“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.
Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.
The Sunday Talking Heads:
This Week with Christiane Amanpour: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton joins Christine in a “This Week” exclusive discussing the uprisings and unrest in the Middle East and the spending showdowns in Wisconsin and the fight over federal spending in Congress that could end in a shut down of the federal government
Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer: This weeks guests are Rep. Paul Ryan, (R-WI), Chairman of the House Budget Committee, Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), House Budget Committee Ranking Democrat and David Sanger, New York Times Chief Washington Correspondent.
Plus, reports from CBS News correspondents in the Middle East
The Chris Matthews Show: This weeks guests are Kelly O’Donnell, NBC News Capitol Hill Correspondent, Howard Fineman, The Huffington Post Senior Political Editor, John Harris, Politico
Editor-in-Chief, and Cynthia Tucker, Atlanta Journal-Constitution Columnist.Under consideration are these questions:
Will Obama and the GOP Jump off the Cliff Together on a Sweeping Debt Package?
Can Republicans Convince Chris Christie To Take On Obama?
Meet the Press with David Gregory: The budget fight in Congress is discussed with guests Assistant Majority Leader Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) and member of the Senate Budget Committee, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC).
The United States ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice discusses how the protests and unrest in the Middle East are affecting US policy in the region
On the roundtable to discuss budget reforms are former governor of Michigan, Jennifer Granholm (D), former congressman from Tennessee, Harold Ford (D), Republican strategist, Ed Gillespie and CNBC’s Rick Santelli.
State of the Union with Candy Crowley: Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) discusses the budget and reform. The ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Indiana Sen. Dick Lugar discussing the Middle East Also, an interview with former Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld
And finally, with President’s Day around the corner, we’ll close with interviews with two former commanders-in-chief.
Fareed Zakaris: GPS: An exclusive interview with billionaire, George Soros plus Fareed’s take on the Middle East conflicts, the Muslim Brotherhood and a look at the art from Baghdad
Robert Reaich: The Republican Strategy
The Republican strategy is to split the vast middle and working class – pitting unionized workers against non-unionized, public-sector workers against non-public, older workers within sight of Medicare and Social Security against younger workers who don’t believe these programs will be there for them, and the poor against the working middle class.
By splitting working America along these lines, Republicans want Americans to believe that we can no longer afford to do what we need to do as a nation. They hope to deflect attention from the increasing share of total income and wealth going to the richest 1 percent while the jobs and wages of everyone else languish.
Kim Barker: Why We Need Women in War Zones
The CBS correspondent Lara Logan has broken that code of silence. She has covered some of the most dangerous stories in the world, and done a lot of brave things in her career. But her decision to go public earlier this week with her attack by a mob in Tahrir Square in Cairo was by far the bravest. Hospitalized for days, she is still recuperating from the attack, described by CBS as a brutal and sustained sexual assault and beating.
Several commentators have suggested that Ms. Logan was somehow at fault: because she’s pretty; because she decided to go into the crowd; because she’s a war junkie. This wasn’t her fault. It was the mob’s fault. This attack also had nothing to do with Islam. Sexual violence has always been a tool of war. Female reporters sometimes are just convenient.
In the coming weeks, I fear that the conclusions drawn from Ms. Logan’s experience will be less reactionary but somehow darker, that there will be suggestions that female correspondents should not be sent into dangerous situations. It’s possible that bosses will make unconscious decisions to send men instead, just in case. Sure, men can be victims, too – on Wednesday a mob beat up a male ABC reporter in Bahrain, and a few male journalists have told of being sodomized by captors – but the publicity around Ms. Logan’s attack could make editors think, “Why take the risk?” That would be the wrong lesson. Women can cover the fighting just as well as men, depending on their courage.
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