“We will never compromise our principles. House Democrats will always put American values over autocracy. Benevolence over bigotry. The constitution over the cult. Democracy over demagogues. Economic opportunity over extremism. Freedom over fascism. Governing over gaslighting. Hopefulness over hatred. Inclusion over isolation. Justice over judicial overreach. Knowledge over Kangaroo courts. Liberty over limitation…..”
—-New Democrat Minority Leader Rep. Hakeem Jeffries following Republican Kevin McCarthy’s election as Speaker of the House
Is this the greatest gaslighting speech of all time? I can’t imagine a more blatant one. Let’s see: Continue reading →
OK, That’s IT! Now The Great Stupid is messing with me personally.
This is war!
Among my many useless and unprofitable areas of expertise are the works of Gilbert and Sullivan, which I performed in, directed, produced, adapted and lectured on for most of my life. Maybe there is someone who has as much experience in the genre as I have, but I doubt it, frankly.
Recently I was engaged to prepare a program on my exploits with the great Victorian musical comedy team for a private club in Washington, D.C. I assembled a capable cast of experienced Savoyards to assist me, including in the planned program numbers from 12 of the 14 performable operettas. I will be emphasizing how many of the songs make still valid satirical observations on current societal foolishness; that number above is included in the program and is from “Princess Ida,” in which Gilbert pokes fun at early feminism. The song is sung at a women’s college where the faculty and students have forsworn male contact and regard the opposite sex as inferior in all respects. Here are Gilbert’s lyrics:
A Lady fair, of lineage high, Was loved by an Ape, in the days gone by. The Maid was radiant as the sun, The Ape was a most unsightly one, The Ape was a most unsightly one So it would not do His scheme fell through, For the Maid, when his love took formal shape, Express’d such terror At his monstrous error, That he stammer’d an apology and made his ‘scape, The picture of a disconcerted Ape!
With a view to rise in the social scale, He shaved his bristles and he docked his tail, He grew mustachios, and he took his tub, And he paid a guinea to a toilet club, He paid a guinea to a toilet club But it would not do, The scheme fell through For the Maid was Beauty’s fairest Queen, With golden tresses, Like a real princess’s, While the Ape, despite his razor keen, Was the apiest Ape that ever was seen!
He bought white ties, and he bought dress suits, He crammed his feet into bright tight boots And to start in life on a brand new plan, He christen’d himself Darwinian Man! He christen’d himself Darwinian Man!
But it would not do, The scheme fell through!
But it would not do, The scheme fell through! For the Maiden fair, whom the monkey crav’d, Was a radiant Being, With a brain farseeing While Darwinian Man, though well-behav’d, At best is only a monkey shav’d!
Ethics Alarms has always maintained that when a child gets control of a real firearm and shoots it, the parents must be held criminally responsible, not only for the consequences of the shooting, but for allowing the child access at all. I also believe that this should be strict liability: I don’t care if the child is a whiz at picking locks or a precocious little Michael Corleone. If you own a gun and your kid gets a grip on it, you’re the menace to society.
I can’t imagine a more perfect illustration of the need for this policy than the story out of Richneck Elementary School in Newport News Virginia. A 6-year-old boy shot and wounded his first grade teacher yesterday. He apparently did it intentionally—he had some dispute with her, we are told—and is a good shot: she is in critical condition.
That’s a faked headline. No such op-ed ever ran in the Times, but it nearly got me. I saw it on several conservative sites, some quite reliable, but something in my softly pinging ethics alarms warned me that I should check it out before referring to it anywhere. Sure enough: “No such article exists. A fabricated headline about bullying was made to look like it came from an opinion piece by the outlet, a spokesperson with The New York Times confirmed.” It should be plain why any regular reader of the Times would assume that headline above was real. It is no more ridiculous than any number of Times op-ed headlines. A few years ago, one Times “expert” advocated allowing children—like sixth graders—to vote. A headline from 2021 read, “Yes, kink belongs at Pride. And I want my kids to see it.” Another: “Want to Get Rid of Trump? Only Fox News Can Do It.” Here’s one: “Trump’s Nacissiam Could Cost Us Our Lives.”
