Friday miscellaneous (10/26)

On the political front, this week featured the final presidential debate. Most people seem to think that the president landed more blows than he received, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it changes much. Both campaigns seem to agree that the momentum is with Romney, who is gaining ground in suburbs. Washington Post gets points for most entertaining debate review.

I sincerely wish there had been a more thorough discussion about drones. I’m not happy with either candidate there. Nor did any of the candidates discuss what happened after the Benghazi attack: Libyan demonstrators took to the streets and stormed several terrorist compounds in retaliation.

In Michigan, which should be a safe blue state, the candidates are tied. And the Detroit News just endorsed Romney (it also endorsed McCain four years ago).

Obama is striking back against the criticisms that he has no plan by publishing a plan/photobook, and then talked about major policy changes that weren’t in the plan (maybe it’s because he lost the plan). No worries though, the internet has a copy. CNN does too, and they determined that its numbers don’t add up.

National Review highlights the decency of Mitt Romney. For someone out of touch, he seems to spend a lot of time quietly helping those around him.

Tennessee seems to have the worst candidate this cycle: Mark Clayton who is running for Senate with $278 and one yard sign.

And the implementation of Obamacare seems to be turning into a race to the bottom between private employers and government regulators over the definition of part time workers. The result: workers’ hours keep getting shorter and shorter.

On a lighter note, empirical research suggests that garlic may actually attract vampires. Note: researchers used leeches as vampire proxies due to a lack of vampire participation.

Last week I mentioned Thomas Kidd’s article on paleo-evangelicals. The term seems to be sticking. Juicy Ecumenism hosted a debate between two of their writers. First Things even weighed in.

Left-leaning Slate published an article this week on how Islam is misogynistic.

Francis Cardinal George writes about being on the wrong side of history:

Communism imposed a total way of life based upon the belief that God does not exist. Secularism is communism’s better-scrubbed bedfellow. A small irony of history cropped up at the United Nations a few weeks ago when Russia joined the majority of other nations to defeat the United States and the western European nations that wanted to declare that killing the unborn should be a universal human right. Who is on the wrong side of history now?

Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Hans von Dohnanyi could say something about being on the “wrong” side of history.

And in case you thought all the bad Jefferson scholarship was on the right, Henry Wiencek’s new book on Jefferson as a slaveowner is also receiving familiar sounding criticism.

And finally, here’s a political issue we can all get behind: let’s move deer crossing signs to lower traffic areas.