Change in Rio Has Mayor's Temper Up

[Guest Paragon]

He wanted the job, so he should calm down! But then, with so many protesting his build-up of sports facilities versus hospitals and schools, there must be some aggravation. Sports facilities will bring in the tourists for the World Cup and Olympics. They will spend money, which, conceivably, would go for better hospitals and schools.

Read more:http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/01/world/americas/shepherd-of-the-citys-rebirth-rios-mayor-feels-the-strains-too.html?hp

[RA1]

I completely agree. This guy wouldn't last 5 minutes as a US pol and not even 3 as a UK pol.

He seems to have an embarrassment of riches available. All he has to do is put them into the proper light and enjoy.

Best regards,

RA1

[ihpguy]

Those of you not here have no clue as to what is actually going on.

#1: How in the hell can a mayor solve the problem of a lack of doctors in this country, let alone this city, to keep a hospital woth even one doctor on staff 24/7?

#2: Are the problems of previous administrations his problems to solve in a matter of 4 or 6 or 8 years. Is he to blame for the regional water company failing to connect the sewer systems of the whole region to the newly built sanitation facilities so raw sewage doesn't run directly into the ocean and the bay? This is a matter for the past three governors and the current and past two presidents.

#3: Here is a country, with a much-praised, even celebrated past president for not even being a graduate of a high school. Only a strong union leader. Brasil is back 50 plus years from the US in many respects where it is considered a huge thing to graduate high school and PASS the national testing of knowledge learned. Post, we are talking mainly technical schools and not four-year colleges and universities. Where do the teachers come to educate an enormously expanding base of children needing education?

These are problems endemic in the whole country, not just Rio de Janeiro. What exactly can Paes as the mayor solve?

What he is attempting to accomplish is build an entire new modern business district on top of something much older and much larger than what Boston wasted billions on with their "Big Dig."

[ihpguy]

Another problem for Mayor Paes to deal with. Hardly of his own making.

Arrived back in Rio de Janeiro yesterday from a short trip to the US of A. Large hills of garbage all over downtown. The garbagemen struck for higher pay. Three plus day strike just when they were most needed. Great timing. A wonderful way to show a city full of tourists the great way Cariocas handle things during an international event.

9% raise for them. Combined with other raises for the bankers, the teachers, the police and the firemen, inflation is definitely rearing its head in a noticeable way.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-26429380

[Guest Paragon]

"Those of you not here have no clue as to what is actually going on."

That's such a rude and insulting statement, I am not sure what merit there would be in responding to it. We are all at some form of distance from virtually everything we comment on unless it involves ourselves as the immediate focus. Yet we can comment on events in many places without being insulted, and often our comments are right on. The author of the above insult is not Brasilian to my knowledge. That, in itself, would make him distant from what is actually going on. Unless he works right in the mayor's office, or lives in his home, he is again distant from what is "actually" going on. Our perspective does change with knowledge, but not all knowledge is obtained from direct participation. SO why not be gracious and allow those of us not there our opinions, such as they are, and perhaps based upon a lot more than you yourself are aware of.

[ihpguy]

Once more... With Gusto!!!

And you really do not understand what is going on.

The problem with overbuilding of football stadiums is a national problem with white elephants in Cuiaba, Manaus and Forteleza for a start. FIFA only asked for 8 locations, max. Lula and his cronies, are the group who pushed for the even dozen host cities. Not Paes and Cabral.

And when the Olympic Stadium roof arches were built with smaller-guage steel arches, neither Cabral nor Paes had yet been elected.

Did you know that since Rio was awarded the games, that a majority of the other states have hijacked much of the oil revenues from the pre-sal that the e-governor Cabral and Prefeito/Mayor Paes where planning on using to finance the major rebuilding of the Port District? Let alone normal government operations? Although not born here, I am a resident of the city for many years. And you?

Selectively reading one report in the NY Times and coming up with some half-baked conclusions makes you the expert that Paes should be consulting? Maybe you need to read up on the subject a bit more to increase your "knowledge" perhaps?

Oops, my bad. Attempting to elucidate a "confederacy of dunces."

[ihpguy]

Some of the craziness of the characters and the situations shifted to the other side of the equator.

This review is from: A Confederacy of Dunces (Hardcover)

This book is quite simply a comic masterpiece, a novel brimming with original characters, absurd situations, and at its heart a blustery, vulnerable mama's boy named Ignatius J. Reilly. He is one of the most startlingly original characters in modern fiction, and his efforts at hitting the job market after his mother smashes their car will leave you in stitches.
A word on the history of the novel is worth mentioning here. The author, John Kennedy Toole, committed suicide in 1969, and his mother found the hand-written manuscript in her son's papers. She brought them to a publisher, who dreaded having to read even a portion of the work and to notify Toole's mother that it stunk. Instead, he was blown away by Toole's draft, and the rest is history. The novel earned him a posthumous Pulitzer Prize, and it is universally hailed by critics.
Trying to summarize the plot is impossible - the book cannot really be categorized. Ignatius is an over-educated oaf who stays home filling his writing tablets full of his offbeat musings on ancient history, which he plans to organize and publish some day but which presently reside all over his bedroom floor. Rome wasn't built in a day he reminds himself. He cites in footnotes, as authority for some of his offbeat opinions, papers he had previously written and hand-delivered to the local university library for inclusion into their archives. He watches dreadful tv shows and movies, howling at the screen with a mixture of delight and loathing at the teenybopper drivel, and in the privacy of his room his self-gratification is performed while imagining visions of the old family dog. And wait til you see him out in public, getting a series of odd jobs, including a filing clerk at Levy Pants (with very innovative filing techniques to avoid crowded file space) as well as a costumed hot dog vendor wandering around the French Quarter in a pirate costume. All the while he begins work on his latest opus, The Journal of the Working Boy.
There is a latent sadness to the plot, for while you are laughing out loud at Ignatius, his bowling-addicted mother, and the motley crew of skillfully drawn supporting characters, you sense that he will never really belong anywhere, and that he realizes his outcast status with his innate intelligence. Perhaps the author felt the same way in 1969, leading to his own suicide.
However, at least Toole did leave us A Confederacy of Dunces, a novel which reveals more with each rereading. Keep it on your shelf, and every now and then pick up the book to any page and marvel at the absurdity of Ignatius's grandiose ramblings, read exerpts of his bizarre historical writings, and revisit his comic efforts to organize a worker's revolt at Levy Pants. The list goes on and on. There is no work of litereature like it I know, and my only regret in reading Toole is the sorrow felt in knowing the tremendous body of work that was lost when he ended his life.

[lookin]

Loved that book! And, as the reviewer says, a wonderful backstory. Thanks for posting.

[ihpguy]

Russell Crowe left Rio de Janeiro yesterday after promoting "Noah"

His farewell tweet was that the traffic here was terrible as it took him 2hours 20 minutes to transit Ipanema (most likely Hotel Fasano) to Galeao.

Like sitting through Gladiator again with all of the blood, guts and violence, only this time when passing the favelas in Mare and Manguinhos.