Just in time for the Olympics, MoveOn.org Political Action is releasing this ad that calls out Mitt Romney for wanting many Americans to receive worse treatment than a horse. We want Rafalca, and all our Olympic athletes, to bring home the gold, but we won't stand for Mitt Romney shipping jobs overseas. And it's great that Rafalca gets excellent care, but Mitt Romney trying to cut Americans' health care? Well, that's a horse of a different color.

The famed award-winning investigative reporting team of Donald Barlett and James Steele have just published a new book, "The Betrayal of the American Dream," a followup to their landmark bestseller, "America: What Went Wrong?" As Republicans and Democrats continue disputing who should bear the brunt of the tax burden, Barlett and Steele argue that America’s middle class has been decimated over the years due to policies governing not only taxes but also bank regulations, trade deficits and pension funds. Their book chronicles how the American middle class has been systematically impoverished and its prospects thwarted in favor of a new ruling elite. Barlett and Steele have worked together for more than 40 years, sharing two Pulitzer Prizes and two National Magazine Awards. The duo join Amy Goodman of DemocracyNow! to discuss the assault on the middle class, the great tax heist, deregulation, the outsourcing of U.S. jobs by companies like Boeing and Apple, and the end of retirement. "People are going to have to work forever, and yet what are those jobs going to be? What are they going to pay? And it also puts pressure then on people coming into the workforce. How are they going to get a job if people are having to work between 65 and 75 years old?," Steele says. The duo also discuss their past reporting on the 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake City, headed by the Republican presidential candidate, Mitt Romney, and note he headed "an Olympic committee where that entire operation raided the federal Treasury like no other Olympics in history."

Full transcript here.

If you missed the opening ceremony of the Olympics on Friday evening, here's a glimpse. This was seriously mind blowing, a country where the people pay higher taxes for nationalized health care, and they celebrate it. The mere mention of it in the U.S. makes the right-wing recoil in horror and hiss all at once.

"It’s something that is very dear to people's hearts. If you live here, you will end up there, it does not matter how rich or powerful you are. ... We got hundreds of volunteers from the National Health Service. All the
volunteers made a special sacrifice to be with us and to be rehearsed, but these guys are extraordinary.”

– Danny Boyle on celebration of the U.K.'s NHS during London Olympics

More on Danny Boyle and the UK's 2012 Olympics opening ceremony here.

H/T Michael Moore

Courtesy of the DNC, highlights from #RomneyShambles. In case you missed David Cameron's stinging comeback to Romney's implication that London wasn't prepared for the Olympics:

"We are holding an Olympic Games in one of the busiest, most active, bustling cities anywhere in the world," the prime minister said, pointedly. "Of course it's easier if you hold an Olympic Games in the middle of nowhere." (Romney ran the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake Ciy, Utah.)

I just hope that Romney isn't headed to any other nations overseas to show off his foreign diplomacy skills. We really can't spare any allies.

Good morning, today is Friday, July 27, 2012...TGIF!

On this date in:

1694 The Bank of England received a royal charter as a commercial institution.

1789 Congress established the Department of Foreign Affairs, the forerunner of the Department of State.

1861 Union Gen. George B. McClellan was put in command of the Army of the Potomac.

1866 After two failures, Cyrus W. Field succeeded in laying the first underwater telegraph cable between North America and Europe.

1940 Bugs Bunny made his official debut in the Warner Bros. animated cartoon ''A Wild Hare.''

1967 In the wake of urban rioting, President Johnson appointed the Kerner Commission to assess the causes of the violence. The same day, black militant H. Rap Brown said violence was ''as American as cherry pie.''

1974 The House Judiciary Committee voted 27-11 to recommend President Nixon's impeachment on a charge that he had personally engaged in a ''course of conduct'' designed to obstruct justice in the Watergate case.

1992 Boston Celtics star Reggie Lewis died after collapsing on a Brandeis University basketball court during practice; he was 27.

1995 The Korean War Veterans Memorial was dedicated in Washington, D.C., by President Clinton and South Korean President Kim Young-sam.

1996 Terror struck the Atlanta Olympics as a pipe bomb exploded at the public Centennial Olympic Park, killing one person and injuring more than 100.

Good morning, today is Tuesday, July 24, 2012. Enjoy the video while I make the coffee.