Congressman Gill doesn’t know what a conflict of interest is. A company gives money to a groups that advocates a government program that benefits the company. An advocacy organization accepts contributions from a company to help fund its advocacy. What’s the conflict?
“Most people” who think Gill has described a conflict of interest don’t know what a conflict of interest is…just like Gill.
The Supreme Court made three unremarkable, straight-forward rulings yesterday, and the Axis predictably acted as if the Court has banned kissing and ice cream:
A. Hawaii passed a law that a lawful gun owner would have to ask permission to carry a gun on privately owned property that is open to the public. The ruling was condemned by the Brady anti-gun groups, whose president wrote, “I will not mince words: This deeply dangerous majority opinion privileges guns over everything and all people in society.” That’s an interesting way to describe a civil right. The majority simply confirmed that the presumption on private property is that citizens have all their rights until the owner declares otherwise. An owner who doesn’t want guns on his property can prohibit them. Gavin Newsom’s tweet demonstrates his dishonesty: “Gun laws keep people safe. This ruling by Trump’s Supreme Court will only endanger people. If Justice Alito really thinks people need guns to go to the grocery store “for self-defense,” this country is truly broken.” All gun laws are good, so there! And once again, the government doesn’t get to decide when a citizen “needs” a gun.
B. The Court ruled that Temporary Protection Status is temporary. Seems reasonable to me! 350,000 Haitians have come here and stayed based on an earthquake that took place in 2010. The idea of TPR is to allow endangered foreign nationals to come here until a particular peril has passed, and then return home. If Congress wants a different system, it can change it. The Left’s whole case against Trump deciding not to permit TRP squatters to stay forever is to claim that the policy is based on racism. No, it’s based on the principle that a nation should control who it allows to come here, and letting the gate swing open for large numbers of people from cultures antithetical to ours is suicidal.
C. The third case held that non-US. citizens coming in from Mexico need to apply for asylum or start the legal immigration process before showing up at the border or crossing into the U.S. The way the system was administered by the Biden Administration let everyone in who claimed to be a refugee, whereupon they were able to scatter before any determination had been made. “Today Trump’s loyalists in the Supreme Court have joined forces with him to deny immigrants internationally recognized human rights and advance an authoritarian white supremacist agenda,” Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.) said. The United States of America is not bound by the “internationally recognized” right to ignore borders.
As always, those condemning the SCOTUS rulings won’t read the opinions, and the Axis media won’t explain them without spinning for the Left. Gee: the right to bear arms is a right, temporary doesn’t mean forever, and you have to get permission to get into the country before you get into the country. Stunning. Tyrannical.
But here you do have a recognized right to write about whatever you want…as long as it involves ethics.
Perfect!
Larry David, who has managed to make millions with the meta stunt of portraying himself as a toxic asshole on HBO when he in fact is a toxic asshole, dug deep into his warped character and told “Variety” the White House Flag Day UFC event was a “travesty.” “What else can you say about it?” the “Seinfeld” co-creator added. “It was embarrassing. I was embarrassed to be an American.”
TMZ ’s Jacob Wasserman tracked down Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa) on Capitol Hill yesterday and asked his reaction to David’s outburst.
“I’d say ‘Lighten up, Francis,’” Fetterman replied. That’s a 1980s film reference to the cult Bill Murray comedy “Stripes,” making Fetterman a man after my own heart. In a famous scene the ridiculous recruit named Francis (played by Conrad Dunn) tells his fellow soldiers he wants to be called “Psycho” and that he’ll kill anyone who calls him by his right name. He then tries to demonstrate his psycho creds by running off what he would consider justifications for murder.
Sgt. Hulka (played by Warren Oates) deflates the rant by saying, “Lighten up, Francis.”
Wasserman proved himself culturally ignorant by not getting Fetterman’s allusion, so Fetterman had to spell out his meaning. “Hey, I’m proud to be an American, and if you are embarrassed or whatever because of a UFC thing, get over yourself, dude!” the Senator said.
Such a light, civil way to tell David “You’re an asshole”!
In April, Brazilian father and mother, Audato and Ieda Denardi were found guilty of the crime of “intellectual neglect” and were sentenced to 50 days in prison for homeschooling their two daughters without sufficient instruction on“gender and sex education” or “tolerance and diversity.”
