“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”
Essam El-Errian: What the Muslim Brothers Want
The Egyptian people have spoken, and we have spoken emphatically. In two weeks of peaceful demonstrations we have persistently demanded liberation and democracy. It was groups of brave, sincere Egyptians who initiated this moment of historical opportunity on Jan. 25, and the Muslim Brotherhood is committed to joining the national effort toward reform and progress.
In more than eight decades of activism, the Muslim Brotherhood has consistently promoted an agenda of gradual reform. Our principles, clearly stated since the inception of the movement in 1928, affirm an unequivocal position against violence. For the past 30 years we have posed, peacefully, the greatest challenge to the ruling National Democratic Party of Hosni Mubarak, while advocating for the disenfranchised classes in resistance to an oppressive regime.
Essam El-Errian is a member of the guidance council of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.
Roger Cohen: Wael Ghonim’s Egypt
CAIRO – The sea of people pulsated with energy, galvanized by the words of Wael Ghonim, the young Google executive who got the Mubarak treatment – 12-day disappearance, blindfolding, interrogation – before a tweet that will one day be etched in some granite memorial: “Freedom is a bless that deserves fighting for it.”
The fight goes on. In the Tahrir Square crowd, I ran into Ahmed el-Shamy, a Pfizer executive. He’s 54, and like many of his generation who have known only dictatorship since the coup of 1952, he can hardly believe his eyes. “Our youth makes fear history,” he said.
Ghonim’s tweet and a shattering TV interview afterward got Pfizer employees and much of Egypt re-energized in their quest for the dignity that comes with being actors in a nation’s destiny rather than its pawns. A sign I’ve seen sums things up: “Tahrir Square – closed for constitutional changes.”
(emphasis mine)
Robert Riech: Why the Republican Attack on “Job-Killing Regulations” Is Dumb
Republicans aim to end all “job-killing regulations” — especially those that, according to House Speaker John Boehner, are “strangling” business with detailed requirements over health, safety, the environment, corporate governance and finance.
Here’s another instance of where the White House’s attempt to preempt Republican rhetoric (the president said last week his administration would root out all nonsensical and inefficient regulation) ends up legitimizing it — and re-framing the public debate around an issue that’s hardly central to what ails America.
The reason we have continued sky-high unemployment has nothing to do with excessive regulation. There was no sudden outpouring of federal regulation in 2007 before the economy tanked and millions lost their jobs.
Robert Sheer: Hey Obama, Read WikiLeaks
After a good start, the Obama administration’s response to the democratic revolution in Egypt has begun to exude the odor of betrayal. Now distancing itself from the essential demand of the protesters that the dictator must go, the administration has fallen back on the sordid option of backing a new and improved dictatorship. Predictably, it is one guided by a local strongman long entrusted by the CIA, Vice President Omar Suleiman, described by U.S. officials in the WikiLeaks cables as a “Mubarak consigliere.” The script is out of an all-too-familiar playbook: Pick this longtime chief of Egyptian intelligence who has consistently done our bidding in matters of torture and retrofit him as a modern democratic leader. But this time the Egyptian street will not meekly go along.
Ray McGovern: America’s Stay-at-Home Ex-President
As the news broke on Saturday that former President George W. Bush had abruptly canceled his scheduled appearance this week in Geneva to avoid the risk of arrest on a torture complaint, my first thought was – how humiliating, not only for Bush but, by extension, for all Americans.
However, those who might have expected Bush to be down in the mouth and sulk about the embarrassment were disabused of that notion as the TV cameras caught him and Condoleezza Rice — his former national security adviser and Secretary of State — in seats of honor at Sunday’s Super Bowl in Dallas.
Doomed to become America’s first better-stay-at-home former president, Bush could still take consolation in getting scarce tickets to big sports events – he also attended high-profile Texas Rangers baseball games last year – and he can expect to hear some folks cheer for him, so long as he stays in Texas.
Gail Collins: Don’t Worry. Be Happy.
In troubled times it’s important to pace yourself. There’s only so much you can worry about at once, and we’ve already got Egypt, the weird weather, rising food prices and unemployment. Plus, the secretary of homeland security says the terror threat is really high. It would be at least reddish-orange if we hadn’t gotten rid of the color code.
Good grief, maybe we shouldn’t have gotten rid of the color code.
At moments like this, I find it soothing to make lists of things that we don’t have to worry about at all. Such as:
Outrageous bills proposed by state legislators
Glenn Beck’s declining ratings
Who will win the Conservative Political Action Conference straw poll
The fact that Congress isn’t doing anything
Nicholas D. Kristof: Obama and Egypt’s Future
In Tahrir Square, I saw a young man holding a sign over his head. The sign urged President Hosni Mubarak to flee the country: “Hurry up! My arms are tired.”
Lots of Egyptians seemed to feel the same way. They said they’re sick of Mr. Mubarak and the entire regime – and are increasingly resentful that the Obama administration continues to seem more comfortable with the regime than with people power. My sense is that we’re not only on the wrong side of history but that we’re also inadvertently strengthening the anti-Western elements that terrify us and drive our policy.
Laura Flanders: Corruption and Inequality Begin at Home
The U.S. media seems to have found a new language for the economy. There’s been talk of “solidarity” and even “class war,” and a focus on corruption and inequality like we haven’t seen in who knows how long.
The only problem? They’re talking about Egypt.
“It’s quite clear that entire domains in the economy were dominated by a few people,” a British professor of Middle Eastern Studies told the New York Times Monday. The reporter notes “Hosni Mubarak’s Egypt has long functioned as a state where wealth bought political power and political power bought great wealth.”
Salon’s Glenn Greenwald notes that such rhetoric about foreign countries serves to promote the idea that these problems exist Over There, but not over here. But Greenwald’s readers and GRITtv viewers know better.
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