Sunday opinion. [See the latest Egypt situation mothership over in the rec diary list.]
NY Times:
Spotlight Again Falls on Web Tools and Change
By cutting off Egypt’s Internet and wireless service, the president betrayed his fear that his weakness could be exposed.
NY Times:
The chaos is laying bare a stark fact, experts say: In the Arab world, American words may not matter.
NY Times:
Less than an hour after Mona Eltahway, an Egyptian blogger and journalist, appealed to CNN to stop focusing on looting and security problems in Egypt following the government's decision to withdraw the police from the streets, the broadcaster has changed its onscreen headline from "CHAOS IN EGYPT" to "UPRISING IN EGYPT."
But for all you investors out there:
If President Hosni Mubarak clings to power, investors will reprice Egyptian and regional assets to brace for weeks, months or possibly years of heightened political risk.
If he goes, global markets could still react with alarm, fearing a rising tide of unrest across the Middle East and possibly other authoritarian economies that could threaten energy supplies and potentially global economic recovery.
Frank Rich:
The Republicans, who sold themselves as the uncompromising champions of Tea Party-fueled fiscal austerity, have discovered that most Americans prefer compromise to confrontation...
Obama’s post-New Year’s surge past a 50 percent approval rating — well ahead of both Reagan’s and Bill Clinton’s comeback trajectories after their respective midterm shellackings — may have only just begun.
There was no drama to Obama’s address — just a unifying theme, at long last, as he reasserted the role of government in rebooting and rebuilding the country for a new century and putting Americans back to work. The president wisely left any theatrics to his adversaries, and, as always, they were happy to oblige.
And most Americans aren't buying gold, either. But speaking of compromise, The Hill:
Republicans embrace Obama rail initiative
"I believe it's good for America to develop a high-speed rail corridor in the Northeast corridor," Rep. Bill Shuster (R-Pa.), the chairman of the railroad subcommittee, said according to the Connecticut Post. "It's a place we have to start, we have to accomplish it, because then I believe all of America, in the various corridors around the country, will want high-speed rail if they see success here."
Rep. John Mica (R-Fla.), the chairman of the whole committee, also said Friday he was "pleased that President Obama has helped to launch a system for improved passenger rail service for our nation."
The pair warned Obama to seek more private investments in the project, and encouraged the administration to be more focused in where it will deploy high-speed rail service.
Still, the pair's support could enable cooperation between the Republican House and the Obama administration on one of the president's major initiatives.
Dana Milbank:
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.
The Villagers are starting to get it. This joins Milbank's Sarah Palin moratorium column as "hey, I just woke up, what's going on here?" pieces.
And speaking of the moratorium, this tongue-in-cheek is from CJR:
We might be being duped here. After all, who is to say that after lulling us into our own moratoriums, Milbank himself won’t devote his month of February to all things Palin? With the competition shamed into silence, all those floating clicks, all those searching eyes, could be his. Cunning, ‘tis true. But too cunning for a hard-working D.C. politico?
I don’t know that I would put it past Milbank. After all, one wonders just how many clicks today’s column calling for a moratorium on Palin—headlined, "I’m declaring February a Palin-free month. Join me!"—has nabbed him so far.
We’re on to you, Milbank.
Conor Williams:
In his State of the Union speech on Tuesday, President Obama demanded that we "stop expelling talented, responsible young people," people we've educated, because of irrational immigration policies. This sort of immigration reform should be obvious, particularly in the part of the country that stands to benefit most from more immigration - the politically crucial Midwest.
You wouldn't know it, though, from some of the politicians the region produces. See former Minnesota governor - and possible 2012 presidential contender - Tim Pawlenty. For a Republican, he's relatively moderate on the issue. He was the only prominent GOP presidential aspirant to speak at a recent meeting of the conservative Hispanic Leadership Network. Yet his views are hardly moderate at all: Pawlenty has advocated fining or jailing business owners who employ undocumented immigrants. He's even suggested amending the Constitution to repeal birthright citizenship.
Dan Balz:
Obama's State of the Union caught the public mood in other ways. His focus on reinvigorating America's manufacturing base and on fixing schools, two broad themes in his State of the Union address, tracked with the findings of a recent NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll that asked people what worries them most about the country's future. The flight of manufacturing jobs overseas was the most-cited worry about the country's future (33 percent) and the poor quality of public schools was second (25 percent).
What gives Americans confidence about the future? Some basic American beliefs are still the key. In the NBC-Wall Street Journal survey, the three most-cited factors were: the opportunity to work hard and get ahead; creativity and innovation (a major theme of the president's address); and the free enterprise system.
George Lakoff:
For the first two years of his administration, President Obama had no overriding narrative, no frame to define his policymaking, no way to make sense of what he was trying to do. As of his 2011 State of the Union Address, he has one: Competitiveness.
The competitiveness narrative is intended to serve a number of purposes at once:
1. Split the Republican business community off from the hard right , especially the Tea Party. Most business leaders want real economics not ideological economics. And it is hard to pin the "socialist" label on a business-oriented president. He may succeed.