For the Love of Badminton!

Every Olympic Gamesis known for something. Previous games have been known for performance enhancing drug use, terrorist attacks, and even losing the keys to Olympic venues.

The London Olympics stand out because of a scandal in the highly competitive, engrossing, sport of badminton.

Three teams from Singapore, Indonesia, and China were dismissed from the Olympic Games for intentionally trying to lose their pool matches, in order to get easier matches in the next round of the tournament.

In the China case, losing would’ve separated their two teams, giving them an opportunity to win two medals instead of one.

I put this on the blog because it is an open question whether a government could condone such behavior.

There is unquestioned prestige in the winning of an Olympic gold medal.

For the athletes, there’s the added perk of fame and notoriety, particularly in some of these Southeast Asian countries. There have certainly been allegations of athletes in Communist countries doing everything to get ahead.

But isn’t the prospect of being caught, a far greater embarrassment than any potential gain?

Florida: The Hispanic Vote

The recently contested Florida primary provided a first gauge of the large Hispanic vote in this country.

 Several key states including California, Texas, Illinois, and Florida have large populations of Hispanic voters. Both parties would be wise to pay attention to this diverse group of voters because winning the Hispanic vote could mean the difference between moving into the White House and delivering a concession speech.

Capturing the Hispanic vote is far from easy. Party leaders shouldn’t paint any group of people with a broad brush, but this is particularly true of the Hispanic voter.

 The Hispanic voter in Florida may be concerned about future U.S. policy towards Cuba, while Hispanics in California and Texas may be more concerned about illegal immigration or plans to deal with the escalating drug violence in Mexico.

This is not meant to be an exhaustive list, just illustrative of the diverse issues that any population in America faces. How the presidential candidates meet this populations diverse needs will be an interesting aspect of the 2012 campaign.