Tag: Politics

“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”.

The Sunday Talking Heads:

This Week with Christiane Amanpour: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton joins Christine in a “This Week” exclusive discussing the uprisings and unrest in the Middle East and the spending showdowns in Wisconsin and the fight over federal spending in Congress that could end in a shut down of the federal government

Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer: This weeks guests are Rep. Paul Ryan, (R-WI), Chairman of the House Budget Committee, Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), House Budget Committee Ranking Democrat and David Sanger, New York Times Chief Washington Correspondent.

Plus, reports from CBS News correspondents in the Middle East

The Chris Matthews Show: This weeks guests are Kelly O’Donnell, NBC News Capitol Hill Correspondent, Howard Fineman, The Huffington Post Senior Political Editor, John Harris, Politico

Editor-in-Chief, and Cynthia Tucker, Atlanta Journal-Constitution Columnist.

Under consideration are these questions:

Will Obama and the GOP Jump off the Cliff Together on a Sweeping Debt Package?

Can Republicans Convince Chris Christie To Take On Obama?

Meet the Press with David Gregory: The budget fight in Congress is discussed with guests Assistant Majority Leader Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) and member of the Senate Budget Committee, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC).

The United States ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice discusses how the protests  and unrest in the Middle East are affecting US policy in the region

On the roundtable to discuss budget reforms are former governor of Michigan, Jennifer Granholm (D), former congressman from Tennessee, Harold Ford (D), Republican strategist, Ed Gillespie and CNBC’s Rick Santelli.

State of the Union with Candy Crowley: Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) discusses the budget and reform. The ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Indiana Sen. Dick Lugar discussing the Middle East Also, an interview with former Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld

And finally, with President’s Day around the corner, we’ll close with interviews with two former commanders-in-chief.

Fareed Zakaris: GPS: An exclusive interview with billionaire, George Soros plus Fareed’s take on the Middle East conflicts, the Muslim Brotherhood and a look at the art from Baghdad

“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”

Warning: While I disagree with Mr. Milbank that Medicare is a “major driver” of our debt crisis. the rest of his column is, well, both hysterically funny and ironically saddening. That said Do Not Eat or Drink While Reading

One other short comment, today’s Pundits were prolific and prophetic. The decision who to put above the fold was not easy

Dana Milbank: Serious budget cutting? The House has other fish to fry.

To say that our lawmakers are carping at trifles gives them too much credit. In fact, they are carping at carp.

“Asian carp [are] one of the world’s most rampant invasive species,” Rep. Dave Camp (R-Mich.), chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, proclaimed on the House floor, 35 hours into the debate over budget cuts. “Weighing up to 100 pounds, spanning over six feet and eating half their body weight daily, Asian carp have the ability to decimate fish populations indigenous to the Great Lakes.”

That certainly stinks for Great Lakes fish and Great Lakes fishermen. But if you think the federal budget will be balanced on the backs of the Asian carp, you’re all wet. And that’s what makes Camp’s carping emblematic of the current debate over budget cuts. The whole exercise is less about improving the nation’s fiscal balance than about parochial concerns and political volleys.

FSM, I wish this was snark. It’s not

Michael Winsap: Across the US, GOP Lawmakers Build States of Denial

Forced at gunpoint this weekend to clean out a lot of old paper files in anticipation of some home improvements, I ran across some articles and obituaries I had saved following the death, a little more than five and a half years ago, of the late, great Ann Richards, former governor of Texas.

One of them related the story of how Governor Richards was approached by the ACLU, which was disturbed by the presence of a Christmas crèche on the grounds of the state capitol in Austin. “You know,” she replied, “that’s probably as close as three wise men will ever get to the Texas Legislature, so why don’t we just let them be.” . . . . .

This comes to mind in the wake of this week’s release of “Texas on the Brink,” a pamphlet published annually by the Texas Legislative Study Group, a group of Democratic state lawmakers. According to their research, much of it corroborated by the U.S. Census Bureau and the Texas Legislative Budget Board, in 2011, “Texas has the highest percentage of uninsured children in the nation. Texas is dead last in the percentage of residents with their high school diploma and near last in SAT scores. Texas has America’s dirtiest air… Those who value tax cuts over children and budget cuts over college have put Texas at risk in her ability to compete and succeed.”