The court also found that the girls, aged 15 and 11, not enjoying popular Brazilian musical genres such as “trap” or “sertanejo” was evidence of a criminal deficiency in their cultural education.
Even though the prosecutors in the São Paulo trial requested an acquittal after concluding that the minors were not suffering from any neglect and were demonstrating appropriate academic and social development, the conviction was handed down. It is currently under appeal before the Seventh Criminal Court Chamber of the São Paulo State Court of Justice. The Christian legal organization ADF International is representing the family, and it denounced the case as “a grotesque abuse of criminal law.”
Ya think?
Despite the fact that both girls are pianists with advanced training and are fluent in several languages, the judge accused the parents of “using their daughters as pawns in an ideological struggle, subjecting them to a form of unregulated education, the effectiveness and quality of which lack adequate metrics within the Brazilian legal system, while completely excluding the state’s involvement.” Julio Pohl, legal counsel for Latin America at ADF International, neatly pointed out the obvious: to be concise, the verdict is crackers.
“An independent educational psychologist found no sign of neglect. The girls themselves described rigorous daily education,” Pohl said. “The judge convicted anyway because a fifteen-year-old said she finds some music lyrics morally questionable, and because the curriculum didn’t include state-approved content on gender. A parent has been sentenced to prison not for failing to educate her children, but for educating them according to her own values. This is a grotesque abuse of the criminal law, and we will not let it stand.”
Let’s go through the occupants of Congress, the Senate, state houses and mayors’ offices and speculate which of them secretly (or not so secretly) would like to see similar “justice” in the United States. Do we even have to speculate on the how the leadership of the teachers unions would regard the Denardi case?
I was briefly tempted to make the latest Savannah Guthrie sympathy porn outbreak on NBC’s “Today” show an Ethics Quiz, but to heck with it: I have no doubts about this. “Today” show is abusing its position as a news or an entertainment show to exploit the disappearance of co-host Savannah Guthrie’s almost certainly dead mother for cheap publicity and reality show appeal. As for Guthrie, it’s simple: she is unprofessional, self-indulgent, and incompetent.
The New York Post reports from “Page Six,” which catalogues celebrity news, gossip, and other matters that waste time and thought,
“[On]“Today” show on Tuesday… Savannah Guthrie broke down in tears while discussing the ransom note her family received in February allegedly claiming her missing mom, Nancy Guthrie, had died. “A lot of people at ‘Today’ are affected by it,” says a source. “There was a sense of sadness today. Everybody just feels so bad for her. There is a lot of uncertainty.” “There is a lot of admiration and praise for her that she is still able to do her job,” says our source. “People really support her and care about her, and people are heartbroken.” During the show, Guthrie said she had “no comment” on the headlines and is “not involved in … coverage” of her mother’s abduction, but that she couldn’t “pretend” to not be present for the conversation. “I just wanted to take the opportunity to really ask people and really beg people to come forward because somebody knows something,” Guthrie continued.“This is a news story today that is on your radar, but this is the life my sister, [Annie Guthrie], lives, that I live, that my brother, [Camron Guthrie], lives, that our extended families live, that our children live every day,” she explained. “We cannot be at peace,” the journalist said. “No matter how much I try to come out here every day and smile and find that joy — and I will, I promise I will — this is a moment to say we need your help. … I’m not gonna miss that opportunity.”Guthrie ended her emotional plea with a promise: “We love our mom, and we’ll never stop looking for her. Ever.”
Ugh.
Ethics Alarms flagged the news media’s Guthrie obsession as unethical special treatment for the rich and famous in February, when the apparent kidnapping was at least new:
Above is the résumé of the woman discussed in today’s earlier post. With this, I have no sympathy for JP Morgan at all. Or Angie, though it can’t be pleasant having your worst moments (or at least one of them) splashed all over the web.
