Optimistic, Friendly, Heartwarming Lad

This little fellow showed up in our backyard recently. He has no

out-door kitty skills. He is sweet and refuses to be engaged by

Kitty's through-the-window aggression. He appears to take her hissy

fits as acts of friendly playfulness. It amazes us how open-hearted he

is.

One night he jumped up on the barbecue to cry at me through the

window. I went over to see what he wanted and heard Anton go, "Oh,

it's raining! That's what he's telling us." And that was it. He was

telling us it was raining, letting us know, saying, "Mommy! Daddy!

It's raining! Let Me In!" My heart broke a bit. It hurts to keep him

out.

He will look at me through the window, open-eyed, as if he doesn't

understand why we don't let him in. He found us and he is happy. A

very happy little one.

I remember the first time I fed him. He was so happy he purred out

loud and ate like crazy.

He likes to walk in front of me and often tangles himself in my legs

as he leaps ahead on the narrow path of stepping stones, tail high. He

feels so connected, he feels home and it hurts my heart. For I know he

is an indoor cat. He has other fur siblings. Someone is missing their

cat, and he was so thin.

How long has he been on his own? How long has he been starving and

cold? How long can I keep him outside? I worry about his health, and I

worry that he might have something contagious. I change my clothes

when I visit with him, then change again when I go back inside. But I

am walking on the same wet ground he does, then walk on my floors and

carpet. The same floors and carpet Kitty walks on. He seems healthy,

so I am keeping my fingers crossed for all of our sakes.

I walked the neighborhood tonight handing out little flyers with my

phone number on them, trying to find his home.

Outside of the Town Hall theater on West 43rd Street in Manhattan, a crowd of smiling and optimistic people Friday overflowed into the one-way street. Delivery trucks and yellow taxi cabs creeped by, their engines engaged in a shouting match with Bennet Weiss, a man who bore a fleeting resemblance to the Democratic presidential candidate they were all there to support.

"We don't have billions of dollars! All we have are people wearing Bernie pins," Weiss yelled, a large black umbrella covered in Bernie Sanders campaign pins at his feet, catching drops of sweat from his brow. The Occupy Wall Street protester-turned-Sanders supporter urged the crowd to wear the pins at all times with no exception -- even in the shower -- and gave them away freely to anyone who said they didn't have enough cash to afford to pay the suggested donation.

That's the kind of populist support Sanders' campaign has steadily been attracting since the U.S. senator from Vermont formally announced his candidacy in late April. Friday was no exception, with passion-filled people who think Sanders has proved himself the worthy champion of causes they care about the most, such as income inequality, climate change, Wall Street reform and further healthcare reforms. But, perhaps most importantly, they also think he can win the White House.

"Absolutely" he can win, said Joe Trinolone, 30, a former finance industry worker from Long Island, New York, who is studying mathematics at St. Joseph's University. "I mean, he's winning right now."

Sanders, during a fundraising speech Friday, ticked through the policies he cares about and areas of change he wants to see in Washington should he become president. At each turn, his blend of outrage, optimism and sly sarcasm brought raucous cheers from the crowd of 1,100. He rejected recent Wall Street Journal criticism of the high price tag of his proposals, including making public colleges and universities free, lowering so-called real unemployment by pumping funding into infrastructure repairs for the nation’s roads and bridges and implementing a universal healthcare system.

Instead, he pointed to European nations that already have those programs. He implored the crowd to think about what many of them were already talking about: that taking on the big-money interests in the United States that impede those sorts of policy changes is a shared moral obligation.

“Welcome to the revolution,” Sanders said, describing what he believes must happen to American politics. “We can accomplish all of this and more.” And the crowd ate it up.

When asked why they support Sanders, many described his candidacy as a movement. They love his policies, and have a hard time thinking of much they don’t like about him. They especially like that he has been a consistent voice during his time in Washington. That’s a big perceived difference between Sanders and his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton. Those "feeling the Bern" were split on whether they would consider voting for her if she becomes the nominee. Many were newcomers to political action but felt compelled to join the fray when they heard Sanders and his message.

“I’ve never been excited about a politician my entire life,” said Meira Marom, 34, a Brooklyn third-grade teacher with a master's degree in creative writing. When Marom started seeing social media posts about Sanders and reading about him, she decided to stop focusing her personal time on writing for herself. She now writes and publishes something about Sanders every day -- Dr. Seuss themes every Sunday, poems and parodies. “I decided this is the most worthy cause to put my rhymes to use.”

Sanders has seen an unexpected rise in the polls since he joined the race for the Democratic nomination shortly after the current national front-runner Clinton announced her candidacy. While Sanders was trailing Clinton by 21.4 percent in national averages of polls compiled by Real Clear Politics, a look at early nominating states like Iowa and New Hampshire paints a different picture of vulnerability for Clinton and strength for Sanders.

The two candidates are tied in Iowa, which constitutes a dramatic drop for Clinton and an impressive surge for Sanders, who has been distancing himself from Clinton in New Hampshire at the top of the Democratic pack since Aug. 25, when he jumped past her in the state for the first time. He currently leads there by 10.5 points.

The candidates are noticeably different in many ways, from policy prescription to fundraising strategy.

Clinton has moved leftward since announcing her candidacy, but she is still threatened by the populist appeal of Sanders, who has long championed the causes that seem to be coming into grace for the Democratic Party. While the candidates currently hold some very similar positions on issues such as immigration reform, gay rights, gun control and campaign finance reform, Sanders has been able to stake out positions to the left of Clinton on other issues that excite some vocal voters.

Among them are his strong anti-war and anti-government surveillance positions as well as his distaste for President Barack Obama's Trans Pacific Partnership trade deal. Sanders also has been a vocal critic of Wall Street and champion of financial reforms, and his stance on those issues has drawn attention to Clinton's cozy relationship with Wall Street executives and the huge paychecks she has received for speeches to large banks since leaving the U.S. State Department. For some Sanders supporters, though, the perception that Sanders has been a consistent proponent of these liberal policies, and cares about them more than winning, is key.

“It’s the message that supporting Bernie Sanders is not just voting on a horse in the race” that attracts Brian Dillon, a 28-year-old self-employed Web designer and developer for e-commerce, said Friday. Dillon has voted just one time in his life, but he has been organizing meetings to drum up support for Sanders.

Sanders's fundraising portfolio also is the reverse of Clinton's. While the former secretary of state is expected to spend somewhere north of $1 billion should she win the primary and head into the general election for 2016, the same has not been said of Sanders. Currently, Clinton has raised, through her campaign committee and super PACs associated with the campaign, $47.5 million, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics. Sanders, on the other hand, has raised just shy of $16.5 million, according to CRP data.

Their most startling difference in fundraising, however, can be seen in the size of the donations they're receiving. The Clinton campaign received 82 percent of its donations from large contributors, and her top industry donors, not including retired people, so far have been lawyers, business services and the financial industry.

In contrast, Sanders relies much more on small donations, which are defined as donations totaling $200 or less. So far, 69 percent of his contributions have come from small donors, and the biggest industries that have given to his campaign have been from the education, legal and healthcare sectors.

Who are those small donors? The types of people who showed up Friday. Some said they donate $25 to $30 a month to Sanders. Some said they have donated several hundred dollars since he jumped into the presidential race. Nearly all of them mentioned they don't earn a ton of money personally. One in particular, Machumu Sakulira, said he donated $500 before attending Friday’s event.

There is “no way” he would support a Clinton ticket, said Sakulira, a 31-year-old senior political science student at the University at Buffalo. He got on a bus Thursday night at 11 p.m. and arrived in New York at 7 a.m. for the Sanders speech. He said he was going back Friday night. “Bernie represents my interest. My vote is a moral choice, I don’t give it to somebody who doesn’t deserve it.”

www.ibtimes.com/election-2016-bernie-sanders-nyc-fundrais...

Call me Snake offers an optimistic provocation – ‘imagine what could be here’ by Judy Millar. On a walk into the city October 3, 2015 Christchurch New Zealand.

The work is comprised of vibrant graphics of Millar’s looped paintings, which are adhered to five intersecting flat planes, and draws inspiration from the forms found in pop-up books. The colourful piece will add a dramatic and rhythmic counterpoint to the city’s current urban landscape — a mix of flattened sites, construction zones and defiant buildings that have stood through the quakes. The work employs theatricality, playfulness and visual trickery, whereby the viewer is unsure about the work’s flatness or three-dimensionality; and it has been designed to offer a different perspective from each angle. The bright colours interrupt the grey of the work’s surrounds, and as buildings pop up around it,

SCAPE 8, New Intimacies curated by Rob Garrett was a contemporary art event which mixed new artworks with existing legacy pieces, an education programme, and a public programme of events. The SCAPE 8 artworks were located around central Christchurch and linked via a public art walkway. All aspects of SCAPE 8 were free-to-view.

The title for the 2015 Biennial – New Intimacies – came from the idea that visually striking and emotionally engaging public art works can create new connections between people and places. Under the main theme of New Intimacies there are three other themes that artists responded to: Sight-Lines, Inner Depths and Shared Strengths.

For more Info: www.scapepublicart.org.nz/scape-8-judy-millar

Please note that all the contents in this photostream is copyrighted and protected under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and the Copyright Act of Singapore, any usage of the images without permission will face liability for the infringement.

For enquiry, please mail to albertat@singnet.com.sg

Outside of the Town Hall theater on West 43rd Street in Manhattan, a crowd of smiling and optimistic people Friday overflowed into the one-way street. Delivery trucks and yellow taxi cabs creeped by, their engines engaged in a shouting match with Bennet Weiss, a man who bore a fleeting resemblance to the Democratic presidential candidate they were all there to support.

"We don't have billions of dollars! All we have are people wearing Bernie pins," Weiss yelled, a large black umbrella covered in Bernie Sanders campaign pins at his feet, catching drops of sweat from his brow. The Occupy Wall Street protester-turned-Sanders supporter urged the crowd to wear the pins at all times with no exception -- even in the shower -- and gave them away freely to anyone who said they didn't have enough cash to afford to pay the suggested donation.

That's the kind of populist support Sanders' campaign has steadily been attracting since the U.S. senator from Vermont formally announced his candidacy in late April. Friday was no exception, with passion-filled people who think Sanders has proved himself the worthy champion of causes they care about the most, such as income inequality, climate change, Wall Street reform and further healthcare reforms. But, perhaps most importantly, they also think he can win the White House.

"Absolutely" he can win, said Joe Trinolone, 30, a former finance industry worker from Long Island, New York, who is studying mathematics at St. Joseph's University. "I mean, he's winning right now."

Sanders, during a fundraising speech Friday, ticked through the policies he cares about and areas of change he wants to see in Washington should he become president. At each turn, his blend of outrage, optimism and sly sarcasm brought raucous cheers from the crowd of 1,100. He rejected recent Wall Street Journal criticism of the high price tag of his proposals, including making public colleges and universities free, lowering so-called real unemployment by pumping funding into infrastructure repairs for the nation’s roads and bridges and implementing a universal healthcare system.

Instead, he pointed to European nations that already have those programs. He implored the crowd to think about what many of them were already talking about: that taking on the big-money interests in the United States that impede those sorts of policy changes is a shared moral obligation.

“Welcome to the revolution,” Sanders said, describing what he believes must happen to American politics. “We can accomplish all of this and more.” And the crowd ate it up.

When asked why they support Sanders, many described his candidacy as a movement. They love his policies, and have a hard time thinking of much they don’t like about him. They especially like that he has been a consistent voice during his time in Washington. That’s a big perceived difference between Sanders and his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton. Those "feeling the Bern" were split on whether they would consider voting for her if she becomes the nominee. Many were newcomers to political action but felt compelled to join the fray when they heard Sanders and his message.

“I’ve never been excited about a politician my entire life,” said Meira Marom, 34, a Brooklyn third-grade teacher with a master's degree in creative writing. When Marom started seeing social media posts about Sanders and reading about him, she decided to stop focusing her personal time on writing for herself. She now writes and publishes something about Sanders every day -- Dr. Seuss themes every Sunday, poems and parodies. “I decided this is the most worthy cause to put my rhymes to use.”

Sanders has seen an unexpected rise in the polls since he joined the race for the Democratic nomination shortly after the current national front-runner Clinton announced her candidacy. While Sanders was trailing Clinton by 21.4 percent in national averages of polls compiled by Real Clear Politics, a look at early nominating states like Iowa and New Hampshire paints a different picture of vulnerability for Clinton and strength for Sanders.

The two candidates are tied in Iowa, which constitutes a dramatic drop for Clinton and an impressive surge for Sanders, who has been distancing himself from Clinton in New Hampshire at the top of the Democratic pack since Aug. 25, when he jumped past her in the state for the first time. He currently leads there by 10.5 points.

The candidates are noticeably different in many ways, from policy prescription to fundraising strategy.

Clinton has moved leftward since announcing her candidacy, but she is still threatened by the populist appeal of Sanders, who has long championed the causes that seem to be coming into grace for the Democratic Party. While the candidates currently hold some very similar positions on issues such as immigration reform, gay rights, gun control and campaign finance reform, Sanders has been able to stake out positions to the left of Clinton on other issues that excite some vocal voters.

Among them are his strong anti-war and anti-government surveillance positions as well as his distaste for President Barack Obama's Trans Pacific Partnership trade deal. Sanders also has been a vocal critic of Wall Street and champion of financial reforms, and his stance on those issues has drawn attention to Clinton's cozy relationship with Wall Street executives and the huge paychecks she has received for speeches to large banks since leaving the U.S. State Department. For some Sanders supporters, though, the perception that Sanders has been a consistent proponent of these liberal policies, and cares about them more than winning, is key.

“It’s the message that supporting Bernie Sanders is not just voting on a horse in the race” that attracts Brian Dillon, a 28-year-old self-employed Web designer and developer for e-commerce, said Friday. Dillon has voted just one time in his life, but he has been organizing meetings to drum up support for Sanders.

Sanders's fundraising portfolio also is the reverse of Clinton's. While the former secretary of state is expected to spend somewhere north of $1 billion should she win the primary and head into the general election for 2016, the same has not been said of Sanders. Currently, Clinton has raised, through her campaign committee and super PACs associated with the campaign, $47.5 million, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics. Sanders, on the other hand, has raised just shy of $16.5 million, according to CRP data.

Their most startling difference in fundraising, however, can be seen in the size of the donations they're receiving. The Clinton campaign received 82 percent of its donations from large contributors, and her top industry donors, not including retired people, so far have been lawyers, business services and the financial industry.

In contrast, Sanders relies much more on small donations, which are defined as donations totaling $200 or less. So far, 69 percent of his contributions have come from small donors, and the biggest industries that have given to his campaign have been from the education, legal and healthcare sectors.

Who are those small donors? The types of people who showed up Friday. Some said they donate $25 to $30 a month to Sanders. Some said they have donated several hundred dollars since he jumped into the presidential race. Nearly all of them mentioned they don't earn a ton of money personally. One in particular, Machumu Sakulira, said he donated $500 before attending Friday’s event.

There is “no way” he would support a Clinton ticket, said Sakulira, a 31-year-old senior political science student at the University at Buffalo. He got on a bus Thursday night at 11 p.m. and arrived in New York at 7 a.m. for the Sanders speech. He said he was going back Friday night. “Bernie represents my interest. My vote is a moral choice, I don’t give it to somebody who doesn’t deserve it.”

www.ibtimes.com/election-2016-bernie-sanders-nyc-fundrais...

+2 in comments

.

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL:

Schumer Optimistic on Democrats’ Chances in 2012

By Corey Boles

Never let it be said that Sen. Charles Schumer (D., N.Y.) isn’t an optimist.

On Wednesday, the senior Democrat said that if his party was able to knock off one or two Republican-controlled Senate seats in next November’s elections, it would be “almost impossible” for the Democrats to lose control of the Senate.

“When you look at it from 30,000 feet it looks bad,” Mr. Schumer said, at a round table with reporters hosted by the Third Way, a centrist economic think tank. “But when you look at it race by race, it looks darn good.”

Mr. Schumer’s reasoning goes against the views of political oddsmakers, who think Democrats will have a difficult time retaining control of the Senate. They currently have a 53-47 majority, but 23 seats currently held by Democrats are up next year as opposed to just 10 seats for the GOP, leaving Democrats defending more than double the number of seats as Republicans. Analysts also believe about 10 of the Democratic seats are competitive, while just two of the Republican seats are seen as being potentially vulnerable.

But Mr. Schumer sees it differently. He said it was possible Democrats can defeat GOP incumbent Sen. Scott Brown in Massachusetts, where former Harvard professor Elizabeth Warren is running against him. He also mentioned Arizona, Indiana and Nevada as possible Democratic targets depending on the candidates.

The New York Democrat is far from being a novice in political matters. He ran the campaign which steers funds to Senate candidates in the fat years for Democrats in 2006 and 2008 when they regained control of the chamber and then reached their height of power at 60 seats, a mark that effectively gave them complete control of the Senate.

Unsurprisingly, Republicans disagreed with Mr. Schumer’s assessment. Brian Walsh, communications director for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, said Mr. Schumer’s view was “out of touch with political reality.”

Outside of the Town Hall theater on West 43rd Street in Manhattan, a crowd of smiling and optimistic people Friday overflowed into the one-way street. Delivery trucks and yellow taxi cabs creeped by, their engines engaged in a shouting match with Bennet Weiss, a man who bore a fleeting resemblance to the Democratic presidential candidate they were all there to support.

"We don't have billions of dollars! All we have are people wearing Bernie pins," Weiss yelled, a large black umbrella covered in Bernie Sanders campaign pins at his feet, catching drops of sweat from his brow. The Occupy Wall Street protester-turned-Sanders supporter urged the crowd to wear the pins at all times with no exception -- even in the shower -- and gave them away freely to anyone who said they didn't have enough cash to afford to pay the suggested donation.

That's the kind of populist support Sanders' campaign has steadily been attracting since the U.S. senator from Vermont formally announced his candidacy in late April. Friday was no exception, with passion-filled people who think Sanders has proved himself the worthy champion of causes they care about the most, such as income inequality, climate change, Wall Street reform and further healthcare reforms. But, perhaps most importantly, they also think he can win the White House.

"Absolutely" he can win, said Joe Trinolone, 30, a former finance industry worker from Long Island, New York, who is studying mathematics at St. Joseph's University. "I mean, he's winning right now."

Sanders, during a fundraising speech Friday, ticked through the policies he cares about and areas of change he wants to see in Washington should he become president. At each turn, his blend of outrage, optimism and sly sarcasm brought raucous cheers from the crowd of 1,100. He rejected recent Wall Street Journal criticism of the high price tag of his proposals, including making public colleges and universities free, lowering so-called real unemployment by pumping funding into infrastructure repairs for the nation’s roads and bridges and implementing a universal healthcare system.

Instead, he pointed to European nations that already have those programs. He implored the crowd to think about what many of them were already talking about: that taking on the big-money interests in the United States that impede those sorts of policy changes is a shared moral obligation.

“Welcome to the revolution,” Sanders said, describing what he believes must happen to American politics. “We can accomplish all of this and more.” And the crowd ate it up.

When asked why they support Sanders, many described his candidacy as a movement. They love his policies, and have a hard time thinking of much they don’t like about him. They especially like that he has been a consistent voice during his time in Washington. That’s a big perceived difference between Sanders and his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton. Those "feeling the Bern" were split on whether they would consider voting for her if she becomes the nominee. Many were newcomers to political action but felt compelled to join the fray when they heard Sanders and his message.

“I’ve never been excited about a politician my entire life,” said Meira Marom, 34, a Brooklyn third-grade teacher with a master's degree in creative writing. When Marom started seeing social media posts about Sanders and reading about him, she decided to stop focusing her personal time on writing for herself. She now writes and publishes something about Sanders every day -- Dr. Seuss themes every Sunday, poems and parodies. “I decided this is the most worthy cause to put my rhymes to use.”

Sanders has seen an unexpected rise in the polls since he joined the race for the Democratic nomination shortly after the current national front-runner Clinton announced her candidacy. While Sanders was trailing Clinton by 21.4 percent in national averages of polls compiled by Real Clear Politics, a look at early nominating states like Iowa and New Hampshire paints a different picture of vulnerability for Clinton and strength for Sanders.

The two candidates are tied in Iowa, which constitutes a dramatic drop for Clinton and an impressive surge for Sanders, who has been distancing himself from Clinton in New Hampshire at the top of the Democratic pack since Aug. 25, when he jumped past her in the state for the first time. He currently leads there by 10.5 points.

The candidates are noticeably different in many ways, from policy prescription to fundraising strategy.

Clinton has moved leftward since announcing her candidacy, but she is still threatened by the populist appeal of Sanders, who has long championed the causes that seem to be coming into grace for the Democratic Party. While the candidates currently hold some very similar positions on issues such as immigration reform, gay rights, gun control and campaign finance reform, Sanders has been able to stake out positions to the left of Clinton on other issues that excite some vocal voters.

Among them are his strong anti-war and anti-government surveillance positions as well as his distaste for President Barack Obama's Trans Pacific Partnership trade deal. Sanders also has been a vocal critic of Wall Street and champion of financial reforms, and his stance on those issues has drawn attention to Clinton's cozy relationship with Wall Street executives and the huge paychecks she has received for speeches to large banks since leaving the U.S. State Department. For some Sanders supporters, though, the perception that Sanders has been a consistent proponent of these liberal policies, and cares about them more than winning, is key.

“It’s the message that supporting Bernie Sanders is not just voting on a horse in the race” that attracts Brian Dillon, a 28-year-old self-employed Web designer and developer for e-commerce, said Friday. Dillon has voted just one time in his life, but he has been organizing meetings to drum up support for Sanders.

Sanders's fundraising portfolio also is the reverse of Clinton's. While the former secretary of state is expected to spend somewhere north of $1 billion should she win the primary and head into the general election for 2016, the same has not been said of Sanders. Currently, Clinton has raised, through her campaign committee and super PACs associated with the campaign, $47.5 million, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics. Sanders, on the other hand, has raised just shy of $16.5 million, according to CRP data.

Their most startling difference in fundraising, however, can be seen in the size of the donations they're receiving. The Clinton campaign received 82 percent of its donations from large contributors, and her top industry donors, not including retired people, so far have been lawyers, business services and the financial industry.

In contrast, Sanders relies much more on small donations, which are defined as donations totaling $200 or less. So far, 69 percent of his contributions have come from small donors, and the biggest industries that have given to his campaign have been from the education, legal and healthcare sectors.

