Chicago Is U.S. 2016 Olympic Bid Candidate - GameBids.com

My sweet home town has always shown a "can-do" attitude and it's what I love and take from it, and is still within me. I'm so proud of Chicago. It will win the World Bid, and show the World what Chicago's really all about! Wooo!

Chicago Is U.S. 2016 Olympic Bid Candidate By Close Vote
Posted 9:04 pm ET (GamesBids.com)

It was not necessarily a landslide, it was a “very, very close vote”, said U.S. Olympic Committee officials following the announcement that Chicago would be the U.S. candidate in its bid for the 2016 Summer Olympic Games.

Patrick Ryan, Chicago’s bid committee chairman said, “it’s just beginning. It’s a long road”.

USOC chief executive officer Jim Scherr said, “this contest ultimately is not about the economics, it’s not about the surplus, it’s about the magic that can be created through the Olympic and Paralympic Games, and how that by itself can transform a city, can transform a nation, can transform the world. And so we look forward to trying to earn that prize”.

Before opening a sealed envelope that revealed the winning city USOC chairman Peter Ueberroth said it was a very tough decision. He said, “if I had all the power – and sometimes people accuse me of that – I would take the map and merge the two cities because I’ll tell you what: If you could take the mayors of these two communities and have them run our country, we would all be better off”.

Chicago’s plans call for a $1.1 billion lakefront village that would be built near the convention centre just south of downtown. The lakefront plan was repeatedly mentioned as a key factor, reports the Associated Press.

USOC international vice president Bob Ctvrtlik said, “for the Olympic Games to be a success we have to recreate a certain magic, a certain celebration centre, and the waterfront location, right on the lake, we felt could do that”.

He added, “the legacy projects, coupled with the guarantees they have offered, I believe gave our board a level of assurance that might have been the differentiation between the cities”.

At a press conference following the announcement Chicago Mayor Richard Daley said it was an honour to be chosen to partner with the USOC to bring back the Olympics to the United States. He called L.A. a great city - “they put us through our paces. We will support each other”, adding “2016 here we come”.

Daley admitted he was “very, very nervous” until he heard the name Chicago.

Ctvrtlik said the USOC will work very closely with the city. “It will be a full time partnership this time. It wasn’t so in 2012” (when New York was the U.S. candidate).

When asked how they would do it differently from New York he said, “this is a new day, this is about partnership. We’re a different USOC”.

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa called Los Angeles’ bid an effort “that we’ve very, very proud of” and a “fair process”. He said he wouldn’t change anything about L.A.’s bid if he had it to do over.

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger issued a statement thanking the Los Angeles team for its efforts saying he would like to congratulate the city of Chicago “which I am confident will do an outstanding job representing the U.S. and ultimately prevail in this competition”.

Don Imus Racism Does Not Compare To Rappers - Integrationists v. Segregationists

What's interesting about this time in the maturation of our society is the conflict between what I will call integrationists and segregationists. Integrationists have friends of different skin colors and backgrounds and prize diversity. Segregationists don't have friends of different colors and are at best luke warm about diversity. (And when I mean friends, I'm referring to people you invite over to your house, not people who you run into who are acquaintences.)

The Integrationists to a person denounce what Don Imus said and call for his outright ouster. The Segregationists -- here's another example -- don't think this is a big deal what he said and that he's using free speech. It's also distubing that the vast majority of Segregationists bloggers -- at least according to their Imus reactions -- are white and male according to my Technorati tour. Not surprisingly, the Integrationists are White, Black, Latino, Asian, male, female, etc...

I'm an Integrationist.

What Don Imus said are the words of a Segregationist. A person who sees people as apart due to skin color and doens't want to get to know anyone who looks different from them. What Don Imus said in referring to Black Women as "Nappy Headed Ho's" are the comments of someone who is not in the company of Black Women, and doens't want to be. That's the sickness of it all. He's -- in one fell swoop -- denounced an entire group of people. What's more, anyone tunes in to CNBC is forced to here Imus' crap when he's on. His show's supported by corporations who purchase ads, which is a way of saying "We love your content."

Wow.

Now how that compares with -- as one Blogger put it "Black Rappers" -- is a question only a Segregationist would come up with because only they would stereotype rappers as being first Black and then racist. Of course Integrationists know that there are rappers like LL Cool J who don't use hate speech.

But on top of that, every Integrationist knows that one can simply chose not to buy a certain rap record. Look at the whole matter of "Prussian Blue" - Lamb and Lynx Gaede, those 13-year old white girls who made racist records, yet gain fan mail from nutos as far away as Germany and who are concerned about "The White Race." (No kidding about that.) Did any of the Segregationist bloggers call for their "firing" or for that matter, their parents?

Nope.

But they didn't hit the top ten lists either, and several of their planned concerts were cancelled. Why? Because they advance the same kind of race hate tha Imus' comment would seem to imply. You could take his statement, install it in a Prussian Blue song, and their sick Segregationist fans would love it.

Why not include them and compare them to Don Imus? Why focus on Rappers who are Black? I'll tell ya why. Because Segregationists are looking for every reason not to -- integrate. They don't want diversity and loved it when things were divided and Whites were on top.

Am I saying that Segregationists are all White? No. Some are not, and yet can't see a society where there's true balance and real equal opportunity as well as constant integration. It's a new concept to thos who are -- well, mentally enslaved.