Bad Deeds for 4-29-2009

Michele Bachmann Tries to Link Swine Flu To Democrats, Gets History Wrong – Minnesota Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann, following Rush Limbaugh’s cue, suggested on Tuesday that President Obama was to blame for the swine flu crisis. She went even farther than the talk show host, implying that swine flu epidemics are a Democratic phenomenon that dates back to President Carter.

I find it interesting that it was back in the 1970s that the swine flu broke out then under another Democrat president Jimmy Carter. And I’m not blaming this on President Obama, I just think it’s an interesting coincidence.

Bachmann’s facts are a little off. Republican President Gerald Ford, not Carter, led the country during the last outbreak of the virus.

 

Conservative Commentators Using Swine Flu to Promote Racism– Despite the fact that there is no evidence to support such claims, talk radio hosts Michael Savage and Neal Boortz, radio and Fox TV personality Glenn Beck, and columnist Michelle Malkin are spreading them faster than the contagion.

“Illegal aliens are bringing in a deadly new flue strain. Make no mistake about it,” blares Michael Savage.

“I’ve blogged for years about the spread of contagious diseases from around the world into the US as a result of uncontrolled immigration,” writes Michelle Malkin.

“What happens if there’s a rash of deaths in Mexico… and if you’re a family in Mexico and people are dying and Americans are not, why wouldn’t you flood this border?” announces Glenn Beck.

What better way to sneak a virus into this country than to give it to Mexicans….then spread a rumor there are construction jobs here, and there they come,” blathers Boortz.

Savage — “make no mistake about it” — believes that radical Islamic countries planted the virus in Mexico knowing that humans make the “perfect mules for bringing the strain into America.”

OK, you ignoramuses: what you’re saying is idiotic and racist on so many levels, it has to be called out.

#1. Why would we believe that Islamic countries or terrorist groups would have virologists capable of creating a new bio-terrorist flu? Didn’t we fall for the Weapons of Mass Destruction line already, and start a war over it?

#2. If terror groups were capable of planting it among Mexicans — why wouldn’t they be just as capable as planting it among Americans? If they couldn’t get into the country, they’d just need to get a few of their own infected people to hang out in a foreign airport with flights going to the US.

#3. Since most of the Mexicans who are sick are in Mexico City, hundreds of miles from the US border, how exactly would they just pick up and “rush it?”

Furthermore, cases of swine flu have turned up in New York City students who recently returned from a trip to Cancun, Mexico — they brought it back with them.

 

Microsoft Internet Explorer Has Worst Score on Web Standards Test – Acid3 is a test page from the Web Standards Project that checks how well a web browser follows Internet web standards, especially relating to the Document Object Model and JavaScript. Scores for Current Release of Browsers (out of a possible score of 100):

Internet Explorer (IE 8.0) – 20
Firefox – 71
Apple Safari – 75
Google Chrome – 75
Opera – 85
Konqueror – 87

Scores for Beta Release of Browsers (out of a possible score of 100):

Internet Explorer – No Beta Available for Test
Firefox – 94
Apple Safari – 100
Google Chrome – 100
Opera – 100
Konqueror – 87

Regards,

Jim