I have done a lot of hiring in my time, and I have vetted a lot of résumés. That one would have set off all my “B.S.” alarms like the Chicago fire, and adding to the things I don’t understand about this mess is that Angie was hired in the first place. Her education credentials are beyond weak, and the stated markers of skill and accomplishment are pure puffery. In cases like this, not only should the employee be fired but whoever hired her should be dumped too. All right, I’ve sometimes taken a flier on applicants who seem to have a certain spark, “un je ne sais quoi” as the French say when they aren’t too hot, and I’ve suffered for it on occasion. However, when someone gets a job and the hiring supervisor says, “OK, I’m going to take a leap of faith with you, but you better not let me down,” that employee has to be on notice that, for example, engaging in public theft during basketball fan riot is not consistent with the admonition. If ever a hire pulsed with a DEI-hire-to-fill-a-DEI-job vibe, this is it.
Meanwhile, JP Morgan seems to have a bit of a culture problem with its personnel decisions, no? Have you been following this story, the viral lawsuit by a JP Morgan employee who alleges that his JP Morgan manager, 37-year-old Lorna Hajdini, drugged him and turned him into a sex slave?
I can’t wait to hear my Facebook friends blame Trump somehow.
Last night Darializa Avila Chevalier, a 32-year-old Democratic Socialists of America. member defeated Adriano Espaillat, the chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus in their primary. Chevalier’s stated positions will make her the most radical Democrat, or member of any party, elected to Congress ever if she prevails in November. She wants to abolish police, prisons, and borders. “All deportations are wrong,” she maintains, even when an illegal immigrant has committed a felony.
She was one of the founders of Columbia University Apartheid Divest, the militant student group behind the violent 2024 occupation of Columbia in support of Hamas. “We are Westerners fighting for the eradication of Western Civilization,” she says. “We stand in full solidarity with every movement for liberation in the Global South. Our intifada is an Internationalist one…” She complains that Bernie Sanders and AOC are too pro-Israel.
How could any American vote for her? Chevalier calls the United States “a fucking disgrace,” and as signature significance for a woke maniac whose brain raised its hand and asked to leave the room, refers to the United States as “occupied” Native American land. Naturally, she also wants the government to seize “all properties from landlords.”
Imagine: the Trump Deranged are so warped by hate and hysteria that they are willing to put people like this lunatic and Graham Platner in positions of power and risk allowing the party that supports them to get control of the nation. For the second time today, I am reminded of that guy who shot the nails into his head to stop his arm from hurting.
It’s stunning that anyone would have to explain to someone with functioning neurons that it is irresponsible to support candidates like Chevalier and the party that spawns them. But this toxin has been seeping into the American culture for a very long time, since the late Sixties at least. The vile conservative talk show host and author Michael Savage had a best-seller 20 years ago called “Liberalism is a Mental Disorder.” I wrote several articles about how unethical it was for one side of the partisan divide to call the other mentally ill; to me it was redolent of the way the Soviets discredited, isolated and imprisoned dissidents. Savage is vicious, but he’s not stupid, however. I may have to admit that in today’s environment, that ugly title has the ring of truth.
In this post I wrote about the dispiriting tale of Texas Tech quarterback Brendan Sorsby, an admitted gambling addict whom a ADA-addled judge ruled could not be banned from playing Big 12 football this season. I wrote then,
“The larger issue is what kind of society this will become if the progressive obsession with empathy and forgiveness for all wrongdoing continues on its current path. Sorsby is an addict, not a bad guy! He shouldn’t be prevented from doing what he loves just because his addiction makes him likely to cheat. It isn’t his fault that he has this affliction! And really, aren’t all criminals just addicts or emotionally damaged in some way? They shouldn’t be in prison. This is why “restorative justice” is the only caring way to deal with our fellow human beings who deceive, cheat, rob, and harm us.”
Meanwhile, the loopy decision was throwing all of football into chaos. After the excessively empathetic judge granted a temporary injunction that allowed Sorsby to return to the team with a slap-on-the-wrist two-game suspension, The Big Ten considered a ban on playing Texas Tech altogether. Athletic directors at other schools erupted in anger. Kansas State AD Gene Taylor called the judge’s ruling “fucking bullshit.” “I think there needs to be serious conversations about not playing Texas Tech in any sports,” University of Georgia athletic director Josh Brooks said. “We cannot in good conscience put our student-athletes on a field where the competitive integrity of the contest is compromised and overridden by the courts.”
