It seems that trying to ram through the U.S. Senate an enormous, highly controversial, and very expensive piece of legislation isn’t as easy as one would think. This report explains that health-care reform is sputtering along:
On the third day of a divisive debate, Democrats threatened to keep the Senate in session through the Christmas holiday if necessary to pass a healthcare reform bill that President Barack Obama has made his top domestic priority.
The U.S. Senate debate on a sweeping healthcare overhaul stumbled toward gridlock on Wednesday, with frustrated Democrats considering new procedural moves after Republicans blocked votes on the first amendments.
This, of course, is nothing new for the “greatest deliberative body in the world.” The Republicans aren’t impressed with Democrats’ demand for speed. (“‘They expect to have a right to weigh in,’ Republican Senator Lamar Alexander told reporters. ‘The Senate is a place where we have generally unlimited debate, generally unlimited amendments, so we’re just getting started on this bill.’”) And Sen. Judd Gregg has a guide to parliamentary options to help his colleagues select which procedures they’d like to employ.
There is nothing in the least improper nor surprising about this. Democrats imagined they could craft a bill in secret, disregard the building public opposition, and ignore the minority party. They are finding out it’s not so easy given the Senate’s rules. The Senate is playing its historic and constitutionally appropriate role in slowing down a legislative freight train.
After all, if the bill is so wonderful, more debate and discussion can only work to its sponsors’ advantage, right? Well, there’s the rub. Democrats are freaking out, quite plainly, because with each passing week and month, the chances that this monstrosity will pass diminish.
Jesse Owens’ victories may be what is remembered most from the ’36 games, but the U.S. did its own appeasing of Hitler. USOC chief Avery Brundage replaced the two Jewish members of the 400 meter relay team with Owens and another runner.
I think I aqree with you, David, but jeez indeed. What a picture.
Wow, Noah. Hitler felt that Owens was more Aryan than Jews were. But then, Hitler had no problem about forming the Axis with Japan. And little did Hitler know that Gypsies speak an Indo-European language, making them Aryans.
Didn’t athletes from all countries (all that participated) dip their countries’ flags to salute the Soviet Union during the Moscow Olympics?
Bill Drissel
Grand Prairie, TX
This article said, “The American response was to strip-bomb their tracks with Jesse Owens’ speed, as a prelude to the real war.”
America, as late as 1941, was still so resistant to the idea of fighting Germany head-on that FDR needed to use various stratagems to aid the Allied forces. After the attack on Pearl Harbor caused the US to declare war on Japan, Hitler unexpectedly declared war on the US (Germany had no such treaty obligation to Japan), finally making our full involvement possible.
During the early to mid 30s hitler’s regime garnered tacit support & even approval from many . The upper classes of Britain were said to be quite favourable to Germany’s methodical economies.
After all they still had to deal with their own ‘lazy’ pesky unionized lower classes.
The saying still goes in Anglo countries – At least the trains ran on time .
remember dear Americans whilst you were slumbering quiety away British merchant seamen were being bombed by uboats – their losses carried the wa effort. Whilst Australia Canada NZ sent their best forces 7 scarce air crew to fight USA did NOTHING .
For anyone who wants to read a good recent history of the ’36 Games, I would recommend “Nazi Games: the Olympics of 1936″ by David Clay Large, 2007. The bootlicking behavior of the IOC does not seem to have changed in 70 years.
John I have just ordered the book. David, I know dilemmas exist, but the Chinese are, as I write this, extending repression and literally shooting innocent civilians dead in Tibet–as the Olympic Torch is being moved, with heavy police escort that includes Chinese security forces, through London with I think Paris next–and Tibetan and other protesters being beaten to the ground by English police.
Surely we should all know where to stand today?
Actually, the picture in question is not from the 1936 Olympics: it’s from a 1938 soccer match in Berlin between England and Germany. At the behest of Britain’s ambassador to Germany and the English Football Association, the England players joined in the Nazi salute during the pregame rendition of Deutschland Uber Alles. Not exactly the proudest moment in English sporting history.
