Utterly apropos of nothing—I don’t even know what made me think of it—I want to write today about the always-rumored-but-never-really-confirmed notion that NYPD parking agents have a “quota” of tickets they have to hand out. Let me say first of all that I have no particular insight on this. I haven’t been doing any investigative reporting, haven’t videotaped any former parking enforcement officers in silhouette, telling the ugly, dark truth about the secret quota system. I don’t need to do all that to find the truth of this. Common sense leads one to the only possible conclusion:

Of course there are quotas. It’s madness to think otherwise. Furthermore, there NEED to be quotas. It ultimately serves citizens—and drivers/parkers—more than it hurts them.

It’s the same with parking enforcement officers. If they weren’t required to administer a minimum number of citations, a lot of them wouldn’t do it. If it were me, and it was pouring rain outside, and none of my supervisors were requiring me to slap some tickets on cars parked at expired meters, I might just decide to stay dry.

How could that be good for you? Well, if you’re cruising around and around the block on that rainy day, looking for a place to park so you can pick up your kids from day care, I’m guessing you’d appreciate it if there was some kind of authority making sure people, fearing expensive tickets, were vacating their parking spots when their meter time was up.

I realize—and we’ve been reporting on this recently—there’s always the potential for abuse. An officer scrambling to reach his or her quota might cut some corners to get their number. That’s definitely a problem. But I’m going to guess the vast majority of parking citations handed out were legitimately earned, you could say. Having quotas just makes sure the job is being done properly, bringing in revenue for the city, and keeping turnover in parking spaces.

So next time you see a parking enforcement agents prowling your neighborhood looking to both catch parking miscreants AND reach their quota, give ‘em a big old smile and say “thank you for doing your job!” It’ll be worth it just to see the look on their face.

“Thank you very much. I’m honored that a majority of New York City voters have given me another four years to serve as your mayor. I’m as surprised as the rest of you that it wasn’t a very big majority, and I want you to know that I’ve noticed that, and that I’m taking it very much to heart. It’s one of the reasons I’ve tried to tone down what was going to be our big victory party here at the Sheraton tonight. In fact, Jimmy Fallon was going to introduce me, but I decided to skip that. What tonight’s results show me is that New Yorkers have very serious things on their minds at this point in our history, and it wouldn’t be right to have a comedian and a big expensive light show kick things off.

But I want to remind everyone that I also come from humble beginnings, and what I have today, I earned, through long years of hard work. I’ve been fortunate, and for the past eight years, and now the next four, my wish has been to share what I’ve learned in the business and philanthropic world to help make our city an even better place to live, not just for the wealthy, but for all New Yorkers. In my heart, I truly believe I have more to give this city as mayor, and that’s why I fought for the chance to stay in office. Not because I needed it for my ego, or because I need to stay in the limelight, but because we still have so much important work to do.

Tonight I pledge to begin this work anew, with a new focus on the needs of the people who are now struggling, the middle and working class people who feel like they don’t live in the same New York City that I do. To all those people tonight I say I hear you, I am with you, and thank you, for giving me another chance to serve as your mayor.”

It’s a case of a political narrative being repeated so many times, it becomes conventional wisdom, even if it’s not especially true. All day long—for weeks, actually—I’ve been hearing the cable newsers talking about how the New Jersey governor’s race is a “referendum” on how President Obama is doing. I’m writing this just as the polls in the Garden State are closing, so I don’t know whether Jon Corzine or Chris Christie is going to be the winner. But I am saying now that, either way, this never was Barack Obama’s race to lose, even though he threw his wholehearted support behind Corzine.

Of course, if you’re determined to find an Obama effect, you might note that Jon Corzine was trailing by a double-digit margin for most of the year, until the president began making his five visits to campaign for the incumbent. Does that indicate that Obama’s still-strong popularity at least kept Corzine competitive? Or is it strictly a win-lose proposition: meaning if Corzine wins by a percentage point, President Obama and his party remain strong; if Corzine loses by a point, the president is a loser, doomed to failure in the 2010 midterms? There’s no way it’s that simple.

It’s been on for a few weeks now, but I find myself doing a double take each time I see the DirecTV commercial featuring the late comedian Chris Farley. Here it is, if you haven’t seen it. It’s one of a series of commercials by the satellite tv provider that takes scenes from old movies, with the original actors, but changes the dialog so that the characters are talking about DirecTV. It’s a novel idea, I guess—I saw one today with Dana Carvey and Kim Basinger, in an altered scene from “Wayne’s World”—but I just don’t know about using an actor who is, you know, dead, from semi-tragic causes (Farley, a hard, hard partier, died of a drug overdose in 1997).

