The most recent clown to enter that circus known as the US Senate says that Chicago didn’t get the Olympics because of Bush. Just as predicted.
[Update a couple minutes later]
Here’s a non-nutty explanation for the Olympics decision. Don’t expect the administration to learn from the experience, though — as a commenter notes over there, the president is far too intrinsically, almost pathologically narcissistic to change.
And then, of course, there’s also this:
A sense of stunned bewilderment suffused Air Force One and the White House. Only after the defeat did many advisers ask questions about the byzantine politics of the Olympic committee. Valerie Jarrett, the president’s senior adviser and a Chicago booster who persuaded him to make the trip while at the United Nations last week, had repeatedly compared the contest to the Iowa caucuses.
The country’s in the very best of hands.
Like the Iowa caucus without ACORN.
As an L.A. partisan, all I have to say about this is: Suck it Chicago! Who’s the second city now, bitch?
The 84 games gave the Olympics relevance and cachet again, and Los Angeles ought to host next time the games are in the US.
Nothing to do with Obama; he wasn’t my choice but he is our President and I don’t like to see the Pres pwnd… but maybe it’s a good thing he’s been shown that he can’t wave his magic wand over everything and make it turn out the way he wants. Could save some trouble on something that matters.
There’s also this take on the matter:
Did the TSA cost Chicago the Olympics? I wouldn’t be surprised if it played a part.
“One of the things that I think is most valuable about sports is that you can play a great game and still not win,” [Obama] said in the Rose Garden.
That’s definitely a “progressive” view of sports. One wonders if the President is _contrasting_ sports with all else, or if he has the same view of all competition. This quote is ambiguous, but I hope it doesn’t mean that he’d be happy with a “great game” of nuclear negotiation with Iran — even though it wound up with Israel wiped off the map…
Did the Obama team actually expect to just walk up to the Olympic people, say “Hi, we’d like the games to be in Chicago next,” and expect to get what they wanted just like that? OMG, too funny. Talk about coming from a life of privilege. The thing about Obama and the current crop of Dem leaders is the way they all have this vast sense of entitlement. They’ve never known real hardship, and apparently never had their least wishes thwarted in their lives.
That includes Obama and his “I’m a black man I feel the pain of all African-Americans” shtick. He doesn’t feel the pain of African-Americans or any other “oppressed” group. He’s always had his path smoothed for him by guilty liberal whites who chose him as their token Black Person To Support. (Because he’s not “too” black, unlike Jesse Jackson et al.) So of course he thought he could get the Olympics in his “home” town, because he wanted it.
There is an article that talks about how the US Olympic Committee has refused to renegotiate the television revenue sharing, of which the USOC gets 200x the money of the rest of the world committees combined. One official from the IOC said that the U.S. cities would be well to not waste their money going for an Olympic bid until this impasse is settled.
The Obama team should have known this before they went and embarrassed themselves.
I am left wondering what the reaction would have been if he _hadn’t_ gone (like a certain Anthony Blair esq. did for London, during a messy, unpopular war etc…) and Chicago still had lost.
I suspect that would be his fault too.
Not that any of it really matters in the scheme of things, I always suspected it would be Rio purely for the fact it’s never been in South America before, just like South Africa was a shoe-in for the 2010 World Cup.
Daveon blathers: I am left wondering what the reaction would have been if he _hadn’t_ gone (like a certain Anthony Blair esq. did for London, during a messy, unpopular war etc…) and Chicago still had lost.
The reaction would have been “thank jeebus that the President of the United States did the honorable thing and stayed the hell out of such a meaningless, lose/lose situation such as begging the IOC for the 2016 Games.”
You’re welcome.
As cthulhu says, it’s not about the which city gets the games, it’s about how the President comports himself, and the ineptitude of his actions.
Obama not wasting his political capital and time on trying to get the games would have been better than not. Unless of course, he actually had Chicago as a lock, which was why the conventional wisdom was that Chicago would be getting the games.
Remember? The logic was that Obama had to be getting Chicago because no President could possibly whiff on such a softball.
But hey, apparently the ICO is too byzantine. Thank goodness Iran will be a cakewalk.
That trip to Copenhagen was Obama’s “Al Capone’s Vault.”
Daveon: no one would have cared. Fewer and fewer people in the US care about the Olympics, and we certainly don’t expect the freaking president to drop everything and fly to Europe (especially during a war and an economic crisis!) to bid on a game that is seven years in the future.
Obama should have gone to Copenhagen, just like the others did, and he should have given a nicey-nice BOMFOG speech, just like the others did. Criticizing him just for going is ankle-biting, yes.
He should not have tried to give a sales pitch, and he should definitely not have made his pitch based on “I’m so great you should give me the Olympics to confirm my Greatness”. As anybody who’s ever dealt with a reasonably effective committee knows, the decision was in the can before they hired the hall.
It has nothing to do with the Olympics qua Olympics, and anybody trying to make it look like it is is either lying or pig-ignorant.
Regards,
Ric
It’s racism because there are no black people in Brazil….uh, nevermind. Hooray for Rio!
I thought we had two clowns that were more recent than this particular clown.
We do, but no one’s found the Daveoff switch.
I am left wondering what the reaction would have been if he _hadn’t_ gone
I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that it would have been fairly similar to the reaction when the previous 43 Presidents didn’t go.
It never occurred to Mr. Barrack Headuphisass, or Mrs Headupherass, that they would be denied ANYTHING. They’ve never been denied anything from reading their histories.
It must suck to have to grow up, suddenly, in your 40’s!!
Of course Burris is wrong. Chicago didn’t lose the games because of Bush. It lost the games because of Israeli intransigence. This should be obvious, since Israeli intransigence is the cause of everything.
Unsurprising that Obama and his crew seem genuinely perplexed; he went to Copenhaen, he made clear his wishes, he bestowed himself on the IOC…and yet they voted against his desires. As is said above, the overweening sense of entitlemen is disturbing.
Mrs. Obama’s own speech was a small masterpiece of self-absorption. I am astonished that the IOC wasn’t moved by the sacrifice she made in appearing. Oh, yes, you fly to Copenhagen on one of the most luxurious airplanes in the world, stay for three days, and then fly back the same way. Quelle sacrifice.
I’ve been in Copenhagen and believe me, it’s just as the song says, a wonderful town, and hanging out there for three days is a sacrifice only if you give an entirely new meaning to the world “sacrifice.”
I forget who but someone called the Obama Administration ‘Amateur Hour’.
That sums my feelings. I never felt that way about Clinton.
“I never felt that way about Clinton.”
He’s slick Willy in more than one way.