It's a wrap. Tell us your favorite Olympics 2012
moments

Goalkeeper Hope Solo (2nd R) of the U.S. celebrates with her team mates after winning
 their women's soccer final gold medal match against Japan at Wembley Stadium.Maybe in Rio in 2016, NBC will wise up, spend less time on beach volleyball and try not to cover every single event like a home-town reporter. Maybe the opening ceremonies will be broadcast live, the way the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation did it this year. Perhaps live-streaming will also actually be, like, y'know, live.

Complaints aside, whether you saw the Olympics in real time or NBC Delayed, what were your favorite moments?

A few have been included in our poll. But many readers' favorites won't be included in that confined list. That's what the comment thread is for.

A good list of who won medals and some charts with data on the winners, including average weights, heights, ages and sex of competitors in various sports can be found here.

Top Six Nations:

1. United States: Gold?46; Silver?29; Bronze?29
2. China: Gold?38; Silver?27; Bronze?22   
3. Russia: Gold?24; Silver?25; Bronze?33   
4. Great Britain: Gold?29; Silver?17; Bronze?19   
5. Germany: Gold?11; Silver?19; Bronze?14       
6. Japan: Gold?7; Silver?14; Bronze?17   

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our-favorite-Olympics-2012-moments

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Sunday Stuff

I give you Mikey the Beloved in Bucks County?s conservative house organ today (here)?

?(Kathy Boockvar?s) pilgrimage to San Francisco to be with her fellow extreme ideologues to raise money from the far left?s radicals in their home base demonstrates to our community all we need to know about Boockvar?s misguided beliefs,? according to the release, attributed to Faith Bender, Fitzpatrick?s campaign manager.

OMIGOD NANCY PELOSI NANCY PELOSI NANCY PELOSI NANCY PELOSI NANCY PELOSI!!!!

Do you want to know what happened when Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats were in charge of the U.S. House (and Mikey was busy campaigning against Patrick Murphy telling us how many jobs he was going to create)?

Try this (and if you want to tell Mikey to shove it, start by clicking here)?



?and given the events of the past week around Le Manse Doomsy, this is a song I feel like listening to, so here it is.



Read The Full Article:
http://liberaldoomsayer.blogspot.com/2012/08/sunday-stuff_12.html

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Mitt's new friend had to show his taxes.

I hate to keep "beating a dead horse", but, once again, I have to ask Mitt about those tax returns. This questions becomes even more important because of what Mitt demanded of his potential running mate for vice president.

"CHARLOTTE - Mitt Romney requested "several" years of tax returns from his potential running mates, a senior adviser to the candidate said Saturday, suggesting that those considered for the ticket may have been required to reveal more financial documents that the candidate himself.

In a briefing with reporters in Virginia Saturday, senior adviser Beth Myers, who was charged with headed the vice president selection process, declined to specify exactly how many years of tax returns were required, saying only that "several" were requested.
Several, by definition, implies more than two years." [Source] 
I can't say that I blame Mitt for wanting to know how his potential running mate has handled his taxes over the past few years, and Mitt should understand why we, the American people, want the same from him. To say that seeing how an individual has handled this important aspect of his life over the past few years is not important for the person running for president is ludicrous. Of course it's important. And I suspect that Mitt and his supporters know that it is. However, for the sake of political one- upmanship they pretend not to.

Speaking of running mates, Mitt had his on the stump with him today in North Carolina. They had bigger crowds and more enthusiasm coming from those crowds. Ryan, right on cue, lashed into Obama for attacking Mitt instead of offering real hope and change. Yes, he attacked Obama for attacking. This is politics in America.

Anyway, it seems that Obama and his peeps have some attacks of their own. Apparently they have been expecting Mr. Ryan.

 "..Team Obama's response to the House Budget Committee Chairman's elevation to potential VP made clear that the Democrat's campaign won't overhaul so much as go into overdrive. Aides argue that Ryan amplifies rather than challenges their core message with just 88 days until the election.
The early attacks are telling: Obama's website repeatedly refers to Ryan's "extreme budget plan" as favoring the rich over the middle class (the president's core argument against Romney). The first line of its biographical sketch reads "Paul Ryan is a career Washington D.C. insider." (Obama has been running in large part against inside-the-Beltway political stalemate, casting the blame on Republicans.)
In an attack everyone in politics saw coming, the site warns Ryan's budget "would turn Medicare into a voucher program, increasing seniors' costs by up to $6,350 per year"?an unusually precise figure seemingly tailored to shock elderly voters in pivotal battlegrounds like Florida, even though his proposal would not affect people currently over 55. [Source]
Ryan is 42 years old and has spent 20 years in Washington. So yes, he qualifies as an inside the beltway guy. (Isn't that the antithesis of what the new republican party is supposed to represent? Tea Party types who want to throw the bums out and give government back to the people?)