Who are those small donors? The types of people who showed up Friday. Some said they donate $25 to $30 a month to Sanders. Some said they have donated several hundred dollars since he jumped into the presidential race. Nearly all of them mentioned they don't earn a ton of money personally. One in particular, Machumu Sakulira, said he donated $500 before attending Friday’s event.

There is “no way” he would support a Clinton ticket, said Sakulira, a 31-year-old senior political science student at the University at Buffalo. He got on a bus Thursday night at 11 p.m. and arrived in New York at 7 a.m. for the Sanders speech. He said he was going back Friday night. “Bernie represents my interest. My vote is a moral choice, I don’t give it to somebody who doesn’t deserve it.”

www.ibtimes.com/election-2016-bernie-sanders-nyc-fundrais...

$200

The mouth of that powerful V8, the life and soul of this mighty machine.

The Aston Martin Lagonda first entered production in 1974, and was designed to be one of the most revolutionary cars ever built, but being revolutionary was something Aston Martin should have had as far off their minds as possible!

When the car was launched, the company had just recovered from bankruptcy, and logically should have been playing things safe to try and recover their losses. But instead, what they did was design a car that was to be the cutting edge of automotive technology.

Designed by William Towns, the intention was to make a car that was so low and smoothly streamlined as was humanly possible. The result was a car that was so low that even when I was kneeling down next to this example it was still lower than me! Although such examples of cars are commonplace amongst Ferrari's and Lamborghini's, this car is neither, it's a 4-door luxury limousine, not a two-door supercar!

But the problems with the Lagonda weren't just about its low styled body, internally the car was like a substation! To try and be cutting edge, Aston Martin designed the car to be digital in every conceivable way. All readings on the Dashboard were displayed with LED's rather than analogue needles, and everything was controlled by push-buttons, the kind you'd find on the bridge of the Starship Enterprise!

However, cutting edge does not always guarantee outright success, and the poorly made wiring inside the car meant that none of the electrics ever worked. The problem was then compounded by the fact that fitting the electrics to the car in the first place cost 4 times more than the budget of the entire car! The result was that when the first Lagonda left the factory a year late and thousands of Pounds over budget, the car was simply undrivable because of its faulty electrics.

And just to top off what could already be described as an insanely reckless car, the price tag for it was £50,000. Aston Martin were certainly being optimistic with that price tag, probably expecting to make a fortune off of their angular wonderchild. However, they had forgotten to note that there had just been an oil crisis and the idea of driving a £50,000 car powered by a gas-guzzling 5.3L V8 engine didn't exactly ring everyone's bells! The result was that Aston Martin only made 645 of these cars during its 16 year construction run, and not one of them made their money back!

So, Aston Martin, cash strapped and barely working, decided to make a car that had an outrageous design, outrageous electrics, an outrageous price tag and an outrageous engine, and expected to make a profit?

Today, many look back on the Lagonda as one of the most abysmal failures of automotive history, frequently popping up on 'Worst cars ever made' lists with other ambitious cars of that era such as the Rolls Royce Camargue. But today there is something of a cult following for these curious and crazy machines. Although here in the UK you'd be stretched to find one (I was very lucky to catch this bad boy), there'll probably be some rumbling around in the South of France or on the West Coast of the United States.

Outside of the Town Hall theater on West 43rd Street in Manhattan, a crowd of smiling and optimistic people Friday overflowed into the one-way street. Delivery trucks and yellow taxi cabs creeped by, their engines engaged in a shouting match with Bennet Weiss, a man who bore a fleeting resemblance to the Democratic presidential candidate they were all there to support.

"We don't have billions of dollars! All we have are people wearing Bernie pins," Weiss yelled, a large black umbrella covered in Bernie Sanders campaign pins at his feet, catching drops of sweat from his brow. The Occupy Wall Street protester-turned-Sanders supporter urged the crowd to wear the pins at all times with no exception -- even in the shower -- and gave them away freely to anyone who said they didn't have enough cash to afford to pay the suggested donation.

That's the kind of populist support Sanders' campaign has steadily been attracting since the U.S. senator from Vermont formally announced his candidacy in late April. Friday was no exception, with passion-filled people who think Sanders has proved himself the worthy champion of causes they care about the most, such as income inequality, climate change, Wall Street reform and further healthcare reforms. But, perhaps most importantly, they also think he can win the White House.

"Absolutely" he can win, said Joe Trinolone, 30, a former finance industry worker from Long Island, New York, who is studying mathematics at St. Joseph's University. "I mean, he's winning right now."

Sanders, during a fundraising speech Friday, ticked through the policies he cares about and areas of change he wants to see in Washington should he become president. At each turn, his blend of outrage, optimism and sly sarcasm brought raucous cheers from the crowd of 1,100. He rejected recent Wall Street Journal criticism of the high price tag of his proposals, including making public colleges and universities free, lowering so-called real unemployment by pumping funding into infrastructure repairs for the nation’s roads and bridges and implementing a universal healthcare system.

Instead, he pointed to European nations that already have those programs. He implored the crowd to think about what many of them were already talking about: that taking on the big-money interests in the United States that impede those sorts of policy changes is a shared moral obligation.

“Welcome to the revolution,” Sanders said, describing what he believes must happen to American politics. “We can accomplish all of this and more.” And the crowd ate it up.

When asked why they support Sanders, many described his candidacy as a movement. They love his policies, and have a hard time thinking of much they don’t like about him. They especially like that he has been a consistent voice during his time in Washington. That’s a big perceived difference between Sanders and his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton. Those "feeling the Bern" were split on whether they would consider voting for her if she becomes the nominee. Many were newcomers to political action but felt compelled to join the fray when they heard Sanders and his message.

“I’ve never been excited about a politician my entire life,” said Meira Marom, 34, a Brooklyn third-grade teacher with a master's degree in creative writing. When Marom started seeing social media posts about Sanders and reading about him, she decided to stop focusing her personal time on writing for herself. She now writes and publishes something about Sanders every day -- Dr. Seuss themes every Sunday, poems and parodies. “I decided this is the most worthy cause to put my rhymes to use.”

Sanders has seen an unexpected rise in the polls since he joined the race for the Democratic nomination shortly after the current national front-runner Clinton announced her candidacy. While Sanders was trailing Clinton by 21.4 percent in national averages of polls compiled by Real Clear Politics, a look at early nominating states like Iowa and New Hampshire paints a different picture of vulnerability for Clinton and strength for Sanders.

The two candidates are tied in Iowa, which constitutes a dramatic drop for Clinton and an impressive surge for Sanders, who has been distancing himself from Clinton in New Hampshire at the top of the Democratic pack since Aug. 25, when he jumped past her in the state for the first time. He currently leads there by 10.5 points.

The candidates are noticeably different in many ways, from policy prescription to fundraising strategy.

Clinton has moved leftward since announcing her candidacy, but she is still threatened by the populist appeal of Sanders, who has long championed the causes that seem to be coming into grace for the Democratic Party. While the candidates currently hold some very similar positions on issues such as immigration reform, gay rights, gun control and campaign finance reform, Sanders has been able to stake out positions to the left of Clinton on other issues that excite some vocal voters.

Among them are his strong anti-war and anti-government surveillance positions as well as his distaste for President Barack Obama's Trans Pacific Partnership trade deal. Sanders also has been a vocal critic of Wall Street and champion of financial reforms, and his stance on those issues has drawn attention to Clinton's cozy relationship with Wall Street executives and the huge paychecks she has received for speeches to large banks since leaving the U.S. State Department. For some Sanders supporters, though, the perception that Sanders has been a consistent proponent of these liberal policies, and cares about them more than winning, is key.

“It’s the message that supporting Bernie Sanders is not just voting on a horse in the race” that attracts Brian Dillon, a 28-year-old self-employed Web designer and developer for e-commerce, said Friday. Dillon has voted just one time in his life, but he has been organizing meetings to drum up support for Sanders.

Sanders's fundraising portfolio also is the reverse of Clinton's. While the former secretary of state is expected to spend somewhere north of $1 billion should she win the primary and head into the general election for 2016, the same has not been said of Sanders. Currently, Clinton has raised, through her campaign committee and super PACs associated with the campaign, $47.5 million, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics. Sanders, on the other hand, has raised just shy of $16.5 million, according to CRP data.

Their most startling difference in fundraising, however, can be seen in the size of the donations they're receiving. The Clinton campaign received 82 percent of its donations from large contributors, and her top industry donors, not including retired people, so far have been lawyers, business services and the financial industry.

In contrast, Sanders relies much more on small donations, which are defined as donations totaling $200 or less. So far, 69 percent of his contributions have come from small donors, and the biggest industries that have given to his campaign have been from the education, legal and healthcare sectors.

Who are those small donors? The types of people who showed up Friday. Some said they donate $25 to $30 a month to Sanders. Some said they have donated several hundred dollars since he jumped into the presidential race. Nearly all of them mentioned they don't earn a ton of money personally. One in particular, Machumu Sakulira, said he donated $500 before attending Friday’s event.

There is “no way” he would support a Clinton ticket, said Sakulira, a 31-year-old senior political science student at the University at Buffalo. He got on a bus Thursday night at 11 p.m. and arrived in New York at 7 a.m. for the Sanders speech. He said he was going back Friday night. “Bernie represents my interest. My vote is a moral choice, I don’t give it to somebody who doesn’t deserve it.”

www.ibtimes.com/election-2016-bernie-sanders-nyc-fundrais...

Eight foot up a telegraph pole on a route through an industrial estate. Not going to find many converts there.

Outside of the Town Hall theater on West 43rd Street in Manhattan, a crowd of smiling and optimistic people Friday overflowed into the one-way street. Delivery trucks and yellow taxi cabs creeped by, their engines engaged in a shouting match with Bennet Weiss, a man who bore a fleeting resemblance to the Democratic presidential candidate they were all there to support.

"We don't have billions of dollars! All we have are people wearing Bernie pins," Weiss yelled, a large black umbrella covered in Bernie Sanders campaign pins at his feet, catching drops of sweat from his brow. The Occupy Wall Street protester-turned-Sanders supporter urged the crowd to wear the pins at all times with no exception -- even in the shower -- and gave them away freely to anyone who said they didn't have enough cash to afford to pay the suggested donation.

That's the kind of populist support Sanders' campaign has steadily been attracting since the U.S. senator from Vermont formally announced his candidacy in late April. Friday was no exception, with passion-filled people who think Sanders has proved himself the worthy champion of causes they care about the most, such as income inequality, climate change, Wall Street reform and further healthcare reforms. But, perhaps most importantly, they also think he can win the White House.

"Absolutely" he can win, said Joe Trinolone, 30, a former finance industry worker from Long Island, New York, who is studying mathematics at St. Joseph's University. "I mean, he's winning right now."

Sanders, during a fundraising speech Friday, ticked through the policies he cares about and areas of change he wants to see in Washington should he become president. At each turn, his blend of outrage, optimism and sly sarcasm brought raucous cheers from the crowd of 1,100. He rejected recent Wall Street Journal criticism of the high price tag of his proposals, including making public colleges and universities free, lowering so-called real unemployment by pumping funding into infrastructure repairs for the nation’s roads and bridges and implementing a universal healthcare system.

Instead, he pointed to European nations that already have those programs. He implored the crowd to think about what many of them were already talking about: that taking on the big-money interests in the United States that impede those sorts of policy changes is a shared moral obligation.

“Welcome to the revolution,” Sanders said, describing what he believes must happen to American politics. “We can accomplish all of this and more.” And the crowd ate it up.

When asked why they support Sanders, many described his candidacy as a movement. They love his policies, and have a hard time thinking of much they don’t like about him. They especially like that he has been a consistent voice during his time in Washington. That’s a big perceived difference between Sanders and his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton. Those "feeling the Bern" were split on whether they would consider voting for her if she becomes the nominee. Many were newcomers to political action but felt compelled to join the fray when they heard Sanders and his message.

“I’ve never been excited about a politician my entire life,” said Meira Marom, 34, a Brooklyn third-grade teacher with a master's degree in creative writing. When Marom started seeing social media posts about Sanders and reading about him, she decided to stop focusing her personal time on writing for herself. She now writes and publishes something about Sanders every day -- Dr. Seuss themes every Sunday, poems and parodies. “I decided this is the most worthy cause to put my rhymes to use.”

Sanders has seen an unexpected rise in the polls since he joined the race for the Democratic nomination shortly after the current national front-runner Clinton announced her candidacy. While Sanders was trailing Clinton by 21.4 percent in national averages of polls compiled by Real Clear Politics, a look at early nominating states like Iowa and New Hampshire paints a different picture of vulnerability for Clinton and strength for Sanders.

The two candidates are tied in Iowa, which constitutes a dramatic drop for Clinton and an impressive surge for Sanders, who has been distancing himself from Clinton in New Hampshire at the top of the Democratic pack since Aug. 25, when he jumped past her in the state for the first time. He currently leads there by 10.5 points.

The candidates are noticeably different in many ways, from policy prescription to fundraising strategy.

Clinton has moved leftward since announcing her candidacy, but she is still threatened by the populist appeal of Sanders, who has long championed the causes that seem to be coming into grace for the Democratic Party. While the candidates currently hold some very similar positions on issues such as immigration reform, gay rights, gun control and campaign finance reform, Sanders has been able to stake out positions to the left of Clinton on other issues that excite some vocal voters.

Among them are his strong anti-war and anti-government surveillance positions as well as his distaste for President Barack Obama's Trans Pacific Partnership trade deal. Sanders also has been a vocal critic of Wall Street and champion of financial reforms, and his stance on those issues has drawn attention to Clinton's cozy relationship with Wall Street executives and the huge paychecks she has received for speeches to large banks since leaving the U.S. State Department. For some Sanders supporters, though, the perception that Sanders has been a consistent proponent of these liberal policies, and cares about them more than winning, is key.

“It’s the message that supporting Bernie Sanders is not just voting on a horse in the race” that attracts Brian Dillon, a 28-year-old self-employed Web designer and developer for e-commerce, said Friday. Dillon has voted just one time in his life, but he has been organizing meetings to drum up support for Sanders.

Sanders's fundraising portfolio also is the reverse of Clinton's. While the former secretary of state is expected to spend somewhere north of $1 billion should she win the primary and head into the general election for 2016, the same has not been said of Sanders. Currently, Clinton has raised, through her campaign committee and super PACs associated with the campaign, $47.5 million, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics. Sanders, on the other hand, has raised just shy of $16.5 million, according to CRP data.

Their most startling difference in fundraising, however, can be seen in the size of the donations they're receiving. The Clinton campaign received 82 percent of its donations from large contributors, and her top industry donors, not including retired people, so far have been lawyers, business services and the financial industry.

In contrast, Sanders relies much more on small donations, which are defined as donations totaling $200 or less. So far, 69 percent of his contributions have come from small donors, and the biggest industries that have given to his campaign have been from the education, legal and healthcare sectors.

Who are those small donors? The types of people who showed up Friday. Some said they donate $25 to $30 a month to Sanders. Some said they have donated several hundred dollars since he jumped into the presidential race. Nearly all of them mentioned they don't earn a ton of money personally. One in particular, Machumu Sakulira, said he donated $500 before attending Friday’s event.

There is “no way” he would support a Clinton ticket, said Sakulira, a 31-year-old senior political science student at the University at Buffalo. He got on a bus Thursday night at 11 p.m. and arrived in New York at 7 a.m. for the Sanders speech. He said he was going back Friday night. “Bernie represents my interest. My vote is a moral choice, I don’t give it to somebody who doesn’t deserve it.”

www.ibtimes.com/election-2016-bernie-sanders-nyc-fundrais...

Something tells me this old Triumph might have a bit of trouble making it to the top speed on its speedometer. 2009 All British Field Meet, VanDusen Botanical Garden, Vancouver. May 16, 2009.

Apologies for not keeping up on this the past few weeks. Today I resume. I miss the photos.

He dumped me.

Months ago.

So far, I've lost almost 50 lbs.

It's the medications for keeping my back pain under control. It's been a rough road. I'm finally on medication that doesn't make me high out of my mind. It's nice to have most of my thoughts back- though, motivation I'm still having a tough time with.

The pain eases a little each day- but some days it comes back full force. I'm trying to stay optimistic.

I suppose it's time to be very shallow and a little bitchy.

Meet my revenge body.

It's no longer his to enjoy!

Boy, that makes me gloat.

Outside of the Town Hall theater on West 43rd Street in Manhattan, a crowd of smiling and optimistic people Friday overflowed into the one-way street. Delivery trucks and yellow taxi cabs creeped by, their engines engaged in a shouting match with Bennet Weiss, a man who bore a fleeting resemblance to the Democratic presidential candidate they were all there to support.

"We don't have billions of dollars! All we have are people wearing Bernie pins," Weiss yelled, a large black umbrella covered in Bernie Sanders campaign pins at his feet, catching drops of sweat from his brow. The Occupy Wall Street protester-turned-Sanders supporter urged the crowd to wear the pins at all times with no exception -- even in the shower -- and gave them away freely to anyone who said they didn't have enough cash to afford to pay the suggested donation.

That's the kind of populist support Sanders' campaign has steadily been attracting since the U.S. senator from Vermont formally announced his candidacy in late April. Friday was no exception, with passion-filled people who think Sanders has proved himself the worthy champion of causes they care about the most, such as income inequality, climate change, Wall Street reform and further healthcare reforms. But, perhaps most importantly, they also think he can win the White House.

"Absolutely" he can win, said Joe Trinolone, 30, a former finance industry worker from Long Island, New York, who is studying mathematics at St. Joseph's University. "I mean, he's winning right now."

Sanders, during a fundraising speech Friday, ticked through the policies he cares about and areas of change he wants to see in Washington should he become president. At each turn, his blend of outrage, optimism and sly sarcasm brought raucous cheers from the crowd of 1,100. He rejected recent Wall Street Journal criticism of the high price tag of his proposals, including making public colleges and universities free, lowering so-called real unemployment by pumping funding into infrastructure repairs for the nation’s roads and bridges and implementing a universal healthcare system.

Instead, he pointed to European nations that already have those programs. He implored the crowd to think about what many of them were already talking about: that taking on the big-money interests in the United States that impede those sorts of policy changes is a shared moral obligation.

“Welcome to the revolution,” Sanders said, describing what he believes must happen to American politics. “We can accomplish all of this and more.” And the crowd ate it up.

When asked why they support Sanders, many described his candidacy as a movement. They love his policies, and have a hard time thinking of much they don’t like about him. They especially like that he has been a consistent voice during his time in Washington. That’s a big perceived difference between Sanders and his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton. Those "feeling the Bern" were split on whether they would consider voting for her if she becomes the nominee. Many were newcomers to political action but felt compelled to join the fray when they heard Sanders and his message.

“I’ve never been excited about a politician my entire life,” said Meira Marom, 34, a Brooklyn third-grade teacher with a master's degree in creative writing. When Marom started seeing social media posts about Sanders and reading about him, she decided to stop focusing her personal time on writing for herself. She now writes and publishes something about Sanders every day -- Dr. Seuss themes every Sunday, poems and parodies. “I decided this is the most worthy cause to put my rhymes to use.”

Sanders has seen an unexpected rise in the polls since he joined the race for the Democratic nomination shortly after the current national front-runner Clinton announced her candidacy. While Sanders was trailing Clinton by 21.4 percent in national averages of polls compiled by Real Clear Politics, a look at early nominating states like Iowa and New Hampshire paints a different picture of vulnerability for Clinton and strength for Sanders.

The two candidates are tied in Iowa, which constitutes a dramatic drop for Clinton and an impressive surge for Sanders, who has been distancing himself from Clinton in New Hampshire at the top of the Democratic pack since Aug. 25, when he jumped past her in the state for the first time. He currently leads there by 10.5 points.

The candidates are noticeably different in many ways, from policy prescription to fundraising strategy.

Clinton has moved leftward since announcing her candidacy, but she is still threatened by the populist appeal of Sanders, who has long championed the causes that seem to be coming into grace for the Democratic Party. While the candidates currently hold some very similar positions on issues such as immigration reform, gay rights, gun control and campaign finance reform, Sanders has been able to stake out positions to the left of Clinton on other issues that excite some vocal voters.

Among them are his strong anti-war and anti-government surveillance positions as well as his distaste for President Barack Obama's Trans Pacific Partnership trade deal. Sanders also has been a vocal critic of Wall Street and champion of financial reforms, and his stance on those issues has drawn attention to Clinton's cozy relationship with Wall Street executives and the huge paychecks she has received for speeches to large banks since leaving the U.S. State Department. For some Sanders supporters, though, the perception that Sanders has been a consistent proponent of these liberal policies, and cares about them more than winning, is key.

“It’s the message that supporting Bernie Sanders is not just voting on a horse in the race” that attracts Brian Dillon, a 28-year-old self-employed Web designer and developer for e-commerce, said Friday. Dillon has voted just one time in his life, but he has been organizing meetings to drum up support for Sanders.

Sanders's fundraising portfolio also is the reverse of Clinton's. While the former secretary of state is expected to spend somewhere north of $1 billion should she win the primary and head into the general election for 2016, the same has not been said of Sanders. Currently, Clinton has raised, through her campaign committee and super PACs associated with the campaign, $47.5 million, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics. Sanders, on the other hand, has raised just shy of $16.5 million, according to CRP data.

Their most startling difference in fundraising, however, can be seen in the size of the donations they're receiving. The Clinton campaign received 82 percent of its donations from large contributors, and her top industry donors, not including retired people, so far have been lawyers, business services and the financial industry.

In contrast, Sanders relies much more on small donations, which are defined as donations totaling $200 or less. So far, 69 percent of his contributions have come from small donors, and the biggest industries that have given to his campaign have been from the education, legal and healthcare sectors.

Who are those small donors? The types of people who showed up Friday. Some said they donate $25 to $30 a month to Sanders. Some said they have donated several hundred dollars since he jumped into the presidential race. Nearly all of them mentioned they don't earn a ton of money personally. One in particular, Machumu Sakulira, said he donated $500 before attending Friday’s event.

There is “no way” he would support a Clinton ticket, said Sakulira, a 31-year-old senior political science student at the University at Buffalo. He got on a bus Thursday night at 11 p.m. and arrived in New York at 7 a.m. for the Sanders speech. He said he was going back Friday night. “Bernie represents my interest. My vote is a moral choice, I don’t give it to somebody who doesn’t deserve it.”

www.ibtimes.com/election-2016-bernie-sanders-nyc-fundrais...