Sometimes students ask me, how could the unspeakable crimes of Hitler have been committed? My answer: just read today’s newspaper. If Bush, Brown, Sarkozy, Kofi Annan, Manmohan Singh, Benedict XVI and everyone else would forthrightly condemn the crimes the Chinese government has committed against its people–Tibetans, Turks, Chinese, and others–then there would be some hope. The same goes for the other human rights atrocities that are such a tragic feature of our world.
Furthermore, what would happen if Bush, for example, roundly condemned the undoubted crimes and declined to go to the opening ceremonies? Would he lose esteem? Would the Chinese somehow sanction him? Would they punish the US by cutting off exports? I think it is far more likely that the pressure created might lead to change.
Sometimes one has to stand up. That was a lesson of the appeasement and rationalization of the Nazis. If there was ever a time to bear that lesson in mind, it is now.
David Durant thank you for the correction. In 1938 we knew even more about who the Nazis really were than we did in 1936.
French torchbearers will be encircled Monday by several hundred officers, some in riot police vehicles and on motorcycles, others on skates and on foot.
Three boats were also to patrol the Seine River, and a helicopter was to fly over Paris, police said.
The head of Reporters Without Borders, arrested in Greece last month for protesting during the flame-lighting ceremony there, said the group had altered its initial plans because of the heavy police turnout.
Without giving away details, Robert Menard promised protests would nonetheless be “spectacular.”
This is the advance word from France:
French torchbearers will be encircled Monday by several hundred officers, some in riot police vehicles and on motorcycles, others on skates and on foot.
Three boats were also to patrol the Seine River, and a helicopter was to fly over Paris, police said.
The head of Reporters Without Borders, arrested in Greece last month for protesting during the flame-lighting ceremony there, said the group had altered its initial plans because of the heavy police turnout.
Without giving away details, Robert Menard promised protests would nonetheless be “spectacular.”
Here is the advanced word from Paris:
French torchbearers will be encircled Monday by several hundred officers, some in riot police vehicles and on motorcycles, others on skates and on foot.
Three boats were also to patrol the Seine River, and a helicopter was to fly over Paris, police said.
The head of Reporters Without Borders, arrested in Greece last month for protesting during the flame-lighting ceremony there, said the group had altered its initial plans because of the heavy police turnout.
Without giving away details, Robert Menard promised protests would nonetheless be “spectacular.”
Does that mean you are not going arthur? The Chinese will be crushed!
In 28 years I can see that Tibet might be free of China but maybe we wont like what they are up to & occupy it ourselvesa la Afghanistan
It is interesting that no one is championing the Islamic Urghurs & their greater claims to freedom.
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Well 2008 is different from 1936. Maybe, just maybe, an aware athlete will have the chance to speak out against the Chinese government’s repression on live, national television. That would be powerful indeed.
Wishful thinking – I know.
In what way will it be powerful Matt ?
Apologies for the repeat.
Why wait for the games in hopes of protest by athletes? Far better for our media, our leaders, and ourselves to speak out while the torch is still making its way, with its bodyguard of Chinese security, through the world. I hope now that everyone who has agreed to carry the torch will think again. Two–an Indian and a Thai–to my knowledge have already withdrawn.
We should not boycott. Why? (1) We would ruin the dream of hundreds of athletes who have spent their lives training for this. (2) We would harm the Olympic sponsors, many of which are US-based multinationals that are country is supposed to be promoting. (3) It unnecessarily insults the Chinese and gains us nothing, at a time when we need their help on dealing with Iran and North Korea.
Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan (the 1 party LDP was harldy democratic for some time) all democritized once their economic development had progressed to the point where they had a plurocratic civil society. China will be no different.
