{"id":250,"date":"2004-08-22T00:55:00","date_gmt":"2004-08-22T00:55:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bobtherieau.com\/blog\/index.php\/2004\/08\/22\/ac5cbdf6-0d22-4916-a526-90c386c35d2b\/"},"modified":"2018-06-13T01:29:37","modified_gmt":"2018-06-13T01:29:37","slug":"ac5cbdf6-0d22-4916-a526-90c386c35d2b","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bobtherieau.com\/blog\/2004\/08\/ac5cbdf6-0d22-4916-a526-90c386c35d2b\/","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"<div data-src=\"v5\">\n<p><b>So, Care For International Politics?<\/b><\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve been watching the Olympics lately and I&#8217;ve noticed a trend: sure, I want the Americans to win&mdash;as they have in some <a href=\"http:\/\/www.fencing.net\/\" target=\"_blank\">surprising places<\/a>&mdash;but if they don&#8217;t, I don&#8217;t seem to mind if the gold is snatched away by a resident of one of the nations represented by the &#8220;Coalition Of The Willing.&#8221; An Italian won the bicycle road race and I cheered. He was clearly the best man in the event even though the US Postal team seemed to be phoning in their performance (<i>neat mixed-metaphor! &#8211; ed<\/i> Thanks! I thought of it all by myself. &#8211; bob).  If the Aussies beat us in the pool, that&#8217;s okay because they&#8217;re <i>with us<\/i>. When (if) the French win anything, I&#8217;m sure that it will be a &#8220;hiss&#8221;-able event. <\/p>\n<p>Remember how, when we were kids, that the Russians not only inspired the fear of nuclear annihilation but domination of sports like gymnastics (<i>is that a sport? &#8211; ed<\/i> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.catchfence.com\/press\/081004p.html\" target=\"_blank\">Ask NASCAR drivers<\/a>. They&#8217;ll tell you! &#8211; bob). It was an arms race with real arms, and legs, and heart, and everything else that defines a true athlete. How could we possibly win against the Eastern Bloc countries, what with the East German female (and I use the term loosely) swimmers, the Romanian gymnasts, the Yugoslavian basketball team beating our brains out year after deflating year?<\/p>\n<p>We cajoled the IOC into allowing professionals in, that&#8217;s how. Now we have a group of spoiled millionaire NBA thugs losing to Lithuania while at the same time our other teams can lure top talent by allowing them the endorsement deals that would&#8217;ve been prohibited under the old rules. <\/p>\n<p>But Lithuania is &#8220;with us,&#8221; aren&#8217;t they?<\/p>\n<p>Your pal,<\/p>\n<p>bob<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So, Care For International Politics? I&#8217;ve been watching the Olympics lately and I&#8217;ve noticed a trend: sure, I want the Americans to win&mdash;as they have in some surprising places&mdash;but if they don&#8217;t, I don&#8217;t seem to mind if the gold is snatched away by a resident of one of the nations represented by the &#8220;Coalition &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/bobtherieau.com\/blog\/2004\/08\/ac5cbdf6-0d22-4916-a526-90c386c35d2b\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-250","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bobtherieau.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bobtherieau.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bobtherieau.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bobtherieau.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bobtherieau.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=250"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bobtherieau.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1651,"href":"https:\/\/bobtherieau.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250\/revisions\/1651"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bobtherieau.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=250"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bobtherieau.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=250"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bobtherieau.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=250"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}