July 28, 2012

London Olympics: “an opening ceremony for the 99 percent”

London Olympics: “an opening ceremony for the 99 percent”


Opening Ceremony London 2012: Did director take shot at US on health care?

The director of the opening ceremony for the London 2012 Games created a production for the 99 percent,
it seems. For an Olympic movement that hates controversy, that is unusual.



“One of the reasons we put the NHS in the show is that everyone is aware of how important the NHS is to everybody in this country,” he said at a press conference earlier in the day. ”One of the core values of our society is that it doesn’t matter who you are, you will get treated the same in terms of health care.”



[...] Is that political? That is in the eye of the beholder.

But it is hard to escape at least some small sense of advocacy in Boyle’s second act, particularly after a cigar-chomping elite let loose the gluttony of unchecked industry on the idyllic English countryside in the first act. This was, it seemed, an opening ceremony for the 99 percent.

more:
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Olympics/2012/0728/Opening-Ceremony-London-2012-Did-director-take-shot-at-US-on-health-care
http://underthemountainbunker.com/2012/07/28/london-olympics-an-opening-ceremony-for-the-99-percent/

July 28, 2012

Mitt’s insults, mistakes & blunders abroad aren’t gaffes-They actually represent his true worldview.

Romney’s World
Mitt’s insults, mistakes, and blunders abroad aren’t gaffes. They actually represent his true worldview.


The thing that Krauthammer doesn’t get is that Romney is not the sort of businessman—that his brand of capitalism is not the sort of enterprise—that requires even the most elementary understanding of diplomacy, courtesy, or sensitivity to other people’s values, lives, or perceptions.

The American capitalists-turned-statesmen of an earlier generation—Douglas Dillon, Averell Harriman, Robert Lovett, John McCloy, Dean Acheson, Paul Nitze—took risks, built institutions, helped rebuild postwar Europe, befriended their foreign counterparts: in short, they cultivated an internationalist sensibility at their core. Whatever you think of their politics or Cold War policies generally (and there is much to criticize), financiers formed an American political elite in that era because finance (through the Marshall Plan, the World Bank, the IMF, and so forth) was so often the vehicle of American expansionism.

By contrast, private-equity firms, such as Bain Capital, where Romney made his fortune, tend to view their client companies as cash cows, susceptible to cookie-cutter formulas from which the firms’ partners reap lavish fees, almost regardless of the outcome. Their ends and means breed an insularity, a sense of entitlement, a disposition to view all the world’s entities through a single prism and to appraise them along a single scale.

How Romney should have behaved in London may have been obvious to Charles Krauthammer, who studies politics; it would have been obvious to politically ambitious businessmen from more traditional lines of work or from an earlier era. But as we have been graced to see this week, it is not necessarily obvious to Romney himself.

more:
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/war_stories/2012/07/mitt_romney_s_insults_and_mistakes_while_at_the_london_olympics_aren_t_gaffes_as_much_as_a_fair_representation_of_his_worldview_.single.html

July 28, 2012

Eric Lewis has the perfect Mittens goes to London cartoon.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/07/28/1114325/-Animal-Nuz-107

July 28, 2012

London Olympics: a cheer for our athletes

July 28, 2012

Of Course Romney is Behind in the Polls

Of Course Romney is Behind in the Polls
by BooMan
Sat Jul 28th, 2012 at 10:24:48 AM EST

I'm tired of political scientists who look at historical economic data and say that Mitt Romney should be leading in the polls. I see a lot of this coming from people on the left, and I think it may have something to do with the left's propensity to see history as unfolding in some kind of deterministic dialectical way. People on the right are much more inclined to give credit to the "great men in history" approach to understanding events. That's why they fetishize Winston Churchill, for example.

I'm trying to think of the right kind of analogy to explain my dissatisfaction. Remember Mike Tyson at the end of his professional career, after he had suffered defeat, gone to jail for rape, and then decided to bite off a chunk of Evander Holyfield's ear rather than continue to fight him man-to-man? At that point, Tyson had lost everyone's sympathy and their trust. You wouldn't expect the prognosticators to predict future victories, nor would you expect the judges to be unbiased against him. But what if you had him fight a featherweight fighter? What if you had him fight some guy you picked up off the street? In those cases, Tyson's declining performance and erratic behavior would not be an indicator that he was about to lose. Not at all. Mitt Romney should not be ahead in the polls because he's a featherweight. He's no match for the president as a politician.

