Tag: TMC 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: Ms. Amanpour will be live from Cairo, Egypt. Her guest s will include, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Egyptian Ambassador to the U.S. Sameh Shoukry, and National Security Adviser to former President Carter Zbigniew Brzezinski.

Al Jazeera Washington Bureau Chief Abderrahim Foukara, ABC News’ George Will, ABC News Senior Foreign Correspondent Martha Raddatz, and ABC News contributor Sam Donaldson join ABC News Senior White House Correspondent Jake Tapper for the roundtable discussion.

I think we can all guess the topic.

Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer: Mr Schieffer will have an exclusive interview with New White House Chief of Staff William Daley in his first television interview since joining the administration.

Plus the latest on the crisis in Egypt, with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton

The Chris Matthews Show: This week’s guests are Andrea Mitchell, NBC News Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent, Rick Stengel, TIME Managing Editor, John Harris, Politico Editor-in-Chief and Helene Cooper, The New York Times White House Correspondent.

This weeks questions are:

In his quest for the center, is Barack Obama watching Ronald Reagan?

The politics of an Obama gun control Push

I bet those topics have changed

Meet the Press with David Gregory: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will be Mr. Gregory’s guest to discuss the protests in Egypt. Also joining him for insights and an analysis are former Mideast negotiator and Ambassador to Israel for President Clinton, Martin Indyk, and New York Times Columnist, Tom Friedman.

Also an exclusive guest: Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY). (heh, the Human Hybrid Turtle)

The roundtable: Longtime Republican strategist, Mike Murphy, former Tennessee congressman and Chairman of the Democratic Leadership Council, Harold Ford, NBC’s Chief White House Correspondent and Political Director, Chuck Todd and Washington Correspondent for the BBC, Katty Kay.

State of the Union with Candy Crowley: As unrest in Egypt builds: Will anything besides President Mubarak’s resignation assuage the protesters? Is this a tipping point for unrest throughout the Middle East? And what’s the next move for the Obama Administration?

We’ll begin with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. (Hillary is going to need a throat lozenge or two)

Then, joining us with their insights will be the former U.S. Ambassador to Egypt, Edward S. Walker and former US Ambassador to the United Nations John Negroponte. (more war criminals)

And Arizona Sen. John McCain, who believes the protests are “a wake-up call” for the Mubarak-led government. (the real question: Will John be awake?)

On the domestic front, New York Sen. Chuck Schumer will argue that the GOP is playing a high stakes game of chicken over government spending. Who will blink first?

(I think we have the answer to that)

And finally a conversation with Alan Simpson, the Co-chair of the W.H. Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform. His report laid out a path to fiscal discipline, but no one seems ready to follow it.

(Let’s hope they don’t change their minds)

Fareed Zakaris: GPS: Site not up dated at the time of our publishing but I fairly certain the Middle East will be a big topic for discussion.

This is a Live Blog and will be updated as the news is available. You can follow the latest reports from AL Jazeera English and though Mishima’s live blog, our news editor.

The Guardian has a Live Blog that refreshes automatically every minute

This is actually the sixth day of protests in Egypt against the repressive, brutal regime of President Hosni Mubarak. As Mubarak struggles to maintain control, the Egyptian army is doing little to stop the protesters who have defied curfews to demonstrated against Mubarak’s 30 year rule. The appointment of former intelligence chief, Omar Suleiman, as his vice president and Ahmed Shafik, another general and Mubarak insider, prime minister, have only fueled the protesters’ fervor for Mubarak’s ouster. Nobel Peace Prize winner, Mohamed ElBaradei returned to Egypt on Thursday and has called for Mubarak to step down. He has also plead with the demonstrators and the army to use restraint and avoid violence.

The Guardian reports that Al Jazeera’s Cairo office has been shut down by the Mubarak regime. It’s license’s revoked early this morning:

“The information minister ordered … suspension of operations of al-Jazeera, cancelling of its licences and withdrawing accreditation to all its staff as of today,” a statement said.

