Friday Open Forum, Over-Heated Ethics Edition

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

It it was great sadness that Ethics Alarms must confirm the death of former Pope Hat blogger and lawyer Ken White’s brain. As with the brains of Bill Kristol and so many friends and colleagues I once respected, including Ethics Alarms’ AWOL columnist Curmie, Ken’s neural headquarters expired of acute Trump Derangement.

The malady was first diagnosed in his case when he joined the Axis stalwart magazine “The Atlantic,” though I personally had hoped for a recovery based on my satisfying personal contacts with Ken over the years and the fact that compared to what the Democrats have become, Donald Trump seems as reasonable and rational as James Monroe.

Meanwhile, the anti-white racism and low-IQ bluster coming from certain presumed Democratic Part base segments is, if not surprising, provocative. I would rather slice off my lips than vote with such self-evident fools. It is amusing, I must admit, to see how easy it is to own them on social media. As in…

Nothing helps, however.

Over at Althouse, Ann Althouse devotes a post to taking issue with President Trump calling Graham Platner a pig. It is certainly a less creative ad hominem than most of Trump’s insults, but there are some things even I find too trivial to criticize. She does have a good quote about the news that someone cut “8647” into the National Mall, getting there by discussing the newly refurbished Reflecting Pool that my Trump Deranged Facebook friends find so offensive:

“The more grim, puritanical, humorless, imperious, and repressive you are, the funnier it is to make fun of you.” There’s a similar concept at play here: The more you show how much you care about pristine beauty, the more exciting it becomes to besmirch it. We can’t have nice things. Oh, but those who endorse the idea “86 47” might respond, these “nice things” are not nice. They are Trump things and therefore the ugliest things of all. To desecrate them is to move in the direction of true beauty. “

My thoughts about the latest “8647” are a bit different. Comey’s juvenile pleasure at seeing that shell formation would have vanished into internet obscurity if the Trump Justice Dept. wasn’t so foolish as to indict him for it. The Streisand Effect is real, and rather obvious by now, wouldn’t you think? Apparently not, at least among MAGA zombies.

“Now go do that voodoo that you do so weeeeeeeell!“

Ethics Quiz: “Ick!”or Ethics [Hello Fresh’s Anal Sex Ad]

/ Jack Marshall / 26 Comments

Nice.

I guess I had to post about that, though I wish I didn’t have to. I feel, and I always have felt, that being “proud” of how you have sex is like being proud of how often you have to visit the bathroom. It’s desperate and stupid, as well as gross.

That ad, and so much else our grovelling to the LGBTQ community has burdened society with, demonstrates how pernicious slippery slopes are. Because ancient taboos held that gay people should hide themselves in shame, some genius decided our society should declare that what one chooses to do with their naughty bits should swing to the other end of the spectrum and be a source of “pride.” No, it shouldn’t. In my experience, only mega-jerks boast about how and where they choose to have sex. I don’t care. It’s none of my business. If I’m interested, I’ll ask, and since I’m not and never will be, I won’t, so shut the hell up.

Hello Fresh has now exposed its marketing department as tasteless and pandering, like all those cowardly, pusillanimous companies that slobbered all over Black Lives Matter. I remember a late night D.C. horror movie TV host got himself fired for suddenly talking about smegma between reels of “The Brain From Planet Arous.” I thought his outburst was hilarious, but it didn’t belong on TV, and that was the end of “Gore DeVol.” This ad should be the end of Hello Fresh if there’s any justice in the world, and we know there isn’t.

I’m going to ask anyway, though I know my answer…

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is…

Is the Hello Fresh “Pride” ad alluding to anal sex just in terrible taste and icky, or is it unethical, as in wrong?

________________

Pointer: Willem Reese

Comment of the Day: “Why Are Conservatives Trying To Get Blacks To Riot Over Karmelo Anthony?”

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

Cees Van Barneveldt challenges me from the start of her Comment of the Day to lay odds on how likely it is that Democrats will try to turn Karmelo Anthony into the latest “systemic racism” martyr. One can never go broke relying on the stupidity of either political party, but I just can’t believe the Axis is foolish enough to let this happen.