Over the years, such statistics and other damned shenanigans have led many to debate whether Texas is indeed the rightful landlord of the nation’s worst statehouse. As someone with a mother’s Lone Star blood flowing through his otherwise anemic northeastern veins, I write this with no small amount of perverse pride. But in the last couple of weeks a lot of other states have been giving Texans a run for their money.

John Nichols: ‘First Amendment Remedies’: How Wisconsin Workers Grabbed the Constitution Back From the Right-Wing Royalists

When Democratic members of the Wisconsin State Senate walked out on Capital on Thursday – denying the Republican majority quorum that was necessary to pass the legislation — they were attacked by Walker and his cronies.  The governor called the boycott a “stunt” and claimed the Democrats were disrepecting democracy.  

After all, Walker’s backers noted, the governor and his Republican allies won an election last Novembe  

That is true.  

But Wisconsin’s greatest governor, Robert M. La Follette, declared: “”We have long rested comfortably in this country upon the assumption that because our form of government was democratic, it was therefore automatically producing democratic results. Now, there is nothing mysteriously potent about the forms and names of democratic institutions that should make them self-operative. Tyranny and oppression are just as possible under democratic forms as under any other. We are slow to realize that democracy is a life; and involves continual struggle. It is only as those of every generation who love democracy resist with all their might the encroachments of its enemies that the ideals of representative government can even be nearly approximated.”  

La Follette’s point, apparently lost on Walker, is that democracy does not end on Election Day. That’s when it begins.  Citizens do not elect officials to rule them from one election to the next. Citizens elect officials to represent them, to respond to the will of the people as it evolves.

(emphasis mine)

Please read below the fold, there is so much more to consider

“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”

Paul Krugman: Willie Sutton Wept

There are three things you need to know about the current budget debate. First, it’s essentially fraudulent. Second, most people posing as deficit hawks are faking it. Third, while President Obama hasn’t fully avoided the fraudulence, he’s less bad than his opponents – and he deserves much more credit for fiscal responsibility than he’s getting.

About the fraudulence: Last month, Howard Gleckman of the Tax Policy Center described the president as the “anti-Willie Sutton,” after the holdup artist who reputedly said he robbed banks because that’s where the money is. Indeed, Mr. Obama has lately been going where the money isn’t, making a big deal out of a freeze on nonsecurity discretionary spending, which accounts for only 12 percent of the budget.

But that’s what everyone does. House Republicans talk big about spending cuts – but focus solely on that same small budget sliver.

Glen Ford: Obamaland, Where Right Meets Center-Right

The First Black President just gave birth to an unmistakably Republican budget – and everybody knows who that ugly baby’s daddy is. For the past two years, Barack Obama has been making out quite publicly with George Bush’s corporate friends. But that shouldn’t be a scandal; after all, Obama has always told everyone in range of his voice that his main goal in life is to forge a grand consensus with the GOP, a bipartisan understanding between the Right and the Center Right.

The result is an Obama budget that is all sliced up, like the loser in a knife fight – only, Obama and his corporate executives-on-loan at the White House did all the cutting, themselves. Obama is showing such extraordinary talent for obliterating poor and working class programs across the board, he’s making Republicans look redundant and obsolete.

Eugene Robinson: Haley Barbour’s silence speaks volumes

The Mississippi governor continues to display ignorance on issues of race

Does Haley Barbour really have a warped and offensive view of America’s racial history? Or is he just playing a dangerous game?

Perhaps both. . . . . .

The latest outrage – and I don’t use that word lightly – came Tuesday, when Barbour was asked to comment on a proposal for a state license plate honoring one of the most notorious figures of the Civil War era, Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest. I question whether any Confederate officer is worthy of such recognition, given that they were all committing treason. But even for the Sons of Confederate Veterans – the group proposing the license plate – Forrest should be an embarrassment.

