Last night was the last Dog Court rehearsal of 2009. They got me a bottle of Glenlivet 15-year-old French Oak Reserve. They are awesome. They are performing at the Magnet this Sunday at 9:30 p.m. I will be in attendance. I hope you all will, too.

As snow (!) covered my puffy jacket, I trudged to the deli around the corner for a Post. I thought about tonight’s ball drop and what a security nightmare it would be if it kept snowing. Once I got my paper, I realized that it’s already a security nightmare. The snow doesn’t even enter into it.

COPS DROP THE BALL

Abandoned van sat in Times Sq. for 2 days

Two days. The white 1992 Dodge van sat on Broadway between 41st and 42nd Street for two days. It had NO LICENSE PLATES. It had A FAKE LAW ENFORCEMENT PLACARD ON THE DASHBOARD (titled “Detective’s Crime Clinic” for “Metropolitan New Jersey and New York”). Its registration had been “tampered with” and “all the windows were covered up with thick plastic bags.” Meter maids passed the van — repeatedly — but never wrote it a ticket and never thought that it might be a threat to the thousands of people in its immediate vicinity. Only after someone called it in to the police did they investigate.

Two. Days.

Turns out it belongs to a street peddler and it contained no PETN, no anthrax, no pipe bombs. Just Burberry knock-offs. Which means that, like the recent Jim Carrey-on incident, we got lucky despite law enforcement doing a half-assed job.

I wouldn’t go to Times Square tonight if you paid me.

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The MTA wants $28,000,000,000 for “big-ticket projects like the Second Avenue Subway.”

The state said no, pointing out the $10,000,000,000 funding gap in their budget.

B’also? Only one person on the board that oversees capital budgets voted no. Thankfully, approval requires unanimity.

B’also’also? The MTA gives its employees AND their spouses AND their children FREE UNLIMITED METROCARDS. But students from low-income neighborhoods that require public transportation to get to their schools will be paying full price for their formerly-free cards in 2011 (and half price in 2010).

There are war crimes, people.

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Sheldon Silver “predicted… that Andrew Cuomo would run for governor next year.”

That’s uncanny! I wouldn’t have expected the Assembly Speaker — “the state’s No. 2 Democrat” — to be so knowledgeable! It’s almost as if he read any single newspaper in the last year and a half!

Page 2 news, everyone!

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New York State has a budget of $133,000,000,000. Currently, it has $833,000,000 in its treasury for 2010.

That’s 00.6% That’s the lowest amount ever recorded (in the “at least three decades of the present accounting system”).

Oopsy-doodle.

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The Post held a Readers’ Choice poll for the 10 Best Front Pages of the last decade.

#1 – Sept. 13, 2001

#2 – Sept. 11, 2001

#3 – Sept. 15, 2001

Not on the list: Sept. 12, 2001 and Sept. 14, 2001. Makes you think, right?

Other “winners” include topless Ashley Dupre holding her prostitute breasts (in full color!) at #5 (March 14, 2008), Tiger Woods — with Photoshopped missing teeth, bruises and band-aids — and the I’M A CHEETAH caption (December 9, 2009), Eliot and Silda Spitzer grimacing above the bold HO NO! headline  at #7 (March 11, 2008), and the corpse of al-Zarqawi (close-up on his freshly-bloodied face — in full color!) and a cartoon word balloon that says “Warm up the virgins” (makes you think, right?) only managed to snag the #8 slot (June 9, 2006).

I can’t believe that the edition they ran announcing Dick Gephardt as Kerry’s running mate didn’t place…

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Rush Limbaugh was rushed (heh) to a hospital in Hawaii after experiencing “chest pains.”

He was listed as “in serious condition” and told paramedics that he “was taking medication for a back problem” (wink wink).

The cardiology department looked in Limbaugh’s chest and immediately realized that their expertise was inapplicable.

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Fun fact! Authorities at an airport in Somalia caught a guy last month who was trying to get on a plane with a syringe, acid and over two pounds of explosive powder (13x more than Jim Carrey-on).

In Somalia they did this. And I’m fairly certain they don’t spend as much on airport security.

Maybe one day we’ll be as advanced. As Somalia.

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They’re burning our flag in Tehran? Don’t they know that that’s against the law?

We’d better go to war there then.

And in Yemen.

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A Taliban suicide bomber got into a US military base in Afghanistan. Eight CIA employees are dead.

“The CIA has declined to comment publicly on the attack until relatives of the dead are notified.”

Dick Cheney, on the other hand, just shoved the list of names into the grave of Robert Novak.

Then he ate a baby.

