“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: This Sunday, an exclusive interview with Democratic National Committee Chairman Tim Kaine. As the President wraps up a four-day, five-state campaign swing this week, that will take him to the blue states on the west coast.
The roundtable with George Will, Republican Strategist Ed Gillespie, former White House Communications Director Anita Dunn and ABC News Political Director Amy Walter looks at all the big races and some of the biggest gaffes of this turbulent political season.
Also, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Hugh Shelton (Ret.)discussing his book and his thoughts on Iraq, Afghanistan and DADT
Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer: On Sunday Mr. Schieffer’s guests will be Karl Rove, Fox News Contributor (at left)
Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), Chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee
The Chris Matthews Show: This week’s guests are ,Katty Kay BBC Washington Correspondent, Dan Rather, HDNet Global Correspondent, Andrew Sullivan, The Atlantic Senior Editor and Cynthia Tucker, Atlanta Journal-Constitution Columnist.
They will consider there questions along with Mr. Matthews:Did President Obama push his own agenda to his party’s detriment?
Will Tea Party members go rogue on Republicans and form a third party?
Meet the Press with David Gregory: Mr. Gregory will have an exclusive interview with RNC Chairman Michael Steele.
Our political roundtable covers all the angles: David Brooks of The New York Times; E.J. Dionne of The Washington Post; Chair of the Democratic Leadership Council Fmr. Rep. Harold Ford Jr. (D-TN); Rachel Maddow, the host of msnbc’s “The Rachel Maddow Show”; and CNBC’s On-Air Editor, Rick Santelli.
State of the Union with Candy Crowley: A special State of the Union from Florida just 10 days before Election Day. Candy Crowley moderates the Florida Senate Debate with Gov. Charlie Crist (I), Rep. Kendrick Meek (D), Marco Rubio (R) live at 9am ET from the University of South Florida. Make sure to tune in for the Florida showdown on the issues central to Florida and the nation in this battleground state.
Fareed Zakaris: GPS: Fareed gives his take on why technology and the global marketplace have taken so many jobs from America – and maybe even taken the American dream, too.
He then sits down with Richard Holbrooke, the US Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan to assess the situation.
Peter Bergen, who interviewed bin Laden in 1997, joins Fareed to share his thoughts on where Osama bin Laden is…and why we haven’t found him yet.
Next up, when Fareed interviewed Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, the Chinese leader said, “freedom of speech is indispensable, for any country.” So just why did China censor and then re-censor Fareed’s interview with the Premier?
After that we look at how the rest of the world views the upcoming American elections? GPS brings you three great global thinkers to share their views on the U.S. midterms, how the world views the U.S. and much more. And finally a last look at Iran’s surprising “social” revolutionary.
Paul Krugman: The Worst Economist in the World
A thought: it has occurred to me that we could use an economics equivalent of Keith Olbermann’s “Worst Person in the World” award. KO does not, of course, mean that the person he goes after on any given night really is the worst person in the world; he just uses the title to highlight some especially awful action or statement.
I’d encourage others to enter this game – and yes, I know that various paid trolls and others will award me the title five times a day if they can. But here’s what caught my eye: the WSJ’s Real Time Economics explaining (or rather, “explaining”) the risks from competitive devaluation:
When one country devalues its currency, others tend to follow suit. As a result, nobody achieves trade gains. Instead, the devaluations put upward pressure on the prices of commodities such as oil. Higher commodity prices, in turn, can cut into global economic output. In one ominous sign, the price of oil is up 8.7% since August 27.
Urk.
Bob Herbert: The Way We Treat Our Troops
You can only hope that the very preliminary peace efforts in Afghanistan bear fruit before long. But for evidence that the United States is letting its claim to greatness, and even common decency, slip through its fingers, all you need to do is look at the way we treat our own troops.
The idea that the United States is at war and hardly any of its citizens are paying attention to the terrible burden being shouldered by its men and women in uniform is beyond appalling.
We can get fired up about Lady Gaga and the Tea Party crackpots. We’re into fantasy football, the baseball playoffs and our obsessively narcissistic tweets. But American soldiers fighting and dying in a foreign land? That is such a yawn.
I would bring back the draft in a heartbeat. Then you wouldn’t have these wars that last a lifetime. And you wouldn’t get mind-bending tragedies like the death of Sgt. First Class Lance Vogeler, a 29-year-old who was killed a few weeks ago while serving in the Army in his 12th combat tour. That’s right, his 12th – four in Iraq and eight in Afghanistan.
Gail Collins: Elections: Oshkosh Shrugged
“I’m in Sheboygan!” said Senator Russ Feingold over the phone. “It’s the bratwurst capital of the world!”
