Saturday, October 31, 2009

Your Desire is Your Mask

It is all Hallows Eve, time for the spirits to come out and play! Ah, yes most people are sitting down, getting ready to watch a scary movie or getting dressed up to go to a Halloween Party. It is simple you see, Halloween is a holiday people like to celebrate because people like to be scared. They dress up their houses and homes alike to scare those who dare to visit. What other day is it acceptable for children to go around to stranger’s houses asking for treats, which will probably rot their teeth? There seems to be a festive atmosphere for most as they get out the decorations and celebrate again the scariest day of the year. As we go back in time, when witches and wizards were real and practiced their wicken deeds.
It is absurd to think about, young and old alike dressing up as what they truly are not. It is the one day where you can be someone or something other than who you truly are. Then again, who truly are you? Is Halloween just a holiday where we dress up like in costumes that we buy at the local grocery store or is it a holiday where we show more of our inner thoughts? People are really revealing a bit of their true personality as they head for the extravagant makeup. Halloween is a day where you can magnify your inner desires in costume form and show the world without them truly realizing what has been revealed.
Little kids are the best example to the belief that Halloween is for people to illustrate their inner desires. What little girl doesn’t want to literally be a pretty princess or a little boy be a strong superhero? It is obvious to anyone that little children choose costumes for Halloween that are their actual desires. They really want to be that fairy or angel or batman or Thomas the train. So, why would it be such a leap to say that we don’t continue that tradition as we get older? Sure, costumes get more violent as the age grows but maybe that has more to do with the anger and aggression that grows within people as they get older. Who has ever seen a little kid keep a grudge for more than ten minutes? I know I even have kept grudges for years. It is a fact of life, as we grow we loose our innocence and we become angrier and so our costumes usually just correlate back to that.
Not everyone wears scary costumes as they get older though. Some still want to be that pretty princess or superhero. Those people are either genuinely sweet or they just cannot let go of their childhood yet. I know that I never want to fully grow up. I like the age I am at and kind of just want to stay here. I find this to be very apparent in my costume choice as well. I went as a teenager in the 80s. If you look past the obnoxiously bright colors of my costume and the overall 80s fashion you would see a teenager. I went as myself just in a different decade because I do not want to grow up.
Through my costume I realized this just as anyone can look deeper into their costume and find their desires blasted across the makeup. For instance, my brother went as a hunter. He says that he was an army man or whatever. He was a hunter. Now that does not mean he wants to be a hunter when he grows up but if you look closer it does reveal something about him. Hunters go out and kill because that is what they want to do. They are still human but they kill. My brother is a very aggressive person. You get in his way, make him mad. You better run! It ain’t pretty. He is like this most of the time too. He really likes to shoot at his friends, with air soft guns yes but still. He likes to also hide himself from people in my belief because underneath it all, he still knows he needs his mommy. His camouflaged costume hides what normally the aggression hides, himself.
Well, I hope you all have fun dressing up in your masks and makeup. Have fun letting your desires go free. Happy Halloween!

Be wise in disagreeing with the government

Every act of creation is first of all an act of destruction. -Pablo Picasso

In recent weeks there has been obvious hostility between the Chamber of Commerce and the White House. It seems that now that the Chamber has started to disagree with the White House on certain issues, they have become enemies in the eyes of the White House. The conflict that they are disagreeing on the most is, of course, the Health Care reform. The Chamber of Commerce is concerned that if not handled properly a move in our health care policies will create overall downfall in the economy; as of current date one sixth of the economy deals with health care. The Chamber is not the only ones feeling the heat. Anyone who presents information against the health care reform is discredited by the White House by any means necessary. The Chamber is receiving comments from both the Energy Secretary Chu and the President Barrack Obama. Secretary Chu has made comments about how good it is that major companies are withdrawing from the Chamber, which has 300,000 companies, and Obama has tried to discredit the Chamber through comments on their spending throughout the years. It seems that the White House not only wants to discredit the Chamber of Commerce but is leaning towards its demise. The strangest part about the situation is that they had no problem with the Chamber of Commerce when they agreed earlier on things such as the stimulus package that the Chamber helped push through.
It seems that people should really be worried if the disagree with the government. The right to free speech seems to have been lost on the new government that wishes for anyone that disagrees with it to be destroyed, no matter the past. This is very worrisome. It makes you wonder what kind of society we are turning into. The health care reform to people is the first step to a socialist, or worse, communist government. Yes, there are problems with our system of health care right now but I do not see reason to change the parts of it that are working. It is really not that bad and putting too much money into it is really not going to help our nation’s debt problems. Now, where is our freedom of speech going? If the government doesn’t like what an organization is saying they start to discredit it and call for disbandment?? It sounds to me like the new people in charge has let power get to their head a bit. I mean seriously I understand that you don’t want people to be telling information that goes against what you want, but find a better way. If your plan cannot withstand the critics that are trying to discredit it through information then it probably just is not good enough. LET IT GO AND MOVE ON!!! There is a reason why we don’t have this type of health care system; it is because the people have not wanted it. It is a bad idea. That is why not a single president before Obama who has suggested this has been able to do it. It is too costly a risk and it will likely be the downfall of the Obama administration. This reform has lead to the government feeling the need to do some pretty hard core censuring and rebutting, in the wrong way, and may even end freedom of speech. What I do know is that the White House needs to sit down and take a good look at what they are doing and determine if they really think it is right. If they continue on this path, I fear for America. I would also advise looking into moving somewhere else.

