“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: Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair sits down with “This Week” anchor Christiane Amanpour for an exclusive interview.
The “Round Table” with the usual suspects: George Will, New York Times columnist Tom Friedman, Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman and Mary Jordan of The Washington Post who will discuss the whether the new round of peace talks finally lead to progress in the Middle East.
Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer: Mr. Schieffer’s guests will be Laura Tyson, Former Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, Mark Zandi, Moody’s Analytics, Chief Economist Gretchen Morgenson, NYT Assistant Business and Financial Editor Nancy Cordes, CBS News Capitol Hill Correspondent and Jim VandeHei, Politico Executive Editor.
The Chris Matthews Show: This weeks guests will be Cynthia Tucker, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Columnist Howard Fineman,
Newsweek Senior Washington Correspondent, Michael Duffy, TIME Magazine, Assistant Managing Editor and , Norah O’Donnell, MSNBC, Chief Washington Correspondent. They will discuss if democrats lose big this fall will All fingers point at President Obama Himself? and
the top five Republicans definitely running for President.
Meet the Press with David Gregory: Mr. Gregory will have an exclusive interview with Sen. Lindsey Graham discussing the end of combat operations in Iraq and the on-going war in Afghanistan, plus the politics of the mid-term elections. Sen. Graham just returned from Afghanistan where he was serving reserve duty as a colonel for the U.S. Air Force
Also joining Mr. Gregory will be President Obama’s 2008 campaign manager, David Plouffle to discuss the challenges facing the President this year: the economy, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the fight to keep the Democrats in power on the Hill.
The “Round Table” will include CNBC’s Erin Burnett, Charlie Cook of the National Journal and The Cook Political Report, The Washington Post’s E.J. Dionne and the National Review’s Rich Lowry who will discuss the President’s speech next week on the economy and this Fall’s elections.
State of the Union with Candy Crowley: This Sunday on State of the Union, mixed unemployment news for an economy already on the cliff. Candy Crowley talks the economy and jobs with AFL-CIO’s President, Richard Trumka and the President of the National Association of Small Business, Todd McCracken.
Then a busy week in politics and a look forward with our State of the Union roundtable: Ron Fournier, Editor-in-Chief of the National Journal, Michael Duffy, Assistant Managing Editor of Time, and Elisabeth Bumiller, National Affairs Correspondent for the New York Times.
Fareed Zakaris: GPS: This week, three of the most fascinating interviews GPS has ever aired.
First up, a real-life Russian thriller. The amazing tale of William Browder, once the largest foreign investor in Russia. His money made him a target and someone close to him paid the ultimate price. It certainly sounds like a Hollywood movie, but it isn’t – it’s real life.
Then, have you ever met a jihadi? Despite Britain’s serious crackdown on radical Islamic activity over the last few years, homegrown jihadis continue to preach their message in the U.K. Fareed sits down with one of London’s own radicals, Anjem Choudary.
And then, hers is a story of rags to ultimate riches. Zhang Xin grew up in the slums of Hong Kong and is now worth billions of dollars. Zhang, one of China’s biggest real estate developers, speaks candidly about what she finds wrong with the Chinese system that made her so rich.
And finally, the Last Look: a golf course where the water hazards could be truly deadly.
David Sirota: Despite celebration, Iraq war continues
Barack Obama’s declaration that combat is over is not the second coming of V-J Day
Something about 21st century warfare brings out Washington’s lust for historical comparison. The moment the combat starts, lawmakers and the national press corps inevitably portray every explosion, invasion, frontline dispatch, political machination and wartime icon as momentous replicas of the past’s big moments and Great Men.
9/11 was Pearl Harbor. Colin Powell’s Iraq presentation at the United Nations was Adlai Stevenson’s Cuban Missile Crisis confrontation. Embedded journalists in Afghanistan strutted around like the intrepid Walter Cronkite on a foreign battlefield. George Bush was a Rooseveltian “war president.” The Iraq invasion was D-Day.
Robert Reich: The real lesson of Labor Day
The problem with the economy is structure, not the business cycle
Welcome to the worst Labor Day in the memory of most Americans. Organized labor is down to about 7 percent of the private work force. Members of non-organized labor — most of the rest of us – are unemployed, underemployed or underwater. The Labor Department reported on Friday that just 67,000 new private-sector jobs were created in August, which, when added to the loss of public-sector (mostly temporary Census worker jobs) resulted in a net loss of over 50,000 jobs for the month. But at least 125,000 net new jobs are needed to keep up with the growth of the potential work force.
Face it: The national economy isn’t escaping the gravitational pull of the Great Recession. None of the standard booster rockets are working. Near-zero short-term interest rates from the Fed, almost record-low borrowing costs in the bond market, a giant stimulus package, along with tax credits for small businesses that hire the long-term unemployed have all failed to do enough.
That’s because the real problem has to do with the structure of the economy, not the business cycle. No booster rocket can work unless consumers are able, at some point, to keep the economy moving on their own. But consumers no longer have the purchasing power to buy the goods and services they produce as workers; for some time now, their means haven’t kept up with what the growing economy could and should have been able to provide them.
Joan Walsh: More taunts to the Democratic base
Emanuel drops another F-bomb on a progressive ally, while Alan Simpson blames some veterans for our budget woes
Another day, another disappointment for progressive Democrats. We learn from former auto-industry car czar Steve Rattner that Obama chief of staff Rahm Emanuel said “Fuck the UAW” during tough takeover talks – just like he called progressives “fucking retarded” for contemplating primary challenges against conservative Democrats.
And former Sen. Alan Simpson, the Republican appointed by our Democratic president to chair his “fiscal commission” – I love the way it’s become commonly known as the “catfood commission,” since so many members favor cuts to Social Security, raising the old specter of seniors eating catfood — has stepped in it again. Fresh from disparaging Social Security as “a cow with 310,000,000 tits,” on Wednesday Simpson complained that American military veterans exposed to Agent Orange are hurting the country by using the program established to help them with health troubles related to the wanton use of that defoliant in Vietnam.
Gail Collins: The Ungreat Debate
We do not generally look to gubernatorial debates for excitement. But this week there was a fascinating one in Arizona, where Gov. Jan Brewer gave a bad performance of epic proportions. Really, Richard Nixon in 1960 was Demosthenes in Athens compared with this one.
Brewer began by blanking out during her introductory statement – there was this horrible 16-second interval where she went silent, stared down at her notes and giggled. The evening ended when she stomped away from reporters who were yelling: “Governor, please answer the question about the headless bodies.”
Everyone knows you never want to finish a big campaign night on a headless-body note.
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