The legal ethics Zoom seminar today went well, thanks…except that there were multiple technical breakdowns. And where I would normally have dozens of back-and-forth interactions with attendees is a live seminar, I had exactly one in three hours in this one. Remote training, to be blunt, sucks, just like remote court proceedings suck and remote public school sucks. More genteel characterizations are not sufficiently accurate or derogatory.
1. Why anyone pays attention to Tucker Carlson when he says things this foolish, I have no clue. Carlson, in his rants this week, questioned why American leaders were vilifying Vladimir V. Putin, the Russian president, adding, “Not a single Republican leader has stood up to point out how insane all of this is and how completely divorced it is from anything that American voters actually care about…It might be worth asking yourself, since it is getting pretty serious: What is this really about? Why do I hate Putin so much? Has he shipped every middle-class job in my town to Russia? But Joe Biden likes Ukraine, so Putin bad, war good.”
Well gee, Tucker, I think Americans care about stopping international outlaws, not letting bullies prevail, opposing invasions of peaceful nations, and citizens of other countries being killed by ruthless dictators. That’s for a start. Why wouldn’t any normal American (Tucker is clearly not normal) hate Putin (let’s say distrust, disrespect, and detest)? He’s a liar, a murderer, a despot and a dictator. What is it that Carlson finds appealing? Putin is bad, and would be bad if he had Russia invading any sovereign nation.
2. As the ABA’s recent unhinged woke edicts show, lawyers are going nuts…but I didn’t expect this: a rash of naked lawyer sightings. First, the Butler (Ohio) County Bar Association recommended an indefinite suspension of an attorney for a series of public indecency incidents that included driving while nude. Just a couple of weeks later this month, police arrested 49-year-old lawyer Kelly Elizabeth Elkins of Treasure Island, Florida, after an incident that began when the manager of the Beach Lounge refused to serve Elkins any more liquor because she was already “drunk as a skunk.” She then walked into the restroom and emerged “completely naked.” She then refused to leave.
This is considered unprofessional conduct suggesting that she may not be fit to practice law, though not necessarily. Lawyers drink more than any other professionals, and all bar associations have special programs that help such practitioners instead of disciplining them.
3. This doesn’t help. “Anonymous,” the arrogant, outlaw, vigilante cyber-thugs, declared ‘cyber war’ against Vladimir Putin and the Russian government in response to the invasion of Ukraine. The group claims it has disabled several websites of the government, the Kremlin, the Duma, and the Ministry of Defense, and to have taken down the website of Kremlin-backed TV channel Russia today, which broadcasts in Britain.
These people are dangerous, and could get us into a war. Joe Biden may bot be much, but he’s the one we elected to deal which such problems, not a bunch of cocky teenage hackers.
4. Speaking of cyber-jerks, Bloomberg reports that some of the most-viewed videos on Facebook’s gaming channel today were clips purporting to be of military action taking place in Ukraine. They were “watched by more than 110,000 people and shared more than 25,000 times,” before they were taken down by Facebook. Twitter has removed similar videos. Why were they taken down? They were really out-takes from “ArmA III,” a video game that can fool the casual observer.
5. Polls (yecchh). Biden’s latest ratings from Gallup:
- Overall job: 41% approve, 55% disapprove
- Economy: 37% approve, 62% disapprove
- Response to the coronavirus: 47% approve, 52% disapprove
- Foreign affairs: 40% approve, 56% disapprove
- The situation with Russia: 36% approve, 55% disapprove
What exactly is it that the 41% approve of? It isn’t ethical citizenship to be a blindly partisan zombie. In related news, Approximately 69% of Russians now say they approve of Putin, compared to the 61% who approved of him in August 2021, according to Russian polling agency the Levada Center. Only 29% of Russians disapprove of Putin, down from 37% in August 2021.
Who knows what the real numbers are? Our polls are skewed by political bias; imagine what a Russian polling group is capable of. I would not be surprised, however, if the numbers accurately reflect that a majority of the public in Russia approve of Putin. Russia’s culture is an ethics wreck, and the people are so used to being dominated by oppressive leaders that they only feel safe that way.They had a chance in the Nineties to make a real run at democracy, and instead they allowed a KGB veteran to take over. They are accountable for what Putin does.
Ethics Alarms 
1. Agree completely on Tucker Carlson. Who is he to declare himself the voice of America? And why does he have the platform he possesses? Viewers should push back on this. I’ll figure out how.