Truly, I am learning something new every day in this long campaign season. People, did you know that the official state bird of Alaska is the willow ptarmigan? Or that Alexandria, Ind., is home to the world’s largest ball of paint? Well, you do now.
But about Russ Feingold. He is running for a fourth term, in a very tough race against Ron Johnson, a plastics manufacturer and one of those rich political virgins who have been popping up in races across the country, waving a checkbook and a copy of “Atlas Shrugged.”
It’s ironic that Feingold, who is possibly the most independent member of the Senate, a Mr. Clean who votes against his party regularly, is among the incumbents in the most danger from an anti-Washington voter rebellion. Especially since Johnson is not all that impressive. Unless you like Ayn Rand and are yearning to see the country run just like a plastics business.
Charles M. Blow: Smoke and Horrors
Attorney General Eric Holder Jr.’s recent chest-thumping against the California ballot initiative that seeks to legalize marijuana underscores how the war on drugs in this country has become a war focused on marijuana, one being waged primarily against minorities and promoted, fueled and financed primarily by Democratic politicians.
According to a report released Friday by the Marijuana Arrest Research Project for the Drug Policy Alliance and the N.A.A.C.P. and led by Prof. Harry Levine, a sociologist at the City University of New York: “In the last 20 years, California made 850,000 arrests for possession of small amounts of marijuana, and half-a-million arrests in the last 10 years. The people arrested were disproportionately African-Americans and Latinos, overwhelmingly young people, especially men.”
For instance, the report says that the City of Los Angeles “arrested blacks for marijuana possession at seven times the rate of whites.”
This imbalance is not specific to California; it exists across the country.
Frank Rich: What Happened to Change We Can Believe In?
PRESIDENT Obama, the Rodney Dangerfield of 2010, gets no respect for averting another Great Depression, for saving 3.3 million jobs with stimulus spending, or for salvaging GM and Chrysler from the junkyard. And none of these good deeds, no matter how substantial, will go unpunished if the projected Democratic bloodbath materializes on Election Day. Some are even going unremembered. For Obama, the ultimate indignity is the Times/CBS News poll in September showing that only 8 percent of Americans know that he gave 95 percent of American taxpayers a tax cut.
The reasons for his failure to reap credit for any economic accomplishments are a catechism by now: the dark cloud cast by undiminished unemployment, the relentless disinformation campaign of his political opponents, and the White House’s surprising ineptitude at selling its own achievements. But the most relentless drag on a chief executive who promised change we can believe in is even more ominous. It’s the country’s fatalistic sense that the stacked economic order that gave us the Great Recession remains not just in place but more entrenched and powerful than ever.
No matter how much Obama talks about his “tough” new financial regulatory reforms or offers rote condemnations of Wall Street greed, few believe there’s been real change. That’s not just because so many have lost their jobs, their savings and their homes. It’s also because so many know that the loftiest perpetrators of this national devastation got get-out-of-jail-free cards, that too-big-to-fail banks have grown bigger and that the rich are still the only Americans getting richer.
Brent Budowsky: Admiral Joe Sestak’s big truth
The strong comeback in the Pennsylvania Senate campaign of Democratic Rep. and retired Adm. Joe Sestak is, from my point of view, one of the few great moments in the 2010 campaign.
In a national campaign full of sickening slanders and second-rate minds, Sestak stands out for one big truth that has governed his life, his work and his career, and it is this:
When a man or woman wears the uniform of our nation in the service of our country, he or she does not look at the fellow patriot in the foxhole, in the cockpit or on the bridge and ask: Are you a liberal or conservative? Are you a Democrat or Republican? What Sestak understands, the value that has been seared into Joe Sestak’s soul through a lifetime of service, is that for those who protect and defend our country, the others beside them are truly a band of brothers and sisters united by a patriotic faith that transcends the cheap shots and divisions of what has become our politics.
Dick Cavett: Match Him? Not Likely
He was devilishly fun to be around.
Whatever his dark side may have been, in the times we spent together I saw only the effervescence. Bernie Schwartz appeared to be having the time of his life being Tony Curtis.
I suppose I say “appeared” because despite the exuberance, his life was not unadulterated bliss, and the marital sort terminated five times. The sixth marriage lasted. He said once, “I wouldn’t be caught dead marrying a woman young enough to be my wife.”
He was a man who admitted that his one driving early ambition in life was simply to be a movie star, and he managed to achieve that (some would say) shallow goal.
But he did more. He went on to become not just a dapper guy for whose looks women tumbled in droves. He also proved he was more than only – in one of several phrases that plagued him – a “pretty boy” of the screen. He became a fine realistic film actor.
(Any doubts? See “Sweet Smell of Success.” Or, if that’s not enough, “The Defiant Ones.”)
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