“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.
The Sunday Talking Heads:
This Week with Christiane Amanpour:
Her guests this Sunday will be General Ray Odierno, the top commander in Iraq and General Peter Chiarelli, the general in charge of the U.S. Army’s efforts to reduce the epidemic of suicide among U.S. soldiers.
The Round Table will be George Packer of the New Yorker, Gillian Tett of the Financial Times, Politico’s John Harris, and Michael Gerson, Washington Post columnist and former Bush speech-writer. The topic will be Mr Packer’s piece this week in the New Yorker on the broken Senate, as well as, California’s gay marriage ban is ruled unconstitutional by a federal court; Republicans push to change the constitution to end birthright citizenship for the children of illegal immigrants; and Elena Kagan is confirmed by the Senate in a highly partisan vote.
Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer:
His guests will be Ret. Admiral Thad Allen, U.S. Coast Guard, David Boies, American Foundation for Legal Rights, Tony Perkins, Family Research Council, Dan Balz, The Washington Post and CBS News Chief Legal Correspondent Jan Crawford. Discussion will ne on What’s Next for the Gulf? and Same Sex Marriage Debate.
The topics will be on Will Dems Have Votes To Kill Tax Cuts?, Will GOP Run Against Gay Marriage? and Will Hillary Clinton Bump Joe Biden From The 2012 Obama Ticket?
His guests will include Howard Fineman, Newsweek Senior Washington Correspondent, Erin Burnett, CNBC Anchor, Kelly O’Donnell, NBC News, Capitol Hill Correspondent and John Heilemann, New York Magazine, National Political Correspondent.
State of the Union with Candy Crowley:
Her guest will be Governors Bob McDonnell (R-VA) and Jennifer Granholm (D-MI) who will discuss their views on immigration, same-sex marriage, and health care. The second segment will include Admiral Thad Allen (Ret.), National Incident Commander discussing the recovery efforts in response to the oil catastrophe. Allen will also respond to this week’s NOAA report on what happened to the oil that spilled into the Gulf.
Fareed will give his take on the controversy over the proposed cultural center at Ground Zero and the founding principle of freedom of religion in America.
He will have a one on one interview with Former Pakistani spy chief Hamid Gul to discuss allegations from the WikiLeaks documents that he conspired with terrorists to kill Allied soldiers and “set Kabul aflame”.
Then, the Foreign Minister of Serbia on whether war in the Balkans is possible again.
And finally a look at how Iran has America pinned to the mat.
Glenn Greenwald: What collapsing empire looks like
As we enter our ninth year of the War in Afghanistan with an escalated force, and continue to occupy Iraq indefinitely, and feed an endlessly growing Surveillance State, reports are emerging of the Deficit Commission hard at work planning how to cut Social Security, Medicare, and now even to freeze military pay. But a new New York Times article today illustrates as vividly as anything else what a collapsing empire looks like, as it profiles just a few of the budget cuts which cities around the country are being forced to make. This is a sampling of what one finds:
Plenty of businesses and governments furloughed workers this year, but Hawaii went further — it furloughed its schoolchildren. Public schools across the state closed on 17 Fridays during the past school year to save money, giving students the shortest academic year in the nation.
Many transit systems have cut service to make ends meet, but Clayton County, Ga., a suburb of Atlanta, decided to cut all the way, and shut down its entire public bus system. Its last buses ran on March 31, stranding 8,400 daily riders.
Even public safety has not been immune to the budget ax. In Colorado Springs, the downturn will be remembered, quite literally, as a dark age: the city switched off a third of its 24,512 streetlights to save money on electricity, while trimming its police force and auctioning off its police helicopters.
(emphasis Mr. Greenwald’s)
Dana Milbank: The right wing mantra: If at first you don’t secede . . .
Vacationing on North Carolina’s Outer Banks this week, I’ve been thinking about how different things will be here when the South secedes from the Union.