I am afraid the fiasco is continuing with the spotlight turned on Chinese human rights abuses. But police are committing their own abuses dealing with the protesters. See these extracts from guardian:
An unnecessary farce
Paul Lewis
April 7, 2008 2:00 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/paul_lewis/2008/04/an_unnecessary_farce.html
The Olympic torch’s farcical journey through crowds of protesters yesterday was laden with symbolism. Wherever it went – swerving past bystanders, pulled from the grasp of a demonstrator and hastily concealed in a red bus – a dubious and slightly menacing team of Chinese security agents followed.
At times these blue-tracksuited officials appeared to be participating in some new kind of Olympic event – a cross between rugby and the 31-mile hurdles. The tactics of these “robots” was laid bare this morning by TV presenter Konnie Huq, who came the closest to losing the torch to a demonstrator. On Radio 4′s Today programme, she let slip that the Chinese torch guard even engaged in scuffles with the Metropolitan police.
But what was has been less widely-reported is how our own cavalcade of police and security agents contributed to the disharmony.
The official view of yesterday’s relay, expressed by government ministers and torchbearers alike, seems to be that the halting passage through London was a “triumph for democracy”, a kind of demonstration to the world of how free speech should be allowed. What nonsense. I was reporting yesterday’s protests for the Guardian and, from the outset, police identified anti-Chinese protesters and subjected them to different rules to red-flag waving spectators.
Before the relay had even properly begun, my colleague witnessed police removing T-shirts and flags from demonstrators. At Ladbroke Grove, spectators carrying Tibetan flags were relegated to a pavement across the road, kept apart from a carnival-style reception.
It was the same story at Bloomsbury Square, which, along with Whitehall, was the most heated part of the relay. Several protesters were dragged away. I saw one woman asked to place her anti-Chinese posters in plastic bags. She told me she had been told by two officers that her materials, which complained about China’s treatment of animals, were “inflammatory”.
Demonstrators who did not obey police requests to stand in designated areas were repeatedly threatened with anti-terrorist legislation. On what grounds?
Police were also restrictive towards the press. I was threatened with arrest several times – for indiscretions such as having one foot on pavement and another, dreadful as it sounds, on the road. Jim Jameson, a freelance photographer, told me he was “thrown to the ground” while photographing an arrest near Whitehall.
There is of course a danger of overreacting. Policing yesterday’s route was a public order nightmare, and clearly there were demonstrators intent on physically disrupting the progress of the Olympic flame. Some acted unlawfully, and it was right they were arrested. Overall violence was kept to a minimum and, on the face of it, separating opposing groups – as you would opposing teams of football supporters – made sense.
But as officers have since made clear, allowing free expression did not appear to be their primary objective. Rather, they were engaged in an ignoble collaboration with the Chinese bodyguards (who, it has to be said, looked to be the ones in charge) to ensure the torch’s safe passage.
There was of course another option – and one that was reportedly considered by police. After it became clear that the relay had descended into farce, they could have called it off. If that had happened, there would not have been the arrests, injuries and disorder that prevailed over London’s streets. The Metropolitan police would have been their own masters, rather than appearing complicit with a desperate bid by the Chinese to keep the flame alive.
This course of action may well have been embarrassing, for the Olympic committee and China alike. Not for the first time in history, critics would have complained that politics had trumped sport. Would that have been such a bad thing?
Here is another excellent piece, from The Scotsman:
http://news.scotsman.com/latestnews/The-Olympic-spirit.3953028.jp
My question is, by mistreating and abusing the protesters, who are after all doing no more than speak the truth, do we not become complicit in the Chinese governmental project, which is to use the Olympics as a propaganda tableau for their oppressive regime? We have been through this with other oppressive regimes. Why do we keep making the same mistakes?
Of course China is not the ONLY oppressive regime in the world , though that is where the vast majority of unfree people now live, and we Americans have much about which to be ashamed as do others. But right now the question events are posing is: “What do you say about China and Tibet? Where do you stand?”
I am appalled by the waffling and rationalization, particularly from our own government. They gain us nothing. They devalue our announced values. And they break faith with the Chinese and Tibetans and others who want and deserve freedom.