Spin Cycle

Who knew? The story behind this 2004 foto of John McCain and Tina Fey is here:

Today was an interesting day.

McCain's campaign over the weekend announced that it was going to begin attacking Obama on character issues to "turn the page" on the economy, and proceeded to do so, with Sarah Palin bringing up Obama's acquaintance with ex-radical William Ayers.

Obama, today, responded with a frontal assault on McCain's relationship with fraudster Charles Keating. Although Obama once said Keating was not "germane" to the campaign, he clearly was ready to bring him up -- they didn't produce a 13-minute documentary over the weekend, did they?

Maybe Keating is now "germane" because a financial scandal has now become the country's number 1 issue. But today, as Obama was attacking Keating, the Dow was dropping 500 points. And the news reports we saw reported a kind of equivalency -- McCain's campaign talked about Ayers and Obama's talked about Keating while voters worried about their retirement and college savings.

The trick now is getting it just right. If you fight too little you're a wimp, but if your response -- Obama on Keating, today -- is too strong, you appear to be ignoring the issues. There's points to be lost if you aren't in the mud, but there's points to be scored if you're above it all.

Who can be Goldilocks?

As we noted on Friday, Gov. Palin's tax returns did not report as income any of the $16,951 she received as $60 a day per diem travel payments for spending 312 days during her first 19 months in office at home and working in nearby Anchorage instead of reporting to her "duty station" in Juneau, the capital.

The payments were unusual in the first place: Most employers do not pay employee commuting costs, and do not pay extra when employees stay at home instead of reporting to their workplace. Based on the tax returns, not only did Palin get paid $60 a day for incurring less expense than if she had gone to Juneau -- she also received the payments tax free.

A tax lawyer hired by the campaign vouched for the treatment, because Alaska didn't put the per diems on Palin's W-2, but they have run into some rough sailing over the past few days. Sheldon Cohen, a former IRS commissioner, questioned the claim that they weren't taxable. Two tax lawyers writing on the Tax Prof Blog agreed that Palin had wrongfully excluded some or all of $43,000 she received in payments for her husband's and children's travel (a separate issue), and that blog also located a State of Alaska policy statement indicating that Palin's per diems should be taxed.

The Alaska Department of Finance document, Income Tax Implications of Long-Term Per Diem (here), says essentially that when an employee spends more than 50 percent of their time away from their "duty station," they acquire a new "tax home" and their travel per diems become taxable. Since Palin got 312 per diems in 19 months, she was over 50 percent.

We spent the weekend asking why that policy didn't apply to Palin, and this afternoon ended up on a phone call with a Palin press officer and Kim Garnero, Alaska's finance director. Here's the answer: You only acquire a new "tax home" when you're "assigned" by a supervisor to work at a location remote from your duty station, and since Palin was the governor she -- uniquely -- had no supervisor and was never "assigned." Even though she got per diems long-term, she was never assigned to Long Term Per Diem status.

Garnero: "They (governors) are in a different category because they answer to no supervisor. They answer to the people of the state. So the governor is in a different category."

We asked Garnero if, maybe, Gov. Palin -- when she decided she wanted to work in Anchorage -- was "assigning" herself, and therefore had the responsibility for filling out the paperwork that would have put her in Long Term Per Diem status.

" I understand your question, John," said Garnero. Shortly thereafter, the conversation came to an amicable conclusion -- without, however, any further explanation.

So there it is. It's not clear that Palin did anything wrong -- but she got $60 a day for not commuting, and didn't have to pay tax on it because she never put herself in the status that would have made it taxable.

Nice work if you can get it.

McCain, speaking in Florida, asserts that “as recently as September of last year,” Mr. Obama “said that subprime loans had been, quote ‘a good idea.’” But what he actually said in September, 2007, was:

“Subprime lending started off as a good idea helping Americans buy homes who couldn’t previously afford to." And he added, “As certain lenders and brokers began to see how much money could be made, they began to lower their standards. Some appraisers began inflating their estimates to get the deals done. Some borrowers started claiming income they didn’t have just to qualify for the loans, and some were engaging in irresponsible speculation. But many borrowers were tricked into glossing over the fine print.”

