Overnight Open Thread
Open | Mon, Oct 6, 2008 at 9:38:06 pm PDT
A newspaper is a device for making the ignorant more ignorant and the crazy crazier.
— H. L. Mencken
GOP: The Obama Ayers Relationship
Politics | Mon, Oct 6, 2008 at 8:20:24 pm PDT
Sarah Palin vs. The Moonbats of Southern California
Images | Mon, Oct 6, 2008 at 5:48:27 pm PDT
LGF operative Ringo the Gringo was at Sarah Palin’s appearance at the Home Depot tennis center in Carson, California, and so were a few hundred screeching SoCal moonbats: Sarah Palin Visits Southern California on October 4, 2008.
Pat Condell Won't Back Down
Video | Mon, Oct 6, 2008 at 4:09:17 pm PDT
Pat Condell has a few words for the people who got YouTube to ban his last video, and a bit of a clarification on his views about the religious apartheid kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Tech Note: IE6 Needs an Exorcism
Science | Mon, Oct 6, 2008 at 2:32:31 pm PDT
If you’re using Internet Explorer version 6, you may have noticed the left sidebar seemingly disappearing.
It wasn’t really disappearing, it was being pushed down to the bottom of the page when the “Top Rated Links” area opened up. The reason: without getting too technical, Internet Explorer is simply the buggiest browser still in common use, and since we moved to a pure CSS float-based layout the bugs have been crawling out of everywhere.
This problem is fixed now, at the cost of having the columns look slightly lopsided. We’re using conditional comments to serve modified styles to IE6, so the lopsided look only shows up in that misbegotten browser.
Financial Crisis Watch
Business | Mon, Oct 6, 2008 at 11:33:03 am PDT
As we write, the Dow index is down more than 700 points. We’re in free fall, as the effects of a worldwide sell-off ravage the markets.
Palin's Creationism Statements: Distorted by Right and Left
Politics | Mon, Oct 6, 2008 at 10:24:35 am PDT
It’s bad enough when the Obama supporters do it, but it’s worse when Sarah Palin’s creationist supporters try to distort her record to suit their purposes. A letter to the editor of the Indiana Star Press: Be an informed voter.
There’s not enough space to address each and every “ignorant” comment made by the pro-Obama writers, but I must correct one writer who unfairly attacks Palin’s views on the teaching of “creationism and abstinence-only sex education in public schools.” The writer is simply ignorant of the facts. The truth is Palin would like creationism and abstinence added to the curriculum. She believes students should be subjected to both views.
The highlighted statement above is absolutely, completely, 100% false. Palin has stated on several occasions, very explicitly, that she does not want to add creationism to school curricula.
The Anchorage Daily News: ‘Creation science’ enters the race.
In an interview Thursday, Palin said she meant only to say that discussion of alternative views should be allowed to arise in Alaska classrooms:
“I don’t think there should be a prohibition against debate if it comes up in class. It doesn’t have to be part of the curriculum.”
She added that, if elected, she would not push the state Board of Education to add such creation-based alternatives to the state’s required curriculum.
Even the Associated Press was forced to admit that Palin has never pushed creationism into schools as governor of Alaska.
And in Palin’s interview with Katie Couric, she repeated that she supports the teaching of evolution, and that “science should be taught in science class.”
Anyone for Toast?
Politics | Mon, Oct 6, 2008 at 9:55:31 am PDT
In Slate Magazine, William Saletan says the polls are so stacked against John McCain, there’s no possibility he can win. The race is over.
Oh, wait. That was eight years ago, and he was talking about George W. Bush.
Since Labor Day, the media have released about 20 polls on the presidential race. Three show a dead heat, one shows George W. Bush leading by a single percentage point, and the rest show Al Gore leading by one to 10 points. In the latest polls, Gore leads by an average of five points. It’s fashionable at this stage to caution that “anything can happen,” that Bush is “retooling,” and that the numbers can turn in Bush’s favor just as easily as they turned against him. But they can’t. The numbers are moving toward Gore because fundamental dynamics tilt the election in his favor. The only question has been how far those dynamics would carry him. Now that he has passed Bush, the race is over.