Outside of the Town Hall theater on West 43rd Street in Manhattan, a crowd of smiling and optimistic people Friday overflowed into the one-way street. Delivery trucks and yellow taxi cabs creeped by, their engines engaged in a shouting match with Bennet Weiss, a man who bore a fleeting resemblance to the Democratic presidential candidate they were all there to support.

"We don't have billions of dollars! All we have are people wearing Bernie pins," Weiss yelled, a large black umbrella covered in Bernie Sanders campaign pins at his feet, catching drops of sweat from his brow. The Occupy Wall Street protester-turned-Sanders supporter urged the crowd to wear the pins at all times with no exception -- even in the shower -- and gave them away freely to anyone who said they didn't have enough cash to afford to pay the suggested donation.

That's the kind of populist support Sanders' campaign has steadily been attracting since the U.S. senator from Vermont formally announced his candidacy in late April. Friday was no exception, with passion-filled people who think Sanders has proved himself the worthy champion of causes they care about the most, such as income inequality, climate change, Wall Street reform and further healthcare reforms. But, perhaps most importantly, they also think he can win the White House.

"Absolutely" he can win, said Joe Trinolone, 30, a former finance industry worker from Long Island, New York, who is studying mathematics at St. Joseph's University. "I mean, he's winning right now."

Sanders, during a fundraising speech Friday, ticked through the policies he cares about and areas of change he wants to see in Washington should he become president. At each turn, his blend of outrage, optimism and sly sarcasm brought raucous cheers from the crowd of 1,100. He rejected recent Wall Street Journal criticism of the high price tag of his proposals, including making public colleges and universities free, lowering so-called real unemployment by pumping funding into infrastructure repairs for the nation’s roads and bridges and implementing a universal healthcare system.

Instead, he pointed to European nations that already have those programs. He implored the crowd to think about what many of them were already talking about: that taking on the big-money interests in the United States that impede those sorts of policy changes is a shared moral obligation.

“Welcome to the revolution,” Sanders said, describing what he believes must happen to American politics. “We can accomplish all of this and more.” And the crowd ate it up.

When asked why they support Sanders, many described his candidacy as a movement. They love his policies, and have a hard time thinking of much they don’t like about him. They especially like that he has been a consistent voice during his time in Washington. That’s a big perceived difference between Sanders and his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton. Those "feeling the Bern" were split on whether they would consider voting for her if she becomes the nominee. Many were newcomers to political action but felt compelled to join the fray when they heard Sanders and his message.

“I’ve never been excited about a politician my entire life,” said Meira Marom, 34, a Brooklyn third-grade teacher with a master's degree in creative writing. When Marom started seeing social media posts about Sanders and reading about him, she decided to stop focusing her personal time on writing for herself. She now writes and publishes something about Sanders every day -- Dr. Seuss themes every Sunday, poems and parodies. “I decided this is the most worthy cause to put my rhymes to use.”

Sanders has seen an unexpected rise in the polls since he joined the race for the Democratic nomination shortly after the current national front-runner Clinton announced her candidacy. While Sanders was trailing Clinton by 21.4 percent in national averages of polls compiled by Real Clear Politics, a look at early nominating states like Iowa and New Hampshire paints a different picture of vulnerability for Clinton and strength for Sanders.

The two candidates are tied in Iowa, which constitutes a dramatic drop for Clinton and an impressive surge for Sanders, who has been distancing himself from Clinton in New Hampshire at the top of the Democratic pack since Aug. 25, when he jumped past her in the state for the first time. He currently leads there by 10.5 points.

The candidates are noticeably different in many ways, from policy prescription to fundraising strategy.

Clinton has moved leftward since announcing her candidacy, but she is still threatened by the populist appeal of Sanders, who has long championed the causes that seem to be coming into grace for the Democratic Party. While the candidates currently hold some very similar positions on issues such as immigration reform, gay rights, gun control and campaign finance reform, Sanders has been able to stake out positions to the left of Clinton on other issues that excite some vocal voters.

Among them are his strong anti-war and anti-government surveillance positions as well as his distaste for President Barack Obama's Trans Pacific Partnership trade deal. Sanders also has been a vocal critic of Wall Street and champion of financial reforms, and his stance on those issues has drawn attention to Clinton's cozy relationship with Wall Street executives and the huge paychecks she has received for speeches to large banks since leaving the U.S. State Department. For some Sanders supporters, though, the perception that Sanders has been a consistent proponent of these liberal policies, and cares about them more than winning, is key.

“It’s the message that supporting Bernie Sanders is not just voting on a horse in the race” that attracts Brian Dillon, a 28-year-old self-employed Web designer and developer for e-commerce, said Friday. Dillon has voted just one time in his life, but he has been organizing meetings to drum up support for Sanders.

Sanders's fundraising portfolio also is the reverse of Clinton's. While the former secretary of state is expected to spend somewhere north of $1 billion should she win the primary and head into the general election for 2016, the same has not been said of Sanders. Currently, Clinton has raised, through her campaign committee and super PACs associated with the campaign, $47.5 million, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics. Sanders, on the other hand, has raised just shy of $16.5 million, according to CRP data.

Their most startling difference in fundraising, however, can be seen in the size of the donations they're receiving. The Clinton campaign received 82 percent of its donations from large contributors, and her top industry donors, not including retired people, so far have been lawyers, business services and the financial industry.

In contrast, Sanders relies much more on small donations, which are defined as donations totaling $200 or less. So far, 69 percent of his contributions have come from small donors, and the biggest industries that have given to his campaign have been from the education, legal and healthcare sectors.

Who are those small donors? The types of people who showed up Friday. Some said they donate $25 to $30 a month to Sanders. Some said they have donated several hundred dollars since he jumped into the presidential race. Nearly all of them mentioned they don't earn a ton of money personally. One in particular, Machumu Sakulira, said he donated $500 before attending Friday’s event.

There is “no way” he would support a Clinton ticket, said Sakulira, a 31-year-old senior political science student at the University at Buffalo. He got on a bus Thursday night at 11 p.m. and arrived in New York at 7 a.m. for the Sanders speech. He said he was going back Friday night. “Bernie represents my interest. My vote is a moral choice, I don’t give it to somebody who doesn’t deserve it.”

www.ibtimes.com/election-2016-bernie-sanders-nyc-fundrais...

Outside of the Town Hall theater on West 43rd Street in Manhattan, a crowd of smiling and optimistic people Friday overflowed into the one-way street. Delivery trucks and yellow taxi cabs creeped by, their engines engaged in a shouting match with Bennet Weiss, a man who bore a fleeting resemblance to the Democratic presidential candidate they were all there to support.

"We don't have billions of dollars! All we have are people wearing Bernie pins," Weiss yelled, a large black umbrella covered in Bernie Sanders campaign pins at his feet, catching drops of sweat from his brow. The Occupy Wall Street protester-turned-Sanders supporter urged the crowd to wear the pins at all times with no exception -- even in the shower -- and gave them away freely to anyone who said they didn't have enough cash to afford to pay the suggested donation.

That's the kind of populist support Sanders' campaign has steadily been attracting since the U.S. senator from Vermont formally announced his candidacy in late April. Friday was no exception, with passion-filled people who think Sanders has proved himself the worthy champion of causes they care about the most, such as income inequality, climate change, Wall Street reform and further healthcare reforms. But, perhaps most importantly, they also think he can win the White House.

"Absolutely" he can win, said Joe Trinolone, 30, a former finance industry worker from Long Island, New York, who is studying mathematics at St. Joseph's University. "I mean, he's winning right now."

Sanders, during a fundraising speech Friday, ticked through the policies he cares about and areas of change he wants to see in Washington should he become president. At each turn, his blend of outrage, optimism and sly sarcasm brought raucous cheers from the crowd of 1,100. He rejected recent Wall Street Journal criticism of the high price tag of his proposals, including making public colleges and universities free, lowering so-called real unemployment by pumping funding into infrastructure repairs for the nation’s roads and bridges and implementing a universal healthcare system.

Instead, he pointed to European nations that already have those programs. He implored the crowd to think about what many of them were already talking about: that taking on the big-money interests in the United States that impede those sorts of policy changes is a shared moral obligation.

“Welcome to the revolution,” Sanders said, describing what he believes must happen to American politics. “We can accomplish all of this and more.” And the crowd ate it up.

When asked why they support Sanders, many described his candidacy as a movement. They love his policies, and have a hard time thinking of much they don’t like about him. They especially like that he has been a consistent voice during his time in Washington. That’s a big perceived difference between Sanders and his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton. Those "feeling the Bern" were split on whether they would consider voting for her if she becomes the nominee. Many were newcomers to political action but felt compelled to join the fray when they heard Sanders and his message.

“I’ve never been excited about a politician my entire life,” said Meira Marom, 34, a Brooklyn third-grade teacher with a master's degree in creative writing. When Marom started seeing social media posts about Sanders and reading about him, she decided to stop focusing her personal time on writing for herself. She now writes and publishes something about Sanders every day -- Dr. Seuss themes every Sunday, poems and parodies. “I decided this is the most worthy cause to put my rhymes to use.”

Sanders has seen an unexpected rise in the polls since he joined the race for the Democratic nomination shortly after the current national front-runner Clinton announced her candidacy. While Sanders was trailing Clinton by 21.4 percent in national averages of polls compiled by Real Clear Politics, a look at early nominating states like Iowa and New Hampshire paints a different picture of vulnerability for Clinton and strength for Sanders.

The two candidates are tied in Iowa, which constitutes a dramatic drop for Clinton and an impressive surge for Sanders, who has been distancing himself from Clinton in New Hampshire at the top of the Democratic pack since Aug. 25, when he jumped past her in the state for the first time. He currently leads there by 10.5 points.

The candidates are noticeably different in many ways, from policy prescription to fundraising strategy.

Clinton has moved leftward since announcing her candidacy, but she is still threatened by the populist appeal of Sanders, who has long championed the causes that seem to be coming into grace for the Democratic Party. While the candidates currently hold some very similar positions on issues such as immigration reform, gay rights, gun control and campaign finance reform, Sanders has been able to stake out positions to the left of Clinton on other issues that excite some vocal voters.

Among them are his strong anti-war and anti-government surveillance positions as well as his distaste for President Barack Obama's Trans Pacific Partnership trade deal. Sanders also has been a vocal critic of Wall Street and champion of financial reforms, and his stance on those issues has drawn attention to Clinton's cozy relationship with Wall Street executives and the huge paychecks she has received for speeches to large banks since leaving the U.S. State Department. For some Sanders supporters, though, the perception that Sanders has been a consistent proponent of these liberal policies, and cares about them more than winning, is key.

“It’s the message that supporting Bernie Sanders is not just voting on a horse in the race” that attracts Brian Dillon, a 28-year-old self-employed Web designer and developer for e-commerce, said Friday. Dillon has voted just one time in his life, but he has been organizing meetings to drum up support for Sanders.

Sanders's fundraising portfolio also is the reverse of Clinton's. While the former secretary of state is expected to spend somewhere north of $1 billion should she win the primary and head into the general election for 2016, the same has not been said of Sanders. Currently, Clinton has raised, through her campaign committee and super PACs associated with the campaign, $47.5 million, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics. Sanders, on the other hand, has raised just shy of $16.5 million, according to CRP data.

Their most startling difference in fundraising, however, can be seen in the size of the donations they're receiving. The Clinton campaign received 82 percent of its donations from large contributors, and her top industry donors, not including retired people, so far have been lawyers, business services and the financial industry.

In contrast, Sanders relies much more on small donations, which are defined as donations totaling $200 or less. So far, 69 percent of his contributions have come from small donors, and the biggest industries that have given to his campaign have been from the education, legal and healthcare sectors.

Who are those small donors? The types of people who showed up Friday. Some said they donate $25 to $30 a month to Sanders. Some said they have donated several hundred dollars since he jumped into the presidential race. Nearly all of them mentioned they don't earn a ton of money personally. One in particular, Machumu Sakulira, said he donated $500 before attending Friday’s event.

There is “no way” he would support a Clinton ticket, said Sakulira, a 31-year-old senior political science student at the University at Buffalo. He got on a bus Thursday night at 11 p.m. and arrived in New York at 7 a.m. for the Sanders speech. He said he was going back Friday night. “Bernie represents my interest. My vote is a moral choice, I don’t give it to somebody who doesn’t deserve it.”

www.ibtimes.com/election-2016-bernie-sanders-nyc-fundrais...

a storm clears over sebago lake

© paul noble images

Outside of the Town Hall theater on West 43rd Street in Manhattan, a crowd of smiling and optimistic people Friday overflowed into the one-way street. Delivery trucks and yellow taxi cabs creeped by, their engines engaged in a shouting match with Bennet Weiss, a man who bore a fleeting resemblance to the Democratic presidential candidate they were all there to support.

"We don't have billions of dollars! All we have are people wearing Bernie pins," Weiss yelled, a large black umbrella covered in Bernie Sanders campaign pins at his feet, catching drops of sweat from his brow. The Occupy Wall Street protester-turned-Sanders supporter urged the crowd to wear the pins at all times with no exception -- even in the shower -- and gave them away freely to anyone who said they didn't have enough cash to afford to pay the suggested donation.

That's the kind of populist support Sanders' campaign has steadily been attracting since the U.S. senator from Vermont formally announced his candidacy in late April. Friday was no exception, with passion-filled people who think Sanders has proved himself the worthy champion of causes they care about the most, such as income inequality, climate change, Wall Street reform and further healthcare reforms. But, perhaps most importantly, they also think he can win the White House.

"Absolutely" he can win, said Joe Trinolone, 30, a former finance industry worker from Long Island, New York, who is studying mathematics at St. Joseph's University. "I mean, he's winning right now."

Sanders, during a fundraising speech Friday, ticked through the policies he cares about and areas of change he wants to see in Washington should he become president. At each turn, his blend of outrage, optimism and sly sarcasm brought raucous cheers from the crowd of 1,100. He rejected recent Wall Street Journal criticism of the high price tag of his proposals, including making public colleges and universities free, lowering so-called real unemployment by pumping funding into infrastructure repairs for the nation’s roads and bridges and implementing a universal healthcare system.

Instead, he pointed to European nations that already have those programs. He implored the crowd to think about what many of them were already talking about: that taking on the big-money interests in the United States that impede those sorts of policy changes is a shared moral obligation.

“Welcome to the revolution,” Sanders said, describing what he believes must happen to American politics. “We can accomplish all of this and more.” And the crowd ate it up.

When asked why they support Sanders, many described his candidacy as a movement. They love his policies, and have a hard time thinking of much they don’t like about him. They especially like that he has been a consistent voice during his time in Washington. That’s a big perceived difference between Sanders and his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton. Those "feeling the Bern" were split on whether they would consider voting for her if she becomes the nominee. Many were newcomers to political action but felt compelled to join the fray when they heard Sanders and his message.

“I’ve never been excited about a politician my entire life,” said Meira Marom, 34, a Brooklyn third-grade teacher with a master's degree in creative writing. When Marom started seeing social media posts about Sanders and reading about him, she decided to stop focusing her personal time on writing for herself. She now writes and publishes something about Sanders every day -- Dr. Seuss themes every Sunday, poems and parodies. “I decided this is the most worthy cause to put my rhymes to use.”

Sanders has seen an unexpected rise in the polls since he joined the race for the Democratic nomination shortly after the current national front-runner Clinton announced her candidacy. While Sanders was trailing Clinton by 21.4 percent in national averages of polls compiled by Real Clear Politics, a look at early nominating states like Iowa and New Hampshire paints a different picture of vulnerability for Clinton and strength for Sanders.

The two candidates are tied in Iowa, which constitutes a dramatic drop for Clinton and an impressive surge for Sanders, who has been distancing himself from Clinton in New Hampshire at the top of the Democratic pack since Aug. 25, when he jumped past her in the state for the first time. He currently leads there by 10.5 points.

The candidates are noticeably different in many ways, from policy prescription to fundraising strategy.

Clinton has moved leftward since announcing her candidacy, but she is still threatened by the populist appeal of Sanders, who has long championed the causes that seem to be coming into grace for the Democratic Party. While the candidates currently hold some very similar positions on issues such as immigration reform, gay rights, gun control and campaign finance reform, Sanders has been able to stake out positions to the left of Clinton on other issues that excite some vocal voters.

Among them are his strong anti-war and anti-government surveillance positions as well as his distaste for President Barack Obama's Trans Pacific Partnership trade deal. Sanders also has been a vocal critic of Wall Street and champion of financial reforms, and his stance on those issues has drawn attention to Clinton's cozy relationship with Wall Street executives and the huge paychecks she has received for speeches to large banks since leaving the U.S. State Department. For some Sanders supporters, though, the perception that Sanders has been a consistent proponent of these liberal policies, and cares about them more than winning, is key.

“It’s the message that supporting Bernie Sanders is not just voting on a horse in the race” that attracts Brian Dillon, a 28-year-old self-employed Web designer and developer for e-commerce, said Friday. Dillon has voted just one time in his life, but he has been organizing meetings to drum up support for Sanders.

Sanders's fundraising portfolio also is the reverse of Clinton's. While the former secretary of state is expected to spend somewhere north of $1 billion should she win the primary and head into the general election for 2016, the same has not been said of Sanders. Currently, Clinton has raised, through her campaign committee and super PACs associated with the campaign, $47.5 million, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics. Sanders, on the other hand, has raised just shy of $16.5 million, according to CRP data.

Their most startling difference in fundraising, however, can be seen in the size of the donations they're receiving. The Clinton campaign received 82 percent of its donations from large contributors, and her top industry donors, not including retired people, so far have been lawyers, business services and the financial industry.

In contrast, Sanders relies much more on small donations, which are defined as donations totaling $200 or less. So far, 69 percent of his contributions have come from small donors, and the biggest industries that have given to his campaign have been from the education, legal and healthcare sectors.

Who are those small donors? The types of people who showed up Friday. Some said they donate $25 to $30 a month to Sanders. Some said they have donated several hundred dollars since he jumped into the presidential race. Nearly all of them mentioned they don't earn a ton of money personally. One in particular, Machumu Sakulira, said he donated $500 before attending Friday’s event.

There is “no way” he would support a Clinton ticket, said Sakulira, a 31-year-old senior political science student at the University at Buffalo. He got on a bus Thursday night at 11 p.m. and arrived in New York at 7 a.m. for the Sanders speech. He said he was going back Friday night. “Bernie represents my interest. My vote is a moral choice, I don’t give it to somebody who doesn’t deserve it.”

www.ibtimes.com/election-2016-bernie-sanders-nyc-fundrais...

I especially enjoy yellow roses! They are widely regarded as a cheerful optimistic image! To me they are really a delight! :-):-)

We all go through moments in life where we wonder our hypothetical life-glass is half full or half empty; we assess our viewpoint and determine if we are optimistic, pessimistic, or a blending of the two. As we begin the journey towards self-realization we are forced to understand how we view the world and accept that it is alright that we may view the world in a different light than other people.

Photographs are © Copyright Galactic Dreams (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on blogs, websites, or in other media without advance written permission from Galactic Dreams.

Outside of the Town Hall theater on West 43rd Street in Manhattan, a crowd of smiling and optimistic people Friday overflowed into the one-way street. Delivery trucks and yellow taxi cabs creeped by, their engines engaged in a shouting match with Bennet Weiss, a man who bore a fleeting resemblance to the Democratic presidential candidate they were all there to support.

"We don't have billions of dollars! All we have are people wearing Bernie pins," Weiss yelled, a large black umbrella covered in Bernie Sanders campaign pins at his feet, catching drops of sweat from his brow. The Occupy Wall Street protester-turned-Sanders supporter urged the crowd to wear the pins at all times with no exception -- even in the shower -- and gave them away freely to anyone who said they didn't have enough cash to afford to pay the suggested donation.

That's the kind of populist support Sanders' campaign has steadily been attracting since the U.S. senator from Vermont formally announced his candidacy in late April. Friday was no exception, with passion-filled people who think Sanders has proved himself the worthy champion of causes they care about the most, such as income inequality, climate change, Wall Street reform and further healthcare reforms. But, perhaps most importantly, they also think he can win the White House.

"Absolutely" he can win, said Joe Trinolone, 30, a former finance industry worker from Long Island, New York, who is studying mathematics at St. Joseph's University. "I mean, he's winning right now."

Sanders, during a fundraising speech Friday, ticked through the policies he cares about and areas of change he wants to see in Washington should he become president. At each turn, his blend of outrage, optimism and sly sarcasm brought raucous cheers from the crowd of 1,100. He rejected recent Wall Street Journal criticism of the high price tag of his proposals, including making public colleges and universities free, lowering so-called real unemployment by pumping funding into infrastructure repairs for the nation’s roads and bridges and implementing a universal healthcare system.

Instead, he pointed to European nations that already have those programs. He implored the crowd to think about what many of them were already talking about: that taking on the big-money interests in the United States that impede those sorts of policy changes is a shared moral obligation.

“Welcome to the revolution,” Sanders said, describing what he believes must happen to American politics. “We can accomplish all of this and more.” And the crowd ate it up.

When asked why they support Sanders, many described his candidacy as a movement. They love his policies, and have a hard time thinking of much they don’t like about him. They especially like that he has been a consistent voice during his time in Washington. That’s a big perceived difference between Sanders and his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton. Those "feeling the Bern" were split on whether they would consider voting for her if she becomes the nominee. Many were newcomers to political action but felt compelled to join the fray when they heard Sanders and his message.

“I’ve never been excited about a politician my entire life,” said Meira Marom, 34, a Brooklyn third-grade teacher with a master's degree in creative writing. When Marom started seeing social media posts about Sanders and reading about him, she decided to stop focusing her personal time on writing for herself. She now writes and publishes something about Sanders every day -- Dr. Seuss themes every Sunday, poems and parodies. “I decided this is the most worthy cause to put my rhymes to use.”

Sanders has seen an unexpected rise in the polls since he joined the race for the Democratic nomination shortly after the current national front-runner Clinton announced her candidacy. While Sanders was trailing Clinton by 21.4 percent in national averages of polls compiled by Real Clear Politics, a look at early nominating states like Iowa and New Hampshire paints a different picture of vulnerability for Clinton and strength for Sanders.

The two candidates are tied in Iowa, which constitutes a dramatic drop for Clinton and an impressive surge for Sanders, who has been distancing himself from Clinton in New Hampshire at the top of the Democratic pack since Aug. 25, when he jumped past her in the state for the first time. He currently leads there by 10.5 points.

The candidates are noticeably different in many ways, from policy prescription to fundraising strategy.