Al Jazeera has released this statement:

Al-Jazeera sees this as an act designed to stifle and repress the freedom of reporting by the network and its journalists. In this time of deep turmoil and unrest in Egyptian society it is imperative that voices from all sides be heard; the closing of our bureau by the Egyptian government is aimed at censoring and silencing the voices of the Egyptian people…

Al Jazeera Network is appalled at this latest attack by the Egyptian regime to strike at its freedom to report independently on the unprecedented events in Egypt

You can still follow Al Jazeera’s reports here and through Twitter. This is a list of their reporters that can be followed on Twitter. For now Evan Hill reports:

Yes, Al Jazeera is still broadcasting live despite apparent shutdown order. No one knows who would enforce it.

The team is working on a plan if the shutdown does occur. For obvious reasons, won’t be tweeting the details here

The Stars Hollow Gazette will be following this list.

President Obama has refrained calling for Mubarak to step down but has called for him to institute real reforms and not just shuffle the players.

This morning reports coming from the Guardian‘s live up dates are saying that the military will take harder line against the protesters but doubt they will carry it out. Even though the military is patrolling the streets, they are doing little to stop the looting. Due to the absence of the security police, residents are trying to maintain order and protect themselves and their property.

Already today there are several thousand protesters are in Tahrir square, chanting they will not leave until Mubarak quits and in the center of Alexandria chanting: “Down, Down, Hosni Mubarak”. Some also shouted slogans in support of the army and shook hands with soldiers.

From Reuters this morning:

• Thousands of protesters have gathered in Ishmalia, east of Cairo. Police have fired teargas and rubber bullets at the crowds.

• Dozens have gathered in the central areas of Suez chanting: “Down, Down, Hosni Mubarak”. About 100 people gathered outside the morgue in the city, saying it was holding the bodies of 12 protesters.

• Thousands have taken to the streets in the Nile Delta city of Damanhour, chanting anti-government slogans and calling on Mubarak to quit.

This is going to be a long day.

Up Dates are below the fold.

This is a Live Blog and will be updated as the news is available. You can follow the latest reports from AL Jazeera English and though Mishima’s live blog, our news editor.

A second day of protests have taken to the streets across Egypt and conditions have deteriorated considerably. Protests, dissatisfied with a reshuffling of the “deck chairs”, have intensified calling for the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak. Mubarak has appointed a Vice President for the first time and a new Prime Minister, both government insiders who are close to Mubarak. Omar Suleiman, 71 years old, head of intelligence and former spy, has been named Vice President. Mubarak had promised to do this some years ago but never did to Suleiman’s disappointment. He, however remained loyal to Mubarak. The new Prime Minister is another military man, Ahmad Shafiq.

The Muslim Brotherhood, the opposion party that has no seats in the current parliament, has called for Mubarak to step down and a unity government formed without the ruling party, NDP. Al Jazeera is now reporting that the head of the Muslim Brotherhood have been detained by the Mubarak government.

In a statement this evening (Egyptain time), Mohamed Elbaradei has called once again for Mubarak to step down and the formation of a unity government that represents all the Egyptian people. The people will be satisfied with nothing less. (I will have the video with the simultaneous translation as soon as Al Jazeera makes it available on You Tube)(Up date #2: Video of Elbaradei’s statement with simultaneous translation by AL Jazeera)

The curfew, 6 PM to 7 AM local time, continues but is being ignored. There are reports of looting and vandalism of shops, the museums and hospitals. There are no signs of the security police from the Ministry of Interior. The army is unable to contain any of the protests and is calling for private citizens to protect themselves and their property. There are also reports that the “thugs” who are looting may be police from  police Egypt’s Central Security. Al Jazeera’s Ayman Mohyeldin is reporting that thugs in one neighborhood were seized and found to have state security id and carrying state issued weapons.

7:38pm Ayman Mohyeldin reports that eyewitnesses have said “party thugs” associated with the Egyptian regime’s Central Security Services – in plainclothes but bearing government-issued weapons – have been looting in Cairo. Ayman says the reports started off as isolated accounts but are now growing in number.

