It probably won't stay up long, catch it while you can. Incredible performance by the Who. Peter Townsend and Roger Daltry just rocked it out of the stadium and across the ocean. Well done, London.

Gore Vidal has died. He was 86 and had been ill with pneumonia.

Here's Gore Vidal's Vanity Fair article on Timothy McVeigh and his take on 911 and the Patriot Act.

For a bibliography and site with links to the full text of many of his essays, check out the Gore Vidal Pages. Some Vidal quotes are here.

R.I.P. Mr. Vidal.

Michael Phelps has won his 19th Olympic medal setting the Olympic record for the most medals.

NBC continues to confound viewers-- now the LA Times reports it's live feed of Phelps' race wasn't even live -- it broadcast the results on the live feed before the race was over.

With about 50 meters left in the race, the network sent out an app notification with the outcome. I was still watching Phelps swim, supposedly "live," after a notification on my iPad had already told me the race's result.

I haven't even been able to get NBC's live feeds on my laptop even though I'm a Comcast/Xfinity subscriber at the requisite level. I get directed to NBC and never get past the screen that says "who is your cable provider?" This has been happening for four days now.

Why is one network allowed to buy the exclusive rights in the first place? Whatever happened to competition?

Happy Birthday to Mick Jagger, who turned 69 on July 26.

There's not many groups that prompt lists of their top 100 songs. Among my personal favorites:

“Gimme Shelter“ (1969)
“You Can’t Always Get What You Want“ (1969)
“Sympathy for the Devil“ (1968)
“Street Fighting Man“ (1968)
"Dead Flowers" (1971)

[More...]

Via Balloon Juice, Jennifer Rubin:

The Obama campaign can’t bear the thought that the well-traveled Mitt Romney will make a nice impression on his overseas tour.

One less thing for the Obama campaign to worry about.

See also Daily Kos Radio, The Ministry of Truth Show, July 27.

Is that a fair headline? You be the judge of this:

President Obama Praises Self for Ending War in Iraq on Bloodiest Day of the Year in That Country

Is it bad timing or irrelevant? President Obama’s campaign today released a video praising the president for ending the war in Iraq. It turns out that today has proven to be the deadliest day of the year in that country. [...]

On the other hand, none of the dead appears to be American – which may be all that U.S. voters, and many policymakers, care about.

[Emphasis supplied.]

During his interview of George Zimmerman last night, Sean Hannity asked George Zimmerman "What do you say to Al Sharpton and those who rushed to judgment?" MSNBC today released a statement to Politico:

MSNBC would like to set the record straight following some misinformation presented by Fox News during the interview with George Zimmerman last night," MSNBC wrote in a statement sent to POLITICO. "Reverend Al Sharpton never 'rushed to judgment,' as stated by Mr. Hannity. Reverend Sharpton repeatedly called for calm and for a more thorough investigation in the wake of the tragic events. Ultimately, the authorities agreed an arrest was warranted."

I guess MSNBC forgot about this March 19, 2012 Al Sharpton show. (video here.) Or this Sharpton appearance on the March 21 Joe Scarborough show and this press conference (especially around the 4 minute mark) on the day of his arrest. Sharpton's comments speak for themselves. To say he merely called for calm and a thorough investigation is laughable. [More...]

Despite concerted attempts by the Media and its "factcheckers" to dismiss the Bain story, Mitt Romney has blown it so badly that it is now the Media issue of the campaign. While Romney is clearly suffering badly under the Obama onslaught on Bain (mostly I submit, mostly due to his own political incompetence -- how in blazes does he expect to distance himself from Bain - the company he founded, owned and ran for 25 years? The very company that is basically his "economic" credential? Incredible political incompetence), so too are the "factcheckers", who have become subjects of ridicule and lampooning at this point.

