(h/t commentor Dead Existentialist)
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It’s an Age of Austerity “human scale” Olympics, according to the Washington Post:
LONDON — Remember the 2,008 exquisitely synchronized drummers at the opening of the Beijing Games? In London, look for a flock of sheep, three cows, two goats and 10 waddling ducks. Where there were choreographed Chinese philosophers reenacting the invention of the printing press, expect James Bond in a helicopter. And where dragons lurked in the Bird’s Nest stadium, watch out for a Voldemort-vs.-Mary Poppins smackdown inside the glistening new Olympic Park….
As a global audience prepares for nearly three weeks of competition set against the backdrop of one of the world’s most recognizable cities, it speaks to the wholly different mission of the London Games: to bring the ponderous, politicized and outsize Olympics back down to Earth.
“I think there is a bit of a responsibility on us to bring these Games down to size and return them to a game for athletes, to hand them on in such a condition that other countries elsewhere around the world who have not had the Games thus far feel like they can be comfortable bidding for them,” said Hugh Robertson, Britain’s minister for sports and the Olympics. “I don’t feel they should be exclusively the reserve of global superpowers.”…
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Besides ogling extremely fit people doing amazing things with their bodies, what’s on the agenda for the end of the work week?
(Any bets on some kind of hideously botched Romney tax-form “Friday document drop” in hopes that the Olympics will draw attention away?)
JPL
Mike Luckovich’s cartoon on Mitt’s visit
link
amk
The way mittbot has fucked up his first “FP” tour in his own anglo-saxon way, releasing those mysterious returns might not be such a bad idea after all. He always has got the msm to cover his a$$.
amk
@JPL: Damn you. That was gonna be my next post.
BruinKid
Can anyone explain if Ron Paul’s Audit the Fed bill that passed the House is a good thing, or if there are poison pills in it that make it a bad thing? Because Harry Reid is refusing to take it up in the Senate.
Raven
Fucking morons in the Athens paper are defending him!
Raven
@BruinKid: Anything that jackass proposes should be opposed.
JGabriel
Who are we supposed to root for?
.
BillinGlendaleCA
@JGabriel: Injuries.
JPL
@amk: It’s is worth a double post.
Narcissus
Honestly ogling hot bodies is like two-thirds of the reason why I watch the olympics
I know this makes me a bad person
arguingwithsignposts
Two beefs with the Olympic coverage:
1. Lots of people seem to be using the word “free” incorrectly related to NBC’s streaming online offerings. It’s NOT FREE! You have to be a cable, satellite or telco TV subscriber to be able to watch live online. No online-only purchase option, even. Assholes.
2. The president of NBC Olympics must not have gotten the memo about the ‘toned down’ ceremonies, because this is his bullshit excuse for not livestreaming the opening/closing ceremonies: “It was never our intent to live stream the Opening Ceremony or Closing Ceremony. They are complex entertainment spectacles that do not translate well online because they require context,” said Gary Zenkel, president of NBC Olympics.
Fucking Live Feeds, how do they work?
geg6
I can only hope that Mittens makes my work day as entertaining as he did yesterday. I’m sure my co-workers are convinced I’ve completely lost it during this busiest time of year for me due to all the cackling coming from my office.
I’m a sucker for the Games’ opening ceremonies. Looking forward to it and I certainly will enjoy any Harry Potter references. Am I the only person on earth who hated the overblown Chinese version?
mai naem
@arguingwithsignposts: I didn’t know they weren’t free. That’s BS. I have to believe there’s a miniscule number of people who are going to subscribe to cable just for the Olympics. It’s the freaking Olympics. They should be free to watch.
Geoduck
At this point I just don’t see Romney releasing any tax info under any circumstances.
kay
@amk:
Well, there’s 2 ways to look at it. The only reason he chose London was to draw attention to his managing the Salt Lake City games.
For some reason that is a mystery to me, Republicans and political media think the Salt Lake games are a huge selling point for Mitt.
I don’t think anyone will give a shit that he managed the Olympics 10 years ago, but they all do.
He only has 3 things to talk about. Bain, Olympics and Massachusetts. Obama campaign made the whole Bain subject problematic for him, this disastrous
trip makes the Olympics dicey to talk about, which leaves Massachusetts.
I don’t think he wants to rely on his one term in Massachusetts for the next 3 months. US media may be covering for him, but 2 pillars of his campaign are rapidly crumbling, leaving one, and his Massachusetts record objectively sucks.
arguingwithsignposts
@mai naem: or at least an online only purchase option. tying it to a cable sub. is just stupid. Of course, NBC is now owned by a cable co., so it makes perfect sense in their stupid little heads.
NotMax
As usual, will not be wasting so much as one second watching the Olympics.
Holds zero interest, charm, allure or appeal for me.
