Well, seeing this type of protest would certainly liven up my travel experiences!
And for those who know I do travel a lot, don’t worry. I realize I’m several years past making this particular type of political protest statement and having “The Ruins” on display in the papers and on TV! Talk about losing credibility….
From RawStory.Com
A circuit court judge has ruled that a man who stripped down to his birthday suit to protest against airport security was not guilty of indecent exposure, according to the Associated Press.
Fifty-year-old John Brennan of Oregon took off his all clothes while going through an airport screening at Portland International Airport in April. He was arrested after refusing requests from Transportation Security Administration officers to put his clothes back on. Brennan was charged with disorderly conduct and indecent exposure.
Multnomah County Circuit Court Judge David Rees ruled Wednesday that Brennan’s airport strip show was an act of protest and therefore protected speech under the First Amendment.
Uh, does anyone really want this man in charge of U.S. Diplomacy?
If he can piss off our oldest and closest ally in a matter of hours, just think what he would do to our enemies…
There is reason the “Talking Ken Doll” was never a hit for Mattel…..
From The Guardian (UK):
Mitt Romney handed Barack Obama a priceless gift for the US presidential election campaign when the presumptive Republican nominee blundered on his first diplomatic outing by questioning whether London was capable of staging a successful Olympic Games.
In a move that astonished Downing Street, hours before it laid on a special reception for Romney at No 10 he told NBC there were “disconcerting” signs about the preparations for the Games.
One senior Whitehall source said: “What a total shocker. We are speechless.”
David Cameron wasted no time in rebuking Romney hours after his remarks were broadcast. On a visit to the Olympic Park, the prime minister said: “We are holding an Olympic Games in one of the busiest, most active, bustling cities anywhere in the world. Of course it’s easier if you hold an Olympic Games in the middle of nowhere.”
Cameron’s remarks were intended to be a light-hearted jibe at Romney, who used his famous management skills honed at Bain Capital to rescue the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, Utah.
Romney rowed back later after a 45-minute meeting in Downing Street where the prime minister expressed his unease about his remarks. “I am very delighted with the prospects of a highly successful Olympic Games. What I have seen shows imagination and forethought and a lot of organisation and [I] expect the Games to be highly successful,” he said.
Sadly, the Stripper look-alike is probably more qualified for public office than the original….
And let’s hear it, again, for these Republicans and their dedication to Family Values….
Hypocrites….
From The Raw Story:
Sarah Palin fans who are disappointed that the former vice presidential candidate won’t be speaking at the GOP convention in Tampa next month won’t be left hanging because her stripper look-alike will be entertaining hard-working Republicans at a local “gentleman’s club.”
WFLA learned last week that a “dead ringer” for Palin will stripping at Tampa’s Thee Doll House, only 5 miles from the the Tampa Bay Times Forum convention site.
Owners of Thee Doll House and 2001 Odyssey strip club both told the WFLA that they expect business to quadruple during the convention.
And that’s not a surprise because conservatives have a reputation for being great for the adult entertainment business.
“Hands down, the Republicans have always been our best customers,” Association of Club Executives Executive Director Angelina Spencer recently told WFAE. “We get clients from all walks of life, but for whatever reason… I have heard club owners say, ‘Boy, those Republicans really are great customers.’”
It’s really bad when people in your own Party say an incompetent ignoramus from Alaska is a “better candidate”…
Mittens is really having a rough week….
Good!
From TalkingPointsMemo:
Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) defended Mitt Romney from Democratic speculation that he passed on him as a 2008 running mate after reviewing his tax returns, saying Sarah Palin was simply the better choice at the time.
McCain called the tax claims “outrageous” and “disgraceful” in an interview with Politico Tuesday. He said he chose Palin “because we thought that Sarah Palin was the better candidate.”
I’ve posted on Chick-fil-a and their cultish behavior before, but now they have really come out of the closet.
Let me say this very clearly: Chick-fil-a is an anti-Gay company. Openly and clearly stated below.
If you know and care about anyone who is Gay, you should really think hard if you want to buy that greasy chicken sandwich and waffle fries knowing the profit is going to be used against your friends and loved ones….
And for the record, “biblical principles” are open to interpretation. He’s using this phrase to justify his personal bigotry….
Form TheAdvocate.com:
Dan Cathy, the chief operating officer of Chick-fil-A, said there is no denying that his company opposes marriage equality.
Cathy said that he does not feel right billing Chick-fil-A as a Christian business because, as Christian business mentor Fred Roach once said, “There is no such thing as a Christian business … Christ never died for a corporation.”
However, Cathy told the Baptist Press he aims to operate the restaurant chain “on biblical principles.” When asked whether his company had an established position against marriage equality, Cathy said, “guilty as charged.”
He added, “We are very much supportive of the family — the biblical definition of the family unit. We are a family-owned business, a family-led business, and we are married to our first wives. We give God thanks for that. … We know that it might not be popular with everyone, but thank the Lord, we live in a country where we can share our values and operate on biblical principles.”
All this stuff about Romney and Bain Capital isn’t new.
He’s just upset because it has been used effectively against him before and he hoped to avoid it happening again….
Here is an ad Ted Kennedy rain against Mitt Romney when Romney ran his losing campaign against Kennedy for the Massachusetts U. S, Senate seat in 1994.
