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This week on Uprising:

* Despite Obama’s Populism, Speech Tinged with Militarism
* Why Newt Gingrich Won Big in South Carolina
* Black Agenda Report on Newt Gingrich’s Presidential Candidacy
* A Year Later, Egypt’s Revolution Strong, Committed to Ending Old Regime

* * *

Despite Obama’s Populism, Speech Tinged with Militarism

In his third State of the Union speech on Tuesday President Obama articulated a vision for an improved economy, seeking to reclaim control over the Republican narrative that places blame for high unemployment solely at his feet. In an address that Reuters called populist, the President promoted the so-called Buffet Rule, a tax reform that would end tax breaks that benefit the richest Americans. Earlier in the day GOP Presidential candidate Mitt Romney released his personal tax records, unwittingly underscoring the need for a revamped tax system. Romney and his wife paid a 15.4% tax on millions of dollars of income, including dividends, in 2011, about half of what a wage earner taxed at the highest rate of 35% paid in the same year.

In his State of the Union address, largely seen as the President’s first national campaign speech for reelection, Obama also called for increased job training for millions of Americans, help for home owners seeking to refinance their homes, and the establishment of several new government agencies: a special federal unit to investigate abusive lending practices that led to the housing crisis, a financial crimes unit to prosecute investment fraud, and a trade enforcement unit to “investigate unfair trading practices.” The President also reiterated his strategy for immigration reform, in effect asking Republicans to work with him in exchange for the enforcement crackdown his administration has led. Obama made a brief mention of government safety net programs, repeating his desire to reform them to “rein in the long-term costs of Medicare and Medicaid, and strengthen Social Security, so long as those programs remain a guarantee of security for seniors.”

The President, after his address, spent time online answering questions from the public. Meanwhile, Republicans prepared and released in advance of the speech, a minute long video parodying as a trailer for a fake movie called 1000 Days Without a Budget, and pointing people to a web address where they also took online questions. Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels relayed the official GOP response to the address. Activists with Occupy DC also gave their response in McPherson Square calling it the “state of the 99 percent.”

GUEST: Roberto Lovato, Writer with New America Media, Co-Founder of Presente.org, and Uprising Election Analyst

Why Newt Gingrich Won Big in South Carolina

Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney are sharpening their attacks against one another ahead of Florida’s January 31st primary. Gingrich won South Carolina with 40.4% of the vote, trailed by Romney who captured just 27.8%. Based on exit polls the Washington Post found that Gingrich’s surge was credited to voters who chose their candidate in the final days, and maybe hours of campaigning. He was also favored by 45% of the state’s voters who call themselves conservative and a majority of self-identified evangelical or born-again Christian voters. However the race is far from over as Florida represents a different demographic of voters. It is the first primary state with a large population of Latino voters, many of them Cuban, and the candidates face a more diverse electorate overall in the Sunshine state than the three previous primary states. The candidates are hammering each other on their past employment. Romney, one of the richest men to ever run for President, has conceded to make his tax returns public. Romney turned the spotlight on Gingrich this weekend and is demanding Gingrich release records on his time as a consultant and, specifically on how the former Speaker of the House helped mortgage giant Freddie Mac. Talking to a group of Florida voters this week Romney asked, “[w]hat’s Newt] been doing for 15 years? … He was working as a lobbyist and selling influence around Washington.” It is a sharp turn from the more pious, religiously coded campaigning the two engaged in for two weeks in South Carolina, and that may have handed Gingrich a win over this Mormon rival.

GUEST: Sarah Posner, senior editor for Religion Dispatches, investigative journalist and expert on conservative evangelicals. She writes for the American Prospect website about news of the religious right, and she is author of “God’s Profits: Faith, Fraud, and the Republican Crusade for Values Voters

Read Sarah’s work at www.religiondispatches.org

Black Agenda Report on Newt Gingrich’s Presidential Candidacy

Glen Ford is a writer and radio commentator and the Executive Editor of the Black Agenda Report. Today’s commentary is about Newt Gingrich’s win in South Carolina.

Visit www.blackagendareport.com for more information.

A Year Later, Egypt’s Revolution Strong, Committed to Ending Old Regime

Hundreds of thousands of Egyptians demonstrated in the streets on Wednesday to mark the one year anniversary of the start of the Egyptian Revolution that ended the 3 decade reign of Hosni Mubarak just over two weeks later. In the past 12 months Egyptians have continued to demonstrate for change in massive numbers against what they see as a continuation of oppression by the transitional Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF). In anticipation of anniversary, the military council announced yesterday a partial end to emergency law, a tool used for decades by Mubarak to quell popular protest. Field Marshall Mohammed Hussein Tantawi announced the military would curb use of emergency law except in cases of “thuggery.” Hossan Bahgat, the director of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, told the Guardian there will be no change in practice as historically Mubarak, and now the military, apply the term “thug” broadly. Bahgat said, “We call on the new parliament to reject this decree and insist on nothing less than the full and immediate lifting of the state of emergency and return to normal civilian law.” Meanwhile, on Monday the 508 seat lower house of the People’s Assembly met for the first time following November elections. Elections for the the Shura Council, the upper house of the Assembly, will begin January 29th and last nearly a month. Only 10 women were elected to the lower assembly. Egyptian women have protested alongside men since the revolution began and their presence has been hailed as the dawn of a new era for gender equality in the nation. However they have been relegated to the sidelines in official negotiations and even suffered gender-based violence at the hands of the military in the last year. Last month a female activist was attacked in public by soldiers, stripped and beaten, sparking a massive women-led protest on December 23rd that drew international attention to abuses by the regime. Earlier this month Nobel Prize winner Mohammed El Baradei dealt a further blow to the ruling military council when he withdrew from the upcoming presidential race and declared, “[t]he old regime has not fallen yet.”

GUEST: Noha Radwan, Assistant Professor of Arabic and Comparative Literature, University of California-Davis, Sherif Gaber, live from Cairo, working with the Mosireen Media Collective, was active with the group No Military Trials for Civilians

Visit www.mosireen.org for independent media coverage of the Tahrir Square protests.

Sonali’s Subversive Thought for the Day:

“The revolution is not an apple that falls when it is ripe. You have to make it fall.” — Che Guevara