All I can say is...

 IOC Vote: First round knockout stuns fans of Chicago 2016 bid (today's Chicago Tribune).

...HALLELUJAH!!!

I, like many Chicago residents -- perhaps more than 50 percent of us -- was not in favor of the various bustling/busybodying plans to bring the Olympics to Chicago. So, needless to say, it was gratifying in the extreme to hear so early in the much-discussed (around these parts lately) Copenhagen "voting process" that Chicago was eliminated from the competition.

I was not, needless to say, among those who thought that bringing the Olympics to this city would improve the quality of life for residents of all neighborhoods and in all income-"brackets." How? According to our mayor Richard Daley and his gang of elite business-class thugs, this was going to have occurred because of the large amounts of 'infrastructural investment' that the Olympics would be sure to bring about.

In other words: Never mind that Chicago's public transportation system is woefully overcrowded and inefficient, the Olympics will bring large-scale, lasting improvements! Yeah right. Never mind that Daley, who runs this city like a dictator, has really begun to piss almost everyone off (meaning, not just me and my bleeding-heart and impoverished friends from white, middle class families) with his recent parking-meter-privatization shenanigans. Never mind that entire South Side neighborhoods just a couple of miles west of my apartment would likely have been more or less destroyed: struggling, poor families shoved aside or uprooted in the interest of -- I don't know -- the javelin competition.