Brilliant! Ask a bunch of American Fox News viewers about the British perception of Mitt Romney! Guess what, guys? 87% don’t see any problem.
It would be especially nice if a mob of hooligans from the UK showed up to let Fox News know what you actually think.
How’s Mitt Romney’s visit to Britain going?
He’s doing fine. The nasty headlines in the tabloids are making something out of nothing 67.41%
Couldn’t be worse. His gaffe on the Olympics insulted the host 12.3%
A little shaky, but he’ll make it up when he travels to Israel 20.3%
I wonder if Mitt is going to try to play up his “Anglo-Saxon heritage” when he visits Israel.
Either way, I can’t wait to see what sort of gaffes he’ll make in Jerusalem.
If the Faux News believers think that Willard is doing fine and that this is nothing more than nasty tabloids stirring up trouble, they didn’t pay attention to what British Prime Minister David Cameron said:
“We are holding an 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.”
[Italics mine]
I’m not a fox view, but I don’t see a problem either.
What I see is great entertainment.
On the other hand, I don’t want Romney to be elected. If his appearance at the olympics were helping him, then I would see that as a problem.
No need to clear cookies, just hit refresh and vote as many times as you like.
Have we succeeded in lying to you today?
Yes, I’ll believe anything you say.
No, I know better than to trust you.
Almost, but I heard someone being Fairer and More Balanced in the background.
Fox isn’t so far off here. Sure, they’re divorced from reality. The Republican base was named in the filing as co-respondent.
His visit to israel is going to go well? I hope he doesn’t let it slip that the promised land is actually in america, according to his church.
Oh, dear. Fox forgot the “violated British security practices by blabbing about his MI-6 briefing.” A mere oversight, I’m sure.
The best bit for me was when he was in a meeting with Ed Milliband, leader of the Labour Party, and clearly forgot Milliban’s name. calling him Mr Leader instead.
Oh, and looking out the backside of Downing Street was pretty good as well.
Gotta love splitting the negative vote into two. Fox News is sew awzome.
That increase in the vote count? That’s all the other people that vote at the same time as you. It doesn’t mean your votes are all counted.
I think he just wanted to be polite… in what he didn’t know is exactly the wrong way.
I doubt that many people who could potentially change their vote are tuning into fox news or using their website much. We are seeing opinion from people determined to vote for him no matter what. From what I can see even people who really want to like him are having a hard time. That is some bad shit. Its a flashback to john kerry, no one was excited to vote for him and it really fucked his campaign. Its one of those elections again, I’m feeling more confident every day.
Even if people can hand wave romney’s fuck ups away one by one, people will start to notice a pattern of him screwing up constantly. The pattern will be impossible to ignore. We are barely into the fucking thing and there are so many mistakes already, and he seems to be completely oblivious about the problems he causes until someone else alerts him.
Doesn’t matter what the polls say, the Brits won’t forget.
Latest figures :
Thank you for voting!
He’s doing fine. The nasty headlines in the tabloids are making something out of nothing 66.44% (27,813 votes)
Couldn’t be worse. His gaffe on the Olympics insulted the host 13.68% (5,727 votes)
A little shaky, but he’ll make it up when he travels to Israel 19.88% (8,323 votes)
Total Votes: 41,863
Mittens. Not warm enough.
Actually make that Mittens my hands are still freezing!
(Goes back inside to warm up by the oil heater alongside a happy Jack Russell x fox terrrier & black and golden furred tortoiseshell cat.)
Yeah, Romeny = cold-hearted, blandest of bland, forgettable loser. Bigtime. POTUS material? No way ever!
Matt Penfold (#9):
Which is oddly understandable, given that Milliband’s formal parliamentary title is Leader of the Opposition (or in full: Leader of Her Majesty’s Most Loyal Opposition in the United Kingdom). And so obviously*, by analogy with “Mr Speaker” or “Mr President”, he should be addressed as “Mr Leader”.
