Well, look on the bright side, New England fans. At least no one on the street got to check out your mammogram records. That’s what happened to a 54 year old New York woman. You see, during the Giants’ big celebratory parade on Tuesday, businesses along the route were supplied with confetti to throw out. Unfortunately, some people got overzealous and started throwing out any paper they could find in their office without even shredding it. This meant that documents featuring people’s social security numbers, legal statements, and medical records were gracefully gliding to the ground.

People should be expecting a surprising number of political ads during the Super Bowl tonight. And one of them was played on today’s Meet the Press, when host David Gregory asked New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg about a gun control ad he made with Thomas Menino. In the ad, Bloomberg and Menino admit they don’t agree on much (including which team to back in tonight’s game), but they do see eye-to-eye on the issue of gun safety.

Last month, Occupy Wall Street protestors almost ended up in the background of some scenes for The Dark Knight Rises, the final movie of Christopher Nolan‘s Batman trilogy, but the producers ended up scrapping the idea. Now a popular TV show is facing its own problems trying to incorporate the Occupiers into its plotline. Law [...]

Anyone who has ever tried to attend the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree Lighting in New York City will give you the same advice: don’t go. You won’t get close enough to see the tree, you’re barricaded in with groups of people pushing to get closer, it’s nearly impossible to navigate your way through the crowds, and getting there is a hassle, as traffic is snarled and roads are blocked off. So the fact that President Obama has decided to visit New York City on the same night as the Tree Lighting, to attend three fundraisers, has millions of residents angry as they hopelessly stare down a double-dose of unimaginable gridlock.

As the Occupy Wall Street protests continue, undeterred by their eviction this week from Zuccotti Park, one New York chef is showing his thanks for the protestors by preparing all of them a large Thanksgiving dinner.

The Occupy Wall Street protestors are marching for the 99%, but others within the 99% have vocally expressed their frustration with the protests. Local businesses have claimed OWS has lost profits since the protests began a few weeks ago, and according to a survey of businesses on and around Broadway by the New York Post, businesses in the area have lost a combined total of roughly half a million dollars in total.

Say what you will about Anthony Weiner, at least he never tried to write off his lewd pictures as works of art. Well, one New York Democrat running for reelection has taken a rather unusual approach to his lewd photo scandal: taking down the pictures in question, but admitting he took them for an art class he took over ten years ago while pursuing his degree.

Ann Coulter is no fan of Occupy Wall Street, and she has been vocal about her opposition. On Hannity last night, she reiterated the thesis of her latest book, Demonic, in which she called left-wing mobs violent and evil by nature, noted the Occupy Wall Street rallies fit the bill perfectly, and assured America that the students protesting there are only from “bush-league schools… none of these kids are coming from places like Yale.”

Sean Hannity is very upset that his Monday Night Football has been irreparably damaged by the absence of Hank Williams, Jr., after the country singer compared a meeting between President Barack Obama and Speaker John Boehner to “Hitler and Netanyahu playing golf” (???). He dedicated the first segment of his Great American Panel tonight to Williams, where most of the panel agreed he should be forgiven– with the one holdout, New York Republican State Senator Greg Ball, taking something of a rhetorical beating for demanding consequences for Williams’ comments.

It has been an eventful Saturday for the protesters that have been camped out in Downtown Manhattan for some weeks now, at the protest now known as Occupy Wall Street. As of now they have mostly remained in place, but attempted an unsuccessful trek over the Brooklyn Bridge, and are expected to continue throughout the night. Follow the livestream below for the latest on the protests as they continue into the evening.

A large circle of vaguely left-wing, anti-capitalist protesters may not sound like the friendliest atmosphere to send Fox News film crews into, and yet Friday night was full of coverage from representatives of both The O’Reilly Factor and Hannity, which were treated slightly more warmly than the first crew to get down there led by Red Eye‘s Bill Schulz. Schulz accompanied Sean Hannity last night to make sense of the footage, which Jesse Watters gave his eyewitness testimony to Bill O’Reilly.

New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg is seriously concerned about the jobs crisis– so much so that yesterday the mayor predicted the possibility of Cairo- and Madrid-style riots in the streets of New York by the unemployed. Needless to say, the cast of the New York-based Red Eye didn’t seem particularly concerned, first and foremost because Cairo is a “horrible, horrible place.”

