transit funding system that a) overfunds highways and b) dispenses capital project money for urban mass transit systems but forbids any federal spending on operating costs for cities of more than 200,000 people. The Reagan administration slashed mass transit funding, of course, but it was Mr. Bill Clinton who eliminated operating assistance altogether. Do you want to know about how much highway funding has increased over the same period of time? No, you don't. Real estate taxes and fares are not the proper way to fund the nation's largest subway system, especially when we will earmark federal cash for the Robert Byrd Memorial Frontage Road to the Erma Ora Byrd Conference and Learning Center and Community Swimming Pool.
• To destroy the MTA. The public authorities reform bill that just passed the Assembly is a wonderful start! But the entire board needs to be dissolved and replaced with, you know, actual subway riders, elitist technocrat transit wonks, and people with experience in government management and accounting. Civil servants, in other words.
• Everyone in Albany should be tarred and feathered. This is an important part of our prescription for any local problem.
• Also fuck Bloomberg.

Anyway! No fare increases until January 1, 2011! And some day—maybe in like 2015, when you ride the robot-operated Second Avenue line to your favorite soup kitchen—there may be those little signs that tell you when the next train is coming! This "install little signs" project is only a zillion dollars over budget (so far!).

UPDATE: It was No. 3! According to the New York Daily News, Giuliani intends to run for Kirsten Gillibrand's Senate seat next year. That news comes just hours after Hakim's report that he'd opted not to run for governor. Hakim is probably pretty pissed right now.

It certainly seems strange that Giuliani would bow out now; he's been open about his interest in the job since August, and the path to nomination appears to be clear if he wants it. Plus, Bernard Kerik just pleaded guilty, eliminating the likelihood that unpleasant and distracting disclosures about their relationship would come out at trial. Here's some baseless speculation on why he bailed:

• Governing New York would be a shit-show, and could only be a liability for a 2012 presidential run. This is undoubtedly true—who wants to wrestle with a Democratic legislature for two years and preside over devastating budget cuts? But Giuliani knew this back in August, when he launched the whisper campaign, so it doesn't explain the sudden withdrawal. And the upsides in positioning himself for a run against Obama in 2012 are considerable: His governorship would be presented against the backdrop of a massive terror trial in New York City that he could nitpick on a daily basis as a shameful spectacle and hang around Obama's neck.
• He doesn't think he can beat Andrew Cuomo. According to Pollster.com, the most recent public poll around the time Giuliani started nosing around the governor's desk had Cuomo—New York's popular attorney general, who is likely to challenge Gov. David Paterson for the Democratic nomination—beating him by five points with 11 percent undecided, which amounts to a toss-up this far out from election day. A poll taken last week had Cuomo up by 12 points, with 6 percent undecided. And while 49% of New Yorkers say they want Cuomo to run for governor, only 32% say they want to see Giuliani's name on the ballot. Those are much less hospitable numbers, but still close to meaningless a year from election day. And Giuliani has amply demonstrated that he's a cruel dick who delights in destroying people, so it's certainly not like him to shrink from a chance to rough up Cuomo.
• He wants to run for Senate instead. The Senate was Giuliani's initial job choice after mayor, before God gave him prostate cancer and he had to bow out. And Sen. Kristen Gillibrand, who was appointed by Paterson to replace Hillary Clinton, is a weak incumbent with just a two-year track record to tout. Giuliani's close adviser Tony Carbonetti ruled out a Senate bid back in September, but maybe he's changed his mind. He's crushing Gillibrand in the polls right now, and the Senate could be a better place from which to prepare a 2012 presidential bid, lacking as it does all the unpleasantness associated with actually governing a nearly ungovernable state.
• He would prefer to secretly make millions of dollars from former cocaine smugglers and Arab dictators through Giuliani Partners, his consulting firm. Sounds like a plan, although most of those clients only pay those millions of dollars as a bet that one day he'll be governor of New York, or president.
• He doesn't want to run for president in 2012 against Sarah Palin, so why bother? He lost his first bid for the Replublican nomination for a reason: He's a gay-loving abortionist whose name ends in a vowel and whose children hate him. The ever-diminishing number of angry people who describe themselves as Republicans are going to flock to Palin over him. And maybe he's betting that terrorism—the only thing that he can flog on his resume, despite the fact that his role in the 9/11 attacks is more properly described as disaster management than anything to do with combating terrorism—won't be as ripe an issue on which to base a campaign in 2012.
• He's about to be indicted. Please?

In other people-related-to-politicians-who-also-allegedly-drive-drunk news, Sen. John Kerry's daughter Alexandra was arrested for driving under the influence early this morning in Hollywood. These things come in threes, and we're counting on the Kennedy family to step up to the plate.

Lacey's description, from Ebay:

The sixth painting in the Gawker series, which is an elaboration on the Rachel Maddow riding a be-saddled Keith Olbermann into battle with a lance and pancake shield against a comparably-though-perhaps-differently-armored Limbaugh riding Hannity suggestion. The suggestion was made before the full assention of Beck and includes a completely gratituous full bodied although one-legged Sarah Palin with pancakes on her head. Obama and Penelope the Unicorn insert themselves into the center of the fray but are powerless to stop the slaughter.

Provocative. Bid on this artwork that you, the Gawker commentariat, spawned, at Ebay.

[Previous paintings in the series here]