Good one.
This is so not on my RADAR. Seriously, fix the economy, get us out of war, I can think of tons of things that are way more important than this.
Africa has never hosted an Olympics.
I thought Rio had it in the bag and was surprised Obama threw in so late for a bid that was pretty clearly not going to win. But it won’t much affect his reputation; this sort of thing doesn’t generally affect national politicians because it’s not something they’re directly responsible for, and in any event there’s a lot of people who are pleased as punch when their cities lose these bids, since they’re such financial catastrophes.
Africa?
Eh. The right wing chatterocracy will make a big deal out of this until the next “outrage” emerges. I don’t see this having any legs.
Has any African city ever put in a bid?
Cape Town, South Africa bid for the 2004 Games and actually got a lot of support, beating out a number of other cities (including Rio) and surviving two ballots and a runoff, eventually finishing third to Athens and Rome.
Cairo bid for the 2008 Games but didn’t get any votes.
Cape Town put in a bid in 1997 for the 2004 Olympics (didn’t win, obviously).
I’m a conservative but I think that Obama pitching for Chicago was the right thing to do. This does show that he may not be the worldwide rock star that he seemed to be during the election.
Will the right then shut up about Obama being “the great one”, or “Obama worship”?
(rhetorical question - of course they won’t)
In theory yes, but past scandals have set the voters against pressure from star power or any appearances of bribery. BTW I also clarified that politics was not the only reason for how the vote came up, but with voters being human too, it would be silly IMHO to ignore how the rest of the world sees the USA, even with Obama at the lead.
There are plenty of us on the right that would be fine with that.
Much better than the opposite.
I’m split. As a Chicagoan, I’m disappointed. But as someone who loves Olympic opening and closing ceremonies, I’m elated. Rio knows how to party! And the improvements that inevitably be made to Rio will have a tremendous positive effect that Chicago doesn’t really need.
As a Chicagoan, I’m glad we didn’t get it, though I think Blago, Capone, and that kid getting beaten to death on-cameraphone offset any good Obama could do. Well, that and the lack of enthusiasm on the ground here.
As for longterm effects, Obama invested a couple days. Richie Daley invested an awful lot of time and political capital when he’s in a slump.
I think it’s idiotic for him to have gone. He’s personalizing it…and what was with his wife’s speech about how her dad taught her to throw a right hook? What? Who cares? Why would a judge want to send the olympics to chicago because his wife’s dad had MS or something and this is also a chance for america to show that it isn’t a bunch of assholes like it was under bush.
If him going is the right thing to do, should every president go every time? To do what? To add what exactly to the debate? The President of the US wants you to pick Chicago…or Boston or whatever US city is in the running. Of course they do, how is that news? How is that surprising? He’s basically saying “do this for me, because I want you to, and now that I’ve come here you won’t make me look like an ass, will you?”
Who cares about the stupid olympics anyway. Was it worth the time waste and the gas to go over to that country and beg them for the stupid olympics? It’s assinine.
I think the biggest criticism Obama’s likely to get is that his decision to spend days on an Olympic bid shows a very poor set of priorities. His generals are waiting for his decision on Afghanistan while the situation deteriorates, and he tells them he needs a few more weeks to think about it - and then decides to focus his effort on bring the Olympics to Chicago. At the very least the appearance of misplaced priorities is very bad.
Oh, come on. He was going to get dragged through the coals no matter *what *he did. If he hadn’t gone, the outrage du jour would’ve been that he didn’t try to get the Olympics for America.
I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m getting pretty sick and tired of the speculation over how everything he does will be viewed. It’s either viewed that way, or it’s not- speculation is just another way for the Right to paint him as a failure without him having actually done anything bad.
This is getting ridiculous. What will it be next week? 'Cause I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but there seems to be a very specific pattern to the Right-wing bloviation. There always seems to be some new outrage every week, usually just in time for the weekend.
But as has been pointed out elsewhere, if he DIDN’T go we’d be hearing speeches about how he missed out on an opportunity, isn’t doing his job and so on.
It hits home that Hillary kept pounding the fact home that while Obama talks he didn’t really accomplish anything while in the Senate or anywhere else, indeed he got in over her basically 'cause he didn’t vote for the Iraq War while she did.
Nearly a year into his presidency he hasn’t done much, except take publicity tours to Africa and various other places. Mr Obama got into office by saying he wanted to change things, and good on him. But he never explained how he would do this and when any of his critics brought this up, they were called out as being everything from reactionaries to racists.
The IOC since the Salt Lake City bribes scandal is very sensitive to ANYTHING that looks like a bribe or influence. Bringing all those celebs to Denmark was nothing more than a media blitz, and the IOC and the rest of the world reacted by saying “Oh yeah.”
Chicago was a strong contender so what happened was in the first round everyone voted to get rid of them right away.
Look at it this way, if you were planning an event and it came down to a few choices and someone showed up with Oprah and Mr Obama and all these other celebs and the like wouldn’t you consider that pandering?
Once November rolls around Mr Obama is going to have to pull off some results. The economy is still a mess, I know for me at least, my situation is 100 worse than last year at this time and isn’t likely to get better for a year or so.
Mr Obama needs to get the troops home, like he said, get the banks under real control, and stabalize the economy. The tackle big things like healt care
Sam:
We’ve been in Afghanistan how long now? About two weeks short of forever? In all that time, when was the last occcasion that the President’s advice and attention has been urgently and immediately required?
“Roger, C in C, this is McChrystal Palace, do you read? Over.”
“Copy, McChrystal Palace, over.”
“Taliban attacking from the south, Do I reinforce the Ist Airborne, or retreat? Over.”
“McChrystal, advise all personnel to dig very, very deep foxholes, I’m nuking the whole shebang. Over.”
“My God, Sir, you …”
“Just jerking you around, homey. Reinforce with rifle company along the ridge. Over.”
Perhaps he does take a bit longer to ponder than you might like. Perhaps it might be better if we had a more intuitive leader, one who “thinks from his guts”. Myself, I’d kinda like to give Obama’s approach a try, considering.