For those who enjoy them, more power to you. They’re not everyone’s cup of tea, however.
VividBlueDotty
Loved that video and thanked Dead Existentialist for it when it was first posted!! Also included it in the Weekly Awards I’m doing in lieu of #FF on Twitter @VividBlueDotty.
@geg6: I’m with you hoping he outdoes himself today!! It’s a high hurdle for him, I know, but I have faith that he will rise to the challenge.
Joseph Nobles
I just realized that every last traffic jam in London during the Olympics will be flogged by Fox News and the Kapitalist Keyboard Kommandos as proof Mitt was right. So we’ve got that to look forward to.
NotMax
Mitt can always go duck the media on the 32-acre plot the Mormon Temple in London occupies.
mai naem
I think Mitt’s going go to Israel and screw up in one of two ways: first, he’ll make a comment something to the effect of – You jews are so good at making money or he will make a comment about the Israelis/Jewish people not allowing the Mormon to build a mormon temple on old Jewish temples. This was an issue about seven years ago.
NotMax
@NotMaxActually, that brings up another question. If/when Mitt enters a Mormon temple, is his Secret Service contingent forbidden entry as any non-member would normally be?
JPL
@mai naem: What will he say in Poland? Will he bring up his visit to Poland when he visits Israel?
bemused
What’s the deal with Romney being a registered lobbyist and organizing the Utah Olympics at the same time? I’m wondering if this is unusual for an Olympic games organizer or not.
NotMax
@JPL
In Poland, expect him to promise to re-instate missiles there and American troops to guard them to counter the ‘Soviet threat.’
Absolutely 100% sure he will not address (nor answer any questions about) the ongoing hot-button legal cases there investigating governmental culpability regarding the CIA black site in Poland.
Maybe he’ll beam about the wonders of a cheesy pierogi.
Arclite
I’ve been following the story of how the US Army is rebooting it’s camo pattern after 8 years b/c it didn’t camouflage anything. Apparently the army spent $5 billion developing and implementing it. Not sure why it costs five fcking billion to design a pattern (that doesn’t work) and put it on a few million uniforms, but there you have it.
If someone has an itemized breakdown of where that money went, I’d love to see it.
Anya
@Raven: on what basis?
Narcissus
@Geoduck: How can he avoid it?
CaliCat
Mika on Morning Schmoe is beyond crestfallen that her boyfriend Mitt is being held accountable for his stupidity by the British Press. It must be driving the Village yayhoos crazy that they can’t control the media narrative across the old pond. Mika’s also desperately trying to keep the “he didn’t build some shit or whatever” meme alive. Yawn. Time for bed.
NotMax
@Calicat
If Mika Brzezinski were any more of a tool, she’d be listed in the Snap-on company’s catalog.
Geoduck
@Narcissus: He’ll just keep stonewalling. (Of course, my political predictions are usually wrong, so expect a release within the hour..)
Anya
From watching a video of Michelle Obama greeting the US Olympic team, I know what the right will counter with Romney’s gaffes.
Anya
@CaliCat: Mika a gigantic tool! She needs to get some self respect and stop acting Scarborough’s abused wife.
JoyfulA
I haven’t followed the Olympics since the 1970s, when the U.S. Olympic Committee sued a local hole-in-the-wall Greek restaurant for being named “Olympus” and infringing on its trademarks. The owner didn’t have the money to defend himself against the big bucks and went out of business.
Have they made the capital of the state of Washington change its name yet?
JPL
Wonder if Mitt will air his disgust over the two state solution like his new best friend Sheldon?
JPL
@Anya: Do you have a link?
kdaug
Fess up, Anne – where’s your peephole?
Can’t be coincidence. Granted, you didn’t mention the paint in my hair or the dirt under my nails, but I don’t work well when I’m being watched…
Valdivia
Stupid question: can we see the Opening ceremonies live on tv or are the nbc idiots going to only show it on prime time?
different-church-lady
I was afraid of this. After the most aesthetically astonishing opening and closing ceremonies in Olympic history, we got that little taste of people in bowler hats doing slow motion Deiter dances on a London bus and I’m not sure how anyone’s reaction could be anything but, “The fuck?”
I suppose you’ve got to respect them for realizing nobody could top Beijing, but for cryin’ out loud, they’re gonna go kitsch instead?
amk
The Sun FP headlines today – mitt the twit
Anya
@JPL: Here it is!
JPL
First Lady Michelle Obama is on the Today Show and said leading the delegation will be a humbling experience. Mitt asked an aide to look up the definition of the word humbling.
Steeplejack
@Valdivia:
I can’t find any channel showing any live coverage of the opening ceremonies (starting at 4:00 p.m. EDT).
kdaug
@NotMax:
Can he swear on a bible?
Can he get a security clearance without releasing his tax returns?
