The Commentariat -- January 30

Art by Barry Blitt for the New York Times.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." ...

... Dan Balz of the Washington Post: "The outlines of the domestic side of the 2012 election debate came into sharper focus this past week. President Obama called on America to win the future and made government a principal instrument of that effort. Republicans countered by pointing at Washington and its appetite for spending as the single biggest threat to a secure future." ...

... Peter Wallsten of the Washington Post: "Less than three months since his party's major election losses, President Obama has presided over a West Wing makeover designed to help him keep a sharp focus on economic issues heading into his 2012 reelection campaign, while drawing clear lines of distinction with newly empowered Republicans." ...

... Sheryl Gay Stolberg of the New York Times: President Obama pivots into the Cheerleader-in-Chief just as he is gearing up his re-election campaign. David Axelrod claims the upbeat State of the Union address was not so much a pivot as "a straight rhetorical line ... from earlier speeches like the heavily biographical 2004 keynote to the Democratic National Convention, in which Mr. Obama spoke of America as 'a magical place.' The State of the Union address, Mr. Axelrod said, was ... a 'matter of returning to first principles' for a president who had to temper his rhetoric when his administration was 'functioning as a triage unit arriving in the middle of an economic calamity.'"

... Maureen Dowd: David Axelrod departs the White House. "Asked about the cascade of 'exclusive' exit interviews he was giving, he warned drolly: 'Don’t turn on the Shopping Network!'” AND here's another "exclusive" exit interview, this one with Jack Tapper of ABC News:

Fareed Zakaria on Egypt:

Zakaria interviews Mohamed ElBaradei:

Massimo Calabresi of Time: "... Secretary of State [Hillary Clinton] took the U.S. position on the situation in Egypt a tonal step further, calling for an 'orderly transition', suggesting that the administration is beginning to view embattled President Hosni Mubarak's days as numbered.... The U.S. will have a better chance of influencing a slow handover of power over the next six to nine months than trying to drive fast changing events on the ground. Clinton's statements suggest that's the developing American strategy." CW: see today's Ledes. ...

... David Sanger & Helene Cooper of the New York Times: "President Obama’s decision to stop short, at least for now, of calling for Hosni Mubarak’s resignation was driven by the administration’s concern that it could lose all leverage over the Egyptian president, and because it feared creating a power vacuum inside the country, according to administration officials involved in the debate. In recounting Saturday’s deliberations, they said Mr. Obama was acutely conscious of avoiding any perception that the United States was once again quietly engineering the ouster of a major Middle East leader." ...

Justin Elliott of Salon talks with Stanford historian Joel Beinin about the history of the U.S.'s alliance with Egyptian leadership -- a very useful shortcourse. ...

... Here's Juan Cole's take on Egyptian class conflict. ...

Egyptian Vice President Omar Suleiman. European Pressphoto Agency photo.... Michael Slackman of the New York Times profiles Omar Suleiman, whom Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak named vice president yesterday. ...

... AND Jane Mayer of the New Yorker: Suleiman "was the C.I.A.’s point man in Egypt for renditions — the covert program in which the C.I.A. snatched terror suspects from around the world and returned them to Egypt and elsewhere for interrogation, often under brutal circumstances." ...

... Scott Shane of the New York Times on the role of Web tools in revolutionary uprisings. ...

... Christopher Beam of Slate surmises how Egypt shut down the Internet. ...

... AND the Huffington Post has a page with suggestions for how Egyptians can get back online. Of course, if they're not online, I don't know how they'll read it. Oh, and it's all in English. ...

.. Tweets from Egyptian journalist Waal Abbas here. Most are in Arabic; a few in English. Related Los Angeles Times story here.

... Howard Schneider & Greg Jaffe of the Washington Post: "Egypt's military, built with tens of billions of dollars in American technology and training, is facing its biggest test in decades.... The arrival of tanks and troops in Cairo's streets seemed to calm a tense situation, suggesting that the Egyptian military will play a key role as the country navigates its way out of the current crisis. On Saturday, soldiers seemed largely to sympathize with the throngs of protesters. The massive amounts of defense aid -- which have made Egypt's military one of the more effective forces in the region and yielded a relatively stable and wealthy officer class -- will probably give the United States some critical leverage, Middle East analysts said."

WTF. Who -- besides the Newt -- knew that Gingrich wrote a book published in 2005 titled Winning the Future? Kasie Hunt of Politico writes that Newt's little polemic has shot up in sales since President Obama used the phrase "win" or "winning the future" nine times in his SOTU & Gov. Classy S. Palin thought she should call attention to the acronym. Naturally, Newt has been tweeting about it.

John Curran of the AP: "Bolstered by billions in federal stimulus money, an effort to expand broadband Internet access to rural areas is under way, an ambitious 21st-century infrastructure project with parallels to the New Deal electrification of the nation's hinterlands in the 1930s and 1940s. President Barack Obama emphasized the importance of Internet access in his State of the Union address last week."

John Donnelly of CQ: "For the second year in a row, the U.S. military has lost more troops to suicide than it has to combat in Iraq and Afghanistan."

Palin Retreats. Andy Barr of Politico: in a speech before a gun club in Reno, Sarah Palin retooled "Don't retreat, reload," to "Don't retreat, stand tall."

Body Size Matters. (Just Thought This Was Interesting.) Amelia Reyno of the Washington Post: "... thin women are paid significantly more than their average-size counterparts, while heavier women make less. Skinnier-than-average men, on the other hand, cash smaller paychecks than their average-weight peers. Experts say it's just another sign that as a society, we've internalized the unrealistic, media-driven physical ideals that show up in the workplace -- and therefore the pocketbook."

News Items

Firedoglake: "Twenty-five protesters were arrested in Rancho Mirage, California today, at a protest in front of the Rancho Las Palmas resort, site of the 'Billionaire’s Caucus,' an annual meeting put on by the Koch Brothers and other corporate entities and conservative movement operators. Riverside Sheriff’s deputy Melissa Nieburger ... estimated between 800 and 1,000 activists at the 'Uncloak the Kochs' event." New York Times story here.

AP: "Southern Sudan's referendum commission said Sunday that more than 99 percent of voters in the south opted to secede from the country's north in a vote held earlier this month.... If the process stays on track, Southern Sudan will become the world's newest country in July. Border demarcation, oil rights and the status of the contested region of Abyei still have to be negotiated."

Fox "News": "The United States wants to see steps taken to transition Egypt to a democracy, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Sunday in remarks that avoided stating a U.S. preference about Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's fate but offered several positive marks for Egypt's army." Updates: New York Times story here; Politico story here. ...

... New York Times: "As President Hosni Mubarak struggled to maintain a tenuous hold on power and the Egyptian military reinforced strategic points in the capital with tanks and armored vehicles, the United States said on Sunday it was offering evacuation flights for American citizens, including diplomatic dependents and non-essential staff." Story had been updated. The lede now reads, "The Egyptian uprising, which emerged as a disparate and spontaneous grass-roots movement, began to coalesce Sunday, as the largest opposition group, the Muslim Brotherhood, threw its support behind a leading secular opposition figure, Mohamed ElBaradei, to negotiate on behalf of the forces seeking the fall of President Hosni Mubarak." See Fareed Zakaria's interview of ElBaradei in the left column. ...

... New York Times: thousands of tourists are trapped in Egypt. Also, "about 90,000 Americans live and work in Egypt. There have been no reports so far of plans to evacuate them, though some American companies were ordering workers’ families to leave."