Rightly or wrongly, the U.S political Left has convinced itself that the mid-terms ar in the bag because all voters care about is the price of eggs, beef and gas. (In other words, voters are even dumber than the two parties.) There has been substantial backlash against Black Lives Matter, and Karmelo is not a particularly sympathetic “victim.” It is hard to justify stabbing an unarmed teen to death.

This is Cees Van Barneveldt‘s Comment of the Day on the post, “Why Are Conservatives Trying To Get Blacks To Riot Over Karmelo Anthony?”

* * *

“Democrats can’t be dumb enough to try to make a martyr out of Karmelo Anthony. They just can’t. Right?“

I am just curious what our host is willing to bet on this; the last word of the post indicates some doubt. I am afraid that Red State may have a point here, and I hope they are wrong.

I do not like the scenes outside the courthouse. A group of black people who believe the entire case is about race, and are cheering on Karmelo Anthony. One of the protesters is on video shouting “The only good cracker is a dead cracker”. Not that I am surprised by this, given that the GiveSendGo campaign for Karmelo’s defense was motivated by the desire to fight white supremacy. For Karmelo and his family, and for the donors to this fund the issue has always about race since the arrest, and not about justice (murder or self-defense).

I also do not like the counter protesters, with their “White Lives Matters” banners, American flag T-shirts, and some of them waving confederate flags. This is like waving a red cape in front of a bull, needlessly provocative. Why would anybody not just simply follow the court proceedings on television from home, and hope and trust that the jury reaches a just verdict?

About not having an African American on the jury, this is not evidence of jury rigging in disfavor of Karmelo by the prosecution. The county in which the trial took place has a 12% black population. The likelihood of a jury without any African American by random selection is 20%; this means that there was no significant bias against African Americans during jury selection. Statistics often uses a likelihood of below five percent as significant. One of the black juror prospects demonstrated bias during jury selection by stating that he “would have a hard time convicting a brother”, and had to be stricken for reason. The jury was not all white as there were four minority members on the jury, just not black. I do not blame the prosecution for trying to prevent racially biased jurors reaching an OJ Simpson style verdict based on racial considerations.

The trial proceedings did not show racial bias. Many of the witnesses against Karmelo Anthony were black. Austin Metcalf’s coach is black.

If the defense attorney is worth his salt and salary (which he has not proven during this trial) the best thing he can do is appeal the verdict based on the jury selection process. We will see how much merit it has. The speed and clarity of the verdict will be a big hurdle for the defense to get an appeal.

Sadly enough this society has enough low IQ people who will milk their grievance till the bitter end and will be willing to burn this society like in 2020. To them I would say “bring it on and make my day” and see how this works out in the mid-terms. They will find that accusations of racism have lost the power to shame and manipulate people, and now only contribute to the phenomenon of “black fatigue”.

Ethics Foul Call: The Jeffrey Epstein Obsession Is a Pure Trump Derangement Symptom and Another “Get Trump!” Hoax, Nothing Else

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

At this point, the statement above must be ruled not an opinion, but a fact. As a fact, it is another indictment against the political forces—“the resistance,” Democrats, the Left’s captive media, its politicized and corrupted justice system, and furious Republicans who resent the overthrow of their weak Bushy establishment—-that have plotted to destroy Donald Trump from the moment he upset Hillary Clinton’s dream of being the first female President.

The New York Times, hardly a neutral bystander in the Left’s unyielding effort to destroy an elected President by any means necessary, recently published a compendium of what their crack reporters have learned about Epstein, who has been dead for seven years. Sixteen years ago, in 2008, he was convicted of soliciting a minor for prostitution, and thanks to a “Dream Team” of high-priced defense lawyers and incompetent prosecutors, was allowed to accept a sweetheart plea deal. Epstein got himself indicted again in 2019 for sex trafficking minors but died in custody awaiting his trial, almost certainly by suicide. It is inconceivable that this single rich sociopath would still be in the news today or even remembered by most Americans if there was not an ongoing effort to use him to take down the President of the United States.