And, frankly, this is a highly unfair analogy because President Obama hasn't behaved erratically or showed any signs of ring-rust. He hasn't lost people's trust. And the Republicans, now led by Mitt Romney, have done everything they can think of to prevent a robust economic recovery. Do the experts factor Republicans' culpability for the economy into their equations? When was the last time a political party intentionally sabotaged the economy and the country's credit rating during a period of high unemployment? Are the people supposed to be completely unaware of this record?

When has a party been so openly hostile to so much of the electorate? Over the last four years, the Republicans have waged a War on Women, who make up more than 50% of the electorate. They have vilified Latinos, who are the fastest growing demographic in the country. They've passed laws aimed mainly at disenfranchising blacks. They've waged a cultural war against gay rights. They've attacked Muslims' right to build mosques and worship as they please. They've alienated the scientific community by denying that climate change is occurring. They've waged an unprecedented war on public sector employees and unions in general. That's a lot of people who need to disregard the way they've been treated in order to cast a vote against Obama because of the economy. Forget the GDP or the unemployment rate, any party that alienates this many people should be behind in the polls.

http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2012/7/28/102448/411

July 28, 2012

Here’s The Opening Ceremony Tribute To Terrorism Victims NBC Doesn’t Want You To See

Here’s The Opening Ceremony Tribute To Terrorism Victims NBC Doesn’t Want You To See



The major transitional element of today's London Olympics opening ceremony was a downtempo performance of adoptive sporting anthem "Abide With Me" by Scottish singer Emeli Sandé. The song and accompanying dance were a tribute to the victims of the 7/7 terror attacks in London that claimed 52 victims days after the 2012 Summer Olympic hosts were named. (It's also been suggested the performance was a memorial to the war dead.)

Regardless, it was a rather significant and emotional moment in the opening ceremony, coming just before the parade of nations—and it wasn't aired in the United States. Instead, viewers were treated to a lengthy and meaningless Ryan Seacrest interview of Michael Phelps. NBC regularly excises small portions of the opening ceremony to make room for commercials, but we've never heard of them censoring out an entire performance—especially to air an inane interview. We've asked NBC why they didn't air the tribute, and if they get back to us we'll let you know what they say. In the meantime, enjoy the performance everyone else in the world saw. [BBC]

video & more here:
http://deadspin.com/5929778/heres-the-opening-ceremony-tribute-to-terrorism-victims-nbc-doesnt-want-you-to-see

July 28, 2012

Romney "The Diplomat" Toon

July 28, 2012

PELOSI: "For the record, I prefer Kentucky Fried Chicken"

@NancyPelosi
Nancy Pelosi
For the record, I prefer Kentucky Fried Chicken. #ChickFilA
July 27, 2012 9:19 pm via TweetDeck Reply Retweet Favorite
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/27/nancy-pelosi-chick-fil-a-tweet_n_1711845.html

July 28, 2012

ROMNEY-SHAMBLES

July 28, 2012

Mittens: one of the very small number of Americans who actually did commit voter fraud.

SAT JUL 28, 2012 AT 06:00 AM PDT
Here's why Romney will NEVER release his tax forms, and why we need to keep hounding him
byBlack MaxFollow



Clear enough. Mittens is likely guilty of voter fraud, by living in California (or perhaps New Hampshire), owning no property in Massachusetts, yet voting in the 2010 election by claiming he "resided" in his son's unfinished basement. He's denied it, and though I'm not a Massachusetts political junkie and therefore know few details about how he's managed to fend off the charges of voter fraud, he's so far managed to dodge the story almost entirely.

The tax returns, along with showing just how unethically and unpatriotically clever he's been in sheltering his Rmillions from Uncle Sam and the IRS, will also prove that he resided legally in California when he trundled his rich ass back to MA to cast an illegal vote for Scott Brown.

Mittens: one of the very small number of Americans who actually did commit voter fraud. If I'm not mistaken, the form of fraud he committed in Massachusetts is a felony.

That's why he won't release them, and that's why we need to keep hounding him about it. We also need to accuse him of voter fraud, using the info above, and keep after him to disprove the allegation by releasing his tax returns.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/07/28/1114484/-Here-s-why-Romney-will-NEVER-release-his-tax-forms-and-why-we-need-to-keep-hounding-him