Everything is loused up, delayed and failing today. I don’t want to talk about it…
Harvard professors Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, who carved out a niche by claiming that Donald Trump uniquely defied “democratic norms,” thus pointing the government toward “authoritarian” rule, had better be hiding their heads in bags now. The theme was quickly picked up by other unethical (as in partisan and biased without admitting so) academics like historian Alan Lichtman, and it became one of the more popular Big Lies weaponized by the Left-allied mainstream media, as in this Washington Post hit piece.
Ethics Alarms took the position that this was a contrived new standard dreamed up just for Trump (and to sell books and get MSNBC gigs, of course), concocted for political warfare,and it was. Meanwhile, Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt have been notably silent as the Joe Biden Presidency has shattered one “norm” after another, most spectacularly in using the Justice Department (and Congress, as well as his party generally) to harass and attempt to neutralize a former President of the United States and past and likely future adversary at the ballot box. The raid on Mar-a-Largo was the ultimate IIPTDXTTNMIAFB (“Imagine if President Trump did X that the news media is accepting from Biden”), and one that genuinely threatens democracy, unlike, say, firing a wildly incompetent and untrustworthy FBI director. Not a peep from the “norms” police though.
Gee. What a surprise.
1. Here’s another “surprise”: when a group becomes entitled and protected, “inclusion and diversity” fly out the metaphorical window. Assistant professor of community health and director of the Health Promotion Center at York College Vincent Jones II and professor and director of gender, sexuality, and feminist studies at Middlebury College Laurie Essig write in the Boston Globe that heterosexual bachelorette partiers are ruining the all-gay scene in Provincetown, Massachusetts. The male-loving women, it seems, have found the long-time arts, galleries and gays town on the tip of Cap Cod the perfect place to party without the inconvenience of being hit on, at least not by men. The residents claim the women are “asserting their privilege” in what should be LGBTQ+ “safe spaces.” Worse still, the straight infestation consists of “mostly white women.” How dare they?2. From the Washington Post, an “it isn’t what it is” gaslighting classic: “Biden, trying to tout his policies, faces a familiar intruder: Trump.” Kudos to Ann Althouse for flagging this insulting counter-factual nonsense. As Ann writes,
How can we stop thinking about Trump when his antagonists are doing such conspicuous things to him?…The Democrats, the party in power, are intruding on Trump. They can’t turn around complain that he’s intruding on them!
Oh, but they do! Because Trump was such a malefactor, they have to spend their time looking backward, investigating, searching, reviling. And because he didn’t get his second term, they’ve got to look forward to the next election and do what they can to defeat him before he builds an unstoppable momentum. That’s all so intrusive of him.
Exactly. Trump is in the headlines and the news like no other ex-President before him, and it is because the Democrats, Trump-Deranged and progressive mainstream media can’t and won’t leave him alone. Conservative blogger Stephen Kruiser adds,
All of this is being driven by the Democrats’ obsession with using the J6 fauxsurrection to keep Trump off of the ballot in 2024. They know that they could resurrect FDR and Trump is still going to waltz back into the White House. He’s the monster under all of their beds. As I’ve written before, he’s not only living rent-free in their heads, he’s building condos and inviting his friends. Had they not been working out daddy issues since Jan. 20, 2021, there is a chance that Trump might have opted to enjoy more golf and play Republican kingmaker.
It would be astounding that the Washington Post would have the gall to blame Biden’s crash-and-burn on Trump’s “intrusion” when the Post is part of the cabal thrusting Trump into every day’s conversation, except that no degree of dishonesty and hypocrisy from the Axis of Unethical Conduct is even surprising any more.
3. Our untrustworthy, incompetent public schools (cont) Remember Gabriel Gipe? Ethics Alarms wrote about this dedicated teacher last September: he was exposed by Project Veritas and his own big mouth as working hard to indoctrinate his students. Gipe displayed an Antifa flag in his classroom and said he wanted to turn his students into revolutionaries. Parents demanded that he be fired, and now he is, but it took four months for the school system (you know: California) to do it. He was reportedly paid about $190,000 to leave without a lawsuit. [Pointer: Other Bill]
4. Ew! Baby drop boxes! All 50 states have safe haven laws that protect mothers giving up their babies from criminal charges. The first was known as the “Baby Moses” law, passed in Texas in 1999, after a number of women abandoned infants in trash cans or dumpsters. Some places are using “baby drop boxes” like this one…
…and such devices are expected to proliferate with the end of Roe. But, sayeth the New York Times,
But for many experts in adoption and women’s health, safe havens are hardly a panacea.
To them, a safe haven surrender is a sign that a woman fell through the cracks of existing systems. They may have concealed their pregnancies and given birth without prenatal care, or they may suffer from domestic violence, drug addiction, homelessness or mental illness.
The adoptions themselves could also be problematic, with women potentially unaware that they are terminating parental rights, and children left with little information about their origins.
Better, I suppose, to just make sure the babies never get born at all. Problem solved! Presumably, this is the position of the “women’s health” experts relied on by the Times. If there is a better example of the fallacy of allowing the perfect to be the enemy of the good, I can’t think of it right now.
