Posts Tagged ‘olympics’

I’ve already taped next week’s Your Prayer Intentions show which deals with the beginning of the Bread of Life Discourses. It’s one of the most ignored parts of scripture because our protestant friends tend to pass it over because it’s very hard to spin the Eucharistic away as a symbol rather than the actual body and blood of Christ when reading it and of course our non Christian friends ignore the lot.

It’s so blatant that Jonathan Roumie, the devout Catholic who plays Jesus in the show did a reading of the passage in his Jesus voice at the latest Eucharistic Conference because as he noted it’s unlikely that they will get to film that scene.

To give you a sneak preview of what I said note this part just of the scripture involved which will be part of this sunday’s Gospel at every Catholic church in the world:

When the crowd saw that neither Jesus nor his disciples were there, they themselves got into boats and came to Capernaum looking for Jesus. And when they found him across the sea they said to him, “Rabbi, when did you get here?” Jesus answered them and said,

“Amen, amen, I say to you, you are looking for me not because you saw signs but because you ate the loaves and were filled. Do not work for food that perishes but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For on him the Father, God, has set his seal.”

So they said to him, “What can we do to accomplish the works of God?” Jesus answered and said to them,

“This is the work of God, that you believe in the one he sent.”

So they said to him, “What sign can you do, that we may see and believe in you? What can you do?

The irony here is that he literally had just fed five thousands of them with 5 loaves and two fishes. They saw it happen. In fact as I noted in last week’s show if this story had been false it would have been the easiest to prove because the logistics of 1st century Judea would have meant that the supplies and wagons to carry food for 5000+ (that number didn’t count women and children) would have been very visible, yet they still asked for a sign.

I submit and suggest they asked for another sign because they didn’t want to acknowledge the sign they had just seen because once they did, then a choice would have to be made.

Basically it’s the same choice Israel had when God actually appeared to them on the mountain (Exodus chapter 19 & 20). People often forget this in scripture, God actually appearing to the people of Israel and the people of Israel asking through Moses for God not to do that again. I blame Cecil B DeMille because that bit was left out of his epic The 10 Commandments and thus people who never actually read Exodus chapters 19 & 20 don’t realize it. I suspect that it’s the primary reason why the people of Israel still exist as a people.

And that brings us to the opening of the Paris Olympics and God’s public response.

I’m not in the least surprised at the acts of the left in their mockery of the Last Supper, nor am I surprised by their disingenuous response claiming in English that this was not what they were doing when in French it clearly stated that this was the case:

What surprised me was the very public response by God. The blackout that followed can easily be explained away as a technical issue and under normal circumstances that would be the reasonable response to the blackout the next day.

What can’t be so easily explained away is the fact that there was one rather prominent structure in the city that was not affected by the blackout:

The real irony is that Church was built in reparation for sins against the church by France.

I’ve argued for many years that God has not stopped giving signs, but we have trained ourselves not to see them because to see them generates a choice that comes down to this.

If God in general and the Catholic Church in particular is real, what will I change about my life in response?

I’ve argued that said signs are usually personal and only rarely public and certainly not commonly visible to the entire world. Apparently there are exceptions.

Well God has given you a classic sign, a public sign, nobody hurt but a visible sign of his existence. The media will of course run away from it, my parish priest has already noted that while many protestants acknowledge the blackout as a sign they have ignored the church retaining the light. Now it’s up to you.

You have a choice, you can explain it away or you can acknowledge it and act accordingly.

Your move.

Blogger after a race in 2019

By John Ruberry

Did you hear about the massive organized protest by American conservatives of the Toyko Olympics? 

No?

That’s because there wasn’t one. 

The 2020 Summer Olympics, delayed a year because of the COVID-19 pandemic, got off to a bad start, unless you are woke.

In a women’s soccer match between Team USA and Sweden, athletes from both sides took a knee rather than stand for the Star Spangled Banner. Sweden won the match, 3-0. The US women’s soccer team was the overwhelming favorite to win a gold medal in Tokyo, it ended up with the bronze.

Earlier this year the International Olympic Committee rescinded its Rule 50, which stated “No kind of demonstration or political, religious or racial propaganda is permitted in any Olympic sites, venues or other areas.”

The Olympics are a dying movement. More on that in a bit. But the woke protests just add accelerant to the fire. 

In competitive sports success of course is achieved by winning a game, crossing the finish line first, or lifting the heaviest object, or throwing it the farthest. 

The Olympics are a big business, despite being comprised of not-for-profits such as the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee, or more commonly in other nations by government ministries of sport.

The big money for the Olympics comes from TV rights and revenue for the broadcasters. If you envision television ratings as a shot put, then that heavy ball appears to have been thrown by a weak child.

From Fox News

NBC is giving advertisers who bought airtime during the Tokyo Olympics extra commercials due to underwhelming ratings for this year’s 2020 Olympic Games, fueled by a pandemic-weary population and backlash against woke athletes protesting the U.S. flag and national anthem. 

NBC Sports Chairman Pete Bevacqua insisted to the Associated Press that the network would still make money on the 2020 Olympics – but left out details about how much. 

