Politics of Spite
Paul Krugman continues to demonstrate that brilliance in one field doesn't necessarily translate into sound insights into others. He's upset that some Republicans took pleasure in President Obama's embarrassment in not landing the Olympics for his adopted Chicago and their cynicism in positioning themselves as the defenders of Medicare in order to fight his health care reform proposals. ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on October 5, 2009 15:24
Chicago Won’t Get Olympics
CNN is reporting that Chicago has, along with Tokyo, been eliminated from consideration for the 2016 Olympics. Apparently, Oprah and Obama weren't enough. Chicago was eliminated in the first ballot of voting for the 2016 Olympics on Friday, a stunning defeat for the city that was expected to be one of the two finalists. Not even the presence of President Barack ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on October 2, 2009 11:38
Dept. of Silly Analogies
John Cole comments on Michelle Obama's pledge to "take no prisoners" as she helps her husband fight to get the Olympics for Chicago: You know who else hosted an Olympics? Hitler. Just saying… QED.Posted in Outside The Beltway on September 29, 2009 16:09
Quote of the Day – Money Editions
"Just because Usain Bolt sets a world record every time he runs doesn’t make the other runners slow." - Mark Cuban, explaining why income disparity isn't a problem. While it's a great line, it's actually a poor illustration. Races and records are zero sum games. Bolt's winning the Olympics and setting a new record deprives other runners of gold medals and records. Conversely, ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on August 18, 2009 12:04
Obama Lobbying for Chicago Olympics
When I saw the headline "White House lobbies for Olympics in Chicago" at Memeorandum, I was prepared to write about the abuse of power and the bringing of machine style politics to the Oval Office. One has to read a bit into Ken Vogel's Politico piece to think otherwise. The Obama White House is playing an unprecedented role in the bid ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on May 12, 2009 07:09
Inauguration Scandal: Music Not Live
Taking a page from the Communist Chinese Olympics, the Obama inauguration featured truthy music. Daniel Wakin blows the doors off this travesty in a NYT exclusive: It was not precisely lip-synching, but pretty close. The somber, elegiac tones before President Obama’s oath of office at the inauguration on Tuesday came from the instruments of Yo-Yo Ma, Itzhak Perlman and two colleagues. But ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on January 23, 2009 07:41
Networks Fear Obama Blowout
While the liberal media might be cheering for Obama -- McCain joked that "it's going to be a long, long night at MSNBC if I manage to pull this thing off" -- their bosses are hoping it doesn't happen so quickly as to spoil the show. Paul Friedman, CBS News senior vice president, said he has started to think “about what ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on October 17, 2008 17:11
The Western Media Respond to the Beijing Olympics
As I suggested over the weekend now that the Games are over and the correspondents happily back from their sojourns in China covering the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, the Western media are singing a somewhat different tune than they were while the games were in progress. L'audace, l'audace, toujours l'audace. Yesterday a story in the Times of London reported on ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on August 26, 2008 11:22
Michael Phelps the Greatest Olympic Athlete Ever?
I am a fairly recent convert to the sport of swimming. I've gotten into it as my son has gotten more involved in the sport. Tonight Michael Phelps has become one of the greatest, if not the greatest, Olympians of all time by becoming the only Olympian to win 13 gold medals over the course of his swimming career ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on August 16, 2008 03:03
Legalize Sports Cheating
John Tierney and Megan McArdle argue that we should let athletes use whatever performance enhancing drugs they want since some will cheat regardless of the rules and because our definition of "fair" competition evolves over time. The response to that, though, is obvious: many of these drugs are dangerous and legitimating them all but mandates them. John, an early commenter on ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on August 12, 2008 15:57
Mainstream Media Obsessed with Sex, Sex, Sex!
Cernig is outraged at the sex-obsessed American press. I am now officially disgusted with America's insular and navel-gazing punditry. En masse and on a bipartisan basis the media, commentators and bloggers have decided that the Edwards Affair story is more important than events in South Ossetia. What happened, folks, did your minds cloud over at contemplation of events beyond these hallowed ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on August 9, 2008 18:50
Olympic Stabber Attacks Coach’s Family
A bizarre and shocking crime has turned the opening day of the Olympics into tragedy. A knife-wielding Chinese man attacked two relatives of a coach for the U.S. Olympic men's volleyball team at a tourist site in Beijing, killing one and injuring the other on the first day of the Olympics on Saturday, team officials and state media said. The man ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on August 9, 2008 07:19
American Olympic Favoritism
Megan McArdle offers a defense of Americans from the charge that Americans are only interested in Olympic sports in which Americans are strong medal contenders, noting that we're a large country with established team sports loyalty and so forth. It's all true. More fundamentally, though, I reject the premise that Americans' America-centric view of sports is problematic. As Sir Paul McCartney, ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on August 8, 2008 13:50
White House Press Corps Detained in China
Demonstrating the public relations prowess for which they're known, Chinese authorities detained the White House press corps for nearly three hours upon its plane landing in Beijing. The flight crew of the Northwest Airlines 747 had been expecting to park at a VIP terminal, but after landing was instead directed by the control tower to a normal international gate. White House officials ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on August 8, 2008 08:41
Chinese Terror Cops Get Segways
This story is a few days old now, but Noah Shachtman's post is the first I've seen it: Chinese elite anti-terror police officers are wheeling into action ahead of next month's Beijing Olympics on two-wheeled scooters. Members of the country's armed police unit practised on the Segway models that have been re-named 'Anti-Terror Assault Vehicles' in the eastern province of ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on July 7, 2008 11:57
