It shouldn't come to anyone's surprise that a George W. Bush sycophant like Mike Bloomberg would lie. It only took three months of prodding to get noticed by the Democrats.

Freddy's Public School/Private School flap last week apparently spurred the Ferrer camp to not just factcheck their own site and fire the staffer who had been writing Freddy's diary, but also got them to do a little Oppo at Mike's place.

Where they found Mike's lie to me.

• Fred from Manhattan: How do you plan to get the homeless of this City permanent and secure places to live?

• Mike Answers: We're already bringing down the overall number of homeless New Yorker [sic]; that's why we were able to close the biggest family shelter in New York...

Gifford Miller shot back...today: “When Bloomberg can’t confuse New Yorkers with millions in television ads, he’s willing to downright lie about his record. In the ‘Ask Mike’ section of his website, which Bloomberg said he personally oversees and approves, he writes that he is already bringing down the overall number of homeless New Yorkers."

FACT: Under his four years as mayor, homelessness has skyrocketed a staggering 26%! And he knows it.

If you have not done so yet, go check out the Gotham Gazette's Campaign 2005 - Mayoral Candidates: Grid.

Chockfull of information it really is a fast way to check where the candidates stand and compare in issues such as immigrant voting rights, the smoking ban, city finances, anti-terror plans and civil rights.

I hope they do the same next time with all major electoral positions in the city. This would be an amazing resource to have in the future.

[via Quinnipiac University | Ferrer still short of 40% in NYC dem primary, Quinnipiac University poll finds; three others in horse race for second place]:

New York City likely Democratic primary voters give mayoral candidate Fernando Ferrer 33 percent, short of the 40 percent he needs to avoid a Democratic primary runoff, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released today.

The other Democratic contenders are in a horse race for second place, and a chance to be in the runoff, with 17 percent each for Council Speaker Gifford Miller and Manhattan Borough President C. Virginia Fields and 16 percent for U.S. Rep. Anthony Weiner, the independent Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pe-ack) University poll finds.

Even among these likely Democratic voters, 16 percent remain undecided and 51 percent say they still might change their mind before the September 13 primary.

And 44 percent of these likely Democratic voters say they will vote for Republican Mayor Michael Bloomberg if the candidate they support does not win the primary.

Unfriggingbelievable.

I am just flabbergasted by this. I really am. If there is anything that reflects the problems of the Democratic Party, from a local to national level, is this race. There is no unity, no desire for a Democratic Party win. What we have are four factions vying to undercut each other, and not interested at all to bring back New York City to the Democratic Party.

The New York Post printed FERRER: AX 'PARK DISS' COMMISH, this morning; giving the impression that Ferrer was somehow calling for a firing squad; but I have here the audiocasts that will paint a better picture of the incident.

Fernando Ferrer's Call for Accountability

Mayoral Candidates Follow-up on Ferrer's Call for Accountability

The podcast, raw and unedited, is a whopping 9+ GIGABYTES.
Daily Gotham's audiocast of Parks1 26 July 2005 Mayoral Forum

Oh, and just in case you wondered, I signed the pledge too

Now, the question you've all been waiting for me to answer : Who came out in front?

And the answer is ...

Ferrer:

(1) Ensure every dollar of the consession money goes back into the parks.

(2) Minimum staffing and maintenance standards
(3) Compeltely clear & transparent way for people to judge the city in its maintenance of its parks

"Lovely to have wifi but we first need the benches."

Fields
(1) Funding would be a priority .. that's why I signed the 1% pledge

(2) Planning, so that when decisions made about development, parks are on the table

Miller
(1) Reclaim bottom 50 parks

(2) $10 million for maitenance & $25MIL capital

(3) Enforce maintenance & make sure there's security

(4) Create relationships with private funding

Ognibene
(1) The first thing I would do is to rethink my position about community gardens

(2) I went to all the community organizations and the most important thing to do is to find out what they need and what they want and make sure they interact with the new parks commissioner ... there's no reason why every park has people's input

Dave Evans : "I am not an advocate ... but I get indignant every morning I see the benches along Riverside Drive and I see them with no wood:

Ognibene:
All of our benches have wood on them.

We spent $25 million dollar rehabilitating all the parks in my community in Queens.

I made sure money was spent so it wouldn't be an eyesore.

I made sure civic groups would get involved in keeping the parks clean and safe.

Miller:

"Fighting the notion that they are an amenity ... a luxury .. parks are a necessity .. they are at the heart of what makes our city strong, our city safe, our city livable."

He's mentioning the

"problem of vision, problem of commitment" Ad $10 million of operating budget and $25 million in capital budget ... publish crime numbers no matter how small ... encourage private and public investment ... "

Fields :
Funding : Funding has been systematically reduced and cut ... funding is the challenge.