The NYTimes rips him for this and roughly ten other misrepresentations and distortions on housing, taxes and health care in his speech.

Meanwhile, factcheck.org looks at McCain's latest ad and -- as Spin Cycle did this morning -- finds that it is based on misrepresenting an Obama vote on troop funding and an Obama statement on Afghanistan.

In light of the wink-fest, eerie similarities:

We somehow missed this link this morning -- the LATimes looks at McCain's mishap-prone record as a Naval aviator and some of the bad flight reviews he got: "...a pilot who early in his career was cocky, occasionally cavalier and prone to testing limits."

And this nice picture:

Why has Obama put up four new TV ads in the past week attacking McCain's health care plans?

In part, by selectively focusing on a proposed tax on employer health benefits and paying less attention to a proposed tax credit, he can blunt McCain's effor to cast Obama as a tax-hiker.

But there's also this: A new Marist poll shows that by a 51-38 margin voters think Obama is the better candidate to tackle health care.

Miraculously this morning, we learned that at the very time Mayor Bloomberg was telling reporters in Berlin that a voter referendum on term limits this spring might be illegal, the city's chief lawyer Michael Cardozo -- presumably not influenced by the political desires of his boss -- was saying the exact same thing to the NYTimes.

Since the current term limits law was adopted by voters in two separate referenda, it's somewhat counterintuitive to hear that taking Bloomberg's repeal-them-for-me request to the same voters would be illegal, but taking it to City Council would be legal. But Cardozo explained:

"Michael Cardozo, the city’s corporation counsel, said that because special elections tend to draw so few voters, 'there’s a serious question' of whether the process would stand the scrutiny of the Department of Justice, which must approve all changes to the city’s election procedure under a longstanding civil rights provision."

Forcing Mike to go to the voters to change a law that the voters approved would violate the civil rights of.... who? Mike?

Election law expert Jerry Goldfeder, a bit more steeped in that specialty than Cardozo, disagreed, telling the Times: “There’s no reason to think the Justice Department would be less favorably inclined were term limits changed by several hundred thousand people in a special election than if they were changed by 51 council members.”

We decided to ask Cardozo about his opinion. Had he, we wondered, discussed the matter with Bloomberg or his political aides? What, we asked, was the nearest comparable precedent on which he was relying? Would the Justice Deparment enjoin an election in advance on the theory it might produce low turnout, or evaluate it afterwards? What if 80 percent of voters turned out to vote on term limits -- did Cardozo think Justice would try to invalidate the results? Had Cardozo bothered to ask the Justice Department's voting rights division what it thought before opining on what he thought it might think?

The response, in an e-mail from spokesperson Kate Ahlers: "He said that we can't discuss legal advice given to the Mayor. In addition, in light of potential litigation, it would be tough to answer your questions in detail."

It's what we sometimes call no-depost, no-return policymaking. Cardozo pronounces a legal opinion for public consumption -- but he's suddenly barred from answering questions about it or defending it or even providing a case that supports it by confidentiality and "potential litigation"??

If it's so hush-hush, why did he toss it out to Times readers in the first place? Because Bloomberg wanted some political help?

It seems a little selective, doesn't it?

It becomes clearer than ever, in light of last week's events, that for all the mayor's relative competence, charm and maturity, an essential part of the Bloomberg m.o. has long involved convoluted power plays, stealth operations and insider dealing. And the third-term scheme now unfolding seems ironically to prove what hadn't been demonstrated before: the wisdom of the current law's eight-year limit (with no option to purchase).

Right at the start of this administration, the mayor's office was selling a weird deal in which the Port Authority would swap control of Ground Zero with the city for control of the Queens airports. It went nowhere.

