More on Egypt

Israel may think the US should be world-deciders, but the fine gentleman from New York disagrees. Representative Gary Ackerman had this to say:

President Mubarak has been a valuable partner for the United States, but he has, by his own decisions and successive phony elections, shorn his rule of any mandate or legitimacy beyond that provided by force and arms. His last act of service to Egypt should be to facilitate a fast transfer of power to a transitional government that can prepare for free and fair elections. Accordingly, I believe the United States must suspend its assistance to Egypt until this transition is underway.

The Egyptian people have made their wishes very clear: it is time for President Mubarak to step down and allow Egypt to move forward into a new era of democracy, human rights and the rule of law.

Well played, sir. Well played.

Holy Shit This Is Awesome!

Seriously... kudos Google! While the company has come under some fire for its policies vis-a-vis China, this stands out as quite spectacular:

Over the weekend we came up with the idea of a speak-to-tweet service—the ability for anyone to tweet using just a voice connection.

We worked with a small team of engineers from Twitter, Google and SayNow, a company we acquired last week, to make this idea a reality. It’s already live and anyone can tweet by simply leaving a voicemail on one of these international phone numbers (+16504194196 or +390662207294 or +97316199855) and the service will instantly tweet the message using the hashtag #egypt. No Internet connection is required. People can listen to the messages by dialing the same phone numbers or going to twitter.com/speak2tweet.

Israel Could Not Be More Wrong on Egypt

This is the kind of petty, protectionist and short-sighted thinking that infuriates even the friends of Israel. As dobber so aptly put it: "so Israel's official policy stance is that the US should pick leaders of foreign sovereign nations over the will of their own people?"

The Egyptian Message Censored

Egypt and the people's protests is the biggest story in the world right now. This is especially true on the heels of Tunisia, and Iran. This story dwarfs anything happening in Washington, including assessments over Washington's reaction to what is happening (though, I was quite impressed with SOS Clinton on the morning shows yesterday). I cannot tell you what, exactly I think the importance of these events are; I just have an inchoate sense that we'll look back on these times as momentous. But it's not simply momentous for an American audience, rather, its importance is largely in the example it sets throughout the world; in the opportunity it has to reach out and grab those other peoples feeling the urge of democracy. This is why, especially following Hu Jintao's trip to Washington recently, it is so disappointing to read this story regarding Chinese efforts to suppress the pro-democracy message from Egypt:

The filtering of search result and the blocking of search term “Egypt” in social media websites is to prevent certain interpretation of the political situation in Egypt. The scenes of Tanks moving into the city center, the confrontation between the people and the soldiers are very likely to recall Chinese people's memory of the June 4 incident back in 1989 and the criticism of the authoritarian government in Egypt can easily turn into a political allegory in China. The propaganda department certainly has to issue censorship alert to web-portal and social media websites, where opinions can spread rapidly and become mainstream public discourses in a few hour time.

A Morning Gem

Thank you Political Wire for making my morning with this one:

Failed Nevada U.S. Senate candidate Sharron Angle (R) was in Iowa but wouldn't tell the Des Moines Register whether she was there exploring a run for president or not.

Said Angle: "I'll just say I have lots of options for the future, and I'm investigating all my options.

And then I appreciated Chris Christie's quote from Political Wire as well. I hate to give the Governor credit, but he's saying and doing some smart things regarding his political future. If only he could figure out how to run his state:

"If you don't believe in your heart that you're ready, you have no business running. And just because you see political opportunity, that's not an excuse to run."

-- New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R), in an interview on CNBC, on why he's not running for president.

Quick Thought of the Morning

Why will regulating health insurance companies destroy our republic and represent an overreaching of the federal government into states' rights but the federal government must absolutely as a high priority tell the states how they should decide verdicts in torts cases?

Pre-SOTU Economics Post

Since President Obama is likely to spend a good portion of tonight's State of the Union address discussing government spending, I figured I would take a moment to comment on Eugene Robinson's column from the Washington Post today. Robinson asserts that Republican budget proposals slash spending based simply on spite and politics, not economic policy:

Republicans who feign attacks of the vapors and fainting spells over the big, scary deficit would be more convincing if they didn't begin with the insane premise that defense spending should be sacrosanct. The House leadership in the past few days has begun to signal retreat from this indefensible position, but it's unclear how much of the hyper-conservative GOP majority will follow.

. . .

The Republican "Pledge to America" promised to cut "at least $100 billion in the first year alone," notwithstanding "exceptions for seniors, veterans and our troops." This was never a serious proposal, given that defense, plus entitlements and other mandatory spending, consume about four-fifths of the budget. But it was a nice round number that sounded good.

. . .

Do Americans really want the effectiveness of, say, food safety inspection to be eroded by 30 percent? What about air traffic control? I didn't think so.

Robinson also reminds us that the Republicans political budget play would cut "funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the Legal Services Corporation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Energy Star program, the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change" while continuing to waste $13 billion for a landing craft that Secretary of Defense Bob Gates wants to cut because "we are no longer fighting World War II."

I agree with Robinson. There are plenty of wasteful defense contracts that should be among the first things we cut because they don't exist to keep our troops safe. Some things, like the FDA or the FAA or (I'll say it...) USAID are just as important as building military equipment that doesn't work or fit in with how our military operates in this millennium.