Those Pictures from Facebook: The Olympics

This came to me from Global Secular Humanist Movement on Facebook. I mean, I really don’t care; The Games these days about sport, about the pageantry of the human spirit, and about reaching out to other nations in solidarity with that spirit. And the bucks for some in commercial endorsements back home.

However, some people oughta check themselves before they start cheering for our side. I mean, they claim to love the Christian deity, and Zeus has been relegated to the study of myths and legends in junior high/middle school. Of course, the Jehovah’s Witnesses and some other more fundamentalist churches would have more than a few things to say about this.

Next, The Queen.

I’m sure Her Majesty smiled during the grand festivities last month, but for the Olympics ceremonies? Elizabeth II is 86, and I am sure she missed her bed and some shuteye. But she looked so stern and displeased after she came to the dais with Prince Philip, 90, when she supposedly jumped out of a helicopter with Daniel Craig’s James Bond in tow as her personal bodyguard. What was up with her?

NBC’s n0-help-at-all commentators—Matt Lauer and Meredith Vieira—kept saying that the old lady had a sense of humor and complied all in fun. Um, right. I think even some of her more fun-living ancestors were throwing down on the Other Side at this stunt. (Lauer and Vieira were also woefully too short on information about British history to explain it all for American viewers).

I really wonder, though, because this expression of Elizabeth’s is soooo choice. Did she really understand or care what was going on before her, or was she bored out of her skull with it all. Maybe she was overwhelmed. Or perhaps, she may have been going along to get along at these certain times since the death of Diana, no matter how embarrassing it may seem to her sensibilities. I mean, really, The Queen is at the top of The Establishment. She didn’t have to dig what she saw, and it seems to me that she didn’t. (There is another one going around on FB showing The Queen saying, “Kill them all, Philip, kill them all.“) The few times the American cameras were trained on the royal family members, they were fastened more on Catherine, the Duchess of Cambridge and/or her husband Prince William of Wales, and his brother Prince Harry. They did not linger more than a few seconds on The Queen.

The ceremonies were a celebration of the English (as well as the Celtic people, represented by the Scots and the Irish, the Cornish and the Welsh), particularly through the wrenching Industrial Revolution. Of course, the Revolution resulted in a Britain becoming a Great economic (as well as a colonial and a military power) at a great cost to its people, its towns and cities, and its environment that blighted the ideal of Glastonbury Tor. The ceremonies were not at all a celebration of military or historical incidents that usually lauds statesmen, industrialists, generals, nobles or kings and queens who are at the top of the heap. And here, Mitt Romney should have taken note.

And when those powers were significantly diminished after the Second World War, Britain’s government instituted the National Health Service (NHS), which has benefited the entire country—England, Scotland, Wales and Cornwall—for generations. It was instituted particularly for all the men and women who came home maimed, diseased and dying from World War II. This move in the Keynesian welfare state instigated by the Laborites under Clement Attlee signaled that Britain would care for its own rather than insist on dominating the world.

Sounds something like what the President is trying to do with Obamacare and with withdrawing from Iraq and Afghanistan. We cannot do it all, thank goodness. We are not exceptional, nor should we strain for empire. If you want to see the end result of empire, check out what happened to Italy, Spain, and Portugal, when their possessions and powers were diminished over the centuries.

I found the opening ceremonies amusing and breathtaking at the same time, not only because Mitt Romney was probably in the stands. Without devolving into agitprop, Irish director Danny Boyle (who directed the Academy Award-winning Slumdog Millionaire) helped to show how as the smokestacks rose, and as those rings were forged, it was the people who turned the wheels. It was the children of the Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH) that J.M. Barrie did not forget in his will, who did not forget to dream to banish the baddies like The Queen of Hearts of Alice in Wonderland (who is thought to have been modeled on The Queen’s ancestor, Queen Victoria) and Lord Voldemort of a more recent, immensely popular British children’s book. That it is people who make history and who matter, whether they are headed by presidents or queens.

But what’s happening with Team USA? Check this one out…

Lori “Lolo” Jones is a track and field athlete running in the 60 and 100 meter hurdles. Girl is something else for defending her right to keep her hair straight.

Meanwhile, these Olympic ID photos of athletes sure don’t recommend themselves.

And the Mittster? Still laughing my ass off at these below.

Above came from Democrats.com on Facebook.

And this one, probably a shot from one of the early Frankenstein flicks, is from the Facebook page, Mitt Romney’s Lie(s) of the Day.

If Romney says something stupid in Israel or in Poland, his privileged ass is cooked. All those previous ethnic slur jokes (and even dog whistles) would pale in comparison, and I don’t have retail the demeaning stuff for you to get an example of what I mean. I don’t care what he says in private, because I can well imagine that what he says would rival what Santorum dog-whistled during the primaries. But Romney deserves to be whacked upside the head when he spews front and center in public.

And if you missed all the opening festivities, here are some special moments.