The Rebuilding of Ground Zero, Part 164

President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama will be visiting the World Trade Center site this afternoon to view progress at the site as part of a trip to New York City that includes two fundraisers for the 2012 campaign.

The trip will disrupt the commutes of tens of thousands of people who use the PATH station at the WTC (myself included), but the President needs to do more than just view the progress all while meeting with steel workers and the governors of New York and New Jersey along with Port Authority officials and Mayor Mike Bloomberg. He needs to get the Port Authority to quit its inane demands on the WTC Memorial Foundation and push ahead with completing its work on the museum and PATH Transit Hub, both of which are years behind schedule. The Museum opening keeps getting pushed back with each passing day and the earliest it may open is towards the 3rd quarter of 2013. It was supposed to be open this September.

Ferreting out who wants what has been harder than cracking the National Security Agency. Eventually, we sifted the misinformation to discover that the PA, which controls the Ground Zero site and is building the museum for the foundation, is behaving very, very badly.

Samson and Foye must, first, get through their heads that they are cutting a deal with a nonprofit foundation set up to construct proper 9/11 remembrances and not with, say, the developer of a retail mall.

Banished from the talks must be thought of asking the foundation for a percentage of revenues from museum admissions or gift shop sales. The concept is so preposterous as to defy belief that anyone could have raised it seriously — instead of as a throwaway bargaining tactic. Get rid of it.

Also to be dropped is any idea that the Port Authority will muscle out the foundation to take greater command of the memorial and museum. The PA must keep hands off.

It is a political agency that has no business presiding over sensitive issues such as how aspects of the 9/11 story will be told. Just as bad, the authority would succumb to the temptation to open the property to speechifying by elected officials.

The Port Authority, which operates at the behest of Governors Chris Christie (R-NJ) and Andrew Cuomo (D-NY), has been fighting with the memorial foundation, which is headed by Mayor Mike Bloomberg, over costs and the work has groaned to a standstill for months.

While 1WTC (Freedom Tower) and 4WTC continue rising skywards, and the Fiterman Hall project nears completion, the Port Authority's work on the transit hub, vehicle security center, and the museum are crawling along as costs pile up.

George Will Gets It Wrong On Obamas' IOC Copenhagen Speeches

President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama may bea malignant narcissists, but their speeches before the IOC in Copenhagen don't prove the claim. George Will seems to think that it does, but he gets it wrong.

What the Copenhagen speeches show is an abject failure to persuade the IOC that Chicago had a superior bid to other cities in the competition combined with a failure to understand the IOC and how they chose cities to host the Games.

It also exposed yet another failure of the Administration officials to recognize no-win situations and put the President in a bind no matter how he responded to the challenge.

If Obama didn't go and Chicago didn't win, Obama loses.
If Obama goes and Chicago doesn't win, Obama loses.

Obama would only claim partial credit if Chicago wins the bid, and it is all too apparent that the Chicago bid was wanting even without Obama stepping in. Obama went because other cities had their respective national leaders go and promote the cities involved in the competition.

If you actually read the speeches, as oppose to read the punditocracy, you'd see that the speech was wanting on that very issue - the Obamas were supposed to be selling Chicago, and they didn't make the sale.

Here's the text of the speeches.

The speeches were supposed to persuade, but they do nothing of the sort. They are completely devoid of any reason to actually vote for Chicago over any of the other cities. That's the primary failure of the speeches.

Read Michelle and President Obama's speech, and it's all about the family and their attachment to sports; it was not about how the Bears or the Cubs and the White Sox make Chicago a huge sports town where the fans will make the Olympics commercially successful. After all, this is about the Olympics making money and being a successful operation.

It's about their personal connections to the city - not about the City itself and what it can do for the Olympics. That was a huge mistake. I'm not sure who thought that the Obamas' personalizing Chicago would help it win over the IOC, but it was a failed gambit. It would have been better had they not spoken at all since they completely missed the point of why they were there in the first place.

Had they instead spoken of the fans' devotion to teams despite failure to achieve for decades (Cubs fans!) they might have seen how the City could embrace all manner of sports that don't normally garner the kind of respect that basketball, swimming and gymnastics usually gets. I'm talking about the secondary sports that could use a boost from a fanatic crowd that would come out to cheer. None of this came across in the speeches.

A Worrisome Trend

Friday's failure of Chicago to win the bid to host the 2016 Olympics may turn out to be a blessing in disguise for Chicago as Mike Lupica notes, but it clearly exposed problems with the Obama Administration and its worldview.