Al-Masry Al-Youm has reported that protesters have been trying to organize to protect neighborhoods in the absence of the police.

Also a h/t to Siun at FDL for her fine reporting.

Up Date #1: Mubarak’s new Vice President, Omar Suleiman, ran the US secret rendition program in Egypt.

From Jane Mayer’s book The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War (pp113), Suleiman negotiated directly with top US officials and personally approved of the renditions. Edward S. Walker, former US Ambassador to Egypt, described Suleiman as “very bright, very realistic” and very aware of the  downside of the “negative things that Egyptians engaged in, torture and so on. But he was not squeamish, by the way.”

Egyptian Americans protested outside the Egyptian Embassy in Washington, DC this today

“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”.

Robert Naiman: Mohamed ElBaradei: ‘If Not Now, When?’

If Western leaders, who have backed the dictator Mubarak for 30 years, cannot stand before the Egyptian people today and say unequivocally, “we support your right of national self-determination,” when can they do it?

That’s the question that Egyptian democracy leader and Nobel laureate Mohamed ElBaradei has put before Western leaders today.

Speaking to the Guardian in Cairo, before the planned protests today, ElBaradei stepped up his calls for Western leaders to explicitly condemn Mubarak, who, as the Guardian noted, has been a close ally of the US.

Dana Milbank: Glenn Beck vs. the rabbis

After MSNBC let go Keith Olbermann last week, Glenn Beck couldn’t resist celebrating. “Keith Olbermann is the biggest pain in the ass in the world,” he judged.

But Olbermann’s departure really should give Beck pause: With political speech coming under new scrutiny, how much longer can Beck’s brutal routine continue at Fox News?

The latest omen of Beck’s end times came on Thursday — Holocaust Remembrance Day — when 400 rabbis representing all four branches of American Judaism took out an ad demanding that Beck be sanctioned for “monstrous” and “beyond repugnant” use of “anti-Semitic imagery” in going after Holocaust survivor George Soros.

A Fox News spokesman brushed off the complaint in the usual fashion, attributing it to a “Soros-backed left-wing political organization.” But that’s not going to fly: The statement’s signatories included the chief executive of the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism and his predecessor, the dean of the conservative Jewish Theological Seminary rabbinical school, and a number of orthodox rabbis.

John Nichols: Biden Stakes a Place on the Wrong Side of History: Vice President Denies Mubarak Is a Dictator

This has not been a good week for the Obama administration, at least when it comes to responses to the popular revolt that has swept Egypt

First, President Obama failed to make mention the mass street demonstrations in Cairo and other Egyptian Tuesday in his State of the Union Address. No one expected the president to declare his solidarity with the Egyptian people. . . . .

At least Obama’s silence allowed him to avoid saying something he would soon regret.

That’s not the case with Vice President Joe Biden.

Asked about developments in Egypt during a PBS NewsHour interview this week, Biden said Mubarak should retain his grip on power.

The vice president also rejected the use of the term “dictator” to describe the Egyptian strongman who has held power for three decades, banned political parties, jailed opponents, censored the press, groomed his son for dynastic succession and unilaterally dissolved and appointed governments.

“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: Their Own Private Europe

President Obama’s State of the Union address was a ho-hum affair. But the official Republican response, from Representative Paul Ryan, was really interesting. And I don’t mean that in a good way.

Mr. Ryan made highly dubious assertions about employment, health care and more. But what caught my eye, when I read the transcript, was what he said about other countries: “Just take a look at what’s happening to Greece, Ireland, the United Kingdom and other nations in Europe. They didn’t act soon enough; and now their governments have been forced to impose painful austerity measures: large benefit cuts to seniors and huge tax increases on everybody.”

Johann Hari: How Can Conservatives Object to Protecting Gay Kids?

