It’s been a while between warm-ups, I know. They are a necessary feature to cover the myriad ethics issues that arise daily, even though even with them the task is impossible. Unfortunately, the format also requires almost twice as much time as a normal, single issue post, and the warm-ups usually prompt fewer comments and clicks, I’m not sure why. Fortunately, I don’t write Ethics Alarms for clicks. But it’s been chaotic around here lately, and I haven’t had many uninterrupted hours to prepare on of these multi-matter posts. This certainly isn’t one. Well, let’s just see what happens…

1. Of all people….Sarah Palin has advised Ron DeSantis to “stay Governor.” “DeSantis doesn’t need to [run],” Palin said in an interview with Newsmax. “I envision him as our president someday but not right now. He should stay governor for a bit longer,” she added. “He’s young, you know. He has decades ahead of him where he can be our president.” Someone needs to explain to Sarah the principle of ethics estoppel. Palin abandoned the job the citizens of Alaska elected her to do based in the belief that she would fulfill her commitment to do it, resigning as governor in 2009 after just three years on the job. If there is one person in the U.S. who has no standing to advise anyone to “stay governor,” it’s her.

Palin was horrible and unethically mistreated by the news media when she ran for VP with John McCain. Savaging her was part of the MSM’s push to elect Barack Obama; meanwhile, it ignored the obvious deficits of Obama’s running mate, a guy named Joe Biden. I defended Palin then, ethically so, but virtually everything she has said or done since has almost—almost-–made me regret it.

2. Oh for heaven’s sake….The Department of the Interior’s U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is offering “eco-grief” training to employees who are anxious and depressed about the impending planetary doom from climate change, among other things. The training is supposed to define their eco-grief and allow employees an opportunity to “examine their emotions” while giving them “and “tools to cope.” The HBO series “Big Little Lies” had an episode where second-grader had a crippling panic attack while her teacher was explaining that global warming was going to end life on Earth if we didn’t act quickly. But then she was six. Any U.S. government employee who suffers from “eco-grief” is too juvenile, emotionally stunted and unstable to be a public employee. The remedy for “eco-grief” is to grow the hell up.

An employee of Fish and Wildlife said, “The FWS is in absolute crisis when it comes to funding and staffing. Most refuges I know have lost 50 to 60% of their staff over the last 12 years. And yet consider how much time, money, energy and staff time is being spent on spreading the woke message. Would the FWS support its employees having a booth and being dressed in uniform and while on the clock supporting a pro-life festival?”

3. Advocating tougher gun laws and simultaneously promoting lenient law enforcement? Do we really have to explain to progressives what’s the logical inconsistency in that? Apparently! The Detroit Free Press reported that Anthony McRae — the man police indicated was responsible for slaying three innocent students and then killing himself — was arrested in 2019 on a gun-related charge in Lansing, Michigan. He wouldn’t have been allowed to acquire a gun under existing Michigan law, but the Ingham County District Attorney’s Office under progressive Democrat Carol Siemon, allowed McRae plead guilty to a misdemeanor. McRae would have been barred from legally purchasing, owning, or possessing a firearm if he had have been convicted of the original concealed weapons charge, but the misdemeanor conviction allowed him to be able to purchase a gun once he successfully completed his terms of probation.

If I were a dedicated conspiracy theorist, I might conclude that Democrats want to have as many mass shootings as possible so they can finally ban guns, because obviously the laws “don’t work.”

4. Wouldn’t you think, after one disaster and botched crisis after another on his watch, DOT Secretary Pete Buttigieg would be making a special effort to be effective and competent? If you did, you would be wrong. After the disastrous train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, now causing residents symptom of chemical poisoning, this diversity appointment (Pete is gay, and has no other evident qualification for leadership in any setting) brushed off concerns and criticism by telling Yahoo Finance, “There’s clearly more that needs to be done, because while this horrible situation has gotten a particularly high amount of attention, there are roughly 1,000 cases a year of a train derailment.” Oh! Then it’s business as usual and no reason to be all upset, then! Buttigieg also resorted to the “needs to be done” dodge. By whom, Pete? You’re the one in charge. No no no, Pete says, tweeting, “Glad to see newfound bipartisan agreement here. We could start by discussing immediate steps Congress could take to address rail safety & reduce constraints on USDOT in this area. Give us a call, we can do some good work.”

Really? Prove it. The up-side of this is that Buttigieg, like Kamala Harris, is dashing any chances he might have had at being President by his repeated displays of incompetence. The down-side is that Biden will never fire this narcissistic hack because he is incompetent..

5. Regarding the dogshit-smearing star choreographer….It took a ridiculous five days, but Hanover’s main opera house finally fired Marco Goecke, its acclaimed German choreographer, after he slapped dog feces from his dachshund, Gustav, on the face of a dance critic whose review had displeased him. I suggested that the delay—Goeke was initially just suspended when he ought to have been fired for cause immediately—was triggered by “The King’s Pass,” rationalization #11 on the list, and it is clear that Goecke constantly benefits from that license to be a jerk. Goecke will retain his position as an associate choreographer with the Nederlands Dans Theater, an acclaimed Dutch company. The company said that Mr. Goecke’s behavior was “contrary to our values” but that he had apologized. Baloney. Smearing fecal matter on a critic is not just criminal but an attempt at intimidation. It is also signature significance: normal, stable, trustworthy choreographers don’t do that ever, not even once. His apology is meaningless. and Goecke proved it by later saying that newspaper critics, he said, should not write in “a personal and hateful way.” So she deserved the shit in the puss, then? He also said, “If I’d been a woman and the critic a man, this would be seen differently.”

What an asshole.

Remember”Hoosiers,” where Gene Hackman plays a star college basketball coach who punched one of his players and could no longer get a coaching job except in a small Indiana high school? A professional choreographer, no matter how good he is, that physically attacks a critic should have to work his way back by choreographing high school “Nutcrackers,” if he’s allowed another chance at all.