2. Also agree re Russians/Putin. They did elect this outlaw (however that might shake out upon investigation), and apparently only a relatively few are willing to put their freedom at risk to disagree with his actions. And considering the history of Russia, can you really blame them? Ukraine is a state-to-state issue, and it is naive to expect the Russian citizenry to take part at this point.
(1) Europe has been shutting down their domestic oil/gas/coal production and nuclear energy and replacing it with Russian natural gas. Germany is shutting down ALL their nuclear reactors by the end of the year. France has gone from a net electricity producer to a net electricity importer because over 25% of their nuclear reactors are down. Their reactors are aging and more are likely to go offline while no new reactors are built. Their wind farms aren’t working because Europe has been experiencing low wind speeds for 2 years now.
(2) A lot of that gas that Europe depends on has been flowing through Ukraine.
(3) The pipeline through Ukraine has been having problems delivering gas to Europe and they have been threatening Putin about it.
(4) The natural gas started flowing again…yesterday. European natural gas prices dropped almost 30% yesterday.
(5) The Biden administration has been shutting down domestic oil and gas production. He has replaced it with oil imports from Russia.
(6) The Biden administration introduced new restrictions, shutting down more oil and gas production this week, to be replaced by Russian oil.
(7) The diplomatic solution to Ukraine was not that hard. This centers on parts of Ukraine that used to be Russian (probably an excuse…but true) and the possibility of NATO (an anti-Russian alliance) putting anti-Russian troops and missiles on the Russian border. No sane country would allow the latter action to happen without a fight.
(8) The UK and US seemed to be goading Russia into war with Ukraine, while reassuring Ukraine we had their back.
(9) The sanctions on Russia do not touch their big money makers…energy and agriculture products. Russia makes 12% of the world’s fertilizer. The top 3 fertilizer exporters (in order) are Russia, China, and Canada. Germany and the UK shut their fertilizer production last year because of Paris accord restrictions. Our fertilizer production is down because of a hurricane and a fire in North Carolina. Our farmers are planning on reducing the corn crop by over 30% because fertilizer prices are up 300% and not enough is available to plant our crops.
(10) According to some newly released data, British support for Hitler wasn’t confined to the royal family. In 1938, England reassured Czechoslovakia that they would support the Czechs against Hitler. They advised the Czechs to make territorial concessions to Hitler.
(11) It has been suggested that England was at least telling Hitler they were secretly supporting Germany and giving the Czech natural resources to Hitler so he could rebuild and counter Stalin (with the Sudetenland Germans as an excuse). Germany was too weak to conquer the Czech military at that time and needed the oil and other resources the Czech’s had. The Czech-made tanks Hitler seized (much more numerous than HIS tanks) allowed Hitler to conquer Poland and take on Stalin.
(12) England was doing the same thing with Poland and Hitler, telling both sides they really supported THEM (Hitler wanted back the parts of Germany that had been given to Poland by the Treaty of Versailles). Unfortunately, the British were so duplicitous that Hitler began to believe they were going to double-cross HIM this time like they double-crossed the Czechs and invaded Danzig, starting WWII.
These are some interesting points to consider when analyzing the current world situation.
“Lawyers drink more than any other professionals,”
Ever been to a PBA picnic?
1) As in all things foreign policy, the usual suspects never line up in any synonymous way in which they line up on domestic policy. There will be anti-interventionist right wingers and anti-interventionist left wingers, there will be pro-interventionists on either side, there will be pro-sanctionists on either side, and etcetera.
In the past I’ve always been roughly able to understand everyone’s arguments, solutions and plans.
But this time? I don’t get it. Both sides of the aisle have disgusted me – their arguments make no sense and their plans make no sense.
The only cluster of guys I would have trusted on this topic – pro-intervention Republicans are frustratingly silent on this because of tribalism. And that’s why it’s frustrating! There are scant few pro-aggressive intervention Democrats – tribalism doesn’t even compel silence here.
Lambast Biden for the fact that his fecklessness emboldened Putin and lambast him for his toothless nonsense sanctions and agitate for more active support of Ukraine.
Tucker, an ordinarily smart guy baffles me here, if he wants to take the anti-intervention route there are a handful of ways to make arguments to avoid taking action that don’t involve verbally defending Putin.
I’m not happy with any of the politicians on this topic.