Thank Heaven For The Olympic Games

OK, so I'm really a Winter Olympics guy - ice hockey, downhill racing, curling, cross country, but not the skateboard thing (I'm just in the wrong demographic).  Snow and ice....great stuff!

But this summer - for the very first time -  I've become a Summer Olympics guy, and the reason is very simple:

I will watch damn near anything which does not include a political windbag saying nasty things about opponents real or imagined.   Idiot gymnastics  judges I can abide;  political gasbags on two legs  complaining about the deficits of an opponent, I cannot.  And won't.

The Olympics and presidential elections occur every four years:  One involves honest competition, the joys of both individual and team achievement, and the proverbial agony of defeat.  The other is any election in our country.

We have become a nation of not-very-productive sourpusses, kvetching about every aspect of public life - not that there isn't a good reason too, but like an athlete, we should be trying to make ourselves and our country better  - that would be enough.

Watching an Olympic event is almost a cleansing experience.  Whether individual or team, here are athletes who have trained and competed endlessly with little expectation that their skills will fund the rest of their lives.  They do their best, and sometimes they win, but more often they do not.

Yes, there are the occasional rotten apples in the barrel of sport, but if you get upset about that, you must be really steamed at  the U.S. Congress, funded as it is by every special interest with money to "invest."

So for the next ten days or so, enjoy the competition from the United Kingdom.  Immediately thereafter we will be washed away by a tsunami of clichés, negative advertising, and little real discussion of the issues that face the country.

Put more succinctly, Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, and Nancy Pelosi ain't on my awards platform. Not now, not ever.

Only a year and a half until the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia.

I can't wait.