For the information used in this post click here.

Saturday, October 24, 2009

It's a School day? Oh, no. I'm sick!

If you treat a sick child like an adult and a sick adult like a child, everything usually works out pretty well. – Ruth Carlisle

We all have had days where we have just not wanted to get up in the morning. I however seem to have quite a few of these days where I would have given anything to stay in bed. Sure school is a time to meet with one’s friends; to talk about what happened last night on your favorite television show; to build new relationships; and to learn of course. But there are so many days where I will wake up in the morning and just know that it is better for me to stay in bed or other days when I just feel like my time would be better spent outside than in a brick building. Well, continuing on in my ode to Shel Silverstein I could not pass up the opportunity to blog about one of the silliest poems about attempts to not go to school, “Sick.” Let’s face it we all have done it claimed to be deathly ill when in reality we just wanted a break from learning and a day to relax and watch TV. Well in “Sick,” little Peggy Ann McKay gives a list of excuses as to why she just cannot go to school today, all of them dealing with her being supposedly ill. If you read the poem close enough though, you realize that as her excuses go on they start to have nothing to do with being ill but are actually just how some parts of the body function; such as, her belly button caving in and her elbow being bent. In the end after listing a ton of reasons not to go to school, someone tells little Peggy Ann McKay that it was actually Saturday! All the attempts to get out of school and she actually did not even have school that day. So little Peggy responds to the news that it is actually Saturday by telling the person, who she had just complained about all these illnesses to, that she was going out to play. Shel Silverstein really out did himself again in this poem with his ability to tell a story so smoothly while still being self-conscience about keeping up with his rhyme scheme. This poem just makes you have to giggle about all the effort little Peggy put into not having to go to school. It’s something to think about next time you want to be ‘sick’ and skip school.

One Dollar equals Five Pennies :)

You are led through you lifetime by the inner learning creature, the playful spiritual being that is your real self. Don’t turn away from possible futures before you’re certain you don’t have anything to learn from them.-Richard Bach

This week has been a very interesting one for me. It was my first week back to school after the wretched swine flu attack and so I was still recovering a little bit. I found myself taking quite a bit of cough syrup this week. If you know me well enough you would be very frightened by that last sentence. You see, I react very strangely when it comes to cough syrup. I have several times been accused of being high because I act a little strange; ok, I act extremely strange. Well I guess it is probably because I was acting so strangely, that I remembered one of my favorite poets when I was younger. Since his poetry is aimed at a younger audience it has been quite awhile since I have opened Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein but today I did. Shel Silverstein is a genius, if I do say so myself. His poetry is so light and humorous that it makes you just want to giggle. You can tell just from the title of his books that he is a man who likes to have fun and is also very creative. One of my favorite poems from Where the Sidewalk Ends has to be “Smart.” In this humorous poem a boy is given one dollar bill by his father and by the end of the story he had traded it for five pennies. Because five is more than one, the boy thought his father was too proud of him to speak when he showed his father the final outcome of the dollar bill. This poem is an excellent example of the ability that Shel Silverstein has. Silverstein uses an intricate rhyme scheme in this light-hearted poem while also giving a moral that quantity does not beat out quality in money. The poem is taken from this little boy’s perspective and how he thinks he has tricked all these people out of something but in reality he is the one who has been tricked. The progression in the story is eloquent yet peppy at the same time. The boy goes around trading his one dollar bill for two quarters, his two quarters for three dimes, his three dimes for four nickels and finally his four nickels for five pennies. Shel conveniently runs through our currency by quantity in this poem while supporting the theme that quality is better than quantity. Overall the imagery in this poem is also so amazing that you really can imagine this scene as it happens. If you are ever in need for a laugh I urge you to read this poem about a boy who learns a lesson about money.

