Queens is starting to see signs of NYC Department of Health Commish Neal Cohen’s recently unleashed $600,000 media campaign that’s pleading residents to help "send the rats packing."

QConfidential got its hands on a copy of one of the posters, which in the coming weeks will begin to increasingly appear on borough buses, sanitation trucks and bus shelters.

It depicts a cartoon of an overflowing garbage can — complete with apple cores, banana peels and empty Chinese food boxes — and jokingly states across the middle "to a rat this is a four star restaurant."

The DOH has even started airing an animated commercial spot on Time Warner cable to stress the importance of sanitary garbage disposal.

Now New York City has always held the distinction of having some of the best restaurants in the country — making the decision on what to eat an often-difficult one for diners. According to the DOH, city rats are faced with a similar dilemma.

"What do you feel like, Italian or Chinese?" one rat asks another in a heavy New York accent in the commercial.

The new, old Bill Clinton has arisen from the lame duck abyss, and is flapping his wings and blowing his own horn or saxophone again.

With the rampant apathy of the national electorate over the Gore-Bush match up, and the lukewarm reception that his wife Hillary has received here in New York, Clinton is sitting pretty. In fact, in the latest Esquire Magazine he’s probably sitting a little too pretty, a little too confident for a President who barely averted getting impeached. The revisionist history on Clinton is spinning like crazy as the end of his eight-year tenure as President nears.

Clinton was doing some surrogate speaking to rally voters to get out to vote. "A Gore win is a win for the legacy of the Clinton Presidency," a Presidential aide said to QConfidential.

Clinton’s bravado is evident on the Esquire cover where he is sitting down, crouched down a bit, camera angle coming from ground level, making Clinton larger than life, happy, and whose body language says, " Here I am. I have survived." The fact is that Clinton’s much discussed pose was modeled after the Abraham Lincoln pose used for the Lincoln Memorial, QConfidential has learned.

However, the rascally grin on his face had nothing to do with Honest Abe.

Whitestone’s White House restaurant held its own share of political intrigue during the recent Robinwood Civic Assoc. Candidate Night when Assemblywoman Ann Margaret Carrozza lost her way in the briarpatch of party loyalty.

The Dem Carrozza — who faced no challengers this election — was invited to address the conservative crowd before the main event: pitches by Republican Senator Frank Padavan and his new-comer challenger Dem Rory Lancman.

Watch the catcher: the call here is for a pitch to support Lancman because Carrozza has nothing to lose and that’s the way a party team player works.

But Carrozza shook off the suggestion and instead used her well-received words to thank the Republican she replaced in office — Doug Prescott — for expanding the role of the job. She also told the voters that "Senator Padavan and I are fighting hard" to bring funds and benefits to the neighborhood.

Stepping down from the mound, she sat front and center for Padavan’s comments, then was called from the meeting before Lancman ever got up to bat.

In this political ball game, Carrozza may have scored for herself, but struck out for her home team.

Inning over, World Series Over, The Yankees win!

Yeah, yeah, we get it, but what is a baseball fan to do to get their sports fix until pitchers and catchers report to spring training?

Football seems like a the next logical sport of choice, but if you are new to going out to watch New York’s (or New Jersey’s to be geographically correct) gridiron greats, hang in there for a few more years and you may get your chance.

Unlike both of the Big Apple’s big league baseball teams, tickets for seats to watch the New York Jets or New York Giants battle for football supremacy are not as easy to come by.

Scoring tickets could take almost as long to get as it takes a child born today to graduate from high school.

According to the Jets official website there are "no individual game tickets available" to any Jets games. However the site advises that if you are not a season ticket holder you may join the waiting list for tickets – with one catch.

The Jets advise prospective season ticket subscribers that the waiting list is now over 15,000 people long and that team offices "anticipate the wait to be at least 10 to 15 years."

That’s only 15 baseball seasons from now.

That should be enough time to plan the perfect tailgate party.

Confidentially New York . . .

E-MAIL your items to: conf@queenstribune.com

Queens NYConfidential is edited by: Michael Schenkler and Tamara Hartman.
Contributors:	Tom Allon, Steve Azzara, Nick Buglione, David Colby, Ira Cohen, Marcia Moxam Comrie, Barbara Jarvie, Stephen McGuire, Mike Nussbaum, Dee Richard.