Another thing, is Paul Ryan really a blue collar guy? I know that he represents a blue collar district, (even though he seemed to shun them for a more well to do County when he appeared today with his wealthy new friend) but blue collar? Hardly.

He is a fourth generation Wisconsin native, his dad is a lawyer, his great- grand father owned a hugely successful construction business, his grandfather was appointed US Attorney for Western Wisconsin by Calvin Coolidge, and his family liked to go on ski trips when he was a kid. Yep, a real everyman background. I can just see him and his dad pounding back Pabst Blue Ribbon bears and swapping jokes about the mill in their overalls. Not. 

Still, the imagery is there, and right wingers -from the republican wonks in Washington to the Tea Party faithful down at the local Wal Mart- are all on board.

Now if they can just keep those minorities, old people, and single women home come November, they will be in business.     

*Pic from the Paul Ryan Watch





   






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The gay Republican fetish

Log Cabin Republicans is the main gay GOP group - they recently endorsed Paul Ryan as VP, even though Ryan doesn't support any pro-gay policies at all. Well, our own Chris Andoe had something to say about that.Few fetishes are as odd or as kinky, however, as the increasingly visible "Log Cabin fetish" sweeping the nation.Until recently "Logging," as those in the lifestyle call it, was a...

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http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Americablog/~3/E2AGTwTxDfU/the-gay-republican-feti
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The Death of the Liberal Bargain

The labor violence that escalated from the late 1800s to the late 1930s was eventually defused by the grand liberal bargain, enshrined in the Wagner Act. Unions were strengthened and given the tools to protect their members from the assault of capital.[...]

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http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/firedoglake/fdl/~3/naPAsAyvCiA/

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This Week: In Memoriam

Click here to view this media (h/t Heather)

This Week with George Stephanopoulos notes the passings of eight service members in Afghanistan.

US Army 1SG Russell R Bell, 37, Tyler, TX
US Army SSG Matthew S Sitton, 26, Largo, FL
US Marines Cpl Daniel L Linnabary II, 23, Hubert, NC
US Navy PO3 Clayton R Beauchamp, Weatherford, TX
US Air Force Maj Walter D Gray, 38, Conyers, GA
US Army SPC Ethan J Martin, 22, Lewiston, ID
US Army Maj Thomas E Kennedy, 35, West Point, NY
US Army CSM Kevin J Griffin, 45, Laramie, WY

According to iCasualties, the total number of allied service members killed in Afghanistan is now 3,136.

In addition, the following notable names lost their lives this week:
Football player Fred Matua, gay rights activist Sister Boom Boom, astronomer Sir Bernard Lovell, composer Marvin Hamlisch, art critic Robert Hughes, playwright Mark O'Donnell, film critic Judith Crist, director Mel Stuart, writer and This American Life essayist David Rakoff, actor Al Freeman Jr, music producer Carl Davis, television host Bill Rafferty and South African journalist and author Heidi Holland.

Read The Full Article:
http://crooksandliars.com/nicole-belle/week-memoriam-156

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Looking for answers on the jobs crisis Look at
businesses, not workers.

The campaign to shift the economic narrative from businesses not creating jobs to workers not being good enough to deserve jobs continues. Sometimes it's wholly cynical. Other times it seems to be done with good intentions. But ultimately, however good the intentions, workers?whether currently employed or struggling to find jobs?are harmed when powerful people promote the idea that the big reason for unemployment lies in the deficiencies of unemployed people.

Arianna Huffington, for instance, is getting on board with what appears to be a well-intentioned version of this storyline:

More than 20 million Americans are currently unemployed or underemployed, yet 3.4 million available jobs remain unfilled because job seekers lack the necessary skills.

This sentence should, for most readers, refute itself. There are more than 3 million jobs that not one of the more than 20 million unemployed or underemployed people can't fill because they, the unemployed people, aren't skilled enough? It's a common line, and if it's true, it points to a need for huge government investment in higher education and technical training. But the evidence suggests it's just not true that skills and training are the real issue here.

For one thing, we have the data showing that recruiting intensity?how hard businesses are actually trying to find people to fill the jobs they claim they want to fill?is very low, far below what it was before the recession.

Other studies, too, find "limited evidence of skills mismatch"; in other words, in a few areas there may be a scarcity of workers already trained to do vacant jobs, but it's not widespread, certainly not enough so to explain the levels of unemployment we see. That's pretty clearly visible when you look at a breakdown of jobless people and job openings by industry:
Another measure of how workers?currently employed workers?feel about the actual, real-life availability of jobs lies in how many of those workers quit their jobs. Usually you quit one job either because you have another, better job prospect, or because you feel like it won't be too hard to find an equally good job. But, the Economic Policy Institute's Elise Gould writes, that's not the case:

If the economy were healthier, we would expect a larger number of voluntary quits, which would signal that workers are more confident about outside job opportunities. Voluntary quits are also on a general upward climb, having increased 20.7 percent since June 2009. But they too have a long way to go; they are still 26.8 percent below their 2007 average.