Swine Epidemic

In spite of your fear, do what you have to do. Chin-Ning Chu

President Barrack Obama has declared the recent outbreak of the H1N1 virus a medical emergency. But what does that truly mean? Not much, to the average person actually. The proclamation of swine flu as a medical emergency does not give reason to hide it out under your covers; it merely means that now hospitals can skip over some red tape to keep sick people away from the rest of the sick population. With more and more cases of swine flu being acknowledged everyday it is hard on hospitals to room all their sick patients. An even more daunting task is keeping patients, whose immune systems are already down, away from the risk of the H1N1 virus. Now that the proclamation has been made, hospitals can work to create off-site facilities for people with flu symptoms to go to get the proper help. These off-site facilities are a barrier for other sick people against the raging virus and have been greatly needed. The red tape that hospitals had great difficulty passing in past months has been lifted by this announcement made by President Obama. The true question though, is why did he wait so long? The H1N1 virus has been attacking our neighbors to the south since last year; it managed to kill hundreds of Mexicans and the fear it would migrate north was realized not many months after. Sure, the cases slowed down for a couple of months but this past month you turn to any channel and you will hear more news about the spread of the swine. It had been previously predicted that the flu would return in the coming months after its break and once it did the president should have immediately made it a health emergency. Personally, I have never been a fan of any kind of red tape. I am not really sure I see a reason for it other than financially and the way Obama has been throwing money around doesn’t seem like it should matter even in that case. It seems like a risk was being taken on the health of people for the past month and for no true reason. Swine flu is not only a force to contend with but evidence has shown it comes with some troublesome friends that can bring harm, even death, to the elderly and young. I think this proclamation is long over due and I just hope no one’s life was actually risked by slow reaction to this harmful virus.

To see a map of Swine Flu activity click here.

Sunday, October 18, 2009

Acting OUT

My role in society, or any artist's or poet's role, is to try and express what we all feel. Not to tell people how to feel. Not as a preacher, not as a leader, but as a reflection of us all.- John Lennon

I thought I would turn again to a song this week for a little poerty inspiration. Ashley Tisdale is known to most as Sharpay Evans, aka the mean girl, in the High School Musical Series. After High School Musical, she started to take her music career a little more seriously and has recently released her second album. For some reason the album has not actually been very popular even though I think it is amazing. My favorite song is "Acting Out" which is a very empowering song that talks about well a girl wanting to act out. I decided to add the youtube video to the post of the song for you to hear for yourselves. It has a very different beginning but a nice beat that goes along with the up beat lyrics of girl about to jump out of this skin that people have percieved her as. It is definitely a different type of expression than most of the poems I have presented but I believe that songs are poetry just put to music. My favorite part of the song is the lyrics and just how they really motivate you to do something that you havent done before to show people a different side of yourself just like she has shown a new side of herself in her new album. Hope you enjoy this song as much as I do!

Dream a Little Dream of Me


Dream as if you'll live forever, live as if you'll die today. -James Dean

Another renowned poet that I have yet to share with my fellow bloggers is Langston Hughes. The first time I became familiar with the work of Langston Hughes was during a poetry unit sophomore year. My class analyzed his poem “Theme for English B” and I found his work to be very refreshing and different than the other works we had read. He is probably one of the most renowned black poets for his time. Not only did he work magic when writing he was one of the first poets to experiment with jazz poetry. I was looking through an archive of his works and found this very pleasant poem called “Dreams.”

Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.
Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.

Though it is a fairly short poem it manages to hold a lot of meaning in its words about dreaming. Langston Hughes was also a very technical writer and poet. This poem reads so easily because of his ability to take technical skill and create an easy flow in his poetry. In this essay Langston Hughes describes the importance of dreams and that you must dream or your life will have no meaning and you might as well be dead if your life has no meaning. Hughes uses two very interesting analogies to represent a life with no dreams; he relates not holding tight to your dreams to a bird that cannot fly and frozen dirt laden with snow. Using both of the analogies, it can be stated that Langston believes that a person’s dreams are what give people the urge to live and without them people have nothing to pull themselves up from whatever mess they were given. I think this message is easy to understand when you look back on Langston Hughes childhood which was not very easy for him but he obviously managed to come out of the mess and become a successful poet that was influenced by the troubles of his early childhood.