The Confederates, I anticipate, will order Elizabeth’s Café & Winery to banish the Maine lobster tomato caprese in favor of fried catfish. The lattes at Duck’s Cottage will likely be nullified and replaced by sweet tea. Inevitably, the Sanderling spa will be ordered to discontinue its Vinyasa yoga classes and instead open a shooting range.
Happily, there is as yet no sign of imminent hostilities at the seaside; Escalades with Jersey plates continue to ply Highway 12 unmolested by rebel artillery. But you wouldn’t know things were so calm from the words spoken by Republican primary candidates lately. Here in the South, they have been campaigning under a bizarre theory: nothing succeeds like secession.
Frank Rich: How to Lose an Election Without Really Trying
COULD George W. Bush be a kind of Gipper-in-reverse and win yet one more for the Democrats? Clearly this White House sees him as the gift that will keep on giving. The 2010 campaign against the Bush administration is in full cry, with President Obama leading the charge. The Republicans are “betting on amnesia,” he confidently told the claque at a recent fund-raiser. “They don’t have a single idea that’s different from George Bush’s ideas.” It’s now the incessant party line.
Sounds plausible, but it’s Obama who’s on the wrong side of that bet, to his own political peril.
Betting on amnesia is almost always a winning, not a losing, wager in America. Angry demonstrators at health care town-hall meetings didn’t remember that Medicare is a government program, and fewer and fewer voters of both parties recall that the widely loathed TARP was a Bush administration creation supported by the G.O.P. Congressional leadership. So many Republicans don’t know Obama is a natural citizen – 41 percent in a poll last week – that we must (charitably) assume some of them have forgotten that Hawaii was granted statehood. The G.O.P. chairman is sufficiently afflicted with amnesia that he matter-of-factly regaled an audience with the counterfactual observation that the war in Afghanistan, Bush’s immediate response to 9/11, began under Obama.
Matthew Yglesias: Anchor babies, the Ground Zero mosque and other scapegoats
Politics always seems to get a bit off-kilter when the temperature goes up. But instead of the familiar silly-season stuff of years past — made-up scandals and who-cares gossip — the past two summers have been filled with vitriol. Last year we had town halls gone wild, fueled by the threat of death panels pulling the plug on Grandma. This year, us-vs.-them controversies are proliferating, linked by a surge in xenophobia. This is our summer of fear.
So far, the summer of fear has featured a charge, led by Newt Gingrich, Sarah Palin and former New York congressman Rick Lazio, to block the construction of the Cordoba House Islamic cultural center (which is to include a mosque) a few blocks from the site of the World Trade Center. Meanwhile, with frightening speed, we’ve gone from discussing the prospects for comprehensive immigration reform to watching congressional Republicans call for hearings to reconsider the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of citizenship to anyone born in the United States.
Carlos Lozado: How did Christina Romer do as an Obama economic adviser? Ask Christina Romer.
So, how do we assess the performance of Christina Romer, who is stepping down after 19 months as the chair of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers to return to the University of California at Berkeley? It just so happens that one person particularly qualified to judge CEA chair Christina Romer is, well, professor Christina Romer.
David Callahan: As the green economy grows, the ‘dirty rich’ are fading away
So the blown-out oil well in the gulf has finally stopped gushing, plugged with heavy mud and awaiting the ultimate “kill” by a relief well. Yet, even with the largest oil spill in the nation’s history in the background, what seems to have been killed much more quickly is Washington’s will to take meaningful action on the environment. After axing climate-change legislation in late July, the Senate is now taking up a modest energy bill — and even that effort may go nowhere.
Hopes for a pivotal BP-driven eco-moment — remember President Obama’s call in June for a new “national mission” to get America off fossil fuels? — have dissipated, seemingly confirming the common view that powerful energy firms, and corporate America more broadly, stand as the sworn enemies of any bold new environmental rules and that they have the clout to get their way.
1 comments
Author