The defunct Jets stadium, West Side housing and commercial development, extension of the No. 7 line and the hosting of the 2012 Olympics were all bundled into one big contraption. That went nowhere.

The Manhattan commuter toll collapsed in part due to a transparent power grab too -- the MTA was never going to give up funding to be distributed by the City Hall crew. And years earlier, he'd tried a complicated commuter-tax proposal that died in Albany.

Along the way, each of these plans underwent compromise offers in an effort to save them. So the mayor's third-term gambit may go the same way. For all the hazy statements about how a special-election in the spring wouldn't hold up in court, a vote before the next nomination season seems to be the fallback position for Bloomberg's third-term effort.

The mainstream opinion (outside the billionaire gentlemen's club) seems to be that voters approved a two-term limit twice and if you want to change the law you need to ask the voters again. That was of course the mayor's position until recently -- probably because he and his political butlers knew it polled well.

And yet, as Azi points out in what could be a crucial area of inquiry, the mayor's office balked earlier this year on an expected charter commission, which could have put the question on November's ballot. Why? Looks like he didn't want this coming to a vote, at least too soon.

Since public resistance to his power lunge right now turns on ......

Continue reading "Bloomberg: Unanswered questions, dark suspicions" »

Here's the Obama documentary on McCain's involvement in the Keating 5 scandal. It's hardly unbiased, but it also identifies a fundamental truth:

While Barack Obama knew William Ayers, he never did anything for him. McCain not only knew Charles Keating -- he tried influence regulators on his behalf. Also, who are Americans more concerned about right now? Student radicals, or slimy bankers who buy Congressmen?

The McCain campaign responded this morning with a conference call featuring John Dowd, McCain's defense lawyer, and not the most disinterested party. This afternoon, a little more persuasively, they present audio from Bill Bennett, the Democratic counsel for the Senate ethics panel that investigated McCain. (But only a little more persuasively: Last year, McCain hired Bennett to represent him when the NYTimes was working on a story about his relationship with a lobbyist.)

Bennett today draws a distinction -- arguing that after McCain tried to intervene with regulators, he pulled out when the investigation became criminal. The assumption is that Congressmen go to bat for constituents with regulators all the time, so there was nothing wrong with that -- a view voters may or may not share:

Vincent Jeffreys, the 22-year-old Manhasset man accused by police of stealing Craig Johnson signs in Port Washington, appears to have been the highest-compensated staffer for the Barbara Donno campaign, having collected at regular intervals $7,000 in wages, at least $500 in consulting fees, and $1,453.06 in other payments since late July. He's now suspended without pay, the campaign announced.

Jeffreys had been described Friday by a campaign spokesman as "an overzealous supporter" who "obviously" was acting outside the Donno camp's direction. The Johnson camp called it a "new low."

The wage and fee information is based on recent financial disclosure filings with the state elections board.

One of only a few documented encounters Obama had with ex-radical Bill Ayers was in 1995, when he hosted a dinner at which Hyde Park's outgoing state senator introduced Obama as her chosen successor.

Today, on CNN, Obama's chief strategist David Axelrod asserted that Obama didn't even know about Ayers' radical past as a founder of the Weathermen. On the surface, that is possible -- Ayers was also the son of a former CEO of Commonwealth Edison, a member of a wealthy family, and a prominent education professor at the University of Illinois.

But bringing it up seems to be a tactical error. Although the Ayers connection is not new -- Hillary Clinton's campaign obsessed about it, and Obama was asked about it in a debate -- the argument has always been that the contacts between the two men were inconsequential. This is the first time, as far as we know, that the Obama camp didn't know who Ayers was.

