CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER ON OBAMA: “From the moon landing to solar shingles. Is there a better example of American decline?”

NOBODY KNOWS WHAT A REVOLUTION LOOKS LIKE? Until after it’s happened. Or not. “It’s quite clear that Obama is totally bamboozled. He has no culture to deal with this situation, nor does Hillary. I wonder about Panetta. Does the Intelligence Community have people who know in detail who is who in the tumults? Historically we haven’t been great at this–the intelligence failures at the time of the Iranian revolution could fill a fat volume, with another needed to chronicle the failures during the following 31 years–but we’ve got a lot of Arabists and we may be lucky enough to have a few very good ones.”

UPDATE: Tim Cavanaugh says don’t expect too much from the Egyptian riots: “In a world where you can’t even count on The New York Times to go out of business, you can never underestimate the ability of a discredited institution to linger.” Heh.

MARKDOWNS ON heart-rate watches and pedometers.

MOHAMMED EL-BARADEI’S ties to the Muslim Brotherhood?

ELLIOTT ABRAMS IN THE WASHINGTON POST: Egypt protests show George W. Bush was right about freedom in the Arab world. Well, possibly — and as I noted yesterday, I wish we’d kept up the momentum back in 2005, when the correlation of forces — and mana — was more favorable. But it’s also possible that we’re seeing a Piven-style “revolution” in which the serfs just pick a different batch of rulers, and fit them with boots and spurs. We should be doing what we can to make sure that doesn’t happen, but I’m not entirely sure the folks in charge really understand the difference . . . .

UPDATE: Condi Rice in 2005.

BILL QUICK ON INTERNET KILL SWITCHES:

I suspect that if the US government really wanted to pull the plug on the US net today, it could do so.

The whole notion of “internet revolutions” has always been a fragile one, and became even moreso when state actors began to understand and react to the threat.

He’s basically right — though on the other side, the economic cost of shutting down the Internet is enormous, even for Egypt, and would be gigantic in the United States. I had some thoughts on this subject in this review, for the Stanford Law & Policy Review, of Jack Goldsmith and Tim Wu’s Who Controls The Internet?

RICHARD FERNANDEZ: Mubarak Obama.

IF YOU HEAR THE SIRENS, close the windows and hold your breath for the next few days.

ROGER SIMON: “Good for Barack Obama who seems to be taking a strong pro-democracy stand in his conversation with Hosni Mubarak.”

FIXING HEARTS WITH FAT-BASED STEM CELLS?

PC MAGAZINE: After Egypt, Will U.S. Get ‘Internet Kill Switch’?

ARMAGEDDON: Facing a “global chocolate drought.”

UPDATE: The Anchoress emails: “When I read that line, for some reason I immediately flashed to 1984, where Winston Smith eats a bit of crumbly dry chocolate and remembers tasting other chocolate as a child, sweet and smooth. Did Orwell even get the chocolate right?”

I think Lawrence Sanders’ The Tomorrow File is a better example, as he makes lousy food a counterpoint to baroque bureaucratic maneuvering in a social-democratic quasi-tyranny. (And that book really deserves more attention than it got). But in fact, I think good chocolate and overweening bureaucracy can coexist for long periods — how else to explain Brussels?

BOOKWORM: The Egypt crisis; or, the Community Activist and foreign policy.

I was going to open this post with a snarky line about whether anybody with even marginal intelligence expected a 40-something community activist to have the necessary chops to deal with an international crisis of the type currently unfolding in Egypt. Indeed, I think I still will: Does anybody with an IQ over the single digits seriously believe that a former community activist and part-time legal lecturer has the skills and knowledge to handle the revolutionary disarray unfolding on Egypt’s streets right now? No. I didn’t think so.

Snark out of the way, I want to talk about something more profound than mere inexperience — and that’s Obama’s instinctive distrust of individual freedom. His two years in office have shown us that, given the choice, Obama will invariably bow to whatever, or whomever, controls the government faction in a given country.

This is a tough problem, but nothing Obama has done so far has inspired any confidence.

UPDATE: On the other hand, what to make of this report? America’s secret backing for rebel leaders behind uprising: “The American government secretly backed leading figures behind the Egyptian uprising who have been planning ‘regime change’ for the past three years, The Daily Telegraph has learned.” If this is true, I certainly hope we backed the right guys this time . . .

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Mark Hunn writes: “Glenn, why would we expect anything but feckless ineptitude from an administration still pursuing a war its foreign policy team believes we were duped into by the dumbest president in modern times?” Heh. Well, when you put it that way . . . .

MORE: And reader Bob Poynor writes: “Among all your coverage of the events in Egypt, don’t forget that Egypt operates the Suez Canal. A LOT of commerce goes through there, as well as a lot of supplies to our forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. Isn’t there a food crunch right now? How much oil goes through there? If a radical group manages to shut it down in a show of strength, even for only a few days, I’d expect a large ripple effect beyond than the mere act of closure.”

And reader Mike Puckett emails: “Didn’t Hillary once say something about a call at three AM? I think that call is coming in now.”

STEM-CELL RESEARCH running into intellectual-property brick walls.

COMPARISON: AT&T vs. Verizon iPhones.

HAS SPORTS PERFORMANCE peaked?

AT AMAZON, it’s the Friday Sale.

WILLIAM GALSTON: As bad as the CBO fiscal numbers look, it’s actually worse.

EGYPT: What’s happening now.

UPDATE: Also, liveblogging at The Atlantic.

Plus, Events Moving Too Fast For Obama Administration. It’s a Sputnik moment, but it’s not 1957 any more, and Obama’s no Eisenhower. (Bonus Suez Crisis reference omitted, because that’s just too easy).

DAVID HARSANYI: Who Are We in This ‘Sputnik Moment’? Plus this: “Really, was this country ever about being proud that your children ended up in the same plant you slaved in for 30 years? Even with a promise of a union pension and — if you’re lucky — an ‘occasional’ promotion, it sounds like a soul-crushing grind you’d want your offspring to escape, tout de suite.” A place for everyone, and everyone in his place: That’s the new progressive motto! Especially the “everyone in his place” part.

AMY SISKIND: Why Does MSNBC Tolerate Chris Matthews’ Misogyny?

PATHS TO COMPETITIVENESS: More spending vs. better laws.

NANOTECHNOLOGY UPDATE: Scaling up from atomic assembly and individual nanodevices to macroscopic systems.

COMING: More medical tests on paper strips.

MARY KATHARINE HAM: To “Sir” With Love.