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Restoring Our Future: Figures From Mitt's Super PAC

Around 10 p.m. on Tuesday night, Mitt Romney's (independent) Super PAC released its six month campaign finance data, just a few hours after his big win in the Florida primary. This is what the campaign to Restore Our Future looks like (all info compiled from FEC Data between Jul. 1, 2011 and Dec. 31, 2011):

Total raised from individuals and organizations: $17,947,952

Total spent: $6,535,213.64

Greatest amount raised from one donor: This is actually a tie between four donors, each gave $1 million:

1. Rooney Holdings, Inc - a large Manhattan private investment firm and construction company. Rooney Holdings built Cowboys Stadium, the U.S. Capitol Visitors Center and the George H.W. Presidential Library. The CEO and President L. Francis Rooney was the U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See from 2005 - 2008.

2. Robert Mercer of East Setauket, N.Y. - Mercer is co-CEO for Renaissance Technologies Corp., one of the world's largest private hedge funds. He owns this house and pays $303,678 per year in property taxes on it.

3. Julian Robertson of Locust Valley, N.Y. - Robertson is a former hedge fund manager who founded Tiger Management Corp. In 2011, his fortune was estimated at $2.4 billion, according to Forbes.

4. Paul Singer of New York, N.Y. - Singer is the founder and CEO of the hedge fund Elliott Management Corporation. His firm manages $17 billion in assets, he personally has a net worth of $900 million, which is almost four times as much as Mitt Romney

Top five total contributions by state:
1. New York - $4.63 million
2. Florida - $3.33 million
3. California - $1.90 million
4. Massachusetts - $1.67 million
5. Texas - $1.58 million

Total raised from corporations, with no individual name given (7/1/11 - 12/31/11) - $6,540,000

The average contribution was about $98,000. Romney and Restore Our Future spent a combined $6.28 million on Florida ads in the final week leading up to the primary, according to the Associated Press. $4 million came from Restore Our Future. In case you aren't sure what a Super PAC is and how the Supreme Court's Citizen's United decision allowed them to exist - read this.

And here's a chart of the data that shows what this all means to the average American:

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Occupy Wall Street in Pictures

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I was in New York for a week and made a handful of trips to Zucotti Park to talk to people down there and take some photos. Karoli was nice enough to make them all into a snazzy video.

It was pretty intense down there. First off, Mayor Bloomberg's jokes aside - it is a tourist attraction. They come by the double bus load to look at the 9/11 memorial and then make their way to the protest (to look at what's happened since 9/11). The park is packed to capacity with Occupiers and there's a steady stream of gawkers with cameras passing through.

Who knew it would last this long? No one. The viral nature of this movement is shocking to everyone down there. But they're still there and everyday more tourists come to look and ask questions.



9/11 And Its Great Transformations

On September 11th, 2001, on what was a perfect morning -- right up until the very moment a Boeing 767-223-ER slammed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center -- I stood on the corner of Delancey and Ridge Streets in downtown Manhattan.

I was working on an election campaign – it was primary day in New York – and little did I realize that politics, culture and our entire trajectory as a nation was about to change forever. I had been alerted to the first crash by a friend calling my cell phone, but it was as I was staring at the gaping hole in this New York City landmark, in horror, shock set in as I saw a second plane approaching.

I can see it all in slow motion these days – the airplane seemed to glide in almost effortlessly, and as I and others around stood unable to move, a loud explosion echoed through the canyons of lower Manhattan as a fireball erupted that almost seemed to reach where I was standing. It was, for lack of a better term, surreal.

For me, the journey forward from that day would be a difficult one. I was born and raised in Manhattan and was young enough that I couldn’t remember the city without those two awe-inspiring landmarks. It is what I would use to figure out where I was going whenever I came up from the subway system.

I had to process the knowledge that I had been in the North Tower only 16 hours before the attack. Because I had been delivering campaign literature to a volunteer who lived in the neighborhood and thought to myself, “I haven’t been in the Twin Towers for a while.”

