So the Albany soap opera has come to a close. Crystal and Alexis will live to catfight another day. Serena and Blair will return in the fall. And Malcolm and Pedro will assuredly be ready for more battles next session. In the meantime let’s figure out the winners and losers from the month of madness.
Losers
We’ll start with the losers because it’s easier.
Republicans
Already in a deep state of disarray and on the wrong end of the demographic pendulum, New York Republicans came thisclose to pulling off a miracle. The problem is …

So let’s just put this up front: Nobody really knows what the f*ck is going on with the economy. But still, there are some “experts” that really shouldn’t even be allowed to speak or write or exist.
Remember the heady days almost precisely a decade ago of the dot com boom? Thanks to new technology and supersmart economists the world’s advanced economies had little to worry about in the way of recessions or downturns. Sure there might be a hiccup here or there but the bad old days of economic cycles …

While Mayor Mike spread the green (so to speak) at the Staten Island St. Patrick’s Day Parade this weekend, his so-far-only-kinda-officially-announced major Democratic competitor (sorry Tony A) stepped up his “Mike’s out of touch” attacks.
Comptroller Bill Thompson launched into a (for him) blistering blast on Bloomberg — specifically the Mayor’s comments during his radio show on Friday morning when hizzoner responded to questions about the fairness of hiking taxes on the rich in these tough times.
Here’s what Bloomberg said on Jon Gambling’s show: “We can tax the rich, except that, …

 
It’s no mystery what Mike Bloomberg is going to run on in his bid for a third term — safe streets and good management. But what exactly would his Democratic opponent try and do to sour New Yorkers on their popular mayor?
 
If Anthony Weiner was to really run (which seems very doubtful at this point) he has already spent months sketching out an outer-borough populist case that paints Bloomberg as an elitist who was lucky enough to be mayor during one of the biggest economic booms in the city’s history. …

It’s nice to be Mike. Bloomberg that is. And not only because he’s (still) worth multiple billions of dollars.
The new Marist Poll out Friday shows why it’s virtually impossible to see how Mike Bloomberg is stopped from winning a third term as Mayor later this year.
Despite the “Blues for Bloomberg?” headline a quick peak into the numbers shows that Bloomberg is broadly popular among New Yorkers and actually in a better position than he was at this time in 2005. And he’s ready to spend even more than the $80 …

 
Mea Culpa! Apparently after all those years of a President who couldn’t think of a single mistake he’d made and corporate executives who couldn’t find a failure they wouldn’t reward, mea culpa’s are back.
 
Earlier this week New York City’s Independent Budget Office released it’s annual “how we would fix this screwy city budget if we could” report (Budget Options for New York City). It contained dozens of ideas for how the city could save hundreds of millions by changing some big and small things about the way the city does …

While we all wait to see exactly what the US Senate comes up with for it’s version of the stimulus package it seems certain that the total amount will easily blow way past the $819 billion House plan which passed Wednesday. So what will it mean for New York? Especially the state government which is facing a $15.4 billion budget gap?And what about New York City where Mayor Bloomberg is unveiling his doomsday budget today?
Monetarily Sen. Chuck Schumer calculates the state and cities will get roughly $15 billion over the …

You gotta hand it to Mayor Michael Bloomberg. He royally pisses the voting public off with his term limits power grab but they still lovvvvve him.
That’s what a new Quinnipiac Poll out Tuesday seems to suggest. By a margin of 56% to 42% NYC voters disapprove of the term limit extension Bloomberg and the City Council pushed through for themselves last year. So that’s bad news for Bloomy, right? Of course not!
A big majority of those same voters say they not only want Bloomberg to run but that they’ll vote …

Oh how quickly the news has moved on from Kirsten Gillibrand the “accidental Senator” to David Paterson the “doomed Governor.” Newspapers across the state from Buffalo to Gotham wrote up Paterson’s big problems this morning after the botched selection process to replace Hillary Clinton.
Now two new polls, one from Quinnipiac and the other from Siena, make several things abundantly clear:
1. Pundits be damned, the public is NOT blaming Paterson for the Caroline Kennedy fiasco (despite Liz Benjamin’s excellent report this morning indicating the public might want to think again).
2. Paterson …