On an overseas trip while Rome burns, Mike Bloomberg is acting as if term limits remained intact and he couldn't run for another term.

The mayor's in Israel, having a "blast," as the Post puts it, during the invasion of Gaza.

While the rest of the city's inhabitants are facing an onrushing New Depression, Bloomberg is occupied with the occupiers. Focusing primarily on getting his aides to make sure he stays alive, the mayor's not exactly concentrating on the crisis back home. How does a New York City mayor keep schools, health clinics, transit service, and libraries from being slashed? He dunno.

Meanwhile, a woman was slashed while jogging behind Gracie Mansion. If Bloomberg had been at home, he (or his valet) might have peeked out the window and shooed away her attacker.

Lots of other news follows, for the all the good it will do you. Plus, at the end of this aggregation, see a cluster of Madoff Watch items...

NO PARTICULAR ORDER:

Editor & Publisher: 'Media Commentary Muted as Israel Invades'

N.Y. Post: 'BLOOMBERG HAS 'BLAST' IN ISRAEL: TAKES SHELTER AFTER ROCKET ROCKS HIS "BOOM!" TOWN VISIT'

Wall Street Journal: 'U.S. Transition Slows Negotiations Over Gaza'

N.Y. Times: 'Gaza Hospital Fills Up, Mainly With Civilians'

Bloomberg: 'Israel Troops Drive Deep Into Gaza; Sarkozy Leads Truce Effort'

N.Y. Times: 'Activist Unmasks Himself as Federal Informant in G.O.P. Convention Case'

Vanity Fair: 'The Good, the Bad, and Joe Lieberman' (James Wolcott)

Bloomberg: 'Journal of a Plague Year: Faith in Markets Cracks Under Losses'

N.Y. Times: 'The End of the Financial World as We Know It' (Michael Lewis)

N.Y. Post: 'SLAY RAPS IN CRANE TRAGEDY'

Bloomberg: 'Buffett Has "Nowhere to Hide" Amid Berkshire's Plunge'

N.Y. Times: 'For Israel, Chance to Strike Before an Ally Departs'

N.Y. Post: 'QNS. SLASHER HUNT: WOMAN, 86, BRUTALIZED IN HER BED'

N.Y. Times: 'Woman Slashed While Jogging in Park Behind Gracie Mansion'

Vanity Fair: 'The Ultimate Bubble?'

Media Week: 'Kathy Griffin In Hot Water Over Comments on CNN'

Gawker: 'Kathy Griffin's "Dicks" Banned From Times, "Magic Negro" OK'

Bloomberg: 'Engines of Recovery Flame Out as Economy Seeks Obama-Fed Rescue'

N.Y. Times: 'Blood Sugar Control Linked to Memory Decline, Study Says'

Wall Street Journal: 'Israel's Ground Assault Marks Strategy Shift'

N.Y. Post: 'GRAN GETS BOOT FOR CHRISTMAS'

Gawker: 'Scientology Founder Slams Drugs That Might Have Saved Travolta's Son'

Bloomberg: 'Obama Moves to Counter China With Pentagon-NASA Link'

Crain's New York Business: 'Stress and the city: New York is gripped by fear. Are we headed back to the bad old days of the 1970s?'

N.Y. Daily News: 'Mayor Bloomberg whisked into bomb shelter in Israel as rocket fire erupts during solidarity trip'

N.Y. Post: 'FISHY NUPTIALS FIASCO'

N.Y. Post: 'FUMING MAD: SUIT OVER WEDDING MONOXIDE'

Daily Beast: 'Carnival of the Shameless: What do Dubya, Blago, Bernie Madoff, and Roland Burris have in common? No regrets!' (Christopher Buckley)

N.Y. Post: 'NARCO COP 'ROID SLAP'

New York: 'Stephon Marbury May Soon Destroy Celtics'

N.Y. Daily News: '"I'm not guilty," yells bus driver'

New York: 'The Catastrophe Capitalist: Short-seller Jim Chanos is having the time of his life through this crisis'

Muckety: 'Ties to former Paterson aide may help Caroline Kennedy'

Crain's New York Business: 'Thacher Proffitt: case closed: Downward spiral touched off by mortgage crisis claims its most prominent legal victim'

Crain's New York Business: 'Residential permits down 74% in November'

Crain's New York Business: 'Majority of arts groups cutting back'

N.Y. Daily News: 'Analysis: Gov. leaving Kennedy in limbo'

N.Y. Post: 'SUPPORT FOR BUS MATRON: DISPATCHER FINGERED'

