California May Need $7 Billion Bailout
As Dave Schuler has been predicting for a while now, the financial crisis is starting to hit state governments. California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, alarmed by the ongoing national financial crisis, warned Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson on Thursday that the state might need an emergency loan of as much as $7 billion from the federal government within weeks. The warning comes ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on October 3, 2008 08:32
California to Ban Trans Fats, Needs Schwarzenegger Signature
California will become the first state in the Union to ban trans fats in restaurants and other public food facilities if Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signs into into law a bill passed by the state legislature Monday. Schwarzenegger has yet to announce his position publicly but he did sign a ban on trans fats in public school cafeterias last year. Michelle Malkin ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on July 17, 2008 12:53
McCain Shakes Up Campaign Staff. Again.
John McCain has reshuffled his top campaign staff for the second time is a less than a year, elevating Karl Rove protégé Steve Schmidt to the top post. Responding to Republican concerns that his candidacy was faltering, Mr. McCain put a veteran of President Bush’s 2004 campaign in charge of day-to-day operations and stepped away from a plan to have the ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on July 3, 2008 08:08
Obama = Charismatic = Hitler = Armageddon
Arthur Silber is, as am I, fascinated by the cult of personality surrounding Barack Obama. He notes some anecdotal creepy gushing on a local radio show and then Reactions of this kind to Obama are fairly common. No, they are not this extreme much of the time, but such statements are far from unusual. And many of Obama's less obviously deluded ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on July 1, 2008 08:19
Hummer Terminated by High Gas Prices?
General Motors CEO Rick Wagoner has announced the closure of four truck and SUV plants in North America and says the Hummer brand may be discontinued altogether. The civilian version of the Hummer came out as I was getting out of the Army and, frankly, I never much understood the appeal. I had spent enough time riding and even ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on June 3, 2008 08:59
Michael Savage Mocks Kennedy Cancer
Right wing shock jock Michael Savage had fun at the expense of Teddy Kennedy while announcing that the senator had being diagnosed with a brain tumor. Following the announcement that Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA) has been diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor, nationally syndicated radio host Michael Savage opened his May 20 show by interspersing audio of Kennedy singing "Ay Jalisco ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on May 21, 2008 10:44
Rebuilding the Republican Brand
It's not exactly news that the Republican Party is in the doldrums at the moment. It lost control of both Houses of Congress in the 2006 elections, its president is at historic lows in the polls, it has lost a string of special elections and its incumbent Congressmen are retiring in droves, and the odds are better than even ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on May 20, 2008 11:43
Is John McCain a ‘Natural-Born Citizen’?
John McCain was born on a U.S. Navy base overseas. The NYT's Carl Hulse has an interesting article about whether McCain is Constitutionally eligible to be president. Mr. McCain’s likely nomination as the Republican candidate for president and the happenstance of his birth in the Panama Canal Zone in 1936 are reviving a musty debate that has surfaced periodically ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on February 28, 2008 08:51
Logic 101: The Fallacy of Guilt by Association
As an educational service here at OTB, I thought it might be useful to elucidate one of the more common logical fallacies: the fallacy of guilt-by-association. This is also sometimes known as the "Bad Company" fallacy. The typical structure of an argument that incorporates the guilt-by-association fallacy is something along the lines of:Person X supports idea I. Person X is bad ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on February 12, 2008 14:14
Presidential Race Dividing Families
The 2008 primaries are dividing political parties, with significant numbers of Republicans saying they won't support John McCain and many Democrats saying they can't bring themselves to vote for Hillary Clinton. With this weekend's endorsement of McCain and Barack Obama by California first couple Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver, respectively, we see splits within families as well. Maria Shriver ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on February 4, 2008 09:01