* that’s “obviously” as in “seems obvious to someone who couldn’t be arsed to do the slightest bit of research”
It seems to me that the whole point of this little trip is to demonstrate to the US voters how contemptuously he will treat foreigners when he becomes president. The more he stirs things up, the better his voting core will like it.
On that basis, I think I will demonstrate stereotypical British sang froid and vote that he’s been no trouble at all. Mitt who?
That’s the very odd thing. Apparently the US Embassy in London has a small section who have the job of advising visiting American VIPs on how not to fuck up and say stupid shit. Mittens it seems decided he did not need their advice.
I’m not a fan of Romney, but as a Brit, I honestly don’t care what he said about the Olympics, and most other people I know don’t either. The papers were saying the exact same things as him until he said them, and then they got all offended that some yank had come over and said them too.
To paraphrase Father Hackett, what is that gobshite doing in Britain?
He is screwed…
The conservative party in Blighty is ideologically aligned with a boorish prancing pillock like Romney just like they need another embarrassment on their watch.
For Cameron & Johnston to bite his plump ass is telling…they were seriously pissed off with his utter moronity and he has successfully mangled his campaign with regards to the ‘special relationship’
The British folk are not quite as dim as to think it was a slip of the tongue the cretin dug a deep pit and jumped in without a ladder!
If he can so easily isolate himself in the popularity stakes and insult ideological similar leaders in the west…then his sky fairy must fear for what he will accomplish elsewhere.
The dude is a just a sack of dumb & dull hammers waiting to fall on folks feet…they will just kick it to the curb…simples!
He made no friends in Blighty that is for damned sure!
Well I suspect Cameron and Boris might like him, but only because his stupidity gave both of them excellent sound-bites when criticising him.
Yes, tabloids like The Daily Telegraph which is about the most establishment newspaper in the UK. Not to mention with a famously right wing bias.
When a GOP candidate gets headlines like “Romneyshambles: Democrats seize on Mitt Romney’s gaffes” and “Romney’s farcical tour of Olympics London exposes the cultural gulf between Britain and America” in the Telegraph, you know that he’s pissed people off…
I don’t understand why he’s having meetings about things of a secret nature. He’s not elected, yet. I am not really educated in higher politics, I suppose, but this really bothers me. Why is he being groomed?
It is normal in the UK to brief opposition leaders before and during an election on issues such as security and defence. The same is true in the US, when Presidential candidates will be briefed on similar issues. I suspect it was just a matter of protocol, since Romney is standing against Obama, and has a realistic possibility of winning.
I’m so torn:
Mitt Romney? HATE!
Fox News? HATE!
British Tabloid press in general? HATE!
There’s just not enough hate. I’ll have to hate them all but that will take effort. Dammit now I hate the fact I can’t hate them all enough. It’s more hate! When will the madness end?
Louis
I don’t think your 87% interpretation is correct. The 20% is “he’ll get better”, so I think they acknowledged there was a problem.
Of course he won’t get better unless he gets some real handlers, which is probably unlikely.
Oooooh! He’s going to Israël?!
I’m all giddy with excitement. Please let this be good. I hope he lectures them about the history of Lehi. And how it’s totally okay to baptise Holocaust victims posthumously.
To be honest I wouldn’t expect his supporters to particularly care what our papers are saying anyway. I imagine their main concern is voting for someone who can address US domestic issues (of which I gather there are many). Obviously it doesn’t bode well to go abroad and insult people but I’d imagine that pales in comparison to people’s domestic concerns. Besides it seems that Obama isn’t exactly a big fan of us either.
Don’t get me wrong though, I think the guys an idiot and would be a complete disaster for both you and the rest of the world. I just don’t imagine that upsetting us would be that high on his supporters list of concerns.
There’s a reason Divvy Cameron had to use the Olympics to try and score some foreign investment in Britain; because Britain is a dead power that produces nothing whose economy is based on theoretical mathematics and Ladbrokes-style speculation, loose libel laws and being a safe haven for foreign political intrigues (especially if Islam or Islamists are involved), which is also home to 60-odd million people who for some reason believe they’ve a right to consume vast amounts of resources despite making up only 0.8% of the world’s population – their belief in this God-given right to be profilgate filth is so strong that they steadfastly refuse to fully engage with the EU, instead preferring to play Mini-Me to a nation which makes abundantly clear at every available opportunity that the UK is just a market for their goods, and which has a proven track record of shitting all over it’s “allies” in deference to it’s own national interests.