What sticks with me most, though, is that after seeing the second plane hit, a lanky, salt-and-pepper-bearded man standing next to me who was holding his bike at his side, saying, “this is terrible; we’re going to be at war tomorrow.”

He wasn’t far off the mark. He only underestimated the wars.

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Ann Coulter repeats her "New Yorkers are Cowards"

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On H&C tonight, Alan Colmes asked Coulter to explain a statement in her recent column calling NY'ers cowards:

" and it's far preferable to fight them in the streets of Baghdad than in the streets of New York (where the residents would immediately surrender)

icon Download | play -WMP

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Colmes: You don't feel that New Yorkers are cowards?

(pause)

Coulter: ahhh...I think they would immediately surrender...

Calling people who suffered cowards is reprehensible. She should speak to a fireman or policeman about it sometime.



Freshman Tea Party Rep Didn't Know Government Pays Her Health Care

Congressperson Ann Marie Buerkle (NY-25) with a surprise win against Dan Maffei, rode into Congress in 2010 with the rest of her tea party compatriots. Buerkle promised fiscal responsibility and a new way to do business in Washington DC. I'm not sure that she could claim to be entirely successful in that endeavor, but she has managed some choice committeeships (Oversight and Government Reform, Foreign Affairs and Veteran Affairs) and a sparkly 80 percent score from Heritage Foundation, the highest of any New York representative.

Congresswoman Buerkle also displays the same amount of sparkly intelligence and grasp of how things really work as the rest of her tea party buddies:

A fun nugget buried in this story about Rep. Ann Buerkle's (R-NY) first town hall meeting as an elected member of Congress. Constituents repeatedly asked a puzzled Buerkle about her health benefits. She couldn't figure out why. But her staff sure could.

Buerkle, who voted to repeal the health care reform act, was twice asked about the health insurance she receives as a government employee. At first she said she couldn't understand why people were so interested in her health insurance, and that taxpayers didn't pay anything for it. She later corrected herself after being handed a note from a staffer. Like most employees, she pays for a portion of her insurance and her employer, the government, pays the rest, she said.

Well, no, technically her employer is NOT the government. It's the people (a government for, by and of the people, remember?), and more specifically, it's being paid for by taxpayers. But that's not something any other American (for, by and of the people, remember?) should be able to have, right?



Turned out my entire neighborhood was in the storm surge zone, so I decamped across the bridge to a New Jersey hotel. (I figured it was cheaper than a new car.) All night, I was glued to the teevee as they announced one tornado warning after another, even in the city of Philadelphia. In Lewes, Delaware, at least 15 homes were damaged by a tornado.

Now, New York and New England, it's your turn:

Hurricane Irene, a ferocious and slow-moving storm, smashed into North Carolina on Saturday morning, then slowly swirled its way up the Eastern Seaboard, flooding low-lying areas, knocking out power to as many as 1 million customers and forcing the densely populated regions of Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., and New York City to take unprecedented steps as they braced for impact.

At least eight people are known to have died as a result of the storm in North Carolina, Virginia and Florida.

Irene is expected to continue its northward path through New England before weakening early Sunday morning. The youngest victim, an 11-year-old boy, was killed when a tree crashed through his apartment building in Newport News, Va.

“I've never even heard of a hurricane around here,” said Peter Watts, working at the Vitamin Shoppe in downtown Philadelphia. “Or an earthquake,” he said, referring to Tuesday’s 5.8-magnitude temblor that shook the East Coast.

Storm-related disruptions of daily life were immense. About 10,000 commercial airline flights were canceled, and more than 2 million people were ordered evacuated from areas inundated by the surging floodwaters that accompanied the 450-mile-wide hurricane's northward path at 16 mph.

Evacuation orders affected people in Staten Island and Battery Park in New York City, the Jersey Shore, all coastal areas of Delaware, plus parts of Rhode Island, Connecticut, Maryland, Virginia and North Carolina.

