IT COULDN'T HAPPEN TO A NICER GUY. The Mayor has been playing cagey with the UPJ protestors and their demand for a Central Park demo during the RNC, but his game with the cops is about to run down, I should think:

Weeks away from thousands of anti-Bush protesters converging on the Republican convention, police union members employed to control the crowds on Thursday stepped up their own threats to disrupt the meeting.

"No contract, No convention!" about 20 off-duty officers chanted before Mayor Michael Bloomberg arrived to open an HIV/AIDS services center -- the latest protest by police and firefighters who have publicly hounded the mayor for weeks over a contract dispute on wage increases.

They've been working without a contract for two years.

For most of us citizens, it has been a little unnerving, having a rich mayor who can do whatever the hell he feels like doing -- apeshit smoking and noise bans; on-again, off-again property tax increases -- knowing that if we finally get up on our hind legs and kick him out, he can always buy an island someplace and rule that; but his well-unionized opponents know they've got him now. Rudy may be whispering in the shadows, Fuck 'em! Show 'em the back of your hand, like I did! That's all they respect! But Bloomberg must be worrying, insofar as worry ever penetrates his dense skull, that the last-minute cop comity in his old home town, Boston, will make him look bad -- what will his friends at the Club say?

Now the officers are keeping him up nights, which is very bright -- a man accustomed to getting himself and his friends around by private jet may be driven mad by even the mildest inconvenience.

Whatever happens, he looks like an asshole. Which is only just.

The massive number of energized local Democrats, plus the cops -- it's a nice little coalition. And the words "Mayor Ferrer" -- what a nice ring they have.

I'm starting to like this Convention.