First round slap in the face from the IOC.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/europe/10 ... index.html

Nice.

While I was hoping for Chicago to win, I've been pulling for Rio as well - here's hoping that they get it.

THANK GOD

Yeah, I have a feeling most folks in Chicago are more relieved than disappointed.

IMPEACH OBAMA!!

I love all the "This bum screwed up" stuff coming from the right wing when the truth is Chicago wouldn't have had a chance in hell without the Obamas.

Really? See, I've seen the opposite that right-wingers are yelling and screaming that we have much more pressing issues and that the US didn't need to spend X amount of dollars to send potus+fl to Copenhagen.

Also, someone posted that she was glad Rio got the Olympics because they were celebrating in the streets and no one in Chicago nor the US cared. Apparently she didn't see the live cut-ins before noon of downtown Chicago.

Yeah, there must have been a few thousand in Chicago. As opposed to 50,000 in Rio.

She specifically said "no one cared" in the US. Even a few thousand gathered is more than "no one".

i'm glad Rio got it. fuck Oprah, and shame on Barry for spending time on this shit.

i think this is true. the people i know who were pro-chicago2016 were all from the suburbs. i am pretty happy that we didn't get it. but there are a lot of disappointed-looking people walking around downtown.

It's over-rated.

Now that's funny.

Tony Blair did it for London and nobody said a fucking word. Obama tries to bring something to Middle America and near the struggling state of Michigan, and Pete Hoekstra has a fucking shit about it. I don't get why most people think the President shouldn't spend time on shit like this. He's an executive, he's suppose to parade around and brag about the country, while Congress and the bureaucracy actually run the country.
As for Rio, having this and World Cup 2014 should put them in even greater international debt. I can't wait to read about them bulldozing shanty towns again and shooting the peasants to make sure all the tourist don't see anything resembling the poverty filled cesspool the city tends to be.

My mom called me because she was so excited that Obama didn't get the olympics. She was glad because she hates Obama because he is a socialist. I told her that could be the stupidest thing she has ever said and then I hung up on her.

My father actually blamed the fact that we didn't get them on Obama. He cannot stand the man and thinks he's going to bulldoze the country into ruins. We then had a fifteen minute argument about our opposing views on Chicago not getting them(I'm thrilled, he's furious). The argument got so bad with him yelling at me that I had to say stop.

For him, a real estate developer, he viewed it as an opportunity for real estate sales to pick up and more work for his industry. I however think that's overshooting things, there are never guarantees with these things.

Anyways, everyone I know who lives down there(aside from two people) is thrilled since it means they're lives won't be inconvenienced by the crowds/structures etc.

Not sure Rio should have gotten it, would have liked to see a city with less crime and poverty.

Tony Blair doesn't have a lot of work to do in this country.

Why would broke ass, rope holding up its pants, can't afford a missile shield or health care America want the Olympics anyway? It's a great big bill for a bunch of sports no one in America cares about.

Just ask Britain about the bullet you just dodged. The UK government rues the day Tony 'A Folly A Day' Blair's personal vanity project to bring the Olympics to London came oh so woefully true.

The Athens Olympics in 2004 cost $12 BILLION. Any future Olympics will cost many billions more.

As a result the London Olympics is going to be the first one in history were cardboard medals coloured in with felt tip pens by handicapped children from a local special school are given out to winning athletes as a cost cutting measure. It's going to be a national humiliation as the world tunes in to the opening ceremony only to see Boris Johnston lighting off a box of grocery store fireworks from the top of a double decker bus before symbolically pulling the lining of his pants pockets out and announcing "World, I'm terribly sorry, I'm terribly, terribly sorry".

And for what is it all for anyway? So we can watch a short, stocky, very hairy Bulgarian probably called Stoian Stoianov win the clean and jerk by very slowly lifting 500 kgs over his head while trembling a lot as his anus collapses under the strain?

Or so we can marvel at blonde permed Slovakian lesbians with skeleton faces jog round in a very boring circle before the allegedly exciting highlight where they jump over a black and white painted railway sleeper into a little foot bath?

You don't even win the 100 metres any more; believe me you are better off out of it. Let Rio have it, give a heavy sigh of relief and spend the money on nation wide weapon caches in preparation for the inevitable Communist Chinese invasion of 2028, code name 'Operation Manchu'.

jesus. when Darrin is on, he's on.

i'm copying this for the book i'm putting together of all of his works. i'm going to publish it, get rich, but not give him a cent...i need more of this.

Darrin is right. I just get tired of imbeciles blaming the folly of American Politics on one Black man who has served less than a year, when for decades we have done a much better job of ruining our society under crotchety old white men.
Deep down I am glad South America finally got an Olympic games. I'm just not so sure it is wise to put two major international sporting events in one of those countries in a two year span.
The Chinese have to get a reputable Navy before 2028, since nobody else has the man power to invade us by that time. We'll somehow implode before that date. I'm just glad we were able to give a big Fuck you to Paul Kennedy and his prediction in "The Rise and Fall of The Great Powers".

Mexico City Olympiad '68 & Mexico World Cup '70 dispute your assertion, Malachi.

Mexico WC '86 has written an amicus brief.

***

& the Montreal Summer Games '76 & Lake Placid Winter Games '80 are peevish about your claims.

I believe the success of Mexico is proven wrong by the 1982 Financial Crisis and the 1994 Financial Crisis only adds to evidence that without International Aid the Mexican economy would still be in complete chaos.

Montreal and Lake Placid are in two separate countries and there were four years between those events. The 1994 World Cup and 1996 Atlanta Olympics would have been a better claim for you.

Brazil having the tenth largest GDP should help it out, but that cancellation of International Debt of 1988 is still worrisome.

Darrin, you could write for the Onion.

& you would blame the collapse of the USSR on the '80 Summer Games? & what of Tokyo '64, coming before the pitched ascent of Japan, & while the country was just wrapping its recovery from WWI?

I don't think the Olympics make or break a country, at least not in terms of fiscal stability. They do often serve as a fulcrum on which later tourist dollars turn, e.g. Barcelona '92. But as an unabashed Olympics lover -- Summer Games, anyway -- I am not unbiased.