as a follow up ... I find the outright rejoicing of this outcome to be on par with the worse sentiment I see coming from the left
There is no contradiction whatsoever. The "first round" is meaningless, yet you place some sort of absurd "value" on it. Madrid was given "lip-service" in the first round because of Samaranch. At the end of the day, that's totally meaningless. You are grasping at "straws" my friend. Straws.
Yep. Madrid was given lip-service. Tokyo was given "lip-service" too for reasons unclear to anyone. In fact the only city that did not get even the courtesy of "lip-service" was Chicago. And that I believe was a major slap in Obama's face. You are grasping at "straws" my friend. I guess we'll have to agree to disagree Frankly I only hope that Obama will learn his lesson that all his international apologies and concessions have earned him nothing and never will, that the monetary value of his "charm" factor is zero.
In the interest of keeping it real ... the IOC is filled with Polanksi type figures ... in other words ... we should be proud to have been voted down
Once again you show that you have no idea what you are talking about . . . For starters, I suggest that you might wish to check out how many IOC voting members there are, and how many come from Europe. You might just learn something.