Olympic Copenhagen

Biggest news of the day, barring some huge event occurring within the next twenty minutes, was the International Olympic Committee's vote to award the 2016 Summer Olympics to the city of Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. I blogged about this previously on 7 July 2009 in which I expressed my opinion that awarding the games to Rio would be the best decision, but that I thought it rather unlikely. Sure enough, though, Rio pulled it out, and by a decidedly large margin as well. This is how the vote went down this morning in Copenhagen:

City (Country)	Rd 1	Rd 2	Rd 3
Rio de Janeiro (BRA)	26	46	66
Madrid (ESP)	28	29	32
Tokyo (JAP)	22	20	--
Chicago (USA)	18	--	--

Congrats to Rio de Janeiro, the first South American city host the Games. However, on the side of Rio's celebration is a political story here in the United States. President Barack Obama visited Copenhagen to lobby for the Games to be held in his adulthood home of Chicago. He sat as a member of the small panel asked questions by the members of the IOC about their city's bid. It was speculated that Obama's presence would improve Chicago's chances given his high popularity worldwide. The President's failure to win the games for Chicago has drawn him criticism from conservatives throughout the country for having "wasted his time". The video on the linked page shows members of Americans for Prosperity, a right-wing tea-bagger group erupting in applause when told that Chicago lost on the first vote. They are morons. What everyone in America fails to understand is that it is quite normal for a head of state of a nations of a candidate city to attend the vote. No President of the United States has ever gone, but it is most certainly a positive thing for a head of state to attend. President Lula da Silva of Brazil was in attendance when his city won the bid. In fact, Lula actually encouraged Obama to make the trip. So why is this being blown up as "the worst day of his presidency"? It seems to me that all the Republicans aim to do is find something, anything to take such a cheap shot at President Obama, something as stupid as the city for which he spoke to the IOC losing its bid to host the Olympics. Pitiful.

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