“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”

Nicholas D Kristof: Tunisia. Egypt. Bahrain?

Manama, Bahrain Tunisia The gleaming banking center of Bahrain, one of those family-run autocratic Arab states that count as American allies, has become the latest reminder that authoritarian regimes are slow learners.

Bahrain is another Middle East domino wobbled by an angry youth – and it has struck back with volleys of tear gas, rubber bullets and even buckshot at completely peaceful protesters. In the early-morning hours on Thursday here in the Bahrain capital, it used deadly force to clear the throngs of pro-democracy protesters who had turned Pearl Square in the center of the city into a local version of Tahrir Square in Cairo. This was the last spasm of brutality from a regime that has handled protests with an exceptionally heavy hand – and like the previous crackdowns, this will further undermine the legitimacy of the government.

Robert Reich; Budget Baloney: Why Social Security Isn’t a Problem for 26 Years, and the Best Way to Fix It Permanently

In a former life I was a trustee of the Social Security trust fund. So let me set the record straight.

Social Security isn’t responsible for the federal deficit. Just the opposite. Until last year Social Security took in more payroll taxes than it paid out in benefits. It lent the surpluses to the rest of the government.

Now that Social Security has started to pay out more than it takes in, Social Security can simply collect what the rest of the government owes it. This will keep it fully solvent for the next 26 years. . . . . . .

Today, though, the Social Security payroll tax hits only about 84 percent of total income.

It went from 90 percent to 84 percent because a larger and larger portion of total income has gone to the top. In 1983, the richest 1 percent of Americans got 11.6 percent of total income. Today the top 1 percent takes in more than 20 percent.

If we want to go back to 90 percent, the ceiling on income subject to the Social Security tax would need to be raised to $180,000.

Presto. Social Security’s long-term (beyond 26 years from now) problem would be solved.

Yes, it is that simple

Robert Sheer: Home Sweet Wall Street

A most dastardly deed occurred last Friday when the Obama administration issued a 29-page policy statement totally abandoning the federal government’s time-honored role in helping Americans achieve the goal of homeownership. Instead of punishing the banks that sabotaged the American ideal of a nation of stakeholders by “securitizing” our homesteads into poker chips to be gambled away in the Wall Street casino, Barack Obama now proposes to turn over the entire mortgage industry to those same banks.

The proposal, originated by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, involves nothing less than a total “winding down” of the 80-year-old federal housing program, setting instead a new goal of a two-tiered America in which the masses are content to be mere renters of the American Dream. Such a deal for a country where, as the report concedes, “Half of all renters spend more than a third of their income on housing, and a quarter spend more than half.”

“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”

Harold Meyerson: Workers toppled a dictator in Egypt, but might be silenced in Wisconsin

Wisconsin’s governor is acting like an autocrat.

But even as workers were helping topple the regime in Cairo, one state government in particular was moving to topple workers’ organizations here in the United States. Last Friday, Scott Walker, Wisconsin’s new Republican governor, proposed taking away most collective bargaining rights of public employees. Under his legislation, which has moved so swiftly through the newly Republican state legislature that it might come to a vote Thursday, the unions representing teachers, sanitation workers, doctors and nurses at public hospitals, and a host of other public employees, would lose the right to bargain over health coverage, pensions and other benefits. (To make his proposal more politically palatable, the governor exempted from his hit list the unions representing firefighters and police.) The only thing all other public-sector workers could bargain over would be their base wages, and given the fiscal restraints plaguing the states, that’s hardly anything to bargain over at all.

You might think that Walker came to this extreme measure after negotiations with public-sector unions had reached an impasse. In fact, he hasn’t held such discussions. “I don’t have anything to negotiate,” Walker told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel last week. To underscore just how accompli he considered his fait, he vowed to call in the National Guard if protesting workers walked off the job or disrupted state services.

It’s a throwback to 19th-century America, when strikes were suppressed by force of arms. Or, come to think of it, to Mubarak’s Egypt or communist Poland and East Germany.

