and there's lots to disagree about this week

This week marks the 100th day of the Obama Presidency, and both critics and supporters are seizing the moment to open up with all the ammunition they have. Tonight's post press conference analysis is sure to be a doozy.

But let's leave that alone for now. Instead, there have been other events that are really tugging at the heart of our politics and policy in the US.


First, Arlen Specter, long time Republic Senator in Pennsylvania, defected from the GOP to the Democratic party. It was a stunning announcement that caught both parties by surprise, and left the GOP reeling and well, somewhat pissed.

Senator Specter, in his announcement, essentially said that the GOP had moved too far right since he had been elected in the Reagan years and that he found his views more in line with Democratic party today. He, however, did promise that he would not be a party stooge and vowed to keep his "independent" record alive.

Undoubtedly, Senator Specter, by his own admission, is doing this partly out of survival reasons because he would have faced a tough Republican challenger in his primary in the upcoming election (this is what you get for voting for a bailout). However, he's also right in pointing out that 200,000 of his constituents have switched party affiliations from GOP to Democrat in 2008 alone. He has made a legitimate, if somewhat convenient, argument that his constituents no longer want him to be a GOP senator.

Nonetheless, the GOP didn't waste any time and went to town on Mr. Specter. The Michael Steele, the RNC chair, is responded, "[Specter] left to further his personal political interests because he knew that he was going to lose a Republican primary due to his left-wing voting record.”

Really? Left-wing voting record? Come on Michael Steel. The man has been a GOP senator since you were a small child. You can disagree with Specter's voting record all you want, but he was a foundation for your party since before you entered politics. This labeling of Specter as "left-wing" is ridiculous by any objective standard (Specter voted for the Iraq war, conservative Supreme Court justices, anti-union, etc.). You can at best call him a centrist or at center-right.

As Mike Grunwald of the Time pointed out," The GOP is shrinking — down to 20% of the country, in a new New York Times poll — and its holdouts are increasingly hard-core. They don't like government. They do like Rush Limbaugh. They care more about the purity of their principles than the size of their tent."

Congratulations GOP leadership. Instead of actually trying to engage anyone on issues (which most people can agree would be a nice intellectual activity at the very least), you've brought your party to the brink of collapse.


The torture/interrogation argument reached its peak (I think). I don't have too much to add to this topic because 1) I don't work for the CIA Clandestine Service branch or hold any top security clearances and 2) I have no perspective on what it is like to deal with members of Al Qaeda or other terrorist groups.

Nonetheless, the facts are pretty clear. The United States intelligence organizations have tortured/interrogated many suspects over the last few years using techniques that would make Jack Bauer pretty happy. No one in the public will really never know whether the information gained from these techniques were crucial in stopping future attacks or that alternative interrogation techniques could have paid off equally, so a ends based critique is somewhat futile.

Now, I fully understand that the saying reasonable people can disagree about torture sounds barbaric, but I think clearly that has been proven true. While the humanist/liberal in me may to say that torture should not be condoned, there are plenty of people who accept a "realist" frame of national security and international politics who say that torture must be a necessary aspect of defending our country sometimes. Those arguments are not without merit.

So what is a President to do? Not much unfortunately. I think President Obama managed to piss EVERYONE off with his actions on the torture memos, but maybe that was the point.

As Paul Krugman of the NYTimes points out, "The president’s decision to expose but not prosecute those responsible for this policy is surely unsatisfying; some of this abuse involved sheer brutality that had nothing to do with clear and present dangers. Then why justify the Obama compromise? Two reasons: the first is that because justice taken to its logical end here would likely require bringing George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld and other senior officials to trial, which would rip our country apart; and the other is that Al Qaeda truly was a unique enemy, and the post-9/11 era a deeply confounding war in a variety of ways."


Car companies are still dying. There's no other way to put this. GM is still being restructured, the Pontiac brand is no more, and Chrysler isn't doing any better.

Undoubtedly people have lots of opinions on whether we should save the US auto industry. On one hand, they're a lot more people friendly (all those hard working auto-workers after all) than banks (damn MIT kids screwing things up), but on the other hand, there seems to be very little point in propping up a company that no longer makes things that apparently people don't want anymore.

In this somewhat Pro-Bama piece, the NY Times seems to indicate that our President is willing to let these companies go bankrupt. This will undoubtedly piss off a significant portion of his constituents, but only time will tell if this is the right choice.

Anyways, this argument has been done to death already, so I'll leave it to the economists and business analysts to go to town.