Add to the many examples of Times punditry bordering on lunacy the rampant Wuhan virus phobia and hysteria promoted by the Times itself (among others), and the widespread “ends justify the means” embrace the political Left has favored of late. In this context, a Times column advocating the position that we have to bully kids in order to save them is completely plausible. Continue reading →
Rep. Kevin McCarthy didn’t take the Ethics Alarms ethics advice to withdraw from the race to become the next Speaker of the House. Instead, he hung on to barely squeak by on a 15th ballot, the most required to anoint a new Speaker since before the Civil War. To accomplish this, he made so many concessions to his GOP opposition that he evoked memories of the 1968 Presidential race, when it was said of Hubert Humphrey that he so wanted to be President that he showed himself unworthy of the office by the manner of his pursuit of it. McCarthy, it must be said, is no Humphrey: he is now a small, undistinguished and petty politician in a big job, the very epitome of the Peter Principle in action.
Observation 1: It tells you all you need to know about the state of the slim GOP House majority that Matt Gaetz, one of the truly creepy members of Congress, was a power broker in this mess. Just look at this guy. And in order to get the job he so covets, McCarthy gave him more power than he already had, and he already had too much because his brain dead district sent him to D.C. One of the concessions McCarthy made to flip the party members voting against him was to alter House rules so a single member could trigger a challenge to his leadership. This not only gives tremendous leverage to Gaetz, but other incompetent and untrustworthy Republican members, like Margorie Taylor Greene, Paul Gosar, and even the unimaginably dishonest George Santos. Yes, McCarthy has to ask “How high?” when Lying George tells him to jump too, or risk another 15 ballot siege.
Observation 2: Democrats and the news media (but I repeat myself) enjoyed blathering about how the McCarthy floor fight showed the lack of leadership in the Republican Party. I submit that this is an accusation Democrats have a lot of gall making against anyone, with a half-conscious Democratic President, an embarrassingly inept Vice-President, and the just-exiting antediluvian Speaker Nancy Pelosi as their party’s most prominent leaders. This is more than the pot calling the kettle black: this is the kettle calling the kettle black. The leadership of both parties and the nation as a whole is weak and corrupt, arguably as weak and corrupt as it has ever been. In hindsight, Lyndon Johnson looks like a giant, and Ronald Reagan a colossus. Who can Democrats point to today as respectable, credible party leaders? Elizabeth Warren? Pete Buttigieg? Old School hack Chuck Schumer?
Some years from now, when “This Day in History” expounds on January 6, will the foolish rioting of 2021 be number one on the list of notable anniversaries, or will it have fallen to where it belongs, which is somewhere between FDR’s “Four Freedoms” speech ( 1941) and the the admission of New Mexico as the 47th state (1912)? Unfortunately, the ugly incident is probably destined to always be regarded with inflated importance if for no other reason than it became the focus of one of the most protracted and cynical partisan political propaganda efforts by any party since the United States was founded.
Like the Kardashians who are famous for being famous, the January 6 Capitol rioting will be important because so many people have said it was important for so long. It was destructive and it was embarrassing, but the rioting was not an insurrection, nor was it part of a plot by Donald Trump to somehow hold on to the White House. The hacks and demagogues in the media and elected offices who have claimed otherwise are only better than the rioters in that they have been less violent. Both disgraced themselves and their country.
1. Now THIS is a frivolous lawsuit…The estate of Brian Sicknick is suing Donald Trump and two rioters, Julian Elie Khater and George Pierre Tanios, for $10 million in damages from each of the defendants based on the theory that the Capitol Police officer’s death was “a direct and foreseeable consequence” of Trump’s words and action on January 6, while the two rioters are accused of assaulting Sicknick with bear spray during the conflict. Sicknick died of a stroke the next day, and it is literally impossible to trace the stroke to the riot. Sicknick’s death was attributed to “natural causes.” If Rudy Giuliani is facing discipline by the D.C. Bar for not having sufficient evidence to justify his lawsuit claiming voter fraud in Pennsylvania, sanctioning the lawyer who brought this “Hail Mary” lawsuit should be automatic. If the lawyer isn’t sanctioned, we will have even more evidence that the posse chasing Rudy is motivated by politics, not a sincere desire to police the legal profession’s ethics.
