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​Before Occupy Wall Street artist Molly Crabapple had largely shied away from political themes in her work. Crabapple's signature compositions are described on her website as what would happened "If Dr. Seuss backtracked through the time-space continuum and commissioned Toulouse-Lautrec to reimagine his storybooks." But when Occupy started, Crabapple, who lives across the street from Zuccotti Park, immediately started making posters for the movement.

"Before Occupy I felt like using my art for activist causes was exploitive of activist causes, " she said in a phone interview Friday. "I think what Occupy let me do was it allowed me to instead of just donating money to politics or just going to marches, it allowed me to engage my art in politics."

Now, in a project she's raising money for on Kickstarter, Crabapple is hoping to combine the activist threads in her Occupy work with the swirling, baudy detail of her original style.

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​Mayor Bloomberg appeared on a Super Bowl-themed Meet The Press segment this morning, and sounded off on topics like increasing taxes for the wealthy, his Mayors Against Illegal Guns Super Bowl ad and the potential for an Iraq War veterans' parade in the city. Paired with Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels (representing Super Bowl's home base) and Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick (Patriots), Bloomberg (Giants, duh) took questions from David Gregory from the Super Bowl field in Indianapolis. We compiled some sound bites from the mayor.

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​Credit card debt? What credit card debt? Oh, pour yourself another drink. The latest fun -- and healthy! -- thing we're all doing under the influence of a little boozin' is...shopping on our own personal computers, from home, at night, after a hard day's work, with the jug of wine next to us. In a fascinating "trend" piece from the New York Times, it seems that not only are we shopping drunk -- the online retailers actually want us to shop drunk. As long as we don't return things the next day, of course.

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​EU leaders are in Brussels today for a crisis meeting on how to resolve the Euro's financial woes. Germany is resisting calls to increase the bailout fund and cut Greece's debt. Bloomberg reports "measures on the table include writedowns of as much as 50 percent on Greek debt, 100 billion euros ($139 billion) in fresh capital for banks and the pooling of two rescue funds to deliver as much as 940 billion euros to contain the crisis." Germany, the EU's strongest economy, is hesitant to agree to any of these terms. [Bloomberg]

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​Now that the baseball season for Yankee fans comes down to what-ifs (Why couldn't Joaquin Benoit have thrown that last pitch just three feet higher?), it seems like adding insult to injury to suggest that a suddenly postseason-free October could batter New York's fragile economy as well.

Yet that's the upshot of a report by the New York City Economic Development Commission that, as noted in yesterday's Daily News, projected that each ALCS home game played at I Can't Believe It's Not Yankee Stadium would bring in $12.6 million to the local economy. World Series games came in at $20 million a pop, said the study — which would mean that A-Rod's feeble hacks last night helped cost the city as much as $110 million.

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​With unemployment rates at a standstill and the economy still withering, one financial sector just had a banner year: lottery tickets. According to USA Today, 41 state lotteries saw a sales increase from the last fiscal year, with 17 states recording record-high ticket sales. A 2004 Cornell University study purports that people are more inclined to purchase lotto tickets when the economy is bad. This study is flawed, however, as it does not account for this really good feeling we have about 5 16 8 39 6 and 12 for the Mega Millions.

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​In some pretty dire economic news, today the Labor Department has announced that the U.S. economy added NO NET JOBS in the month of August. None. Analysts had estimated that something like 75,000 new jobs -- between 60,000 and 100,000 -- would be created. Instead, there was a net of zero, with factors to blame including the S&P downgrade, increased layoffs, and the fact that 45,000 Verizon workers were on strike (the good news: They have since returned to their jobs). The unemployment rate stays at 9.1. percent.

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​Standard & Poor's downgraded the United States' long-term credit rating from AAA to AA+ last night. The company said that the messy and prolonged political squabble around the debt ceiling bill was responsible for the new valuation. "The downgrade reflects our view that the effectiveness, stability, and predictability of American policymaking and political institutions have weakened at a time of ongoing fiscal and economic challenge," they said in a statement. The White House responded that Standard & Poor's made a large mathematical mistake in their judgment, overstating the national debt by $2 trillion. [NYT]

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​If you missed Christmas the first time around, or want to celebrate it again, or just want to keep your home pumped full of that fresh, pine-y conifer smell, a Korean man in Flushing, Queens is offering a "big sale" on his leftover stock of 300 Christmas trees. [NYT]

​Almost 100,000 unemployed New Yorkers whose unemployment benefits are expiring will have a very not-so-merry Christmas this year now that House Republicans have killed a proposed $56 billion benefits extension, the Daily News says.

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