We generally fill our Monday morning allotment of blog posts on national political news emanating from Washington, but after spending two hours plus watching the Sunday morning public affair shows yesterday, we don't really have much to say regarding the whole skirmish in D.C. on the debt ceiling issue. It seems to change daily, and there never seems to be very specific numbers regarding budget cuts that are said to be the major (if not only) part of this deal to have Congress support increasing the debt ceiling.
So we're avoiding that today. We do have some news on a couple of Republican presidential candidates, however, including Tim Pawlenty, who appeared on CNN yesterday to (what else?) blast President Obama – and also talk about why he support a ban on same sex marriages.
We're still a long way from knowing who the GOP candidate will be (and the results of the Iowa Caucus may not tell us that much – which is in two weeks by the way), but Mitt Romney is acting like he's the front-runner, including airing on the Internet net another jab at President Obama, this time on jobs. Which leads one to ask, what's your record on that topic, Mitt? Some say not so good.
And last but not least, we're very intrigued by the polemic that NY Times food columnist Mark Bittman proposed in the SundayReview; that is, seriously looking at taxing sugar drinks and bad foods to try to do something positive about the fact that Americans are eating themselves into obesity, if not to their deaths in some cases. No doubt it will be labeled by some as anti-American, but we think it's intriguing.
This article appears in Jul 21-27, 2011.