Hasta La Gadget!

Budapest will cancel its bid to host the 2024 Summer Olympics, the Associated Press reported Wednesday, making the Hungarian capital the seventh city to pull out of the final stages of the Olympic bidding process in just the last four years.

A pending city council vote that will assuredly pass will make Budapest the fourth city to nix a final bid for the 2024 Games alone, after Boston and Hamburg, Germany, backed out in 2015 and Rome canceled its bid in September. Budapest’s decision will leave just two cities ― Los Angeles and Paris ― competing to host the games.

Both LA and Paris are strong candidates that have hosted twice before, and the IOC is reportedly considering awarding the 2028 Olympics to whichever city doesn’t host the 2024 games. 

But Budapest’s failure followed a path that has become increasingly familiar to the IOC and prospective Olympic organizers, as local residents have rallied against Olympic bids. In Budapest, an opposition group earlier this month gathered more than 260,000 signatures against the bid, forcing a referendum on the games that polling showed would likely defeat the city’s effort to host the games.

It is also the latest in a string of embarrassments for the IOC. Only two cities made it to the final round of voting for the 2022 Winter Olympics in 2015, too, after voters in Stockholm; Oslo, Norway; and Krakow, Poland, all rejected proposed bids. 

It’s no secret why cities have been running away from the games: The Olympics’ exorbitant costs, destructive effects on poor communities and empty legacies have all been on display at the two most recent games, in Sochi, Russia, in 2014 and Rio de Janeiro last summer. 

The cost of the Sochi games ― estimated as the most expensive in Olympic history ― and the debacle of the 2022 bidding process led the IOC to adopt a slate of reforms, known as Agenda 2020, aimed at making the Olympics more cost-conscious and sustainable.

But Olympic skeptics have dismissed many of those reforms as public relations ploys, and IOC officials themselves have said they don’t expect major changes to the bidding process. So it’s no surprise that cities ― especially those in democratic countries ― keep looking at the idea of hosting the Olympics and saying no.

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WASHINGTON ― Democrats have “done a good job of addressing the needs of Americans and will continue to do so,” despite election defeats, said Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf (D), whose state narrowly voted for President Donald Trump after going Democratic in the previous six presidential elections.

“What we saw in November, to a certain extent — and remember, Hillary Clinton won by 3 million votes — what we saw were a lot of people who were concerned about whether either party is addressing their needs, rightly or wrongly,” Wolf told The Huffington Post on Wednesday. 

Trump campaigned as an anti-establishment candidate and his voters “wanted to shake things up,” Wolf said. A winning strategy for Democrats, he said, is to accomplish policy priorities to restore voters’ faith in government.

Wolf cited his latest budget proposal, which he said increases funding for public education, jobs and the fight against the opioid crisis.

“I’m actually increasing amount of money that I think Pennsylvania ought to invest in those areas. At the same time, I’m not asking for any tax increases,” he said. “I’m going to make government work better to do the things that people in Pennsylvania want it to do.”

Wolf said it’s important for state and local officials to fight policies that hurt their constituents through the courts. But ultimately, he said, voters will decide.

Last month, attorneys general from more than a dozen states, including Pennsylvania’s Josh Shapiro (D), vowed to challenge the constitutionality of Trump’s ban on immigration from seven majority-Muslim nations. A lawsuit filed by Democratic attorneys general in Washington state and Minnesota successfully halted enforcement of the ban.

“The attorney general has the ability to pursue cases that — in our case, Josh Shapiro — are unconstitutional, but the best way is to make sure that we have representatives in various offices at the federal and the state level that don’t pass unconstitutional measures,” Wolf said.

Since Trump’s election, Democrats around the country have become more actively engaged in grassroots activism.

In Pennsylvania, progressive activists have targeted Sen. Pat Toomey (R), with a new group called “Tuesdays with Toomey,” which goes to the senator’s local office each week to voice concerns.

Toomey narrowly won re-election in November, in part by distancing himself from Trump. He waited until Election Day to reveal that he voted for Trump.

Toomey has avoided town hall meetings this week, apparently fearing protesters. Activists mocked his absence with an empty suit at an event on Tuesday. 

The national Democratic Party is preparing to choose a party chair this weekend. The Democratic National Committee race, featuring former Labor Secretary Tom Perez and Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) as front-runners, has exposed rifts within the party on how best to oppose Trump and the GOP.

Both Wolf and Pennsylvania state Democratic chair Marcel Groen have endorsed Perez.

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In an impassioned (but not quite scorched–earth) op-ed for The New York Times, Metropolitan Museum of Art director Thomas P. Campbell issued a swift and effective defense of public art in the United States. 

“Arts and cultural programming challenges, provokes and entertains; it enhances our lives,” he wrote. “Eliminating the NEA would in essence eliminate investment by the American government in the curiosity and intelligence of its citizens.”

His defense ― a paean to the National Endowment of the Arts, in particular ― comes after rumors-turned-reports alleged that President Donald Trump’s administration plans to slash arts funding in an attempt to cut down on domestic spending. “Eliminating arts funding programs will save Donald Trump just 0.0625% of budget,” outlets have claimed. Nonetheless, it appears as though his office is ready to eliminate nine programs, including the NEA.