I realize that Farley’s estate must have approved of the spot. But he died without any children or dependents, so who, exactly is benefiting from this? His parents? Siblings? Ewww. As for David Spade, he was asked about the questionable taste of the commercial.. here’s his answer. He said his old friend would have loved the idea, and perhaps he’s right. But since we’ll never know—since we can’t know—maybe even having to speculate about it is proof enough that it was wrong.

Ladies and gentlemen, the Watkins family is now a cat family.

Meet Charlotte, the adorable kitten which arrived in our home a week ago. There was a pet adoption fair held in conjunction with our local church, and my wife and sons came away with a real winner, I think. Charlotte (when it came time to pick a name, one of my twin seven-year-olds, Jamie, just blurted out “Charlotte!” It seemed to arise out of him so instinctively, we figured that must be the name our new pet was meant to have) is around two months old, was abandoned somewhere in Westchester County before making her way to the adoption service, but seems by all indications to be sweet-tempered and playful, and—as you can readily see from the photo—just SICK CUTE!

So I wanted to take a few of my early observations about Charlotte, and run them by all you cat lovers for your comments:

• Are cats naturally house trained? From the day we got her, this tiny kitten wouldn’t THINK about going to the bathroom anywhere but her litter box. Isn’t that just wonderful??!!

• When we pet Charlotte, she loves it…for about three minutes. After that, she starts getting a little bite-y and scratchy with the hands of the person doing the petting. My wife says that’s when you grab a little toy, to let her get those aggressive instincts out in a “healthy” manner. How do we go about handling this? The boys already have a few little scratches on their hands.

• I’m actually losing sleep over the scenario of Charlotte getting out of the house through a door left open, and running away. Should I be worried about this? Do young cats instinctively look for ways to “get away” from their domesticated surroundings, or is she really looking around and thinking, “Plenty of food, showered with affection, nice warm bed.. SWEET! I’m not going anywhere!” ?

• The boys want Charlotte to sometimes sleep in their beds. So does my wife, now that I think of it. Is there a rule for whether it’s good or bad for a kitten to spend the night in bed with people?

• Charlotte alternates between being accessible and willing to be picked up and petted, and making a determined effort to run away any time one of us comes to get her. Should we leave her alone when she gets like that? I can’t figure out what the variables are in how she’s deciding if she wants to be friendly or not..

Cat people, I eagerly await your advice on these matters. Turtle lovers, you can feel free to jump in, also.

I had a birthday this week. Didn’t really tell anybody about it. It’s become something I don’t announce anymore. So why am I bringing it up now? Because I’m trying to figure out if that’s weird behavior, or not.

So why don’t I do that? I had perfectly fine birthdays as a child, with parties and gifts, and all that. My parents always made a big fuss, just like my wife and I do now when our sons’ birthdays come around. I truly don’t believe in the slightest there’s any deep, dark, negative emotional connections I associate with birthdays. And yet, I now pretty much keep them to myself.

Part of it, I suppose, is good old vanity; as the years go by, one is less inclined to announce that.. well, that another year has gone by. Maybe part of it is spending so many years living the broadcast nomad life, out on my own, that I got in the habit of playing down holidays and birthdays, simply because I was just a long way from home. I don’t really know.

Well, anyway, the big day has come and gone for another year. Maybe I’ll start asking these questions before my birthday next year, in a way that will open me up to more of a real observance of the occasion. I know my wife would appreciate that; she gets a little miffed that I’m not very “birthday friendly.” It was her who gave me the best birthday card I ever received, not that long after we met. No corny poem on the inside, just these seven words: “I celebrate the day you were born.” Perhaps I need to celebrate that more, myself.

I’d be interested in your thoughts on this strange topic, if you have any to share.

When I was in seventh grade, going out for the junior high school football team, I remember running a drill that seemed designed to help coaches figure out who, as they put it, “likes to hit.” Basically two players would collide with each other at top speed. I put my head down and went helmet-to-helmet repeatedly, sometimes with guys much bigger than I was. I made the team. I also remember I had a bad headache for a few days.

Well, I’m not so sure I can do that as a fan anymore. Serious evidence is mounting that football players—many, many of them—expose themselves to serious brain injury and damage from playing the game even a brief amount of time.