(Hat tip: Tim Blair.)
This is a Strategy?
Politics | Mon, Oct 6, 2008 at 9:09:58 am PDT
Good grief.
Lieberman: McCain draws the line at using Rev. Wright.
Wallace asked Lieberman if McCain would bring up Rev. Jeremiah Wright after condemning state Republican parties for running ads criticizing Obama for his relationship with the controversial figure.
Lieberman responded: “He [McCain] didn’t like that approach. Senator McCain feels that same way about bringing up Reverend Wright through his campaign. And that’s the kind of line drawing that I think John McCain is all about.”
Later on Fox News Sunday, Brit Hume said the McCain camp would be “out of their mind” to not bring up Obama’s relationship with Rev. Wright.
“What on earth are Joe Lieberman and John McCain talking about when they say that the long association with the Reverend Jeremiah Wright is off the table?” Hume said. “Why is that off the table? It’s an important part of Obama’s background and record. It’s one of the reasons people wonder about who he really is.”
The Weathermen Tried to Kill My Family
Politics | Mon, Oct 6, 2008 at 8:47:46 am PDT
The mainstream media is now engaged in a full court press to defend former Weather Underground terrorist William Ayers, with article after article minimizing his crimes. The lefty blogs go even farther; some of them are actually calling Ayers a “patriot,” and claiming he never intended to harm anyone.
So here’s an article by John Murtaugh (who was also very young when William Ayers was on the rampage), telling the story of what it was like to be Ayers’ target: The Weathermen tried to kill my family.
In February 1970, my father, a New York State Supreme Court justice, was presiding over the trial of the so-called “Panther 21,” members of the Black Panther Party indicted in a plot to bomb New York landmarks and department stores. Early on the morning of February 21, as my family slept, three gasoline-filled firebombs exploded at our home on the northern tip of Manhattan, two at the front door and the third tucked neatly under the gas tank of the family car. (Today, of course, we’d call that a car bomb.) A neighbor heard the first two blasts and, with the remains of a snowman I had built a few days earlier, managed to douse the flames beneath the car. That was an act whose courage I fully appreciated only as an adult, an act that doubtless saved multiple lives that night.
I still recall, as though it were a dream, thinking that someone was lifting and dropping my bed as the explosions jolted me awake, and I remember my mother’s pulling me from the tangle of sheets and running to the kitchen where my father stood. Through the large windows overlooking the yard, all we could see was the bright glow of flames below. We didn’t leave our burning house for fear of who might be waiting outside. The same night, bombs were thrown at a police car in Manhattan and two military recruiting stations in Brooklyn. Sunlight, the next morning, revealed three sentences of blood-red graffiti on our sidewalk: FREE THE PANTHER 21; THE VIET CONG HAVE WON; KILL THE PIGS.
For the next 18 months, I went to school in an unmarked police car. My mother, a schoolteacher, had plainclothes detectives waiting in the faculty lounge all day. My brother saved a few bucks because he didn’t have to rent a limo for the senior prom: the NYPD did the driving. We all made the best of the odd new life that had been thrust upon us, but for years, the sound of a fire truck’s siren made my stomach knot and my heart race. In many ways, the enormity of the attempt to kill my entire family didn’t fully hit me until years later, when, a father myself, I was tucking my own nine-year-old John Murtagh into bed.
UPDATE at 10/6/08 9:00:34 am:
The Sydney Morning Herald calls Ayers a “former anti-Vietnam war militant.”
(Hat tip: Tim Blair.)
Monday Morning Firefox Bug Fix
Science | Mon, Oct 6, 2008 at 8:17:42 am PDT
If you were having trouble seeing all the comments in longer threads with Firefox 3, reload the page and this should now be fixed. Apparently the Windows version of Firefox has a serious bug with its implementation of the CSS “overflow” property, which we added to a certain page element to fix another problem. We’ve removed the “overflow” property now; the other problem wasn’t as serious as disappearing comments.