“Staying behind is dangerous, staying behind is foolish and it's against the law,” said New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie took to television to plead with about 600 seniors who refused to leave their Atlantic City high-rises. He said he feared they would be injured or worse if the hurricane’s expected 80 mph winds shattered their windows.

“You’re correct that I cannot make you leave your home and I certainly do not intend to place you under arrest to get you to leave,” Christie said. “But if you stay where you are, you’re putting yourself in danger as well as your loved ones.”

In New York City, the country’s largest subway system ground to a halt as officials took precautions against flooding. In an effort to minimize flying debris in the face of brutal, sustained winds, city sanitation workers turned over 25,000 trash cans.



For God's Sake - Stop Talking

Lately, there would seem to be a whole lot more people who have a direct channel to the Big Guy Upstairs than one could have humanly thought possible.

It is oft-said that "God works in mysterious ways". But when Michele Bachmann hears voices telling her to run for president, am I the only who thinks the most likely explanation is a batch of bad clams or one-too-many nights role playing The Book of Eli with her equally demented husband Marcus?

Perhaps, these are the very same voices that have shared with her the important role "Founding Father John Quincy Adams" played in ending slavery as he battled the oncoming scourge of puberty? I don't know, just a stab in the dark.

Regardless, whether it is gay marriage or spotting the Virgin Mary in your gordita, our re-embrace of culture-by-theology in the United States (not unlike much of the rest of the world) has led supposedly "serious people" to say things that not so long ago would have landed them a starring role in Girl, Interrupted.

In our current age, in fact, possessing a direct cerebral channel to Deus (or at least claiming you do) would seem to be a requirement for receiving an invitation to a GOP presidential debate.

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We already know that Glenn Beck sees the world through his own peculiar filter, but this one really takes the cake. Notice the trembling lip, the catch in his voice. He's so into his vision of himself as the Second Coming. Poor Glenn Beck, the man who's targeted so many liberals that they got death threats and lost their jobs... It wouldn't even occur to him to have an "aha!" moment:

Today on his radio show, Glenn Beck tearfully recounted an incident from Bryant Park last night when he and his wife and daughter turned up to see a showing of the Hitchcock classic The 39 Steps. Apparently some fellow picnickers began harassing the Becks, even at one point "accidentally" kicking a glass of wine onto his wife's back. It sounded genuinely unpleasant and a little scary, though the famously paranoid Beck played up the dramatics in his retelling. "I swear to you I think, if I had suggested, and I almost did, 'Wow, does anybody have a rope? Because there's [a] tree here. You could just lynch me.' And I think there would have been a couple in the crowd that would have," he said. He called Gawker, which ran some user-submitted photos of the Becks, "especially horrible." "They have done everything they can to stalk me and my family," he said. "They’ve put my family in jeopardy in their own home."

Then, for almost ten minutes, Beck went on an extended rant against New Yorkers and the type of twentysomethings that harassed him. "These people were some of the most hateful people I had ever seen," he said. "I was told a lot last night about how New York hates people like me."

"I really feel sorry for you," he continued. "Here you are, 25 years old, and you are so lost and so arrogant and so convinced that you are absolutely 100 percent right. And you are helping craft a system that is fueled by hate. You're being used, and you don't even know it. You're building a system fueled by the very things you say you hate: special interests, the rich, the powerful, global corporations — that’s who's pulling your string."

So that tearful part where he's so worried about leaving his family to the mercy of the horrible crowd? He forgot to mention the bodyguards. Here's a different version from someone who was sitting behind him:

Just a quick FYI -saw your article on Mr. Beck and his numerous FALSE claims about the way that he was treated at Bryant Park last night. Myself and several of my friends were seated immediately behind Mr. Beck & co (have pictures) and I can tell you that while the crowd was certainly not *thrilled* that he had shown up, his family was left completely alone, and for the most part he was too. Conversely, it was his security detail (two body guards) that seemed to be unnecessarily prickly with the crowd, scolding myself and my friends for acrobatics and other harmless activities taking place well before the movie started, and contributing to a considerably less relaxed atmosphere than is typically experienced during BPMN (I've been going for about six years now).