Last week, I read this article from The New Yorker, by bestselling author Malcolm Gladwell. It’s an eye-opener:

“Much of the attention in the football world, in the past few years, has been on concussions—on diagnosing, managing, and preventing them—and on figuring out how many concussions a player can have before he should call it quits. But a football player’s real issue isn’t simply with repetitive concussive trauma. It is, as the concussion specialist Robert Cantu argues, with repetitive subconcussive trauma. It’s not just the handful of big hits that matter. It’s lots of little hits, too.”

Football fans, I warn you, you might never feel the same way about the game again after reading this. It is not a pretty picture, and as I found when I sat down to watch the Giants and Jets games last Sunday, it was NOT something I was able to forget about as I watched the players on the field. With each big hit, I found myself worrying about the players and what this was doing to them. I know starting NFL players get huge money to take those hits, but is it really worth it to exponentially increase the chances of dementia, depression, and Alzheimer’s by the time they reach middle age, if not sooner?

I lasted three years in organized football. I broke my collarbone playing on our freshman team, trying to block an opposing player who was twice my size. With all this new research about the dangers of playing football...I'm wondering if he didn't do me a favor.

But that was just the start. On CNN last night, there was the whole family again, the boys showing the same nervous twitchiness as before, only this time it was hours later. Falcon shouldn't have been on national television.. he should have been in bed, or playing with his brothers, or being read to by his mom.. anything to put him into a healing, comforting environment as far away from the media glare as possible.

And it still wasn't over. One of the big news items today is that Falcon actually vomited on live television when the family was on "Good Morning America." This makes ME want to vomit. Do you know how early you have to get up in the Mountain Time Zone to be interviewed at the top of one of the network morning shows? This had to have been the scenario: after three hours of frightful trauma for Falcon and his brothers Thursday morning and afternoon, they're paraded in front of cameras like trained monkeys well into the evening. Then, they're shaken awake by their parents around 3 in the morning to get them up and ready to talk again about Falcon's humiliating experience, this time on GMA. We're talking about a six-year-old child here, incapable of having any kind of complete grasp of what is going on around him, publically pushed to the point that he actually became physically ill. But, by God, the parents got another shot on national television! Good for them!

Some people were saying after the balloon chase that the parents should be investigated by child services in Colorado, to find out how there could be a scenario where it might even seem as if this little boy had been carried away in a balloon. I disagree; strange as the whole situation was, it was really just a misunderstanding (I'm assuming, as authorities in Colorado say they're assuming, that this was not a hoax engineered by the father). However, I would call in child protective services to look into the greedy, selfish, publicity-grasping response by the mother and dad to the whole thing, a response that clearly borders on being abusive toward their own flesh and blood.

Of course, with their experience on the ABC reality show "Wife Swap" (and with a classy title like that, you know it had to be an enriching experience for the boys) Mr. and Mrs. Heene know how the game is played: you offer your children up like little on-camera accessories while you get that reality spotlight focused right on you. Maybe someday there will be a specific psychological diagnoses for children emotionally harmed this way by their narcissistic parents; they can call it Jon-Kate Syndrome.

I can't help but think that during those endless interviews, with those lights glaring in his face and people shouting questions he couldn't even begin to fathom, that Falcon was wishing he was someplace else; maybe flying away from everything in a little balloon, high into the sky, where--as it turns out--he might have felt safer.

Boy, it just begins earlier and earlier every year, the celebration of the holiday. At least it seems that way. Months ahead of time, you see the displays in the stores, you get the commercials on TV, the kids start thinking about nothing else; sure isn't the way I remember it.

I'm talking, of course, about Halloween.

When I was growing up, Halloween truly was a one-day event, almost completely something for children, and I mean elementary school children. Along with our mother, my brother and I would begin thinking about a costume to wear to school.. I don't know.. a day or two before October 31st. Pretty basic stuff, for us: firemen, cowboys, pirates. We'd parade around the school auditorium, then that night, go trick or treating on our street. Some of the more creative neighbors would put out a jack-o-lantern to give a little scare to the kids. And that was it. It was all over but the cavities.

Now, it's as much an adult holiday. That's one reason why it gets started so soon. Gotta sell those products, get those ad campaigns up and running,.. there are parties to be thrown, fake "haunted houses" to get ready, decorations to go up on the lawn (in my neighborhood, there have been tombstones in yards and skeletons hanging from trees for weeks, already); and costumes to be sold, lots and lots of costumes. Each year, it seems to me, more stores clear out rows of their usual merchandise so they can creat a Halloween section. Heck, some costume/novelty stores spring into existence for the weeks leading up to October 31st, only to then disappear like.. well, like ghosts.

