Tag: Opinion

“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.

“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.

William K. Black and L. Randall Wray: Foreclose on the Foreclosure Fraudsters, Part 1: Put Bank of America in Receivership

After a quick review of its procedures, Bank of America this week announced that it will resume its foreclosures in 23 lucky states next Monday. While the evidence is overwhelming that the entire foreclosure process is riddled with fraud, President Obama refuses to support a national moratorium. Indeed, his spokesmen on the issue told reporters three key things. As the Los Angeles Times reported:

 

A government review of botched foreclosure paperwork so far has found that the problems do not pose a “systemic” threat to the financial system, a top Obama administration official said Wednesday.

Yes, that’s right. HUD reviewed the “paperwork” problem to see whether it threatened the banks — not the homeowners who were the victims of foreclosure fraud. But it got worse, for the second point was how the government would respond to the epidemic of foreclosure fraud.    

The Justice Department is leading an investigation of possible crimes involving mortgage fraud.

That language was carefully chosen to sound reassuring. But the fact is that despite our pleas the FBI has continued its “partnership” with the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA). The MBA is the trade association of the “perps.” It created a ridiculous on its face definition of “mortgage fraud.” Under that definition the lenders — who led the mortgage frauds — are the victims. The FBI still parrots this long discredited “definition.” That is one of the primary reasons why — in complete contrast to prior financial crises — the Justice Department has not convicted a single senior officer of the large nonprime lenders who directed, committed, and profited enormously from the frauds.

Glenn Greenwald The real danger from NPR’s firing of Juan Williams

I’m still not quite over the most disgusting part of the Juan Williams spectacle yesterday:  watching the very same people (on the Right and in the media) who remained silent about or vocally cheered on the viewpoint-based firings of Octavia Nasr, Helen Thomas, Rick Sanchez, Eason Jordan, Peter Arnett, Phil Donahue, Ashleigh Banfield, Bill Maher, Ward Churchill, Chas Freeman, Van Jones and so many others, spend all day yesterday wrapping themselves in the flag of “free expression!!!” and screeching about the perils and evils of firing journalists for expressing certain viewpoints.  Even for someone who expects huge doses of principle-free hypocrisy — as I do — that behavior is really something to behold. And anyone doubting that there is a double standard when it comes to anti-Muslim speech should just compare the wailing backlash from most quarters over Williams’ firing to the muted acquiescence or widespread approval of those other firings.

But there’s one point from all of this I really want to highlight. The principal reason the Williams firing resonated so much and provoked so much fury is that it threatens the preservation of one of the most important American mythologies:  that Muslims are a Serious Threat to America and Americans.  That fact is illustrated by a Washington Post Op-Ed today from Reuel Marc Gerecht, who is as standard and pure a neocon as exists:  an Israel-centric, Iran-threatening, Weekly Standard and TNR writer, former CIA Middle East analyst, former American Enterprise Institute and current Defense of Democracies “scholar,” torture advocate, etc. etc.

David Sirota: The Tea Party Test Case

What is the tea party? Many have tried to answer that question ever since CNBC’s Rick Santelli first launched the backlash with his trading-floor rant against the poor.

Democratic operatives, for instance, say the tea party is merely a Republican Party facade. As proof, they point to GOP-linked corporate groups’ involvement in tea party events, and cite the absence of tea party deficit and bailout protests during George W. Bush’s presidency.

Social scientists, meanwhile, suggest that the tea party is not the entire Republican apparatus, but specifically the extreme conservative edge of the GOP. The data add credence to that argument: As the Public Religion Research Institute and the University of Washington report, tea party followers are disproportionately part of the Christian right and are more racially resentful than the general public.

“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.

Paul Krugman: British Fashion Victims

In the spring of 2010, fiscal austerity became fashionable. I use the term advisedly: the sudden consensus among Very Serious People that everyone must balance budgets now now now wasn’t based on any kind of careful analysis. It was more like a fad, something everyone professed to believe because that was what the in-crowd was saying.

