Unethical People Making Unethical Arguments Being Treated By An Incompetent Journalist As If They Could Possibly Be Something Other Than Unethical

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Wow. Great job, New York Times!

That’s a gift link to this head-exploding piece: “‘The Rich Don’t Play by the Rules. So Why Should I?’ ” That states pretty clearly an example of Rationalizations #1, #2, and #2a on the Ethics Alarms Rationalizations List: 1. The Golden Rationalization, or “Everybody does it,” 2Whataboutism, or “They’re Just as Bad“and 2 A. Sicilian Ethics, or “They had it coming.” These rationalizations aren’t so high on the list by random chance. They are near the top because they are ancient, popular, invalid and obvious rationalizations that have been rotting society for thousands of years. Yet the New York Times thinks its worth pondering whether such anti-ethical reasoning is justified.

I hate to repeat myself, but this exemplifies how today’s Left thinks.

Left-wing “influencer” Hasan Piker and New Yorker writer Jia Tolentino did a video interview with culture editor Nadja Spiegelman on “the ethics of theft.”

[Pssst! There is no “ethics of theft.” Theft is both unethical and immoral, as well as illegal (you know, that Ten Commandments thingy).] This is a podcast that should have lasted,oh, ten seconds or less. Nadja begins with this fatuous intro: “I’m proposing a new term: Microlooting. People are taking small things from big corporations and they’re feeling justified. But is it a slippery slope? What’s going on with our moral code?”

Of course it’s a slippery slope, and if you even have to ask that question, you’re too clueless to moderate the topic!

Then we get quotes like these:

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“Insider Prediction Market Betting”

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Ah, new and different ways to cheat! Is this a great country, or what?

Kalshi is an online prediction gambling operation where users can bet on everything from how long the government shutdown will last to Oscar winners to what show will top Netflix’s streaming numbers in a given week. Naturally political bets are particularly popular.

And, also naturally, some users will try to cheat by betting on matters they have some control over or insider information about. Last week Kalshi slapped down and fined three political candidates who tried to bet on their own races: Mark Moran, an independent running for U.S. Senate in Virginia, Ezekiel Enriquez, a former Republican congressional candidate in Texas, and Matt Klein, a Democratic Minnesota state senator who is running for Congress.

Kalshi’s head of enforcement and legal counsel said that the sanctions are part of Kalshi’s “proactive engineering solutions” to “identify illicit trading activity.” Kalshi’s rules were recently updated to ban politicians from betting on their own candidacies. I see no difference between a candidate doing this and a baseball player (like the late Pete Rose) betting for or against his own teams. The New York Times fatuously writes, “It’s unclear if they were trading in a manner that was relying on inside information.” What? By definition the bets were based on inside information: every candidate is an insider regarding his or her own race! What if the candidate knows a personal scandal is ready to break? What if he or she knows money is running out, or the campaign’s polls look dire?

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And Another Metaphorical Canary Dies In The Mine Of Democracy…

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

This can’t happen in a healthy democracy, or a healthy culture for that matter.

Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick is so clearly corrupt and a crook that even her corrupt party wouldn’t defend her. That’s quite an achievement. Democrats wouldn’t even go through their usual spin and denial routine, like the Axis did to pretend Joe Biden, the brain-damaged President Democrats inflicted on the nation, wasn’t an empty shell unfit to be in the White House. This is the party that insists to this day (at least publicly) that Kamala Harris ran a flawless campaign and was only defeated because too many Americans won’t vote for a sort-of black woman to be President. Cherfilus-McCormick resigned from Congress because she knew that the House ethics investigation was about to expose her and that she faced a bi-partisan expulsion.

The panel had previously found her guilty of 25 ethics violations, among them stealing $5 million dollars in federal disaster-aid funds to support her 2021 campaign. The two-year investigation included interviews of 28 witnesses and examination of more than 33,000 documents. Never mind, though: Cherfilus-McCormick filed on April 17 to run again for her seat in South Florida, where apparently dupes, fools and ignoramuses run like salmon at mating time. A political operative told reporters, “While we would have to check with the lawyers to see if Cherfilus-McCormick can run using Cell Block C as her residence, it isn’t clear that there is anyone in that district who can beat her if she runs again.” The district, he explained, is “heavily reliant on name recognition,” and the expensive media markets from West Palm Beach to Fort Lauderdale will make it difficult for another Democrat to attract enough support to win.

