Hilton Hotels Corporation

Eliot Spitzer may have toned down his act recently, but he wasn't tempering much of anything during his appearance at the Hilton this morning in front of an audience of business leaders at an ABNY breakfast.

Displaying the logos of 1199 and the Greater New York Hospital Association under the headline "guardians of the status quo," he said, "I wanted to put your logos up here so everybody knows who you are."

A ripple of distinctly nervous laughter went through the ballroom.

-- Azi Paybarah

I found this photo last night on the Flickr page set up by Eliot Spitzer's campaign. It's from 2005 and but it takes on a certain added poignance now that the governor is about to launch half-million dollars' worth of ads against 1199 SEIU and the Greater New York Hospitals Association over his plans to reduce health care spending.

On a related matter, at 10:30 a.m. at the Hilton, 1199 will have a delegate meeting with union representatives from health care institutions where their members work, according to two sources. It's possible that a few elected officials may drop by also.

-- Azi Paybarah

According to Downtown Express, Goldman Sachs is negotiating with Embassy Suites to buy its 453-room hotel in Battery Park City. A lawyer for Goldman wrote a letter to Community Board 1 saying that an agreement would be signed by tomorrow, with a closing a month later.

A DE source, noting that the building is "really ugly," said that Goldman will "likely either demolish the building or change its facade .... "
Goldman recently began construction on its new $2.4 billion headquarters across a pedestrian walkway from the hotel.  read more »

-Matthew Grace

As part of our continuing, exhaustive (exhausting?) series on Mark Warner in New York, here's a write-up from Observer contributor Niall Stanage on an event that was covered by him and one Japanese reporter and, as far as Niall could tell, no one else:

Addressing the annual dinner of the Japan Society at the Hilton Hotel, Mark Warner delivered a speech that borrowed much of its lexicon and its worldview from Sen. Clinton's husband, emphatically underlining his centrist credentials.

At times, it could almost have been the former president at the lectern. Warner spoke frequently of an "interconnected" and interdependent world.

In a supremely Clintonian formulation, he asserted that the current moment held "tremendous" opportunities, "but only if we see the key questions of our day . . .are no longer based on the ideological fault lines of the past: left versus right, liberal versus conservative, or even open versus closed markets. Issues must be looked at through the prism of the future versus the past."

A lack of foreign policy experience could clearly be a weakness if Warner presses ahead with a presidential bid. He seemed intent on dispelling any impression of ignorance or naiveté last night.

More after the jump.  read more »