“More than 60 Times journalists have delved into the life of the sexual predator whose secrets spurred an international reckoning over money, power and complicity,” the Times announced in “The Big Questions About Jeffrey Epstein: What The Times Has Learned.” [Gift Link] “Oh!” I thought. “At least I know the Times will move heaven and earth to represent the matter in the most damning way possible regarding Donald Trump. Okay, let’s see it. Give us all the innuendo, the presumed Bad Orange Man criminal perversion sand guilt by association. What have you got, Times Trump Hit Squad? Lay it on me.”

Here is what they have under the “big question” “What were his relationships with Trump and Clinton?” First I should note that combining Trump with Clinton is a cheat and a guilt by association tactic all by itself. They are not equivalent cases. Clinton was involved with Epstein while Bubba was living in the White House and fooling around with a young female intern there. There is substantial circumstantial evidence raising legitimate questions about Clinton’s possible involvement in Epstein’s criminal sex procurement activities. The answer to that “big question” regarding Donald Trump however is, I conclude, zzzzzzzzzzzip.

The Times writes,

“Mr. Epstein was friends with Mr. Trump long before he became president, and he developed a relationship with Mr. Clinton during his time in the White House. Those relationships involved bonding with Trump over their pursuit of young women. The two men became good friends in the late 1980s, hanging out together at casinos, Mr. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate and other venues. A note and sexually suggestive drawing containing what appeared to be Mr. Trump’s signature was included in a 2003 book for Mr. Epstein’s birthday. Mr. Trump has denied writing the note. Some of Mr. Epstein’s victims, including [Epstein accuser] Giuffre, were recruited by Ms. Maxwell from Mr. Trump’s Florida club and residence, where Ms. Giuffre worked as a spa attendant. Mr. Trump said last year that he cut ties with Mr. Epstein in the early 2000s because he “stole” his female employees, although the relationship also deteriorated when the men fought over a piece of Florida real estate.”

Wait…that’s it? Based on that, Democrats, Graham Platner, Marjorie Taylor Greene and my Trump Deranged Facebook friends call the President of the United States a pedophile, allege a cover-up, and claim that everything Trump does, eventhe war on Iran, is an effort to “distract from the Epstein scandal”? What scandal? Two billionaires knowing each other isn’t a scandal because one of them breaks the law. Hanging out in casinos isn’t illegal or unethical. Rich guys pursuing young women isn’t a crime; heck, it is inevitable. I don’t know why Trump bothers to deny a doodle included in a birthday book: it proves nothing. And that’s all! That’s all the New York Times has after it has sent 60 reporters to get dirt on the President and seven years of searching.

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Rep. Jasmine Crocket On a Racist Rampage

/ Jack Marshall / 27 Comments

And she was supposedly a rising star of the Democratic Party. Well, she’s better than Graham Platner…

Crockett, who lost her attempt to run for the U.S. Senate and now is a lame duck in the House, was in fine form this week. The House Judiciary Committee held a hearing on the evidence that the Southern Poverty Law Center was paying the “hate groups” it railed against. One of the witnesses called by the Republicans on the committee was Dr. Alveda King. Her father is Alfred Daniel King, the younger brother of Martin Luther King Jr., and she has broken ranks to be a GOP supporter and an advocate for President Trump.

After King’s statement, Crockett began shouting about how how “white men” had invited Alveda to the hearing and that those white men from the GOP wanted to “tell people of color who is fighting for who. People of color do not feel comfortable or welcomed within your party.”  

“That’s why you have to parade someone who has the name ‘Dr. King’ attached to them, so that people can be confused,” she continued. “Because I have been reading the comments online, and people are like, ‘Who is this Dr. King’ because you want them to believe that she somehow espouses who Dr. King was.” Crockett didn’t give this Dr. King an opportunity to respond, but the next speaker, Rep. Russell Fry (R-S.C.), allowed her to do so.

“Congresswoman, I am a bit emotional,” King began. “I’m going to watch what I say, but it seems as though you have suggested that I am a bastard to the King family legacy. I am legitimately the daughter of the Rev. Alfred Daniel Williams King and Dr. Naomi Ruth Barber King. We are a family who loves God. And I love you. God bless you.” 

