I have a couple of new posts over at Care2, my other blog home, and I’ve been negligent in linking to them.  The first looks at Jacques Rogge and the International Olympic Committee, and wonders whether they’ll ever actually let the Olympics celebrate the human spirit in a way that doesn’t involve the detention, death, or denegration of humans:

The reality is that Rogge and his colleagues have absolutely no incentive to change things.  They are making ridiculous amounts of money.  They get treated like kings and queens everywhere they go.  And everytime an athlete does something spectacular, most people forget about the bad stuff.  As Jenkins notes, the Olympics are virtually indestructible.  That’s good news in terms of the amazing spectacle they offer viewers.  But let’s stop pretending that they are some sort of celebration of the human spirit. . . . When it comes to the utter mendacity competition, you’ve got to give the gold medal to Rogge and his colleagues on the IOC.

The second looks at a bill introduced yesterday by Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-NC) proposing to replace Ulysses S. Grant on the fifty-dollar bill with Ronald Reagan. . .because he did better in a poll of Presidential historians.

Grant isn’t on the money because of his service as President.  By all accounts he was a lousy President — although he’s no longer regarded as one of the worst.  But he was kinda sorta maybe really responsible for leading the Union forces to victory in the Civil War.  So using a poll of historians on who was the best President as the basis for excluding Grant pretty much misses the reason why he was honored in the first place.

You can read them both here, along with a more thorough takedown of Marc Thiessen, Dick Cheney’s favorite torture apologist.

Related posts

• Obama, Messaging, and Dean Wormer
• Jack Cade, White Courtesy Phone Please
• What’s Missing at DNC: Torture, Guantanamo. . .and Cheney
• Was McCain Tortured? Ask Dick Cheney
• Torture: Something Old, Something New