Seriously-- Chicago Dodged a Bullet

Check out the smoking craters of debt the Olympics has left behind in other places.

Here's an interesting angle: Although conservatives tend to be against subsidizing stadium construction, for liberals, there's usually an extra dose of outrage, because not only is public money being misspent on something other than abortions and methodone, it's being put into the pockets of wealthy team-owners, and besides, liberals only watch tennis and the WNBA.

That's all the Olympics is. A massive public payment to a private entity to benefit some but not many private businessmen (hoteliers, obviously), and for no real greater reason than prestige.

Well... What is prestige worth? Surely not five or ten billion dollars.

At any rate, while many on the right have been making this case about the Chicago Olympics for some time -- noting that the city was split about it, many people not thinking they wanted to pay a ten year surtax to cover the costs of two weeks of chariot races -- liberals have forgotten all about the very real question of misallocation of limited public resources and rah-rah embraced the bid for Chicago -- just because it would have represented a win for Dear Leader.

You've got jackasses like Glenn Thrush wringing his dainty little boy-hands that Republicans may be viewing this only in terms of wins or losses for Dear Leader -- but what the hell are liberals doing? Since when has paying ten billion on stadium construction appealed to them lately? Seems like it's only now that Prince Obama of Grayskull said it's a good thing that they're rabidly in favor of this.

They're doing this a lot lately. I do not believe that more than 20% of partisan liberals really give a fig about the public option per se. For example, I do not believe that Chris Matthews has any policy wonk interest in the question at all. I neither believe he's thought much about health care in the past nor has he increased his thinking about it in the present.

So why is he so interested in the public option? Only because pushing it through would represent a display of raw presidential power on Obama's part. He only cares about it at all to the extent that it could possibly represent a "W" in his boyfriend's standings.

The Olympics? Same deal. Frankly very few of us even realized Chicago was in the running for the 2016 Olympics (long time in the future, eh?) until a week and a half ago.

And yet, suddenly, among liberals, this became a much greater political cause than health care.

Why? Because it was so important that Chicago spend oodles of money for a two-week party?

No. Because they knew Obama needed a win, desperately, and they figured this was an easy one. Rack this easy win up, claim he's on a roll, try to leverage this easy (and frankly meaningless) win into a win on something more important, like health care.

Which... 80% of them also don't care about all that much, except to the extent Obama can win there and beat those nasty Bible-thumping moose-murdering Republicans.

So, you know -- f'n' spare me, spare the living shit out of me, over this sanctimony of Republicans rooting against your BMOC wannabe-boyfriend. "You're just rooting against our collective Dream Date Ken Doll out of partisan spite!," liberals sputter.

Oh? And why the hell are you rooting for him, I'd like to know. Tell the exact moment when you all collectively became great supporters of publicly-funded stadium construction -- and if that point is more than two weeks ago, I'll eat a beer-truck.

Jay Cost explains the feeling all of us on the right have. While you on the left are still so giddy to be able to root and cheer Obama in all his glorious contests -- like baseball, scheduled just about every day, with frequent double-headers -- the rest of us are starting to get a little weary of Obama Omnipresent.

For you, it's delightful. You still get tingles up your leg and you still marvel at his impeccably-creased trousers.

For the rest of us: Go. The Hell. Away.

This is the permanent campiagn. We have talked about its imminence for years. Well, now it's here and this is what it looks like. This is what a President does in it....

I, for one, am exhausted by our new permanent campaign. That might sound strange coming from somebody who runs the Horse Race Blog, but it is true. The ominpresence of the Obama campaign apparatus is, frankly, wearing me down. I can't get away from him or it, even in my down times. Watching the Office on TBS used to be a real pleasure for me and the missus, but now we must be interrupted by the President of the United States cracking lame jokes at us in the promotion of a second-rate comedian. There is no escape.

It's not simply because enough is enough, though that is part of it. It's also because he is different now. He holds the executive authority of the United States within his person at this moment, and it is sobering to see the holder of such vast power on the cover of a magazine urging us to follow his fitness regime. By continuing the permanent campaign into his tenure so thoroughly, he has given new meaning to the phrase "big government." When he is on the cover of Men's Health telling us how to work out, in a certain sense, the federal government's executive authority is on the cover of Men's Health telling us how to work out.

And so it continues today. What should have been a story about Chicago - or better yet, Rio (good for you, Rio!) - is now a story about...Obama. Of course. Because just about everything in the public sphere must, must become a story about Obama. Because Obama injects himself and his campaign appartus/mindset/worldview into everything. .

...

I was hesitant to place a bet on the outcome of the health care debates, but I'll place one here. Sooner or later, the American people are going to say, "Enough is enough" with this constant, incessant politicking that is inevitably built around the specialness of Barack Obama.

Do you get this, liberals? For you, Obama is, in fact, as the McCain ad said, "the World's Greatest Celebrity," and you continue to be dazzled and delighted at every setback and triumph in his life, as if he's a radiation-mutated Jennifer Aniston, now 100 feet tall, with all the difficulties in her dating life that 95 feet of unwanted height brings.

The rest of us are not as rapt as you.

Please stop insisting that we, like you, spend every minute of our being beaming out positive mental vibrations to your boyfriend. We don't like him. We never did, but your unending insistence we love him just as much as you do is starting to make us hate him.

And you.

You have a crush. I'm sure it feels like nothing you've ever felt before. And the apple of your eye I'm sure is, to you at least, the most wonderful and perfect creature ever to bestride the earth.

We don't have a crush though, and we're tired of hearing about yours.

posted by Ace at 06:25 PM

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