I DO want it; I implore people reading this not to listen to noise coming from doomsayers. The city getting crowded for one month, six years for now is not a good enough reason pass up on a once in a lifetime experience. Money? Yeah it’s going to cost money, everything does, so why not spend some of it on something to be proud of? Even through hardship there is a basic human desire to do great things, it’s corny I know, but let’s not let the problems of today rob us of greatness tomorrow.

Go on vacation if you want, but you don’t speak for anyone but yourself.

Um… we don’t want it. At least, those of us who haven’t drunk the Kool-Aid and have thought for ourselves. Please do not bring the Olympics to Chicago. I won’t be able to take a long enough vacation to avoid it. The taxpayers will be on the hook for it, our mass transit system is for sh*t anyway (and is broke, but still somehow managing to renovate every single train line, while the CTA accountants are told, in so many words, to look the other way), and it will make downtown, where a good percentage of Chicagoans go to work, completely unbearable. Crime will skyrocket, we’ll have to build stadiums and everything, all while our city’s infrastructure is failing.

Mr. President, good sir, I think you’re terrific, brilliant, and a goddamn Jedi. But please don’t help the Olympics come to Chicago.

Screw it. Between him, Oprah, and Daley, we’re going to get the damn games. Better start saving up those vacation days now.

Uh – the whole Olympics enterprise is corrupt. Do some reading on how Salt Lake City got the Winter Games in 2002. The IOC is a private enterprise, and yet it makes public bodies take on huge debt loads to host the Olympics. Just as I get ticked that football, baseball, and basketball teams arm twist local governments into building them stadiums, so I am upset that Chicago is going to be on the hook for this thing (if we get it) for decades.

The Limits of Charisma
Mr. President, please stay off TV.

The president’s problem isn’t that he is too visible; it’s the lack of content in what he says when he keeps showing up on the tube. Obama can seem a mite too impressed with his own aura, as if his presence on the stage is the Answer. There is, at times, a self-referential (even self-reverential) tone in his big speeches. They are heavily salted with the words “I” and “my.” (He used the former 11 times in the first few paragraphs of his address to the U.N. last week.) Obama is a historic figure, but that is the beginning, not the end, of the story.

There is only so much political mileage that can still be had by his reminding the world that he is not George W. Bush. It was the winning theme of the 2008 campaign, but that race ended nearly a year ago. The ex-president is now more ex than ever, yet the current president, who vowed to look forward, is still reaching back to Bush as bogeyman.

He did it again in that U.N. speech. The delegates wanted to know what the president was going to do about Israel and the Palestinian territories. He answered by telling them what his predecessor had failed to do. This was effective for his first month or two. Now it is starting to sound more like an excuse than an explanation…..
–Howard Fineman

Have you seen the composition of the IOC? A more pompous group of bandits you will never find. They are bound to hold it against the USA if their leader doesn’t come to kiss their collective pinky ring

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Ask Tony Soprano how the construction business is, and he’d probably say: “NOT TOO BAD, AND IT’S GONNA GET BETTA”

There has not been a lot of coverage of this. It happened back in July and is only now winding its way through the federal system.

Barack Obama and his administration are about to significantly drive up the costs of federal building construction. In an incredible reach of power, The Office of Management and Budget has directed that any federal construction over $25 million benefit unions.

The order would make all federal construction projects 10-20% more expensive by requiring all contractors to either use union workers and work rules to their employees. Contractors would also be required to make contributions to union pension funds and other union programs that non-union workers will never benefit from.

This will hugely drive up the cost of construction of federal buildings and line the pockets of unions without even having union workers involved in the projects. Statistics shows that only 15.6% of private construction workers in America belong to unions. In other words, 8 out of 10 construction workers in America will be legally denied the right to work on federal building projects.
Just what the doctor ordered in a down economy.

This is correct. I presume that Obama has been told behind the scenes that it’s going to Chicago, so he’s making one last appearance of lobbying for his hometown so he can appear to be a hero when it happens.

I like the Olympics as much as the next guy, but I really, really can’t stand taxpayer-funded sports boondoggles of any kind, and the money laid out to accommodate the Olympics are really just another variation of corporate sports welfare. There’s a good reason that the ancient Greeks didn’t rotate it to a new city every year and instead just reused the existing infrastructure at Olympia.

I can see some positives here. The US has done a lot over the past eight years to discourage foreign tourism. This could help stimulate tourism and improve America’s general perception amongst people around the world, in ways that could pay dividends far beyond the 2016 Olympics.

Wouldn’t you rather have your POTUS do this instead of the constant fundraising we saw during the Bush administration?!

In a nutshell, if Olympics are run well, they make at least $1 bln, possibly more. Athens Olympics lost money b/c government restricted ads and spent a lot of money on stadiums.

I’ll see you in Daley Plaza.

Yeah, isn’t Atlanta one of the most wonderful cities in the world to live.

me:
What do you mean, joaqin? …

joaquin:
Everything isn’t about Wilbur. It really isn’t.

heh heh heh. Classic.

I realize your wing-nut lizard-brains can’t handle the fact that Unions are indeed good for something, but spare us the mock outrage.

I don’t feel that strongly about the Olympics, but if Obama can take a trip to help make it happen thereby spurring a bit of economic growth, then so be it.

What do you mean, joaqin? One of two things, I suppose:

a) the fact that I’m wrong and you bother to point it out means I’m right!

b) It doesn’t matter if I’m right or wrong, I got a rise out of you so I win!

Both are pretty common lines of asinine wingnut thinking, I’m just curious which one you’re going with.