Basically DavCam had to grab the foreign investors while they were obliged to come here, otherwise they’d never have bothered.
But yeah. Some irrelevant politician from another country saying mildly derogatory things about the very real failures of LOCOG is our biggest problem. Let’s all whine about the circuses while we’re waiting for our bread.
PS: Craig Bellamy, Ryan Giggs, Kim Little, and everyone else who refused to sing the royalist dirge at the football are my new favourite Olympians :-D
Fred Salvador – Iron, Carbon, Potassium, Oxygen Difluoride- Don’t hold back mate, tell us what you really think. :-)
I AM BITTER, HEAR ME ROAR!
*whimper*
What puzzles me is why Robomormon chose this particular occasion to depart from his longstanding habits, and tell something approximating to the truth. The Grauniad had a story on the “training” G4S is giving the few “security” personnel it has managed to recruit: 20 minutes practice on the bag scanner, and as many tries as they need on a “test” of their proficiency in detecting bombs. If Al Qaeda fail to smuggle a bomb in, it will simply prove that they are even more stupid and incompetent than those who gave this crucial work to a gang of profiteering chancers.
I am not american nor british, just a latin european. But, even if it comes from Fox News, this is a joke, right?
I LOLed hard.
What prompted it? Because Americans, even the right wing nutjob ones, care about the Olympics whilst simultaneously not caring in the slightest about the UK, so his pointing out the G4S fiasco scores what are essentially free political points.
Meanwhile, we “Brits” all get to pretend we’ve given the Yanks a jolly good telling off, when in fact they couldn’t care less about anything we do or say. We can then continue reposing in our misbegotten smugness as our government’s efforts to sell us down the swanney continue apace all around us.
But we don’t care, because London got the Olympics. We’ll have a legacy. Just like Greece!
I think they’re on to us. Do you suppose they can detect voters referred from Pharyingula? The stats haven’t changed much since this AM
Let’s face it, since Fox News had to eighty-six its comments section, they needed an outlet for their ignorant viewers to express their inane opinions. Loaded polls are the only way they can do that, and have the added benefit of not showing the world how vile their viewers can be by letting them post below their news stories.
“looking out of the backside of 10 Downing Street”. Does backside really mean the same in American English as it does in British English? If so, presumably a Romney presidency would mean it’s back to the days of George Bush style gaffes.
In all fairness and — ahem — balancedness, Fox News does explicitly say on the website that “This is not a scientific poll.”
My favorite bit of idiocy in this particular category of intellectual dishonesty was when Fox News had a You Decide poll asking whether sea levels around the world have risen. The overwhelming majority, if I remember correctly, voted that sea levels are not rising. Whew! For a moment there I was a little worried by the fact that sea levels around the world are actually rising.
Unfortunately, it looks like Fox News took down this poll — after five minutes of tedious searching, I discovered that half of the You Decide archive is missing. So I can’t check to see if my memory is accurate or if I’m merely confabulating. Maybe we could just put this to a vote, though… — Phil (www.acrisisoffaiththebook.com)
…And reality couldn’t be happier about it.
Romney’s going to Israel? Now that should be funny.
I like the news about how the GoP (pronounced ‘Go Pee’
I guess) couldn’t give a shit what the world thought of Romney. It reminded me of a very young William F. Buckley and the prevailing ‘conservative’ (isolationist) attitude to global diplomacy. Gee, the GoP want to be global pariahs as well as isolationists – to me that just screams “we don’t know what we’re doing!”
He’ll make it up when he goes to Israel ? Make it up to whom? This poll is about his visit to Britain, right? Why would his visit to Israel make up for his insults to Britain ? Will that make the Britons feel any better ? (perhaps seeing him leave will) This poll only makes sense if you assume his visits are meant to impress the american public instead of the people of the countries he’s visiting.