And it’s a fad that has been fading lately, as evidence has accumulated that the lessons of the past remain relevant, that trying to balance budgets in the face of high unemployment and falling inflation is still a really bad idea. Most notably, the confidence fairy has been exposed as a myth. There have been widespread claims that deficit-cutting actually reduces unemployment because it reassures consumers and businesses; but multiple studies of historical record, including one by the International Monetary Fund, have shown that this claim has no basis in reality.

No widespread fad ever passes, however, without leaving some fashion victims in its wake. In this case, the victims are the people of Britain, who have the misfortune to be ruled by a government that took office at the height of the austerity fad and won’t admit that it was wrong.

Eugene Robinson: Lawyers got it right on the foreclosure mess

Don’t blame the lawyers. The crisis over faulty or fraudulent paperwork in mortgage foreclosures — which is either a big deal or a humongous deal, depending on which experts you believe — is the fault of arrogant, greedy lenders who played fast and loose with the basic property rights of homeowners.

Banks and other lenders, it seems, made statements in courts of law that turned out not to be true. Because judges have such an underdeveloped sense of humor when it comes to prevarication, this mess may be with us for a while.

The mortgage industry would love to blame the whole thing on predatory, opportunistic lawyers who are seizing on mere technicalities to forestall untold numbers of foreclosures that should legitimately proceed. The bankers are right when they complain that the delays are gumming up the housing market, as potential buyers for soon-to-be-foreclosed properties are forced to bide their time until all the questions about documentation and proper title are answered.

Linda Greenhouse: Calling John Roberts

As 1997 wound down, Bill Clinton was in the White House, the Republicans controlled the Senate, and the Clinton administration’s judicial nominees were going nowhere. Nearly one in 10 federal judgeships was vacant, a total of 82 vacancies, 26 of which had gone unfilled for more than 18 months. In Democratic hands back in 1994, the Senate had confirmed 101 nominees. In 1997, under the Republicans, the number dropped to 36.

On New Year’s Eve, a major public figure stepped into this gridlock. He was a well-known Republican, and although he had set aside overt partisanship, his conservative credentials remained impeccable. He had given no one a reason to think he was favorably disposed toward the incumbent administration or its judicial nominees. Yet there he was, availing himself of a year-end platform to criticize the Senate and to warn that “vacancies cannot remain at such high levels indefinitely without eroding the quality of justice.”

His name was William H. Rehnquist, chief justice of the United States, using his annual year-end report on the state of the federal judiciary to declare that with “too few judges and too much work,” the judicial system was imperiled by the Senate’s inaction. “The Senate is surely under no obligation to confirm any particular nominee,” he said, “but after the necessary time for inquiry, it should vote him up or vote him down to give the president another chance at filling the vacancy.”

“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.

Joe Cirincione: British Budget Collapse Foreshadows Cuts to Come in U.S. Defense Budget

Great Britain’s cuts, particularly to its nuclear forces, are the canary in the defense budget mine. Just as massive deficits forced the conservative UK government to cut deep into its military programs, the United States will soon have to choose: update its force structure or cling to obsolete Cold War posture?

The UK may have waited too long to make the cuts. It is now forced to cut military personnel by 10 percent, and scrap an aircraft carrier and the entire fleet of Harrier jump jets (a very versatile, though very dangerous, fighter jet in which I once flew).

Less controversial is the plan to delay a decision on building a new generation of nuclear-armed submarines to replace the four existing Trident subs, each armed with 16 missiles carrying a total of 48 hydrogen bombs per sub.

Johann Hari: The Tea Party’s Wildest Dreams Come True — in Britain. The Result? Disaster

Margaret Thatcher is lying sick in a private hospital bed in Belgravia — but her political children have just pushed her agenda further and harder and deeper than she ever dreamed of. The government of David Cameron just took the Tea Party’s deepest fantasies — of massive budget cuts, introduced immediately — and imposed them on Britain. When was the last time Britain’s public spending was slashed by more than 20 percent? Not in my mother’s lifetime. Not even in my grandmother’s lifetime. No: It was in 1918, when a conservative-liberal coalition said the best response to a global economic crisis was to rapidly pay off this country’s debts. The result? Unemployment soared from six percent to 19 percent, and the country’s economy collapsed so severely that they lost all ability to pay their bills, and the debt actually rose from 114 percent to 180 percent. “History doesn’t repeat itself,” Mark Twain said, “but it does rhyme.”