It seems defensive. It opens up a factual issue that will merit more journalism, and more attention -- can anyone contradict Axelrod? When did Obama find out who Ayers was? Already, paper is flying out of the McCain camp:

“Does Barack Obama truly expect the American people to believe that he had no idea about his friend’s past as the infamous founder of the domestic terror group ‘The Weather Underground’ or is he just lying? If Obama didn't know in 1995 about the bombings Ayers was responsible for, when did he find out -- because Obama was promoting Ayers' book in 1997, serving on boards with him until 2002, and trading emails and phone calls with him as recently as 2005. If Obama really was unaware of Ayers' radical past, learning the truth doesn't seem to have had any effect on their friendship."

All the McCain camp wants is for people to talk about Obama-Ayers, and Axelrod has provided fuel for the discussion. The full McCain release is after the jump. It does not, it should be noted, contain even a morsel of affirmative evidence that Obama actually did know about Ayers in 1995.

Here's video of Obama communications chief Robert Gibbs reiterating Axelrod's assertion:

Continue reading "Video: Obama didn't know about Ayers?" »

As McCain and Palin try to refocus the campaign on Obama's acquaintance with ex-radical Bill Ayers and play around with Wright and Rezko slights, more quotes surface in which the campaign acknowledges what it's doing.

From the NY Daily News: “It’s a dangerous road, but we have no choice. If we keep talking about the economic crisis, we’re going to lose.”

When similar candor appeared in Saturday's Washington Post, we wondered about the wisdom of a campaign essentially telling the press that it wanted to divert the public from serious matters and focus on character attacks as a purely tactical improvisation -- not out of any belief that Obama's connections were as important as the economy.

They keep doing it -- but today, they're doing it as the Dow tanks, dropping below 10,000 for the first time since 2004.

Which just creates a terrible appearance, doesn't it?

Notice the phraseology: "We have no choice." Of course, they do -- run a campaign in which they tell the voters what they want to do to solve the country's problems, and let the people decide.

There's not some rule of politics that says you are absolutely required to do untoward things if you would lose based on the merits, is there?

Getty Images Photo

The Wall Street Journal rips into Biden in an editorial today for misstating the facts about Afghanistan in his debate with Palin -- you can read it here -- and in the process discusses Palin's response in this curious passage:

"In trying to correct him, Mrs. Palin mispronounced the general's name -- saying 'General McClellan' instead of General David McKiernan. But Mr. Biden's claim was the bigger error, because General McKiernan said that while 'Afghanistan is not Iraq,' he also said a 'sustained commitment' to counterinsurgency would be required. That is consistent with Mr. McCain's point that the 'surge principles' of Iraq could work in Afghanistan."

Of all the things that happened in Thursday's debate, we stipulate that none are less important than Gov. Palin's reference to "General McLellan." But how can you even take seriously a newspaper that is so incapable of coming to grips with the reality of its favored candidate's lack of knowledge that it calls that a mispronounciation?

McLellan? McKiernan? What, Alaskans are well known to pronouce "kier" as "lell"? Boys named "Kieran" up there are called, "Lellan"??

Come on, guys.

She couldn't remember the name. She made a mistake.

Which was the most fevered lunge for self-promotion by a power player?

1) New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg, who during the Thursday press conference announcing his bid to change the city’s term limits law – just this one time, promise! – gave no hint of why three years ago he thought doing so would be an “absolute disgrace.”

2) Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, who pounced on a relatively placid New York Times story about the nonassociation between Barack Obama and former Weatherman Bill Ayers by suggesting that Obama has spent time “palling around with terrorists.”

3) Suffolk County Executive Steve Levy, who responded to a union’s radio ad knocking his stewardship of the county’s 911 center with a press conference in which he accused union president Cheryl Felice of lying 14 different times.

CLICK HERE TO VOTE

More than 89,000 new Long Island voters — a 15 percent jump over four years ago — have enrolled to cast ballots in next month’s presidential contest and Democrats have garnered a huge edge among newcomers, according to local elections officials.