As far as I’m concerned as a Brit the Brits aren’t worried about anything Romney says because they think him irrelevant.
I think the general Brit mentality is that no country could possibly elect him.
Looks a bit complacent to me, though.
Dammit Dubya was elected.
David
sumdum @ 43–These visits ARE intended to impress the American public! To show how “presidential” he is, how he will deal with world leaders. And dealing with them through insult is just fine with the Amurrican conservaturd–after all, them damn furriners better remember who’s in CHARGE here!
(N.B–THis attitude does not apply to Israel, whose survival is utterly paramount to the U.S.A.–after all, the Bible doesn’t mention the existence of Washington as a prerequisite for the Rapture!)
Well, yes, that was exactly the point. The apparent purpose of the trip was for Romney to show off his foreign policy skills and show team Obama how diplomacy is done, or something like that.
Per the Washington Post, right before the trip:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/post/obama-team-nervous-about-romney-overseas-trip/2012/07/23/gJQAcJ2c4W_blog.html
Awesome job, Mitt.
Fred Salvador – Iron, Carbon, Potassium, Oxygen Difluoride
I see what you did there. Clever.
Likely enough, the support for Rmoney is likely 90% outsourced from India, where people are paid to “like” whatever he does, even though they have no idea who he or Rush Asshole are,
To be a Faux ‘Mer’kin “Republican” is to (pretend to) be proud of being ignorant and stupid and/or insane, and to fantasize about being all pow’ful and ebil-like!
How troublesome and sad this age is, where I have to spend seconds a day hating some many people I used to be able to pity, ignore, or respect in certain, limited ways!
sumdum @ 43 —
Rmoney’s international trip is entirely aimed at Americans — especially the part in Israel. Remember, in the U.S. it’s important to be pro-“Israel”, where “Israel” refers not to the country but only the extreme racist right wing thereof. By U.S. political standards, much of Israel is “anti-Israel” (not to mention most American Jewish groups that aren’t “non-partisan” or openly reactionary); as with most other countries, candidate statements of international policy have little or nothing to do with the countries involved and everything to do with the American political imagination regarding what those countries “represent” or “stand for”.
@44. davidb :
Correctly because he is irrelevant.
I cannot see Mittens becoming President. Not at all. He’s going to be a footnote in US political history come Decmeber 2012.
His opinions & personal ignorance as significant as those of Bob Dole, John Kerry and John McCain.
@44 davidb
Twice.
I also LOLed at the Israel option.
I can’t help but wonder if the author of this poll isn’t betraying a certain unspoken anxiety in mentioning this. Like just maybe one of the for-now-otherwise-silenced free agents in the back of their brain was saying: ‘Oh dear fuck, this could get messy’. And this is just how it came out.
Me, I’m happy to say it a bit more directly. I mean, sure, sending Romney anywhere should be entertaining. But for Israel especially, I’d think the ticket prices might get a mite higher.
Lots of empty seats at Olympic events that plenty of people were refused tickets for today, as there were yesterday. Like the “security”, the ticketing has been fucked up. I hear there will be an extra medal ceremony for the biggest fuck-ups, with Nick Buckles of G4S and “Lord” Coe, head of LOCOG, currently tipped to take gold and silver.
I guess Robomormon could get the bronze.
Well, actually, it’s pretty far to his left. They’re more like Obama.
All you can do is buy a pair of extremely elastic purple shorts and turn green.
*squirming on ground in agony*
“…The second time. …As long as nobody finds the ballot boxes of Ohio.”
– C. Montgomery Burns
iamthegenie
Sadly, they are not pretending.
Please do not use the word insane here at pharyngula. It is insulting to people with actual mental illness. Crazy is also on the “not used” list. I think deranged works without splash damage to innocent bystanders?
Mitt Romney will of course try to play up his Jewish heritage in Israel.
nms #57, I would really, really, and I mean really, like to see him try that.