I am exhausted. I have spent all week trying to brainwash small children into being gay, by relentlessly inserting homosexuality into their math, geography and science lessons. Their little eyes widened when the gay algebra lesson started, but it worked: Their concept of “normal sexual behavior” has been successfully destroyed. It’s all part of the program brilliantly coordinated by the Homintern to imposed The Gay Agenda on Every Aspect of Life.

That, at least, is what you would believe if you had read some of Britain’s bestselling newspapers this week, or listened to some of our most prominent Conservative politicians. The headlines were filled with fury. The Conservative Member of Parliament Richard Drax said gays were trying to impose “questionable sexual standards” on kids, while a right-wing newspaper said we were mounting a massive “abuse of childhood.”

Here’s what is actually happening — with plenty of lessons for the U.S. A detailed study by the Schools Health Education Unit found that in Britain today, 70 percent of gay children get bullied, 41 percent get beaten up, and 17 percent get told at some point in their childhood that they are going to be killed. The evidence suggests the situation in the U.S. is just as bad.

Amy Wilentz: Haiti: Not for Amateurs

Lost in the uproar over the return of Jean-Claude Duvalier to Haiti and his to-ing and fro-ing from hotel to courthouse to hotel to mountain home, is the much more important political crisis. On election day in November, only 22.3 percent of Haiti’s eligible voters cast their ballots in what turned out to be an election plagued with fraud. The reason for the low turnout was apathy, coupled with the catastrophic loss of identity papers in the earthquake of January 2010. Given the miserable conditions of so many Haitians since the earthquake, the anemic turnout provided resounding evidence that Haitians don’t believe their vote matters.

And they are right. Many parties were kept out, including the popular party of Haiti’s first freely and fairly elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who has been living in exile in South Africa since a coup backed by the international community forced him from power in 2004. Many see post-Duvalier Haitian politics as a back-and-forth between the forces who support Duvalier, a prototypical right-wing strongman, and those who support Aristide, theoretically a leftist prodemocracy leader. Although this analysis is grossly simplistic, it is also partly true.

News is breaking extremely fast. Both Al Jazeera and CNN are transmitting live images. You can watch the Al Jazeera broadcast live on line. Protests broken out all over Egypt and there are tanks on the streets of Cairo. Reports are that the police have withdrawn from the Alexandria.

Mohamed ElBaradei, the former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, arrived in Egypt yesterday and it is being reported by numerous news agencies that he has been placed under house arrest

As I am writing this, the commentator is reporting that state security has entered Al Jeezera’s Cairo building in an attempt to shut down their feed. Communications have been hampered in the building. The cutting of cell phone connections and the Internet blackout the past three days is unprecedented and reporters and crews are missing, as per live reports.

It is prayer time and the protesters are organizing for evening prayer and the riot police has back off to give them time to pray.

There are reports of at least one person killed in Cairo and a curfew has been imposed for 6 PM Egyptian time (11 AM EST).

This is a video of clashes on a bridge that took place earlier today.

UP dates will continue as they happen.

Mishima’s live blog

I’ve been awake for 22 hours I’m going to bed- mishima

Up Date #1: CNN reports that the Egyptian Army has been ordered to take over the security from the police.

Up Date #2: The New York Times has continuous up dates on the protests as they receive them.

Egyptian President is expected to give a live address.

Up Date #3: A curfew went into effect at 6 PM (11 AM) and is being ignored.

Al Jazeera reports that 5 Army tanks have entered Cairo as protesters take over security police armored personnel carriers and police stations, setting them on fire.

Further up dates and videos will be below the fold.

In case you missed it because the American MSM mostly buried it, Tunisia had a revolution overthrowing it’s US backed dictator, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, who fled to Saudi Arabia with most of his family. The upheaval arouse from the streets out of the frustrations of a well educated public that is suffering with high unemployment and skyrocketing prices for basics. The streets protesters were joined by the police and the military. The “revolution” is spreading across Africa to Egypt with major protests in the streets condemning the rule of ailing President Hosni Mubarak and his hand pick successor, his businessman son. Inspired by the Tunisian revolution, Egypt poverty stricken youths have taken to the streets demanding the end of Mubarak’s 30 year rule.