Suffolk had the largest gains, with 39,762 new voters since the beginning of the year, up 50 percent from four years ago. And Democrats gained the most with 20,642 new voters while Republicans drew one third that number — 6,905. The number of new Suffolk voters not aligned with any party jumped 13,301.

In Nassau, there are 49,497 new voters, about the same as four years ago, but 24,844 of them enrolled Democrats; 9,245 of Republicans and 12,084 not aligned to any party. What is different in the Nassau numbers is that Democrats have a 15,600 bulge this year compared to only 8,100 four years ago.

Those interested in voting can still register until Oct. 10 by mail or in person at the board of elections inn Mineola or Yaphank. Enrollment forms can be obtained on line here.

Both counties will also hold special registration days at a dozen sites: Suffolk will be Tuesday and Saturday from 4 to 7 p.m.; Nassau will be Friday and Saturday noon to 9 p.m. To find your nearest site call in Nassau, 516-571-2411 and Suffolk 852-4500.

Livid at Suffolk’s Conservative Sheriff Vincent DeMarco for taking over highway patrol, the Suffolk PBA is threatening to throw its weight around in the sheriff’s minor party.

Jeff Frayler, Suffolk PBA president, acknowledged E-mailing all 1,780 union members, asking them to switch into the Conservative Party by the Oct. 10 deadline so they could exert influence next year’s Conservative primary when DeMarco is up for re-election. He also asked the Nassau PBA to circulate his e-mail to members who live in Suffolk.

Frayler, himself an enrolled Conservative, said he is not trying to take over the county party, which has about 19,000 members, but his members are upset and “want to be heard.” He also said he has talked to former Nassau PBA president Gary DelaRaba, a Republican, as a possible sheriff candidate, who said he “would think about it.”

But for the PBA to wage a primary, they need a Conservative to run or get authorization of the top party officials to a give a non-party member ballot access, an unlikely prospect since county Conservative boss Edward Walsh is a major DeMarco supporter and one of his corrections officers.

“I think its an emotional response,” said Richard Schaffer, Suffolk Democratic chairman, whose party also backs DeMarco, adding he expects the move to fade and “cooler heads to prevail.”

DeMarco said he is not concerned, noting he won even though all police unions opposed him in 2004. Walsh declined to comment on the PBA effort, but deadpanned, “It’s good to see more people interested in the Conversative Party for all the great things we’ve accomplished.”

Rick Brand

Sarah Palin, in an interview with NYT columnist Bill Kristol, says she's like to talk about Obama and Rev. Jeremiah Wright but McCain won't let her -- which, of course, is a way of talking about Wright, and means that McCain has decided to let her:

“Those were appalling things that that pastor had said about our great country, and to have sat in the pews for 20 years and listened to that — with, I don’t know, a sense of condoning it, I guess, because he didn’t get up and leave — to me, that does say something about character. But, you know, I guess that would be a John McCain call on whether he wants to bring that up.”

This from a woman who claims to have been disconnected from the anti-gay preaching and hands-on protect-us-from-witches blessings she received at her own church!!

The picture slowly emerging of Palin: She more or less draws a blank or uses slogans and talking points when she's asked about issues. But she loves the attacks, the negative stuff, portraying herself as Mrs. American and her opponents as less-than-that. Just what the country needs.

Nonetheless: Strategically, Obama can't ignore attacks and allow himself to be a punching bag. So he hits back. And the tit-for-tat creates a more level playing field than exists on the economy. Ultimately, it may damage Obama's "brand."

So, you can understand why the GOP is doing it.

Jim Maiella at Cablevision adds in a news release:

"The debates will also be available to Cablevision’s iO TV digital cable customers on News 12 Interactive, channel 612, after their initial airing. And since the debates on News 12 Interactive are geo-coded, viewers need only enter their zip code with their remote control to receive instant access to all relevant debates for their location.

“News 12 Long Island has long proven itself a leader in local election coverage and we’re continuing that mission this year,” said Patrick Dolan, news director for News 12 Long Island...

