More Like This And I Really Won’t Care That You’re Behind A Pay Wall

The Post has a reporter go “undercover” as an obnoxious cab-sharer on the first day of the TLC’s new program to allow riders to share taxi rides down Park Avenue just so people “get a taste” of what they’re in for:

As the shared-ride program was unveiled yesterday, an undercover Post reporter rode along with three Upper East Side women and gave them a taste of some of the uncouth behavior they could encounter when crammed in the back seat with fellow commuters.

Turning on the dreaded taxi TV was the first of countless annoying ways our reporter was able to disrupt the ride.

Reading too much into actions, manufacturing an “issue” where nothing is there and proving the negative — sounds a lot like blogging actually! And this after fewer than two dozen people actually took advantage of the shared-ride program.

This Seems Like A Good Way To Get Out Of Having To Run Again

For the sake of everyone, jokes about the governor’s eyesight have been omitted:

Gov. Paterson was spotted nuzzling, neck-kissing and cooing like a smitten schoolboy with a pretty young woman — not his wife — in a New Jersey steakhouse yesterday afternoon, The Post has learned.

“I saw him kissing her neck,” said Sharon Farrell, a lawyer sitting two tables away from Paterson and his mystery gal pal at the River Palm Terrace in Edgewater. “He was right on her neck, nudging, like back and forth.”

. . .

Farrell’s friend and dining companion, special-ed teacher Carol McGuirt, said Paterson and his lady friend, a leggy Latina in her 20s, were ensconced in a cozy, curved banquette for several hours during lunch, and clearly were enjoying each other’s company — immensely.

“A young, young girl was with him,” McGuirt said of Paterson, who was stylishly accoutered in a shiny purple dress shirt and slacks. “I would say they looked like a young couple who are very into each other . . . and enjoying themselves.”

Merry Christmas . . . Feel Free To Stiff The Homeless

In the past, the Post has done its most just in time for Christmas to make you feel less guilty for stiffing panhandlers. Here they are again, gleefully reporting State AG Andrew Cuomo’s crackdown on the United Homeless Organization plastic water jugs that are all over town, at tables where volunteers ask you to give up a penny for the homeless:

State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo filed suit yesterday, charging the United Homeless Organization is a scam run by con artists who pocket most of the change they collect — hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.

. . .

UHO founder Stephen Riley and director Myra Walker take a big cut of the money to fund personal shopping sprees at the GameStop, Home Shopping Network, Bed Bath & Beyond and P.C. Richard, as well as their monthly cable bills, legal papers charge.

Riley, a beefy 60-year-old, shamelessly used the donated dollars — which are supposed to be used to “feed the homeless” — to pay his Weight Watchers bills.

There Are Glass Domes And There Are Glass Domes

Poor Helen Marshall. If there is a difference between a $500 million glass dome and a $20 million glass dome, the Post can’t discern it:

With the mayor announcing a doomsday budget scenario, you’d think the whole city would come together to make every single penny count.

Not Borough President Helen Marshall, who pushed ahead yesterday with a questionable $20 million glass atrium at the rear of Queens Borough Hall.

On the same day Mayor Bloomberg said the city might cut 23,000 jobs and many city services, a request for competitive bids on the extension project was made public.

The plan calls for a high-ceilinged enclosure to be constructed in the nearly 70-year-old building’s rear courtyard. The area would be used for public meetings, cultural events and performances. It will be paid for with taxpayer money budgeted to Marshall’s office.

“It is a $20 million project funded from the borough president’s discretionary capital fund. It is to provide much-needed space for meetings and community programs,” said Marshall’s spokesman, Dan Andrews.

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!