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Week In The News: Wildfires, Greece, Debt Ceiling
ResumeTom Gjelten in for Tom Ashbook
The President hammers Congress. The deadly Afghan hotel attack. Wildfires threaten Los Alamos. That and more on the week in the news roundtable.
It looks more and more like a game of chicken: President Obama and the Republicans face off over the debt.
In Minnesota, a debt debate shuts down the government. A stunning development in the case of Dominique Strauss Kahn.
Michelle Bachman jumps into the presidential race. Will Texas governor Rick Perry be next?
A big Taliban attack on a hotel in Afghanistan. But it’s Leon Panetta’s problem now. Defense Secretary Robert Gates has retired.
The Greek Parliament approves an austerity plan.
This hour On Point: our weekly news roundtable.
Guests:
Susan Davis, Congressional correspondent for the National Journal.
Greg Ip, U.S. economics editor for The Economist
Jack Beatty, On Point news analyst
Tom's Reading List
- Debt Ceiling debate: "President Obama belittled congressional Republicans for taking vacations amid difficult deficit-reduction talks. He contrasted lawmakers with his young daughters. And he brushed off criticism of his Libya policy as a “fuss” that is all about politics."
- Obama press conference: "Who was that combative president? The guy who came out swinging against tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires, for big oil companies, for hedge fund managers, for corporate jet owners?"
- Same sex marriage: "After months of saying his position on same-sex marriage is “evolving,” President Obama traded that language on Wednesday for comments that stopped just short of endorsing the notion that gay people have the right to marry."
- Free trade deals: "President Barack Obama's plan to win approval of U.S. free trade deals with South Korea, Colombia and Panama faces its first test on Thursday as the Senate Finance Committee takes up the measures."
- Afghanistan attack: "Nazir Amini, an Afghan visiting from his home in Germany, had just returned from the buffet with a bowl of ice cream when two men with an AK-47 rifle and a machine gun started shooting guests around the pool at the Intercontinental Hotel, one of the capital’s most fortified buildings."
- Greece: "As Greece’s 300 legislators debated, and finally approved, an internationally backed financial-rescue plan with many clear downsides—it will pile pain onto hapless firms and citizens who already pay taxes, for instance, and so subsidise those who do not—some dire pronouncements on the possible consequences of saying “no” to the world were ringing in their ears."
- Wildfires: "Residents across New Mexico might be wondering what they did to anger Mother Nature. Ever since 2011 arrived on the scene, the weather has been nothing but ugly, beginning with a terrifying winter and now terrifying fires with the nebulous (though still unlikely) possibility of nuclear contamination."
This program aired on July 1, 2011.