"As part of its expanded 2008 coverage, News 12 will also produce 'Island Vote 2008' pieces that highlight the issues involved in this year’s election, enabling Long Island voters to get all the information they need before heading to the polls. News 12.com’s “Voter’s Guide” will offer candidate profiles for each race....

Continue reading "Debate season: Punch in your zip code" »

Apparently, McCain spokesman is pointing out to reporters that Obama has been endorsed by three of the "Keating 5" senators -- who were implicated, along with McCain, in trying to help the Arizona fraudster out with regulators.

Those would be Democrats DeConcini of Arizona, Glenn of Ohio, and Riegle of Michigan.

Does this make any sense as a response?

McCain went to regulators to plead for a hearing for Keating, who was a big player in Arizona, was giving lots of money to McCain, and was ripping off investors, driving his bank into the ground, and costing taxpayers millions of dollars for a bailout at the time.

Obama got endorsed 20-plus years later by three guys who used to be in the Senate who were doing the same sort of special pleading McCain was doing.

And there's supposed to be some sort of equivalency????

Tonight, News 12 Long Island — which like Newsday is an affiliate of Cablevision — begins broadcasting its full slate of wide-ranging 30-minute candidate debates for state Assembly, state Senate and Congress. Debates for all 21 Assembly districts across Nassau and Suffolk run through Oct. 21 (two per weekday), followed by the counties’ nine Senate districts through Oct. 24th (generally two per weekday), and the Island’s five Congressional districts (one per weekday), through Oct. 31.

Each will be broadcast once between 4 and 5 p.m. and repeated between 11:30 p.m. and 12:30 a.m. More details available here (subscriber site).

For the full schedule, by district, click 'continued' bar below.

Continue reading "Debate season: Assembly, Senate, Congress on Ch 12" »

Discussing Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s explosive move for a third term, retired Bronx pol Fernando Ferrer remembered being attacked in print for refusing as a mayoral candidate in 2001 to promise if elected to keep Bernard Kerik police commissioner.

“What is it about Kool-Aid,” Ferrer asks, “that everyone finds so refreshing?”

So, as personal attacks begin to completely take over the campaign, McCain releases a new ad attacking Obama as "dangerous."

It has two misleading elements. One is the old McCain canard that Obama voted against funding troops. The facts: McCain also opposed troop funding, during a 2007 legislative struggle over a timetable on Iraq. Obama opposed a funding bill without a timetable, McCain opposed a funding bill with a timetable, and neither man actually opposed giving the troops all the funding they needed.

The other is based on a quote from Obama in 2007 when he was calling for more troops in Afghanistan: "We've got to get the job done there and that requires us to have enough troops so that we're not just air-raiding villages and killing civilians, which is causing enormous pressure over there."

McCain pretends that was some horrible slur on the troops -- as opposed to the White House strategy. An AP fact check at the time found, however, that Obama was correct -- as of August, 2007, militants had caused 231 civilian casualties in attacks, while Western forces had caused 286 collateral casualties. The clip notes that even George Bush, in a meeting with Hamid Karzai, acknowledged that civilian casualties were too high.

Here's the ad:

Sen. Barack Obama makes much of rejecting contributions from lobbyists for his presidential campaign — and slams Sen. John McCain for his close ties to a number of them.

So it is interesting that National Grid Executive Vice-President David Manning insists he is no lobbyist.

Never mind that Manning addressed colleagues on the presidential race last week in a talk billed inside the company as “perspectives and insight from our Washington D.C. ‘insider.’” Forget his continual travels in the political circuit, hobnobbing with the elected and the appointed of state, federal and local governments, talking up utility issues.

And never mind that for the 9 months until June 30, Manning was registered with Congress to lobby on a wide range of high-stakes company interests, including the Islander East Pipeline, the Jamaica Bay pipeline, and Long Island pipeline extensions. Or that major-player National Grid in the first quarter was reported on track to spend more than $2 million on federal lobbying this year.

