What is the Muslim Brotherhood?
Mother Jones offers a cogent, informed, sane analysis. Both the good news and the bad.

Fox Geezer Syndrome
Via Kevin Drum, this is a must-read, if your parents have become batshit conservative crazy in the last 2 years. Luckily, I'm not in that boat, but maybe you are, or someone you know is. Pass it on.

Inspiration

Revolution
It's not every day that you get to watch a successful revolution unfold over the course of a few weeks. And it's only these days that you can watch it from the comfort of a coffee shop as reports stream in over Twitter, as I am doing now, with Bob Dylan in the background, singing "everybody must get stoned". Either appropriate or not, for the moment, not sure.

Considering this new era of revolution, below find some of my favorite celebratory tweets of the morning, instead of the usual clip from some prestigious newspaper.

@NickKristof: Omar Suleiman says that #Mubarak has quit, armed forces in charge! People power wins -- for now....

@theharryshearer: 3 weeks to take down a dictator. Time well spent.

@SultanAlQassemi: I love you Egypt.

@theharryshearer: Dear George W. Bush: this is how the Middle East gets re-made. No invasions necessary.

@davidcorndc: Number of Egyptian civilian deaths during revolution: approx. hundreds. Number of Iraqi civilian deaths during war: 100,000 or more. #Egypt

@AP_Ken_Thomas: CAIRO (AP) _ Egypt's ElBaradei: "This is the greatest day of my life. The country has been liberated."

@davidcorndc: Glenn Beck just ran to the Safeway to buy more canned goods. #Egypt #caliphateacoming

@dcdebbie: Never forget, it took the courage of a 26 year old woman to start this revolution: http://bit.ly/fWeFC8 #Egypt [me: the video this link refers to is now posted above.]

@kagrox: Egyptian people greet selves as liberators.

@SCClemons: Feels odd to be cheering for a military government in #Egypt w/total power. Actually, I am not cheering for that. Lots could still go wrong

@LaraABCNews: Chants in Tahrir: 'Muslims, Christians, We are One.' This is the rebirth of a country, with a feeling that anything is possible #Egypt

@brianbeutler: McCain conflicted. Happy Mubarak's gone, but furious about all the gay high-fiving in the salons of Georgetown.

Whose Turn Is It?
Monopoly Live is a new version of the same old game, with one big difference - a big-brotherish electronic monitor towering over the board to tell you whose turn it is, which space you should occupy, how much money you have, basically squeezing the last drops of fun out of it.

The tower, powered by 4 AA batteries, bathes the board in infrared light, and a camera can see reflectors placed on each game piece. To roll the die, you hide your game piece from the camera by cupping your hand over it, and the computer rolls, complete with fake dice sounds. It then watches to make sure you land on the right property. There are new random events like a horse race, auctions, or a gas tax, and there’s an option to pay a bit more to upgrade your utilities so they are green.

What's the point of being an actual big brother now, if some electronic gizmo is going to eliminate all opportunities for bullying, pointing out mistakes, running the game as we see fit, etc?

Don't Buy the Smurfberries
How can this possibly be legal?

Over the winter break from school, 8-year-old Madison worked to dress up her simple mushroom home on the iPhone game Smurfs' Village. In doing so, she also amassed a $1,400 bill from Apple....But like a growing number of parents, Madison's mom, Stephanie Kay, was shocked to find very real charges from iTunes show up in her e-mail box days later.

The app can cost money to download of course, and most of them do, but I didn't know iPhone apps could subsequently charge money to your iTunes account. But more basic than that, you can charge real money for imaginary fruit?

We Are All Egyptians
That's the title of Nick Kristof's op-ed in today's NYTimes

At Tahrir Square’s field hospital (a mosque in normal times), 150 doctors have volunteered their services, despite the risk to themselves. Maged, a 64-year-old doctor who relies upon a cane to walk, told me that he hadn’t been previously involved in the protests, but that when he heard about the government’s assault on peaceful pro-democracy protesters, something snapped.

So early Thursday morning, he prepared a will and then drove 125 miles to Tahrir Square to volunteer to treat the injured. “I don’t care if I don’t go back,” he told me. “I decided I had to be part of this.”

“If I die,” he added, “this is for my country.”

What Mubarak's disgraceful end has done is bind up all peace-loving, freedom-loving citizens of the world in unity with the protests. Any hesitations that were there before - he has at least been a helpful US ally, and maintained a peaceful border with Israel - have fallen away with the brutality of his hired hands.