It also revealed a naivete and inexperience that extends to foreign policy and basic diplomacy.

Presidents do not attend major events unless their underlings have prepped the situation on the ground so that it favors the President to use his political capital to achieve success. It is all too apparent that the Administration did not understand the IOC and its byzantine politics. That's unforgivable precisely because they should have known what to expect from the USOC and Chicago 2016 committee. They admitted that much when they expressed those sentiments on Air Force One on the trip home from Copenhagen.

If the Administration knew that it was going to attend the IOC meeting, where was the preparation to insure the President would not get embarrassed if things didn't work out? It appears that it was wholly inadequate.

And that's going to get the US in trouble in the next three years. The President wants to rush headlong into talks with Iran, a totalitarian repressive regime that regularly lies, obfuscates, and alternates between secrecy and bold aggressive statements calling for the destruction of Israel, death to the US and is sitting on a vast nuclear program that is geared towards the production of nuclear weapons. Underestimating the politics of the IOC is one thing; to forge ahead and not understand the base rationale for Iran's pursuit of those nuclear weapons and missile technology is unforgivable.

Yet, that's the path we're apparently on. The President doesn't quite understand that talking, or the appearance of talking with the illegitimate leaders of Iran, including Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, actually legitimizes the regime and undermines the opposition that has been fighting to make sure their voice is heard despite a violent crackdown against the regime. The regime in Tehran wants nuclear weapons, and missteps in understanding the nature of the problem means that this Administration is falling into needless mistakes; mistakes that threaten US national security and the security of our allies throughout the world.

Everyone watched and saw the Administration's inability to seal the deal at the IOC. The best thing you can say is that he was in a no-win situation because had he not gone and Chicago lost, he would have been blamed for not going to support the bid, but he did go and Chicago still came in fourth.

That speaks to fundamental weaknesses in the Chicago bid or to the IOC's reaction to the Administration's efforts in Copenhagen. I suspect it's a bit of both.

The problem is that these issues keep cropping up all over the place with this Administration, whether it's the failure to properly vet candidates for top policy positions or fundamentally misreading the state of the economy.

That's the worrisome trend; the on the job training isn't working fast enough and the repercussions are going to linger.

IOC Voting Eliminates Tokyo and Chicago From Hosting 2016 Games; Rio Gets It

Tokyo and Chicago are out. That leaves Rio and Madrid. I think the odds favor Rio, primarily because Europe is already hosting the 2012 Games in London. The IOC tends to spread out the Games geographically, and it would be the first time a South American country hosted the Games.

Apparently all the last minute efforts by the Obamas went for naught. It just wasn't in the cards.

UPDATE:
The Chicago Sun Times calls the outcome shocking. Really? Was Chicago really the frontrunner for the Olympic bid? I didn't really think it was. I always thought that Rio had the inside edge on this one.

Some reports suggest that President Obama only came to lobby the IOC after other national leaders did the same to bolster their own national efforts. Boosterism couldn't hurt, but it didn't help Obama land Chicago the 2016 games.

The US efforts to land Olympic games is coming up against stronger bids elsewhere; the NYC 2012 bid failed when the West Side Stadium deal collapsed a month before selection, thrashing any chances. Maybe that's why the Obamas couldn't seal the deal; they didn't have the strongest bid no matter how much support they could throw their way.

And that's the fault of no one but the Chicago 2016 committee.

UPDATE:
Rio wins in the third round of balloting.

UPDATE:
Apparently for some it was a foregone conclusion that Chicago would win that we have stunned disbelief from the CNN reporters covering the announcement:



That's not covering the news. That's cheerleading, and realizing that your team lost.

The Chicago 2016 Olympic Bid Gets Support From Obamas

President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama are both hoping to make the case that Chicago should win the 2016 Olympics bid for holding the games. They're competing against Tokyo, Madrid, and Rio di Janeiro.

It is a multibillion dollar effort to put on the Olympic Games. They usually don't make money for the host city, but they are transformative in that they create new structures and infrastructure. The Beijing Games was a coming out party for the Communist government to showcase some tremendous and cutting edge sports venues, but had to overcome the heavy handed tactics of dealing with protesters, tracking and limiting content online, and the ineffectual ability to control the pollution that clogged the skies of the city all too frequently.

Japan's efforts include renovations of venues used in the games held there previously, along with a pledge to make the 2016 games eco-friendly. Chicago has an excellent mass-transit infrastructure on paper, but the facts are something else entirely.