For decades, Egypt’s authoritarian president, Hosni Mubarak, played a clever game with his political opponents.  

He tolerated a tiny and toothless opposition of liberal intellectuals whose vain electoral campaigns created the facade of a democratic process. And he demonized the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood as a group of violent extremists who posed a threat that he used to justify his police state.

But this enduring and, many here say, all too comfortable relationship was upended this week by the emergence of an unpredictable third force, the leaderless tens of thousands of young Egyptians who turned out to demand an end to Mr. Mubarak’s 30-year rule.

Now the older opponents are rushing to catch up.

“It was the young people who took the initiative and set the date and decided to go,” Mohamed ElBaradei, the former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said Wednesday with some surprise during a telephone interview from his office in Vienna, shortly before rushing home to Cairo to join the revolt.

ElBaradei, who has been targeted for assassination by Mubarak supporters, is returning to Egypt today. in his  statement issued prior to his departure, ElBaradei has some disparaging comments about Secretary Of State Hillary Clinton:

   When Egypt had parliamentary elections only two months ago, they were completely rigged. The party of President Hosni Mubarak left the opposition with only 3 percent of the seats. Imagine that. And the American government said that it was “dismayed.” Well, frankly, I was dismayed that all it could say is that it was dismayed. The word was hardly adequate to express the way the Egyptian people felt.

   Then, as protests built in the streets of Egypt following the overthrow of Tunisia’s dictator, I heard Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s assessment that the government in Egypt is “stable” and “looking for ways to respond to the legitimate needs and interests of the Egyptian people”. I was flabbergasted-and I was puzzled. What did she mean by stable, and at what price? Is it the stability of 29 years of “emergency” laws, a president with imperial power for 30 years, a parliament that is almost a mockery, a judiciary that is not independent? Is that what you call stability? I am sure not. And I am positive that it is not the standard you apply to other countries. What we see in Egypt is pseudo-stability, because real stability only comes with a democratically elected government..

   If you would like to know why the United States does not have credibility in the Middle East, that is precisely the answer…

(emphasis mine)

Now, it has spread to one of the poorest Mideastern countries, Yemen, as their youth take to the streets to protest their government.

BEIRUT, Lebanon – Yemen, one of the Middle East’s most impoverished countries and a haven for Al Qaeda militants, became the latest Arab state to witness mass protests on Thursday, as thousands of Yemenis took to the streets in the capital and other regions to demand a change in government. . . . . .

The demonstrations on Thursday followed several days of smaller protests by students and opposition groups calling for the removal of President Ali Abdallah Saleh, a strongman who has ruled this fractured country for more than 30 years and is a key ally of the United States in the fight against the Yemeni branch of Al Qaeda. . . . . .

Yemen’s fragile stability has been of increasing concern to the United States. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, in a visit to Sana earlier this month, urged Mr. Saleh to open a dialogue with the opposition, saying it would help to stabilize the country. His current term expires in two years, but proposed constitutional changes could allow him to hold onto power for longer.

How many despotic regimes will the US continue to bolster? For how long? US policy in the region has been on the wrong track for decades. Time to reassess is coming fast.

“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”.

Robert Reich: The President Ignored the Elephant in the Room

The president’s new emphasis on the importance of investing in education, infrastructure, and basic research in order to build the nation’s long-term competitive capacities is appropriate. For the last three decades the federal government’s spending on these three essentials has declined as a percentage of its total spending, arguably threatening America’s technological and economic leadership.

But the president’s failure to address the decoupling of American corporate profits from American jobs, and explain specifically what he’ll do to get jobs back, not only risks making his grand plans for reviving the nation’s “competitiveness” seem somewhat beside the point but also cedes to Republicans the dominant narrative.

