Ursus Antro

Gold Medallists Michael Phelps, Conor Dwyer, Ryan Lochte and Ricky Berens of the United States pose with the medals won the Men’s 4 x 200m Freestyle Relay final at the Aquatics Centre.

Andrew Sullivan, in “The Conservative Case for Obama (Again)”:

Alas, the GOP is stuck in the 1984 of its own fetid imagination, incapable of acknowledging the real failures of the last Republican administration or the new, actual, vital questions we have to answer in this millennium: How do we make our healthcare system much more efficient? How do we best mitigate climate change? How do we tackle the problem of economic hyper-inequality? How do we advance US interests in a time of upheaval and revolution in the Arab world? How do we make government solvent?

The reason Romney’s campaign is vague on so many of these questions is that it has little to offer on these practical issues but ideological stridency. It is brain-dead. And zombie-conservatism is not conservatism. It is the violent twitching of a political corpse. This election is a chance to bury that corpse and start over. We should be grateful a de facto moderate Republican is president while conservatism has a chance to regroup.

Awesome hashtag for NBC’s lousy Olympics coverage. Check it out!