Crockett walked out of the chamber in the midst of King’s statement. Nice.

She was just getting warmed up, though. Later that day, after the Karmelo Anthony guilty verdict was announced, the loud-mouth Congresswoman went on her “Clock It With Crockett”podcast and wildly distorted the facts of the case. She argued that the victim Austin Metcalf’s family couldn’t understand the pain black women have to endure daily. Crockett said that was made clear to her again while talking about the case to a friend who is a black mother. “Black women — especially black women who have black male children — live in fear and agony every single day,” Crockett said. “A fear and agony that I promise you, the Metcalfs probably never spent a day living that way.”

How ironic that their unarmed son was the one who was murdered, not the worried black mother’s son who stabbed him in the heart.

Crockett then expressed the revolutionary idea that Americans need to have “real conversations about race in this country,” as if such conversations aren’t usually hijacked by race-hustlers like Jasmine Crockett, making them divisive and useless.

Crockett, ignoring the evidence at trial, insisted that the stabbing was self-defense. “If a 300-pound man is beating me, like on top of me and beating me down, I’m not limited to fists,” Crockett said. She must have been thinking of Mike Brown. “Cuz I’m telling you right now, if you were twice my weight and got way more strength than me and you got me pinned down, I don’t believe I’m going to survive,” Crockett ranted. It was reported that Metcalf was 6’0, 200 pounds, and Anthony is 5’11 and 162 pounds. The latter was never “pinned down” nor was he in danger of being pinned down. Witnesses said that Anthony dared Metcalf to touch him, and stabbed him to death when he did.

Jasmine: “And when you look at like George Floyd, like George Floyd died, and they never took out a quote-unquote weapon. So this idea you can’t die is wild, right?” Wait, was Metcalf kneeling on Anthony’s neck? What was she talking about?

Then Crockett claimed the murder weapon (it was a knife with a five-inch blade) was too small.

“Well, I would have argued the size of it alone, you wouldn’t even think it’s a deadly weapon,” she reasoned. By definition, if the knife penetrated Metcalf’s heart and killed the kid, it’s a deadly weapon.

Jasmine then said that Metcalf confronted Anthony because “this is the culture that is being instigated,” where white people are “gettin’ real bold with us right now.”

I guess the solution is to kill more white people when they get too bold.

 

And Speaking Of Swallowing Indoctrination Regarding Racist America, That Is How Brianna Turners Are Created…

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

What a moron.

Ethics Dunce Brianna Turner of the WNBA has announced that she refuses to wear the league’s special jerseys to celebrate the U.S.’s 250th Anniversary. “Whoever called for the WNBA all-star uniforms to have the USA 250 patch should have thought that through considering no WNBA players would have been free 250 years ago. The majority wouldn’t even have their freedom 100 years ago,” she tweeted.

This kind of intellectually flabby and historically dunder-headed calculation is typical of the sad victims of anti-USA hate, which is inflicted on them through devices and lies like the “1619 Project.” Hers is also the intellectually handicapped mindset that accepts the “reparations” propaganda: she is personally angry at ancient conditions that never affected her directly or personally.

Citizens who live in the United States of America derive many benefits therefrom. There is no professional women’s basketball in England, for example: Turner is a direct beneficiary of what happened 250 years ago this July. Without the second-rate basketball league that pays Brianna six figures, my guess is that her intellect would have her working at a diner or bouncing drunk and disorderly lesbians from gay bars rather than basketballs.

To be fair, there is no reason why Turner’s stupid historical observations on social media should have any more publicity than anyone else’s. Indeed, at least she isn’t a New York Times reporter posing as a historian or a DEI history professor or one of the anti-white racists elected to Congress. They and others like them make the same offensive statements about the nation they are so lucky to live in, but have sufficient credentials, however dubious, that many Americans take them seriously. You know. They are “experts.”

Come to think of it, I don’t know why what Brianna thinks about anything that doesn’t involve throwing a ball through a hoop is newsworthy. Why is Fox News, Newsweek, USA Today and other allegedly serious news sources reporting this? In fact, why am I writing about it? She’s not even a real celebrity outside of Las Vegas, which is where her team plays its inferior brand of basketball that any of the top 100 men’s college teams could trounce them in.