George Osborne, the finance minister, has just gambled Britain’s future on an extreme economic theory that has failed whenever and wherever it has been tried. In the Great Depression, we learned some basic principles. When an economy falters, ordinary people — perfectly sensibly — cut back their spending and try to pay down their debts. This causes a further fall in demand and makes the economy worse. If the government cuts back at the same time, then there is no demand at all, and the economy goes into freefall. That’s why virtually every country in the world reacted to the Great Crash of 2008 — caused entirely by deregulated bankers — by increasing spending, funded by temporary debt. Better a deficit we repay in the good times than an endless depression. The countries that stimulated hardest, like South Korea, came out of recession first.

Bob Cesca: The Republican Swindle About ‘Obamacare and Stimulus’

If you happen to be a swing voter who’s considering the Republican slate next month, you’re being tricked. That’s not to say you’re an idiot, but the Republicans are doing an excellent job masking over what they really stand for, and millions of Americans seem to be falling for it.

The Republican strategy for this midterm election is simple: Treat voters like easily manipulated hoopleheads. The GOP and its various apparatchiks are spending untold millions of dollars, much of it from anonymous donors and, perhaps, even some illegal foreign donors, in order to play out this nationwide swindle. They’re investing heavily on the wager that Americans are so kerfuffled by the slow-growth (but growth nevertheless) economy that they’re willing to buy any line of nonsense as an alternative solution.

Regarding that nonsense, just about every GOP solution and every GOP idea reveals either a hilariously obvious contradiction or an utterly transparent hypocrisy. Say nothing of unchecked awfulness like Southern Strategy race-baiting or bald-faced lies. But it doesn’t seem to matter much because they’ve buried most of it under heaping piles of inchoate outrage and fear. Just like always. It’s not unlike the 2000s all over again. They’re engaging in the same bumper sticker sloganeering and myopic agitprop, but with updated content for 2010.

Paul Krugman linked to this chart from a paper by Mary Daly of the San Francisco Fed with the comparison of the Japanese economy to the current US economic morass.

Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Prize winner, doctor of economics and professor of economics at Columbia University, appeared today on the Dylan Ratigan Show and offered his advice for radical surgery to get the money and the jobs flowing again.

Ratigan:

“What is the risk of not dealing with the vicious cycle that is becoming joblessness in America, which leads to foreclosure in America, which leads to bank dysfunctionality, which leads to less investing and that vicious cycle that clearly has tremendous peril? What is that peril?”

Stiglitz:

“Well, I learned years ago that if we didn’t do it, we would be exactly where we are today and if we don’t do it now, we are likely to be entering into a Japanese style malaise, low growth, high unemployment, literally for years to come that should be unacceptable.”

See chart above and listen to Stiglitz offer his “radical surgical” solution.

“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.

Dean Baker: Timothy Geithner forecloses on the moratorium debate

By refusing to halt foreclosures to sort out the mortgage mess, the treasury secretary again shows his favour to Wall Street

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is good at telling fairy tales. Geithner first became known to the general public in September of 2008. Back then, he was head of the New York Federal Reserve Board. He was part of the triumvirate, along with Federal Reserve Board chairman Ben Bernanke and then Treasury secretary Henry Paulson, who told congress that it had to pass the Tarp or the economy would collapse. . . . .

Now, Geithner has a new fairytale. This time, it is that if the government imposes a foreclosure moratorium, it will lead to chaos in the housing market and jeopardise the health of the recovery.

For the gullible, which includes most of the Washington policy elite, this assertion is probably sufficient to quash any interest in a foreclosure moratorium. But those capable of thinking for themselves may ask how Geithner could have reached this conclusion.