But I'm not sure it's not all about creeping commercialism, so to speak, and the exploitation of one more "made up" holiday. My kids are crazy for Halloween, and have been since before they could talk. It makes me think that maybe there's something very fundamental, very primal, about the passion--and the growing expression of the passion--for this essentially pagan celebration. Maybe it's not being led by marketers and beer companies just looking for new ways to make money. Maybe they're just following the unleashed instincts of people wanting to celebrate their dark sides, their alter egos, their fascination with the mystery of death... albeit in fun and mostly wholesome ways.

I've always suspected that behind our accepted, structured value systems and religions, we're all pagans at heart, endlessly fascinated—and frightened--by what's really out there waiting in the dark, and that the reason the Halloween "season" has expanded so greatly is we've decided that having only one day to act that out that just isn't enough.

It was just six months ago, but seems longer than that; I was at the first Mets game in their new stadium Citi Field, and, man, it was electric. For sports fans both crazed and casual, a new stadium opening up is a huge event, one that happens maybe once or twice in a lifetime for a fan of any particular team (or in the case of Red Sox and Cubs followers, never in a lifetime). It’s a cliché how the start of any new baseball season is like the first breath of a new life; add a new home to the equation, along with a team with some terrifically talented ballplayers, and Mets fans packed in to the rafters were doing some sweet dreaming on that April night at that first home game.

For the Mets and their followers, it was a cruel end to the Long Season of baseball.

Baseball is my favorite of all the major sports, in part because it IS such a long season: 162-games, literally more than 10-times the number of regular season NFL games. There’s a daily-ness to the baseball schedule that just seems to mimic life itself during the six months-plus that make-up the season. A team can go catastrophically wrong, losing eight or nine games in a row, and still get its act together to pull out of the dive and save the season. Nine losses in a row in the NFL, and you’re looking for a new coach and figuring out who you’ll choose with your first round draft pick. Similarly, a baseball team can WIN a bunch of games in a row, then completely lose their mojo and fall right back down again. Sound familiar, humans? It should; it’s the way things play out during the regular season in the sport of being alive every day.

I relate to this especially because of the nature of my work as a local newscaster, doing several shows five days a week; it’s the baseball season of the media world. We’re not doing newscasts once a week, with six days of preparation, or spending six months making a single program; we hammer it out night by night, month by month; we have long winning streaks and long losing streaks, but no matter what happens, we get to come back on to our “field” the next day and play it all again. I love that. I like being in a field where success means being in it for the long haul, where you get a chance to succeed or fail every night, and then the next night, and then the next night.

The problem is, of course, that sometimes you do reach an endpoint of some kind, and you finish, well, 70-and-92. Which brings us back to the Mets. As sad as that final game of this disappointing season for Mets fans could have been, it was still a lovely day to be at the ball park. My kids had a blast; they could have cared less about where the Mets were finishing in the standings, they got free bobblehead dolls! It was heartening to watch the diehard fans keep up their cheering and enthusiasm right down to the last out. And some of those players whose names I barely knew looked like they might have some promise for next season. Or not. Either way, it’s a good lesson for life and career, making it through the long season with your hope and integrity intact, ready to come back and try again, and again, and again.

When I heard the details today about the David Letterman/sex/extortion story, I had three immediate reactions, in this order:

1) That was one sorry blackmail plot.
2) Employers shouldn’t sleep with their subordinates.
3) That was one sorry blackmail plot.

As to reaction number two: It’s not cool for the boss to have sex with staff members, especially extremely young ones (Geez, Dave, even in the TV news business you learn to lay off the interns long before you reach middle age—and you’re past that). Remember, these weren’t fellow CBS staffers we’re talking about. Letterman is the head of his own production company which makes “Late Night” and other shows. These young women were his employees. There may or may not be sexual harassment issues here, but it’s one of those situations that rarely ends well, without some kind of hurt coming to someone.

That brings us to reaction number three, which you’ll note is the same as number one, because it was REALLY a sorry blackmail plot. Not only was Letterman unlikely to pay the amount police say the suspect, CBS producer Joe Halderman, was asking… Dave’s also a gifted enough performer that he’s able to go on national television to confess, play it for a few laughs at the same time, and come out with his popularity intact, if not enhanced. Take a quick scan here.

“…Bill Barol says at True/slant that Mr. Letterman has ‘a big reservoir of public goodwill, and a platform from which to get out ahead of the story.’

‘Tonight he was shrewd enough to use them,’ Mr. Barol writes, ‘and human enough to make it feel like something other than a gimmick.’”

