Now that the election is over and the bloated corpse of the Romney campaign lies dead in a field somewhere in Ohio, it is time for the autopsy. Having closely watched the campaign for over a year these are the ten biggest mistake I believe Mitt Romney made, in roughly chronological order. For me a true campaign mistake is different from a gaffe or simple bad luck. For it to really be a “mistake,” it had to be a planned political decision.

If it were a country, Team Gay would have tied Jamaica for 31st in the XXXth Olympiad that closed with a magnificent ceremony many in America did not see (thanks #NBCfail!).

Following up on an earlier item, the good news is that we’ve found one lawmaker in Washington who thinks that exempting Olympians from paying taxes on a cash award is a bad idea. The striking news is that this lawmaker is Tom Coburn.

Ann Romney’s pretty pony Rafalca managed to waltz her way into the freestyle dressage competition, earning the 18th and final spot in Thursday, August 9′s freestyle dressage.

Smoking pot didn’t prevent Phelps from becoming the greatest Olympic winner of all time. In the same way, the actual use of marijuana didn’t stop Bill Clinton or Barack Obama from graduating from top universities and eventually becoming President.

It is a running joke that Americans learn geography or about countries outside the United States only when the US military decides to invade a country. Presumably, this is why NBC broadcasters Bob Costas, Matt Lauer, and Meredith Viera announcing the Olympics opening ceremony would be sharing trivia about each country, especially information that Americans might be able to understand even if they were terribly uneducated. But that should be no justification for the candor of the commentary during the broadcast of the Opening Ceremony, which was frankly an example of smug American elitism and often outright condescension.

While it is fun to point out how horribly Romney’s attempt to prove he can handle international diplomacy quickly backfired, these actual reports about Romney’s trip this week are unlikely to change any votes.

I think we have enough data to close down the years-long human experiment into whether austerity hurts economies in recovery. With last quarters result in, this is the first double-dip recession for Britain since the 1970s, and the longest and biggest since quarterly record keeping began after World War II. In addition, the British economy is now smaller than it was when Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron took office in May 2010.

When Ann Romney haughtily declared this morning that “You People” had better well quit nosing around in her family’s affairs already, I was reminded of my mother’s perennial and typically generous comment regarding couples who were either startlingly unattractive or otherwise even less appealing together than the sum of their parts: “Well, at least they found each other.”

Indeed.

The world’s greatest games are about to begin in London. But outside the sporting spectacle this summer, few will notice where the real cheating is going on: in Asian factories that churn out plush mascots and other Olympiad gear, corporations have freely exploited lax labor regulations. As the Olympics approach, activists are racing to push the brands behind the games to play by the rules of fair trade and human rights.

Trying to avoid an instant replay of London’s age of imperialism, the Play Fair 2012 campaign aims for accountability and transparency in the corporations scoring massive profits from cheap labor in the global south.