Amy Goodman: When Banks Are the Robbers

The big banks that caused the collapse of the global finance market, and received tens of billions of dollars in taxpayer-funded bailouts, have likely been engaging in wholesale fraud against homeowners and the courts. But in a promising development this week, attorneys general from all 50 states announced a bipartisan joint investigation into foreclosure fraud.

Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, GMAC and other big mortgage lenders recently suspended most foreclosure proceedings, following revelations that thousands of their foreclosures were being conducted like “foreclosure mills,” with tens of thousands of legal documents signed by low-level staffers with little or no knowledge of what they were signing.

Then the Obama administration signaled that it was not supporting a foreclosure moratorium. Not long after, Bank of America announced it was restarting its foreclosure operations. GMAC followed suit, and others will likely join in. So much for the voluntary moratorium.

Dana Milbank: A Tea Party of populist posers

On the morning of Oct. 14, a cyber-insurgency caused servers to crash at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

The culprits, however, weren’t attacking the chamber; they were well-meaning citizens who overwhelmed the big-business lobbying group with a sudden wave of online contributions. It was one of the more extraordinary events in the annals of American populism: the common man voluntarily giving money to make the rich richer. . . .

A movement of the plutocrats, by the political professionals and for the powerful: Now that’s something Tea Partyers should be mad about.

Reality check ala Rachel:

There was not an ideological coherence to what’s going on in right wing politics.  There’s not a cogent argument to make about what kind of challenge these folks present and what’s going to happen in these elections.

It’s not the deficit.  It’s not big government.  It’s not the stimulus.

It’s not Obamacare.  It’s not populism.  It’s not that all of these people are outsiders.

It’s none of these things.  These things are all provably not what’s going on.  They’re not bolstered by the facts no matter how many times you hear from the Beltway media.  This is not what’s happening.

But the media dressing these guys up like there is some coherent narrative, like there is some cogent argument here, that conveniently obscures what’s really going here, which is that we are on the precipice of elevating the federal office, the most extreme and in some cases strange set of conservative candidates in a lifetime.

Yes, this has happened to a smaller degree before.  In 1994, in the first midterm election after the last Democrat president was elected, we got a slate of candidates that included Helen Chenoweth of Idaho, Steve Stockman of Texas.  These two were so close to the militia movement in this country that Mr. Stockman actually received advance notice that the Oklahoma City bombing was going to happen.

There are extremist candidates who from time to time survive the churn of electoral politics and actually make it into the mainstream.  There’s always a few.  But there has never been this many.

None of this makes any sense.  We’re just about to elect a whole bunch of extremists-unless thing change in the next two week.

Listen as Rachel debunks the campaign lies and the MSM narrative as she exposes the Republicans “wish list” for the extremist agenda that it is.

Two weeks out.  How do Democrats run against this?  

“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.

Robert Reich The Perfect Storm

It’s a perfect storm. And I’m not talking about the impending dangers facing Democrats. I’m talking about the dangers facing our democracy.

First, income in America is now more concentrated in fewer hands than it’s been in 80 years. Almost a quarter of total income generated in the United States is going to the top 1 percent of Americans.

The top one-tenth of one percent of Americans now earn as much as the bottom 120 million of us.

The perfect storm: An unprecedented concentration of income and wealth at the top; a record amount of secret money flooding our democracy; and a public becoming increasingly angry and cynical about a government that’s raising its taxes, reducing its services, and unable to get it back to work.

We’re losing our democracy to a different system. It’s called plutocracy.

Dean Baker: Liar Liens and Wall Street’s Foreclosure Scam

The highest rates of foreclosure are on the quick and dirty loans made at the peak of the bubble.

As we all know there is a major philosophical divide in U.S. politics. One the one hand there are those who think it is the role of government to help ensure that the vast majority of the population can enjoy a decent standard of living. On the other side are those who believe the role of government is to transfer as much money as possible to the rich and powerful. The latter group seems to be calling the shots these days.

This is seen clearly in the ” liar lien” scandal: the flood of short order foreclosures that ignore standard legal procedures. The banks have been overwhelmed by the unprecedented volume of defaulting mortgages in the wake of the housing crash. Even under normal circumstances foreclosure rates that in some areas exceed ten times normal levels would create an administrative nightmare.