The current fiscal crisis in America has at least significantly spooked one of the nation’s most important municipal figures. During his weekly radio address, New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg took a minute to warn those in power that the current jobs crisis could lead many disaffected to riots similar to those in Cairo and Madrid– a situation resulting from economic damage that “will go on for many, many years.”

The New York Daily News is reporting that an investigation may begin into a video posted on World Star Hip Hop which shows a few NYPD officers “grinding” on scantily-clad female parade goers at this year’s West Indian Day Parade in Brooklyn. A “source familiar with the paper” told the paper that, while it’s not corruption, it still “looks bad.”

StoryCorps, a non-profit organization, defines its mission statement as “provid[ing] Americans of all backgrounds and beliefs with the opportunity to record, share, and preserve the stories of our lives.” Their latest animated venture is a retelling of a story from retired firefighter John Vigiano Sr..

Mike Huckabee‘s weekly round at Fox & Friends this morning was far more somber than usual, as the topic of discussion naturally gravitated towards the September 11th attacks and the ceremony planned for tomorrow. Huckabee took offense at the secular nature of the ceremony, arguing that it was not “the politicians [who] were the heroes of 9/11,” but the clergy, and that anyone who would protest Muslim clerics at such a ceremony would be “inappropriate” and “ridiculous.”

America is starting to forget September 11th, 2001. It is a natural process– much of today’s population was either not born at the time or too young to remember, and those cursed with being merely alive but not participating in the true grief of the event are growing exhausted of the burden. Many in the media will implore us to forget the day, to move on with dignity, but the temptation to trivialize the pain lest “the terrorists win” comes at a significant detriment to those who can’t forget what they don’t remember.

The post-hurricane debate over how the mainstream media treated the threat raged on last night, as the many factors in play led to various theories on whether Irene was sufficiently covered. On last night’s O’Reilly Factor, Bernie Goldberg argued that one of the main reasons the media cared so much about Hurricane Irene was “because it was heading for the center of the universe,” and that a larger hurricane heading for a different region wouldn’t have gotten the attention– though giving the caveat that “hurricanes are dangerous things and they’re no fun to go through.”

Even on days when it seems like the news coming out is all good, we can always assume that things are going to turn awful (or, at the very least, cynical) at a moment’s notice. So it’s good to take a break from all that and occasionally watch something that’s just…nice. And there’s no better way to describe the new video from Improv Everywhere in which the merry pranksters set up a lectern in the middle of New York’s Union Square, affixed a megaphone and a sign reading “Say something nice” to it, and recorded the results.

As if the current Republican presidential field wasn’t big enough, former New York Governor George Pataki is considering a campaign of his own, according to anonymous sources close to the former governor. But how well would he fare as a candidate? Pataki has been touted as a potential candidate for the past few months, but [...]

Texas governor Rick Perry has finally tossed his ten gallon hat into the presidential ring, and his campaign has gotten plenty of tongues wagging over whether America is ready for another George W. Bush. Many of those already making the comparison will see much of the 43rd President in Perry’s new ad, but the dark clouds over America, billowing Midwestern fields and cowboy imagery is a lot more Ronald Reagan than pre-presidential Bush.

So not only is George Soros an evil, shadowy figure manipulating foreign governments and hell-bent on creating a global One World Order, he’s also kind of a dick.

A new Quinnipiac poll finds disturbing news for President Obama and his hopes of reelection in 2012: he’s got a negative approval rating in “the most heavily Democratic large state” in the nation: New York. 49 percent of New Yorkers disapprove of the job the president is doing–and only 45 percent approve. As National Journal notes this morning, it’s the first time Mr. Obama has had a negative result in the Empire State. “The debt-ceiling hullaballoo devastated President Barack Obama’s numbers even in true-blue New York,” said Quinnipiac poll director Maurice Carroll.

Midwestern populism is certainly a topic that doesn’t get all that much play on the Daily Show, but when it does, Jon Stewart makes sure to point out how hard it is to follow the will of the people. If the Tea Party were “the people” in 2009, and “the people” staged a recall election against Republicans in Wisconsin, where Democrats were defeated by “the people,” then… who are The Real People?

It wasn’t clear that New York City would survive the 1970s. I mean, physically it would, of course – it wasn’t going to sink, grimy and graffiti-ridden, into New York Harbor. But in late 1975, the city was broke. The budget deficit, reported at $600 million, was in reality nearly four times higher – and the city held $14 billion in debt. In October, President Ford basically told New York to fuck itself; that the city would not be bailed out by the government. (Today, of course, they would only do that to everything north of Canal Street.)