Clinton has moved leftward since announcing her candidacy, but she is still threatened by the populist appeal of Sanders, who has long championed the causes that seem to be coming into grace for the Democratic Party. While the candidates currently hold some very similar positions on issues such as immigration reform, gay rights, gun control and campaign finance reform, Sanders has been able to stake out positions to the left of Clinton on other issues that excite some vocal voters.

Among them are his strong anti-war and anti-government surveillance positions as well as his distaste for President Barack Obama's Trans Pacific Partnership trade deal. Sanders also has been a vocal critic of Wall Street and champion of financial reforms, and his stance on those issues has drawn attention to Clinton's cozy relationship with Wall Street executives and the huge paychecks she has received for speeches to large banks since leaving the U.S. State Department. For some Sanders supporters, though, the perception that Sanders has been a consistent proponent of these liberal policies, and cares about them more than winning, is key.

“It’s the message that supporting Bernie Sanders is not just voting on a horse in the race” that attracts Brian Dillon, a 28-year-old self-employed Web designer and developer for e-commerce, said Friday. Dillon has voted just one time in his life, but he has been organizing meetings to drum up support for Sanders.

Sanders's fundraising portfolio also is the reverse of Clinton's. While the former secretary of state is expected to spend somewhere north of $1 billion should she win the primary and head into the general election for 2016, the same has not been said of Sanders. Currently, Clinton has raised, through her campaign committee and super PACs associated with the campaign, $47.5 million, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics. Sanders, on the other hand, has raised just shy of $16.5 million, according to CRP data.

Their most startling difference in fundraising, however, can be seen in the size of the donations they're receiving. The Clinton campaign received 82 percent of its donations from large contributors, and her top industry donors, not including retired people, so far have been lawyers, business services and the financial industry.

In contrast, Sanders relies much more on small donations, which are defined as donations totaling $200 or less. So far, 69 percent of his contributions have come from small donors, and the biggest industries that have given to his campaign have been from the education, legal and healthcare sectors.

Who are those small donors? The types of people who showed up Friday. Some said they donate $25 to $30 a month to Sanders. Some said they have donated several hundred dollars since he jumped into the presidential race. Nearly all of them mentioned they don't earn a ton of money personally. One in particular, Machumu Sakulira, said he donated $500 before attending Friday’s event.

There is “no way” he would support a Clinton ticket, said Sakulira, a 31-year-old senior political science student at the University at Buffalo. He got on a bus Thursday night at 11 p.m. and arrived in New York at 7 a.m. for the Sanders speech. He said he was going back Friday night. “Bernie represents my interest. My vote is a moral choice, I don’t give it to somebody who doesn’t deserve it.”

www.ibtimes.com/election-2016-bernie-sanders-nyc-fundrais...

Coney Island, Brooklyn, New York City, New York, United States

The seven-story theater and office building recently known as the Shore Theater and originally known as the Coney Island Theater is one of the largest, most substantial structures in Coney Island in Brooklyn and, when it was constructed in 1925, represented the optimistic attitude of that period for the successful year-round development of Coney Island as a premier entertainment district. Seeking to change the atmosphere of the resort from the somewhat seedy aura it had developed in the 19th century into an area of wholesome family amusement, the city constructed the Boardwalk and extended subway service to Stillwell Avenue while private developers built enclosed amusement parks, restaurants and hotels. The Coney Island Theater was part of this redevelopment effort and featured live performances as well as motion picture screenings.

The neo Renaissance Revival style building was constructed and owned by the Chanin Construction Company and leased to the prominent Loew’s theater chain. This large building contained stores, a theater and offices, originally intended for businesses related to the theater industry. Faced with brick and terra-cotta and highlighted by stone and terra-cotta details this structure presents a grand and substantial counterpoint to Coney Island’s more modest one- and two-story buildings. The architects, Reilly & Hall, were leading theater architects of the day. Their selection for the design of the building is indicative of the desire, on the part of Coney Island’s civic and business leaders, to confer legitimacy, grandeur, and elegance on Coney Island. The building is organized in a tri-partite configuration, with a rusticated base, a buff brick shaft and a crown featuring a central arcade and balcony. The Shore Theater Building is a remarkably intact survivor of the early 20th century period when Coney Island was New York City’s playground, and was striving to become a year-round entertainment district for the entire city.

DESCRIPTION AND ANALYSIS

Coney Island

Although the western end of Coney Island had achieved some popularity as a rustic seaside resort early in the 19th century, it also gained an unsavory reputation for its gambling, pickpockets and prostitution. The real growth of Coney Island as a resort came about in the 1870s when five new railroads were constructed to connect the island with the rest of Brooklyn. These lines were built by businessmen and entrepreneurs who developed large hotels on the eastern end of the island and wanted to provide easy access to Brooklyn and Manhattan to attract a higher-end clientele than those who frequented the west side. The Manhattan Beach Hotel was opened in 1877 on the far eastern end of Coney Island, served by the New York and Manhattan Beach Railway with direct connections to lower Manhattan. Just to the west of this was the huge Brighton Beach Hotel opened in 1878, primarily drawing its clientele from Brooklyn’s middle-class business community.

Between Brighton Beach and the less savory environs of the far western point lay West Brighton, an area that became the island’s entertainment section and was served by the Prospect Park & Coney Island Railroad, commonly known as the Culver Line. Carrying numerous day-trippers away from their teeming tenements, this train terminated at a large depot near 17th Street across from Culver Plaza, a spacious open area filled with colorful flowers. West Brighton became the site of numerous bathing pavilions, restaurants, saloons, variety shows, small stores, games and unusual attractions such as “Lucy the Elephant” (destroyed by fire in 1896) and the Iron Tower (imported from the Philadelphia Centennial of 1876). West Brighton became “Coney’s true entertainment district, attracting the lion’s share of the island’s visitors.”

By the end of the 19th century a series of devastating fires opened up vast tracts of land for redevelopment and the West Brighton section became home to a new type of diversion: the enclosed amusement park. In 1895 Paul Boyton’s Sea Lion Park opened, quickly succeeded in 1897 by George C. Tilyou’s legendary Steeplechase Park, and Coney Island took on a different mien. These parks, along with Luna Park (opened in 1903) and Dreamland (opened in 1904) offered thrilling, gravity-defying mechanical rides as well as exotic fantasy architecture shimmering with millions of electric lights, sideshows, live entertainment, theatrical reenactments, music and dance halls, bathing pavilions, and eateries.

It was during the first decades of the 20th century, with the advent of the great amusement parks, that the idea of the “New Coney Island” began to take shape. The “New Coney Island” was a notion promulgated by some Coney business leaders to turn Coney Island into a year-round resort, similar to Atlantic City. Chief among the goals of the “New Coney Island” was to slough off the seedy, somewhat dangerous reputation of the late 19th century, and replace it with a more wholesome image. The enclosed parks all banned alcohol, and required patrons to pay an admission fee. It was believed that this would help to keep out patrons perceived as undesirable. Several civic organizations began calling for the construction of a boardwalk, which would provide visitors with an important public amenity.

The Boardwalk opened in 1920, the same year subway service was extended to Coney Island. Three years later, the Coney Island Chamber of Commerce was organized, with the goal of “developing Coney Island on a larger and broader scale.” With the support and promotion of the Coney Island Chamber of Commerce, several new buildings and amusements were erected. These included the (second) Child’s Restaurant on the Boardwalk, the Cyclone Roller Coaster, the Wonder Wheel, the Stillwell Avenue subway terminal, the Half Moon Hotel, Stauch’s Baths, the RKO Tilyou Theater, and the Coney Island Theater. The Coney Island Theater Building is one of the few structures still extant from this period. Other surviving features include the Wonder Wheel, the Cyclone and the Child’s Restaurant (all designated New York City Landmarks) on the Boardwalk. By decade’s end, Coney Island had been transformed once more.

The Coney Island Theater Building

This large, intact building rising on the Coney Island skyline is a prominent neo Renaissance Revival style structure that expresses, through its size and style, the aspirations of Coney Island’s boosters in the 1920s. The Coney Island Theater Building, most recently known as the Shore Theater Building, was constructed as a fireproof structure on part of the site of the former Culver Railroad line depot (replaced by the newly extended subway). A comment by Irwin S. Chanin, president of the Chanin Construction Company who was the developer of this building indicated a concern for changing the atmosphere at Coney Island. “We realized the great need in Coney Island for an all-year amusement, and I believe we have satisfied this need. We spared no expense to provide adequate facilities that will attract the finest business and amusement ventures.”

By the booming 1920s, with the Jazz Age in full swing, the culture of Coney Island was fully formed. The construction of the Half Moon Hotel in 1927, the first major hotel to be built in Coney Island since the days of the great resorts of the late 1800s, along with the completion of the newly reconstructed and publicly accessible Boardwalk, was to be a harbinger of Coney’s direction for the future. The construction of the Coney Island Theater was part and parcel of this movement. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle reported in May, 1925 that “[the theater] will be the first of its kind at the resort and the forerunner of similar structures in the movement to make Coney Island an all-year amusement resort.” Expanding upon this theme, Irwin S. Chanin continued,

The resort has the greatest population area in the country to draw from, and nothing has prevented it from being an all-year amusement place but the present type of structures, which for the most part are built only for summer use. With the subway terminating at Surf Avenue, the boardwalk extending the full length of the ocean front and the adequate police regulations, nothing can now stand in the way of its advancement.

These bold intentions are also visible in the choice of the architectural firm for the theater building. Reilly & Hall were noted theater architects of the 1920s. Some of their most important commissions were New York’s Sheridan Theater (now demolished) and the Newton Theater in Newton, New Jersey. Upon the opening of the New Jersey theater, a local newspaper, the Sussex County Democrat remarked that,

These young men have, in a short time, impressed theatre owners with their unusual ability, as operators of exquisite theatres and supervised the Tivoli Theatre in Newark, the Sheridan Theatre in New York, the Strand Theatre in Schenectady, and are engaged at present in directing the work on the Coney Island Theatre which, when completed, will rival the best picture palaces of the country.

The firm’s choice of material also indicates the ambitious building campaign. Limestone, brick, and terra cotta were used, rather than wood, as had been the custom at Coney Island. Additionally, the building is not merely a movie theater, but a seven-story “Coney Island Theater Building,” complete with offices intended to be occupied by organizations related to the entertainment industry. With buildings such as this theater and the Half Moon Hotel, the business community of Coney Island was announcing the area’s legitimacy and its aspirations.

Indeed, a 1925 Brooklyn Eagle headline announced, “$2,000,000 Theater and Office Building Reflects Transformation of Coney Island.”

The theater was immediately leased to the prominent Loew’s movie theater chain, an organization that was expanding its holdings throughout the city and beyond.

Chanin Construction Company

The Chanin Construction Company, developers of the Coney Island Theater Building, was founded in 1919 by Irwin S. Chanin (1892–1988) and his brother Henry (1893–1973), an accountant. Irwin was graduated from the Cooper Union School of Engineering in 1915. Beginning with modest residences in Bensonhurst, the firm quickly expanded and by the late 1920s, it was responsible for some of New York’s most significant buildings, including the Century and Majestic Apartments on Central Park West, and the Chanin Building (all designated New York City Landmarks). Indeed, a 1929 profile of the company in The New Yorker notes that “What is unusual about the Chanins’ story is that their achievements are visible; a whole city of scattered buildings, a hundred and forty-one of them in New York and Brooklyn.” Henry was responsible for the day-to-day management of the firm, while Irwin was the artistic visionary. Two other brothers, Samuel and Aron, also played a role in the Chanin Construction Company.

Among their numerous projects were many theaters. One of the earliest was the Roxy Theater, known as the “Cathedral of Motion Pictures” (demolished) followed by the Biltmore Theater; the Forty-Sixth Street Theater; the Mansfield Theater; the Theater Masque; The Royale Theater; and the Majestic Theater. Irwin Chanin had distinct ideas about theater design. The theme of fantasy and escape, of taking people away from their everyday lives was always uppermost in Chanin’s mind. The comfort of the theatergoer and performer was also paramount. The Chanin Construction Company built theaters with wide aisles, wide seats, roomy entry foyers, ample dressing rooms and good acoustics.

The Loew’s Corporation

From the beginning, this theater was leased and operated by the Loew’s theater chain. Marcus Loew (1870 – 1927), the company founder, was born on Manhattan’s Lower East Side and had an early career as a furrier. While working in this field Loew met Adolph Zukor, who was also in the fur business, and Morris Kohn and the three began investing in residential real estate. When Zukor and Kohn invested in a penny arcade on 14th Street, Loew watched the business thrive and was invited to join the partnership. Soon after, Loew began a competing establishment with an arcade on 23rd Street. By 1907 Loew’s company had a nationwide chain of 3,000 nickelodeons. Loew then purchased Watson’s Cozy Corner, a so-called low vaudeville theater in downtown Brooklyn, transformed it into a genuine movie palace and renamed it the Royal Theatre, charging 10 cents for admission, which was twice the standard. Loew began to expand his business rapidly, taking control of several large theaters in Manhattan and then constructing new ones, the first being the National Theatre in the Bronx in 1910. By 1911 a newly reorganized company - Loew’s Theatrical Enterprises – had purchased or taken over the management of dozens of theaters across the country.

During the second decade of the 20th century, studios and audiences had embraced full-length feature films. Zukor’s company had created the earliest essays of this new type and by 1919, Loew was convinced that this was the future of the industry. He changed his company’s name one again to Loew’s Incorporated and acquired Metro Pictures Corporation, a small existing movie production company. Loew’s Inc. then started producing its own movies in addition to owning or managing the theaters in which they would be shown. One of their first productions, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse with Rudolph Valentino, which premiered in 1921, was a smash and with it Loew’s Inc. became a force in the motion-picture industry. The firm embarked upon an extensive theater-building campaign of which the apogee was the construction of the Loew’s State Theater in 1921. Designed by legendary theater architect Thomas W. Lamb, the construction of this theater was a “major event in Loew’s progress [and] fulfilled his dream of possessing a big vaudeville-picture palace in the nation’s theatrical center, Times Square.” If a location could vie with Times Square as a center of entertainment and amusement, it was Coney Island. Although Loew’s Inc. leased rather than owned the new theater, when it opened in 1925 the new building was named the Loew’s Coney Island Theater.

Reilly & Hall

Paul C. Reilly, (1890 – 1984)

Douglas Pairman Hall (1880 – 1945)

Reilly, a native of New York City, was graduated from the Columbia University School of Architecture. In addition to the design of several theaters, Reilly was closely associated with the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York, and served for a period as the architect of St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Among his church commissions were the Sacred Heart Cathedral in Newark and the Church of Our Saviour on Park Avenue and East 38th Street in Manhattan. Other works include St. Ephrem’s Church, Brooklyn and the Church of St. Peter Claver in Montclair, New Jersey.

Hall, a Scotsman (like Lamb), immigrated to America in 1912. He was graduated from the University of Edinburgh and received his architectural degree from the Royal Institute of Architecture in London. Hall developed a reputation as a theater architect, and was responsible for the design of more than 50 theaters in the New York area.

Early in their careers, both Reilly and Hall were employed by the firm of Thomas W. Lamb, theater architect, where Reilly held the position of chief designer. By 1920, the pair formed a partnership and the firm Reilly & Hall occupied an office at 749 Fifth Avenue. Though fruitful, the venture does not appear to have lasted long. By 1928, there is no longer a listing for Reilly & Hall, and Hall is a sole practitioner with an office on East 45th Street. Reilly opened his own office in 1930 on lower Fifth Avenue.

Neo Renaissance Revival Style and the Movies

The 1920s was an era of tremendous growth in the development of movie theater buildings. Often constructed by the studios to showcase their films, theaters were seen as crucial advertising. If the theater was elegant, if it served to enhance the escapism of the movie-going experience, if the eye could be continually delighted, the patron would return week after week. Some theaters were developed as grand “movie palaces” with fantastic interiors that added to the total experience of the invented world on the screen.

Others were dressed in historical revivalist styles, still popular in the 1920s. Of these, there were many variants, including Italianate and French. Based on European precedents of the Renaissance, Baroque, and classical, the style is characterized by rational planning, with classical elements like balustrades and prominent cornices, restrained facades, and a light palette. The neo Renaissance revival style (popular in the 20th century) was an outgrowth of the earlier Renaissance Revival style, which was in vogue beginning in the 1880s. Buildings constructed in these styles ranged from public buildings like theaters and municipal structures to private homes, such as row houses or town houses. These historical revival styles suggested sophistication, wealth, and class. For a movie theater to be outfitted in such architectural clothing communicated the serious side of the Loew’s Coney Island Theater. Its builders intended the structure to evoke high-brow entertainment and edification, as part of Coney Island’s more dignified aspirations at this time.

History of the Loew’s Theater

The Loew’s Coney Island Theater opened on June 17, 1925. Marcus Loew himself presided, and with typical show-business bravura promised an array of stage, screen, and radio stars in attendance. Those who were scheduled to attend included Johnny Hines, Barbara Lamarr, Mae Busch, Ben Lyon, John Irving Fisher, Texas Guinan, Dorothy Mackaill, Virginia Lee Corbin, and John Lowe. Builder Irwin S. Chanin declared, “Here all of the island arrive, and here we hope to make the corner a sort of Coney Island ‘Broadway and 42nd Street.’” During the first week of operation, the stage was given over to Violet and Daisy Hilton, the famed Hilton Sisters.

Built primarily as a movie theater, the Loew’s Coney Island also featured live vaudeville entertainment, as Loew’s included live performances in many of its theaters to bolster the box office.

The Loew’s Coney Island Theater remained under the control of Loew’s Incorporated until 1964. Spaces on the ground floor housed small shops or restaurants, and various offices were located in the upper floors. Some of these businesses included Nedick’s, Garcia y Vega Cigars and Admiration Cigars. The office building housed such varied tenants as Angelo Paino & Co., Inc. (building contractors); Belpark Construction Corporation; and a local draft board.

By the end of 1964, Loew’s Inc. lost control of the theater, and it became the Brandt Shore Theater. As the Shore Theater, movies were shown exclusively, although by the end of 1965, the management announced that the space would become a legitimate theater with musicals, revues, and plays. During this period, some of the offerings included “Let’s Dance,” “The Jewel Box Revue,” and “Bagels and Yox.” By April 1966, burlesque operator Leroy C. Griffith was staging shows at the Shore; thereafter, films resumed being shown along with live entertainment.

It appears that the era of live entertainment in the building was short-lived. Films returned exclusively and by the early 1970s, it had become an adult venue. In 1972 the orchestra level of the theater was converted to a bingo hall and during the 1970s, the Gay Way Bar was a tenant in the ground floor corner retail space. In the 1980s, a branch of Kansas Fried Chicken occupied the corner store. During the late 1960s and through the 1970s, tenants in the office space above included a dress manufacturer, a Medicaid office, and a Head Start nursery program. The building is currently vacant.

Description Surf Avenue Façade: The Shore Theater Building is located on the northwest corner of Stillwell and Surf Avenues. The building, including the ground floor storefronts, is vacant. Scaffolding projects at the first floor cornice line and covers the marquee which is located at the center of the seven-bay wide facade. The storefronts are non-historic and are covered by roll-down iron grilles. The westernmost opening on this facade is for vehicular access and is covered by a solid, roll-down gate. A pedestrian entrance is located in the bay just to the east of this. It has a stone surround, with a rope molding framing the doorway and a stone plaque carved with the name, “Coney Island Theatre Building” above. This opening is also covered by a solid metal gate. Another doorway under the marquee is also surrounded by dressed stone blocks, as are the end piers on both facades.

Above the base is a piano nobile faced with terra cotta molded to replicate rusticated limestone. This level has double-height, round-arched windows with one-over-one metal replacement sash. Within each arched opening the top part has non-historic metal infill, while the spandrels beneath the windows feature terra-cotta panels with foliate designs. This section of the building is capped by a narrow cornice formed by a terra-cotta dentil molding and a series of stone moldings.

Floors three through five are faced with buff-colored brick and have unadorned, rectangular window openings, set in pairs. The top of this level is marked by a dentil course of terra cotta. The sixth floor has the same window pattern as below, but the windows are framed by white terra cotta and the panels between the windows are faced with square white terra-cotta tiles set on the diagonal. The top of the sixth story has a broad, terra-cotta frieze ornamented with circles and classical foliate designs and topped by a terra-cotta cornice. All of the sash in the windows on this facade has been replaced.

The brick-faced seventh floor consists of a central pavilion, five-bays wide, with single-bay setbacks at the eastern and western ends of the facade. These setback bays are fronted by small terraces set behind terra-cotta balustrades and are topped by a brick dentil course and terracotta coping. The top of each round-arched window has been filled with a terra-cotta panel. The round-arched windows of the central pavilion have brick moldings and terra-cotta keystones, with round, flat terra-cotta panels inset into the brick in the spandrels between the arches. Two additional round-headed windows are located to the outside of this central area and these windows have terra-cotta moldings and keystones and sit above small panels of terra-cotta ornament. A broad balcony projects in front of the central five, round-arched windows of this level. Its underside is faced with terra cotta and it is supported on ornate terra-cotta brackets, and topped by a delicate, classically-inspired iron railing. All of the windows on the seventh story have replacement, one-over-one metal sash and the upper areas of the round-arched windows have been filled in. The central area of this level is capped by a projecting, overhanging terracotta cornice with modillions. A broad, bronze frieze ornamented by moresque fretwork sitting on a terra-cotta rope molding is also part of this capping element.

At the southeastern corner of the building a neon blade sign is affixed between the third and sixth floors. The sign reads “SHORE.” Stillwell Avenue façade: The east façade, along Stillwell Avenue, exhibits the narrow side of the seven-story office tower with the undecorated brick facade of the movie theater, about half its height, extending northward beyond it. The design of this facade of the office building is similar to that on Surf Avenue. The ground floor storefronts are vacant and covered by grilles. The double-height piano nobile is faced with terra cotta and pierced by three large, round-headed windows. Between the two northernmost windows are two smaller rectangular window openings, one above the other. The large, northernmost window has its original metal sash, while the other windows have replacement sash. The next four stories have rectangular window openings, with a few of the windows on the northern side of each level retaining their original two-over-two wood sash. The window pattern on these floors is 2-1-2-1-1. The moldings and decorative treatment are the same on this facade as on Surf Avenue. At the top floor level are three round-headed windows flanked by a single rectangular window on each side. The central windows have non-historic infill at the top of the windows, and all have non-historic one-overone sash. The side windows are capped by inset round, terra-cotta circles and the northernmost window has small paned, double-hung sash.

