“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.
Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”
Frank Rich: Wallflowers at the Revolution
A month ago most Americans could not have picked Hosni Mubarak out of a police lineup. American foreign policy, even in Afghanistan, was all but invisible throughout the 2010 election season. Foreign aid is the only federal budget line that a clear-cut majority of Americans says should be cut. And so now – as the world’s most unstable neighborhood explodes before our eyes – does anyone seriously believe that most Americans are up to speed? Our government may be scrambling, but that’s nothing compared to its constituents. After a near-decade of fighting wars in the Arab world, we can still barely distinguish Sunni from Shia.
The live feed from Egypt is riveting. We can’t get enough of revolution video – even if, some nights, Middle West blizzards take precedence over Middle East battles on the networks’ evening news. But more often than not we have little or no context for what we’re watching. That’s the legacy of years of self-censored, superficial, provincial and at times Islamophobic coverage of the Arab world in a large swath of American news media. Even now we’re more likely to hear speculation about how many cents per gallon the day’s events might cost at the pump than to get an intimate look at the demonstrators’ lives.
Paul Krugman: Droughts, Floods and Food
We’re in the midst of a global food crisis – the second in three years. World food prices hit a record in January, driven by huge increases in the prices of wheat, corn, sugar and oils. These soaring prices have had only a modest effect on U.S. inflation, which is still low by historical standards, but they’re having a brutal impact on the world’s poor, who spend much if not most of their income on basic foodstuffs.
The consequences of this food crisis go far beyond economics. After all, the big question about uprisings against corrupt and oppressive regimes in the Middle East isn’t so much why they’re happening as why they’re happening now. And there’s little question that sky-high food prices have been an important trigger for popular rage.
Laurence Lewis: Egypt Is the Future
While many have been surprised by the seemingly sudden uprising in Egypt, the real question isn’t about how it happened but why it didn’t happen sooner. Despite brave and noble opposition efforts by various individuals and groups over the past decades, it seems nevertheless to have been taken for granted by much of the world that the Egyptian people would live under oppression indefinitely. It seems to have been taken for granted that the revolutionary movements that have shaken half the globe in the past half century somehow couldn’t touch one of the world’s oldest nations, as if that very ancient history stultified the very modern Egyptian people. Of course, most of the efforts within Egypt have been ignored by much of the world for decades, and if noticed at all, were mostly written off as but spasms of extremism. So the surprise at current events is not, itself, surprising. The grace and humanity of the current revolutionary opposition is a wake-up call not for Egypt, but for the world.
E. J. Dionne, Jr.: Lessons From Our Egypt Moment
In light of the history-shaking events on the streets of Cairo, it’s not surprising that a truly remarkable development slipped through the news cycle with barely a nod.
On a unanimous voice vote Thursday, the Senate passed a resolution co-sponsored by John Kerry and John McCain urging Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to hand power over to a caretaker government as part of a peaceful transition to democracy. . . . . .
Note that while Kerry and McCain were doing their bipartisan work, Republicans in Congress and conservative judges were trying to scrap a health care law that was the product of two years of legislative struggle and debate.
Peter Dreier: Reagan’s Real Legacy
As the nation embarks on a celebration this Sunday of the hundredth anniversary of President Ronald Reagan’s birth-with conferences, museum exhibits and lots of speeches-let us not forget that many of the serious problems facing America today began or worsened during Reagan’s presidency.
Why not let Reagan, who died in 2004, rest in peace? Because a growing chorus of journalists, politicians, and pundits are using this hundredth-birthday milestone to rewrite history and bestow on Reagan a Mount Rushmore-like status as one of our greatest presidents.
That’s hogwash.
Laura Flanders: Army’s Mental Health Care Failed Bradley Manning
The uprisings in Egypt have inspired all sorts of people, including Private Bradley Manning, the young man being held in solitary confinement in Quantico, accused of being the source for Wikileaks. Manning’s friend David House, tweeted after visiting him this week, “Bradley’s mood and mind soared” at the news from Egypt.
Manning’s mental health has been the subject of much debate, the putative explanation for his isolation and extreme treatment, but a new report on an Army investigation finds that a mental health specialist recommended Manning not be deployed to Iraq in the first place.
Now the Washington Post reports that two Army officials questioned the leadership of Manning’s superior officers, who overruled a recommendation that he not be deployed and sent him to Iraq regardless.
“This clearly demonstrates the failure of the Army to take care of the soldier,” Manning’s attorney, David E. Coombs, told the paper. Where have we heard that before?
Leonard Pitts Jr.: The Dumbing Down of America
ITEM: Only 28 percent of high school science teachers consistently follow National Research Council guidelines encouraging them to present students with evidence of evolution. Thirteen percent “explicitly advocate creationism or intelligent design.”
These are among the findings of Penn State political scientists Michael Berkman and Eric Plutzer after examining data from a representative survey of 926 high school biology teachers. Writing in the Jan. 28 issue of Science magazine, they report that most science teachers — 60 percent — cheat controversy by such stratagems as telling students it does not matter if they “believe” in evolution, so long as they understand enough to pass a test. Or they teach evolution on a par with creationism and encourage students to make up their own minds.
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