Kevin Sheekey, the wunderkind deputy mayor and the shrillest, most relentless cheerleader for the abortive Bloomberg '08 campaign, had his dreams of riding Bloomberg's coattails to a more prestigious job dashed when the Mayor ultimately decided not to run. But now he's aggressively pursuing another course to get his foot in the White House: hyping Bloomberg as the ideal VP choice for both McCain and Obama. Sheekey has been fanning the Bloomberg veepstake flames "like some kind of meth-addled pyromaniac," as John Heilemann aptly put it in New York. His blunt argument for why Bloomberg is such a perfect pick for the candidates? Because he's loaded. Sheekey went on NY1 recently and proclaimed that Bloomberg would be able and willing to contribute as much as a billion bucks to any ticket he might end up on, a naked attempt to entice the McCain and Obama camps with Bloomberg's fortune. Sheekey learned his lesson from Bloomberg's called-off presidential campaign: while even the most incessant attempts at persuasion can fail, bribery's always a safe bet.

• Oh, hey, Republican Mayor Michael Bloomberg might stop snapping at people long enough to play a thinly-veiled, self-mocking George W. Bush in a Broadway play. [P6]

• Lily Donaldson, the 21-year-old Vogue cover girl, plunked down $2.2 million on an apartment on Avenue B. Perhaps not coincidentally, she now has about six bars in a three-block radius. [Observer]

Though Bloomberg News' decision to hire former Time Inc. Editor-in-Chief Norman Pearlstine is probably bad news for the news wire's tyrant editor, Matthew Winkler, it seems likely to open up opportunities for recently-installed Bloomberg executive Dan Doctoroff, a former Lehman Brothers dealmaker. The Times sees hints Bloomberg is getting ready to make some acquisitions:

The internet has given us so many things, among them jargon which can dress up any brutal corporate maneuver in bland and progressive-sounding language. When Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation decided to seize full control of the Wall Street Journal, the Australian media mogul's chief lieutenant took the title of head of content, reducing the role of managing editor to a cipher and sidestepping the rules intended to protect the editorial independence of the newspaper. And now the new management at Bloomberg's financial information company has played the same trick on the bow-tied tyrant who rules over wire service's newsroom like a dapper Stalin, Matthew Winkler.

Michael Bloomberg is the greatest manager ever which is why pundits always want him to run for president. He's sooo great that he left an abusive tyrant in charge of his financial news company, and also that company gets sued every so often for being a hostile work environment for women. Last September, four women were suing Bloomberg LP for wrongful discrimination. Now, it's 58! It seems that whenever a lady employee became pregnant at Bloomberg, they were denied promotions and then received pay cuts. Mayor Mike always claims to have nothing to do at all with his company anymore, but the women filing the suit say he still calls the shots and "contributes to a culture of sexual discrimination." As there have been almost 500 women who've taken maternity leave from Bloomberg since 2002, the number of plaintiffs is expected to grow. And Mike himself is now writing a book about how to be as great a manager as he is. Like his last book, it will probably be ghost-written by his asshole-in-chief Winkler. [NYP]

Shocking fact: in New York City, "arrests for marijuana possession began skyrocketing in the late 1990s during the Giuliani administration." Oh, and that's "a trend that continued under Mayor Michael Bloomberg," the responsible soft-spoken billionaire who's continued many of the grossest aspects of Giulinai's reign of terror, just without the blustery hardman talk. And thanks to their team effort, New York now leads the world in marijuana arrests! But you probably don't need to worry, stoner—the vast majority of these arrests were of poor black people, because when they "decriminialized" possession of small stashes in the '70s they only meant it for like college grads and other responsible types. [WCBS]

Michael Bloomberg on the aquittal of the cops who shot Sean Bell a million times for no fucking reason: "There are no winners in a trial like this." WE CAN THINK OF A COUPLE. [WNBC]

Rudy Giuliani's legacy is being tagged away. Graffiti is back and more popular than ever &mdash complaints of taggings have risen 81.5% from 2006 to 2007. "It's not art - it's just scribble," said a random dude complaining to the New York Post. But even though graffiti has become more prevalent under Bloomberg's tenure, let's not forget that he has protected the rich from other eyesores like fatties and smokers. [NYP]