But these were not ordinary loans. The highest rates of foreclosure are on the quick and dirty loans made at the peak of the bubble. These loans were issued to be sold. Almost immediately after the ink was dry, the issuers would sell these loans off to Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, or other investment banks to turn them into mortgage backed securities. The investment banks themselves were running short order operations. More rapid securitization meant more profits.

Robert Kuttner: Recovery, Please

Will the recession just go on and on and on? In the absence of far more vigorous government action, it certainly looks that way.

At a recent conference sponsored by several think tanks, Paul Krugman declared that the recession could literally continue indefinitely because the economy is stuck in a cycle of depressed wages, reduced consumer purchasing power, damaged banks, and business hesitancy to invest — and no strategy on the political horizon is about to alter this dynamic.

It’s not surprising to hear that from Krugman. The startling thing was that his two co-panelists, former Reagan chief economist Martin Feldstein and the chief economist of Goldman Sachs, Jan Hatzius, agreed that massive stimulus spending was the necessary cure.

“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.

Paul Krugman: Rare and Foolish

Last month a Chinese trawler operating in Japanese-controlled waters collided with two vessels of Japan’s Coast Guard. Japan detained the trawler’s captain; China responded by cutting off Japan’s access to crucial raw materials.

And there was nowhere else to turn: China accounts for 97 percent of the world’s supply of rare earths, minerals that play an essential role in many high-technology products, including military equipment. Sure enough, Japan soon let the captain go.

I don’t know about you, but I find this story deeply disturbing, both for what it says about China and what it says about us. On one side, the affair highlights the fecklessness of U.S. policy makers, who did nothing while an unreliable regime acquired a stranglehold on key materials. On the other side, the incident shows a Chinese government that is dangerously trigger-happy, willing to wage economic warfare on the slightest provocation.

Sherrod Brown: For Our China Trade Emergency, Dial Section 301

TEN years ago this fall the Senate sold out American manufacturing. By a vote of 83 to 15, it established so-called permanent normal trade relations with China, paving the way for that country to join the World Trade Organization. As a result, Chinese imports to the United States fell under the same low tariffs and high quotas as those from countries like Canada and Britain.

Today, though, our trade relations with China are anything but normal. The 2000 agreement’s proponents insisted it would enable a billion Chinese consumers to buy American products. Instead, our bilateral trade deficit has increased 170 percent, largely because China has undermined free-market competition through illegal subsidies and currency manipulation.

Unless the administration takes punitive steps in response to China’s unfair trade practices, the American economy – and the American worker – will continue to suffer.

Sherrod Brown, a Democratic senator from Ohio, is a member of the President’s Export Council and the author of “Myths of Free Trade.”

Glenn Greenwald: How propaganda is disseminated: WikiLeaks Edition

This is how the U.S. government and American media jointly disseminate propaganda: in the immediate wake of some newsworthy War on Terror event, U.S. Government officials (usually anonymous) make wild and reckless — though unverifiable — claims. The U.S. media mindlessly trumpets them around the world without question or challenge. Those claims become consecrated as widely accepted fact. And then weeks, months or years later, those claims get quietly exposed as being utter falsehoods, by which point it does not matter, because the goal is already well-achieved: the falsehoods are ingrained as accepted truth.

I’ve documented how this process works in the context of American air attacks (it’s immediately celebrated that we Killed the Evil Targeted Terrorist Leader who invariably turns out to be alive and then allegedly killed again in the next air strike], while the [dead are always, by definition, “militants”); with covered-up American war crimes, with the Jessica Lynch and Pat Tillman frauds — the same process was also evident with the Israeli attack on the flotilla — and now we find a quite vivid illustration of this deceitful process in the context of WikiLeaks’ release of Afghanistan war documents. . . .

John Nichols: Obama is Wrong, the Republicans are Right

The Obama administration’s Department of Justice is seeking to overturn the world-wide injunction against enforcment of the noxious “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy. . . .