On Friday we asked the loquacious Manning, who was aware of Obama’s rule, about his fundraising and contributions to candidate Obama — such as a $2,300 donation recorded Aug. 28. Manning denied any breach. He responded: “I was registered to lobby at one time, briefly. We’d lost a Washington person and I registered before I was able to hire a new D.C. person. In this quarter I am not a registered lobbyist. I was de-registered within the period.”

Walking, talking, or acting like a lobbyist apparently don’t make you one, at least by that account.

Attention Long Island lawyers: Nassau County Executive Thomas Suozzi can help you keep your law license.

Just sign up for a continuing legal education course about property tax assessment this afternoon (Monday) and you can hear Suozzi explain Nassau’s tax refund history while you earn 3.5 hours toward the 24 hours of continuing education you need every two years to maintain your license.

Suozzi is the lead-off speaker for the course sponsored by the county attorney’s office titled “Nassau Tax Certiorari: New Developments.” Speakers include Carl Laske, of the assessment department, Assessment Review Chairman John Peguillan, County Attorney Lorna Goodman, two deputy county attorneys and two private tax attornies, Laureen Harris and John Turana.

By Friday, 65 attorneys had signed up for the course.

Celeste Hadrick

Obama promises in an e-mail to release a 13 minute web video documentary on McCain's relationship with Charles Keating at noon today -- a response to McCain's effort to play the William Ayers card against Obama.

The web video will appear on a website, www.keatingeconomics.com. A teaser appears below, followed by the McCain campaign response:

McCain spokesman Brian Rogers responds:

"The difference here is clear: John McCain has been open and honest about the Keating matter, and even the Democratic special counsel in charge recommended that Senator McCain be completely exonerated. By contrast, Barack Obama has been fundamentally dishonest about his friendship and work with the unrepentant terrorist William Ayers, whose radical group bombed the Pentagon and the U.S. Capitol.

"Nor has Barack Obama come clean on his close friendship with Tony Rezko, a felon convicted on bribery charges who subsidized the purchase of Barack Obama’s home. It's obvious that Barack Obama is frantically attacking because he knows that most voters find these kinds of friendships, and the failed judgment they expose, to be unacceptable for our next president."

One problem with this statement: Obama has admitted to an error in judgment with Rezko, much as McCain did with Keating. There's no indication Obama misbehaved in his relationship with Ayers, and no evidence that he was ever dishonest about it.

Shifting his emphasis from an earlier statement spotlighting the prospect of collusion between supervisors and employees, Gov. David A. Paterson last week applauded Long Island Rail Road President Helena Williams “for taking swift action” to help stem evident pension-disability abuses on the line that have been authorized by a federal board.

Exactly what direction are the federal and state probes taking? No exact time frame is yet available. Earlier Paterson said: “The thing that bothers me is that this had to be so rampant,” Mr. Paterson said. “I even would wonder if there was collusion between the supervisors and the employees.... You would have thought a whistleblower would have shown up by now.”

Look for another rough day on Wall Street, with European stocks down 5 percent in overnight trading on fears of a world recession, complicating John McCain's efforts to "turn the page" on the economy and refocus on attacking Obama's somewhat limited association with ex-radical Bill Ayers.

Obama hit back at McCain and Palin for the attacks yesterday, while other Dems began to focus on McCain palling around with S&L fraudster Charles Keating.

The tilt of the Supreme Court is a lurking issue that could galvanize voters on both sides during the last 30 days.

Democrats have a huge edge in new registrations in a dozen key battleground states, which could prove a secret weapon for Obama. LI is also experiencing a big surge, with Ds outpacing Rs.

After four terms in Congress LI's Steve Israel has perfected the art of using incumbency to keep his seat secure -- playing the now fashionable role of warrior for the middle class, and proposing election-time bills