Usa Thread

[unit731]

Every single Brit was disuaded and bemused by the comments of candidate Romney.

 

PM Cameron:

"Without specifically being asked about Romney's comments, he volunteered that England was holding the 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." (The British press seized on that comment as a reference to Salt Lake City, where Romney headed the Olympics in 2002.)"

 

 

LINK

[kamui]

Strip Clubs in Tampa Are Ready to Cash In on G.O.P. Convention

 

By LIZETTE ALVAREZ

TAMPA, Fla. — Over at the back door of the 2001 Odyssey, a limo-size tent with flaps — especially designed for discretion and camera-shy guests — is ready to go up. Déjà Vu is welcoming extra “talent†from around the country in its V.I.P. rooms.

 

And Thee DollHouse is all Americana: women plan to slip out of red, white and blue corsets and offer red, white and blue vodka. The headliner that week is expected to bear an uncanny resemblance to a certain ex-governor from a wilderness state, known for her strong jaw and devotion to guns and God.

 

“She’s a dead ringer for her,†said Warren Colazzo, co-owner of Thee DollHouse. “It’s just a really good gimmick to get publicity.â€

 

As Tampa gears up for the Republican National Convention, the biggest party it has ever held, the city and its businesses are primping and polishing for the August arrival of tens of thousands of visitors. Like it or not — mostly not, for city officials — Tampa’s well-known strip clubs have joined the welcome wagon.

 

Club owners here say they have schmoozed with their counterparts in former host cities, like Denver, and have been told that revenue pours in during conventions, sometimes quadrupling earnings from a Super Bowl week. As for party affiliation, this is one place where the country’s caustic partisan differences fall away, owners say.

 

 

Angelina Spencer, the executive director of the Association of Club Executives, which serves as a trade association for strip clubs, said an informal survey of convention business in New York and Denver had determined that Republicans dropped more money at clubs, by far.

 

“Hands down, it was Republicans,†she said. “The average was $150 for Republicans and $50 for Democrats.â€

 

As further evidence of the clubs’ nonpartisan appeal, Don Kleinhans, the owner of the 2001 Odyssey, said when the Promise Keepers, a male evangelical group, came to town years ago, business was rollicking.

 

“We had phenomenal numbers all weekend, and they walked in wearing badges and name tags and weren’t shy at all,†he said.

 

James Davis, a spokesman for the Republican National Convention, declined to discuss Tampa’s prominent strip clubs.

 

“We’re expecting to have a great convention,†Mr. Davis said. “We’re focused completely on having a great convention.â€

 

To be fair, Tampa is known for other things: cigars, Ybor City — the historic district where Cuban and Spanish cigar makers first settled in the late 1800s — three major sports franchises, four Super Bowls and beautiful beaches a short drive away. It is the Florida Gulf Coast’s economic engine and hosts a raucous pirate party every year called Gasparilla.

 

But Tampa cannot shed its national reputation as the strip club capital of the country. “It’s not true,†said Joe Redner, the owner of the renowned Mons Venus and a man famous for fending off local attempts to close his club. “It would be nice, though.â€

 

The Tampa Bay Times has reported there are 20 strip clubs in Tampa and 50 in the Tampa Bay area. Per capita, it ranks behind Las Vegas and Cincinnati. But it is hard to be sure because strip club statistics are squishy, at best, and per capita numbers vary in a tourist town. Tampa does not have as many strip clubs as New Orleans, Atlanta, Houston, New York and Las Vegas, owners said. Miami boasts quite a few, too.

 

Mr. Redner, who has repeatedly brandished the First Amendment, has been arrested 150 or so times and has run often for public office, may be one reason for the city’s reputation. Savvy and colorful, he took on the city in 2000 when it tried to cripple his club; instead, it bolstered his reputation. A Tampa councilman back then, Bob Buckhorn, who is now Tampa’s mayor, backed an ordinance to ban lap dances by keeping customers six feet away from dancers. The rule, intended to curb prostitution and drugs, passed but is mostly not enforced.

 

During that fight, Mr. Buckhorn recalls saying that he “did not want Tampa to become the lap dance capital of the country.†But the statement got truncated and twisted, like in a game of telephone, then repeated, most recently during the debate over gambling in Florida.

 

“We wanted Tampa to be a place where we were proud to call home,†said Mr. Buckhorn, a Democrat. “But we have grown so much bigger and moved beyond that small city we were. We don’t think about it anymore.â€

 

Yet he is not without a sense of humor. “I wonder whether the look-alike will be able to see Russia from the stage,†he asked, a question meant for the ex-governor’s doppelgänger.

 

The spaceship, a much-talked about private V.I.P. room perched atop the 2001 Odyssey like a wedding-cake embellishment, has also helped burnish Tampa’s louche label. It is white, oval, with round windows, a rare prefabricated Futuro house designed by the Finnish architect Matti Suuronen in the 1960s and 1970s.

 

“It was named one of the seven wonders of Tampa Bay,†said the Odyssey’s manager, Todd Trause. The provenance of that distinction is hard to decipher.

 

Inside, Jazmin, 19, prepared to live-chat on a webcam to a faraway customer, one of the club’s new features. She is also preparing for the convention. Given the opportunity to stand up before a politician, she will do her job, naturally, but also share her own tale of financial struggle, as many voters here would do.

 

Laid off from a job in the Medicaid billing industry, she scraped by as a cashier at a grocery store. The paycheck scarcely covered her car payments, she said. Then a friend of a friend told her about the strip club, and now there she is, saving her money (the most she’s ever made) for nursing school.

 

“With the economy,†she said, “it’s hard.â€

 

NYT

[Bangkoktraveler]

Every single Brit was disuaded and bemused by the comments of candidate Romney.