Wow, a rave for the way he told people he’d had sex with much younger employees and somebody tried to blackmail him for it. Letterman’s clearly smart enough and deft enough to turn such an unseemly situation to his advantage, with minimal embarrassment. If only he’d been smart and deft enough not to have put himself in the situation in the first place.

When my seven-year-old twin boys started clamoring to get the video game “Guitar Hero” earlier this year, I always had a good answer: we have REAL guitars in the house, I would say; learn to play them instead of some fake video thing that teaches you nothing about music. And I stuck to that, right up to the time they convinced me to at least try “Guitar Hero” at a video arcade during our vacation. When they asked me after that if we could get it for our home, I’m, like. “uh, yahhh.” (Hey, it takes a big man to admit to his children that he was wrong about something.)

“Guitar Hero” features rock songs, by the original artists, that play just like you’re listening to the record. Up on the screen, you’re looking at a simulated guitar neck, that the player “travels” along as the song proceeds. On the neck are colored dots where the notes and beats of the song are to be played. The simulated guitar the player uses has colored keys, pressed by the left hand (for right-handers) to match what’s on the screen. The right hand “strums” to hit the notes and beats on time. (If none of that made any sense, try this) The more notes you hit—and there are beginner, easy, medium, and difficult levels—the more points you get.

It’s fun. And it’s addictive. Not for my boys—for me. When we bought the game system, dear old dad also had to throw in a disc of Metallica songs. Some of you regular readers know I’m a big Metallica fan, and I figured this would be as close as I’d ever get to playing along with their music. I play real guitar, but at my ability level, I could never be a match for the band’s thundering complexity and speed on an actual instrument. So I strap on the fake guitar, set it on “easy,” call up “Creeping Death” or “Master of Puppets,” and I’m pretty much booked for the next couple of hours.

Are there any benefits, for either my twins or me, in playing “Guitar Hero?” Glad you asked. I think the answer is yes. While it won’t teach much about how to actually play melodies or leads, the game is rigorously strict in making the player keep up with the beat. You can’t play rock—or any kind of music—if you’re constantly lagging behind the tempo. This game teaches you that quite ruthlessly. So that, in itself, I think is a good ongoing music lesson the game teaches… or maybe I’m just rationalizing.

But it’s also great for developing mental focus. You have to concentrate so deeply to keep up with those notes on the screen as they move past you. When I finish one of my sessions, I’m really in a very focused place, mentally speaking. It’s a terrific feeling. James and Lars told me it would be that way when I joined Metallica, and they were right. So were Luke and Jamie.

“The mission of the Icla da Silva Foundation is to save lives by recruiting bone marrow donors and by providing support services to children and adults with leukemia and other diseases treatable by marrow transplants.”

It’s named after a little Brazilian girl who died of leukemia in 1992 after her family couldn’t find a suitable blood marrow donor. Since then, the da Silva’s, led by Icla’s brother, Airam, have worked tirelessly to make sure other families don’t have to experience the same heartache.

Marrow donors and recipients are not allowed to meet until at least a year after the transplant. At the foundation dinner, I have the privilege of bringing donor and recipient forward, where they meet for the first time in front of the crowd. Nothing more need be said, except watch the video (which I’ve left in a pretty raw state), and prepare to weep.

What’s remarkable to me is that in both these meetings, and in all the ones I’ve witnessed over the years, it’s the donor who seems the most moved by the experience, even more than the those whose lives were saved. That really says something to me about the power of giving… oh, geez, I’m getting choked up again..

Here’s a link to the Icla Da Silva Foundation website. Get in touch if you are interested in being a donor or having a registration drive in your community. I suspect that after watching that video, some of you are.

What we found out about the policy points of the health care legislation as it stood at that moment was exactly, precisely, NOTHING. Instead, the coverage immediately began with commentary about whether President Obama was overexposing himself by being on so many programs at the same time. Media experts followed political consultants talking about how it was or wasn’t a good political move for the White House to be doing this, and how it was impacting the polls, and how the rest of the media was responding to those polls… et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.. Not a word from any doctors, patients, uninsured people, or people dropped by their insurance companies. It was just the horse race, just the politics, with none of the policy.