The tipping point was the Boston Globe story on Bain's SEC's filings from 1999 to 2002, which listed Romney as the CEO, Chairman of the Board and sole stockholder of the company whike earning at minimum, $100,000 a year for serving as Bain CEO. Since then other articles and information have come out that pretty much point to Romney having a continuing involvement with Bain during that period. Let me say that that is as it should be given Romney's retention of the titles mentioned above. If he wasn't involved, one would have to question Romney's basic competence. But for whatever reason, Romney has chosen to lie about his role in Bain from the 1999 to 2002 period, making the story much bigger than it would have been -- it now becomes about Romney's character as well as his policies (See Krugman for why discussion of Bain by the Obama campaign makes sense in the larger political narrative regarding the GOP-Romney policy of taking from the poor and the middle class to give more to the rich.)

A somewhat surprising casualty of the Bain story is the "factcheckers", who look like complete fools (or worse.) In particular, Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post, who has been bombarded with ridicule for his assertion that the Bain SEC filings describing Romney as CEO, Chairman of the Board and sole stockholder as not being relevant to whether Romney was involved with Bain. It's gotten so bad that Kessler wrote a personal defense of his writings on the subject:

The three most memorable TV moments of the last 50 years according to a research poll conducted by TV researcher Nielsen and Sony Electronics:

1. The 9/11 Attacks
2. Hurricane Catrina
3. The O.J. Simpson Verdict

The killing of Osama bin Laden was number 5, after the Challenger space shuttle disaster.

Princess Diana’s funeral, the Columbine HS shootings in Colorado, the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and the 2010 earthquake and tsunami in Japan also scored in the top 10. The sudden death of Whitney Houston made the cut, but the death of Michael Jackson did not.

Here's the top 20. [More...]

Yesterday was a bad day for Lance Armstrong in federal court in Austin, Texas. The judge dismissed his request for a temporary injunction preventing the USADA from forcing him to choose between participating in arbitration, where he almost certainly will be permanently banned from cycling and stripping him of his titles, or not participating and accepting the sanctions it doles out. (Details below the fold.) But the Judge said he could refile and today he did just that. (Details of the new suit are also below.)

As Armstrong battles on, today the USADA banned three of his associates for life for drug violations. They include former staff members and consultants on the cyclist’s winning Tour de France teams for drug violations.

Luis Garcia del Moral was a team doctor; Michele Ferrari was a consulting doctor; and Jose “Pepe” Marti (team trainer) worked for Armstrong’s U.S. Postal Service and Discovery Channel squads. All had been accused by USADA of participating in a vast doping conspiracy on those teams during part or all of Armstrong’s seven Tour victories from 1999-2005.

More...

Guilt-Monger in Chief Nancy Grace can chalk up another suicide to her disgraceful antics. Toni Medrano, age 29, dubbed "The Vodka Mom" by Grace, set herself on fire in her mother's backyard and died Saturday, weeks after watching Grace demonize her, while donning her typical hyper-ventilating, nostril-flaring faux-persona, and ask her audience why Ms. Medrano wasn't charged with Murder One instead of manslaughter, for falling asleep on her infant while inebriated, suffocating the baby.

Ms. Medrano saw Nancy Grace's show. Grace said on the show she had attempted to contact Medrano at her home (I wonder how many times the producers called -- someone should subpoena her and her staff's land line and cell phone records). According to friends, after the show, she became despondent. [More...]

Monday the FBI will cease re-routing internet users though a clean DNS server. Or something like that.

Approximately 64,000 Americans could lose Internet access on Monday thanks to a criminal organization that infected millions of computers around the world with malware called DNSChanger. This malware was used to direct unsuspecting users to rogue servers controlled by the cyber thieves, where they manipulated users’ web browsing activity and used it for ad hijacking, allowing them to make millions of dollars in illicit fees.

Your computer may have been one of those affected by DNS-changing malware. To find out, head over to the DNS Changer Working Group. Click on the green button and then a bunch of sites in different parts of the world come up. Click on the one that says dns-ok.us. If it comes up green, you're fine. If it's red, you have problems. Or something like that.

Better safe than sorry. This is an open thread, all topics welcome.