Oh, that’s wonderful, isn’t it? In other words, enough voters in her district either won’t pay enough attention to realize their Congresswoman is a thief, or they don’t care that the woman is devoid of most ethical instincts necessary to justify the public’s trust.

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Ethics Quote of the Week: “Spicy Bits” on “X”

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

“The SPLC orchestrating the Charlottesville event and then pivoting to “endorse” the narrative that Trump coddles white supremacists is the definition of a classic Democrat false-flag operation. They manufacture the crisis, weaponize the media to lie about the “fine people” quote, and use it as a political cudgel to demonize heritage Americans. It’s not just hypocrisy; it’s the standard operating procedure for the Democrat junta regime that relies on fabricated morality and lies to maintain power.“

Honestly, I don’t see how any fair, honest, informed American can disagree with that statement. I’ll even employ the “No True Scotsman” approach: any American who does disagree with that statement is, by definition, not fair, honest, or informed, and perhaps all three.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, which we now know helped plan, organize, and pay for the Charlottesville demonstration, endorsed Kamala Harris, who a month later accused Donald Trump of enabling white supremacists during their debate.

The public now has sufficient information, even with the desperate attempts by the news media to submerge it all, to understand what a dangerous, Machiavellian, deliberately divisive and unscrupulous party the Democrats have allowed their organization to become. Regardless of one’s ideological preferences, it is unethical not to emphatically reject them.

Incompetent Elected Official of the Month and Stupidest Quote of the Year (So Far): Virginia State Senator Lamont Bagby (D)

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

Wow. What an idiot.

Democratic Virginia state Sen. Lamont Bagby, during a floor debate on the Democratic Party’s dishonest gerrymandering scheme, was trying to refute Republicans who argued that Democrats don’t understand the needs of that rural Virginians they are trying to disenfranchise.

So he said this. He really did. No, I wouldn’t make this up, I’m an ethicist!

“I grew up watching ‘The Waltons.’ I grew up with Opie. I even watched ‘The Dukes of Hazzard.’ I think I know a little bit about rural America “I’m not just here for Theo. I’m not just here for Arnold or Willis. I’m here for Opie, John Boy. Blossom, Topanga.”

Bagby was saying that he understands 21st Century rural communities in Virginia because he watched a TV show about a Virginia mountain family during the Depression, an idealized Sixties sitcom about a small town sheriff in North Carolina, and a notorious good ol’ boy TV farce about bootleggers in Georgia that lowered one’s IQ by several points every time one watched it. This is on the same plane as arguing that you are qualified to work for NASA because you were a fan of William Shatner’s “Star Trek.”

As for his other TV references, they make even less sense. “Blossom” lived in Los Angeles. “Boy Meets World,” which is his “Topanga” reference, was set in the Philadelphia suburbs. “Different Strokes” (Arnold and Willis) was set in penthouse at 900 Park Avenue on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, New York City.

This moron couldn’t even get his own ridiculous argument straight. I’ll tolerate political cretinism, but when these fools start misrepresenting old TV show, I really get angry.

Be proud, Virginia Democrats. This is the quality of the people you chose to govern your state.

Today’s “Nah, There’s No Mainstream Media Bias!” Note of the Day, Starring, Naturally, The New York Times…

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

“How the Southern Poverty Law Center Drew the Ire of Conservatives”

That was the Gray Lady’s headline yesterday regarding the Southern Poverty Law Center’s scheme that had it supporting violent hate groups “under the table” so the SPLC could raise money from dupes and saps to defeat them.

What do you think, the most flagrant “Republicans pounce!” example ever?

I am moving ever closer to a policy that will require a ban from the EA comment section for anyone who dares to insist that the mainstream news media isn’t consistently and despicably biased in its reporting. That position has shifted from the realm of spin, stupidity and partisan gaslighting into straight-up lying and signature significance.