The painted side wall of the theater extends to the north behind the office building. There is a small entrance door at the ground level and a variety of small window openings at the second story level, either blocked closed or filled by non-historic sash. A covered metal emergency stairway steps down along this facade, toward the northern side of the building. A small non-historic storefront is located at this side of the facade along with a doorway near the top of the building, fronted by a metal balcony, with a ladder leading to the roof. West façade: The western façade has two sections, the office building and the other side of the movie theater. Both are not designed. The side of the office building is faced with buff brick and features three vertical columns of rectangular, one-over-one double-hung replacement windows. The top of the building features three setbacks, and coping stones are evident at the top. The movie theater is faced in painted brick with a covered emergency stairway that steps down toward the rear. North façade: The northern facade consists of two angled blank painted brick walls, projecting outward slightly and forming the end of the movie theater.

- From the 2010 NYCLPC Landmark Designation Report

:نظرة التفائل

هي المفتاح لبدايات جديدة

Not sure whether they are being optimistic, deluded or reckless. It wants to be a small party.

Outside of the Town Hall theater on West 43rd Street in Manhattan, a crowd of smiling and optimistic people Friday overflowed into the one-way street. Delivery trucks and yellow taxi cabs creeped by, their engines engaged in a shouting match with Bennet Weiss, a man who bore a fleeting resemblance to the Democratic presidential candidate they were all there to support.

"We don't have billions of dollars! All we have are people wearing Bernie pins," Weiss yelled, a large black umbrella covered in Bernie Sanders campaign pins at his feet, catching drops of sweat from his brow. The Occupy Wall Street protester-turned-Sanders supporter urged the crowd to wear the pins at all times with no exception -- even in the shower -- and gave them away freely to anyone who said they didn't have enough cash to afford to pay the suggested donation.

That's the kind of populist support Sanders' campaign has steadily been attracting since the U.S. senator from Vermont formally announced his candidacy in late April. Friday was no exception, with passion-filled people who think Sanders has proved himself the worthy champion of causes they care about the most, such as income inequality, climate change, Wall Street reform and further healthcare reforms. But, perhaps most importantly, they also think he can win the White House.

"Absolutely" he can win, said Joe Trinolone, 30, a former finance industry worker from Long Island, New York, who is studying mathematics at St. Joseph's University. "I mean, he's winning right now."

Sanders, during a fundraising speech Friday, ticked through the policies he cares about and areas of change he wants to see in Washington should he become president. At each turn, his blend of outrage, optimism and sly sarcasm brought raucous cheers from the crowd of 1,100. He rejected recent Wall Street Journal criticism of the high price tag of his proposals, including making public colleges and universities free, lowering so-called real unemployment by pumping funding into infrastructure repairs for the nation’s roads and bridges and implementing a universal healthcare system.

Instead, he pointed to European nations that already have those programs. He implored the crowd to think about what many of them were already talking about: that taking on the big-money interests in the United States that impede those sorts of policy changes is a shared moral obligation.

“Welcome to the revolution,” Sanders said, describing what he believes must happen to American politics. “We can accomplish all of this and more.” And the crowd ate it up.

When asked why they support Sanders, many described his candidacy as a movement. They love his policies, and have a hard time thinking of much they don’t like about him. They especially like that he has been a consistent voice during his time in Washington. That’s a big perceived difference between Sanders and his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton. Those "feeling the Bern" were split on whether they would consider voting for her if she becomes the nominee. Many were newcomers to political action but felt compelled to join the fray when they heard Sanders and his message.

“I’ve never been excited about a politician my entire life,” said Meira Marom, 34, a Brooklyn third-grade teacher with a master's degree in creative writing. When Marom started seeing social media posts about Sanders and reading about him, she decided to stop focusing her personal time on writing for herself. She now writes and publishes something about Sanders every day -- Dr. Seuss themes every Sunday, poems and parodies. “I decided this is the most worthy cause to put my rhymes to use.”

Sanders has seen an unexpected rise in the polls since he joined the race for the Democratic nomination shortly after the current national front-runner Clinton announced her candidacy. While Sanders was trailing Clinton by 21.4 percent in national averages of polls compiled by Real Clear Politics, a look at early nominating states like Iowa and New Hampshire paints a different picture of vulnerability for Clinton and strength for Sanders.

The two candidates are tied in Iowa, which constitutes a dramatic drop for Clinton and an impressive surge for Sanders, who has been distancing himself from Clinton in New Hampshire at the top of the Democratic pack since Aug. 25, when he jumped past her in the state for the first time. He currently leads there by 10.5 points.

The candidates are noticeably different in many ways, from policy prescription to fundraising strategy.

Clinton has moved leftward since announcing her candidacy, but she is still threatened by the populist appeal of Sanders, who has long championed the causes that seem to be coming into grace for the Democratic Party. While the candidates currently hold some very similar positions on issues such as immigration reform, gay rights, gun control and campaign finance reform, Sanders has been able to stake out positions to the left of Clinton on other issues that excite some vocal voters.

Among them are his strong anti-war and anti-government surveillance positions as well as his distaste for President Barack Obama's Trans Pacific Partnership trade deal. Sanders also has been a vocal critic of Wall Street and champion of financial reforms, and his stance on those issues has drawn attention to Clinton's cozy relationship with Wall Street executives and the huge paychecks she has received for speeches to large banks since leaving the U.S. State Department. For some Sanders supporters, though, the perception that Sanders has been a consistent proponent of these liberal policies, and cares about them more than winning, is key.

“It’s the message that supporting Bernie Sanders is not just voting on a horse in the race” that attracts Brian Dillon, a 28-year-old self-employed Web designer and developer for e-commerce, said Friday. Dillon has voted just one time in his life, but he has been organizing meetings to drum up support for Sanders.

Sanders's fundraising portfolio also is the reverse of Clinton's. While the former secretary of state is expected to spend somewhere north of $1 billion should she win the primary and head into the general election for 2016, the same has not been said of Sanders. Currently, Clinton has raised, through her campaign committee and super PACs associated with the campaign, $47.5 million, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics. Sanders, on the other hand, has raised just shy of $16.5 million, according to CRP data.

Their most startling difference in fundraising, however, can be seen in the size of the donations they're receiving. The Clinton campaign received 82 percent of its donations from large contributors, and her top industry donors, not including retired people, so far have been lawyers, business services and the financial industry.

In contrast, Sanders relies much more on small donations, which are defined as donations totaling $200 or less. So far, 69 percent of his contributions have come from small donors, and the biggest industries that have given to his campaign have been from the education, legal and healthcare sectors.

Who are those small donors? The types of people who showed up Friday. Some said they donate $25 to $30 a month to Sanders. Some said they have donated several hundred dollars since he jumped into the presidential race. Nearly all of them mentioned they don't earn a ton of money personally. One in particular, Machumu Sakulira, said he donated $500 before attending Friday’s event.

There is “no way” he would support a Clinton ticket, said Sakulira, a 31-year-old senior political science student at the University at Buffalo. He got on a bus Thursday night at 11 p.m. and arrived in New York at 7 a.m. for the Sanders speech. He said he was going back Friday night. “Bernie represents my interest. My vote is a moral choice, I don’t give it to somebody who doesn’t deserve it.”

www.ibtimes.com/election-2016-bernie-sanders-nyc-fundrais...

Ok, so here it is, I just love it. I mean I'm really obsessed with it, really " When someone hurts you cry a river, build a bridge and get over it!" tell me something more beautiful, deep, optimistic and more true than this!

A big fox cub pronks ...hopefully - but probably unwisely...

I am a Kent artist and enjoy watching my pets and other beasties, and try to capture their antics in paint.

Similar Original Watercolours available via ebay as 'greypepper71' bids starting at £10.99.

"http://fineartamerica.com/profiles/2-debra-hall"

"https://www.facebook.com/GreyPepperArt"

Outside of the Town Hall theater on West 43rd Street in Manhattan, a crowd of smiling and optimistic people Friday overflowed into the one-way street. Delivery trucks and yellow taxi cabs creeped by, their engines engaged in a shouting match with Bennet Weiss, a man who bore a fleeting resemblance to the Democratic presidential candidate they were all there to support.

"We don't have billions of dollars! All we have are people wearing Bernie pins," Weiss yelled, a large black umbrella covered in Bernie Sanders campaign pins at his feet, catching drops of sweat from his brow. The Occupy Wall Street protester-turned-Sanders supporter urged the crowd to wear the pins at all times with no exception -- even in the shower -- and gave them away freely to anyone who said they didn't have enough cash to afford to pay the suggested donation.

That's the kind of populist support Sanders' campaign has steadily been attracting since the U.S. senator from Vermont formally announced his candidacy in late April. Friday was no exception, with passion-filled people who think Sanders has proved himself the worthy champion of causes they care about the most, such as income inequality, climate change, Wall Street reform and further healthcare reforms. But, perhaps most importantly, they also think he can win the White House.

"Absolutely" he can win, said Joe Trinolone, 30, a former finance industry worker from Long Island, New York, who is studying mathematics at St. Joseph's University. "I mean, he's winning right now."

Sanders, during a fundraising speech Friday, ticked through the policies he cares about and areas of change he wants to see in Washington should he become president. At each turn, his blend of outrage, optimism and sly sarcasm brought raucous cheers from the crowd of 1,100. He rejected recent Wall Street Journal criticism of the high price tag of his proposals, including making public colleges and universities free, lowering so-called real unemployment by pumping funding into infrastructure repairs for the nation’s roads and bridges and implementing a universal healthcare system.

Instead, he pointed to European nations that already have those programs. He implored the crowd to think about what many of them were already talking about: that taking on the big-money interests in the United States that impede those sorts of policy changes is a shared moral obligation.

“Welcome to the revolution,” Sanders said, describing what he believes must happen to American politics. “We can accomplish all of this and more.” And the crowd ate it up.

When asked why they support Sanders, many described his candidacy as a movement. They love his policies, and have a hard time thinking of much they don’t like about him. They especially like that he has been a consistent voice during his time in Washington. That’s a big perceived difference between Sanders and his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton. Those "feeling the Bern" were split on whether they would consider voting for her if she becomes the nominee. Many were newcomers to political action but felt compelled to join the fray when they heard Sanders and his message.

“I’ve never been excited about a politician my entire life,” said Meira Marom, 34, a Brooklyn third-grade teacher with a master's degree in creative writing. When Marom started seeing social media posts about Sanders and reading about him, she decided to stop focusing her personal time on writing for herself. She now writes and publishes something about Sanders every day -- Dr. Seuss themes every Sunday, poems and parodies. “I decided this is the most worthy cause to put my rhymes to use.”

Sanders has seen an unexpected rise in the polls since he joined the race for the Democratic nomination shortly after the current national front-runner Clinton announced her candidacy. While Sanders was trailing Clinton by 21.4 percent in national averages of polls compiled by Real Clear Politics, a look at early nominating states like Iowa and New Hampshire paints a different picture of vulnerability for Clinton and strength for Sanders.

The two candidates are tied in Iowa, which constitutes a dramatic drop for Clinton and an impressive surge for Sanders, who has been distancing himself from Clinton in New Hampshire at the top of the Democratic pack since Aug. 25, when he jumped past her in the state for the first time. He currently leads there by 10.5 points.

The candidates are noticeably different in many ways, from policy prescription to fundraising strategy.

Clinton has moved leftward since announcing her candidacy, but she is still threatened by the populist appeal of Sanders, who has long championed the causes that seem to be coming into grace for the Democratic Party. While the candidates currently hold some very similar positions on issues such as immigration reform, gay rights, gun control and campaign finance reform, Sanders has been able to stake out positions to the left of Clinton on other issues that excite some vocal voters.

Among them are his strong anti-war and anti-government surveillance positions as well as his distaste for President Barack Obama's Trans Pacific Partnership trade deal. Sanders also has been a vocal critic of Wall Street and champion of financial reforms, and his stance on those issues has drawn attention to Clinton's cozy relationship with Wall Street executives and the huge paychecks she has received for speeches to large banks since leaving the U.S. State Department. For some Sanders supporters, though, the perception that Sanders has been a consistent proponent of these liberal policies, and cares about them more than winning, is key.

“It’s the message that supporting Bernie Sanders is not just voting on a horse in the race” that attracts Brian Dillon, a 28-year-old self-employed Web designer and developer for e-commerce, said Friday. Dillon has voted just one time in his life, but he has been organizing meetings to drum up support for Sanders.

Sanders's fundraising portfolio also is the reverse of Clinton's. While the former secretary of state is expected to spend somewhere north of $1 billion should she win the primary and head into the general election for 2016, the same has not been said of Sanders. Currently, Clinton has raised, through her campaign committee and super PACs associated with the campaign, $47.5 million, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics. Sanders, on the other hand, has raised just shy of $16.5 million, according to CRP data.

Their most startling difference in fundraising, however, can be seen in the size of the donations they're receiving. The Clinton campaign received 82 percent of its donations from large contributors, and her top industry donors, not including retired people, so far have been lawyers, business services and the financial industry.

In contrast, Sanders relies much more on small donations, which are defined as donations totaling $200 or less. So far, 69 percent of his contributions have come from small donors, and the biggest industries that have given to his campaign have been from the education, legal and healthcare sectors.

Who are those small donors? The types of people who showed up Friday. Some said they donate $25 to $30 a month to Sanders. Some said they have donated several hundred dollars since he jumped into the presidential race. Nearly all of them mentioned they don't earn a ton of money personally. One in particular, Machumu Sakulira, said he donated $500 before attending Friday’s event.

There is “no way” he would support a Clinton ticket, said Sakulira, a 31-year-old senior political science student at the University at Buffalo. He got on a bus Thursday night at 11 p.m. and arrived in New York at 7 a.m. for the Sanders speech. He said he was going back Friday night. “Bernie represents my interest. My vote is a moral choice, I don’t give it to somebody who doesn’t deserve it.”

www.ibtimes.com/election-2016-bernie-sanders-nyc-fundrais...

Outside of the Town Hall theater on West 43rd Street in Manhattan, a crowd of smiling and optimistic people Friday overflowed into the one-way street. Delivery trucks and yellow taxi cabs creeped by, their engines engaged in a shouting match with Bennet Weiss, a man who bore a fleeting resemblance to the Democratic presidential candidate they were all there to support.

"We don't have billions of dollars! All we have are people wearing Bernie pins," Weiss yelled, a large black umbrella covered in Bernie Sanders campaign pins at his feet, catching drops of sweat from his brow. The Occupy Wall Street protester-turned-Sanders supporter urged the crowd to wear the pins at all times with no exception -- even in the shower -- and gave them away freely to anyone who said they didn't have enough cash to afford to pay the suggested donation.

That's the kind of populist support Sanders' campaign has steadily been attracting since the U.S. senator from Vermont formally announced his candidacy in late April. Friday was no exception, with passion-filled people who think Sanders has proved himself the worthy champion of causes they care about the most, such as income inequality, climate change, Wall Street reform and further healthcare reforms. But, perhaps most importantly, they also think he can win the White House.

"Absolutely" he can win, said Joe Trinolone, 30, a former finance industry worker from Long Island, New York, who is studying mathematics at St. Joseph's University. "I mean, he's winning right now."

Sanders, during a fundraising speech Friday, ticked through the policies he cares about and areas of change he wants to see in Washington should he become president. At each turn, his blend of outrage, optimism and sly sarcasm brought raucous cheers from the crowd of 1,100. He rejected recent Wall Street Journal criticism of the high price tag of his proposals, including making public colleges and universities free, lowering so-called real unemployment by pumping funding into infrastructure repairs for the nation’s roads and bridges and implementing a universal healthcare system.

Instead, he pointed to European nations that already have those programs. He implored the crowd to think about what many of them were already talking about: that taking on the big-money interests in the United States that impede those sorts of policy changes is a shared moral obligation.

“Welcome to the revolution,” Sanders said, describing what he believes must happen to American politics. “We can accomplish all of this and more.” And the crowd ate it up.

When asked why they support Sanders, many described his candidacy as a movement. They love his policies, and have a hard time thinking of much they don’t like about him. They especially like that he has been a consistent voice during his time in Washington. That’s a big perceived difference between Sanders and his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton. Those "feeling the Bern" were split on whether they would consider voting for her if she becomes the nominee. Many were newcomers to political action but felt compelled to join the fray when they heard Sanders and his message.

“I’ve never been excited about a politician my entire life,” said Meira Marom, 34, a Brooklyn third-grade teacher with a master's degree in creative writing. When Marom started seeing social media posts about Sanders and reading about him, she decided to stop focusing her personal time on writing for herself. She now writes and publishes something about Sanders every day -- Dr. Seuss themes every Sunday, poems and parodies. “I decided this is the most worthy cause to put my rhymes to use.”

Sanders has seen an unexpected rise in the polls since he joined the race for the Democratic nomination shortly after the current national front-runner Clinton announced her candidacy. While Sanders was trailing Clinton by 21.4 percent in national averages of polls compiled by Real Clear Politics, a look at early nominating states like Iowa and New Hampshire paints a different picture of vulnerability for Clinton and strength for Sanders.

The two candidates are tied in Iowa, which constitutes a dramatic drop for Clinton and an impressive surge for Sanders, who has been distancing himself from Clinton in New Hampshire at the top of the Democratic pack since Aug. 25, when he jumped past her in the state for the first time. He currently leads there by 10.5 points.

The candidates are noticeably different in many ways, from policy prescription to fundraising strategy.

Clinton has moved leftward since announcing her candidacy, but she is still threatened by the populist appeal of Sanders, who has long championed the causes that seem to be coming into grace for the Democratic Party. While the candidates currently hold some very similar positions on issues such as immigration reform, gay rights, gun control and campaign finance reform, Sanders has been able to stake out positions to the left of Clinton on other issues that excite some vocal voters.

Among them are his strong anti-war and anti-government surveillance positions as well as his distaste for President Barack Obama's Trans Pacific Partnership trade deal. Sanders also has been a vocal critic of Wall Street and champion of financial reforms, and his stance on those issues has drawn attention to Clinton's cozy relationship with Wall Street executives and the huge paychecks she has received for speeches to large banks since leaving the U.S. State Department. For some Sanders supporters, though, the perception that Sanders has been a consistent proponent of these liberal policies, and cares about them more than winning, is key.

“It’s the message that supporting Bernie Sanders is not just voting on a horse in the race” that attracts Brian Dillon, a 28-year-old self-employed Web designer and developer for e-commerce, said Friday. Dillon has voted just one time in his life, but he has been organizing meetings to drum up support for Sanders.

Sanders's fundraising portfolio also is the reverse of Clinton's. While the former secretary of state is expected to spend somewhere north of $1 billion should she win the primary and head into the general election for 2016, the same has not been said of Sanders. Currently, Clinton has raised, through her campaign committee and super PACs associated with the campaign, $47.5 million, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics. Sanders, on the other hand, has raised just shy of $16.5 million, according to CRP data.

Their most startling difference in fundraising, however, can be seen in the size of the donations they're receiving. The Clinton campaign received 82 percent of its donations from large contributors, and her top industry donors, not including retired people, so far have been lawyers, business services and the financial industry.

In contrast, Sanders relies much more on small donations, which are defined as donations totaling $200 or less. So far, 69 percent of his contributions have come from small donors, and the biggest industries that have given to his campaign have been from the education, legal and healthcare sectors.

Who are those small donors? The types of people who showed up Friday. Some said they donate $25 to $30 a month to Sanders. Some said they have donated several hundred dollars since he jumped into the presidential race. Nearly all of them mentioned they don't earn a ton of money personally. One in particular, Machumu Sakulira, said he donated $500 before attending Friday’s event.

There is “no way” he would support a Clinton ticket, said Sakulira, a 31-year-old senior political science student at the University at Buffalo. He got on a bus Thursday night at 11 p.m. and arrived in New York at 7 a.m. for the Sanders speech. He said he was going back Friday night. “Bernie represents my interest. My vote is a moral choice, I don’t give it to somebody who doesn’t deserve it.”

www.ibtimes.com/election-2016-bernie-sanders-nyc-fundrais...

Outside of the Town Hall theater on West 43rd Street in Manhattan, a crowd of smiling and optimistic people Friday overflowed into the one-way street. Delivery trucks and yellow taxi cabs creeped by, their engines engaged in a shouting match with Bennet Weiss, a man who bore a fleeting resemblance to the Democratic presidential candidate they were all there to support.

"We don't have billions of dollars! All we have are people wearing Bernie pins," Weiss yelled, a large black umbrella covered in Bernie Sanders campaign pins at his feet, catching drops of sweat from his brow. The Occupy Wall Street protester-turned-Sanders supporter urged the crowd to wear the pins at all times with no exception -- even in the shower -- and gave them away freely to anyone who said they didn't have enough cash to afford to pay the suggested donation.

That's the kind of populist support Sanders' campaign has steadily been attracting since the U.S. senator from Vermont formally announced his candidacy in late April. Friday was no exception, with passion-filled people who think Sanders has proved himself the worthy champion of causes they care about the most, such as income inequality, climate change, Wall Street reform and further healthcare reforms. But, perhaps most importantly, they also think he can win the White House.

"Absolutely" he can win, said Joe Trinolone, 30, a former finance industry worker from Long Island, New York, who is studying mathematics at St. Joseph's University. "I mean, he's winning right now."

Sanders, during a fundraising speech Friday, ticked through the policies he cares about and areas of change he wants to see in Washington should he become president. At each turn, his blend of outrage, optimism and sly sarcasm brought raucous cheers from the crowd of 1,100. He rejected recent Wall Street Journal criticism of the high price tag of his proposals, including making public colleges and universities free, lowering so-called real unemployment by pumping funding into infrastructure repairs for the nation’s roads and bridges and implementing a universal healthcare system.

Instead, he pointed to European nations that already have those programs. He implored the crowd to think about what many of them were already talking about: that taking on the big-money interests in the United States that impede those sorts of policy changes is a shared moral obligation.

“Welcome to the revolution,” Sanders said, describing what he believes must happen to American politics. “We can accomplish all of this and more.” And the crowd ate it up.

When asked why they support Sanders, many described his candidacy as a movement. They love his policies, and have a hard time thinking of much they don’t like about him. They especially like that he has been a consistent voice during his time in Washington. That’s a big perceived difference between Sanders and his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton. Those "feeling the Bern" were split on whether they would consider voting for her if she becomes the nominee. Many were newcomers to political action but felt compelled to join the fray when they heard Sanders and his message.

