Your Abbreviated Pundit Round-up

Saturday opinion.

Andrew Cohen:

A Mohammed trial for Sept. 11 crimes -- the case might actually be styled United States v. Mohammed -- could be one of the biggest legal landmarks in American history. It's not surprising that bringing one of the "faces of terror" to within blocks of Ground Zero would generate a lot of fear, trepidation and political hysteria. So let's try to separate sizzle from steak. Here are six myths about Mohammed and his trial that ought to be destroyed:

Good read.

NY Times on the 9/11 trials in NYC:

To many, it felt exquisitely right: This is where it began. This is where it must end.

Scott Rasmussen and Douglas E. Schoen: Obama needs to turn right to sit well with independents. That's where we are, and that's where the polls say he should be.

Terence Samuel:

Will the GOP be sufficiently rebuilt to challenge Obama and the Democrats in 2010? Probably not.

Charles Blow:

Republicans are likely to gain in 2010, not because of their anachronous tenets, but because of historical patterns and an electorate exasperated with seeming Democratic ineptitude...

[Eric] Cantor is also right that the people want change — still. They trusted Democrats to deliver. The Democrats haven’t, not yet at least, and pleas for patience come at a price. If voters’ thirst remains unsated, they will change politicians until politicians change policies.

Gail Collins:

A lot of people are worrying about the world coming to an end in 2012.

Bummer. I thought we’d gotten over all that in 2000.

Bob Herbert:

President Obama’s strongest supporters during the presidential campaign were the young, the black and the poor — and they are among those who are being hammered unmercifully in this long and cruel economic downturn that the financial elites are telling us is over.

Now, you don't choose your recessions, but...

Alan Sipress:

What's the worst-case scenario? It could be a continuing vaccine shortage. It might be a mutation in the swine flu virus that suddenly makes the strain resistant to Tamiflu, as some seasonal flu strains already are. Or it could be that hospital ICUs become so overwhelmed that people who could have been saved die.

These are all unnerving possibilities. Yet many flu specialists say their real nightmare is that swine flu could meet up and swap genetic material -- or reassort, as these scientists say -- with another, deadlier flu strain, breeding a new virus that is as contagious as H1N1 but far more savage.

Alan's covered H5N1 in Southeast Asia. Be thankful this pandemic's not that pandemic.

Added from TFAH:

Trust for America''s Health (TFAH) and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) released a public opinion survey that finds that 71 percent of Americans favor an increased investment in disease prevention and that disease prevention is one of the most popular components of health reform.  Forty-four percent of Americans strongly favor investing more in prevention.