Remind me, where it is that I live?

Dana Milbank: Boehner the budget hawk shifts his course

Boehner wants to cut the budget, but not in his back yard.

“So be it.”

That was House Speaker John Boehner’s cold answer when asked Tuesday about job losses that would come from his new Republican majority’s plans to cut tens of billions of dollars in government spending this year.

snip

Let’s assume that Boehner is not as heartless as his words sound. Let’s accept that he really believes, as he put it, that “if we reduce spending we’ll create a better environment for job creation in America.” A more balanced budget would indeed improve the jobs market – in the long run.

But in the short run, the cuts Boehner and his caucus propose would cause a shock to the economy that would slow, if not reverse, the recovery. And however pure Boehner’s motives may be, the dirty truth is that a stall in the recovery would bring political benefits to the Republicans in the 2012 elections. It is in their political interests for unemployment to remain higher for the next two years. “So be it” is callous but rational.

Boehner could dismiss the forecasts of job losses as the work of liberal administration critics. But Boehner himself is well aware that the cuts will lead to more unemployment; that’s why he’s fighting hard to shield his Ohio constituents.

Robert Reich: Why We Should Raise Taxes on the Super-Rich and Lower Them on the Middle Class

My proposal to raise the marginal tax to 70 percent on incomes over $15 million, to 60 percent on incomes between $5 million and $15 million, and to 50 percent on incomes between $500,000 and $5 million, has generated considerable debate. Some progressives think it’s pie-in-the-sky. Here, for example, is Andrew Leonard, a staff writer for Salon:

  A 70 percent tax bracket for the richest Americans is pure fantasy – even suggesting it represents such a fundamental disconnect with the world as it exists today that it is hard to see why it should be taken seriously. I would be deeply worried about the sanity of a Democratic president who proposed such a thing.

Fantasy? I don’t know Mr. Leonard’s age but perhaps he could be forgiven for not recalling that between the late 1940s and 1980 America’s highest marginal rate averaged above 70 percent. Under Republican President Dwight Eisenhower it was 91 percent. Not until the 1980s did Ronald Reagan slash it to 28 percent. (Many considered Reagan’s own proposal a “fantasy” before it was enacted.)

“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”

Ari Berman: The Obama Budget: Challenging or Appeasing the GOP?

In his State of the Union address, Barack Obama threaded the needle by calling for new investments in technology, education and infrastructure and a five-year domestic spending freeze. But those were just words. The president’s budget for 2012, released today, is the true reflection of what his priorities are.

The New York Times has posted a quick summary of what the budget does and does not do. The budget includes additional funds for education, high-speed rail, a national wireless network and a national infrastructure bank, which Democrats and Obama supporters will like. The document also rejects the advice of the administration’s deficit commission and does not tinker with Social Security or Medicare, which will no doubt anger deficit hawks in both parties. At the same time, the president is proposing painful cuts in heating assistance for low-income families, block grants for community development and Pell Grants for needy students-all things that Democrats would no doubt criticize if a Republican president proposed them.

John Nichols: On Civil Liberties, War, Crony Capitalism: Ron Paul Is Saying Some Things Democrats Should Be Saying

Texas Congressman Ron Paul may have been speaking to the Conservative Political Action Conference that finished up over the weekend.

He may have been hinting to a cheering crowd that he will run again for the Republican presidential nomination-a prospect the crowd found appealing, as Paul won the conference’s straw poll with ten times as many votes as Sarah Palin.

That unsettled some CPAC attendees. The defenders of the conservative orthodoxies of the moment-as opposed to the Old Right stances Paul echoes-can’t figure out his appeal. To their view, he’s off-message on everything from the war on terror to Wall Street. And they dismiss his backers as hooligans.

But what unsettles mainstream conservatives ought to interest mainstream progressives.

Robert Reich: The Obama Budget: And Why the Coming Debate Over Spending Cuts Has Nothing to Do With Reviving the Economy

President Obama has chosen to fight fire with gasoline.