Saturday, October 17, 2009

Health Care

At their core, Americans all want the same basic things: a quality education for their children, a good job so they can provide for their families, healthcare and affordable prescription drugs, security during retirement, a strongly equipped military and national security. -Ruben Hinojosa

Everyone knows about President Obama’s push for universal health care in the United States. He has given several of speeches about the need for a reform in our health care system and he intends to get one. Personally, I have always feared this idea because of problems that have been heard from other countries taking on health care. When it comes to get everyone in a country adequate health care it seems to me like an impossible task. There are so many problems that come with reforming the health care system. The first major problem is financial. How is our government supposed to pay for everyone to get the proper help they need from doctors. Our national debt is all ready through the roof and adding the burden of providing health care would just add to the debt even more. Right now, people receive health care through their employers. I understand that this is not the best, especially with so many people unemployed, but it is what the country can truly handle at this moment. Are priority should be somehow figuring out how to pay for such an extreme project and get some funding before trying to pass bills in congress that would get to this new health care system. Another issue is if this new health care system is what we really want or need as a people. Think about it for a moment, if you knew the government was providing free health care for you, you would likely go to the doctor for every little sickness because you don’t have to care about paying for it. With everyone having this same mindset the hospitals, doctors would become overwhelmed by patients, become understaffed, under resourced and the overall ability of our health care system would halt. I recently became very ill and my mom decided to take me to a walk-in clinic. We had tried to get an appointment with our family doctor but there were no opening. My family had gotten really concerned because I had been getting increasingly sick. By the time we headed out for the clinic my fever had reached 104 degrees Fahrenheit which is fairly dangerous. My mom called in to the walk-in clinic hoping that I would be seen as soon as I got there, because of my increasing fever. When we got there the waiting area was very crowded and we sat down and waited for my name to be called. I was still very sick because of the fever and decided to lie down along a couple of the chairs and try and get comfortable. Even after calling in early and being probably the sickest person in the waiting room, I had to wait forty-five minutes to be seen by a doctor. Afterwards I was thinking to myself, if we have a health care reform like President Obama wants, who knows how much longer it would have taken them to see me. By the time they did see me my temperature had increased to 104.5 degrees Fahrenheit. We as a nation are in the middle of a health scare with H1N1 virus all over the place and so more people are going in and getting checked for Swine Flu already putting the hospitals and medical centers on the edge. If everyone in the nation had health care and felt the need to get checked out for the flu or a virus that is spreading all over, our medical centers probably would be unable to function properly and there would be even longer waits to be checked or be seen by a doctor even if you were extremely sick like I was this past week. If we do end up having a health care reform the first thing we need to do is make sure that we have not only the financial resources but the medical resources prepared well enough for an increase in patients because that is inevitably what will happen. I would rather stick with the health care system we have, as messed up as it may be, and be able to be seen by a doctor in a decent amount of time when I am truly ill than have to wait around slowly dying to be seen by a doctor who is exhausted and expended on an overflow of patients that he can barely do his job.

Sunday, October 11, 2009

Words, Words, Words...Alive and Well

Have the courage to live. Anyone can die. -Robert Cody

I was searching through a website where I find my Emily Dickinson poems. It has this index of the first lines of each poem. As I was searching for a poem to dicuss in my last blog for the week, I saw the first line of the poem this entry is about and I laughed. "A word is dead." seems like such an unusual topic for a poem that I found myself wondering what makes a word dead. Read what Emily Dickinson's thoughts are on the situation:

A WORD is dead.
When it is said,
Some say.

I say it just
Begins to live
That day.

Before I read this poem I thought to myself for a moment what I thought about a word being dead. I came up with dead languages such as Latin and so I came to the conclusion that a dead word would be a word that had dropped out of the use of the population. According to Emily Dickinson most people think a word is dead when it is first said but she believed that is the day that it begins just to live. I then realized that Emily Dickinson was trying to convey that words were not just a combination of vowels and consonants but have actual meaning and their meanings also give them a life source. Words are living beasts that surround our society which is one hundred percent true. People use words with purposes of hurting, loving, appreciating, criticizing, or informing. It is a new way of looking at words and is actually really thought provoking. Words are given their purpose by the person but they then hold onto that purpose. People give them purpose and life and then sustain it.

And the Noble Peace prize goes to.....