Campbell anticipates that regions around the country, not just those within walking distance of the Met, will feel the loss of such an institution. NEA grants are awarded to schools, jazz festivals, dance troupes, literary organizations, museum exhibitions, “arts programs for war veterans,” and so much more across every U.S. congressional district, Campbell claims. In fact, you can get an idea of the NEA’s scope of influence here, courtesy of a website created by artist Tega Brain. Grants are small ― they average $26,000, Campbell says, and require groups to secure matching funds ― but they can be powerful.

As the planet becomes at once smaller and more complex, the public needs a vital arts scene, one that will inspire us to understand who we are and how we got here.

“Thousands are distributed in all 50 states, reaching every congressional district, urban and rural, rich and poor,” Campbell added, countering the Heritage Foundation’s characterization of the NEA as “welfare for cultural elitists.” “These grants sustain the arts in areas where people don’t have access to major institutions like the Met.”

Contained within Campbell’s poetic defense is also an admission of concern: “I fear that this current call to abolish the NEA is the beginning of a new assault on artistic activity,” he proclaimed, harkening back to the last time publicly-funded art was under threat. In the 1990s, a congressional “decency test” turned lawmakers into wayward art critics capable of vetoing grants to expecting artists who didn’t meet Congress’ moral standards. Think artists like the NEA Four. Or, in the late 1980s, Robert Mapplethorpe, Dread Scott and Andres Serrano.

Campbell continued:

Eliminating the NEA would in essence eliminate investment by the American government in the curiosity and intelligence of its citizens. As the planet becomes at once smaller and more complex, the public needs a vital arts scene, one that will inspire us to understand who we are and how we got here — and one that will help us to see other countries, like China, not as enemies in a mercenary trade war but as partners in a complicated world.

Campbell is hardly the only person to bridle at the prospect of decreased national arts funding. Authors, actors and artists, in particular, have been vocal about the need to protect the NEA and similar institutions. PEN America launched a petition to support the NEA; a White House petition with similar aims erupted.

As writer Celeste Pewter noted in a comprehensive Twitter thread, any proposed cuts to the NEA or similar programs would depend on Congressional budgets and appropriation. Similarly, in a thorough examination for The Huffington Post, reporter Claire Fallon outlined six things NEA supporters can do to protect national arts funding before an official decision to defund is made.

In the meantime, it will be important for figures like Campbell to continue to step forward and effectively communicate the impact and reach of the NEA. To tell the stories that accurately reflect how arts funding touches not only the coasts, but heartland organizations. To eloquently explain the ways in which art can transform opinions and illuminate the other. 

In the face of a president who seems willing to cut budgetary corners he might not fully understand, it’s worth remembering the words of a former president, Barack Obama, who said, “Equal to the impact [artists] have on each of us every day as individuals is the impact [they] have on us as a society. And we are told we’re divided as a people, and then suddenly the arts have this power to bring us together and speak to our common condition.”

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It’s no stretch to say that a field sobriety test is not the best place to show off your gymnastic skills.

A 23-year-old New Mexico woman was arrested Friday night on DWI charges after she kept doing cartwheels even after Albuquerque cops told her to stop.

And it was all caught on camera.

Early Friday evening, officers got reports of a black Volkswagon sedan driving recklessly.

They discovered Bryelle Marshall passed out behind the wheel in a vehicle matching that description in the same area at around 6:45 p.m.

The sedan was parked partially in a roadway and in the driveway to a trailer park, according to a department release.

Marshall woke up when officers started speaking to her and asked her to get out of her vehicle.

Officers said she seemed extremely intoxicated, kept stumbling and smelled of alcohol. She also had a difficult time listening to officers commands.

How so? Well, when a DWI officer gave her instructions on how to complete the Standardized Field Sobriety Tests (SFSTs), Marshall responded by doing cartwheels in front of officers.

As with all things, it’s better with GIFs: 

The video above shows Marshall performing cartwheels at least two times, falling to the ground at least once, and giggling throughout the whole encounter.

Her actions clearly frustrate the officer.

“This is serious. This isn’t a joke. This isn’t haha,” he says on the video. “I don’t know why you’re doing somersaults or cartwheels or whatever they are?”

“Yeah, me neither,” Marshall says while on the ground.

After Marshall struck an officer during a cartwheel, the officers’ patience ran out and she was arrested, according to the release.

The officers asked her to open her mouth and show she was not chewing gum, food or candy ― items that might affect the accuracy of the breath test.

She refused to comply with this request.

Marshall was charged with battery, aggravated DWI and for an expired license plate.

She was released from the Metropolitian Detention Center the next day.

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In news that reminds us it’s definitely worth dusting off old photos once in a while, one amateur astronomer thinks he’s spotted geysers erupting from the south pole of Saturn’s moon Enceladus….in images taken by the Voyager 1 probe in 1980.

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