Republicans want America to believe the economy is still lousy because government is too big, and the way to revive the economy is to cut federal spending. Today (Sunday) Republican Speaker John Boehner even refused to rule out a government shut-down if Republicans don’t get the spending cuts they want.

Today (Monday) Obama pours gas on the Republican flame by proposing a 2012 federal budget that cuts the federal deficit by $1.1 trillion over 10 years. About $400 billion of this will come from a five-year freeze on non-security discretionary spending – including all sorts of programs for poor and working-class Americans, such as heating assistance to low-income people and community-service block grants. Most of the rest from additional spending cuts, such as grants to states for water treatment plants and other environmental projects and higher interest charges on federal loans to graduate students.

“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”

New York Times Editorial: In Defense of Marriage, for All

The 1996 Defense of Marriage Act is indefensible – officially sanctioned discrimination against one group of Americans imposed during an election year. President Obama seems to know that, or at least he has called on Congress to repeal it. So why do his government’s lawyers continue to defend the act in court?

But just last month, the department appealed two rulings by Joseph Tauro, a federal trial judge in Massachusetts, who found that the law’s denial of benefits to married same-sex couples could not pass constitutional muster. We did not agree with some of the judge’s reasoning. He said the marriage act exceeded Congress’s powers and infringed on the state’s right to regulate marriage – an approach that could undermine many of the biggest federal social programs, including the new health care law.

Glenn Greenwald: The Leaked Campaign to Attack WikiLeaks and Its Supporters

But the real issue highlighted by this episode is just how lawless and unrestrained is the unified axis of government and corporate power. I’ve written many times about this issue — the full-scale merger between public and private spheres — because it’s easily one of the most critical yet under-discussed political topics. Especially (though by no means only) in the worlds of the Surveillance and National Security State, the powers of the state have become largely privatized. There is very little separation between government power and corporate power. Those who wield the latter intrinsically wield the former. The revolving door between the highest levels of government and corporate offices rotates so fast and continuously that it has basically flown off its track and no longer provides even the minimal barrier it once did. It’s not merely that corporate power is unrestrained; it’s worse than that: corporations actively exploit the power of the state to further entrench and enhance their power.

Paul Krugman: Eat The Future

On Friday, House Republicans unveiled their proposal for immediate cuts in federal spending. Uncharacteristically, they failed to accompany the release with a catchy slogan. So I’d like to propose one: Eat the Future.

I’ll explain in a minute. First, let’s talk about the dilemma the G.O.P. faces.

Republican leaders like to claim that the midterms gave them a mandate for sharp cuts in government spending. Some of us believe that the elections were less about spending than they were about persistent high unemployment, but whatever. The key point to understand is that while many voters say that they want lower spending, press the issue a bit further and it turns out that they only want to cut spending on other people.

“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”.

The Sunday Talking Heads:

This Week with Christiane Amanpour: Christiane Amanpour has an exclusive interview with Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak. Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich and former Governor of Minnesota Tim Pawlenty, both contending for the Republican Presidential nomination in 2012, will discuss the Egyptian Revolution.

The roundtable guest, also discussing events in Egypt, are Robert Kagan of the Brookings Institution, Arianna Huffington of The Huffington Post, Egyptian journalist Mona Eltahawy, and ABC News’ George Will.

Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer: Mr. Scheiffer’s scheduled guests are Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), Egyptian Nobel Laureate Mohamed ElBaradei,  Egyptian Nobel Laureate and Activist Ahmed Zewail and Egyptian Ambassador to the U.S.

Sameh Shoukry

Editor’s note: As per Think Progress, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) was originally scheduled

The Chris Matthews Show: This week’s guests are Gloria Borger, CNN Senior Political Analyst, John Heilemann, New York Magazine National Political Correspondent, David Ignatius, The Washington Post Columnist, and Anne Kornblut, The Washington Post White House Correspondent.

The questions they will ponder are:

How Did President Obama Handle The Crisis In Egypt?

Can Jeb Bush Be Convinced He’s The GOP’s Best Bet in 2012?