Yet despite evidence piling on evidence that high unemployment is because of a lack of available jobs and that if allegedly available jobs go unfilled, it's only very rarely because of a lack of skilled workers, we still hear a lot about how the problem is that workers need more training.

Many of the people involved in the campaign to highlight "what we the people can do to accelerate job creation and fill job openings" that Arianna Huffington is promoting doubtless have good intentions. And the campaign as she describes it does focus some on job creation, mainly through small business. (That's a focus that may help some, but again fails to challenge the big businesses that are the real culprits in the jobs crisis.) But as long as the idea that there are millions of for-real job openings that American workers just aren't good enough to fill is as central a focus as the idea that America needs job creation, this effort will do more to scapegoat workers than to make a dent in unemployment.

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http://feeds.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/iBOHZTUzyzs/-Looking-for-answers-o
n-the-jobs-crisis-Look-at-businesses-not-workers

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Romney Demanded ‘Several’ Years Of
Tax Returns From Potential VP Candidates

Former Minnesota governor and Mitt Romney surrogate Tim Pawlenty was caught off guard when asked how many years of tax returns he had to turn over to the Republican campaign as part of the vice presidential vetting process, during an appearance on ABC’s This Week on Sunday. “Several,” Pawlenty said, careful not to reinvigorate the issue or contradict Romney’s resistance to release more than two years of returns. A top aide to Romney has admitted that the campaign received ?several years? of income tax returns “from potential running mates.” Watch it:

Read The Full Article:
http://thinkprogress.org/election/2012/08/12/678831/romneys-vice-presidential-con
tenders-released-more-tax-returns-that-him/

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Stephanie Miller: There Isn't Anything 'Bold or
Refreshing' About Destroying Medicare

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From this Sunday's Reliable Sources, Current TV's Stephanie Miller shows us the correct way to respond to the beltway Villager nonsense about Paul Ryan's budget proposals where they constantly try to paint him as a Very Serious Person and the adult in the room who wants to solve the problems that everyone else is afraid to talk about.

After discussing Mitt Romney's selection of Ryan as his running mate and how the media is going to respond to it, Kurtz asked Miller if she and her ?left-wing pals? were now going to ?pound Paul Ryan even more than Mitt Romney?? I love the fact that she managed to get a Charlie Pierce reference into this interview.

MILLER: I'm not sure if this is better for comedy or better for Democrats. It's about even. I love the fact that Eddie Munster is trending on social media now and also the term ?zombie-eyed granny-starver? which I believe my friend Charlie Pierce coined on my show.

A little later in the program, she did a good job of shooting down Kurtz when he tried playing the ?you might not like Paul Ryan but at least he's a Very Serious Person? game.

KURTZ: Now what the Washington pundit class is saying, it seems to me Stephanie Miller, is that you may not like Paul Ryan's ideas, and I bet you don't.

MILLER: Yeah.

KURTZ: But at least he has a plan and he's put himself out there with a detailed, or fairly detailed budget, some omissions in it clearly, and the Democrats are largely ducking the debate about entitlements. So how do you take that one on?

MILLER: Oh, you mean ducking, as in not wanting to destroy the social safety nets? This is what drives me crazy about the ?mainstream media,? present company excepted of course is that somebody puts forward a plan like that and people go ?oh well that's bold and courageous? and ooh he's ?serious.? It's seriously a horrible plan. I don't think there's anything, you know, bold or refreshing about destroying Medicare and replacing it with vouchers.

Amen sister. She also hit back at the notion that Social Security is broke or in a ?crisis? because it isn't and there are policy discussions to be had on making sure our social safety nets stay in place, but gutting them while giving tax cuts to the rich isn't most people's idea of preserving them. I will disagree with her about one thing she said during this segment. I know she was being polite to her host, but Howard Kurtz doesn't deserve an ounce of deference on this matter. He's as bad as the rest of them out there with their adoration of Ryan as he just demonstrated here.

Read The Full Article:
http://crooksandliars.com/heather/stephanie-miller-there-isnt-anything-bold

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Today on The Stars Hollow Gazette

Our regular featured content-On This Day In History August 12 by TheMomCatThese featured articles-What We Now Know by TheMomCatRebuilding a Mosque and Fighting Hate by TheMomCatOur weekly features-Six In The Morning: On Sunday by mishimaPunting the[...]

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http://www.docudharma.com/diary/30588/today-on-the-stars-hollow-gazette

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