Frankensteinbeck
He is not going to release his taxes. Ever. He’s stubbornly arrogant on any issue where he’s not a pathetic waffler. He doesn’t do the wise thing, he does whatever Mitt Romney’s pride wants.
@BruinKid:
I would like to hear more about the bill, but the fed is front and center of Ron Paul’s gold bug insanity, and he thinks it’s run by the Elders of Zion. Odds any bill he supports involving the fed being anything but a clusterfuck approach zero.
@NotMax:
Given that the investigation is ridiculously stupid (Their evidence is that someone built a cage in a building they think the CIA uses, so that MUST be a torture prison, right?!) I think there’s decent odds Mitt will bring it up. And he’ll find some way to be insultingly wrong about it to all sides.
JPL
@Anya: She is the one who is awe inspiring. Thank you.
jibeaux
@Geoduck: Me neither. A man’s got to have some principles, and Mitt’s principle is that we can’t know any more about him than absolutely necessary.
Anya
@JPL: I love her! Can we have Michelle for ever as a first lady? She totally rocks! Hate the jacket though.
Valdivia
@Steeplejack:
thanks, I figured the would embargo it until they can show it on prime time. I hate the taped delay.
btw–hope your house hunting is going ok?
Maude
@arguingwithsignposts:
Comcast is the one who has come up with a $300 monthly program for fast internet isn’t it?
different-church-lady
@Valdivia: I’m a big fan of live TV, but it strikes me that 2 in the afternoon on a Friday ain’t the best time to put on a big show.
Steeplejack
@Valdivia:
Don’t get me started! I have never had as much trouble finding a place as this time. I’m still in the thick of it.
geg6
@different-church-lady:
Man, I really must be the only person on earth who hated, just hated what Beijing’s ceremonies were. Completely incomprehensible to me, not to mention so over the top and North Korean-like that it disgusted me. Gimme some veddy proper Brits with bowler hats any day.
Jay in Oregon
@kay:
Well, he could always run on his record as governor of Massachusetts… oh, wait.
OK then, he could tout his business acumen as owner and CEO of Bain Capital… oh, wait.
Sooooooo… didja know that the President is “near”?
(I think I may have swiped from Jon Stewart for some of that…)
arguingwithsignposts
@Valdivia: Not in the US. See my comment above @11. I’m sure there are places on the Intertubes where they will be streaming it live.
Valdivia
@Steeplejack:
oy. I hope you find something soon. I have been asking around but nothing but things inside the district.
@arguingwithsignposts:
I love seeing it when it happens and hate the repackaging of events at night. Thanks though.
Jay in Oregon
@mai naem:
Cool, then the Israels can counter with “WTF is this shit about Mormon baptism by proxy of Holocaust victims?”
I’m waiting for the #Mittshuggener tag to start trending on Twitter…
@kay: Sorry about stomping on the rest of your comment above. I plead impaired cognition due to having just woken up.
different-church-lady
@Arclite: My guess is a fair amount of grift and gouging, combined with inaccurate accounting and mis-reporting. For example: the design itself didn’t cost that much, the manufacture of all those uniforms got the total up to maybe a billion, and the rest had to to with lousy estimates that got reported as fact.
I remember a major corporation I contracted with suddenly had a huge concern about ordering things because somebody had figured out that every individual order that was processed cost the company $150 in resources. So you had people running around like idiots saying, “I need a box of CD blanks. Does anyone else need anything so we can get this order total up to a hefty amount?”
Six months later nobody gave a damn about it anymore, probably because they figured out the original evaluation was bogus.
JCT
@Steeplejack: Hang in there! I looked at over 40 houses in 18 months before I found what I wanted. This includes living in a trailer for the last 7 months. I finally close on Monday. It’s worth it to get what you want. I think ….
NonyNony
@kay:
I doubt it. Political strategists are really good at, what’s the word, LYING. It’s their job. Republican strategists are looking at Romney and they’re working with his campaign. If his campaign says something is a major asset they aren’t going to disagree with them. That’s what Democratic strategists do – go on the teevee and say “this campaign is completely fucking up – if I were running the campaign I’d have the candidate do X, Y, and Z instead”. Republican strategists don’t do that – they rally round the campaign even when they know what the campaign says is stupid. (I suspect that this is because historically Democratic politicians have rewarded technocratic intelligence over party loyalty while Republican politicians do the reverse. Being able to say “I wuz right” counts for Democratic strategists more than “I wuz loyal”, while the reverse is true for Republicans).
Anyway – the Republicans on the TeeVee say that this is a genius strategy because EVERYTHING a Republican candidate does is a genius strategy right up until it loses them the campaign. And then the knives come out.
