good morning…
1 Responsible parties nominate responsible candidates 1. In Chicago, a permanently Democratic district has no serious Republican candidates, so Holocaust-denier Arthur Jones, a whack-job who has run in this district seven times, is poised to get the nomination. “To me the Holocaust is what I said it is: It’s an international extortion racket,” Jones told the Chicago Sun-Times. Nice. Anticipating the attacks on the Republican Party if he is its representative in the election this fall, Ann Althouse writes, “Should this be used against the Republican Party? Sure, if you’re into taking whatever comes your way and incorporating it into ruthless propaganda for your party. Ironically, that would be Naziish.”
Wrong. I don’t know where the idea came from that a political party organization is obligated to act like a potted plant, but it isn’t. A party’s obligation is to the public, democracy, and the ideals the party and the nation represents. It does not and should not allow a candidate who doesn’t meet minimal standards of competence and responsibility to use the party to achieve political power. Let such people run on their own, or start a Holocaust Denial Party, or National Nut Ball Party, or the Green Party (Kidding!), or something. . A responsible party vets its candidates, and tells those who don’t stand for basic American values or who are unqualified that they don’t get to use the party for their ends by default.
If you check back, this was the Ethics Alarms position on Donald Trump. The Republicans shouldn’t have allowed him to run for the nomination, and even after he did, his conduct in the debates and elsewhere justified its refusing to nominate him at the convention. They don’t deserve to be called Nazis for nominating him, but they don’t deserve an ethics pass, either. The fact that he won is irrelevant.
2. Responsible parties nominate responsible candidates 2. Rep. Danny Davis (D-Ill), also from Chicago, reacted to the controversy over the Congressional Black Caucus conspiring with a journalist to bury a photo of Barack Obama smiling with Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan at a CBC meeting in 2005 by telling the press that Farrakhan was an “outstanding human being.” Outstanding or not, Farrakhan is openly anti-Semitic and anti-white, blaming Jews for the 9-11 attacks, saying white people “deserve to die” and calling Adolf Hitler as a “very great man.” Davis, who has been in Congress for 20 years, told the Daily Caller, “I don’t regard Louis Farrakhan as an aberration or anything, I regard him as an outstanding human being who commands a following of individuals who are learned and articulate and he plays a big role in the lives of thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of people.” When asked about Farrakhan’s history of anti-Semitic comments, Davis said that many people in politics have a history of inflammatory comments.
You know, like Davis.
3. New Ways To Be Unethical Dept. A company named Devumi has made millions by selling Twitter followers and retweets to celebrities, journalists, businesses and anyone who sees a benefit in looking more popular and influential than they are. This is lying to the public by definition, and Devumi is facilitating fraud. It has an estimated stock of at least 3.5 million automated accounts, each sold repeatedly, and has sent more than 200 million imaginary Twitter followers into cyberspace.
A New York Times report identified some of the many “reality television stars, professional athletes, comedians, TED speakers, pastors, models,” and even journalists who deceive the public by buying fake followers, or having their their employees, agents, public relations companies, family members or friends do it for them.
Actor John Leguizamo, the computer billionaire Michael Dell, Ray Lewis, the football commentator and former NFL linebacker, Kathy Ireland, the former Sports Illustrated swimsuit model, Akbar Gbajabiamila, host of the show “American Ninja Warrior,” Hillary Rosen, a Democrat consultant who worked for the Clinton campaign, Richard Roeper, a nationally known film critic, Twitter board member Martha Lane Fox, Fox Business Network Elizabeth MacDonald, and others were identified by the Times, including actress Deirdre Lovejoy, who explained, “Everyone does it.”
Liars and frauds all.
4. What’s the matter with this? Nothing, that’s what. Citing a 2015 news item that I missed, conservative blogger Stephen Green bemoaned the state of society.Consumerist covered the story, among others:
“A barbershop in Pennsylvania has been fined $750 for refusing to cut a woman’s hair. Barbiere of Washington County is aimed at the upscale gentleman’s market, offering clients a complimentary cocktail or a cold beer with their haircut.But owner John Interval ran into trouble with authorities when staff refused to cut a woman’s hair in his establishment. Diamond Pecjak filed an action with the state’s Bureau of Professional and Occupational Affairs after the incident.”
No barbershops for men, no beauty salons for women. Little boys and little girls in identical jumpers playing identical gender-free games with gender-free toys. A round hole for every peg. No men, no women, only wankers — Human-Units with no individuality beyond the happy chores of a life where everything not compulsory is forbidden.
