In the contest to win the 2016 Olympics, Chicago didn't even finish in the top three, having been the first of the four finalists to be eliminated. The gold went to Rio de Janeiro.

The Washington Post’s reporting indicates that the defeat was not Chicago’s alone:

The International Olympic Committee selected Rio de Janeiro over Madrid to host the 2016 Summer Games after eliminating Chicago in a stunning first round of voting Friday despite an unprecedented lobbying effort by President Obama.

Just hours after Obama left Denmark following a brief visit in which he made a personal appeal to the IOC on behalf of his adopted home town, Chicago received the least votes of the four competing cities in the first round. Tokyo fell out in the second round of the secret-ballot voting by more than 90 IOC members. …

Chicago's elimination in the first round produced audible gasps from those in the Bella Center ballroom where the voting took place. …

Willi Kaltschmitt [an IOC member from Guatemala] said he was surprised to see Chicago eliminated in the first round after the "great support" from President Obama.

"Chicago was not supposed to go out in the first round," he said. "We all agreed it was among the [top] two bid cities competing. … The USOC will want to figure out what really happened." …

The defeat represented not just a blow to Chicago and the U.S. Olympic Committee, but also to Obama, who took a significant political risk by flying here to lobby personally for his home city.

Instead of telling the IOC what Chicago will “bring to the game” in her sales pitch, Michelle Obama told them her late father “would have been so proud to witness these Games in Chicago” and that “he taught me how to throw a ball and a mean right hook better than any boy in my neighborhood.” Why did she go on and on about herself? Because, “Chicago's vision for the Olympic and Paralympic Movement is about so more than what we can offer the Games - it's about what the Games can offer all of us.” Um, no. Your presentation to the IOC should have been only about what Chicago was going to offer the IOC as the host city; no one cares about your athletic prowess or childhood memories.

In a first for a sitting U.S. president, Obama then tried to close the deal, and he was even more “me, myself and I” than his wife had been:

We're a nation that has always opened its arms to the citizens of the world - including my own father from the African continent - people who have sought something better; who have dreamed of something bigger. …

I've come here today to urge you to choose Chicago for the same reason I chose Chicago nearly 25 years ago - the reason I fell in love with the city I still call home. And it's not just because it's where I met the woman you just heard from - although after getting to know her this week, I know you'll all agree that she's a pretty big selling point for the city.

You see, growing up, my family moved around a lot. I was born in Hawaii. I lived in Indonesia for a time. I never really had roots in any one place or culture or ethnic group. And then I came to Chicago. And on those Chicago streets, I worked alongside men and women who were black and white; Latino and Asian; people of every class and nationality and religion. …

We stand at a moment in history when the fate of each nation is inextricably linked to the fate of all nations - a time of common challenges that require common effort. And I ran for President because I believed deeply that at this defining moment, the United States of America has a responsibility to help in that effort, to forge new partnerships with the nations and the peoples of the world. …

Nearly one year ago, on a clear November night, people from every corner of the world gathered in the city of Chicago or in front of their televisions to watch the results of the U.S. Presidential election. …

[T]here is nothing I would like more than to step just a few blocks from my family's home, with Michelle and our two girls, and welcome the world back into our neighborhood.

In a nutshell: Michelle Obama argued the Olympics should have been held in Chicago because she had grown up there, and Barack Hussein Obama argued the Olympics should have been held in Chicago because he had moved there. 

After the First Couple's spectacularly self-centered presentation, even The New York Times was disgusted:

President Obama not only failed to bring home the gold, he could not even muster the silver or bronze.

A dramatic 20-hour mission across the ocean to persuade the International Olympic Committee to give the 2016 Summer Games to Chicago proved such a miscalculation that his adopted hometown finished fourth of four candidate cities.

Rarely has a president put his credibility on the line on the world stage in such a personal way and been slapped down so sharply in real time. …

The defeat will be used as a political metaphor and raise painful questions. Why did he invest so much time, taxpayer money and, perhaps most important, presidential prestige in a losing effort? How did he misjudge the potential vote so badly that Chicago evidently was not even in the top tier? What does it say about a leader who may be far more popular abroad than his predecessor yet has trouble converting that esteem into tangible benefits for the United States? …

His decision to become the first president to lobby the Olympic committee in person, just two weeks after saying he was too busy with health care legislation, was a risky gamble from the start. It was predicated on the theory that Mr. Obama’s star power overseas - “the best brand in the world,” as his advisers have put it - was luminescent enough to sway enough committee members to make the difference.

Matt Drudge put it much more pithily: "The Ego Has Landed. World Rejects Obama: Chicago Out In First Round."