This month, Sorsby came to his senses and Texas Tech finally realized the school, its reputation and its athletic program would suffer more than any quarterback was worth if he wasn’t gone. Sorsby dropped his lawsuit against the NCAA and opted to enter the NFL Supplemental Draft, ending his Texas Tech affiliation. But yesterday the NFL announced that it was cancelling its 2026 supplemental draft, and that the decision was entirely because of Sorsby,. The NFL doesn’t wantito have to deal with the controversy. As of now, however, the player is still eligible for the 2027 NFL draft.
The gambling in sports pathogen is not going away, and will continue to spread because of greed, stupidity and the fact that most of the people running collegiate and professional sports, especially football and basketball, have no ethics alarms at all.
1. Never mind! Elon Musk isn’t a trillionaire any more. Does that mean that all of the vile characterizations of him don’t apply any more? If you base your attacks on him on that label, aren’t you obligated to retract them when it no longer applies? If not, doesn’t that prove that the alleged basis for your attacks was a dishonest pretense?
2. So all of the New York communists won in last night’s primaries. New York City is doomed, and the only question is whether the evidence will be out there in time for Independents and non-brain-dead Democrats to smell the smoke. Based on some frightening polls, however, it seems like the last few decades of leftist indoctrination in the public schools and universities have yielded this metaphorical poison fruit. Lazy and complacent conservatives, Republicans and parents allowed this to happen right in front of them. They were all irresponsible citizens, and whether it is too late to reverse the disastrous trend is open to debate.
3. Wait, what? Did those headline like the New York Times “40 People Drown in France Amid Scorching Temperatures” puzzle you? They puzzled me. There’s a basic causation fallacy here. It wasn’t the heat that caused those deaths, it was people being foolish and jumping into rivers when they should have taken a cold shower or just endured the discomfort. “Among the fatalities was a 13-year-old girl who had gone for a dip with her family in the River Seine at Fontaine-La Port on Sunday evening, although she did not know how to swim” is one of the tales.
…which is that this woman should never have been hired to fill a responsible position, and deserved to be fired.
Angie Báez, 40, was caught on video emptying a full special New York Knicks public trash can on the street during the Knicks championship parade and then stealing it. This was all caught on camera, as was the idiot on the subway as she brought her souvenir home, grinning happily…
She was the Executive Director of Community and Industry Engagement for Card and Connected Commerce at JPMorgan Chase, but is no more. The bank’s leadership investigated the incident after the pictures hit the web. A bank spokesperson told the media, “This employee is no longer with the company.” Good.
Still, I don’t understand what the woman was thinking. She made a mess, and stole city property. The amazing arrogance and sense of selfishness behind such public behavior is hard to comprehend, as is the fact that such a creep could get hired in a succession of executive positions. She previously served as Executive Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at New York-based review website The Infatuation, which Chase acquired as part of its expansion into lifestyle and experiential content. Earlier in her career, Báez worked as Diversity & Inclusion Program Lead at Squarespace and also held positions as diversity and inclusion chief at Saks Fifth Avenue, Hudson’s Bay, and Saks Off 5th.
What does a DEI executive do? What qualifies someone for such a job? Professional discrimination experience? Baez also co-founded a queer and black, indigenous and people of color-owned talent agency. That figures, I guess. Her bio on The Infatuation’s website says that “dedication to making a positive impact shines through in every aspect of her work…Angie’s efforts have helped position [The Infatuation] as a trailblazer in the pursuit of a more equitable and relatable food media industry….As a vibrant mosaic of Dominican heritage, Bronx roots, and a passion for storytelling, creativity, and culture, Angie continues to lead the way towards a more inclusive and equitable future for food media, leaving an indelible mark on The Infatuation and everything she touches.”
Like that trashcan, I guess.
There is a sense of entitlement that the whole DEI delusion creates within people who are not as special as everyone keeps telling them they are. Baez decided it was okay for her to steal city property because 1) she is a Knicks fan, 2) is “of color,” 3) is represented by one of the letters LGBTQ and 4) is a “vibrant mosaic of Dominican heritage, Bronx roots, and a passion for storytelling, creativity, and culture.” She dumped trash on the street and stole the receptacle while bystanders watched. No shame, no sense of embarrassment.
Nobody in her career noticed the character deficiencies that were behind this conduct, or did they just not care? I don’t understand…
Ethics Alarms 