This is classic Conservative Derangement Syndrome. If a woman wants the exact same product or service being offered to men by an establishment, she should absolutely be accommodated. Pecjak’s complaint was valid, as was the fine. Especially in light of the absurd variance between the prices charged by barbers and hair dressers, I don’t know why more women don’t use barbers.
Ethics Alarms 
Ethics issues? What ethics issues?:
The Sun-Times conducted an investigation into the issue this week and found that Roeper had purchased roughly 50,000 followers on six occasions between July 2014 and July 2016, spending around $650 of his own money; Roeper said he was unaware that any of the followers he purchased were fake; Roeper cooperated fully with the investigation by providing receipts of his purchases; the Sun-Times had no explicit policy in place that banned the purchase of Twitter followers.
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/chicago-sun-times-reinstates-richard-roeper-investigation-twitter-scandal-1081500
– Roeper had purchased roughly 50,000 followers
– Roeper said he was unaware that any of the followers he purchased were fake
– the Sun-Times had no explicit policy in place that banned the purchase of Twitter followers
Hint: if you have to buy Twitter followers, they are inherently not legitimate followers.
A similar, common scam: buying massive numbers of copies of a book to make it a NYT best seller.
4- Just like the difference between a bar rag and a bar towel is ~ $3 a drink, the difference between a stylist and a barber is at least $80.
It never ceases to amaze me how much my lovely and long suffering wife pays to have her hair cut.
Me? I’ve never paid more than $15…and that includes a generous contribution to the cutter’s favorite charity.
I’ve only been married 15.6 years, so I’m new at this. One thing I have learned is to never, and I mean NEVER, trivialize or mock the approach-n-attention to the hair care regimens of the X-Chromosomal Unit.
FTR, I have one bottle of both shampoo and conditioner, same brand for decades; let’s leave it at that.
Advice to any guy young enough not to know from experience: When asked by your consort upon her returning from the hair cutter how her new haircut looks, always, ALWAYS say “It looks GREAT!”
PS, you don’t even have to look before giving the correct answer.
Yer long on generativity, OB, not unlike Professor Terguson. I always count on you to compassionately inculcate the “not yet” experienced.
I’m sure 15.6 days was sufficient for you to have acquired this basic survival skill, Paul..
And if she says “notice anything different about me” and nothing looks different – guess the hair!!
“notice anything different about me”
While rarely does my Chi hiccup, THAT’S the trigger that’ll do it!
I haven’t been at this marriage thing as long as most of you’s.
Oddly enough, what I’ve learned began on a street corner. Corners actually, my lovely and long suffering wife and I owned adjoining end-of-the-block properties prior to and shortly after she agreed to embrace the tall task of making me an better man.
Several things I ask a couple of times per day:
*a question: “Is there anything you need to yell at me about?”
*a statement: “I’m sorry about everything.”
Corny as they seem, they’ve short-circuited a few molehills with the exponential potential for growth.
Here’s another tip I learned. Whenever you say that you’re tired, make sure you give this caveat, “Boy, I’m worn out today, NOT AS TIRED AS I’M SURE YOU ARE, but I am dragging.” That will cut off the invariable “what are you tired for”, followed by a list of all the things she did.
You know, little tips. We’re all in this together.
Jack, in response only to your query why women don’t use more barbers, women don’t use more barbers because barber shops usually have a drastically reduced selection of available hair cuts. My husband’s barber only offers two or three basic hairstyles and I’ve never seen a pair of scissors there, only razors. Women, in general, want more variety in their hair styles than a barbershop offers, which means that we have to go to hair salons. The large price differential, at least to some degree, reflects the amount of training barbers get verses hair stylists. A standard barber gets 9-12 months training where as a hair stylist gets 12-24 months. That also means, with the difference in training, that a salon has more options available. For example, guys who get their hair colored or wear trendy styles with longer hair usually cannot get the hair done in a barber shop either.
Another difference? Back in the day, barber shops always had better…um…perusing material for one to pass the time during the ubiquitous wait.
Wait.
Someone’s near you with scissors and you’d want a stiffy? There are safer ways to obtain a sex-reassignment procedure.
”Someone’s near you with scissors and you’d want a stiffy?”
Stiffy? While I prefer Woody, or the more formal “Woodrow,” that misses the point.
Some of us are able to control our physical reactions to visual stimuli, may we presume you’re not one of them?
“There are safer ways to obtain a sex-reassignment procedure.”
Just one of the things that makes this a gosh darn great country, am I right?
If your genitals are in danger from your barber’s scissors (regardless of what state said genitals are in), then you need either a) a new barber who keeps his hands out of your lap, or b) remedial lessons in how humans sit in chairs.