The Prognosis For Quality, Affordable Healthcare Is Not Good

“It is becoming obvious” to Boston Globe columnist Ellen Goodman “that just having a female reproductive system is a preexisting condition in the health care debate. The up-and-coming sticking point is abortion.” While decrying a “a federal moral rule over everyone’s health? - um, wasn’t President Barack Hussein Obama the one who wants to impose a federal moral rule over everyone’s health? - Goodman has no problem with a federal mandate over everyone’s health that requires men to buy a health insurance policy that covers abortion and prenatal care: 

My favorite moment so far in the health care debate was when Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona argued against mandating maternity benefits as part of a basic insurance coverage. “I don’t need maternity care,’’ he blurted out. At which point, Michigan’s Debbie Stabenow quipped, “I think your mom probably did.’’

For that matter, so did his wife and daughter. But never mind. We had one brief glimpse into the mind of a politician who doesn’t quite see women’s health concerns as equal to his own.

The Senate Finance Committee beat back some restrictions, but the question for Congress is still whether the “reform’’ that is supposed to increase coverage will instead reduce it. Will women who now have coverage for abortion in their private plans end up losing it?

Because in the last analysis it’s all about abortion for Goodman, it doesn’t occur to her that women, in turn, will be required to buy a health insurance policy that pays for prostate cancer treatment and Viagra. A teetotaler will be forced to pay for other people’s addiction treatment. A 23-year old will be shelling out for a 73-year old’s osteoporosis medication.

Which is precisely the point of this commentary by Robert Tracinski, editor of The Intellectual Activist:

Obama has launched a war on private health insurance, and the Baucus bill contains every essential element of that war.

The Baucus bill includes an "individual mandate" that requires everyone to buy health insurance-but not inexpensive, high-deductible catastrophic health insurance. Instead, it imposes a requirement for pricier comprehensive coverage that pays for routine costs like annual checkups. The bill then requires that insurance companies provide coverage to people with pre-existing conditions, and that they charge customers at high risk of medical problems the same rates as those with lower risks-which means that these extra expenses will have to be paid for by raising everyone else's premiums.

And then the Baucus bill delivers the knock-out punch: after forcing us into expensive comprehensive insurance plans and driving up the cost of those plans, the bill would impose a massive 40% tax on "gold-plated" plans-which turn out to include the health-insurance plans of many in the middle class. So that drives up the cost of insurance even higher.

You can see why it doesn't much matter whether or not we have a "public option" in the original bill. Everything else in the bill is designed to make private health insurance unaffordable-so that in a few years, people will clamor for a government-subsidized "public option," and the same politicians who destroyed private health insurance can make a big show of coming to the rescue of their victims.

Tracinski ends his piece with a point that has also occurred to The Stiletto:

Some supercilious commentators on the left have snickered about the supposed contradiction of town hall protesters who say they are opposed to government-run healthcare and then say that they don't want Congress to touch their Medicare benefits. But this is not really a contradiction. The elderly know what it feels like to be dependent on bureaucrats and Congress for their health-care-and to be afraid that they will be denied medical care because Congress wants to cut costs. And they know that this is the future we're all headed for if Obama gets his health-care bill through Congress.

Well, the future is now. The Wall Street Journal reports that more than 660K senior citizens will lose private Medicare Advantage coverage, because some insurers do not want to comply with federal requirements:  

Most of those beneficiaries are enrolled in a type of Medicare Advantage plan called Private Fee for Service, where enrollment has surged from about 820,000 three years ago to more than 2.44 million today. PFFS enrollees, unlike those under other Medicare Advantage plans, can see any doctor they like as long as he or she accepts payments through their plan. …

Congress, alarmed by the high cost of PFFS plans, voted in 2008 to require the plans to establish networks of providers beginning in 2011. Companies such as Humana Inc., which has established networks that can cover at least 80% of PFFS enrollees, are doing just that.

But Medicare officials acknowledged Thursday that others are pulling out.  …

Seniors can choose from about 3,500 Advantage plans next year, down 18% from this year. They can also get their drug benefit from 1,576 standalone drug plans, 111 fewer than this year. Many of those plans being eliminated are small plans deemed by Medicare officials to be too similar to other plans.

In his weekly radio address, near-daily television appearances and various townhalls, President Barack Hussein Obama has repeatedly said some variation of: “If you like your current insurance, you keep that insurance. Period. End of Story.”

This fairy tale has an unhappy ending for seniors – and for seniors-to-be.

Please Sign This E-Petition

The New Agenda is also asking that you boycott their films in the theaters, and not rent them via Pay-Per-View, NetFlix or other provider. The BigHollywood blog (yes, the folks who posted the “pimp and ho” videos that made ACORN radioactive in Washington, D.C.) has published the names of the actors, directors and producers who signed a petition to Free Roman Polanski.

Do not use your hard-earned money to add to the wealth and fame of people who think that what Polanski did (this column by Steve Lopez of the Los Angeles Times quotes extensively from the victim’s trial testimony) was “a little mistake 32 years ago" (Swiss filmmaker Otto Weisser), a “so-called crime" (Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein) and “wasn't rape-rape” (TV personality Whoopi Goldberg).

Kirstie Alley put it best in this Tweet to her fans: "Just for the record, rape is rape. This is one Hollywood star who does not celebrate or defend Roman Polanski. His art did not rape her."