Crain's New York Business: 'Hard Times: News brand shops assets to cut debt'

Bloomberg: 'SEC Said to Examine More Ponzi Schemes After Madoff'

FOX News: 'Report: Former Madoff Employees Selling Memorabilia on eBay'

New Yorker: 'Cheat, Pray, Love'

Crain's New York: 'Milberg rides Madoff: Scandal-plagued law firm rebuilds image, representing Ponzi scheme victims'

Huffington Post: 'Madoff Employees Still Being Paid Despite Nothing To Do'

Wall Street Journal: 'Why the Bernie Madoff Scandal Is a Good Thing'

Wall Street Journal: 'Madoff Gives Prosecutors Details of His, Firm's Assets'

Muckety: 'Even Dr. Doom invested with Madoff'

Wall Street Journal: 'How the SEC Can Prevent More Madoffs: Bolster its risk-assessment and enforcement staff'

Wall Street Journal: 'Madoff Chasers Dug for Years, to No Avail'

Wall Street Journal: 'Madoff Took Funds Near Arrest'

ABC: 'The Safeguard Madoff Victims Missed: How Custodial Accounts at Banks Can Help Avoid Madoff-Type Schemes'

What few celebrations are still planned for International Human Rights Week, which is winding down and ends tomorrow, one thing is clear: Bernie Madoff isn't invited.

Nothing could be further from "human rights" than Madoff's scheme, short of his taking a machine gun and going berserk.

A shanda we're talking about. The Yiddish word for shame/scandal fits well — particularly the expression "a shanda fur die goy," which means doing something embarrassing to Jews where non-Jews can observe it.

Check out Laurence Leamer's enlightening December 12 piece on HuffPost, "Bernard Madoff and the Jews of Palm Beach," for more on this moneychanger who hung out in temples instead of being driven from them.

Don't call me a self-hating Jew. Jew-haters will relish this sorry episode; look for an outbreak of anti-Semitism, especially in Europe, which has such a strong history of it.

The rest of you can restrict your hate to Madoff, the exclusive-club guy who scammed his co-religionists in much the same way that Christian evangelists fleece their flocks. Few religions are immune: Muslims even blow themselves up for their "faith."

This Madoff situation is kind of the reverse of Weekend at Bernie's, the 1989 comedy in which the title character dies and a couple of employees prop him up to pretend to others that he's still alive.

Madoff, however, is no joke. The Wall Street goniff's shanda is crippling the world — including the crippled children treated at the hospitals that invested millions of dollars in his Ponzi scam.

Like the Long Island Jewish Hospital chain, which, as Newsday reports, lost $5.7 million. It was only that relatively small amount for the heavily endowed hospital, the paper says, because some schnook stipulated that the hospital invest his donation with Madoff.

Madoff's alma mater, Hofstra, placed him on leave from his post as a trustee. But Yeshiva University, here in the city, has made Madoff disappear. Bernie was a trustee there, too, but the school's webmeisters are frantically scrubbing all mention of him on the Yeshiva site.

That won't stop people from knowing that, as the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (the Jewish establishment's main news wire) reports, Yeshiva was "hit hard" by Madoff's scheming:

How embarrassing, especially fur die goyim, that Madoff was chairman of Yeshiva's Sy Syms School of Business. That's the same Syms whose clothing stores spout the slogan "An Educated Consumer is Our Best Customer."

That's the way Bernie Madoff must have seen it while he bilked his rich, well-educated investors.

It's not our fault that he pronounces his name "puts." This is New York City. Maybe he's not a jerk, but P-U-T-Z is "putz."

And the former Seattle relief pitcher's numbers back that up. He'll make $5 million in 2009 and — while the city will be suffering through a full-on depression in 2010 — he'll rake in $8.6 million.

The guy pitched 46 innings last season, so at that rate the Mets will be paying him about $100,000 an inning.

That makes him Putz with a capital P.

There could be a bright side to this deal. Now that he's a Met, stores will carry New York baseball jerseys adorned with his name. If Bloomberg wanted to do something other than try to make us stop smoking, he could require any Wall Street execs whose companies are receiving bailout money to wear those "PUTZ" jerseys.

All jokes are wearing thin ...

NO PARTICULAR ORDER:

N.Y. Daily News: '17,000 kids have no school library'

N.Y. Times: 'Massacre Unfurls in Congo, Despite Nearby Support'

The Age (Australia): 'Flaccid economies lead to lay-offs in Europe's brothels'

N.Y. Post: 'COPS SLAY "BAT" DAD IN BX.'