It was my friend that spilled the glass of wine on Tanya -and I can assure you that it was a complete accident. A happy one, to be sure, but nonetheless a complete and utter accident. As soon as the wine spilled (and I question how Tanya became soaked from a half glass of wine) apologies were made and my friends pretty much scrambled to give Tanya & co napkins -no doubt aware that it would look terrible and that their actions could be perceived as purposeful. No words were exchanged after that, as I think that it became pretty clear to Beck & co that my friends and I were doing everything in our capacity to help clean the "mess".

I'm sure it's unnecessary to point out the hypocrisy in Glen's statements that we were being hateful. I can assure him that we don't need his sympathy. Incidentally, none of us have made a career of "spewing hate" on the radio, or any other media platform. We live our lives intolerant only of those who don't tolerate: We have chosen New York as our city for that very reason. We do things like go to Bryant Park Movie Night, and vote to legalize gay marriage. We don't taunt Glen, or his family. And we certainly don't waste our wine, even on Tanya.

Glenn, you're such a liar. I feel sorry for you.



Natural Love And New York

Let's avoid one thing henceforth and forever: When discussing gay marriage, let us never let anyone get away with suggesting a lifelong bond between a man and woman is particularly "natural."

It's true. Bonobos share 98 percent of our DNA, and they f like bunnies wish they could f when they're having f-ing contests.

Our closest living relatives are to f-ing what beavers are to building dams--specialists with a passion that looks a lot like pleasure. So, you rarely see our closest genetic relatives in zoos, their cages quickly deteriorate into a non-stop scat-enthusiast free-free-for-all f-fest that traumatizes children and seniors. That's God's Perfect Creature for you, untouched by culture.

These so-called "hippie chimps" reap all sorts of benefits from the practice of nonstop chimp f-ery in lieu of marriage. They don't have wars, they have strong familial bonds, and everybody gets laid.

So from now on, before you point a steely finger of judgment at another person's "naturalness," smell those fingers. Do they smell like the inside of another person? If not, you need to be more natural.



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It's always kind of amusing watching Republicans fight over that cherished Tea Party endorsement the way dogs fight over a bone. As they apparently are in upstate New York's congressional District 26 -- the district where Christopher Lee most recently posed as a Republican congressman -- where there's now a disgruntled ex-Republican candidate named Jack Davis running as a third-party Tea Party candidate against a Republican who likewise claims various Tea Party endorsements.

Seems things have gotten down to the usual thuggishness and pettiness:

A 15-second video shows a tea party congressional candidate in New York scuffling with a Republican Party volunteer who questioned his absence from a debate.

The video posted on YouTube shows candidate Jack Davis asking the volunteer Wednesday whether he wants to “punch it out” after a campaign event in Greece, outside Rochester.

Davis was responding to the man’s repeated calls for him to explain why he backed out of a debate held Thursday in Buffalo.

Davis announced Wednesday he’d changed his mind about participating in the debate with the two major party candidates in the May 24 special election for the 26th District seat. Instead, he said he’d speak to voters directly via an electronic town hall meeting May 21.

In the video, the 78-year-old candidate steps toward the volunteer, who was holding a camera and asking, “Why did you back out of the debate? Why did you back out of the debate?”

“Do you want to punch it out?” Davis asks before swiping at the camera with his right hand.

Davis then laughs as he walks to his car while a man who appears to be a Davis campaign aide approaches the cameraman. As the camera shakes, the cameraman groans out of view as if he has been struck and then resumes asking Davis, “Why did you back out of the debate?”

It turns out that the videographer is in fact the chief of staff for the Republican front-runner.

Of course, the national Tea Party organizations are disowning Davis and claiming he's a Democrat in disguise. Even though he in fact ran as a Republican candidate and earned the endorsement of the western New York Tea Partiers.

This should be entertaining to watch, if nothing else.