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Maybe the Chicago Olympic Committee can place a call to China

Posted by Ed Lilly on Wednesday, September 24, 2008 9:39:11 AM
News out of the Windy City on problems that have arisen with the site chosen for the proposed Olympic Village that is a critical component of Chicago's efforts to land the 2016 Summer Games:

Faced with soaring demolition and environmental cleanup costs and a recalcitrant property owner, the Daley administration has broken off talks aimed at moving the $1.1 billion Olympic Village to the campus of Michael Reese Hospital.

Hmmm.  Seems to me that if the Chicago political machine of the corruptocrat Daley family wants something done, it will find a way to get it done.  And isn't there somebody with Chicago political machine connections who's in the news about now?  And didn't he have an observation about the recent Olympic Games held in Peiping?  Why, yes there is, and yes he did:

Obama, yesterday [8/21/08]: "Everybody's watching what's going on in Beijing right now with the Olympics, Think about the amount of money that China has spent on infrastructure. Their ports, their train systems, their airports are vastly the superior to us now, which means if you are a corporation deciding where to do business, you're starting to think, 'Beijing looks like a pretty good option.'"

Obama's comments on Chinese infrastructure drew some criticism from people who still have a grasp on reality (meaning the mainstream media arm of the Democrat Party ignored it).  Summarizing three news stories from China in 2008 prior to the Olympic Games, National Review's Jim Geraghty noted:

Yes, their power outages, crowds at train stations, and outbreaks of air rage are vastly superior to ours.

Even more appropriate in light of the environmental remediation snafu that has now cropped up in Chicago, Hugh Hewitt noted the following with respect to Obama's analysis:

Obama's praise for China's Olympics building binge ignores how those structures were assembled, the source and conditions of the labor, the lack of pollution controls in Beijing and throughout China, the many complaints that Chinese infrastructure outside the Olympics zone remains shoddy, the recent record of Chinese manufacturing scandals, including the heparin fiasco which killed many Americans, and of course the catastrophe brought about by Chinese building standards in the region rocked by the recent earthquake.

Can someone with a press pass please get an answer from Obama on why Chicago shouldn't just take the Chinese approach to getting the Olympic Village done and ignore environmental cleanup laws, labor and construction standards, and personal property rights?  If it was so wonderful when the Chinese did it, shouldn't Obama be urging the Cook County construction industry to get on board with the same approach?

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So was it Gerald or Lawrence who fainted?

Posted by Ed Lilly on Saturday, August 23, 2008 7:58:26 AM
Seeing the linkline below at Sports Illustrated's site this morning prompts my question above:

Synchronized swimmer faints, rescued in pool

My money's on Lawrence.  As he said:

I don't swim.

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Olympic foreshadowing?

Posted by Ed Lilly on Tuesday, August 05, 2008 6:59:17 AM
I hope the news out of China this morning, about an apparent attack by Muslim terrorists that killed 16 police officers in far western China, does not turn out to be an even worse harbinger of what we may see in the next few weeks with the Peiping Olympics.  The smoggy, brown, polluted air, locust infestation, and raging algae blooms seemed like enough unpleasantness without the far worse spectacle of reliving the Munich Games.
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Olympics preparation update

Posted by Ed Lilly on Wednesday, July 02, 2008 8:58:36 AM
From Bloomberg.com:

Olympic organizers struggling to stem an algae bloom at the sailing venue in Qingdao are turning to another threat: a plague of locusts heading for Beijing.

Uh oh.  But, the Olympics being such a hugely important event, and with the eyes of the world watching, surely the ChiComs will find a way to deal with the algae bloom and locusts using organic, earth-friendly techniques, right?  And if they don’t, the environmentalists will be in an uproar, right?

Well....

The northern Chinese province of Inner Mongolia has mobilized 33,000 people to repel swarms of locusts

Sounds good so far.  Use superior human resources to somehow “repel” the swarms.  But let’s see, the story tells us that the locusts:

have infested an area of 1.3 million hectares (5,000 square miles)

Hmmm.  Each of the 33,000 Chinese will somehow “repel” the locusts from an approximately 6.5 square mile area?  I wonder how they’ll do that.  Oh:

Locusts in full flight may not be so easy to tackle. Inner Mongolia authorities are using 200 tons of pesticides, 100,000 sprayers and four airplanes to kill the pests...

Let’s just hope that’s 200 tons of hemp-based, organic, earth-friendly pesticides sprayed by solar or bio-diesel powered, zero emission airplanes.

Perhaps there’s better news on the algae front:

The locust alert comes as 10,000 workers scoop up blue- green algae along the coast...