That reminds me of a client I once had. He was struggling to sell is moderately priced product so he decided to double the price of any competitor. He’s now a millionaire.
1: Yeah, that happened. They couldn’t have prevented him from running for the nomination as far as I know, since he had the required signatures. Giving him a primary opponent, really anyone who’s not a nazi would do, could have prevented this problem though.
I’m fairly amazed that you didn’t mention that Joe Arpaio was making motions like he was going to run for a senate seat… Which is simultaneously bad because 1) It’s Joe Arpaio and 2) he’s a GREAT way for Republicans to lose another senate seat.
On the responsibility of parties not to nominate unqualified persons:
First, let me go on record that I believe both persons identified are poor choices to represent the people of their districts. If I lived in one of those districts, such comments would be disqualifiers to me.
With that said, I would like to take a contrarian view. It is the Republican or Democrat Party’s to neither vet nor support any of the candidates in the primaries; that is the voters role. If the candidate makes it to the general election it is the will of the voter telling the party what it wants; not the other way around. The party must support the voter’s choice. If they do not, the members will leave the party and there will be no party.
The parties responsibility lies in developing qualified candidates who can run and win in a given district who espouse the “the ideals the party and the nation represents”. If they fail to do so that is on them and they risk winding up with people that tarnish the brand.
If the party has an obligation/right to exclude any member of the party from seeking office because he/she holds some whacko ideas then it seems that they have no right to demand that that voter/candidate only vote for their party during primaries. In short, denying an individual the right to represent his/her district because that person does not exemplify every value the party holds dear, or espouses values that are antithetical to the party and society at large then they must also reject that person’s membership in the party and all financial contributions made by that person for the benefit of the party. The party cannot take that which is good for them in terms of membership and money and deny said member full rights and privileges associated with membership.
If we use the example of a hotel chain that carries the banner of the Hilton brand, any licensed hotel that does not live up to the established value proposition of the Hilton brand can have its brand privileges revoked. It must stop using the Hilton logo. It is also no longer required to pay license fees. Hilton, can no longer use the property in its portfolio of offerings. This is fine in the business world where corporate rules reign supreme but such rules are to benefit only the shareholders not the general public. Thus, in politics the concept of what are the brand values must extend well beyond the scope of a limited select group if it is to have any measurable success. Every consumer has his/her likes and dislikes. Piss them off enough and you will lose them. In politics if you marginalize too many you will remain in the minority and out of power.
Jack you wrote, “A party’s obligation is to the public, democracy, and the ideals the party and the nation represents. It does not and should not allow a candidate who doesn’t meet minimal standards of competence and responsibility to use the party to achieve political power.”
What if this were written as follows: “A voter’s obligation is to the public, democracy, and the ideals the voter and the nation represents. We should not allow a voter who doesn’t meet minimal standards of competence and responsibility to use the party to achieve political power.”
I could rewrite that sentence several ways but the upshot is that any way we write it we destroy the political power of the individual. What is minimal standards of competence? Should we have literacy tests, psychological profiles, or require them to name all the state capitals? In short, are we saying that 63 million people, enough to win an electoral majority in our republic are such dim bulbs that cannot be entrusted to vote for the “right” candidate.
In the past primary for the Republican nominee for president the rank and file membership chose a candidate that I found troublesome at best. He was chosen from a field of 17 candidates. They were the best and brightest of the Republican elite. They represented a broad view of opinions. Some were considered whacko by others in the field. All were deemed competent by the powers to be, except one. You would think that in a democracy the chaff would be quickly separated from the wheat. Perhaps it was. What is good is up to the buyer not the seller.
If democracy is to prevail, it is the voters responsibility to vet the candidates not the cabal that maintains an iron fist on our entrenched two party system. Both parties should work to develop competent, ethical candidates. If they don’t offer the voter a choice in the primaries then that is on them.
The Republican and Democratic parties are not monolithic deciders of good and evil. They are a collective of individuals with radically different ideas and values within and without the party. The party is merely a clearing house for opinions and a meeting place for like minded thinkers. An informed competent electorate coupled with well intentioned, informed and thoughtful candidates is the best antidote for keeping whackos from being elevated to power.
I wish Arthur Jones was a mere outlier.
But consider this,
http://reason.com/blog/2018/02/06/wooster-activists-demands-expel-a-racist
If these kind of people dominated the district in question, Arthur Jones would win in a landslide.
Lots of leftwing opinion passing itself off as ‘ethics’ today.