So right now they know he can’t run on his record as MA governor (no real accomplishments outside of RomneyCare, which he can’t talk about), and they were counting on his being SuperCapitalist at Bain to be the selling point. Except Mr. SuperCapitalist is just a textbook example of how our financial regulations are fucked up and not really a good example of “leadership” per se. And making the conversation all about how fucked up our financial regulation is really isn’t in the GOP’s best interest.
So he’s got Salt Lake City. And to be honest, Mitt Romney probably really does truly believe that his work in Salt Lake City is awesomesauce. Because he has a lot of people in Utah who think his work for the Winter Olympics was awesomesauce and it made them look good. But his ego won’t let him realize that it’s really a minor accomplishment in the grand scheme of things.
Cassidy
I love the Olympics. I’ll be staying up late tonight to watch and getting up early tomorrow to watch the beach volleyball and rowing. This is my favorite sporting event.
PurpleGirl
People should go to the official web site to see what they are live streaming.
http://www.london2012.com
I was trying to find what stuff they are selling — specifically if they have stuffed mascot dolls like the Nagano games had. (A friend who worked for IBM spent a month in Nagano and made numerous trips there as a member of IBM’s web site team. He was able to get me one each of all four little owlets.)
ETA: the shop automatically redirects to the teamusa shop… bah, humbug. I want the general Olympics shop.
Foregone Conclusion
@PurpleGirl:
Yeah, they have mascots. They’re truly vile. Horrible, horrible, horrible.
https://mascot-games.london2012.com/
The names are inspired, though. Much Wenlock is a small village which saw the first revival of the Olympics, even before Baron de Coubertin. And they held precursor games to the modern Paralympics at Stoke Mandeville hospital in 1948, which was a spinal injuries unit for war veterans.
chopper
jesus, if mitt ever needs a day job, i’m sure he could portray the new boss on The Office.
R-Jud
@Foregone Conclusion:
“Satan’s Teletubbies”, my husband called them.
Steeplejack
@Valdivia:
I have found a place–two, in fact–but the bureaucratic process is tediously slow.
Steeplejack
@JCT:
Thanks for the support. I think I am seeing light at the end of the tunnel. Waiting on a phone call right now.
PurpleGirl
@Foregone Conclusion: Thank you. However, even that mascot shop redirects to TeamUSA’s shop. Grrrr. I went to the FAQ page and complained about it. I doubt it was will be changed.
I’ve seen pictures of the mascots and I do think they are weird. They remind me of Teletubbies. The names are nice. I just wanted to compare the merchandise to what Nagano had.
@ R-Jud: Satan’s Teletubbies. I like that.
different-church-lady
@Foregone Conclusion: …the …hell… ARE… those?
Janet Strange
@mai naem:
I actually considered it long enough to call Time-Warner and ask how much it would cost. $50 for a month’s cable, $30 connection fee, $40 disconnect fee.
So – $120 to watch the Olympics.
That is, more of the Olympics than whatever is on NBC, which I expect to be, as usual, mostly commercials, a lot of maddening airhead chatter, and a small amount of heavily edited actual sports competition in what they deem the “popular” sports.
Does anyone know if you can just put in the password of a friend with cable, if the friend is okay with that?
Maude
@Janet Strange:
Fine, unless you get caught. They might be monitoring a bit more because of the Olympics.
Janet Strange
@Maude: But what does “caught” mean? What could they do to me? Or my friend?
Nellcote
@Janet Strange:
That’s how I watch hbo. Check with nbc to see if your friend’s particular cable system is an available option.
dead existentialist
@JoyfulA: What’s Seattle got to do with this? ;)
Tehanu
@geg6:
No, you’re not the only one. Impressive, sure, but for a country that’s embraced “capitalism” so fervently in the last 20 years, there was an awful lot of, um, goose-stepping organization.
NotMax
@Janet Strange
$120 for the 17 days the Olympics will run comes out to about $7 per day.
gluon1
@BruinKid: Steny Hoyer would like to explain why Ron Paul’s “Audit the Fed” bill has really nothing to do with auditing the Fed and everything to do with the GOP’s wacky ideas about monetary policy. (Video) (Written, starting in the lower right corner of the page)
JenJen
I’m so freaking excited about the Olympics, I can hardly stand it. I love them sooooo much. Winter more than Summer, but only slightly.
chuck butcher
I don’t think Rmoney is going to release any more taxes than he’s said he will. What he’s released is bad enough for the GOP talking points and his campaign and the others will be worse. It isn’t illegality, it is the demonstration of just how well the “job creators” do compared to anyone else. I’ve played the tax game to the extent a two-bit S-Corp construction outfit can and I’ve done a hell of lot better with that than the wage slaves do. I don’t have to see them to know how bad it will look to ordinary taxpayers, mine would piss them off even though I take the double hit on SS/FICA.
BTW, you’d have to use a pretty loose definition of middle class to get me into it.