“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: Guests will include Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, Former Senate leaders Trent Lott (R-MI), Tom Daschle (D-SD) and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg joined by City Hall aides Jonathan Mintz and John Feinblatt, whose marriage ceremony he will officiate this Sunday.
The roundable guests, ABC News’ George Will, Arianna Huffington of the Huffington Post, Fox Business Network senior correspondent Charlie Gasparino, and economist Alice Rivlin, former member of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, will discuss the debt ceiling crisis and Rep. Michelle Bachmann‘s migraines heh, hers or ours.
ABC News correspondent Lama Hasan reports on the devastating drought and famine in the Horn of Africa.
Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer: Mr. Schieffer’s guests White House Chief of Staff William Daley and key negotiators Sen. Richard Durbin (D-IL), and Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ), plus Gang of Six leaders Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) and Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA).
Liars one and all
The Chris Matthews Show: This week’s guests, Kelly O’Donnell, NBC News Capitol Hill Correspondent, John Heilemann, New York Magazine National Political Correspondent, Joe Klein, TIME Columnist and Gloria Borger, CNN Senior Political Analyst, will babble about these topics:
The Anatomy Of A 2012 Obama Reelection Plan
Can Obama Run On Hope And Still Look Credible?
Meet the Press with David Gregory: Guests this week are White House Chief of Staff Bill Daley, “Gang of Six” member Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK).
The roudtable panel, Former Senator Chuck Hagel (R-NE), tea party freshman Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL), Mayor of Newark, Cory Booker (D), Presidential Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin and NBC’s Andrea Mitchell will be asked if Washington is Broken.
answer: YES
State of the Union with Candy Crowley: Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), Rep. Tom Price (R-GA) and GOP presidential candidate Tim Pawlenty are guests.
Fareed Zakaris: GPS: Guests are Pulitzer Prize winning author David McCullough, Anne-Marie Slaughter and Gideon Rose.
IF China or Iran threatened our national credit rating and tried to drive up our interest rates, or if they sought to damage our education system, we would erupt in outrage.
Well, wake up to the national security threat. Only it’s not coming from abroad, but from our own domestic extremists.
We tend to think of national security narrowly as the risk of a military or terrorist attack. But national security is about protecting our people and our national strength – and the blunt truth is that the biggest threat to America’s national security this summer doesn’t come from China, Iran or any other foreign power. It comes from budget machinations, and budget maniacs, at home.
Dana Milbank: Dangerous dealings with the Default Caucus
Twenty Republican lawmakers crowded the Senate TV studio last week to issue a threat: Meet their demands, or they will force the United States to default.
The only way to prevent the catastrophe, these Tea Party faithful said, was for the Senate to pass, and the president to sign, their plan to permanently cap spending at levels last seen in 1966, before Medicare made the nation soft.
“We want to make very clear: This is not just the best plan on the table for addressing the debt limit – this is the only plan,” first-term Sen. Mike Lee (Utah) said, vowing that “we’re otherwise going to be blowing past the debt-limit deadline.”
“We have a solution,” said Sen. Jim DeMint (S.C.). “It’s the only one that can be passed before the August 2nd deadline.”
This is the language of gangster films: Do as we say – or the girl gets it.
Mark Bittman: Bad Food? Tax It, and Subsidize Vegetables
WHAT will it take to get Americans to change our eating habits? The need is indisputable, since heart disease, diabetes and cancer are all in large part caused by the Standard American Diet. (Yes, it’s SAD.)
Though experts increasingly recommend a diet high in plants and low in animal products and processed foods, ours is quite the opposite, and there’s little disagreement that changing it could improve our health and save tens of millions of lives.
And – not inconsequential during the current struggle over deficits and spending – a sane diet could save tens if not hundreds of billions of dollars in health care costs.
Yet the food industry appears incapable of marketing healthier foods. And whether its leaders are confused or just stalling doesn’t matter, because the fixes are not really their problem. Their mission is not public health but profit, so they’ll continue to sell the health-damaging food that’s most profitable, until the market or another force skews things otherwise. That “other force” should be the federal government, fulfilling its role as an agent of the public good and establishing a bold national fix.
Ross Tucker and Jonathan Dugas: A Doping-Free Tour de France?
SURVIVORS of this year’s Tour de France are to ride into Paris today after racing 2,131 miles over 23 days, including daunting climbs through the Pyrenees and the Alps. For the first time in years, evidence suggests that doping may not be playing the dominant role it once did.
More than any other sport, bicycling has been linked to drugs. Podium finishers in nearly every Tour over at least the last two decades have failed drug tests, admitted to doping or been linked to high-profile investigations.
Viewers have tended to regard the winners with a bit of disbelief.
But the sport appears to have turned the corner and is regaining some credibility, thanks to the antidoping efforts of a new generation of riders, managers and fans. There is, as yet, no conclusive proof of this, as one cannot prove a negative. Still, we now believe that cycling is cleaner than it has been at any time since 1990.
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