Let your eyes wander down to the third paragraph here and take in that first sentence. Anybody who doesn't go along with him is painted as some kind of lousy New Yorker. He is writing about Mike Bloomberg, but couldn't Lupica apply the same words to Mike Lupica?

He typifies many on the opposition. They see the world in absolutes, and God is on their side.It is easy to demonize someone when God is on your side, as Lupica does whenever he writes about the stadium. Or to deify anyone who opposes it. Remember when he called Dick Gottfried "a brave politician?" (Although even Lupica has trouble deifying MSG.)

Also, when God is on your side, it makes it easy to send an organization such as ours daily, multiple "poison pill" emails. (Memo to the dopes who bombard us with this sick crap: We NEVER open attachments on emails, so you might want to save yourself the time.)

It is easy to walk through life with God on your side. But when you are a journalist, it is the truth that pays the price.

Political football

It's time to flag Mike for Jets stadium blitz

Column by Mike Lupica

Mayor Michael Bloomberg could have developed the Hudson Railyards in all kinds of ways, ways that would have benefited all New Yorkers and not just the rich and powerful ones. He could have come up with a smart plan for expanding the Jacob Javits Convention Center, even if only the biggest suckers believe the convention business is somehow crucial to the economic future of this city.

But Bloomberg, operating more than ever like an arrogant CEO, one surrounded only by yes men, had to tie everything to a football stadium for the Jets that masquerades as the centerpiece of Bloomberg's bid for the 2012 Summer Games.

Anybody who doesn't go along with him is painted as some kind of lousy New Yorker. If you don't think the real future of everything in New York is the 2012 Games, you are a bum.

This is a lie, built out of Bloomberg's obsession. The way it is a lie that this stadium, the most expensive sports stadium in world history, will pay for itself, no matter what the up-front cost is to taxpayers.

The cost of Woody Johnson's stadium was supposed to be less than a billion originally. Then slightly more than a billion. Now it is $2.4 billion and rising. You want to know where this all ends? I will tell you where it ends, if Bloomberg continues to stamp his foot and yell at everybody in that shrill voice of his and finally gets his way:

With a stadium for the Jets. And the Olympics in Paris. Paris Hilton is smart enough to figure that.

"He and Gov. Pataki stand there and chant 'Olympics, Olympics, Olympics,'" Assemblyman Richard Brodsky (D-Westchester) was saying yesterday. Brodsky, an honest politician when we can sure use one of those around here, has told the truth about this shell game from the start. "They do it to get a football stadium they never would have gotten on their own."

But they bully their way ahead, Bloomberg taking the lead, spending everybody else's money this time instead of the fortune he spent to get himself elected in the first place. Now there is another arbitrary deadline for the Public Authorities Control Board, comprised of Pataki, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno. For this project to keep moving forward, the three of them have to unanimously vote - unless the vote is postponed again - that the stadium financing is in order.

The stadium is to be built, of course, on MTA land that Bloomberg was ready to give away to the Jets before Cablevision started making noise about that.

Cablevision has always been in this for itself from the start, not wanting any competition for the Garden, which it owns. But the latest in a series of the company's anti-stadium television commercials tells the simple truth of this plan:

This is a football stadium. It has always been a football stadium. Right now, the cost to the taxpayers is supposed to be $600 million. It is a number no one believes any longer. But in the increasingly weird world of Bloomberg, that doesn't matter.

All that matters is winning.

I asked Richard Brodsky yesterday why he thinks the mayor is as fixated on this stadium as he is. First he talked about how when Bloomberg became mayor and he and Pataki were dividing up New York City like they were restructuring one of Bloomberg's companies, the governor got downtown and the mayor got the West Side.

Then he got right down to it.

"(Bloomberg) may be more a businessman than a politician, but he's keenly aware of the monument strategy of government," Brodsky said. "That means leave something behind."

Bloomberg does not want to be remembered as the mayor who followed Rudy Giuliani. Or the wealthy businessman who had to spend about $75 million to get elected, a process that works out to be about $100 a vote. Then he had a brainstorm. Or Daniel Doctoroff, the huckster who presently has the title of deputy mayor, had it: They would develop the last undeveloped piece of Manhattan. And do it their way. If they got the Olympics as a bonus, all the better.

Now Joe Bruno says, simply and sensibly, get back to me when we get the Olympics, I'll be happy to build you a stadium. Bloomberg doesn't want to hear it. His way or no way. Bloomberg has turned into a bully and a mean one at that.

In the end, it has worked out that if Bruno and Shelly Silver don't stand up to him, nobody will.

"(Bloomberg) doesn't know how to deal with anybody who doesn't agree with him," Richard Brodsky said.

On Monday the International Olympic Committee, another parliament of whores, issues its early ratings on the cities bidding for the 2012 Games. Bloomberg had assured everybody he would have a stadium deal in place. He still does not, and may not by the end of the working day tomorrow.

In the end, he is not the mayor of all New York. He is the mayor of those 13 acres on the West Side of Manhattan. He is worried about his legacy? Those 13 acres are going to be his legacy, just not the way he intended.

"There are so many better ways to spend this kind of money," Richard Brodsky said. An Assemblyman from Westchester saying that. Sounding more like the mayor of New York than the mayor of New York.