Not Watching the Olympics — #ThirdWorldGames

Oh, I'll tune in for gymnastics, swimming, and track and field, etc.

I'm just not watching the opening ceremonies. They're so politically correct it's like pulling teeth. And the show's not even live.

More, from Ed Driscoll, at Instapundit, "NEWS YOU CAN ABUSE: An Incomplete List of Why Nobody Really Gives a Shit About the Olympics Anymore."

Alessandra Ambrosio in Brazil

Well, she's Brazilian, so why not chill for the games?

(Actually, I'd rather chill in L.A., but what that heck. She's a local down there as well.)

At Egotastic!, "Alessandra Ambrosio Daisy Dukes In Brazil."

Also, "Alessandra Ambrosio Bikini Dip In Brazil."

VAI BRASIL 💚💛💚 So happy for my country & #Rio to be hosting The #Olympics #RIO2016 !! #Brasil 🇧🇷 É hoje galera !! pic.twitter.com/ZeP9brSCq5

— Alessandra Ambrosio (@AngelAlessandra) August 5, 2016

#ThirdWorldGames

Heh, I gotta get #ThirdWorldGames trending.

Olympic beach water includes high levels of bacteria found in sewage, tests show. https://t.co/8Exi63ZQ9Z pic.twitter.com/UJs4YZujKg

— ABC News (@ABC) August 4, 2016

And tell me why again we're having a world-class athletic competition in that literal shit hole? #Rio2016 https://t.co/8qn7ccPbTU

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) August 4, 2016

Australian coach complains of 'soupy' pool water at #Olympics. https://t.co/MsTd4ZXmzc #Rio2016 #ThirdWorldGames

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) August 5, 2016

Aly Raisman

This young lady's looking good.

Practice makes perfect.

See @Aly_Raisman nail her landing at today’s podium training.

→ https://t.co/tLFht4oaW9 https://t.co/uQWW01Zoi8

— NBC Olympics (@NBCOlympics) August 4, 2016

Olympic Athletes Urged to Keep Their Mouths Shut in Rio (VIDEO)

Heh.

Watch, at Euronews:

Keep your mouths shut!

That is the advice from health experts to Olympic athletes preparing to compete in the polluted waters of Rio de Janeiro's Guanabara Bay, where drug-resistant super bacteria have been found in abundance.

The opening ceremony for the games is just a week away.

"The idea is that athletes maintain minimum contact with the water. Unfortunately that is how it is," said doctor Daniel Becker, acknowledging that it is not always easy to remember to keep your mouth and eyes closed...

Shunned by Canada and Sweden, Unmarried Syrian Muslim Woman Opts for Sensuality-Drenched Brazil

Well, I guess those Canadian and Scandinavian welfare states aren't so welcoming after all.

At the Los Angeles Times, "FLEEING SYRIA: Refugees find dizzying freedoms and unexpected dangers in Brazil":

Soon after she arrived, she began to feel conspicuous. On the street, on the bus, in the subway, people looked. They didn’t seem hostile, just puzzled. Even in Latin America’s biggest city, a woman in a headscarf stood out.

“Everyone was staring, and I was feeling alone,” says Dana Balkhi, 27. “I felt like I was choking.”

She had come to Brazil by herself, an anomaly among unmarried Muslim women. In Syria, she had studied English literature at Damascus University and loved the novels of Jane Austen.

After a missile hit her house, she fled to Turkey with her sister, but couldn’t find work there.

Canada said no, then Sweden said no, and in the winter of 2013, she faced a choice. She could return home, as her sister did, even as civil war obliterated the country. Or she could try Brazil, which was handing out fast, low-hassle “humanitarian visas” to Syrians escaping the carnage.

She went on Google and typed: Sao Paulo Arabic community helping refugees, and found some Brazilian-based Muslims who offered to help.

Who would she be coming with? they wanted to know.

Just me, she said.

They picked her up at the airport in December 2013 and gave her a bed. She learned to brace herself for the questions, when local Muslims discovered she was on her own.

“Not everyone respects my choice,” she says. “They’ll say my family doesn’t care about me, or I’m not a good girl. Of course, there are other girls that did that, but not many.”

Who knows?

Maybe she'll hook up with a bisexual fitness club down on the Copacabana? Who needs that hijab when you can be strutting a hip monokini down the beach?

Still more.

Brazil's Crisis Hits Emerging Middle Class

At WSJ, "Brazil’s Economic Crisis Beats the Emerging Middle Class Back Down":

RIO DE JANEIRO—When proper electricity arrived in Santa Marta, a small favela in the shadow of Rio’s Christ the Redeemer statue, longtime resident Cândida Oliveira Silva was happy to get the bill.