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Michael Lohan is dating Jon Gosselin’s ex-girlfriend (not his wife’s plastic surgeon’s daughter; the “reporter” from Star who has a thing for retarded fame-whores amid mid-life crises).

Is it just me or is the concept of televised game shows/executions (like The Running Man) no longer ridiculous? I mean, wouldn’t you watch these guys fight to the death using only rusty spoons and bleach? High concept/low budget! Where’s my Emmy?

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OK. This is kind of gross. Bear with me.

There’s a survey that ranks the “most-admired men and women in America” (according to the “1,025 adults” they called who didn’t hang up). Hillary Rodham Clinton got 16% of the vote. Sarah Palin got 15% (though Fox News’ estimates give her 73% and 42% of the most-admired man vote and also a pony), Oprah got 8%, Michelle Obama got 7%.

But dig this: The 5th and 6th places on the list both have 1% of the vote but they’re still ranked 5th and 6th (usually you would say they were tied for 5th and there would be no 6th place on the list). But this is the Post, so Condoleezza Rice is 5th and Queen Elizabeth II is 6th. Similarly, the last 4 slots on the list all got 1% of the vote, but Margaret Thatcher is 7th, Maya Angelou is 8th, Angela Merkel is 9th and Elin Nordegren (?) is 10th.

For the top three most-admired men, President Obama got 30% of the vote, George W. Bush got 4% and Nelson Mandela got 3% (upon hearing this. he somberly walked back into his old prison cell and asked only for a copy of Invictus and a rag to cry in). The next four guys tied, but are ranked as: Glenn Beck #4, Pope Benedict XVI #5, Rev. Billy Graham #6 and Bill Gates #7. What a hilariously blasphemous conflict of interest. The next four guys (yes, the men’s list goes to 11) continue the partisan back-patting with: John McCain #8, George H.W. Bush #9, Bill Clinton #10 and Tiger Woods (?) #11.

Billy Graham has been on this list 53 times (it’s has been compiled every year since 1948), but Glenn Beck is the one “ranked No. 4″ while the Rev. gets a third of the number of the beast. And surely the guy who serves one term as POTUS should come before the guy who served two.

Most admired man polls.

Huh huh.

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TONIGHT! TIME WARNER CABLE MAY STOP CARRYING FOX!

Time Warner offered arbitration (during which time the channels would still appear on their lineup) but word on the street is that Fox won’t accept.

That would be a great way to start 2010 — with Fox not being able to broadcast their New Year’s coverage in NYC! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

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Rain and snow this afternoon? Buh-leckhhhh (that’s Yiddish).

Even in the absence of terrorism, peoples is gonna get mad hurt tonight. I bet a bunch of them will get super-drunk, fall in front of a train and get $8,000,000 settlements!

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Robert Morgenthau is leaving office today.

When the sunlight touches him, he is expected to turn into a pile of dust and moaning ghosts.

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Tom Binns, a radio DJ in England, was fired after cutting off Queen Elizabeth(#6)’s Christmas Day speech, telling listeners that it was “boring.” Then he said, “From one queen to another,” and played a song by Wham!

Don’t they know about Adam Lambert in England yet?

That’s Bob Geldof’s new celebrity charity single, incidentally.

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Barf Dicks (sorry, Ralph Peters) has an editorial that predicts catastrophe in the Middle East, which he blames squarely on the America-hating POTUS (O’s Day of Reckoning). Actually… come to think of it… all of these predictions are… the plot of the “thriller” he published!

Just when I think he can’t blur the line between fact and fiction any more than he already has…

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This blurb left out the last five words of Rex Reed’s review of It’s Complicated!

It should read “What a joy to sit back and be entertained in a place with heat.”

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Sigh.

The Nets beat the Knicks (by 9 points!). Now they’re 3-29.

I’m still hoping for a single-digit-in-the-win-column season, though.

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Charlie Sheen’s wife’s attorney, Yale Galanter, claims that while she isn’t pressing charges against Charlie, neithr is she going back on her word.

“Brooke did not recant her story, she was simply unaware of the consequences when she called 911 and felt bad about it,” he somehow said without bursting into flames.

Because, had she known that her husband would have to post $8,500 for bail, she would never have told the cops about how he held her down on a bed, choked her, held a knife to her throat and told her that he could kill her and get away with it — and would.

Can you have battered wife syndrome by proxy? If so, I think Yale’s got it.

That’s some attorney, Brooke.

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Teresa just called — she’s getting off work after lunch (though with the way the snow is falling, she may arrive home at her regular time).

That makes this an almost-four-day weekend! Hooray!

Be safe tonight, ever’buddy and may 2010 help us all forget everything we can about 2009.

Happy New Year!