“I’ve never been excited about a politician my entire life,” said Meira Marom, 34, a Brooklyn third-grade teacher with a master's degree in creative writing. When Marom started seeing social media posts about Sanders and reading about him, she decided to stop focusing her personal time on writing for herself. She now writes and publishes something about Sanders every day -- Dr. Seuss themes every Sunday, poems and parodies. “I decided this is the most worthy cause to put my rhymes to use.”

Sanders has seen an unexpected rise in the polls since he joined the race for the Democratic nomination shortly after the current national front-runner Clinton announced her candidacy. While Sanders was trailing Clinton by 21.4 percent in national averages of polls compiled by Real Clear Politics, a look at early nominating states like Iowa and New Hampshire paints a different picture of vulnerability for Clinton and strength for Sanders.

The two candidates are tied in Iowa, which constitutes a dramatic drop for Clinton and an impressive surge for Sanders, who has been distancing himself from Clinton in New Hampshire at the top of the Democratic pack since Aug. 25, when he jumped past her in the state for the first time. He currently leads there by 10.5 points.

The candidates are noticeably different in many ways, from policy prescription to fundraising strategy.

Clinton has moved leftward since announcing her candidacy, but she is still threatened by the populist appeal of Sanders, who has long championed the causes that seem to be coming into grace for the Democratic Party. While the candidates currently hold some very similar positions on issues such as immigration reform, gay rights, gun control and campaign finance reform, Sanders has been able to stake out positions to the left of Clinton on other issues that excite some vocal voters.

Among them are his strong anti-war and anti-government surveillance positions as well as his distaste for President Barack Obama's Trans Pacific Partnership trade deal. Sanders also has been a vocal critic of Wall Street and champion of financial reforms, and his stance on those issues has drawn attention to Clinton's cozy relationship with Wall Street executives and the huge paychecks she has received for speeches to large banks since leaving the U.S. State Department. For some Sanders supporters, though, the perception that Sanders has been a consistent proponent of these liberal policies, and cares about them more than winning, is key.

“It’s the message that supporting Bernie Sanders is not just voting on a horse in the race” that attracts Brian Dillon, a 28-year-old self-employed Web designer and developer for e-commerce, said Friday. Dillon has voted just one time in his life, but he has been organizing meetings to drum up support for Sanders.

Sanders's fundraising portfolio also is the reverse of Clinton's. While the former secretary of state is expected to spend somewhere north of $1 billion should she win the primary and head into the general election for 2016, the same has not been said of Sanders. Currently, Clinton has raised, through her campaign committee and super PACs associated with the campaign, $47.5 million, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics. Sanders, on the other hand, has raised just shy of $16.5 million, according to CRP data.

Their most startling difference in fundraising, however, can be seen in the size of the donations they're receiving. The Clinton campaign received 82 percent of its donations from large contributors, and her top industry donors, not including retired people, so far have been lawyers, business services and the financial industry.

In contrast, Sanders relies much more on small donations, which are defined as donations totaling $200 or less. So far, 69 percent of his contributions have come from small donors, and the biggest industries that have given to his campaign have been from the education, legal and healthcare sectors.

Who are those small donors? The types of people who showed up Friday. Some said they donate $25 to $30 a month to Sanders. Some said they have donated several hundred dollars since he jumped into the presidential race. Nearly all of them mentioned they don't earn a ton of money personally. One in particular, Machumu Sakulira, said he donated $500 before attending Friday’s event.

There is “no way” he would support a Clinton ticket, said Sakulira, a 31-year-old senior political science student at the University at Buffalo. He got on a bus Thursday night at 11 p.m. and arrived in New York at 7 a.m. for the Sanders speech. He said he was going back Friday night. “Bernie represents my interest. My vote is a moral choice, I don’t give it to somebody who doesn’t deserve it.”

www.ibtimes.com/election-2016-bernie-sanders-nyc-fundrais...

Outside of the Town Hall theater on West 43rd Street in Manhattan, a crowd of smiling and optimistic people Friday overflowed into the one-way street. Delivery trucks and yellow taxi cabs creeped by, their engines engaged in a shouting match with Bennet Weiss, a man who bore a fleeting resemblance to the Democratic presidential candidate they were all there to support.

"We don't have billions of dollars! All we have are people wearing Bernie pins," Weiss yelled, a large black umbrella covered in Bernie Sanders campaign pins at his feet, catching drops of sweat from his brow. The Occupy Wall Street protester-turned-Sanders supporter urged the crowd to wear the pins at all times with no exception -- even in the shower -- and gave them away freely to anyone who said they didn't have enough cash to afford to pay the suggested donation.

That's the kind of populist support Sanders' campaign has steadily been attracting since the U.S. senator from Vermont formally announced his candidacy in late April. Friday was no exception, with passion-filled people who think Sanders has proved himself the worthy champion of causes they care about the most, such as income inequality, climate change, Wall Street reform and further healthcare reforms. But, perhaps most importantly, they also think he can win the White House.

"Absolutely" he can win, said Joe Trinolone, 30, a former finance industry worker from Long Island, New York, who is studying mathematics at St. Joseph's University. "I mean, he's winning right now."

Sanders, during a fundraising speech Friday, ticked through the policies he cares about and areas of change he wants to see in Washington should he become president. At each turn, his blend of outrage, optimism and sly sarcasm brought raucous cheers from the crowd of 1,100. He rejected recent Wall Street Journal criticism of the high price tag of his proposals, including making public colleges and universities free, lowering so-called real unemployment by pumping funding into infrastructure repairs for the nation’s roads and bridges and implementing a universal healthcare system.

Instead, he pointed to European nations that already have those programs. He implored the crowd to think about what many of them were already talking about: that taking on the big-money interests in the United States that impede those sorts of policy changes is a shared moral obligation.

“Welcome to the revolution,” Sanders said, describing what he believes must happen to American politics. “We can accomplish all of this and more.” And the crowd ate it up.

When asked why they support Sanders, many described his candidacy as a movement. They love his policies, and have a hard time thinking of much they don’t like about him. They especially like that he has been a consistent voice during his time in Washington. That’s a big perceived difference between Sanders and his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton. Those "feeling the Bern" were split on whether they would consider voting for her if she becomes the nominee. Many were newcomers to political action but felt compelled to join the fray when they heard Sanders and his message.

“I’ve never been excited about a politician my entire life,” said Meira Marom, 34, a Brooklyn third-grade teacher with a master's degree in creative writing. When Marom started seeing social media posts about Sanders and reading about him, she decided to stop focusing her personal time on writing for herself. She now writes and publishes something about Sanders every day -- Dr. Seuss themes every Sunday, poems and parodies. “I decided this is the most worthy cause to put my rhymes to use.”

Sanders has seen an unexpected rise in the polls since he joined the race for the Democratic nomination shortly after the current national front-runner Clinton announced her candidacy. While Sanders was trailing Clinton by 21.4 percent in national averages of polls compiled by Real Clear Politics, a look at early nominating states like Iowa and New Hampshire paints a different picture of vulnerability for Clinton and strength for Sanders.

The two candidates are tied in Iowa, which constitutes a dramatic drop for Clinton and an impressive surge for Sanders, who has been distancing himself from Clinton in New Hampshire at the top of the Democratic pack since Aug. 25, when he jumped past her in the state for the first time. He currently leads there by 10.5 points.

The candidates are noticeably different in many ways, from policy prescription to fundraising strategy.

Clinton has moved leftward since announcing her candidacy, but she is still threatened by the populist appeal of Sanders, who has long championed the causes that seem to be coming into grace for the Democratic Party. While the candidates currently hold some very similar positions on issues such as immigration reform, gay rights, gun control and campaign finance reform, Sanders has been able to stake out positions to the left of Clinton on other issues that excite some vocal voters.

Among them are his strong anti-war and anti-government surveillance positions as well as his distaste for President Barack Obama's Trans Pacific Partnership trade deal. Sanders also has been a vocal critic of Wall Street and champion of financial reforms, and his stance on those issues has drawn attention to Clinton's cozy relationship with Wall Street executives and the huge paychecks she has received for speeches to large banks since leaving the U.S. State Department. For some Sanders supporters, though, the perception that Sanders has been a consistent proponent of these liberal policies, and cares about them more than winning, is key.

“It’s the message that supporting Bernie Sanders is not just voting on a horse in the race” that attracts Brian Dillon, a 28-year-old self-employed Web designer and developer for e-commerce, said Friday. Dillon has voted just one time in his life, but he has been organizing meetings to drum up support for Sanders.

Sanders's fundraising portfolio also is the reverse of Clinton's. While the former secretary of state is expected to spend somewhere north of $1 billion should she win the primary and head into the general election for 2016, the same has not been said of Sanders. Currently, Clinton has raised, through her campaign committee and super PACs associated with the campaign, $47.5 million, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics. Sanders, on the other hand, has raised just shy of $16.5 million, according to CRP data.

Their most startling difference in fundraising, however, can be seen in the size of the donations they're receiving. The Clinton campaign received 82 percent of its donations from large contributors, and her top industry donors, not including retired people, so far have been lawyers, business services and the financial industry.

In contrast, Sanders relies much more on small donations, which are defined as donations totaling $200 or less. So far, 69 percent of his contributions have come from small donors, and the biggest industries that have given to his campaign have been from the education, legal and healthcare sectors.

Who are those small donors? The types of people who showed up Friday. Some said they donate $25 to $30 a month to Sanders. Some said they have donated several hundred dollars since he jumped into the presidential race. Nearly all of them mentioned they don't earn a ton of money personally. One in particular, Machumu Sakulira, said he donated $500 before attending Friday’s event.

There is “no way” he would support a Clinton ticket, said Sakulira, a 31-year-old senior political science student at the University at Buffalo. He got on a bus Thursday night at 11 p.m. and arrived in New York at 7 a.m. for the Sanders speech. He said he was going back Friday night. “Bernie represents my interest. My vote is a moral choice, I don’t give it to somebody who doesn’t deserve it.”

www.ibtimes.com/election-2016-bernie-sanders-nyc-fundrais...

I had five “main” stops planned for Guangxi this week. The first two – Dragon’s Backbone Rice Terraces and Yangshuo – were fine…all I’d hoped for, even if the weather wasn’t the most ideal for photography. Can’t control the weather. My five days in northeast Guangxi having been spent, today would be a travel day to the opposite side of the province…to a very remote (and, by most people’s consideration) somewhat hard-to-access area.

I was headed for the western border of Guangxi province: Detian Waterfall. It’s called Ban Gioc Falls in Vietnamese. It’s on the border with Vietnam and I believe they say it’s the second-largest transnational fall in the world. (I actually think that’s a mistake, though; I know for certain that Iguazu in Brazil/Argentina/Paraguay is the largest…and Niagara certainly feels bigger than this.) However, second- or third-largest…I don’t care about that kind of designation. Since waterfalls are one of my favorite things to shoot, I was looking forward to getting here, even though I knew I would be giving up a LOT of time to spend less than two hours here.

Since today is all about riding around on buses, I’ll just comment on the scenery and general impressions of Guangxi’s landscape.

The bus out of Yangshuo left around 11:30 in the morning and was supposed to pull into Nanning (provincial capital, smack dab in the middle of the province geographically) 6 hours later. That made me feel a bit less optimistic about being able to make it out to Detian in one day. Some things aren’t in our control, though.

The ride across the northeast was pleasant enough. The karst landscape of Yangshuo gradually faded away after an hour or two, falling farther and farther into the distance. The only major city (that I remember) between Yangshuo and Nanning was Liuzhou. It’s a city I’d never heard of before, and I’ll just say it seemed larger than I expected and looked like it might have been nice. It was in a nice area, anyway, if you like an almost-tropical environment.

I was very glad to see that we were pulling into Nanning well under our six hours that everyone in Yangshuo told me. It was right around 4:15 when we pulled in to the Nanning bus station and the first thing I did was went straight to the ticket window to see about how to get to Detian.

According to Lonely Planet, there is one direct bus a day at 8:30 in the morning, or you have the option of taking a bus to Daxin (about 70 km, I think, south-southeast of Detian) at various times throughout the day and then transferring to Detian…somehow. The ticket lady confirmed that that was indeed the case, so I bought a ticket for the first available bus to Daxin…which happened to be leaving at 4:30.

Now, I’ll take a pause to write all the good things that I experienced the this time and the two subsequent times I passed through town this week: (wait for it…wait for it…) Ok. I’m done.

So, with my ten minutes in Nanning, I ran to KFC (not ideal, but at least I know how to order it, can identify it, and know that I’d get it in time to catch the bus), ate, and then ran to the bus. Goodbye, Nanning!

The road to Daxin was highway for the first hour, and pretty uneventful. Green, for certain. Trees abound as it’s almost-tropical. After we turned off the highway heading slightly northwest towards Baise, we took a two-lane road directly west towards Daxin. A few minutes off the highway, the landscape changed. Common woodlands gave way to banana farms.

These farms were massive. I had no idea China had a banana industry like this here, and I was impressed. It would’ve been a lot of fun to do some landscape photography here, but I had to settle for hoping for a few not-so-terrible pictures from a bus whipping by at 80-100 kph. Not ideal, but you do what you can.

About halfway down this road to Daxin, we had to switch from our double decker coach to a smaller bus. It seemed the road was closed or something, and the coach wouldn’t fit down the road where the detour was.

Past the detour, the banana farms thinned out, and the hills started encroaching. I enjoyed a pretty pastoral, pleasant sunset (not amazing, but…nice), and we finally reached Daxin well after dark. Though it was almost the longest day of the year, it was close to dark-as-night by 9:00 p.m. (You can thank China’s lack of having time zones for this.)

Daxin doesn’t happen to be a terribly big (or pleasant) town, so I was slightly concerned when the bus pulled in to the parking lot and there were no taxis or anything else around. I didn’t even see any hotels, though I’m certain they have some…and the bus station just happened to be away from the populated area.

There was one lonely car with one lonely man in the parking lot, and I rushed up to him before anyone else got to him – though nobody else seemed to be looking for public transportation – and asked if he would be willing to take me to Detian in his minivan. For 200 yuan (steep by Chinese standards, but reasonable by mine), he agreed to take me to Detian where, according to LP, there were plenty of cheap hotels right next to the waterfall.

We left Daxin around 8:30, and wound our way through the dark night (and reasonably unlit road) that wound its way from Daxin north to Detian, eventually paralleling the Vietnam border – though I couldn’t see it at night.

Finally, I’m guessing about 60 km later, and around 10:00, my road trip was done. Close to 10 hours, three buses, one minivan, and one taxi helped me get my way completely across Guangxi to the Vietnam border.

Slightly exhausted, but not too frazzled, I walked into one of the hotels listed in LP, asked for a room, and was set up with a perfectly clean and comfortable (if fairly Spartan) room on the third floor of another Whatever-Name Hotel with friendly staff of limited English skills. (This is completely typical in China.)

After getting settled in, I went out to find something to eat at one of the only two restaurants open at that hour and settled for a fairly mediocre plate of fanqie jidan for about 15 RMB. (That’s a Chinese dish…scrambled eggs and fried tomatoes, usually made with a pinch of sugar, and served over rice.)

After finishing most of my eggs, I paid, thanked the folks at the restaurant, and then went back to my room, falling into a deep sleep before starting the day at 7:00 the following morning.

Friday morning was one of the few days I had hoped for it to be cloudy. Any of us who like to shoot waterfalls understands how much harder it is to shoot them on a bright, sunny day. I was thrilled to wake up and see a completely overcast sky, and also that it was just a little misty/rainy. Nothing more than a drizzle.

I walked down to the waterfall ticket office, hoping that they were open before 8:00. To my delight, they were, and I paid my 80 RMB (at least I recall it being 80) and headed on up the way to the gate about 400 meters away.

This was fantastic. At that hour, I had free reign of the place, and hardly a soul to be found, except those working there (or vendors). I love the excitement and expectation of waterfalls…hearing them before you see them…and then trying to do them justice and have fun capturing them with different shutter speeds, polarizers, etc.

Before saying a word about the falls, I’ll apologize in advance for over-posting and posting so many similar shots of the falls. You’ll have to understand that, living in China for five years, I’ve been going through severe waterfall withdrawal (especially since I lived in Oregon from 2007-2009 where I was beyond spoiled by the excess of falls in that state).

Here at Detian, it was a typical cascade that was split in two (think Niagara Falls, but less distinctively so separate). The approach was down a small stairway a few hundred meters below the fall, then walking the river bank on the approach. There are a lot of bamboo rafts here, too, that later in the day turn the base of the falls into a virtual parking lot. At this hour, though, they were all tied up. I paid 5 RMB to go out for a less obstructed view of the falls from the base, about 100 meters away.

After that, I just tried to find a few different/interesting places to set up and shoot for nice angles and perspectives before heading away from the base and climbing the stars to the top level of the falls. After shooting the bas and mid-falls level, I climbed away from the falls and walked the upper road parallel to the river that headed back towards the karst landscape. I was in search of the 53rd Mere Stone.

This stone is the quirky oddity of this particular waterfall. On the Chinese side, there are stalls and more stalls selling souvenirs, local food, and so on. They eventually thin out, and you come to a little fork in the road that leads you to the 53rd Mere Stone. It’s the stone that marks the legal, recognized border between China and Vietnam and it’s the only point where you can legally cross into Vietnam without needing to get a visa. (There are no border guards, gates, or any other such thing.) The Vietnamese side was much like the Chinese side…but a bit dirtier, and poorer. Just a cluster of stalls, motorbikes, mud paths, and souvenirs, cigarettes, and all touristy things Vietnamese. (I had to ask to make sure I was in Vietnam, and they confirmed I was. So, “Ni hao” quickly became, “Xin chao!” With that, my Vietnamese was exhausted, but I was pleased. Hardly anyone spoke to me there, though, as they seemed shocked to see a large, white elephant man in their midst.) I was fascinated all the same.

After spending all of five or ten minutes in Vietnam (I still don’t know that I should count it as a country I’ve visited; I feel like I’m cheating if I do), I made my way back over to China, back past the falls on the upper road for a few last shots, and then out to the parking lot to figure out how to get to my next destination – Beihai – as soon as possible.

I sure was doing a lot of cross-province travel these two days, and today would be much more cumbersome than I imagined possible…

Outside of the Town Hall theater on West 43rd Street in Manhattan, a crowd of smiling and optimistic people Friday overflowed into the one-way street. Delivery trucks and yellow taxi cabs creeped by, their engines engaged in a shouting match with Bennet Weiss, a man who bore a fleeting resemblance to the Democratic presidential candidate they were all there to support.

"We don't have billions of dollars! All we have are people wearing Bernie pins," Weiss yelled, a large black umbrella covered in Bernie Sanders campaign pins at his feet, catching drops of sweat from his brow. The Occupy Wall Street protester-turned-Sanders supporter urged the crowd to wear the pins at all times with no exception -- even in the shower -- and gave them away freely to anyone who said they didn't have enough cash to afford to pay the suggested donation.

That's the kind of populist support Sanders' campaign has steadily been attracting since the U.S. senator from Vermont formally announced his candidacy in late April. Friday was no exception, with passion-filled people who think Sanders has proved himself the worthy champion of causes they care about the most, such as income inequality, climate change, Wall Street reform and further healthcare reforms. But, perhaps most importantly, they also think he can win the White House.

"Absolutely" he can win, said Joe Trinolone, 30, a former finance industry worker from Long Island, New York, who is studying mathematics at St. Joseph's University. "I mean, he's winning right now."

Sanders, during a fundraising speech Friday, ticked through the policies he cares about and areas of change he wants to see in Washington should he become president. At each turn, his blend of outrage, optimism and sly sarcasm brought raucous cheers from the crowd of 1,100. He rejected recent Wall Street Journal criticism of the high price tag of his proposals, including making public colleges and universities free, lowering so-called real unemployment by pumping funding into infrastructure repairs for the nation’s roads and bridges and implementing a universal healthcare system.

Instead, he pointed to European nations that already have those programs. He implored the crowd to think about what many of them were already talking about: that taking on the big-money interests in the United States that impede those sorts of policy changes is a shared moral obligation.

“Welcome to the revolution,” Sanders said, describing what he believes must happen to American politics. “We can accomplish all of this and more.” And the crowd ate it up.

When asked why they support Sanders, many described his candidacy as a movement. They love his policies, and have a hard time thinking of much they don’t like about him. They especially like that he has been a consistent voice during his time in Washington. That’s a big perceived difference between Sanders and his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton. Those "feeling the Bern" were split on whether they would consider voting for her if she becomes the nominee. Many were newcomers to political action but felt compelled to join the fray when they heard Sanders and his message.

“I’ve never been excited about a politician my entire life,” said Meira Marom, 34, a Brooklyn third-grade teacher with a master's degree in creative writing. When Marom started seeing social media posts about Sanders and reading about him, she decided to stop focusing her personal time on writing for herself. She now writes and publishes something about Sanders every day -- Dr. Seuss themes every Sunday, poems and parodies. “I decided this is the most worthy cause to put my rhymes to use.”

Sanders has seen an unexpected rise in the polls since he joined the race for the Democratic nomination shortly after the current national front-runner Clinton announced her candidacy. While Sanders was trailing Clinton by 21.4 percent in national averages of polls compiled by Real Clear Politics, a look at early nominating states like Iowa and New Hampshire paints a different picture of vulnerability for Clinton and strength for Sanders.

The two candidates are tied in Iowa, which constitutes a dramatic drop for Clinton and an impressive surge for Sanders, who has been distancing himself from Clinton in New Hampshire at the top of the Democratic pack since Aug. 25, when he jumped past her in the state for the first time. He currently leads there by 10.5 points.

The candidates are noticeably different in many ways, from policy prescription to fundraising strategy.

Clinton has moved leftward since announcing her candidacy, but she is still threatened by the populist appeal of Sanders, who has long championed the causes that seem to be coming into grace for the Democratic Party. While the candidates currently hold some very similar positions on issues such as immigration reform, gay rights, gun control and campaign finance reform, Sanders has been able to stake out positions to the left of Clinton on other issues that excite some vocal voters.

Among them are his strong anti-war and anti-government surveillance positions as well as his distaste for President Barack Obama's Trans Pacific Partnership trade deal. Sanders also has been a vocal critic of Wall Street and champion of financial reforms, and his stance on those issues has drawn attention to Clinton's cozy relationship with Wall Street executives and the huge paychecks she has received for speeches to large banks since leaving the U.S. State Department. For some Sanders supporters, though, the perception that Sanders has been a consistent proponent of these liberal policies, and cares about them more than winning, is key.

“It’s the message that supporting Bernie Sanders is not just voting on a horse in the race” that attracts Brian Dillon, a 28-year-old self-employed Web designer and developer for e-commerce, said Friday. Dillon has voted just one time in his life, but he has been organizing meetings to drum up support for Sanders.