I don't know about that bench ... I am not responsible for that.

Parks are the equalizer ... we have people who cannot afford to go away to their summer homes, who cannot leave for the weekend ... I have to toured the parks to better understand what needs to be done.

Ferrer:

Uneveness in investment ... the efforts to reclaim [ parks in Bronx ] was a multi-million dollar effort ... with capital help ... that requires 3 things :

[via Parks1 | Make NYC's Parks #1 In The Nation]

The largest event of the election season is almost here: the Parks1 Mayoral Forum on Parks will bring together 5 candidates, dozens of elected officials, hundreds of gardening, sporting, recreation and cycling groups and NINE HUNDRED New Yorkers for a serious conversation on parks.

I'm here as part of the NYC media covering the largest mayoral forum to date -- there's 900 New York souls eager to listen to what these City Hall hopefuls have to say :

Virginia Fields
Fernando Ferrer
Gifford Miller
Anthony Weiner

and Republican hopeful

Thomas Ognibene

Michael Bloomberg? Nowhere in sight.

No matter how the primary goes on September 13th, Gifford Miller is working hard to be on the November ballot; it seems the man can read polls, if not the political tea leaves.

The reason that Miller will be on the ballot is simple: swarms of Miller volunteers have fanned out across the city, gathering signatures to put the Speaker on a separate ballot line with an education theme. Now, in the unlikely event that Miller captures the Democratic nomination - stranger things have happened - that could prove to be a good move for the Democratic Party, by creating an education-focused ballot line for voters primarily concerned about the subject.

But, in the far more likely scenario that does not feature Miller as the Democratic candidate, a separate ballot line featuring the Speaker will inevitably draw votes away from the nominee. This effort speaks volumes about the Speaker's hopes of success in the primary, given that he seems firmly glued in last place in all published polls. It also shows that he will not accept such an election result.

This petition push seems designed to negate, obviously, the results of the primary election in September. It also highlights what some have called the ethical indifference of the Miller campaign, which has been accused, variously, of club-packing (to secure endorsements), of using a city-funded mass mailing ostensibly informing voters of the actions of their city council reps (to flog Miller at the expense of the taxpayer), and of building web sites specifically to promote Miller initiatives (again, campaigning at public expense).

[via President Bush's Rating on Handling of Iraq Continues to Erode]:

ROCHESTER, N.Y., July 21 /PRNewswire/ -- According to the latest Harris Poll, the rating of President Bush's handling of Iraq continues to decline. Almost two-thirds (64%) of U.S. adults now rate the president negatively. On almost all measures in this survey, the number of adults expressing negative views on Iraq has increased.

These are the results of a new Harris Poll of 2,339 U.S. adults surveyed online by Harris Interactive(R) between July 12 and 18, 2005. The main findings in this poll are:

* President Bush's 64 percent negative to 34 percent positive rating on the handling of Iraq is an increase in that negative rating from 61 to 37 percent in May.

* By 59 to 23 percent, U.S. adults are not confident that U.S. policies in Iraq will be successful. This represents continued erosion in confidence from May when a 54 to 26 percent majority said that they were not confident.

* The percentage of adults who say that taking military action against Iraq was the right thing to do has remained steady (38% now vs. 39% in May). The percentage who thinks that this was the wrong thing to do has also remained steady (49 percent now vs. 48 percent in May).

* While 44 percent of adults think the situation for U.S. troops in Iraq is getting worse, only 17 percent think things are getting better. A third (35%) feels that things haven't changed, similar to the percentage who felt this way in May (34%).

Not withstanding the hyperbolic pronouncement of Reuters via Washington Post that Bloomberg looks set for another term as NY mayor, Bloomie's camp is not that happy over the implosion happening to Virginia Fields :

FIELDS' MELTDOWN BAD NEWS FOR MIKE - Yahoo! News

SENIOR advisers to Mayor Bloomberg in creasingly fear that Fernando Ferrer will win the Democratic primary and avoid a potentially racially divisive runoff that could work to the mayor's advantage.

The Bloomberg camp --which for months has expected Ferrer to be its opponent in the November election-- is now resigned to the possibility that Manhattan Borough President C. Virginia Fields will not draw enough support to keep Ferrer from the 40 percent needed on Sept. 13 to win the primary outright.

"The only person hurt more than us by Virginia's problems is Virginia," said a Bloomberg aide, referring to the weeklong flap over a doctored campaign photo. "If Freddy reaches 40 [percent], it certainly makes things more difficult."

This is really interesting. So if Virginia photoshops her credibility away and the mayor thinks it's bad news; do they have their panties in a bunch now that Gifford Miller junk-mailed his integrity with $1.6 million of tax payers' money? Does this mean we will have a real election after all?