There have been lots of objections. But the loudest complaints are coming from Republicans. Not, unfortunately, all Republicans. But the Log Cabin Republicans — the gay and lesbian group that secured the injunction from a federal judge — are mounting the defense of the injunction. . . .

The Log Cabin lawyer is right: legally, logically and morally. The Department of Justice does have a responsibility to enforce the law, even when the law is objectionable. But it does not have a responsibility to defend a policy that a federal judge has soundly and unequivocally identified as an assault on the Constitution that violates the basic premises of a free and just society.

“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 is “on the trail” reporting from Delaware on “This Week” featuring exclusive interviews with Republican Christine O’Donnell and Democrat Chris Coons.



“This Week” kicks off an extraordinary ABC network wide series, “Woman’s Nation Takes on Alzheimer’s.” Amanpour has an exclusive interview with Maria Shriver, who will be releasing a groundbreaking report Sunday morning examining Alzheimer’s impact on women, who are at the center of this crisis.

Meghan McCain joins ABC’s George Will, Terry Moran and Matthew Dowd on our roundtable. With a little more than two weeks before Election Day they’ll analyze the midterm political landscape, where races are opening up and where they are tightening.

Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer: The question for discussion is: How Divided Are We? Mr Schieffer’s guests will be Howard Dean, Former Chairman, Democratic National Committee, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina), Liz Cheney, Republican Strategist and Chairwoman, Keep America Safe and William Galston, Deputy Assistant for Domestic Policy, Clinton administration and Senior Fellow, Brookings Institution.

The Chris Matthews Show: Mr. Matthews will be joined by Andrea Mitchell, NBC News

Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent, Bob Woodward, The Washington Post Associate Editor, David Brookes, The New York Times Columnist and Helene Cooper, The New York Times  White House Correspondent. They will be discussing 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: An exclusive with White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs for an inside look at the Obama administration’s game plan to keep Democrats in power on the Hill. Plus, a look at the president’s agenda when it comes to all the big issues post-election: the economy, taxes, foreign policy and more.

Also the Senate Debate 2010 series continues with the showdown in Colorado. Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet squares off with Republican Ken Buck on all the issues that matter most to the nation and to Colorado: the economy, taxes, health care, immigration and more.

State of the Union with Candy Crowley: Just two weeks until the midterm elections and the political ad wars are flooding the airwaves at historic levels. The White House accuses the US Chamber of Commerce and other special interest groups of spending millions of dollars from “unknown donors” and foreign entities. Joining us to discuss this and more is Senior Adviser to the President David Axelrod.

We get the GOP response from former presidential candidate Gary Bauer, chair of the Campaign for Working Families. That PAC is launching a $1 million ad blitz in 10 midterm election races.

Then, a closer look at the November midterms and the impact all this money will have on Election Day; that with Evan Tracey of the Campaign Media Analysis Group and Michael Duffy, Assistant Managing Editor of Time.

Fareed Zakaris: GPS:  An exclusive interview with the newest Nobel laureate. MIT professor Peter Diamond was part of a trio that won the award in economics for their work on unemployment — certainly a hot topic these days. And just recently, Diamond was nominated by President Obama to the Federal Reserve. But the nomination was blocked. Diamond on HIS job problem…and the nation’s.

Also, North Korea’s “Dear Leader” is at it again. Kim Jong Il has just announced his succession plan and while it sounds like a farce, the implications could be deadly serious. What is in store for the Korean Peninsula’s future? And could a North Korean collapse lead to a confrontation between the U.S. and China?

While the world was watching the Chilean mine, much else was going on in the world. We’ll span the globe with a terrific GPS foreign policy panel.

And Iraq is going on nine months without a government and violence continues to wreck havoc there. Fareed sits down with Ayad Allawi, the former Prime Minister of Iraq, to get his thoughts on the stalemate and on Thursday’s deadly roadside bombing that killed members of Allawi’s party.

Also, a look at Al Qaeda’s new magazine. Is it the jihadist’s Cosmo?

And finally, was the rescue of the Chilean miners the solution to breaking a century-old dispute between two neighboring nations?