 

PM Cameron:

"Without specifically being asked about Romney's comments, he volunteered that England was holding the 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." (The British press seized on that comment as a reference to Salt Lake City, where Romney headed the Olympics in 2002.)"

 

 

LINK

 

Why is Mitt Romney in England?

 

Every conservative knows the Brits are Socialist Communist

so why is Mitt patronizing the enemy?

[Flashermac]

Gun carrying man ends stabbing spree at Salt Lake grocery store

 

Must be an NRA nutter who should be locked up!

 

 

[robaus]

'Devoid of charm, offensive and a wazzock': Romney's disastrous day in London

 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2179582/Mitt-Romneys-Olympics-2012-gaffe-Devoid-charm-offensive-wazzock.html#ixzz21uIEvL39

 

Thanks Mitt..at least I've learnt a new word "wazzock" possibly derived from the French "oiseau" meaning "bird". Interesting linguistically that Aussies use a similar ornithological expression "galah" for the same meaning.

 

[kamui]

Gun carrying man ends stabbing spree at Salt Lake grocery store

 

Must be an NRA nutter who should be locked up!

 

 

This doesn't seem to happen very often, otherwise the pro-gun lobby wouldn't ask for more guns after every mass killing.

On the other hand over 300 people are injured or killed by stray bulletts in the USA every year. More guns will of course make the worse (like during celebrations on Independence Day or New Year’s Eve)

 

http://www.youthtoda...article_id=5419

 

 

 

[BelgianBoy]

Every conservative knows the Brits are Socialist Communist

LOL

[Steve]

In my opinion he's unfit for office right now. I don't want to sound unsympathetic. I honestly hope he gets better. I like him actually. I've read that he's a centrist politically and no where near the type of person his father is. If you recall he was one of the few black pols who supported Obama from the start and ran counter to pretty much every black politician. It was brave and showed he didn't just go along with the crowd. A crowd he had an 'in' with.

 

However, if he's as bad off health wise as suspected and taking into consideration privacy, the leadership at least needs to know the details. He has a responsibility not only to Illinois but also nationally on important matters that needs voting on.

 

http://nbcpolitics.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/07/27/12997279-jesse-jackson-jr-being-evaluated-for-depression-at-mayo-clinic?lite

Jesse Jackson Jr. being evaluated for depression at Mayo Clinic

[Steve]

Although I wouldn't be voting for Romney, I did minimize his tax return issues. I still do to some extent but this article has given me pause. Not on a legal issue. If it is true as (off shore accounts, etc.) they say and its legal, then nothing wrong with that. What I would find disconcerting is that his platform calls for tax cuts to the rich both individual and corporate and it appears highly self serviing as well as favoring his social/income class while appearing insensitive to the poor, working and middle classes. It simply doesn't look good.

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/09/opinion/krugman-mitts-gray-areas.html?_r=3&ref=opinion

 

First, however, let’s talk about what it meant to get rich in George Romney’s America, and how it compares with the situation today.

 

What did George Romney do for a living? The answer was straightforward: he ran an auto company, American Motors. And he ran it very well indeed: at a time when the Big Three were still fixated on big cars and ignoring the rising tide of imports, Romney shifted to a highly successful focus on compacts that restored the company’s fortunes, not to mention that it saved the jobs of many American workers.

 

It also made him personally rich. We know this because during his run for president, he released not one, not two, but 12 years’ worth of tax returns, explaining that any one year might just be a fluke. From those returns we learn that in his best year, 1960, he made more than $660,000 — the equivalent, adjusted for inflation, of around $5 million today.

 

Those returns also reveal that he paid a lot of taxes — 36 percent of his income in 1960, 37 percent over the whole period. This was in part because, as one report at the time put it, he “seldom took advantage of loopholes to escape his tax obligations.†But it was also because taxes on the rich were much higher in the ’50s and ’60s than they are now. In fact, once you include the indirect effects of taxes on corporate profits, taxes on the very rich were about twice current levels.

 

Now fast-forward to Romney the Younger, who made even more money during his business career at Bain Capital. Unlike his father, however, Mr. Romney didn’t get rich by producing things people wanted to buy; he made his fortune through financial engineering that seems in many cases to have left workers worse off, and in some cases driven companies into bankruptcy.

 

 

Has there ever before been a major presidential candidate who had a multimillion-dollar Swiss bank account, plus tens of millions invested in the Cayman Islands, famed as a tax haven?

 

And then there’s his Individual Retirement Account. I.R.A.’s are supposed to be a tax-advantaged vehicle for middle-class savers, with annual contributions limited to a few thousand dollars a year. Yet somehow Mr. Romney ended up with an account worth between $20 million and $101 million.

 

There are legitimate ways that could have happened, just as there are potentially legitimate reasons for parking large sums of money in overseas tax havens. But we don’t know which if any of those legitimate reasons apply in Mr. Romney’s case — because he has refused to release any details about his finances. This refusal to come clean suggests that he and his advisers believe that voters would be less likely to support him if they knew the truth about his investments.

 

And that is precisely why voters have a right to know that truth

[Flashermac]

This doesn't seem to happen very often, otherwise the pro-gun lobby wouldn't ask for more guns after every mass killing.

On the other hand over 300 people are injured or killed by stray bulletts in the USA every year. More guns will of course make the worse (like during celebrations on Independence Day or New Year’s Eve)

 

http://www.youthtoda...article_id=5419

 

 

From the ages of the shooters and the ages of those hit by stray bullets, it is very clear they are talking about gangbanger shootings. But I suppose it wouldn't be PC to come right out and say that.

 

For your information, I have never fired a weapon into the air or into the ground on Christmas or New Years. Only morons in big cities do that sort of thing.