As most people on Planet Earth now know, the Olympics will samba their way to Rio come 2016, despite the personal intervention of El Presidente Barack Obama himself, up close and personal in Copenhagen.

This means many things, among them this from the Washington Times:

The news of Chicago's early ouster was not good for Mr. Obama, political analysts said.

"I think this is instructive about how seriously the international community takes President Obama," said John Feehery, a former aide to Republican Dennis Hastert. "It seems they don't take him very seriously."

Mr. Feehery, a Chicago native, said the president's decision to "desperately swoop to dramatically save the Olympic bid backfired."

"Backfired"? That's already climbing the charts for understatement of the year. 

What happened to Obama on the world stage today may well happen again here in the U.S. in 2010 and 2012. In fact, judging by the ferment on the ground, in communities, and on the airwaves, it looks as though a wave of freedom is gathering strength day by day, hour by hour, moment by moment, from faith to faith.

The Democrats, the Liberals, and the secularists -- and squishy Republicans -- have awakened a sleeping giant, as a strong American woman stood up and told a deer-in-the-headlights Sen. Arlen Specter not too long ago.

And that sleeping giant remembers something about the Declaration, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and about a Real Creator who has endowed each and every one of us with "certain unalienable rights."

We are remembering who we are.

Creatures of nobility and freedom -- with hard-wired aspirations of individuality and creativity and liberty one nation under God, such that no federal bureaucrat and no empire on any Potomac can ever hope to satisfy.

We are remembering how to grab ahold of God and revolt against tyranny and against enemies of freedom foreign and domestic.   

Viva freedom! Viva dignity! Viva the Constitution! Viva the Declaration! Viva the Bill of Rights!

And, yes: Viva Samba! Rio's gain could be ours as well.