Never mind. She is a stupid and ignorant woman, and this is a wasted post and I wasted my time thinking about it.

But the all-anti-white–race-victim-propaganda all-the-time site “The Root’s” America-haters were impressed. It writes,

“Turner’s critique cuts straight to the core of an ongoing issue in professional sports, how many marketing campaigns prioritize shallow patriotism over historical reality. By forcing a league made up predominantly of Black and LGBTQ+ women to wear a blanket celebration of 1776, the league completely ignored the systemic chattel slavery and disenfranchisement that defined that era.”

Morons.

Hey! I’m back where I started!

That Integrity Test Democrats Already Flunked? Maine Democrats and Women Flunked It Worse. Be Proud, You Hypocrites! “That’s Your Party! That’s Your Party!” [Updated]

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

[The headline refers to this post.]

I keep hoping someone, maybe one of you, dear readers, will make a YouTube video of the moment at the end of “The Godfather” where Connie confronts Michael, now the new and soulless Corleone family mafia boss, accusing him of having her husband (who deserved it, but never mind) murdered. I want the three seconds where, sobbing, she rages to Diane Keaton as Michael’s clueless wife Kay to look at the newspapers: “That’s your husband! That’s your husband!”

I want to add it to the Ethics Alarms Hollywood Clip Archive, because it has become the perfect metaphor for how the Trump Deranged and desperate Democrats are behaving as they try to take over the nation’s culture and government by any means necessary. Dear progressives and Democrats: “That’s your party! That’s your party!”

In particular, Maine’s female Democrats should have to wear their heads under bags. They had a woman as an alternative to vote for rather than the domestic abuser, sexting Nazi-admirer and didn’t. Why, you well may ask? Rotten values? Civic ignorance? Stupidity? Women don’t “read the papers”? It doesn’t matter why; this is res ipsa loquitur. Now we know #MeToo was a cynical partisan scam; we already knew, or should, that the now defunct “Times Up!”was a lie with a non-profit designation. No “feminist” who voted for Platner or who supports the political party trying to put this epic creep in the U.S. Senate should ever be taken seriously again. Former governor Janet Mills is no prize, but I can guarantee that she’s never sent anyone dick picks. I’m pretty sure she didn’t have a Nazi symbol tattooed on her chest either.

I just learned, from former Mainer commenter Arthur in Maine (below), that about 14% of Maine’s Democrats bothered to vote. That is also disgraceful.

Count on the New York Times to come up with fatuous rationalizations for why this damning primary result is a good thing. In “The Good That Can Come From Platner’s Candidacy,” intermittently conscious Times captive conservative Bret Stephens argues that two alleged boons may come from the Democrats chucking all of their alleged principles to present an absolute bounder to the public as an acceptable member of the Senate:

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The Late Gordon Wood Explains Why The “U.S. Is A Racist Country” Cant Is Anti-U.S. Propaganda and Historical Nonsense

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Heard outside the Collin County Courthouse today, after Karmelo Anthony was found guilty of murder (because he was) from the rabble-rousing Black Panthers: “We got to tell our kids the truth that this is a racist ass country. We gotta tell them the truth.”

Of course it isn’t the truth, but many unethical people, teachers, politicians, activists and organizations have made great strides toward creating the illusion that the U.S. is racist, and the efforts have accelerated over the past decade. One of the villains was Barack Obama, whom I am convinced will eventually be recognized for the divisive, destructive, corrupt and devious President he was. Another was Black Lives Matter, which is hardly a startling revelation. Of course we had the lazy, fearful, enablers of BLM, all of the companies, non-profits, local governments and pandering institutions that groveled at BLM’s metaphorical feet, with solemn “in these difficult times” ads and open letters, banners, and nauseating virtue-signaling.

Perhaps as despicable as the worst of them— Ta-Nehisi Coates, Al Sharpton, Charles M. Blow, the Democratic National Committee, which declared that the only reason Kamala Harris wasn’t elected President is because U.S. voters are racists—were the New York Times and its fake historian Nikole Hannah-Jones’ dishonest “1619 Project,” which contrived the lie that the main purpose of the American Revolution was to preserve slavery. Naturally the pathetic Pulitzer Prize people rewarded the Times and its reporter for their libel.