NBC’s primetime coverage of the Tokyo Olympics on July 26 averaged 14.7 million viewers — for a 49% drop compared to the equivalent night from the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Games and 53% less than the 2012 London Olympics. The opening ceremonies saw their lowest viewership since 1988.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, there are more television offerings than ever. And some people will watch Olympics segments on NBC’s YouTube channel and those viewership numbers are not included in the network’s ratings total. 

But the viewership numbers still suck. 

Wokism likely contributed to the ratings rout. That may change soon as conservatives are mobilizing against Critical Race Theory and the Democrats’ hard shove to the far-left, but conservatives don’t have a boycott apparatus in place, such as the liberals do with medium-sized groups such as Media Matters and tiny Twitter armies such as Sleeping Giants. That’s because those on the American right calmly reach for the remote and watch something else when they are offended. Or they simply stop buying products, such as what I did after Gillette ran its toxic masculinity television commercial two years ago. I loved its Good News razors. But I don’t want to put money into the hands of a company that insults me. And now I use Bic razors–which I like better and I probably never would have considered purchasing until that nasty commercial. Gillette owes Bic a finder’s fee for making me a customer. [Corrrection: a commenter mentioned that it should have been written the other way around.]

People watch sports, or buy tickets to live events, for many reasons, but the drama of a competitive event is likely the primary one. Not for the politics, that’s for sure.

And conservatives don’t need a Media Matters-type group to tell us what not to watch. Again that may change soon but the American right doesn’t possess the kneejerk compulsion to regularly pressure companies to avoid a network, a website, or a television program.

NBC is in trouble because it already purchased the US rights to every Olympics through 2032. Because leftism is a quasi-religion don’t look for the IOC to reinstate its protest ban for its athletes any time soon.

And yes, the Olympic movement is dying. Only two cities bid for the 2024 summer games, Paris and Los Angeles. The French capital was the winner and LA was immediately awarded the 2028 games. There was no other bidder. And for the 2032 Summer Olympics, the “winner” was Brisbane, Australia, the only bidder. 

For the 2022 and 2026 winter games there were only two bidders each.

Of course that’s because organizing the quadrennial Olympics are big money losers for host cities. Los Angeles managed to turn a profit with its last summer games–but that was in 1984. The 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, and the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro were particularly ghastly financial debacles. Allegations of corruption in the bidding process over the years makes one wonder how stupid supposedly smart people can be.

Athens is a city of many notable ruins–and now Greece’s largest city can add numerous sites from the ’04 games for tourists to marvel at.

As the expression goes, when you get woke you go broke. 

But the Olympics were already arguably broke. 

Next year Beijing hosts the Winter Olympics. I can think of a bunch of reasons not to watch. China is a communist dictatorship, it has a long history of doping among its athletes, there are over two-hundred concentration camps that incarcerate Uighurs in China, and what else? Oh yeah, there’s a good chance that the COVID-19 virus escaped from the Wuhan laboratory, which destroyed the international economy and killed millions.

Woke protests will seal the deal for me and many more in a few months when the Olympic flame is lit in Beijing.

Corporate CEOs need to listen to the millions of quiet conservative protesters like myself and not the dozen or so left-wing screamers who show up at their board meetings. There are more of us than them.

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

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It hasn’t made me a lot of friends.

Olympic overload

Posted: August 3, 2021 by chrisharper in Uncomfortable Truths
Tags: ,

By Christopher Harper

For years, like many other Americans, I enjoyed the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat at the Olympics.

This year, like many other Americans, I have made it a point NOT to watch any of the Olympics.

Although politics has played a role in many Olympics, particularly the Cold War competition between the United States and the Soviet Union, the antics of this year’s athletes have been over the top.

At its opening match with Sweden, the U.S. women’s soccer team knelt in protest. Not only was I happy the team lost to Sweden but ultimately got knocked off its perch by losing to Canada. I hope Subway passes on Megan Rapinoe in its next round of commercials.

American shot-putter Raven Saunders stepped off the podium during the medal ceremony, lifted her arms above her head, and formed an “X’ with her wrists.

“It’s the intersection of where all people who are oppressed meet,” she said when asked what her protest meant. It’s a rather mediocre protest when you have to explain the meaning!

Moments after Saunders’s protest, American fencer Race Imboden had a circled “X” written on his hand as he went to the podium at a different venue after the U.S. men’s foil team earned a bronze medal. That protest came after his teammates wore pink masks to embarrass a colleague accused of sexual harassment. The teammate hasn’t been formally charged and was cleared by authorities to compete in the Olympics.

I guess the notion of innocent until proven guilty doesn’t have any meaning when you’re planning protests!

I marvel at the abilities of athletes and how they do something few can. I couldn’t care less about what they think about the state of the world unless they have some overarching knowledge of international and national events.

These political statements turn me off, and it’s readily apparent that others think the same as I do. People aren’t tuning out because of time differences and multiple delivery platforms. People are turning out because Olympians should be proud to represent the United States—not preach to others about political matters they know little about.

I hope that Olympic ruling body stands by its intention to punish those who protest. But that’s likely to generate yet another protest. It’s best to convince NBC, which is likely to lose a lot of money from the poor viewership, that few people really care about the Olympics, particularly because of the growing number of protests.

to answer the swiffer challenge?