Oh no, now you've gone and encouraged Michael Bloomberg again: Newsweek reports that "the mayor's confidants and closest associates are, in fact, encouraging him to explore the idea" of buying the Times. And to bolster their case they've no doubt assembled clips of others saying the same thing in the press over the past few months, including Vanity Fair columnist Michael Wolff, shouting head Jim Cramer and former Wall Street Journal managing editor Paul Steiger. Despite frightful working conditions at Bloomberg's financial information company, his buddies imagine him shielding the Times newsroom from intense financial pressures:

[Tyra Banks shoveling dirt with New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg for a segment of her talk show today; image via Splash]

• Blogger Perez Hilton is claiming he made out with a bisexual John Mayer. This disturbing visual comes a few days after singer Mayer posted a long rambling thing to his blog "about a young guy who maintains a celebrity blog... who has wrestled with a lifelong battle for acceptance as a gay man." [Perez] (Photo via Perez)

Oh no: yet another macher proposing mayor Michael Bloomberg step in to save the New York Times. This time it's Vanity Fair's Michael Wolff who, like the Wall Street Journal's former managing editor and that shouter from cable, believes the besieged newspaper could do worse than seek rescue by New York's billionaire mayor.

At last night's Inner Circle bash for the City Hall Press Corps, the Mayor performed with the cast of the campy Broadway roller-disco musical Xanadu. Bloomberg wore two ridiculous costumes that belong to two different City tribes— the gays and the hipsters. At left, an absolutely flaming photo of the Mayor in vaudeville dandy gear surrounded by boys in togas. In the shot on the right, Mike wears an ensemble straight out of the Lower East Side complete with shiny, purple American Apparel spandex and leg-warmers. So where do his loyalties really lie? Is Mayor Mike a gay or a hipster?

Here's a final thought on Michael Bloomberg's annoying flirtation with a presidential campaign, which ended with his declaration in the New York Times today that he wasn't running. The commentators have noted that a short Jew with no political base had no shot at the presidency. But even the New York mayor's supposed managerial competence, his main claim to credibility, wouldn't have stood up to the political spotlight.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg wrote a Times op-ed in which he promised everyone he will not enter the presidential race, and everyone should cut this op-ed out of the newspaper and save it, like some kind of precious insurance policy. Apparently, after all of Bloomberg's friends abandoned his non-existent presidential campaign to support the infinitely more charismatic John McCain, he traveled from city to city like some kind of sad robot to bore everyone with "plain" talk about "common sense" solutions. The experienced convinced Bloomberg he is the perfect man to "steer the national conversation," which somehow he will accomplish by dropping out of the race (that he was never in) and banking the $1 billion he was (not) going to spend on presidential campaign ads. The nation has been deprived of a great and logical man. [NYT]

"There's a scenario where you have five candidates. You could have a hypothetical Paul on the right and Nader on the left and Bloomberg in the center and a Democrat and a Republican," he said. He added that he thinks that "there is a very substantial opening and opportunity" for Mr. Bloomberg. [NY Sun]

New York City's Off-Track Betting parlors, the seediest places left in Manhattan (next to those secret Chinese gambling dens, anyway), are all set to close following an order from noted fun-hater Michael Bloomberg, who's surely done more than any previous mayor to rid the city of its amoral, filthy character, but everyone still loves him anyway because he's not Giuliani and the newsmedia is controlled by and made up of the well-off bastards he's delivered New York to on a silver platter. The Times investigates the wacky, Damon Runyan-esque characters who throw their lives away at the OTB, including the dapper old "retired actor" who says that should the parlors actually close, he'll "probably just stop betting and go to the theater more." We can't let that happen. [NYT]

We've laughed it off for months now but maybe Mayor Bloomberg is idiotic enough to run for president. How else to explain the formerly bland technorat's suddenly strained attempt to transform himself into similarly rich and short crank Ross Perot? Asked about Bush's economic stimulus plan (he is going to send us all checks!!!), Bloomberg said it was "like giving a drink to an alcoholic." He meant because Congress is addicted to spending, but the analogy seems to actually say that Americans are addicted to having money. Or maybe he is actually just saying that Americans will actually spend their entire stimulus checks on booze? Some of them will, sure. But some of them will spend it on drugs! Besides, Americans aren't addicted to cash. We're addicted to running up debt! [NYSun]