Even though that false framing was debunked forcefully and repeatedly by real historians, U.S. schools have been teaching the “1619 Project” anyway. Gordon Wood died this week. He was a Professor of History emeritus at Brown University and author of the acclaimed book “The Radicalism of the American Revolution,” as well as “Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789–1815.” Wood was recognized as one of the most eminent authorities on this nation’s founding, and in 2019, in his courtly, understated way, gave a lively interview explaining just how full of garbage the Times’ anti-American propaganda was. Revealing that Hannah-Jones’ “racist America” trope was hooey was politically incorrect in 2019, so Wood had to go all the way to the World Socialist Web Site to have his analysis published. (The Times, if it weren’t such a biased disgrace, would have interviewed him.)

Here is the whole interview. It doesn’t matter who the interviewer was, but the “A” signifies Prof. Wood’s replies. The result is long but fascinating; I learned a lot, and perhaps you will too.

As we know, however, Facts Don’t Matter…

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Why Are Conservatives Trying To Get Blacks To Riot Over Karmelo Anthony? [Updated]

/ Jack Marshall / 36 Comments

Black teen Karmelo Anthony, 19, was found guilty of murder today in the fatal stabbing of an unarmed white teen, 17-year-old Austin Metcalf, at a high school track meet last year in Frisco, Texas, in April 2025. Ahead of closing arguments today, the judge decided that jurors could also consider manslaughter, which carries a sentence of up to 20 years in prison. Jurors were not moved. The jury began deliberating today before and reached a verdict in only three hours, the mark of an open-and-shut case.

It always seemed like one. The victim was unarmed. Apparently he touched or pushed Anthony, and the defense argued that Anthony stabbed him in the heart in self-defense. None of the witnesses felt that Anthony’s actions were justified.

However, the news media and conservative pundits have been suggesting ominously that a guilty verdict would be likely to set off George Floyd or Michael Brown level, Black Lives Matter rioting. A recent piece in Red State is typical. Teri Cristophe writes in “Is This How Democrats Will Solve Their Graham Platner Problem?”:

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Combine The Societal Corruption Of Legal Sports Betting With The Ethics Void In Collegiate Sports With The Woke Delusion That Every Wrongdoer Is A Victim And You Get…

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

…the head-exploding court decision that Texas Tech quarterback Brendan Sorsby is eligible to Big 12 football this season.

Sorsby had admitted placing at least 40 bets on Indiana football while he was playing for the Hoosiers, and approximately $90,000 in sports wagers using other people’s sportsbook accounts. He spent four years concealing his gambling from three different schools and only came clean once law enforcement swooped down on him. Now he says he is a gambling addict, and it would be hard to dispute that. The NCAA was alerted to Sorsby’s gambling in March. The organization notified Texas Tech of its investigation in April, and Texas Tech made Sorsby ineligible while it fought to have the star reinstated. Then Sorsby’s lawyers sued NCAA on May 18, seeking an injunction that would prevent the NCAA from banning him. And they were successful.

You won’t believe why, or maybe you will if you have followed the slippery slope of progressive enabling of wrongdoing. The judge’s logic: The NCAA would be harming a recovering gambling addict—poor lamb— by enforcing a rule that every pro sports league in this country enforces. Sorsby’s gambling history is a mental health and addiction issue, so the NCAA must consider his well-being and support him rather than punish him. Judge Ken Curry ruled that the quarterback would suffer “irreparable injury” if he isn’t granted a temporary injunction allowing him to play for the Texas Tech Red Raiders this season. To deprive him of the ability to “benefit from the elite coaching, training resources, camaraderie and regimen that only being a member of a Division I college football team can provide”would be unconscionable.

The fact that there is no way to be sure the gambling addict calling the plays hasn’t placed bets on his team’s point spread or isn’t under the metaphorical thumbs of organized crime or angry bookies, and been told that if his team doesn’t lose, his mother will be fish food? Never mind.

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