The Chicago mass transit system needs a serious infusion of funds to bring it up to snuff. There are sections of track where speeds are limited because of a concern that derailments are all too possible. It has been unable to deal with basic maintenance, and the bill is in the billions.

Will the Olympic bid improve matters? Possibly. Mass transit is a key, and many of the venues and the Olympic Village are close together, limiting travel time and improving efficiencies in an effort to make the Games green.

I'm not quite as outraged as some are over the President being a salesperson for the US efforts to win the Olympics bid. It's his hometown, and being a booster for the hometown effort isn't necessarily a bad thing in and of itself. I am concerned that the appearance of spending all that time and effort could be used better to deal with the Iranian crisis or the flooding in Georgia or even the health care battles in Congress. After all, there are other issues that require Presidential attention, and if he's spending time lobbying the Olympic committee in Copenhagen, that's time that he's not spending on foreign policy or national security issues like the Iranian nuclear and missile threats.

Obama Fashion Watch

This is courtesy of Cindy Adams:

MICHELLE Obama's favorite black little cropped cardigan sweater which we heard was J.Crew? Not. And no couple of hundred bucks as was everyone's original estimate. A couple of thou. It's Azzedine Alaia, and he's no discount cheapo. A belt tucked around it? Azzedine Alaia. A sleeveless job for a NATO event? Another black sleeveless ruffled job to a Broadway show? Yet another black sleeveless thing to the NYC ballet? Same. He's not in most mainstream US stores. French-Tunisian, honored by France's ministry of culture, he's high-end European couture. So how's she get this expensive stuff like Etro, which she also favors and is Milanese? From Chicago's Ikram Goldman boutique. They're biiig Obama supporters. Biiig.

Such madness if Jackie Kennedy wore anything but American-made that US labels would be sewn into her Givenchys. And Nancy Reagan, who once dared wear Valentino at a private function, was castigated. Clearly, Americans love Michelle Obama, even if she doesn't always love American designers.

Hey, this is Page Six, and while I don't normally cover fashion stories, this one piqued my interest because we've been consistently told about how fashionable Michelle Obama is and how she's often wearing J. Crew (and which the Obama kids are often spotted wearing). What she chooses to wear is her business, but for the media to ignore the fact that she's wearing all manner of expensive designer wear, little of which is American made makes me wonder just how closely they're bothering to check in on how this Administration is spending its budget.

Thousands of dollars for a sweater? Are you kidding me?

One thing is for certain though, Michelle clearly has more expensive taste in clothes than Barack. Better fitting too.

You Don't Say: Obama Tempers Expectations Over Porkfest Fixing Economy

So, now that President Obama is set to sign the multi-trillion dollar porkfest into law on Tuesday, he's already attempting to manage expectations that the porkfest will not turn around the economy right away.

He's already laying the groundwork for another porkfest package just in case the economy doesn't improve even modestly under the weight of the current porkfest.

That's the Democrats' solution to all problems. Throw massive amounts of money at the problem and pray that something sticks. Oh, and just hours after saying that this bill needed to be passed by Congress to save the economy, President Obama will now not sign it until Tuesday? I guess he realizes he needs to get the press coverage that a weekday brings, not simply signing it into law on a holiday weekend when fewer people are paying attention. It was a hurry up and pass the bill without reading the damned thing so it can sit until such time that the press coverage will be maximized. Since it wasn't going to be signed until Tuesday at the earliest, Congressional Democrats - Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi rammed through this bill with a minimum of debate that would have exposed the extent of this fiscally irresponsible and foolish legislation.

Even the New York Times was forced to admit yesterday that the tax cuts in the bill hold out the only hope for a modest boost in the immediate future; the rest of the porkfest may generate jobs years into the future.

The $787 billion plan — a combination of fast-acting tax cuts and longer-term government spending on public works projects, education, health care, energy and technology — was smaller than Democrats first proposed.

Yet, Obama and the Democrats cut the level of tax cuts to trim the massive bloated porkfest down below $800 billion initial outlay, to amounts that Democrats like Michelle Obama had previously derided as being insufficient to stimulate the economy when President Bush offered them up last year.

Meanwhile, the economic illiterates in Congress are now looking to take over the banking industry and the carmakers are now claiming they need yet another multi-billion dollar bailout because they can't make ends meet and agree with the unions on a modification of contracts that would save jobs. Providing the bailout to the automakers was the height of folly, and Congress will again bail out Chrysler and General Motors in a futile attempt to curry favor with automakers and unions that cannot and will not adapt to current economic realities. Ford has thus far avoided taking any federal monies, and if I were in the market for a car, I would seriously consider them on that basis.