Robert Sheer: Hogwash, Mr. President

What is the state of the union? You certainly couldn’t tell from that platitudinous hogwash that the president dished out Tuesday evening. I had expected Barack Obama to be his eloquent self, appealing to our better nature, but instead he was mealy-mouthed in avoiding the tough choices that a leader should delineate in a time of trouble. He embraced clean air and a faster Internet while ignoring the depth of our economic pain and the Wall Street scoundrels who were responsible-understandably so, since they so prominently populate the highest reaches of his administration. He had the effrontery to condemn “a parade of lobbyists” for rigging government after he appointed the top Washington representative of JPMorgan Chase to be his new chief of staff.

The speech was a distraction from what seriously ails us: an unabated mortgage crisis, stubbornly high unemployment and a debt that spiraled out of control while the government wasted trillions making the bankers whole. Instead the president conveyed the insular optimism of his fat-cat associates: “We are poised for progress. Two years after the worst recession most of us have ever known, the stock market has come roaring back. Corporate profits are up. The economy is growing again.” How convenient to ignore the fact that this bubble of prosperity, which has failed the tens of millions losing their homes and jobs, was floated by enormous government indebtedness now forcing deep cuts in social services including state financial aid for those better-educated students the president claims to be so concerned about.

Laura Flanders: Protests in Cairo Forgotten by Obama

In the State of the Union speech, Barack Obama did get applause for saying that the United States stands with the people of Tunisia. Now, he didn’t mention the two decades of support the US had given the dictatorship.

The president did not have anything to say about Egypt-where thousands of people, inspired by Tunisia, were taking to the streets to protest their own repressive government-another one the United States has backed for years. Secretary of State Clinton’s official word is that the Egyptian government was “stable.” Aha. She said it’s “looking for ways to respond to the legitimate needs and interests” of its people. And she urged “restraint” as they suppressed protesters.

Rachel Maddow describes several political operatives who have squandered their political clout by representing nefarious overseas actors like Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, Jean-Paul “Baby Doc” Duvalier, dictators in places like the Ivory Coast and Equatorial Guinea and the governments of Indonesia and Saudi Arabia that fund organizations that plot terrorist attacks against the United States and its citizens.

Both Bob Barr and Rudy Guiliani have indicated that they are interested in running for president in 2012.

In a lame defense of Mark Penn, the PR firm, Burson Marsteller, said it was unfair “to tie the company’s current leader to former clients that predated him. Penn joined Burson Marsteller in 2005, years after the junta, Indonesia and Saudia Arabian clients contacted the firm.”

Shortly after the Tuscon shootings, Mr. Penn let loose with this little “bomb” on November 4, 2010 when he told Chris Matthews that what Obama really needs to reconnect to the American electorate is an “Oklahoma City moment”. Both sides are guilty of this kind of political rhetoric but at least the left acknowledges that it has to stop and there is a need for a change in tone.  

From Politico:

The House passed a GOP-sponsored bill to end public financing for presidential campaigns Wednesday. Ten Democrats, most of them Blue Dogs, joined Republicans in the vote.

The bill suspends a 35-year-old program that lets taxpayers direct $3 to a general fund in the Treasury when they file their taxes, without reducing their refund. Republicans say ending the option would save $617 million over 10 years without preventing individuals from making personal donations to any candidate or party.

Democrats say there’s a bigger issue at stake. In eliminating the public option, big donors will gain more influence in elections. They drew a comparison between the bill and the Supreme Court’s Citizen’s United v. Federal Election Commission, which eased restrictions on corporate contributions to campaigns.

These are the Blue Dog Democrats who voted for this bill:

Reps. Ben Chandler (Ky.)

Jim Matheson (Utah)

Heath Shuler (N.C.)

Jason Altmire (Penn.)

Dan Boren (Okla.)

Henry Cuellar (Texas)

Joe Donnelly (Ind.)

Nick Rahall (W.V.)

Ross (Ark.)

Adam Schiff (Calif.).

Time to start primarying these corporate owned sell outs of the American voters.

This bill now moves to the Senate where hopefully it will never get out of committee but I have my doubts about them, too.