Governmental Dysfunction Affects Men Of All Ages, But You Should Seek Immediate Medical Attention If You Have A Stalemate Lasting Longer Than Ten Days

And in other news:

State senators made a bold move Thursday to end their paralyzing stalemate: They packed up and went home.

After yet another fruitless negotiating session — which almost came to blows — the battling pols got out of Dodge to enjoy their long weekend.

But not before making sure they got paid.

. . .

A brief session Thursday to try to work out a power-sharing deal almost ended in fisticuffs.

Turncoat Democrat Sen. Pedro Espada and fellow Bronx Sen. Jeff Klein nearly got into a fight during the closed-door session, sources said.

“I was going to kick his ass,” Espada told the Daily News when asked if discussions got heated.

Espada — who was made Senate president in the coup — was angry Klein had joined peace talks just after sending out a press release bashing him and calling on Republicans to dump him as a leader.

Espada wanted to “duke it out,” according to a source.

“Let’s go!” Klein replied before new Senate Democratic leader John Sampson (D-Brooklyn) and the man he replaced, Sen. Malcolm Smith (D-Queens), jumped in and calmed the situation, according to the source.

Espada either left the room or was escorted out.

Klein would not discuss specifics, saying only it was a “heated exchange.”

“I can take it,” Klein quipped before poking fun at Espada’s residency issues. “He lives in Mamaroneck. I live in the Bronx.”

Earliest Editorial Board Endorsement Ever?

The Queens Courier has endorsed Bloomberg for mayor. I wasn’t cranky today . . . until now:

The Queens Courier is proud to endorse Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg in his quest for a third term because he cares about our city, its people, its cultural institutions and our future.

Over the years, we have watched as Bloomberg rode the good times, but always with an eye to the next budget shortfall. His business acumen is invaluable to the city.

He is a builder and an innovator. The 3-1-1 system is a tremendous success. His NYC2030 Plan, which includes planting one million new trees, is turning our city green again.

He knew from day one that education was the key to the city’s future. Under Bloomberg’s Mayoral Control plan — and with the aid of Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein — the scores in math and reading have been going up steadily and the graduation rates are increasing.

Michael Bloomberg is his own man; he takes no money from lobbyists or special interest groups. No one has control or influence over his decisions — he makes them for the good of the people of Queens and the other boroughs.

A tough leader in a tough town, he has fought crime with a modern, well-equipped police force using leading-edge technology. Year after year, crime has decreased in the city, including a 17 percent drop just this past year.

Bloomberg knows that jobs and their creation are vital to keeping businesses in New York. He observes how resilient the private sector can be. Restaurants watched their patrons downgrade from steaks and a bottle of wine to burgers and beer and rebound to meatloaf and a glass of wine during the past few months.

It takes a leader, not a follower, to navigate the kind of economy that we will all have to live through for the next several years. Bloomberg is a true visionary who looks for the traps and pitfalls before we fall victim to them. He is already worrying about the 2011 budget as he keeps his eye on what Albany is doing too.

There is no other candidate currently running or contemplating a run for mayor that is as qualified and worthy of your votes in the coming Primaries and November elections. To cast your vote against Bloomberg and for someone else is simply throwing your vote, and maybe your future, away.

Phil Ochs Introduced “I Ain’t Marching Anymore” To A Crowd In 1968* By Explaining, “So What Can You Do? I Mean Here You Are, A Helpless Soul, A Helpless Piece Of Flesh Amid All This Cruel, Cruel Machinery And Terrible Heartless Men, So All You Can Do Is Turn Away From The Filth And Hopefully Start To Build Something New Someday . . . So Here Is A Turning Away Song”

Which is to say, just when you start to root for Charles Barron, he goes and ruins it:

City Councilman Charles Barron of Brooklyn, who opposed the extension of term limits, said he’ll formally announce on Sunday that he plans to run for a third term.

Referring to his colleagues who joined him in voting against the extension, Barron said, “We were not against 12 years, we were against the process.”

In a brief telephone interview, Barron said he thinks only the 22 City Council members who did not “suck up” to the mayor and Speaker Christine Quinn on term limits deserve to be re-elected.

“Personally,” Barron added, “I don’t even want to run again, but the people around me think it is the best thing for me to do.”

*Michael Ochs’ liner notes from “There And Now,” the live album recorded in late 1968 and released by Rhino Records in 1990, explain that “Phil had just returned from the Chicago Democratic convention, where he had witnessed the death of democracy as he had known it.”

The Telltale Feather

New York Post freakout coming in 5, 4, 3, 2 . . . blammo:

It was those damned geese!

A feather from a bird and “organic material” has been found on the engine, wings and fuselage of the US Airways airliner that crash-landed in the Hudson River, federal authorities said yesterday.

Investigators also have found that fan blades in the Airbus A320’s right engine “revealed evidence of soft-body impact damage.”

. . .

“What appears to be organic material was found in the right engine and on the wings and fuselage,” said the NTSB in a press release. Samples of that material have been sent to the US Agriculture Department for DNA analysis.

“A single feather was found attached to a flap track on the wing,” said the release, adding that the feather “is being sent to bird-identification experts” at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington.

It was the evidence of the old bird’s feather! It increased my fury as the beating of a drum stimulates the soldier into courage!

Brushback Pitches Are Just Part Of Baseball

And after getting beaten up in the press — “This $1 billion-plus pavilion and park financed with a lot of taxpayer help is beginning to sound like something fit for the Wizard of Oz” — Yankee Club President Randy Levine should quit whining and take it like a man. After all, the team is getting $362 million in public financing — sorry, “infrastructure improvements” (what is that for, gold-plated sewers?) — for a stadium that is supposedly completely privately financed. To put this in perspective, Citizens Bank Park — home of the 2008 World Champion Philadelphia Phillies — cost $346 million total. And when did the Yankees last win a World Series? Oh, never mind:

Club President Randy Levine, speaking at a state Assembly hearing in Manhattan, called the project’s main critic “disgraceful.”

And the city’s economic-development chief, Seth Pinsky, accused the critic, Westchester Assemblyman Richard Brodsky, of “deliberately misrepresenting the facts.”

Brodsky, in turn, lashed out at Levine and Pinsky, challenging both to a “civil, in-your-face fistfight” over public financing of the stadium.

The angry club president replied, “In these tough times, you should be encouraging us to create jobs, instead of engaging in political grandstanding that discourages it. Your behavior in trying to hurt the people of this city is disgraceful.”