A LinkedIn posting by HR&A Advisors, a TriBeCa-based real estate consultancy, asked job applicants for a $121,668- to $138,432-a-year position to apply while removing “all undergraduate and graduate school name references” from their résumés, citing only the degree itself. Apparently this policy applies to all HR&A job postings, which the company says is part of its “ongoing work to build a hiring system that is free from bias and based on candidate merit and performance.”
Damar Hamlin, the Buffalo Bills safety who suffered a near-fatal heart attack during a Monday Night Football NFL game this week, after two days in intensive care and still breathing with the help of a ventilator, in a scribbled a note shortly after regaining consciousness.
Well, it’s a great story. In the spirit of the old newspaperman at the end of “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence” [“When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.”], I’m going to assume it’s true, though I have grave doubts. For one thing, it’s hearsay; for another, the account comes through the NFL publicity staff, and the NFL’s any-staff has no ethics credibility at all. But the quote is possibly true, and it certainly conveys an ethical lesson: Put your “team,” whatever it may be, above your own concerns; care about whether your misfortune in pursuit of a shared goal interfered with that goal rather than focusing only on your own welfare. There really have been documented instances where an athlete did give the equivalent quote following a serious injury. Continue reading →
Police in Santa Marta, Colombia, recently published a wanted poster for 12 dangerous criminals in the town, asking the public for help in apprehending them. All are members of the “Los Pachenca” drug cartel and are suspects in a series of crimes committed in Santa Marta in recent months. The published poster (above), however, only mentioned the suspects’ nicknames without revealing their real names, and only generic silhouettes were offered rather than actual photos.
Nevertheless, the police department acted as if their procedure was serious and reasonable. “It is very important that citizens help us identify the people who are affecting life throughout the city,” the police high command said to supplement the poster. “We are going to provide payments for data that allow us to identify them.”
The mockery of the absurdly inept dragnet was instant and relentless. One wag noted that it should be easy to identify cartel members since “they all look identical.”
The department quickly pulled the poster. See? It’s not completely incompetent after all!
Here is as good a place as any to note, since Ethics Alarms is also concerned with leadership as a sub-category to ethics, that Kevin McCarthy’s only ethical course at this point is to withdraw from the Speaker of the House race. It is clear that he cannot lead Republicans in the House, and the compromises and concessions he will need to make to get the support of the 20-plus member faction that opposes him would cripple his leadership as well as his party. Now it’s just selfishness, obstinacy and ego that has him holding on. None of those are ethical reasons to inflict yet another weak GOP Speaker on the nation.
McCarthy’s allies should also recognize this and 1) shut up or 2) move on. One, of course, is Donald Trump who can’t shut up, but who should be completely irrelevant to the Speaker battle. Another is Sean Hannity. It’s depressing that such a dim-wattage Fox News pundit as Hannity has the influence he does, and he proved his Peter Principle creds again in an argument on the air with conservative House member and anti-McCarthy leader Lauren Boebert. Sean apparently thought he had a “gotcha!” by calling Boebert on her statement that McCarthy should just give it up because he didn’t have the votes to win the Speakership. “But he has over 200 votes, and your group has just 20!” Hannity replied. “Shouldn’t you be the ones who give up?”
Uh, it’s like a filibuster, Sean, you dummy. Or a veto. The 20 don’t represent an alternative to McCarthy; they don’t have to elect a candidate to win. Their purpose is to block his ascension to the job, and they have enough votes to do it.
And this guy was advising President Trump…..
Anyway, you talk about what you want. I just needed to get that out. As Jimmy Durante would say, “It showed up on my last X-ray as a safety pin!”
Ethics Alarms 