Sanders's fundraising portfolio also is the reverse of Clinton's. While the former secretary of state is expected to spend somewhere north of $1 billion should she win the primary and head into the general election for 2016, the same has not been said of Sanders. Currently, Clinton has raised, through her campaign committee and super PACs associated with the campaign, $47.5 million, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics. Sanders, on the other hand, has raised just shy of $16.5 million, according to CRP data.

Their most startling difference in fundraising, however, can be seen in the size of the donations they're receiving. The Clinton campaign received 82 percent of its donations from large contributors, and her top industry donors, not including retired people, so far have been lawyers, business services and the financial industry.

In contrast, Sanders relies much more on small donations, which are defined as donations totaling $200 or less. So far, 69 percent of his contributions have come from small donors, and the biggest industries that have given to his campaign have been from the education, legal and healthcare sectors.

Who are those small donors? The types of people who showed up Friday. Some said they donate $25 to $30 a month to Sanders. Some said they have donated several hundred dollars since he jumped into the presidential race. Nearly all of them mentioned they don't earn a ton of money personally. One in particular, Machumu Sakulira, said he donated $500 before attending Friday’s event.

There is “no way” he would support a Clinton ticket, said Sakulira, a 31-year-old senior political science student at the University at Buffalo. He got on a bus Thursday night at 11 p.m. and arrived in New York at 7 a.m. for the Sanders speech. He said he was going back Friday night. “Bernie represents my interest. My vote is a moral choice, I don’t give it to somebody who doesn’t deserve it.”

www.ibtimes.com/election-2016-bernie-sanders-nyc-fundrais...

Oddly warm for mid-December, today saw this dandelion looking a bit optimistic.

Our reliable thermometer, the one hidden under the deck, away from stray sun rays (of which there were none), read 16.7 degrees most of the middle of the day.

I saw a few flies of various sorts, equally optimistic.

But the weather will change back to something closer to normal tonight.

And, for those who live in Fahrenheitland, 16.7 is about 62F. Not bad for so close to the end of the year.

Outside of the Town Hall theater on West 43rd Street in Manhattan, a crowd of smiling and optimistic people Friday overflowed into the one-way street. Delivery trucks and yellow taxi cabs creeped by, their engines engaged in a shouting match with Bennet Weiss, a man who bore a fleeting resemblance to the Democratic presidential candidate they were all there to support.

"We don't have billions of dollars! All we have are people wearing Bernie pins," Weiss yelled, a large black umbrella covered in Bernie Sanders campaign pins at his feet, catching drops of sweat from his brow. The Occupy Wall Street protester-turned-Sanders supporter urged the crowd to wear the pins at all times with no exception -- even in the shower -- and gave them away freely to anyone who said they didn't have enough cash to afford to pay the suggested donation.

That's the kind of populist support Sanders' campaign has steadily been attracting since the U.S. senator from Vermont formally announced his candidacy in late April. Friday was no exception, with passion-filled people who think Sanders has proved himself the worthy champion of causes they care about the most, such as income inequality, climate change, Wall Street reform and further healthcare reforms. But, perhaps most importantly, they also think he can win the White House.

"Absolutely" he can win, said Joe Trinolone, 30, a former finance industry worker from Long Island, New York, who is studying mathematics at St. Joseph's University. "I mean, he's winning right now."

Sanders, during a fundraising speech Friday, ticked through the policies he cares about and areas of change he wants to see in Washington should he become president. At each turn, his blend of outrage, optimism and sly sarcasm brought raucous cheers from the crowd of 1,100. He rejected recent Wall Street Journal criticism of the high price tag of his proposals, including making public colleges and universities free, lowering so-called real unemployment by pumping funding into infrastructure repairs for the nation’s roads and bridges and implementing a universal healthcare system.

Instead, he pointed to European nations that already have those programs. He implored the crowd to think about what many of them were already talking about: that taking on the big-money interests in the United States that impede those sorts of policy changes is a shared moral obligation.

“Welcome to the revolution,” Sanders said, describing what he believes must happen to American politics. “We can accomplish all of this and more.” And the crowd ate it up.

When asked why they support Sanders, many described his candidacy as a movement. They love his policies, and have a hard time thinking of much they don’t like about him. They especially like that he has been a consistent voice during his time in Washington. That’s a big perceived difference between Sanders and his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton. Those "feeling the Bern" were split on whether they would consider voting for her if she becomes the nominee. Many were newcomers to political action but felt compelled to join the fray when they heard Sanders and his message.

“I’ve never been excited about a politician my entire life,” said Meira Marom, 34, a Brooklyn third-grade teacher with a master's degree in creative writing. When Marom started seeing social media posts about Sanders and reading about him, she decided to stop focusing her personal time on writing for herself. She now writes and publishes something about Sanders every day -- Dr. Seuss themes every Sunday, poems and parodies. “I decided this is the most worthy cause to put my rhymes to use.”

Sanders has seen an unexpected rise in the polls since he joined the race for the Democratic nomination shortly after the current national front-runner Clinton announced her candidacy. While Sanders was trailing Clinton by 21.4 percent in national averages of polls compiled by Real Clear Politics, a look at early nominating states like Iowa and New Hampshire paints a different picture of vulnerability for Clinton and strength for Sanders.

The two candidates are tied in Iowa, which constitutes a dramatic drop for Clinton and an impressive surge for Sanders, who has been distancing himself from Clinton in New Hampshire at the top of the Democratic pack since Aug. 25, when he jumped past her in the state for the first time. He currently leads there by 10.5 points.

The candidates are noticeably different in many ways, from policy prescription to fundraising strategy.

Clinton has moved leftward since announcing her candidacy, but she is still threatened by the populist appeal of Sanders, who has long championed the causes that seem to be coming into grace for the Democratic Party. While the candidates currently hold some very similar positions on issues such as immigration reform, gay rights, gun control and campaign finance reform, Sanders has been able to stake out positions to the left of Clinton on other issues that excite some vocal voters.

Among them are his strong anti-war and anti-government surveillance positions as well as his distaste for President Barack Obama's Trans Pacific Partnership trade deal. Sanders also has been a vocal critic of Wall Street and champion of financial reforms, and his stance on those issues has drawn attention to Clinton's cozy relationship with Wall Street executives and the huge paychecks she has received for speeches to large banks since leaving the U.S. State Department. For some Sanders supporters, though, the perception that Sanders has been a consistent proponent of these liberal policies, and cares about them more than winning, is key.

“It’s the message that supporting Bernie Sanders is not just voting on a horse in the race” that attracts Brian Dillon, a 28-year-old self-employed Web designer and developer for e-commerce, said Friday. Dillon has voted just one time in his life, but he has been organizing meetings to drum up support for Sanders.

Sanders's fundraising portfolio also is the reverse of Clinton's. While the former secretary of state is expected to spend somewhere north of $1 billion should she win the primary and head into the general election for 2016, the same has not been said of Sanders. Currently, Clinton has raised, through her campaign committee and super PACs associated with the campaign, $47.5 million, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics. Sanders, on the other hand, has raised just shy of $16.5 million, according to CRP data.

Their most startling difference in fundraising, however, can be seen in the size of the donations they're receiving. The Clinton campaign received 82 percent of its donations from large contributors, and her top industry donors, not including retired people, so far have been lawyers, business services and the financial industry.

In contrast, Sanders relies much more on small donations, which are defined as donations totaling $200 or less. So far, 69 percent of his contributions have come from small donors, and the biggest industries that have given to his campaign have been from the education, legal and healthcare sectors.

Who are those small donors? The types of people who showed up Friday. Some said they donate $25 to $30 a month to Sanders. Some said they have donated several hundred dollars since he jumped into the presidential race. Nearly all of them mentioned they don't earn a ton of money personally. One in particular, Machumu Sakulira, said he donated $500 before attending Friday’s event.

There is “no way” he would support a Clinton ticket, said Sakulira, a 31-year-old senior political science student at the University at Buffalo. He got on a bus Thursday night at 11 p.m. and arrived in New York at 7 a.m. for the Sanders speech. He said he was going back Friday night. “Bernie represents my interest. My vote is a moral choice, I don’t give it to somebody who doesn’t deserve it.”

www.ibtimes.com/election-2016-bernie-sanders-nyc-fundrais...

Outside of the Town Hall theater on West 43rd Street in Manhattan, a crowd of smiling and optimistic people Friday overflowed into the one-way street. Delivery trucks and yellow taxi cabs creeped by, their engines engaged in a shouting match with Bennet Weiss, a man who bore a fleeting resemblance to the Democratic presidential candidate they were all there to support.

"We don't have billions of dollars! All we have are people wearing Bernie pins," Weiss yelled, a large black umbrella covered in Bernie Sanders campaign pins at his feet, catching drops of sweat from his brow. The Occupy Wall Street protester-turned-Sanders supporter urged the crowd to wear the pins at all times with no exception -- even in the shower -- and gave them away freely to anyone who said they didn't have enough cash to afford to pay the suggested donation.

That's the kind of populist support Sanders' campaign has steadily been attracting since the U.S. senator from Vermont formally announced his candidacy in late April. Friday was no exception, with passion-filled people who think Sanders has proved himself the worthy champion of causes they care about the most, such as income inequality, climate change, Wall Street reform and further healthcare reforms. But, perhaps most importantly, they also think he can win the White House.

"Absolutely" he can win, said Joe Trinolone, 30, a former finance industry worker from Long Island, New York, who is studying mathematics at St. Joseph's University. "I mean, he's winning right now."

Sanders, during a fundraising speech Friday, ticked through the policies he cares about and areas of change he wants to see in Washington should he become president. At each turn, his blend of outrage, optimism and sly sarcasm brought raucous cheers from the crowd of 1,100. He rejected recent Wall Street Journal criticism of the high price tag of his proposals, including making public colleges and universities free, lowering so-called real unemployment by pumping funding into infrastructure repairs for the nation’s roads and bridges and implementing a universal healthcare system.

Instead, he pointed to European nations that already have those programs. He implored the crowd to think about what many of them were already talking about: that taking on the big-money interests in the United States that impede those sorts of policy changes is a shared moral obligation.

“Welcome to the revolution,” Sanders said, describing what he believes must happen to American politics. “We can accomplish all of this and more.” And the crowd ate it up.

When asked why they support Sanders, many described his candidacy as a movement. They love his policies, and have a hard time thinking of much they don’t like about him. They especially like that he has been a consistent voice during his time in Washington. That’s a big perceived difference between Sanders and his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton. Those "feeling the Bern" were split on whether they would consider voting for her if she becomes the nominee. Many were newcomers to political action but felt compelled to join the fray when they heard Sanders and his message.

“I’ve never been excited about a politician my entire life,” said Meira Marom, 34, a Brooklyn third-grade teacher with a master's degree in creative writing. When Marom started seeing social media posts about Sanders and reading about him, she decided to stop focusing her personal time on writing for herself. She now writes and publishes something about Sanders every day -- Dr. Seuss themes every Sunday, poems and parodies. “I decided this is the most worthy cause to put my rhymes to use.”

Sanders has seen an unexpected rise in the polls since he joined the race for the Democratic nomination shortly after the current national front-runner Clinton announced her candidacy. While Sanders was trailing Clinton by 21.4 percent in national averages of polls compiled by Real Clear Politics, a look at early nominating states like Iowa and New Hampshire paints a different picture of vulnerability for Clinton and strength for Sanders.

The two candidates are tied in Iowa, which constitutes a dramatic drop for Clinton and an impressive surge for Sanders, who has been distancing himself from Clinton in New Hampshire at the top of the Democratic pack since Aug. 25, when he jumped past her in the state for the first time. He currently leads there by 10.5 points.

The candidates are noticeably different in many ways, from policy prescription to fundraising strategy.

Clinton has moved leftward since announcing her candidacy, but she is still threatened by the populist appeal of Sanders, who has long championed the causes that seem to be coming into grace for the Democratic Party. While the candidates currently hold some very similar positions on issues such as immigration reform, gay rights, gun control and campaign finance reform, Sanders has been able to stake out positions to the left of Clinton on other issues that excite some vocal voters.

Among them are his strong anti-war and anti-government surveillance positions as well as his distaste for President Barack Obama's Trans Pacific Partnership trade deal. Sanders also has been a vocal critic of Wall Street and champion of financial reforms, and his stance on those issues has drawn attention to Clinton's cozy relationship with Wall Street executives and the huge paychecks she has received for speeches to large banks since leaving the U.S. State Department. For some Sanders supporters, though, the perception that Sanders has been a consistent proponent of these liberal policies, and cares about them more than winning, is key.

“It’s the message that supporting Bernie Sanders is not just voting on a horse in the race” that attracts Brian Dillon, a 28-year-old self-employed Web designer and developer for e-commerce, said Friday. Dillon has voted just one time in his life, but he has been organizing meetings to drum up support for Sanders.

Sanders's fundraising portfolio also is the reverse of Clinton's. While the former secretary of state is expected to spend somewhere north of $1 billion should she win the primary and head into the general election for 2016, the same has not been said of Sanders. Currently, Clinton has raised, through her campaign committee and super PACs associated with the campaign, $47.5 million, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics. Sanders, on the other hand, has raised just shy of $16.5 million, according to CRP data.

Their most startling difference in fundraising, however, can be seen in the size of the donations they're receiving. The Clinton campaign received 82 percent of its donations from large contributors, and her top industry donors, not including retired people, so far have been lawyers, business services and the financial industry.

In contrast, Sanders relies much more on small donations, which are defined as donations totaling $200 or less. So far, 69 percent of his contributions have come from small donors, and the biggest industries that have given to his campaign have been from the education, legal and healthcare sectors.

Who are those small donors? The types of people who showed up Friday. Some said they donate $25 to $30 a month to Sanders. Some said they have donated several hundred dollars since he jumped into the presidential race. Nearly all of them mentioned they don't earn a ton of money personally. One in particular, Machumu Sakulira, said he donated $500 before attending Friday’s event.

There is “no way” he would support a Clinton ticket, said Sakulira, a 31-year-old senior political science student at the University at Buffalo. He got on a bus Thursday night at 11 p.m. and arrived in New York at 7 a.m. for the Sanders speech. He said he was going back Friday night. “Bernie represents my interest. My vote is a moral choice, I don’t give it to somebody who doesn’t deserve it.”

www.ibtimes.com/election-2016-bernie-sanders-nyc-fundrais...

Outside of the Town Hall theater on West 43rd Street in Manhattan, a crowd of smiling and optimistic people Friday overflowed into the one-way street. Delivery trucks and yellow taxi cabs creeped by, their engines engaged in a shouting match with Bennet Weiss, a man who bore a fleeting resemblance to the Democratic presidential candidate they were all there to support.

"We don't have billions of dollars! All we have are people wearing Bernie pins," Weiss yelled, a large black umbrella covered in Bernie Sanders campaign pins at his feet, catching drops of sweat from his brow. The Occupy Wall Street protester-turned-Sanders supporter urged the crowd to wear the pins at all times with no exception -- even in the shower -- and gave them away freely to anyone who said they didn't have enough cash to afford to pay the suggested donation.

That's the kind of populist support Sanders' campaign has steadily been attracting since the U.S. senator from Vermont formally announced his candidacy in late April. Friday was no exception, with passion-filled people who think Sanders has proved himself the worthy champion of causes they care about the most, such as income inequality, climate change, Wall Street reform and further healthcare reforms. But, perhaps most importantly, they also think he can win the White House.

"Absolutely" he can win, said Joe Trinolone, 30, a former finance industry worker from Long Island, New York, who is studying mathematics at St. Joseph's University. "I mean, he's winning right now."

Sanders, during a fundraising speech Friday, ticked through the policies he cares about and areas of change he wants to see in Washington should he become president. At each turn, his blend of outrage, optimism and sly sarcasm brought raucous cheers from the crowd of 1,100. He rejected recent Wall Street Journal criticism of the high price tag of his proposals, including making public colleges and universities free, lowering so-called real unemployment by pumping funding into infrastructure repairs for the nation’s roads and bridges and implementing a universal healthcare system.

Instead, he pointed to European nations that already have those programs. He implored the crowd to think about what many of them were already talking about: that taking on the big-money interests in the United States that impede those sorts of policy changes is a shared moral obligation.

“Welcome to the revolution,” Sanders said, describing what he believes must happen to American politics. “We can accomplish all of this and more.” And the crowd ate it up.

When asked why they support Sanders, many described his candidacy as a movement. They love his policies, and have a hard time thinking of much they don’t like about him. They especially like that he has been a consistent voice during his time in Washington. That’s a big perceived difference between Sanders and his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton. Those "feeling the Bern" were split on whether they would consider voting for her if she becomes the nominee. Many were newcomers to political action but felt compelled to join the fray when they heard Sanders and his message.

“I’ve never been excited about a politician my entire life,” said Meira Marom, 34, a Brooklyn third-grade teacher with a master's degree in creative writing. When Marom started seeing social media posts about Sanders and reading about him, she decided to stop focusing her personal time on writing for herself. She now writes and publishes something about Sanders every day -- Dr. Seuss themes every Sunday, poems and parodies. “I decided this is the most worthy cause to put my rhymes to use.”

Sanders has seen an unexpected rise in the polls since he joined the race for the Democratic nomination shortly after the current national front-runner Clinton announced her candidacy. While Sanders was trailing Clinton by 21.4 percent in national averages of polls compiled by Real Clear Politics, a look at early nominating states like Iowa and New Hampshire paints a different picture of vulnerability for Clinton and strength for Sanders.

The two candidates are tied in Iowa, which constitutes a dramatic drop for Clinton and an impressive surge for Sanders, who has been distancing himself from Clinton in New Hampshire at the top of the Democratic pack since Aug. 25, when he jumped past her in the state for the first time. He currently leads there by 10.5 points.

The candidates are noticeably different in many ways, from policy prescription to fundraising strategy.

Clinton has moved leftward since announcing her candidacy, but she is still threatened by the populist appeal of Sanders, who has long championed the causes that seem to be coming into grace for the Democratic Party. While the candidates currently hold some very similar positions on issues such as immigration reform, gay rights, gun control and campaign finance reform, Sanders has been able to stake out positions to the left of Clinton on other issues that excite some vocal voters.

Among them are his strong anti-war and anti-government surveillance positions as well as his distaste for President Barack Obama's Trans Pacific Partnership trade deal. Sanders also has been a vocal critic of Wall Street and champion of financial reforms, and his stance on those issues has drawn attention to Clinton's cozy relationship with Wall Street executives and the huge paychecks she has received for speeches to large banks since leaving the U.S. State Department. For some Sanders supporters, though, the perception that Sanders has been a consistent proponent of these liberal policies, and cares about them more than winning, is key.

“It’s the message that supporting Bernie Sanders is not just voting on a horse in the race” that attracts Brian Dillon, a 28-year-old self-employed Web designer and developer for e-commerce, said Friday. Dillon has voted just one time in his life, but he has been organizing meetings to drum up support for Sanders.

Sanders's fundraising portfolio also is the reverse of Clinton's. While the former secretary of state is expected to spend somewhere north of $1 billion should she win the primary and head into the general election for 2016, the same has not been said of Sanders. Currently, Clinton has raised, through her campaign committee and super PACs associated with the campaign, $47.5 million, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics. Sanders, on the other hand, has raised just shy of $16.5 million, according to CRP data.

Their most startling difference in fundraising, however, can be seen in the size of the donations they're receiving. The Clinton campaign received 82 percent of its donations from large contributors, and her top industry donors, not including retired people, so far have been lawyers, business services and the financial industry.

In contrast, Sanders relies much more on small donations, which are defined as donations totaling $200 or less. So far, 69 percent of his contributions have come from small donors, and the biggest industries that have given to his campaign have been from the education, legal and healthcare sectors.

Who are those small donors? The types of people who showed up Friday. Some said they donate $25 to $30 a month to Sanders. Some said they have donated several hundred dollars since he jumped into the presidential race. Nearly all of them mentioned they don't earn a ton of money personally. One in particular, Machumu Sakulira, said he donated $500 before attending Friday’s event.

There is “no way” he would support a Clinton ticket, said Sakulira, a 31-year-old senior political science student at the University at Buffalo. He got on a bus Thursday night at 11 p.m. and arrived in New York at 7 a.m. for the Sanders speech. He said he was going back Friday night. “Bernie represents my interest. My vote is a moral choice, I don’t give it to somebody who doesn’t deserve it.”

www.ibtimes.com/election-2016-bernie-sanders-nyc-fundrais...

Outside of the Town Hall theater on West 43rd Street in Manhattan, a crowd of smiling and optimistic people Friday overflowed into the one-way street. Delivery trucks and yellow taxi cabs creeped by, their engines engaged in a shouting match with Bennet Weiss, a man who bore a fleeting resemblance to the Democratic presidential candidate they were all there to support.

"We don't have billions of dollars! All we have are people wearing Bernie pins," Weiss yelled, a large black umbrella covered in Bernie Sanders campaign pins at his feet, catching drops of sweat from his brow. The Occupy Wall Street protester-turned-Sanders supporter urged the crowd to wear the pins at all times with no exception -- even in the shower -- and gave them away freely to anyone who said they didn't have enough cash to afford to pay the suggested donation.

That's the kind of populist support Sanders' campaign has steadily been attracting since the U.S. senator from Vermont formally announced his candidacy in late April. Friday was no exception, with passion-filled people who think Sanders has proved himself the worthy champion of causes they care about the most, such as income inequality, climate change, Wall Street reform and further healthcare reforms. But, perhaps most importantly, they also think he can win the White House.

"Absolutely" he can win, said Joe Trinolone, 30, a former finance industry worker from Long Island, New York, who is studying mathematics at St. Joseph's University. "I mean, he's winning right now."

Sanders, during a fundraising speech Friday, ticked through the policies he cares about and areas of change he wants to see in Washington should he become president. At each turn, his blend of outrage, optimism and sly sarcasm brought raucous cheers from the crowd of 1,100. He rejected recent Wall Street Journal criticism of the high price tag of his proposals, including making public colleges and universities free, lowering so-called real unemployment by pumping funding into infrastructure repairs for the nation’s roads and bridges and implementing a universal healthcare system.

Instead, he pointed to European nations that already have those programs. He implored the crowd to think about what many of them were already talking about: that taking on the big-money interests in the United States that impede those sorts of policy changes is a shared moral obligation.

“Welcome to the revolution,” Sanders said, describing what he believes must happen to American politics. “We can accomplish all of this and more.” And the crowd ate it up.

