What's next for the U.S. of AA+

The free market's in free fall! Wait, it's zooming up again! Hold on a second, the stocks are tumbling now! But not for long they aren't! Here comes another U-turn!

You enjoying AA+?

Since Standard & Poor's took America's AAA away, Treasury bill yields have grown cheaper, not more expensive like they were supposed to. And the stock market has turned into a whiplash machine. Does anyone anywhere know how to play this game? Those of us who've been writing about it keep running out of exclamation points and question marks.

There comes a moment in times like these -- here it is -- when the only sane response is to cover our ears, lower our expectations and pray we get out alive. Yes, the ride's been breathless. No, no one has a clue when or where it will end.

Here's what we do know, and it isn't very much: We know the 12 senators and representatives on the debt-cutting super committee. We all know that all their government whacking won't create new jobs. We know our houses aren't worth what they used to be. We know retirements are further and further away.

And we know something else, too: No matter how much we fret about it, here it comes.

JUST IGNORE IT

1. Falling real estate

2. Shrinking retirement

3. Growing debt

4. Expanding waistline

5. Shriveling self-esteem

ASKED AND UNANSWERED: Which is it, Joe Mondello? Is the Republicans' Nassau County redistricting map "fair and equitable"? Or does it give GOP candidates "a little bit of a leg up"? Can both really be true? . . . Sir Bill Bratton? . . . Shootout in a Holbrook gas station? What would have happened if one of those bullets hit one of those pumps? . . . What's the strongest argument FOR moving the Islanders to Queens? Is it that geographic technicality: "Well, Queens is kinda Long Island"? Or is it the Jersey card: "The Giants and the Jets still claim New York"? . . . Can this marriage be saved? Ron Stack and Ed Mangano? The NIFA chief and Nassau exec are TRYING to get along . . . How come the really, really big ones never seem to swim to our side of the Sound? Off Westbrook, Conn., Greg Myerson just pulled in an 82-pound striped bass, which the old-timers at Jack's Shoreline Bait are calling an all-tackle world record.

THE NEWS IN SONG: All we need is some relief, Matchbox Twenty, "These Hard Times." tinyurl.com/timeshard

LONG ISLANDER OF THE WEEK: GEORGE DAW

This one was just too dumb to stand: Good-guy school-bus driver George Daw, getting fired for picking up three stranded police detectives stuck in a hailstorm on the side of the road. That's a firing offense? Not for long, it wasn't, at the chastened Educational Bus Transportation company in Hauppauge. Not after Daw, the cops and the United Service Workers Union brought some sanity and publicity to bear. The Good Samaritan driver had been sacked on the technicality of picking up strangers with kids still aboard. Now that the rest of the story's been told, Daw said he is weighing other job offers.

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