For the 52-year-old homemaker, it meant having legal proof of address and “feeling like a citizen” for the first time. But in recent months it has also meant cutting back on all but the most basic expenses. Reduced government subsidies and a drought have raised her bill to about 280 reais ($72) a month, roughly five times what it was a year ago.

“I can’t travel anymore, I can’t afford to eat at even a modest restaurant,” Ms. Silva said. Rising inflation and Brazil’s plummeting currency have quashed any hopes of visiting her daughter in San Francisco.

Ms. Silva’s struggle to maintain her standard of living amid rising prices shows how a spiraling economic crisis has pushed Brazil’s emerging middle class to the brink.

Urban unemployment rose to 7.6% in September, tied with August for the highest rate in more than five years. Economists on average expect gross domestic product will shrink 3.1% this year and 1.9% next year, according to the Central Bank of Brazil’s latest weekly survey. Inflation approaching 10% has forced the poor to stop buying meat and the central bank to ratchet up interest rates. A disorganized effort by the government to stem a widening budget deficit has resulted in painful tax increases, further crimping family budgets.

Experts say it is hard to estimate how many people are at risk of falling down Brazil’s social ladder, as official data aren’t yet available. But with wages rising less than inflation, around 35 million members of Brazil’s lower middle class are vulnerable, says Maurício Prado, a partner at research firm Plano CDE.

“They have low education and low job formalization,” he said. “There is confluence of negative factors.”

The situation is threatening to derail what Brazilian leaders have extolled as a transformation of the country’s economy and society. Long counted among the world’s most unequal nations, Brazil made significant progress in the past decade toward reducing its gaping income disparity, authorities say.

Strong prices for commodity exports stuffed public coffers with money that was used to weave a social safety net, including a cash-transfer program targeting nearly 14 million impoverished families. Minimum-wage increases averaging more than 11% a year since 2003 transferred more wealth toward the bottom of the spectrum.

Between 2003 and 2013, Brazil’s median household income grew 87% in real terms, compared with a 30% rise in per capita gross domestic product, says Marcelo Neri, an economist who wrote a book on the “new middle class” and served as President Dilma Rousseff’s strategic-affairs minister.

“People who were left behind—uneducated people, people in the northeast and rural areas, poor people, black people, domestic workers, informal workers—these people grew at a much faster rate than the country as a whole,” Mr. Neri said...

Remember, Rousseff’s a Marxist. I guess the withering away of the state toward the communist utopia's going to have to wait.

But keep reading.

Brazilian Man Survives Knife Attack to Skull, Drives Three Hours (VIDEO)

Man, that's gnarly.

At CNN, "Man stabbed in head, drives three hours."

Brazil’s Valley of Beauties Appeals for Single Men

And Brazil's got some smokin' ladies down there too.

At the Telegraph UK, "Women of Noiva do Cordeiro, deep in the countryside of south-east Brazil, where men are scarce or work far away in the city, are left to shoulder the town’s burdens alone."

But read the article.

It's a bunch of controlling radical feminists at Noiva do Cordeiro. No man of self-respect would subject himself to the "rules" they've laid down. These women are going to remain lonely for a long time to come.

Brazilian Models at the World Cup

I didn't realize all these Victoria's Secret models are Brazilian.

At London's Daily Mail, "Brazil's Angels! Victoria's Secret stars Gisele Bundchen and Alessandra Ambrosio show why the World Cup home team have the hottest fans."

Also in attendance are Izabel Goulart and Adriana Lima.

Spectacular talent.

Dire Predictions of Chaos Have So Far Not Come True for World Cup's Host Country

Uh, that's not what all the videos were showing this last couple of weeks, but okay.

At LAT, "Plenty of kicks, few complaints so far at World Cup in Brazil":

“I thought this World Cup was going to be a total fiasco. Everyone did.” said Sardo Lima, 53, a retired bank teller working as a taxi driver during the World Cup in Fortaleza. “But thanks to God, everything is going relatively well, apart from some sporadic traffic. But of course, that doesn't change the fact that millions were stolen for the stadiums and many of the programs promised were never delivered.”

Chaos in #Brazil at World Cup Soccer

At U.S. News and World Report, "Brazilian Protesters Draw Harsh Penalties Before World Cup Opener." And Huffington Post UK, "World Cup 2014: Violent Clashes In Sao Paulo Mar Tournament Opening."



More at the Atlantic, "'There Will Be No World Cup': What's at Stake in Brazil."

Jet Ski Hero Saves Family of Five from Drowning

At Mirror UK, "Video: Watch fearless hero speed on a jet ski to save a family of five from drowning."