Rooting for a movement like this, from the safety of America, is tricky. The people could be crushed; the resulting government could be no better. Something indeed worse may come of it for the people of Egypt and the world - some ruler even more oppressive and more dangerous. But that caution hardly seems to matter now. Hundreds of thousands have stood up to their dictator in peaceful rebellion. Greeted with a downpour of rocks and nail-studded clubs, firebombs and razors, they stand there still. What other choice do we have than to believe in and hope for them?

Removing the Witnesses
It's getting ugly.

The concerted effort to remove journalists lent a sense of foreboding to events in the square, where battles continued between the protesters and the Mubarak supporters, who human rights workers and protesters say are being paid and organized by the government.

Shameful and sad, not just because of the horrifying violence and brutal thuggery of the moment, but because of its certain long-lasting impact: hatred, division, and mistrust among the Egyptian people. That's no way to start a new government. Violence is no way to eliminate opposition, it's a way to ensure it, likely for generations.

Food: Eat Less, Make it Yourself
The new USDA Dietary Guidelines are out, including some shockingly good advice. The NYTimes reports:

As the nation’s obesity crisis continues unabated, federal regulators on Monday issued their bluntest nutrition advice to date: drink water instead of sugary drinks like soda, fill your plate with fruits and vegetables and cut down on processed foods filled with sodium, fat or sugar.

More important, perhaps, the government told Americans, “Enjoy your food, but eat less.” Many Americans eat too many calories every day, expanding their waistlines and imperiling their health.

A great site I just found - Food Politics - breaks down the good, the bad and the ugly in the report. There, Marion Nestle notes:

The report translates its advice (pages 62-68). It translates “Cut back on foods and drinks with added sugars,” a nutrition euphemism, as:

Drink few or no regular sodas, sports drinks, energy drinks, and fruit drinks. Eat less cake, cookies, ice cream, other desserts, and candy. If you do have these foods and drinks, have a small portion.

But it translates “Cut back on solid fats” in yet another euphemism: “Select lean meats and poultry, and fat-free or low-fat milk and milk products.” This, no doubt, is to avoid the politically impossible “eat less meat.”

In related news, here's some free advice: follow Michael Pollan on Twitter!

Egypt-Blogging
Want to keep up with the goings-on in Egypt? You could do worse than follow The Lede, Robert Mackey's NYTimes blog. Lots and lots of great info and other stuff there.

Oscar Nominations
See the whole list here. Below are the nominees for Best Picture:
* Black Swan
* The Fighter
* Inception
* The Kids Are All Right
* The King's Speech
* 127 Hours
* The Social Network
* Toy Story 3
* True Grit
* Winter's Bone
I expect The King's Speech to win - saw it over the weekend. It's really good but also classic Oscar material, which is why I see it overtaking The Social Network. With 10 nominees, though, is this the year an underdog with a loyal following makes it? Inception? Black Swan? Probably not.

See Ebert's take here. He thinks True Grit has a real shot.

Aww, Boo-Hoo
Link

In boom times, yacht enthusiasts would order a new dream boat and keep their old one for the two or three years the builder needed to complete the new boat. Then, they would quickly sell the older yacht to impatient new millionaires and billionaires eager for their requisite status symbols.

But that equation changed with the financial crisis two years ago and took the superyacht market down with it.

Some of the wealthy have ended up like Peter A. Hochfelder, the principal and founder of Brahman Capital Management, a private investment firm in Manhattan. Mr. Hochfelder already owned a 134-foot Lürssen, named Blind Date, that was built in 1995. He commissioned a second boat in 2007, a 161-foot Trinity yacht, that he christened with the same name. It was completed in 2009.

Now, Mr. Hochfelder, who declined to be interviewed, has put both on the market, in the hope that he can sell at least one.

It just really really stinks that the yacht market has slowed. (It's also hard out there to be a pimp, or so I have heard.).

Here is a brief reminder though: According to the most recent census data, 14.3% of Americans live in poverty, that's about 1 out of every 7. That includes *more than a quarter of all African-Americans* and 1 out of every 5 children.

Don't get me wrong - millionaires are people too. They laugh and cry and suffer and help people and experience heart-break and joy and are deserving of all the same empathy the whole human race is. Money doesn't solve life problems, and it probably even creates some. But not being able to sell your yacht is not really one of them, not one that will generate much concern from me, anyway.

Expectations
A new poll shows the very reasonable ideas Americans have for how to address the budget deficit.