And here’s some info from ThinkProgress.org today on what’s behind this current controversy…
No wonder Romney is trying to get people to stop talking about this stuff….
Critics have highlighted a number of businesses that were bought by Bain Capital and then reorganized to maximize profit for the investment firm, with several falling into bankruptcy and vanishing entirely. In several instances however, Mitt Romney defended his candidacy by pointing out that he left Bain Capital in 1999 to run the 2002 Winter Olympics, before those companies began their collapse. With a new timeline that shows Romney was the CEO and principle owner of Bain Capital as late as 2003, that defense now sounds much more questionable. Here are four companies that folded or downsized in the three year period after Romney claimed to have left Bain Capital:
– GS Industries – 750 Jobs Lost: In a series of ads earlier this year, the Obama campaign hit Romney over Bain Capital’s purchase of GS Industries, a steel company that closed its Kansas City plant and eliminated 750 jobs in February 2001. The Romney campaign responded by claiming that Romney had left Bain Capital well before 2001, and was therefore not tied to the collapse of the GS. Bain Capital and its executives, including Mitt Romney, earned at least $12 million on the initial investment.
– KB Toys – Up to 3,500 Jobs Lost: During the primary season, Newt Gingrich’s 30 minute documentary on Romney and Bain Capital spent a significant amount of time focused on KB Toys, a retail chain bought by Bain in 2000. At the time, the Romney campaign, with an assist from fact-checking groups like PolitiFact, pointed to the calendar. As these new filings show, Romney was still very much at Bain Capital when they purchased KB Toys, and profited mightily when the company took out crippling loans to pay Bain Capital an $83 million dividend.
– Dade International – 1,700 Jobs Lost: Months after Romney claims to have left the company, Bain Capital received a $242 million bounty for its stake in the medical supply company. Romney profited substantially from the deal. In 2002, Dade International filed for bankruptcy, costing more than 1,700 people their jobs. At the time, Romney was the 100 percent owner of Bain Capital, the new documents show.
–DDi Corporation – 275 Jobs Lost: In 1996, the circuit board manufacturer was bought by a group of investors, with Bain Capital in the lead, for more than $40 million. By December 1999, DDi closed a Colorado plant and fired 275 workers. Bain Capital, with Romney still listed as Chairman and CEO, then proceeded to take DDi public, raising $170 million during the company’s IPO in 2000. Over the next few months, Bain began selling off its stock, raising almost $100 million, more than doubling its investment. The stock plummeted shortly thereafter.
In all, as many as 6,000 jobs were lost at these four companies during the period between when the Romney campaign alleges he retired, and when the Globe’s report suggests he actually stepped down.
You can argue that elections ought to be about real issues….
That’s how the Democrats lose so many elections they should win.
The Republicans always go for diversions and attack ads, while the Democrats wring their hands, take the high road and lose….
Well, I ‘m glad President Obama’s campaign has apparently seen the light.
The attacks on Romney and Bain Capital are off subject, but brilliant.
And they are working….
If you are going to fight dirty tricks like Karl Rove and the GOP pulls, you have to be willing to join them in the gutter.
And listen to them scream “unfair” when someone does to them what they’ve been doing to others for years….
The next white shoe to drop will be Romney’s tax avoidance…..
Joe Klein at Time gets it….
Back in June of 1988, Lee Atwater took me aside and showed me some stuff that Bush the Elder’s campaign had developed against Michael Dukakis, who was then enjoying a 17-point advantage in the polls. The “stuff” seemed laughable. Dukakis hadn’t signed an order requiring schoolchildren in Massachusetts to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. He had once said that he was a “card-carrying member of the ACLU.” The most damaging bit was that he’d run a weekend parole program for prisoners, which had been abused by several inmates. (If I remember correctly, Atwater didn’t lay out the sordid details of the Willie Horton case.) In any event, I thought these “issues” were fairly pathetic–and they were. But…
They proved to be devastating. Part of it was the Dukakis campaign’s ineptitude when it came to responding–a consequence that led directly to the establishment of Bill Clinton‘s famed “War Room” in 1992. But more important, this coordinated campaign ”defined” Dukakis as an out-of-touch, soft-on-crime Massachusetts liberal, a prisoner of the “Harvard boutique” etc etc etc. He spent the entire summer on the defensive. I still think the pledge of allegiance stuff was pretty silly–Dukakis had refused to require children to say the pledge in order to honor the beliefs of Jehovah’s Witnesses–but it was a nail in a brilliantly constructed coffin.
Fast forward to now. Mitt Romney is experiencing a Dukakis-like summer playing defense. The Obama campaign has also constructed a brilliant coffin, custom-made for a turnaround artist. There are many nails in this coffin, some more important than others. The nails are being hammered in a natural progression. There is a logic to this. The current controversy over whether Romney was or was not running Bain capital during the years 1999-2002 is a relatively minor nail–the functional equivalent of the Pledge of Allegiance. Bain was involved in the global economy during those years. This meant outsourcing jobs to places like Mexico and China, which meant the creative destruction of obsolete jobs here at home. Whether Romney was directing them or not, these activities were perfectly legal. That doesn’t matter, though: there is confusion about why he was still listed as the boss if he wasn’t really the boss, which seems shifty. And there’s the question of why he was making tons of money if he wasn’t the boss, which is what this is really all about.
Lost in the 21st Century 