5. How screwed up are American values and priorities, role models and more? This article—The Fabulous Life of Kylie Jenner: Luxury Cars, Homes and More!—lays it all out for you. Jenner has literally nothing to recommend in her character or ability, just a half-sister who became famous because of a sex video, and a mother with promotional savvy. Education? She has a home-schooled high school diploma, and imagine the schooling you get when the home is the Kardashian residence.
Ethics Alarms 
How about this “Imagine if President Trump did X that the news media is accepting from Biden”: https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2022/08/10/president_biden_zero_inflation_rate_means_that_some_things_went_up_in_price_others_went_down.html
Wouldn’t this be deemed a lie? Wouldn’t Paul Krugman be all over this? How muddled and pathetic does Biden look? I suspect the White House will say he meant to say inflation had not increased from June to July, it had in fact decreased by one percent. But if that’s what he meant to say, why didn’t he say it? Zero inflation. And this just goes uncommented upon. Republicans will doubtless pounce.
1. I guess the message in P Town is “Fag hags keep out!”
And people wonder why so many people believe that Trump actually won the election. If Biden won the presidency fair and square, more people voted for him than Trump, than why do all of this? If Trump really was a loser without enough support to get re-elected, then why is the J6 committee and everything else needed to disqualify him from running again? It isn’t like Republicans are quaking in their boots over the prospect of Hillary Clinton running again. She lost, the Republicans know it, and they would love a multiple-time loser to run against their candidate. Why don’t the Democrats treat Trump the same way? Maybe Biden did win the election, but the Democrats sure aren’t acting like it.
Speaking of Hillary Clinton, it looks like her campaign is selling merchandise advertising the fact that she is above the law and Trump isn’t. It is apparently selling like hotcakes among her followers. I can’t wait to see someone wearing this stuff.
Michael R. wrote, “And people wonder why so many people believe that Trump actually won the election. If Biden won the presidency fair and square, more people voted for him than Trump, than why do all of this? If Trump really was a loser without enough support to get re-elected, then why is the J6 committee and everything else needed to disqualify him from running again? It isn’t like Republicans are quaking in their boots over the prospect of Hillary Clinton running again. She lost, the Republicans know it, and they would love a multiple-time loser to run against their candidate. Why don’t the Democrats treat Trump the same way? Maybe Biden did win the election, but the Democrats sure aren’t acting like it.”
I think this is a really good questions and the only answer I can come up with is that the four tenants of the extreme progressives have infected the entire Democratic Party…
Here are the extreme progressives’ four tenants of “truth”…
1. The left is right.
2. The right is wrong.
3. Wrong is evil.
4. Evil must to be destroyed.
…that’s the dead end of the 21st century extreme progressives and now also the Democrat’s ability to think critically.
The brainwashing of the political left is complete, damn near all of them are totalitarians now and most of them don’t even know it.
They’re power hungry totalitarians now.
I’m trying to wrap my head around the sort of mentality that would consider anonymously abandoning an infant at a fire station to be consistent with retaining parental rights.
I’m imagining some hapless woman in ancient Sparta, leaving her deformed baby to die of exposure, but still expecting to walk back into its life and resume parenting at a future date.
“I’m imagining some hapless woman in ancient Sparta, leaving her deformed baby to die of exposure, but still expecting to walk back into its life and resume parenting at a future date.”
Well, Jocasta did not exactly expect to resume parenting, but your point is well taken: it did not exactly turn out well for her.
-Jut
In my state, women can’t lose their parental rights permanently. Well, they can, but some softhearted judges started reinstating their parental rights if they ‘turned their lives around’. As a result, children really can’t be adopted. I mean, would you adopt an infant, knowing that 6 or 7 years later, that child’s mother could get out of prison, get her parental rights back, and then demand custody of the child? You might think that is insane, but a friend was a foster parent to a teenager whose mother lost parental rights when he was 2, got them back when she was released from prison when he was 7, lost those rights 6 months later when she was sent back to prison, had her rights reinstated when he was 13 after getting out of prison again, lost them again after 6 more months when sent back to prison, and he had been waiting around for her to get out of prison ever since. Our state DHS’s mission is to ‘Reunite the children with their mothers”, so the kids just have to hang around their entire lives, hoping mom can pull it together because no one else is allowed to care for them because it would be unfair to her.
TL’DR: Yes, I can imagine women who think abandoning their infant in a drop box means they can demand the children back in 8 or 9 years when they get their lives together.
And THIS is why we adopted our son in Russia, where once the child is given up, the parents have no further rights, and we were heading an ocean away.
1. In all fairness, often the bridal parties straight (mostly white) women throw at gay bars are extremely annoying. They oogle the men, don’t always tip well, and basically act like privileged little banshees not respecting the space as a one meant for gays.
At least the men still have their own bars. Can’t say as much for lesbians.
https://www.oregonlive.com/portland/2022/08/how-a-portland-lesbian-bar-for-everyone-closed-after-one-day.html
Well, it doesn’t help that the stereotypical role for a gay man in media is to be the hetero female lead’s wisecracking but caring bff who listens to her insecurities, encourages her dreams, and always tells her she deserves the best. There really aren’t too many similar roles for lesbians, although Lauren German’s Leslie Shay on Chicago Fire was an example (who they killed off after only 2 seasons in an obvious example of the trope Bury Your Gays).