It is hard for an empty bag to stand upright. -Benjamin Franklin

It has been brought to everyone’s attention that President Barrack Obama has been named winner of the Nobel Peace Prize and it has also become a major debate on whether he was truly deserving of such an award. Well today I woke up and turned on the television only to watch a show called Fox news Sunday that was discussing this very topic. A panel of political analysts seemed to all be in agreement that President Barrack Obama did not truthfully win the award on his own actions but none of them agreed upon how the situation should be handled. It is not wrong to say that the Bush’s Administration was not well liked by the Nobel committee and most of Europe. One of the panelists said the committee had made it clear in previous years that they would not award the Nobel peace prize to anyone who had made accomplishments that dealt with 9/11 and Iraq because they did not believe those accomplishments commendable for the award because of the controversy that came with the topics. I searched for this information online but could not find a direct statement from the committee saying such but that is partly because the online community is at a major buzz over President Obama receiving the award. I went to the Fox News Sunday website and noticed a poll off to the side that asked people how they felt about President Obama winning the award and the majority of the votes went to the choice of someone else deserved it more. I think the public as a whole does not believe that this decision by the committee made much sense. This award is given to people who are to be commended for their accomplishments and Obama has yet to really accomplish anything. I will admit that the man is a very eloquent speaker and knows how to inspire people through his words but that is no reason to give him a Nobel Peace prize. I do not wish to relate President Obama to a con artist but every time I hear someone talk about how amazing President Obama is at speaking part of me thinks back to how con artists can only be successful if they have the same eloquence in voice as our President yet they are never going to be given any awards for their speaking abilities because it is frowned upon. Another issue the panel explained was that the list of names in the running for the Nobel Peace Prize had to be registered by February 1, 2009. President Obama was sworn into office on January 20, 2009 had he really done anything substantial to get his name on that list a mere 12 days after becoming president? I think not and I do believe that the only reason that President Obama received the award is because he was not Bush. The first few days in office President Obama spent the majority of his time undoing a lot of what Bush had done in his eight years and Europe had become so Anti-Bush that they saw Obama’s work as Nobel Peace prize worthy. A few of the panelists chose to see this as the reason for President Obama receiving the award and some of the more extremists on the panel saw it as an award of Anti-Americanism and thought Obama should politely decline the award. I am not saying that he should truly go that far and I am sure he will not but it brings up a good point, what should be done with the money that comes with the award and how does Obama view this award. Well I believe the money should go directly to the countries debt amounts that Obama insists on multiplying and President Obama says that he sees this award as a promise to complete what he has set out to complete. The problem with that belief is that many people believe that he should have already accomplished what he set out to accomplish to receive the award because the recipients of the Nobel Peace prize had already made their accomplishments to society before winning, not just made promises to accomplish it. I do find it somewhat reassuring that Obama does not feel that he truly deserves this award either because I would be slightly disturbed about America’s future if he thought so. Let us hope this award does not go to his head. Mother Teresa, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King Jr., Jimmy Carter and now Barrack Obama, oh dear oh my.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/europe/10/09/nobel.peace.prize/index.html

http://fns.blogs.foxnews.com/2009/10/09/wallace-unplugged-obama%e2%80%99s-peace-prize/

Friday, October 9, 2009

The Winter Skyscape

God's promises are like the stars; the darker the night the brighter they shine. -David Nicholas

This weekend we had our first snowfall, though none of the snow actually stuck to the ground it was kind of a wakeup call that winter is coming early this year. Now most people relate the snow and winter to cold and depression, but I love the winter. First of all, the nights are longer in the winter which gives you a longer time to just lay beneath the stars and the moon and reflect upon anything and, secondly, snow is this amazing thing that coats the world and turns everything white which just reminds me of purity and letting go of the world because everything is lost in the snow. I find winter to be this very refreshing and enlightening period of the year. Well it is not a surprise that I went searching for a poem about the night sky and snowfall. So I wasn’t surprised to find one by Robert Frost. “Stars” by Robert Frost is a poem that describes the night sky after a snowfall and just how beautiful it is in that moment. Frost paints this landscape in your minds of everything covered in a new and glorious snow that seems to coexist with these bright, meaningful stars that seem so much more exuberant above the snowfall. He tells about how the night is at this ominous peace and a type of rest that leaves at dawn’s break. In the last stanza, Frost describes the stars as so snowy white and relates them back to Minerva, the Roman Goddess of wisdom. In essence his starts to relate the stars to a blind wisdom which is very interesting because it shows that he too believes that the stars are this symbol of enlightenment and power source for pondering through our problems and souls. I think that the stars have always had this symbol since the age of enlightenment when the philosophers and astronomers were so busy looking for answers in the sky and it is really mind blowing how much information the stars give us as a people whether it is just the empowering symbol they provide some or it is actually information about what else lies in this universe, the stars are always there to be versed about.