Sounds earth-friendly, again using immense man-hours to somehow scoop up the algae.  And they’ve already had some reported success:

About 4,000 troops are helping the Qingdao clean-up, which has removed 150,000 tons of algae since June 25...

Wow.  That's a lot of tonnage to remove in a week's time using environmentally friendly techniques.  But I'm sure the ChiComs have been environmentally responsible.  Best of luck in their continuing cleanup and preparation for the Games.

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Inigo Montoya does not think this story means what the author thinks it means

Posted by Ed Lilly on Tuesday, April 15, 2008 11:50:30 AM
Scott Soshnick is a columnist with Bloomberg.com.  He writes sports opinion pieces, and his latest work is on the issue of whether a boycott of the Peiping Olympics makes sense.  Soshnick clearly does not think a boycott is a good idea, and recites a lengthy story about Olympic hopeful Craig Beardsley to make his case.  From the article:

Sports fans should know what the Beardsley family sacrificed for a chance to represent the U.S.

Beardsley at age 4 learned to swim at the 92nd Street Y on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. He attended the United Nations International School, where one of his classmates was an Afghani prince.

Apparently Mr. Beardsley sacrificed by coming from a wealthy and powerful family, as the 92nd Street Y and the UN International School are not the types of places that the hoi polloi get into.  Reading on, we see:

Diplomacy runs in the Beardsley family. His grandfather was consul-general for the Republic of China to Peru in the 1950s.  His mother fled Shanghai during the Communist takeover of 1949.

“One of the last boats out,” he says.

Beardsley's grade-school days began with a 45-minute commute (90 minutes with traffic) from home in Harrington Park, New Jersey, to Manhattan, where his father worked.  First learning.  Then swimming.  Then back to dad's office.  Then home by 6 p.m.  Maybe.  Then more swimming.  Friends were scarce.

“No time,” Beardsley says.

Mom and dad forced Beardsley to join the local swim team.  There, his first coach, a former U.S. Marine, affixed some sort of bands around Craig's ankles to keep his feet together.  By age 11 Beardsley was being recruited by area swim clubs.

Yep.  Dad’s a political bigshot with connections.  That explains the Y and the school.  But more telling is the simple reference to the parents having FORCED Beardsley to join the swim team, and dragging him 50 miles a day round trip into New York and back as a grade schooler.

I thought this story was about what the family sacrificed for young Craig to represent the U.S.

Moving on:

Serious training started at age 12.  All-swimming, all-the- time.  No basketball.  Not anymore.

Beardsley remembers his father waking him up at 4:15 a.m. for morning workouts.  At 14, Craig, an accomplished cellist (his mother was a concert pianist), was accepted to the Manhattan School of Music.  A wasted application.

“I was spending all of my time in the pool,” he says.

Soshnick may be right that a boycott isn’t the right thing to do to the athletes.  But more than anything, what I take from his tale of Craig Beardsley is that at least some Olympic athletes and their families may be crazy and have their priorities completely out of whack.

Apparently Soshnick doesn’t see it that way:

Think about Craig Beardsley the next time some politician or activist uses the word boycott. Think about the 4-year-old's commute. Think about bloody hands and up-river swims.

A 4-year-old’s commute?!  This in some way makes sense to anyone as an argument about the greatness and worth of the Olympics?!

How about I meet Soshnick half-way.  I’ll think about Craig Beardsley the next time someone tells me how great the Olympics are.  And if Craig Beardsley’s story is in any way representative of the background of even 10 percent of U.S. Olympic athletes, I will be completely on board with shutting down our Olympic programs and letting the kids who are being forced into insane athletic training regimens try to get some kind of balance and normalcy in their lives.
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If Evander Holyfield can still box, can't Katarina Witt please keep skating?

Posted by Ed Lilly on Wednesday, March 05, 2008 1:00:16 PM
Sad news from the world of sports on the retirement of a living legend:

BERLIN -- Two-time Olympic champion Katarina Witt ended her show career on ice with a final performance as Carmen -- the role that defined her greatest triumph.

Witt drew thunderous applause in Hannover on the last night of her farewell tour Tuesday, capping her six routines with bowls of fire around the rink.

"I have to say, honestly, that you prepare a tour like this and think of everything," Witt said. "Then I totally forgot to think of what I would say at the very end. Maybe just: Thank you."

The 42-year-old former East German, dubbed "the most beautiful face of socialism" by Time magazine, drew worldwide fame by beating American rival Debi Thomas at the end of the Cold War in a politically charged duel for the 1988 Olympic gold.

The story goes on to note that Witt won her first Olympic gold medal in 1984, the same year Evander Holyfield competed in Olympic boxing.  Amazing that both of them would still be out performing / competing after this long a time.
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