When they went back to the studio after the video report, there were two people joining the anchor at the desk. Finally, I thought, some policy or medical or insurance experts who can actually bring me up to date on the status and content of the legislation itself, and how the President was presenting it. But I was wrong. It was two more media people—Matt Taibbi, a very good reporter for “Rolling Stone,” and a young woman, whose name I don’t remember, whose qualification for being there seemed to be that she had a website. We watched as they proceeded to spend two or three more network television minutes debating how the media was responding to the President’s appearances and what effect this would have in the polls. It was the media analyzing the media analyzing the polls measuring people’s responses to…..the media. I learned nothing about the health care bill.

This is what has come of network news cutbacks on hard news gathering, and the pumping up of the cheaper-to-produce opinion gabfests that now fill the cable news channels, and, increasingly, as I discovered Sunday, the network news programs themselves: namely, lots of talk—not many facts.

People have long criticized local news, where I’ve spent my career, for focusing too much on crime and fires and weather, and certainly some of those criticisms are justified. But at least when we tell you about a fire, we’re telling you about the fire, not about how the fire is being covered by the media or how it impacts the fire commissioner’s approval ratings; it’s the news, the facts, the lives it impacts..and that’s pretty much it. After what I saw on ABC Sunday night, I’ve never been so proud to be in the sector of the media I’m in.

Try this out: whatever national news you watch, whatever programs on whatever cable channel, pledge to only watch the segments that give you hard facts, or discussions about the hard facts (including opinion) concerning any particular story. The minute the focus changes to “let’s see what the media is saying about the media coverage of this topic,” turn it off, or change the channel. I think you’ll find you have some extra time on your hands. Maybe more time to hang out with your family on Sunday morning.

First, let’s look at how Paterson’s extreme unpopularity shoots down almost every analysis of what this White House intrusion means politically in New York and Washington. Let’s take the arguments I heard and read today:

• Obama had to take Paterson out, because otherwise, the accidental governor might really get his party’s nomination (which he insists he’s still going to pursue), and THAT might lead Rudy Giuliani to make his triumphant return to electoral politics with a run for the governor’s mansion-- because everybody knows Giuliani would drill Paterson in a general election—and THAT could lead to another Giuliani run for the White House in 2012 against….. BARACK OBAMA! So the president, according to this analysis, is protecting his flank from tough competition that could be facing him down the road.

My response?

First, Rudy Giuliani is not going to run for governor. You heard it here first. If I’m wrong, I’ll buy you a drink. But I’m not going to be wrong.

Secondly, David Paterson has no chance in hell of being the democratic nominee for governor in 2010. That ship hasn’t just sailed; it’s sunk. There’s not a serious Democrat in the state who doesn’t know that tonight. So why would the President bother smacking down a governor who won’t get his party’s nomination in a scenario that would allow him to run against a well-known Republican who won’t be running?

• President Obama is going to lose support among his most loyal voting block—African-Americans—by doing this to one of only two black governors in America.

My response? This one line from the results of a new Siena College poll:

“The poll found black voters would prefer someone else to Paterson by a 52%-25% margin.”

• Obama threw Paterson under the bus because he’s worried about the governor dragging down other Democrats running for re-election to Congress or the General Assembly.

Any president should be worried about losing members of his party in midterm elections, and with his health care reform effort not appearing to be destined for greatness, Obama should be also. Besides, as noted above, PATERSON WON’T BE THE NOMINEE! That would be Andrew Cuomo, he of the more than 70% favorability rating.

So, then, why WOULD the President take this unusual step of telling a governor that he needs to sit this one out? THAT’S where we say hi to Obama the Ruthless. David Paterson went against White House wishes on several occasions, most notably the debacle that was the appointment of a new U.S. Senator to replace Hilary Clinton. Obama did not want Kirsten Gillibrand to get the job; Paterson gave it to Kirsten Gillibrand. In doing so, he embarrassed Caroline Kennedy, who along with her Uncle Ted gave Obama the endorsement that turbocharged his run for the White House. Paterson’s inclusion of the President in his rant about how the media is trying to keep black politicians down might have broken the camel’s back.

Take all that into account, and remember that President Obama negotiated quite successfully the cutthroat politics of the South Chicago political machine on his way to becoming a U.S. Senator, and I think we’re finally seeing what makes him mad. If you’re going to butt heads with a (still) popular president, you’d better be pretty solid on your own turf. I think Obama got fed up with being dissed by someone who’s barely above water in his own political life. So the ax came down.

I don’t believe Obama’s going to be losing any sleep over this. There’s not much downside to whacking a politician with so few supporters. The upside is, it gives him a whole new image: Barry the Shiv. Maybe he’ll get tougher on those health care opponents now and do what a lot of people have been urging him to do with his congressional majorities: use sheer political power to sweep opponents and nuisances away.