http://www.ketzle.com/frost/stars.htm

Sunday, October 4, 2009

The Tempting Fruit

"Tis one thng to be tempted, another to fall." William Shakespeare

Temptation can be one of the hardest things man must overcome and man is often placed in situations where the temptation seems to great to resist. I decided to break away from the love poems for a time and step into temptation…at least a poem about temptation. Emily Dickinson described temptation best in her poem “Forbidden fruit a flavor has”. It is a one stanza poem which means it is fairly short so I decided I would simply copy and paste it into my entry rather than give you the link like I would normally do.

FORBIDDEN fruit a flavor has

That lawful orchards mocks;

How luscious lies the pea within

The pod that Duty locks!

Emily Dickinson chose a topic that people have dealt with from the beginning of man in this poem, temptation. One would assume that Emily Dickinson purposefully gave this piece religious connotation by referring to forbidden fruit. Forbidden fruit are referred to from the Bible, when Adam and Eve eat the forbidden fruit and are later expelled from the Garden of Eden because they admit to God that they had eaten the fruit he has forbidden them from eating. Temptation has several meanings when referring to religion such as in Dickinson’s poem. It can mean committing a sin such a lying all the way to sinning through murder. Resisting temptation in modern day is related back to honoring a bond or relationship you have with another being and not cheating or deceiving this person. Unfortunately, temptation has grown in modern world and many find it hard to resist by remaining faithful which is cause for the failure of far too many relationships. Emily Dickinson died in 1886 in older times when temptation was not so easily taken in so it is curious to think about how she would she the world today seeing this poem was written over one hundred years ago. Is it possible that people has lost the will power that many used to have and cheat and lie making marriage no longer a lasting union for many. It is disheartening to hear that about only 50% of marriages in modern day are a success. At that frightening rate one of every two marriages fail which really brings a damper on the whole point of marriage. It makes me wonder why we have let marriage success rates drop so enormously and what the cause is. It is something to think about, has temptation become too hard to resist or have people lost their willpower to resist it?

Friday, October 2, 2009

Congrats Rio de Janeiro!


“Olympics—A lifetime of training for just ten seconds.” –Jesse Owens
Congratulations are in order for Rio de Janeiro for winning the Olympic bid for the 2016 Olympics. It will be the first time that the Olympics will be hosted by a South American country so there was some great pride associated with this win. While most people were rejoicing this great feat, the people of Chicago were speechless by the outcome. Chicago had often been considered the likely host for the 2016 Olympics but was actually the first voted out of the bid. This came as a great disappointing shock to the city last Friday and many still do not understand fully what happened. Rumors have actually leaked that the Olympic committee actually voted Chicago out first because of bruised pride. Now here is where the politics comes into play. President Obama and his wife, Michelle, flew to Copenhagen, where the vote was held, and gave speeches to the committee asking them to select Chicago for 2016 Olympics hoping that the gesture would put Chicago far enough ahead of the other cities that it would be the obvious candidate. This tactic might have worked, if the Obamas would have stayed in Copenhagen for the vote and watched Chicago advance throughout the rounds of voting. Instead the Obamas, after giving their speeches about why Chicago deserved to host the 2016 Olympics, jumped onto a plane and left before even the first round of voting commenced. This move is said to have insulted the committee because it made their speeches feel too political rather than a kind gesture. This was what some cried out yet I still believe that is not exactly the truth. Chicago was followed by Tokyo in being dropped from the race which makes since because both cities are from countries that have hosted the Olympics in more recent years. Obama was not the only political leader who has spent time persuading IOC members to vote for his country. Luiz Silva, President of Brazil, has spent the past few months traveling the world to talk with IOC members and influencers about how Rio de Janeiro needed the 2016 Olympics while the other cities merely wanted it. When he heard that Obama was to make a speech before the IOC members he was actually convinced of a defeat, but his pleas obviously helped Brazil receive the host position and on confirming his victory for Brazil he was brought to tears. Now that is the showing of someone who truly deserves to host the 2016 Olympics and I raise my glass to him. BRAVO!! President Obama has made a statement about Chicago’s defeat and it contained the clique phrase ‘you win some and you lose some’ but that is not of importance anymore because there is nothing that can be done to change the IOC’s decision. Congrats BRAZIL!!!!