Per The New York Times, Governor Paterson will speak to New Yorkers about the appalling fiscal outlook caused by the unhappy marriage of the Bush economy and the Bruno/Silver budget.

“There will be no confusion about the gravity of the situation,” said Mr. Paterson, who has been sounding the fiscal alarm repeatedly in recent months, as state budget officials began forecasting large budget gaps and a prolonged and deep recession in the state.

Risa B. Heller, a Paterson spokeswoman, said that the governor would do more than merely warn of worse times ahead.

“The governor will put forth proposals to both get the state’s fiscal house in order and ease the burden on New Yorkers,” Ms. Heller said.

The state budget office’s last official estimates, issued in May, projected a $5 billion budget gap next year, increasing to $7.7 billion for 2010 and $8.8 billion for 2011, owing in large measure to layoffs and billions of dollars in losses at Wall Street firms, which account for a fifth of state tax revenue.

Between the announcement of the largest Federal deficit ever, the weakest consumer confidence reading since 1992, and a weakening currency that's lost half its value since Bush walked into the Oval Office, that's probably not going to be a very happy speech.

Via brownsox on Daily Kos comes word of Jack Davis, officially disfavored contender in NY-26, and his newest foible.

Words fail to describe it, so please check it out, here.

And when you're done, and have calmed down somewhat, check out a real Democrat - Jon Powers for Congress.

Do an experiment today: ask any New Yorker whom you know or meet randomly on the street who their state representatives are. The odds are very good that they won't know. This is because that knowledge makes little pertinent difference in their lives.

The ramifications of that simple fact are laid out in two Daily News pieces today that should make you cringe. One is headlined Ex-staffer says top Shelly aide raped her and Silver did nothing about it, the other, New York burns while Albany fiddles.

The first piece deals with an alleged rape incident in the State Assembly.

[Alleged rape victim Elizabth] Crothers, 32, was a young staffer for an upstate Republican assemblyman when she brought an internal complaint in 2001 with the Assembly that she was raped by Silver's then-counsel Michael Boxley.

Crothers and her boss met directly with Silver, who she said was callously eating pretzels as she recounted her story.

Boxley later in an unrelated incident pled guilty to misdemeanor sexual assault.  read more »

Wow. And on a Monday, too: Bruno won't seek re-election.

"He will not run for re-election. It's still open as to whether he will serve out the term until Dec. 31 or leave early."

UPDATE: Another GOP Senate source tells DN Capitol Bureau Ken Lovett that Bruno will definitely remain in the Senate through the end of the year because if he leaves, the chamber will be tied. The fate of his leadership, however, remains unclear.

This source told Lovett Bruno decided to tell his members today because it's the last day of session and he wanted to inform them of his decision when they were all together.

Bruno, who has served in the Senate since 1976 and has been leader since early 1995, when he took power from Ralph Marino in a coup with then-newly-minted Gov. George Pataki's support, has been coy of late about whether he would run this fall.

Here's what's fun: this morning, Albany Project noted that it sure looked as if Bruno was clearing the gangways.

Several people will have their situations drastically altered by Bruno's retirement. One, the older republican Senators, the Trunzos of the world, will now head for the exits. Bruno's kept them in office to preserve his majority. That's over, and this will not be the last retirement to come.

Two, Sheldon Silver in the Assembly, first elected the same years as Joe Bruno, 1976, now faces the near certainty of a Democratic Senate that will operate under different rules than Silver's own chamber.

Three, New York republicans might as well hand in the towel. It's over for them. Done.

Yes, it's time for another installment in the expanding file about media stories marked "Who the hell cares?".

In this case, the story - here's an extended discussion of it - that David Paterson supposedly

described Mayor Bloomberg in private as a volatile, Spitzerian, untrustworthy, out-of-touch, self-destructive billionaire bully.

Even if true, who. The. Hell. Cares?

Seriously?

This is the kind of media circus that prompts voters to despair. It's not as if there's a war on, and maybe the economy isn't really collapsing, maybe we don't have over 4,000 dead Americans (and dead Iraqis in their thousands, but we don't even count them), a President who broke the laws of the land with impunity, global warming, 4,000 kids in Brooklyn who don't even know whether or where they'll be going to school next year, the list goes on.  read more »