Michelle's Sacrifice

If this isn't enough to make you barf, nothing is.

"'As much of a sacrifice as people say this is for me or Oprah or the president to come for these few days,' the first lady told a crowd of people involved in the Chicago project, 'so many of you in this room have been working for years to bring this [Summer Olympic] bid home."

Oh Michelle, thank you SO much for enduring that first class plane ride to Denmark. Thank you for putting up with first class food and accommodations while you're there. Thank you for enjoying the adoration of the people you're speaking to. Thank you so much for enduring all of these hardships in order to do something that at least half of the people in Chicago don't want. I'm speechless at your selflessness and willingness to spend taxpayer money on such an important quest. Thank you, Michelle. You truly are a gem.

JASmius adds: AP disagrees - sort of:

What, just because you’re forced to accommodate Oprah’s giant ego and listen to The One deliver another droning speech and make kissyface with corrupt Olympic officials and field endless moronic questions about how you get your arms so toned and, um…

Actually, dude? That sounds horrible. I salute the First Lady for her noble sacrifice on our behalf.

If sarcasm is the sour cream of wit, you two are probably emptying Taco Bells AND Taco Times in seismic proportions.

Exit question: If in the fall of 2001 (and 9/11 hadn't happened) George W. Bush had gone abroad to make a pitch to bring the 2008 Olympics to Houston, whatcha think the reaction of people like Barack Obama might've been?

UPDATE: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.....

In a stunning development, Chicago was the first city eliminated on Friday in IOC voting to be host city for the 2016 Summer Olympics…

[Red Barry's] wife tugged at IOC members’ heart strings by discussing her late father, who had multiple sclerosis. She recounted sitting on his lap, watching Olympians such as Carl Lewis and Nadia Comaneci compete, and how her father “taught me how to throw a ball and a mean right hook.”

“My dad would have been so proud to witness these games in Chicago,” she said.

....HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA [snort]

Seriously, my reaction to this news was like Ron White's when the bear ate that greenie filmmaker in his "Bear Like Me" (or whatever the heck it was called): I laughed until I thought I was gonna throw up.  Barack Obama drops everything - Iranian nukes, Afghanistan, an economic depression, even BarryCare - and jets off to Copenhagen with the clear - and reasonable, AP, so don't dine on too much fecal matter - expectation that his adopted hometown had the 2016 Summer Olympics locked up.  I mean, surely they're not going to INVITE THE PRESIDENT OF THE WORLD to this shindig only to humiliatingly stiff him, right?

Man oh man, if this doesn't symbolize just how completely the bloom is off the Obama rose - hell, how the bloom AND the rose have been consigned to the proverbial waste extractor - I don't know what will (until November 2010, anyway).

And he knows, it, peeps, he knows it:

Throngs watching the voting in downtown Chicago’s Daley Plaza gasped in disappointment as the announcement was made.

United States Olympic Committee leaders appeared stunned by the news and had no comment as they left the voting hall. Mr. Obama was flying back to Washington at the time of the vote.

Insert "kayai, kayai, kayai" sound effect here.

Three lessons for The One:

1) The International Olympic Committee is clearly crammed to bursting with racists;

2) Instead of using the Chicago games as a campaign prop for his run for a third term, he'll be leading the 2016 Olympic boycott of, um, one;

3) Maybe they SHOULD have sent Michael Jordan instead.

UPDATE II: Perfect headline, from Drudge: "The Ego Has Landed".

UPDATE III: The IOC torpedoed Chicago's bid because it feared Barry's adopted hometown would be too corrupt even for them? 

UPDATE IV: On a more serious note....:

There's actually something worrisome about this whole Chicago fiasco, and it goes back to President Obama's inexperience. Diplomacy 101 tells us that your head of state only shows up on the high-profile stage when a deal is complete. The lesson that most politicians learn well before they gain positions of power is that diplomacy is done by diplomats, professionals who work through all the negotiations and the hardball tactics and the carrot/stick combinations. The principals in the matter gather to discuss high-level topics and to smile for the cameras as the agreement is being signed. Heads of state do not conduct diplomacy, they ratify it, and surprises are entirely unwelcome at those summits and signing events (hence Reagan's anger in Iceland.)

Why were you and Ramesh surprised? Because you thought that President Obama at least knew this very basic lesson. Today's announcement suggests that he does not, and it just got advertised big-time to countries who already were pretty sure we had a rookie at the helm who didn't know how to use international power. President Obama just got upstaged by an organization against whom no retaliation is acceptable, and he wants to meet with the Iranians next month? We are in deep, deep trouble.