Judy Holliday, “Bells Are Ringing,” and The Duty To Remember

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

In “That’s Entertainment,” the MGM movie musicals retrospective, Liza Minnelli, one of the all-star narration team, says following the film’s homage to her mother Judy Garland, “Thank God for film! It can capture a performance and hold it right there forever. And if anyone says to you, ‘Who was he?’ or, ‘Who was she?’ or, ‘What made them so good?’ I think a piece of film answers that question better than any words I know of.”

I thought about that quote of Liza’s as I re-watched “Bells Are Ringing,” the 1960 movie musical adapted from the hit Broadway show. I had seen it twice before, once when I was a child (and I loved it then without knowing why), again about 20 years ago, and then last night. It made me cry. Not because it’s a sad movie; indeed, like all the old-fashioned movie musicals before Sondheim turned the genre dark, it is a romantic comedy with a happy ending. It made me cry because I fully realized upon this viewing what a luminous, brilliant, unique performer Judy Holliday was. “Bells Are Ringing” was her final screen performance: less than five years later she was dead of breast cancer at 43. Most people don’t know her name or what she looked like. Yet there have been few female performers who were her equal. Today nobody comes close.

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More Observations on the Southern Poverty Law Center Scandal

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

I am having to wrestle myself to the floor to stop from posting on Facebook:

Please, my friends. Don’t embarrass yourselves by defending the SPLC, which has already been making fools of its supporters for decades. It’s fine to be a progressive or a knee-jerk Democrat, except that your party’s leaders are in denial, and lying to you. This is not the time to accuse the Justice Department of targeting legitimate social reform organizations or of supporting “white supremacy.” The apparently agreed-upon spin, that all SPLC was doing by giving millions to the same groups they were claiming to be fighting was creating “paid informants” won’t stand up to reality. Read the indictment. Admit that you’ve been had. Condemn the SPLC for being another social justice racket, even worse than Black Lives Matter.

I won’t though, because the protests and rationalizations I will get back will make me physically ill.

As more of this damning story comes out (and is in the process of being buried by the Axis media, which is substantially responsible for helping the SPLC in perpetrating this astoundingly cynical, disgusting scam), the clearer it is how corrupt this organization was, has been, and is. Also, as in the cases of Eric Swalwell, Harvey Weinstein and Cesar Chavez, the question must be asked: Did the rest of the Axis of Unethical Conduct know the SPLC was a scam, and when did they know it?

Also:

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Ethics Dunce: Actor Ted Levine

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

I wonder if I should bother highlighting the really foolish things actors and celebrities say when they start talking about social issues and politics. Is it the Julie Principle? “Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly, actors think they have valuable things to say about stuff they know little about and are no more qualified to opine on than your average sanitation worker…” Stories like this one make me ponder.

Ted Levine’s most famous role in a successful career as a character actor came early when he played the serial killer “Buffalo Bill,” aka. Jaime Gumm, in “The Silence of the Lambs.” The movie was a sensation, winning both Jody Foster and Anthony Hopkins acting Oscars while its director won the Direction Oscar and the film was Best Picture. Still, Levine’s performance as a mincing, gender-confused psycho (who skinned his female victims to make a “girl suit” was as memorable as either of his co-stars.

Now Levine is in a career slump, or something, so today, thirty-five years later, he says that he “regrets” playing Bill. He told the Hollywood Reporter,

“There are certain aspects of the movie that don’t hold up too well.We all know more, and I’m a lot wiser about transgender issues. There are some lines in that script and movie that are unfortunate… [It’s] just over time and having gotten aware and worked with trans folks, and understanding a bit more about the culture and the reality of the meaning of genderIt’s unfortunate that the film vilified that, and it’s fucking wrong. And you can quote me on that.”

Feel better now, Ted? Were Hollywood Wokies being mean to you because you accepted a plum part as a struggling actor and didn’t anticipate the Transsexual Fever to come in 2026? Will you be acceptable now, after pandering to LGPTQ+ fanatics and activists?

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