re: #322 non obama mama

I don’t get why people don’t see the net positive for the USA and Chicago in NOT having the games.

Who needs such a money drainer?

And why should anyone be kissing the ass of the IOC, which has yet to do a proper vigil for the Israeli athletes who died in Munich/1972?

The IOC is the sporting world equivalent of the UN.

Economically, it’s a net negative that we won’t be hosting the games. So your analysis is way off. It is a big investment to prepare for them, but it’s more than offset by the gains in tourism. Hosting the Olympics is an economic stimulus. No debate about it…

But it is true that the IOC is in many respects the sporting world equivalent of the UN. Here is what they officially wrote about 9/11:

Yet again every foreigner was either embarrassed or irritated by the rampant American media chauvinism. George W. Bush breached protocol when declaring the Games open “on behalf of a proud, determined and grateful nation.” In the space of five months the American people seemed wholly to have forgotten what they had temporarily begun to acknowledge on September 11: that while the immense achievements of the nation over two centuries are regarded with admiration and not a little envy, there are many who find U.S. triumphalism unacceptable.

That garbage doesn’t relate to sportsmanship. It’s political manipulation of the worst kind. That China and Russia, despite their human rights abuses and chauvinistic foreign policies, have locked in Olympic events in recent years also speaks to how corrupt the organization must be.

All that aside, U.S. presidents have and will try to lobby for their country with the commission. It doesn’t matter if they’re Democrat or Republican. This Olympic-Games controversy that wasn’t reminds me of the whole kerfuffle about Obama bowing to the Saudi king. Bush had done just the same, and future presidents likely will continue the tradition. Why the faux outrage? Don’t we have more important issues to worry about?