“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”
Mohamed ElBaradei: The Next Step for Egypt’s Opposition
WHEN I was a young man in Cairo, we voiced our political views in whispers, if at all, and only to friends we could trust. We lived in an atmosphere of fear and repression. As far back as I can remember, I felt outrage as I witnessed the misery of Egyptians struggling to put food on the table, keep a roof over their heads and get medical care. I saw firsthand how poverty and repression can destroy values and crush dignity, self-worth and hope.
Half a century later, the freedoms of the Egyptian people remain largely denied. Egypt, the land of the Library of Alexandria, of a culture that contributed groundbreaking advances in mathematics, medicine and science, has fallen far behind. More than 40 percent of our people live on less than $2 per day. Nearly 30 percent are illiterate, and Egypt is on the list of failed states.
Paul Krugman: Abraham Lincoln, Inflationist
There was a time when Republicans used to refer to themselves, proudly, as “the party of Lincoln.” But you don’t hear that line much these days. Why?
The main answer, presumably, lies in the G.O.P.’s decision, long ago, to seek votes from Southerners angered by the end of legal segregation. With the old Confederacy now the heart of the Republican base, boasting about the party’s Civil War-era legacy is no longer advisable.
But sooner or later, Republicans were bound to notice other reasons to disavow Lincoln. He was, after all, the first president to institute an income tax. And he was also the first president to issue a paper currency – the “greenback” – that wasn’t backed by gold or silver. “There is nothing more insidious that a country can do to its people than to debase its currency,” declared Representative Paul Ryan in one of two hearings Congress held on Wednesday on monetary policy. So much, then, for the Great Liberator.
Which brings me to the story of what went on in those monetary hearings.
Bernie Sanders: Organizing Help Wanted
We must defend America’s middle class before millionaires and billionaires own the entire country.
There is a war going on in this country and I am not referring to the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan. I am referring to the war waged by the wealthiest people in America on the disappearing and shrinking middle class of our country. The nation’s billionaires are on the warpath. They want more, more, more. Their greed has no end and they are apparently unconcerned for the future of this country if it gets in the way of their accumulation of power and wealth.
On the floor of the Senate, we discuss a lot of things. But one thing we fail to talk about is who is winning in this economy and who is losing, and what that means for parents struggling to survive while working longer hours with lower wages, and worrying about whether their children will have the same kind of standard of living they have.
Right now, the top 1 percent controls more than 23 percent of all income earned in America. The top 1 percent controls more than the bottom 50 percent. It’s not only that the rich are getting richer. The very, very rich are getting richer. In the last 25 years, we have seen 80 percent of all new income going to the top 1 percent.
John Nichols: Communications Breakdown: Obama Urges World to ‘Witness History Unfold’ in Egypt and… Mubarak Stays
Well, that was embarrassing.
For most of the day Thursday, news reports suggested that Egyptian Hosni Mubarak was going to step down.
Cool!
After weeks of people power protests, the dictator was finally exiting.
Then Central Intelligence Agency director Leon Panetta, supposedly one of the adults in the Obama administration, started talking about how there was a “strong likelihood” that Mubarak would exit.
President Obama bought into the line, deliving a speech in which he pretty much said “tune in tonight for this historic transition.”
At the opening of another of the many “Winning the Future” speeches about the economy that have gone pretty much unnoticed since the Middle East erupted, Obama told a crowd in Marquette, Michigan: “What is absolutely clear is we are witnessing history unfold. It’s a moment of transformation taking place because the people of Egypt are calling for change.”
That sure sounded like it was all over but the helicopters taking off from the presidential palace, as did the president’s teasing comment that “we are following today’s events in Egypt very closely and we’ll have more to say as this plays out.”
Laura Flanders: A Bright Bipartisan Future on Civil Liberties?
Lately, when the term “bipartisan compromise” is tossed around, it tends to mean that Democrats are giving in to the Republican position on issues, or that women’s rights are being sacrificed to some larger purpose.
But there was bipartisanship of a different sort this week in the House, when civil libertarians on the left and the right of each party joined together to defeat some particularly controversial portions of the Patriot Act.
Twenty-six Republicans, including eight new Tea Party members, voted with some Democrats to stop fast-track passage, extending things like Roving wiretaps, the “lone wolf” surveillance provision, and the “library records” power… at least temporarily.
E.J. Dionne Jr.: Jim Webb: The last Jacksonian Democrat
Much of the focus on Sen. Jim Webb’s retirement will be on how this might make the Democrats’ already hard job of holding their Senate majority even more difficult. But more important than a single Virginia Senate seat is that Webb was one of a kind.
He was not only a Reagan Democrat who became a Republican and then came back. He was also a self-described Jacksonian Democrat. Democrats often speak at Jefferson-Jackson day dinners and mention Old Hickory, but it’s hard to think of any of them being as steeped as Webb was in what it meant to be a follower of Andrew Jackson.
David Sirota: The Super Bowl of Socialism
The Super Bowl has become a true televisual non sequitur-a bizarre “Rocky”-style montage mashing together as many divergent strands of American culture as possible.
This year’s blockbuster was no exception. There was former President George W. Bush sitting next to coach John Madden, who was obsessively texting. There was actress Cameron Diaz feeding popcorn to baseball bad boy Alex Rodriguez. There was Christina Aguilera belting out a “Naked Gun”-worthy version of the national anthem. There was even a melding of hip-hop, hair metal and sci-fi, as the Black Eyed Peas joined Slash for a rendition of “Sweet Child o’ Mine”-all in front of neon “Tron” dancers.
This was a bewildering assault on the senses, to say the least-and nothing was more singularly mind-blowing than the NFL using a Ronald Reagan eulogy to kick off a sports-themed tribute to socialism.
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