Meet the Press with David Gregory: This week will feature an exclusive interview  with Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH).

Also guests Former Ambassador to Israel Martin Indyk and former Middle East Correspondent Robin Wright will discuss Egyptian events.

The roundtable guests are mayor of Atlanta, Kasim Reed (D), freshman member of congress supported by the Tea Party, Rep. Bobby Schilling (R-IL), former Clinton White House press secretary, Dee Dee Myers, columnist for the New York Times, David Brooks, and Time Magazine’s Mark Halperin.

State of the Union with Candy Crowley: Edward S. Walker, the former U.S. Ambassador to Egypt, and John Negroponte, the former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, join us for the third straight week to assess the last 19 days in Egypt and the days to come in the Middle East.

And South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham will join us for a discussion about what the Egyptian revolution means for American foreign policy.

Finally, Jacob Lew, the director of the Office of Management and Budget and author of President Obama’s 2012 federal budget proposal, will join us exclusively on Sunday. He says “the easy cuts are behind us,” but will the Obama administration make enough hard cuts to satisfy a more fiscally conservative populace?

Fareed Zakaris: GPS: : A live special edition with the latest from the revolution in Egypt. The scenes from Tahrir Square and elsewhere around Egypt have captivated the world. The sense of joy and elation is breathtaking. But, the question is, what’s next? The road ahead to democracy is a long one.

Where do Egypt and the opposition movement go from here?

And the big question is: will the Egyptian military, an organization that has enjoyed over 50 years of essentially running the country, really hand over power now to a democratic Egypt? A GPS panel with Richard Haass and Steven Cook from the Council on Foreign Relations dig deeper into that question.

Also, the financial crisis destroyed the reputations of many banks and bankers. One baker who came out of the crisis with his reputation intact was JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon. Hear what he has to say about what caused the crisis and who made it worse. Could it have been YOU?

“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”

John Nichols: Kucinich Says Obama Should Face 2012 Democratic Primary Challenge From the Left

Congressman Dennis Kucinich will not challenge President Obama for in the 2012 Democratic primaries-“I’m focusing on being re-elected to the House of Representatives”-but he thinks Obama should face a foe for the presidential nomination.

“I think primaries can have the opportunity of raising the issues and make the Democratic candidate a stronger candidate,” Kucinich, who sought the party nod in 2004 and 2008, said Thursday. “I think it’s safe to predict that President Obama will continue to be the nominee of the Democratic primary, but he can be a stronger nominee if he receives a strong challenge in a primary.”

Nicholas D. Kristof: Avoiding a New Pharaoh

But the game isn’t over, and now a word of caution. I worry that senior generals may want to keep (with some changes) a Mubarak-style government without Mubarak. In essence the regime may have decided that Mubarak had become a liability and thrown him overboard – without any intention of instituting the kind of broad, meaningful democracy that the public wants. Senior generals have enriched themselves and have a stake in a political and economic structure that is profoundly unfair and oppressive. And remember that the military running things directly really isn’t that different from what has been happening: Mubarak’s government was a largely military regime (in civilian clothes) even before this. Mubarak, Vice President Suleiman and so many others – including nearly all the governors – are career military men. So if the military now takes over, how different is it?

Bob Herbert: When Democracy Weakens

As the throngs celebrated in Cairo, I couldn’t help wondering about what is happening to democracy here in the United States. I think it’s on the ropes. We’re in serious danger of becoming a democracy in name only.

While millions of ordinary Americans are struggling with unemployment and declining standards of living, the levers of real power have been all but completely commandeered by the financial and corporate elite. It doesn’t really matter what ordinary people want. The wealthy call the tune, and the politicians dance.

Charles Blow: Repeal, Restrict and Repress

Republican state lawmakers, emboldened by their swollen ranks, have a message for minorities, women, immigrants and the poor: It’s on!

In the first month of the new legislative season, they have introduced a dizzying number of measures on hot-button issues in statehouses around the country as part of what amounts to a full-throttle mission to repeal, restrict and repress.

“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.