Caption Contest

Time for the Turkey Day OTB Caption ContestTM (AFP/Saul Loeb) Happy Thanksgiving All Winners will be announced Monday PM Winners to last Monday's contest will be announced some time on Friday

Palin – Beck 2012

"Former Alaska GOP Gov. Sarah Palin on Wednesday did not rule out running for president alongside Fox News host Glenn Beck in 2012," Andy Barr reports for Politico. Palin was asked during an interview with Fox News’s “Fox & Friends” about the chances that she “would run on a ticket with Fox’s own Glenn Beck,” as the conservative outlet Newsmax reported ...

Obama: Disloyal, Ruthless, Cold

Wednesday's column by Maureen Dowd, eviscerating President Obama for his shabby treatment of former White House Counsel Greg Craig and supporter Caroline Kennedy, is getting favorable responses from his supporters in the blogosphere. Only a year after he had helped Barack Obama get elected by eviscerating his close friend, Clinton White House colleague and Yale Law School classmate, Hillary Clinton, Craig ...

Weak Democrats Hurt 2010 Senate Chances

Josh Marshall argues that bad picks by Democratic governors in filling vacant seats make it harder than necessary to retain those seats. I was just looking at this run-down of recent polls by Tom Jensen at Public Policy Polling. The upshot is that while it seems extremely unlikely Republicans could regain control of the senate next year, it's not impossible and ...

Third Quarter Growth Revised Downwards

The BEA has revised its estimates for the third quarter’s growth down to 2.8% from 3.5%. This is also a bit below the expected growth of 2.9% for the quarter. The main factors behind the downgrade: consumers didn't spend as much, commercial construction was weaker and the nation's trade deficit was more of a drag on growth. Businesses also ...

Obama Cabinet’s Limited Private Experience

Nick Schultz points us to this interesting graphic on the private sector experience of presidential cabinets: The chart ""includes secretaries of State, Commerce, Treasury, Agriculture, Interior, Labor, Transportation, Energy, and Housing & Urban Development, and excludes Postmaster General, Navy, War, Health, Education & Welfare, Veterans Affairs, and Homeland Security—432 cabinet members in all." If this is accurate, it is indeed truly "remarkable." ...

Google Apologizes for Michelle Obama Monkey Picture

Google looked like a monkey after its algorithms had an unfortunate result for searches for photos of the First Lady. For most of the past week, when someone typed "Michelle Obama" in the popular search engine Google, one of the first images that came up was a picture of the American first lady altered to resemble a monkey. On Wednesday morning, the ...

No OTB Radio Tonight

I've canceled tonight's installment of of OTB Radio, our weekly BlogTalkRadio program. My co-host Dave Schuler is understandably unable to participate after the recent loss of his mother, who will be laid to rest Saturday, and I'm in no mood to go on without him. The next episode will air on Wednesday, December 2nd.

Colleen Blanchard Schuler, RIP

Our colleague Dave Schuler lost his mother Sunday.   My  sincere condolences. Dave eulogizes her in brief, moving fashion: I have lost my oldest friend, my first teacher, and my most inspirational life model. My mother has died at 88. One of my core beliefs is that the best way to preserve someone you love who has died in your heart is to ...

That’s What I Call A Loophole…

In discussing legal possibilities vs. tradition vis a vis the Senate filibuster rules, Matthew Yglesias pens an interesting legal scenario.After all, a lot of things are possible in our system. To the best of my understanding, nothing is stopping Rahm Emannuel from sauntering onto the floor of the Senate, murdering Republicans from states with Democratic governors in cold blood, having ...

Obama “Keeping An Eye” On Robots

Surely no matter whether we identify as Republicans, Democrats, or Independents, we can all agree with President Obama's statement regarding robotics.Now, the students from Oakton High School are going to be demonstrating the Cougar Cannon designed to scoop up and toss moon rocks. I am eager to so what they do, for two reasons. As president, I believe that robotics ...

Phil Carter Quits Administration

Phil Carter, well known to longtime denizens of the blogosphere as the former proprietor of Intel Dump, has suddenly resigned as deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee policy. The NYT buries this news on A20: The Defense Department official in charge of closing the military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, has resigned after only seven months in the job, the ...

Census Worker Hanging Suicide, Not Right Wing Murder

Remember the bizarre case of Bill Sparkman, the census worker found hanging from a tree in Kentucky with the letters FED scrawled on his chest?  Remember the media frenzy about crazy Southerners and their hatred of the federal government?  At the time, I cautioned against jumping to conclusions, saying there could be any number of explanations.  I also agreed with ...

Swine flu is more popular than Dodd

So says the latest Quinnipiac poll. Headlines like that are a major part of why I really hope Sen. Chris Dodd gets shellacked next year. As his ethical troubles have mounted, it's gone from a minor, ir-regular irritant to an almost-daily source of annoyance. Sadly, even with such headlines, he almost assuredly lacks the introspection or good sense to step ...

Paradox of Choice Paradoxically Untrue

Tyler Cowen dubs the paradox of choice -- the idea that people become unhappy when given too many choices -- "one of the most overrated and incorrectly cited results in the social sciences."  He cites Tim Harford's recent piece in FT describing research on the subject: Is more choice better? Ten years ago the answer seemed obvious: Yes. Now the conventional ...