When asked why they support Sanders, many described his candidacy as a movement. They love his policies, and have a hard time thinking of much they don’t like about him. They especially like that he has been a consistent voice during his time in Washington. That’s a big perceived difference between Sanders and his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton. Those "feeling the Bern" were split on whether they would consider voting for her if she becomes the nominee. Many were newcomers to political action but felt compelled to join the fray when they heard Sanders and his message.

“I’ve never been excited about a politician my entire life,” said Meira Marom, 34, a Brooklyn third-grade teacher with a master's degree in creative writing. When Marom started seeing social media posts about Sanders and reading about him, she decided to stop focusing her personal time on writing for herself. She now writes and publishes something about Sanders every day -- Dr. Seuss themes every Sunday, poems and parodies. “I decided this is the most worthy cause to put my rhymes to use.”

Sanders has seen an unexpected rise in the polls since he joined the race for the Democratic nomination shortly after the current national front-runner Clinton announced her candidacy. While Sanders was trailing Clinton by 21.4 percent in national averages of polls compiled by Real Clear Politics, a look at early nominating states like Iowa and New Hampshire paints a different picture of vulnerability for Clinton and strength for Sanders.

The two candidates are tied in Iowa, which constitutes a dramatic drop for Clinton and an impressive surge for Sanders, who has been distancing himself from Clinton in New Hampshire at the top of the Democratic pack since Aug. 25, when he jumped past her in the state for the first time. He currently leads there by 10.5 points.

The candidates are noticeably different in many ways, from policy prescription to fundraising strategy.

Clinton has moved leftward since announcing her candidacy, but she is still threatened by the populist appeal of Sanders, who has long championed the causes that seem to be coming into grace for the Democratic Party. While the candidates currently hold some very similar positions on issues such as immigration reform, gay rights, gun control and campaign finance reform, Sanders has been able to stake out positions to the left of Clinton on other issues that excite some vocal voters.

Among them are his strong anti-war and anti-government surveillance positions as well as his distaste for President Barack Obama's Trans Pacific Partnership trade deal. Sanders also has been a vocal critic of Wall Street and champion of financial reforms, and his stance on those issues has drawn attention to Clinton's cozy relationship with Wall Street executives and the huge paychecks she has received for speeches to large banks since leaving the U.S. State Department. For some Sanders supporters, though, the perception that Sanders has been a consistent proponent of these liberal policies, and cares about them more than winning, is key.

“It’s the message that supporting Bernie Sanders is not just voting on a horse in the race” that attracts Brian Dillon, a 28-year-old self-employed Web designer and developer for e-commerce, said Friday. Dillon has voted just one time in his life, but he has been organizing meetings to drum up support for Sanders.

Sanders's fundraising portfolio also is the reverse of Clinton's. While the former secretary of state is expected to spend somewhere north of $1 billion should she win the primary and head into the general election for 2016, the same has not been said of Sanders. Currently, Clinton has raised, through her campaign committee and super PACs associated with the campaign, $47.5 million, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics. Sanders, on the other hand, has raised just shy of $16.5 million, according to CRP data.

Their most startling difference in fundraising, however, can be seen in the size of the donations they're receiving. The Clinton campaign received 82 percent of its donations from large contributors, and her top industry donors, not including retired people, so far have been lawyers, business services and the financial industry.

In contrast, Sanders relies much more on small donations, which are defined as donations totaling $200 or less. So far, 69 percent of his contributions have come from small donors, and the biggest industries that have given to his campaign have been from the education, legal and healthcare sectors.

Who are those small donors? The types of people who showed up Friday. Some said they donate $25 to $30 a month to Sanders. Some said they have donated several hundred dollars since he jumped into the presidential race. Nearly all of them mentioned they don't earn a ton of money personally. One in particular, Machumu Sakulira, said he donated $500 before attending Friday’s event.

There is “no way” he would support a Clinton ticket, said Sakulira, a 31-year-old senior political science student at the University at Buffalo. He got on a bus Thursday night at 11 p.m. and arrived in New York at 7 a.m. for the Sanders speech. He said he was going back Friday night. “Bernie represents my interest. My vote is a moral choice, I don’t give it to somebody who doesn’t deserve it.”

www.ibtimes.com/election-2016-bernie-sanders-nyc-fundrais...

Outside of the Town Hall theater on West 43rd Street in Manhattan, a crowd of smiling and optimistic people Friday overflowed into the one-way street. Delivery trucks and yellow taxi cabs creeped by, their engines engaged in a shouting match with Bennet Weiss, a man who bore a fleeting resemblance to the Democratic presidential candidate they were all there to support.

"We don't have billions of dollars! All we have are people wearing Bernie pins," Weiss yelled, a large black umbrella covered in Bernie Sanders campaign pins at his feet, catching drops of sweat from his brow. The Occupy Wall Street protester-turned-Sanders supporter urged the crowd to wear the pins at all times with no exception -- even in the shower -- and gave them away freely to anyone who said they didn't have enough cash to afford to pay the suggested donation.

That's the kind of populist support Sanders' campaign has steadily been attracting since the U.S. senator from Vermont formally announced his candidacy in late April. Friday was no exception, with passion-filled people who think Sanders has proved himself the worthy champion of causes they care about the most, such as income inequality, climate change, Wall Street reform and further healthcare reforms. But, perhaps most importantly, they also think he can win the White House.

"Absolutely" he can win, said Joe Trinolone, 30, a former finance industry worker from Long Island, New York, who is studying mathematics at St. Joseph's University. "I mean, he's winning right now."

Sanders, during a fundraising speech Friday, ticked through the policies he cares about and areas of change he wants to see in Washington should he become president. At each turn, his blend of outrage, optimism and sly sarcasm brought raucous cheers from the crowd of 1,100. He rejected recent Wall Street Journal criticism of the high price tag of his proposals, including making public colleges and universities free, lowering so-called real unemployment by pumping funding into infrastructure repairs for the nation’s roads and bridges and implementing a universal healthcare system.

Instead, he pointed to European nations that already have those programs. He implored the crowd to think about what many of them were already talking about: that taking on the big-money interests in the United States that impede those sorts of policy changes is a shared moral obligation.

“Welcome to the revolution,” Sanders said, describing what he believes must happen to American politics. “We can accomplish all of this and more.” And the crowd ate it up.

When asked why they support Sanders, many described his candidacy as a movement. They love his policies, and have a hard time thinking of much they don’t like about him. They especially like that he has been a consistent voice during his time in Washington. That’s a big perceived difference between Sanders and his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton. Those "feeling the Bern" were split on whether they would consider voting for her if she becomes the nominee. Many were newcomers to political action but felt compelled to join the fray when they heard Sanders and his message.

“I’ve never been excited about a politician my entire life,” said Meira Marom, 34, a Brooklyn third-grade teacher with a master's degree in creative writing. When Marom started seeing social media posts about Sanders and reading about him, she decided to stop focusing her personal time on writing for herself. She now writes and publishes something about Sanders every day -- Dr. Seuss themes every Sunday, poems and parodies. “I decided this is the most worthy cause to put my rhymes to use.”

Sanders has seen an unexpected rise in the polls since he joined the race for the Democratic nomination shortly after the current national front-runner Clinton announced her candidacy. While Sanders was trailing Clinton by 21.4 percent in national averages of polls compiled by Real Clear Politics, a look at early nominating states like Iowa and New Hampshire paints a different picture of vulnerability for Clinton and strength for Sanders.

The two candidates are tied in Iowa, which constitutes a dramatic drop for Clinton and an impressive surge for Sanders, who has been distancing himself from Clinton in New Hampshire at the top of the Democratic pack since Aug. 25, when he jumped past her in the state for the first time. He currently leads there by 10.5 points.

The candidates are noticeably different in many ways, from policy prescription to fundraising strategy.

Clinton has moved leftward since announcing her candidacy, but she is still threatened by the populist appeal of Sanders, who has long championed the causes that seem to be coming into grace for the Democratic Party. While the candidates currently hold some very similar positions on issues such as immigration reform, gay rights, gun control and campaign finance reform, Sanders has been able to stake out positions to the left of Clinton on other issues that excite some vocal voters.

Among them are his strong anti-war and anti-government surveillance positions as well as his distaste for President Barack Obama's Trans Pacific Partnership trade deal. Sanders also has been a vocal critic of Wall Street and champion of financial reforms, and his stance on those issues has drawn attention to Clinton's cozy relationship with Wall Street executives and the huge paychecks she has received for speeches to large banks since leaving the U.S. State Department. For some Sanders supporters, though, the perception that Sanders has been a consistent proponent of these liberal policies, and cares about them more than winning, is key.

“It’s the message that supporting Bernie Sanders is not just voting on a horse in the race” that attracts Brian Dillon, a 28-year-old self-employed Web designer and developer for e-commerce, said Friday. Dillon has voted just one time in his life, but he has been organizing meetings to drum up support for Sanders.

Sanders's fundraising portfolio also is the reverse of Clinton's. While the former secretary of state is expected to spend somewhere north of $1 billion should she win the primary and head into the general election for 2016, the same has not been said of Sanders. Currently, Clinton has raised, through her campaign committee and super PACs associated with the campaign, $47.5 million, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics. Sanders, on the other hand, has raised just shy of $16.5 million, according to CRP data.

Their most startling difference in fundraising, however, can be seen in the size of the donations they're receiving. The Clinton campaign received 82 percent of its donations from large contributors, and her top industry donors, not including retired people, so far have been lawyers, business services and the financial industry.

In contrast, Sanders relies much more on small donations, which are defined as donations totaling $200 or less. So far, 69 percent of his contributions have come from small donors, and the biggest industries that have given to his campaign have been from the education, legal and healthcare sectors.

Who are those small donors? The types of people who showed up Friday. Some said they donate $25 to $30 a month to Sanders. Some said they have donated several hundred dollars since he jumped into the presidential race. Nearly all of them mentioned they don't earn a ton of money personally. One in particular, Machumu Sakulira, said he donated $500 before attending Friday’s event.

There is “no way” he would support a Clinton ticket, said Sakulira, a 31-year-old senior political science student at the University at Buffalo. He got on a bus Thursday night at 11 p.m. and arrived in New York at 7 a.m. for the Sanders speech. He said he was going back Friday night. “Bernie represents my interest. My vote is a moral choice, I don’t give it to somebody who doesn’t deserve it.”

www.ibtimes.com/election-2016-bernie-sanders-nyc-fundrais...

Outside of the Town Hall theater on West 43rd Street in Manhattan, a crowd of smiling and optimistic people Friday overflowed into the one-way street. Delivery trucks and yellow taxi cabs creeped by, their engines engaged in a shouting match with Bennet Weiss, a man who bore a fleeting resemblance to the Democratic presidential candidate they were all there to support.

"We don't have billions of dollars! All we have are people wearing Bernie pins," Weiss yelled, a large black umbrella covered in Bernie Sanders campaign pins at his feet, catching drops of sweat from his brow. The Occupy Wall Street protester-turned-Sanders supporter urged the crowd to wear the pins at all times with no exception -- even in the shower -- and gave them away freely to anyone who said they didn't have enough cash to afford to pay the suggested donation.

That's the kind of populist support Sanders' campaign has steadily been attracting since the U.S. senator from Vermont formally announced his candidacy in late April. Friday was no exception, with passion-filled people who think Sanders has proved himself the worthy champion of causes they care about the most, such as income inequality, climate change, Wall Street reform and further healthcare reforms. But, perhaps most importantly, they also think he can win the White House.

"Absolutely" he can win, said Joe Trinolone, 30, a former finance industry worker from Long Island, New York, who is studying mathematics at St. Joseph's University. "I mean, he's winning right now."

Sanders, during a fundraising speech Friday, ticked through the policies he cares about and areas of change he wants to see in Washington should he become president. At each turn, his blend of outrage, optimism and sly sarcasm brought raucous cheers from the crowd of 1,100. He rejected recent Wall Street Journal criticism of the high price tag of his proposals, including making public colleges and universities free, lowering so-called real unemployment by pumping funding into infrastructure repairs for the nation’s roads and bridges and implementing a universal healthcare system.

Instead, he pointed to European nations that already have those programs. He implored the crowd to think about what many of them were already talking about: that taking on the big-money interests in the United States that impede those sorts of policy changes is a shared moral obligation.

“Welcome to the revolution,” Sanders said, describing what he believes must happen to American politics. “We can accomplish all of this and more.” And the crowd ate it up.

When asked why they support Sanders, many described his candidacy as a movement. They love his policies, and have a hard time thinking of much they don’t like about him. They especially like that he has been a consistent voice during his time in Washington. That’s a big perceived difference between Sanders and his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton. Those "feeling the Bern" were split on whether they would consider voting for her if she becomes the nominee. Many were newcomers to political action but felt compelled to join the fray when they heard Sanders and his message.

“I’ve never been excited about a politician my entire life,” said Meira Marom, 34, a Brooklyn third-grade teacher with a master's degree in creative writing. When Marom started seeing social media posts about Sanders and reading about him, she decided to stop focusing her personal time on writing for herself. She now writes and publishes something about Sanders every day -- Dr. Seuss themes every Sunday, poems and parodies. “I decided this is the most worthy cause to put my rhymes to use.”

Sanders has seen an unexpected rise in the polls since he joined the race for the Democratic nomination shortly after the current national front-runner Clinton announced her candidacy. While Sanders was trailing Clinton by 21.4 percent in national averages of polls compiled by Real Clear Politics, a look at early nominating states like Iowa and New Hampshire paints a different picture of vulnerability for Clinton and strength for Sanders.

The two candidates are tied in Iowa, which constitutes a dramatic drop for Clinton and an impressive surge for Sanders, who has been distancing himself from Clinton in New Hampshire at the top of the Democratic pack since Aug. 25, when he jumped past her in the state for the first time. He currently leads there by 10.5 points.

The candidates are noticeably different in many ways, from policy prescription to fundraising strategy.

Clinton has moved leftward since announcing her candidacy, but she is still threatened by the populist appeal of Sanders, who has long championed the causes that seem to be coming into grace for the Democratic Party. While the candidates currently hold some very similar positions on issues such as immigration reform, gay rights, gun control and campaign finance reform, Sanders has been able to stake out positions to the left of Clinton on other issues that excite some vocal voters.

Among them are his strong anti-war and anti-government surveillance positions as well as his distaste for President Barack Obama's Trans Pacific Partnership trade deal. Sanders also has been a vocal critic of Wall Street and champion of financial reforms, and his stance on those issues has drawn attention to Clinton's cozy relationship with Wall Street executives and the huge paychecks she has received for speeches to large banks since leaving the U.S. State Department. For some Sanders supporters, though, the perception that Sanders has been a consistent proponent of these liberal policies, and cares about them more than winning, is key.

“It’s the message that supporting Bernie Sanders is not just voting on a horse in the race” that attracts Brian Dillon, a 28-year-old self-employed Web designer and developer for e-commerce, said Friday. Dillon has voted just one time in his life, but he has been organizing meetings to drum up support for Sanders.

Sanders's fundraising portfolio also is the reverse of Clinton's. While the former secretary of state is expected to spend somewhere north of $1 billion should she win the primary and head into the general election for 2016, the same has not been said of Sanders. Currently, Clinton has raised, through her campaign committee and super PACs associated with the campaign, $47.5 million, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics. Sanders, on the other hand, has raised just shy of $16.5 million, according to CRP data.

Their most startling difference in fundraising, however, can be seen in the size of the donations they're receiving. The Clinton campaign received 82 percent of its donations from large contributors, and her top industry donors, not including retired people, so far have been lawyers, business services and the financial industry.

In contrast, Sanders relies much more on small donations, which are defined as donations totaling $200 or less. So far, 69 percent of his contributions have come from small donors, and the biggest industries that have given to his campaign have been from the education, legal and healthcare sectors.

Who are those small donors? The types of people who showed up Friday. Some said they donate $25 to $30 a month to Sanders. Some said they have donated several hundred dollars since he jumped into the presidential race. Nearly all of them mentioned they don't earn a ton of money personally. One in particular, Machumu Sakulira, said he donated $500 before attending Friday’s event.

There is “no way” he would support a Clinton ticket, said Sakulira, a 31-year-old senior political science student at the University at Buffalo. He got on a bus Thursday night at 11 p.m. and arrived in New York at 7 a.m. for the Sanders speech. He said he was going back Friday night. “Bernie represents my interest. My vote is a moral choice, I don’t give it to somebody who doesn’t deserve it.”

www.ibtimes.com/election-2016-bernie-sanders-nyc-fundrais...

Outside of the Town Hall theater on West 43rd Street in Manhattan, a crowd of smiling and optimistic people Friday overflowed into the one-way street. Delivery trucks and yellow taxi cabs creeped by, their engines engaged in a shouting match with Bennet Weiss, a man who bore a fleeting resemblance to the Democratic presidential candidate they were all there to support.

"We don't have billions of dollars! All we have are people wearing Bernie pins," Weiss yelled, a large black umbrella covered in Bernie Sanders campaign pins at his feet, catching drops of sweat from his brow. The Occupy Wall Street protester-turned-Sanders supporter urged the crowd to wear the pins at all times with no exception -- even in the shower -- and gave them away freely to anyone who said they didn't have enough cash to afford to pay the suggested donation.

That's the kind of populist support Sanders' campaign has steadily been attracting since the U.S. senator from Vermont formally announced his candidacy in late April. Friday was no exception, with passion-filled people who think Sanders has proved himself the worthy champion of causes they care about the most, such as income inequality, climate change, Wall Street reform and further healthcare reforms. But, perhaps most importantly, they also think he can win the White House.

"Absolutely" he can win, said Joe Trinolone, 30, a former finance industry worker from Long Island, New York, who is studying mathematics at St. Joseph's University. "I mean, he's winning right now."

Sanders, during a fundraising speech Friday, ticked through the policies he cares about and areas of change he wants to see in Washington should he become president. At each turn, his blend of outrage, optimism and sly sarcasm brought raucous cheers from the crowd of 1,100. He rejected recent Wall Street Journal criticism of the high price tag of his proposals, including making public colleges and universities free, lowering so-called real unemployment by pumping funding into infrastructure repairs for the nation’s roads and bridges and implementing a universal healthcare system.

Instead, he pointed to European nations that already have those programs. He implored the crowd to think about what many of them were already talking about: that taking on the big-money interests in the United States that impede those sorts of policy changes is a shared moral obligation.

“Welcome to the revolution,” Sanders said, describing what he believes must happen to American politics. “We can accomplish all of this and more.” And the crowd ate it up.

When asked why they support Sanders, many described his candidacy as a movement. They love his policies, and have a hard time thinking of much they don’t like about him. They especially like that he has been a consistent voice during his time in Washington. That’s a big perceived difference between Sanders and his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton. Those "feeling the Bern" were split on whether they would consider voting for her if she becomes the nominee. Many were newcomers to political action but felt compelled to join the fray when they heard Sanders and his message.

“I’ve never been excited about a politician my entire life,” said Meira Marom, 34, a Brooklyn third-grade teacher with a master's degree in creative writing. When Marom started seeing social media posts about Sanders and reading about him, she decided to stop focusing her personal time on writing for herself. She now writes and publishes something about Sanders every day -- Dr. Seuss themes every Sunday, poems and parodies. “I decided this is the most worthy cause to put my rhymes to use.”

Sanders has seen an unexpected rise in the polls since he joined the race for the Democratic nomination shortly after the current national front-runner Clinton announced her candidacy. While Sanders was trailing Clinton by 21.4 percent in national averages of polls compiled by Real Clear Politics, a look at early nominating states like Iowa and New Hampshire paints a different picture of vulnerability for Clinton and strength for Sanders.

The two candidates are tied in Iowa, which constitutes a dramatic drop for Clinton and an impressive surge for Sanders, who has been distancing himself from Clinton in New Hampshire at the top of the Democratic pack since Aug. 25, when he jumped past her in the state for the first time. He currently leads there by 10.5 points.

The candidates are noticeably different in many ways, from policy prescription to fundraising strategy.

Clinton has moved leftward since announcing her candidacy, but she is still threatened by the populist appeal of Sanders, who has long championed the causes that seem to be coming into grace for the Democratic Party. While the candidates currently hold some very similar positions on issues such as immigration reform, gay rights, gun control and campaign finance reform, Sanders has been able to stake out positions to the left of Clinton on other issues that excite some vocal voters.

Among them are his strong anti-war and anti-government surveillance positions as well as his distaste for President Barack Obama's Trans Pacific Partnership trade deal. Sanders also has been a vocal critic of Wall Street and champion of financial reforms, and his stance on those issues has drawn attention to Clinton's cozy relationship with Wall Street executives and the huge paychecks she has received for speeches to large banks since leaving the U.S. State Department. For some Sanders supporters, though, the perception that Sanders has been a consistent proponent of these liberal policies, and cares about them more than winning, is key.

“It’s the message that supporting Bernie Sanders is not just voting on a horse in the race” that attracts Brian Dillon, a 28-year-old self-employed Web designer and developer for e-commerce, said Friday. Dillon has voted just one time in his life, but he has been organizing meetings to drum up support for Sanders.

Sanders's fundraising portfolio also is the reverse of Clinton's. While the former secretary of state is expected to spend somewhere north of $1 billion should she win the primary and head into the general election for 2016, the same has not been said of Sanders. Currently, Clinton has raised, through her campaign committee and super PACs associated with the campaign, $47.5 million, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics. Sanders, on the other hand, has raised just shy of $16.5 million, according to CRP data.

Their most startling difference in fundraising, however, can be seen in the size of the donations they're receiving. The Clinton campaign received 82 percent of its donations from large contributors, and her top industry donors, not including retired people, so far have been lawyers, business services and the financial industry.

In contrast, Sanders relies much more on small donations, which are defined as donations totaling $200 or less. So far, 69 percent of his contributions have come from small donors, and the biggest industries that have given to his campaign have been from the education, legal and healthcare sectors.

Who are those small donors? The types of people who showed up Friday. Some said they donate $25 to $30 a month to Sanders. Some said they have donated several hundred dollars since he jumped into the presidential race. Nearly all of them mentioned they don't earn a ton of money personally. One in particular, Machumu Sakulira, said he donated $500 before attending Friday’s event.

There is “no way” he would support a Clinton ticket, said Sakulira, a 31-year-old senior political science student at the University at Buffalo. He got on a bus Thursday night at 11 p.m. and arrived in New York at 7 a.m. for the Sanders speech. He said he was going back Friday night. “Bernie represents my interest. My vote is a moral choice, I don’t give it to somebody who doesn’t deserve it.”

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