Sunday punditry.
NY Times:
Now, at the halfway point of a first term in which Mr. Obama has mostly relied on the counsel of a tightly closed inner circle, Mr. Biden is taking a more prominent and influential role. With the departure of Rahm Emanuel as chief of staff and Mr. Obama’s need to negotiate with Congressional Republicans if he is to advance his agenda, the president is increasingly using Mr. Biden as a multipurpose emissary while continuing to seek his counsel behind the scenes.
Mr. Biden not only played an important role in negotiating the tax deal with Republicans and trying to sell it to Democrats, but also was one of the people in the West Wing who urged Mr. Obama to try to find a compromise on the issue in the first place, aides said.
Frank Rich:
Hujar died in 1987, and Wojnarowicz would die at age 37, also of AIDS, in 1992. This is now ancient, half-forgotten history. When a four-minute excerpt from "A Fire in My Belly" was included in an exhibit that opened six weeks ago at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, it received no attention. That’s hardly a surprise, given the entirety of this very large show — a survey of same-sex themes in American portraiture titled "Hide/Seek." The works of Wojnarowicz, Hujar and other lesser known figures are surrounded by such lofty (and often unlikely) bedfellows (many gay, some not) as Robert Mapplethorpe, John Singer Sargent, Grant Wood, Thomas Eakins, Georgia O’Keeffe, Andy Warhol, Andrew Wyeth and Haring. It’s an exhibit that would have been unimaginable in a mainstream institution in Wojnarowicz’s lifetime.
The story might end there — like Haring’s altarpiece, a bittersweet yet uplifting postscript to a time of plague. But it doesn’t because "Fire in My Belly" was removed from the exhibit by the National Portrait Gallery some 10 days ago with the full approval, if not instigation, of its parent institution, the Smithsonian. (The censored version of "Hide/Seek" is still scheduled to run through Feb. 13.) The incident is chilling because it suggests that even in a time of huge progress in gay civil rights, homophobia remains among the last permissible bigotries in America. "Think anti-gay bullying is just for kids? Ask the Smithsonian," wrote The Los Angeles Times’s art critic, Christopher Knight, last week. One might add: Think anti-gay bullying is just for small-town America? Look at the nation’s capital.
NY Times editorial:
Here is a basic truth about the deficit: In the long run, it cannot be fixed, without reining in spending on Medicare and Medicaid...
The most disturbing element of both reports is that, in their efforts to show quick savings, they shift much of the burden from the federal budget to individuals or, in some cases, to states. That may make the federal deficit look better, but it is a shell game that produces no real reduction in the cost of health care.
Both commissions would save the government significant money by forcing all but the poorest Medicare beneficiaries to pay higher premiums and co-insurance.
Dana Milbank:
For the first time in my adult lifetime, I am really proud of President Obama.
I'm not particularly proud of the tax-cut deal he and the Republicans negotiated. But I'm proud that he has finally stood firm against the likes of Peter DeFazio.
I've not yet found the opportunity to be proud of Dana Milbank. Clearly, the Villagers still pine for Ronald Reagan. God knows why.
Kathleen Parker:
With the exception of our military, we are a flabby lot, and I'm not just talking about girth. We are merely disgusting in that department. I'm talking about our self-discipline, our individual will, our self-respect, our voluntary order.
Note the operative words: self, individual and voluntary.
We don't need bureaucrats and politicians to dictate how to behave; how to spend (or save); what and how to eat. We need to be the people we were meant to be: strong, resilient, disciplined, entrepreneurial, focused, wise, playful, humorous, humble, thoughtful and, please, self-deprecating. We have all the tools and opportunities a planet can confer.
It's still a jungle out there, however, and the weak lose every time. The lack of respect from other countries, the ridicule from thugs and the WikiLeaks celebration are part of the same cloth. We can do what's necessary - tighten our belts, get tough, grab our shovels. To do less is to surrender to victimhood and the fates that befall those who decline to govern themselves.
John Nichols:
For all the excitement, Sanders was not actually blocking a vote on the tax deal. The Senate will not take the issue up until Monday, at the earliest.
Sanders was, however, sending a powerful signal about the fight to come.
The senator concluded his remarkable 8.5 speech with a call to action. "If the American people stand up and say, 'we can do better than this, that we don’t need to drive up the national debt by giving tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires,' (if) the American people are prepared to stand – and we’re prepared to follow them – I think we can defeat this proposal," he declared. "I think we can come up with a better proposal which better reflects the needs of the middle class and working families of our country and, to me, most importantly, the children of our country. And with that, Madam President, I would yield the floor."
Parker and Milbank both need to pay more attention to Sen. Sanders and what he is saying. They could both stand to learn something, including that center-right columnists are not the arbiters of common sense.