[W]hen given a straight-up choice between broad spending cuts and tax increases, Americans say they would prefer to reduce the deficit mostly through less spending. It’s not even close: 62 percent for spending cuts, 29 percent for tax increases.

A few questions later, though, our pollsters offered a different choice. Would people rather eliminate Medicare’s shortfall through reduced Medicare benefits or higher taxes?

The percentages then switch, becoming nearly a mirror image of what they had been. Some 64 percent of respondents preferred tax increases, while 24 percent chose Medicare cuts. The same is true of Social Security: 63 percent for higher taxes, 25 percent for reduced benefits.

So, we think the deficit is a serious problem (70%); we want it solved through spending cuts (62%), unless you're talking about spending we care about (64%); Then you should raise taxes, but not ours - go for spending cuts instead. Got that, Congress?

Beating the System
An inspiring example of problem-solving in education: A Florida law mandates that classroom sizes in K-12 be reduced. But hey that would require spending money on, you know, teachers and buildings and such, so school systems there did what any honorable institution devoted to children would do: they found a loophole, and shoved the kids right through.

[V]irtual classrooms, called e-learning labs, were put in place last August as a result of Florida’s Class Size Reduction Amendment, passed in 2002. The amendment limits the number of students allowed in classrooms, but not in virtual labs.
...
Alix Braun, 15, a sophomore at Miami Beach High, takes Advanced Placement macroeconomics in an e-learning lab with 35 to 40 other students. There are 445 students enrolled in the online courses at her school...

School administrators said that they had to find a way to meet class-size limits. Jodi Robins, the assistant principal of curriculum at Miami Beach High, said that even if students struggled in certain subjects, the virtual labs were necessary because “there’s no way to beat the class-size mandate without it.”

E-learning labs bring the additional virtue of not having a pesky teacher running around trying to get kids to understand things. There is merely a "facilitator" keeping them on task and making sure the equipment works properly. Many of the schools gave parents and students no option and no notice. They just showed up for pre-calculus and there was just a room with a bunch of computers.

2010 Tied For the Hottest Year Ever
Link

In Case You Missed It
Read President Obama's powerful, moving remarks at the Memorial service in Tucson.

And More...
from George Packer (via Kevin Drum)

In fact, there is no balance—none whatsoever. Only one side has made the rhetoric of armed revolt against an oppressive tyranny the guiding spirit of its grassroots movement and its midterm campaign. Only one side routinely invokes the Second Amendment as a form of swagger and intimidation, not-so-coyly conflating rights with threats. Only one side’s activists bring guns to democratic political gatherings. Only one side has a popular national TV host who uses his platform to indoctrinate viewers in the conviction that the President is an alien, totalitarian menace to the country. Only one side fills the AM waves with rage and incendiary falsehoods. Only one side has an iconic leader, with a devoted grassroots following, who can’t stop using violent imagery and dividing her countrymen into us and them, real and fake. Any sentient American knows which side that is; to argue otherwise is disingenuous.

Horrifying
Thank you, small government!

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer (R) advocated for and passed budget cuts last year that cut off urgent transplant funding that was previously promised to 98 Arizonans. In late November, Mark Price, an Arizona father who had been battling leukemia for a year, died due to complications related to chemotherapy treatment he was receiving. Price was awaiting an organ transplant that could’ve saved his life, but he was unable to receive one in time due to Brewer’s budget cuts.

Now, the University of Arizona Medical Center has told the press that another patient passed away in late December because they were unable to get their organ transplant funded. Although the attending physicians declined to release the name of the patient out of respect for the family’s privacy, they confirmed that the patient that passed away was one of the 98 Arizonans cut off from organ transplants by Brewer and the GOP-controlled state legislature.

Gotta make cuts! Gotta keep taxes low!

Conjunction Junction
So this is what it's come to in the world of Obama Derangement Syndrome: the President's use of the word "or" yesterday is evidence of his religious phonyism.

Krugman
Link

Where’s that toxic rhetoric coming from? Let’s not make a false pretense of balance: it’s coming, overwhelmingly, from the right. It’s hard to imagine a Democratic member of Congress urging constituents to be “armed and dangerous” without being ostracized; but Representative Michele Bachmann, who did just that, is a rising star in the G.O.P.

And there’s a huge contrast in the media. Listen to Rachel Maddow or Keith Olbermann, and you’ll hear a lot of caustic remarks and mockery aimed at Republicans. But you won’t hear jokes about shooting government officials or beheading a journalist at The Washington Post. Listen to Glenn Beck or Bill O’Reilly, and you will.