Bloomberg: 'Foreclosure Storm Will Hit U.S. in 2009 as Loan Changes Fail'

N.Y. Times: 'Carbon Dioxide (No SUV's) Detected on Distant Planet'

Times (U.K.): 'Tesco slashes prices 50 percent in pre-Christmas sale'

N.Y. Times: 'Scandal Is an Early Test for Obama Team'

Register (U.K.): 'Is filming someone in the street a breach of privacy?'

N.Y. Times: 'Officials Say Jackson Was "Candidate 5" in Blagojevich Case'

Washington Post: 'Candidate 5 Stumps for Senate Seat From Hot Seat' (Dana Milbank)

N.Y. Post: 'METS LAND PUTZ, SHIP HEILMAN IN 3-TEAM TRADE'

Times (U.K.): 'Cholera ravages population weak with hunger in Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe'

Times (U.K.): 'Mugabe: "There is no cholera in Zimbabwe"'

Washington Post: 'Nobel Winner to Energy Dept.'

Scotsman (U.K.): 'PM mocked for "we saved world" gaffe'

N.Y. Daily News: 'Federal prosecutors eye N.J. capo from Genovese family in 2005 trial rubout'

Washington Post: 'Bailout Clears House, Faces Hurdles in Senate'

Washington Post: 'Chuck E. Cheese, Beer and Violence'

Washington Post: 'Illegal Workers in Chertoff Home'

Register (U.K.): 'Bollywood to remake The Italian Job: "Lots of singing and dancing"'

Washington Post: 'Gates: More brigades to Afghanistan by summer'

Washington Post: 'U.S. Troops Mistakenly Kill Six Afghan Policemen' (Candace Rondeaux)

The Age (Australia): 'Strikes and violence: Greece paralysed'

Actually, the families just got confirmation of the brutal fact that it's becoming impossible for them to pay for college.

Basing its story, like other outlets, on the newly released "Measuring Up," the annual "report card" from the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, the New York Times grossly understated the situation this morning, especially with its headline: "College May Become Unaffordable for Most in U.S."

Hey, it already is. "No child left behind"? I don't think so. The real news is that the crisis is getting even worse — or "worser," if you can't afford to get the fine education I got in a small town decades ago.

How bad is it for today's families? The Times story notes:

That's the problem, but here are the consequences:

If your kids are able to read down into the story, they'll find some news that may even make them feel sympathy for you. Even the Times calls it "stark":

By the way, you can't flee to another state where higher education is more affordable. Every state but California got an F in the study — and the only reason California didn't is that it has a more extensive community-college system.

What does this all mean? Well, this morning, a BBC anchor noted that when Detroit's automakers pleaded last week for a bailout, they "got sent away with a flea in their ear."

Your kids may not be educated enough to even look up that idiom, let alone understand what Yale professor Robert Shiller said in reply to the anchor's question about whether Detroit should be bailed out. "There could be a degree in histrionics in this," Shiller told the BBC. (See and hear Shiller in one of his many interviews by the foreign press.)

The grim news about paying for college is unfortunately not clouded by histrionics. You could look it up: Read the "Measuring Up" report. If you have to, explain it to your kids. Maybe they'll take to the streets in protest. For a bailout of a situation that's not of their own making.

In other business ...

NO PARTICULAR ORDER:

McClatchy: 'Military contractor in Iraq holds foreign workers in warehouses'

Washington Post: 'Technology Used as Tactical Tool'

Wall Street Journal: 'Big Three Seek $34 Billion Bailout'

Wall Street Journal: 'Shalom, Kiosk Christmas Shoppers'

N.Y. Times: 'Contrite Over Misstep, Auto Chiefs Take to Road'

McClatchy: 'Pelosi says Congress won't let Big 3 carmakers go bankrupt'

International Herald Tribune: 'U.S. Treasury's lead role on China in doubt'

Wall Street Journal: 'Goldman Considers Online Bank'

Wall Street Journal: 'Paulson Debates Second Infusion: Hostile Lawmakers, Competing Bailout Demands and GAO Criticism Pose Dilemma'

Wall Street Journal: 'Jones Urges Broad Afghanistan Approach'

Wall Street Journal: 'Gates Seeks Congress's Help in Closing Guantanamo'

N.Y. Times: 'College May Become Unaffordable for Most in U.S.'

Newsday: 'New York one of 49 states panned on college costs'

Houston Chronicle: 'College report is warning for Texas'

Washington Post: 'Closet Centrist: In Obama's Cabinet, the Audacity of Moderation' (Michael Gerson, former Bush speechwriter)