Punting the Pundits: Sunday Edition

“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: Christiane Amanpour goes on the trail to Connecticut this week with two Sunday exclusives — Senate candidates Republican Linda McMahon and Democrat Richard Blumenthal and Pakistan’s former President Pervez Musharraf comes to “This Week” for an exclusive interview, shares his views on the growing crisis between the United States and a critical ally, and discusses his return to politics. Can the Islamic republic win the war against extremism? Can al Qaeda and the Taliban be defeated? Will Pakistan’s nuclear weapons be kept in safe hands?

Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer: Joining Mr. Schieffer on Sunday will be David Axelrod, White House Senior Adviser and Ed Gillespie, Chairman of the Republican State Leadership Committee and Former Chair of the Republican National Committee

The Chris Matthews Show: This Sunday on Mr. Matthews’ round table forum Andrea Mitchell, NBC News Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent, Bob Woodward, The Washington Post Associate Editor, David Brooks, The New York Times Columnist and Helene Cooper, The New York Times

White House Correspondent. They will discuss these questions:

Is Obama’s National Security Team at war?

What’s the evidence Hillary Clinton might bump Joe Biden?

Are Voters Set to Elect Some Extremists to the Senate?

Meet the Press with David Gregory: David Gregory moderates the first showdown between the major party candidates vying for the U.S. Senate seat in Illinois: State Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias (D) vs. Rep. Mark Kirk (R). Mr. Gregory will be joined by Joe Klein, a columnist for Time Magazine and Peggy Noonan, columnist for The Wall Street Journal, who will talk about the coming election and what voters greatest concerns

State of the Union with Candy Crowley: It’s an all-exclusive Sunday! As the midterm elections approach, we talk politics with two House leaders. First, we sit down with Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, and then Republican Chief Deputy Whip Kevin McCarthy of California joins us for his rebuttal. We then continue our discussion of the midterms by breaking down the numbers with pollsters Celinda Lake and Whit Ayres. Finally, we look at the landscape of current terror threats worldwide with the man who led the CIA under President George W. Bush, Retired General Michael Hayden.

Fareed Zakaris: GPS: This week on GPS: Fareed’s been saying for years that we need to talk to the Taliban. And now the Afghan government is in supposedly “secret” negotiations with them. Will this be the path to peace for Afghanistan? Fareed’s take: maybe, but don’t expect any miracles.

Then, Americans are gearing up to go the polls. The Tea Party is causing much tumult in the mid-term elections. But just what IS the Tea Party all about? And just what political tradition is it “steeped” in? A GPS panel of great historians and thinkers puts it in all context.

And if you think unemployment in the U.S. is bad then you won’t believe what is going on in South Africa. The World Cup was its coming out party but now that the party is over, will rampant unemployment and massive labor strikes cripple the country? And just who is to blame?

Next up, America’s “car czar”, Steven Rattner, with a behind the scenes look at the bailout of the automotive industry and the goings-on inside the White House. Were the car companies really worth saving at all?

And finally a last look at a politician topping the pop charts. You’ll be surprised to see who it is.

Turkana: Class Warfare

It’s not class warfare. Don’t you dare call it class warfare. The Republicans may relentlessly pursue policies that favor the wealthy and hurt everyone else, but it most emphatically is not class warfare. The arbiters of appropriate political discourse will be most put out if you call it class warfare. You will not be welcome in the Village. You will not be invited to appear on the Sunday talk shows.

Class warfare is such an ugly term. To begin with, it suggests that we are a socially stratified nation, and that such stratification is at least to some degree based on money. Money is dirty. One shouldn’t discuss money in polite conversation. And it’s important that we be polite. And everyone knows that we are a melting pot. Everyone is capable of pulling oneself up by the bootstraps, and don’t even consider questioning the physics when there is neither a fulcrum nor a point of leverage. This is America. The land of opportunity.

Republican policies that hurt the less affluent and favor those that need no favors is not class warfare, but to discuss Republican policies that hurt the less affluent and favor those that need no favors is class warfare. The pundits will say so. The policies themselves are not class warfare, but raising awareness about them is. Wealth disparity is the fault of the disparaged. Unlike West Virginia Republican Senate nominee John Raese, the less affluent just didn’t have the wisdom and foresight to inherit wealth. This isn’t about class warfare, it’s about knowing how to pick your parents. To those that plan ahead even of their being born go the spoils.

Dahlia Lithwick: The Battle Cry of a Supreme Court Wife

RICHMOND, Va.-Of all the disclosures in the fascinating new biography of Justice William Brennan  by Seth Stern and Stephen Wermiel, one of the most powerful is this: The worst job in the entire history of the world has to be Supreme Court wife.

Virginia Lamp Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, has learned this lesson well. As she addresses the Virginia Tea Party Patriots Convention  Friday night, she wants it to be perfectly clear that nobody is going to lock her in the attic anytime soon. She’s fighting for what she believes in, and for that she should get enormous credit.

But what, one wonders, might happen if she prevails?

Sally Kohn: Glenn Beck says ‘collective salvation’ is anti-American. Tell that to the Founding Fathers

New York – Fox News television host Glenn Beck  says the idea of “collective salvation” – that our fates are linked – is “dangerous to the Constitutional republic.” He argues that related notions of social justice, redistribution, and ending oppression are fundamentally anti-American, communist creeds. American’s Founding Fathers would disagree. They embraced collective redemption and the protection of the common good.

The Constitution made clear from its first lines the collectivist intent of the American enterprise:

“We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

Dana Milbank: Conspiracy theorists find validation from Glenn Beck

Glenn Beck has a friend in California.

“I would’ve never started watching Fox News if it wasn’t for the fact that Beck was on there,” says this friend, Byron Williams. “And it was the things he did, it was the things he exposed, that blew my mind.”

“I do enjoy Glenn Beck,” Williams also says, “and the reason why I enjoy that is because… no other channel will speak about the same things that he’s talking about, and if you go and investigate those things you’ll find out that they’re true.”

Unfortunately for Beck, this satisfied viewer currently resides at the Santa Rita Jail near Oakland and stands accused of a freeway shootout with police. Williams pleaded not guilty to four counts of attempted murder of a police officer. But according to court documents, he said he had been on a mission to kill people at the liberal Tides Foundation, which happens to be a favorite Beck target.

In August, I wrote that while it’s not fair to blame Beck for violence committted by his fans, he would do well to stop encouraging extremists. Now, Williams has granted a pair of jailhouse interviews, one with the conservative Examiner.com and one to be published soon by the liberal group Media Matters. These recorded exchanges, which I have reviewed, show precisely why Beck is dangerous: because his is the one voice in the mass media that validates conspiracy theories held by the unstable.