Bravo.
Month: August 2023
The Puppeteering Of Sen. Feinstein
“Have you no sense of decency? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?‘
With those deft, live-televised and well-timed (and planned in advance) words, lawyer Joseph Welch set off ethics alarms around the country that stripped the mask from Sen. Joe McCarthy and signaled the end of one of the ugliest episodes of political misconduct in American history. The Democratic Party is in the midst of another such episode of its own construction, but it’s doubtful that a Welch-like question would have any effect today. Nonetheless, the Democratic Party’s cynical and desperate manipulation of the brain-damaged (John Fetterman) and the elderly and senile (President Biden) to maintain its tenuous hold on power is an abandonment of decency arguably as disgusting and anti-Democratic as McCarthy’s smearing of political foes as Communists.
The party’s reduction of Senator Diane Feinstein, 90, once a sharp and professional Senator from California, but now a sick, mentally-diminished shell, to its marionette is particularly ugly. Last week, Feinstein relinquished the power of attorney to her daughter, a tacit admission that she was no longer competent to handle her own affairs. Yet she remains in a position that requires her to participate in decisions regarding the affairs of the United States, and its many millions of citizens. How could she be incapable of acting in her own interest but still qualified to do the job her constituents (foolishly) elected her to do? Obviously, she can’t.
Comment Of The Day: “First Open Forum Of August!”
Michael West, who used to weigh in here far more frequently than he has been able to in recent years, issued a well-timed commentary in last week’s Friday open forum. It’s a perfect intro, if a bit ironic, to a post I’ll get up today if climate change doesn’t kill us all about the intractable reaction some have had to yesterday’s heresy that Donald Trump has officially jumped the legitimate Presidential candidate shark. The recent ban-ee actually sounded like Trump, warning me of dire consequences should I not succumb to his arguments and dance to his off-key tune.
Here is Michael West’s Comment of the Day on the most recent open forum:
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On the widening worldview dichotomy, objectivity and debate:
Can a progressive commenter ever last here anymore?
The complaints that this is a conservative echo chamber have some practical merit – in that most of the commenters here have a libertarian or conservative lean. The progressives all left, mostly of their own accord, many because their own assertions painted themselves into logic corners from which all they had left was the vitriol that eventually got them banned.
Therein lies the question – can a progressive commenter last here without admitting that their entire train of thought has gone off the rails? And once a progressive commenter does have that realization – can they honestly remain progressive anymore?
It’s Come To This: “Liking” A Politically Incorrect, Bad Taste Joke On Social Media Can Get You Suspended In The United States Of America
Madness.
Rising NASCAR driver Noah Gragson was suspended indefinitely for liking a meme on Instagram. The meme was a pun evoking the “Little Mermaid” song “Under the Sea,” sung in all versions by Sebastian the Crab. It showed the crab with George Floyd’s head superimposed with a reference to his demise, like this:
Too soon? Once his politically incorrect sense of humor was brought to its attention, Gregson was suspended indefinitely by his team, the Legacy Motor Club, and by NASCAR as well. “NASCAR fully supports Legacy Motor Club’s decision to suspend Noah Gragson,” the racing association stated. “Following his actions on social media, NASCAR has determined that Gragson has violated the Member Conduct section of the 2023 NASCAR Rule Book and has placed him under indefinite suspension.”
Comment Of The Day: “MAGA Loyalists: Do You REALLY Believe That Anyone Who Makes A Public Threat Like This Can Be Trusted To Be President?…”
I am proud to present an epic Comment of he Day by A M Golden on the post, “MAGA Loyalists: Do You REALLY Believe That Anyone Who Makes A Public Threat Like This Can Be Trusted To Be President? Because He Can’t…Ever.” It is wise, wide-raanging and nuanced, so I’m not going to waste your time with an introduction. Just read, think, and enjoy.
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As the saying goes, “When someone tells you who they really are, believe them.” We have enough evidence to see with our own eyes and ears who Trump is and who he is not and that should not be relevant to who Joe Biden is and who he is not.
This entry, the previous one in the latest installment of the “Nation of Assholes” series and the one before that about Rudy Giuliani’s untrustworthy secret recorder have all coalesced in my mind this weekend as I have spent several days wearing myself out over planning for a pop-culture convention next week by following other conventions in other cities on social media to determine how the shows are accommodating the guests’ requirements under SAG-AFTRA’s strike rules and what that means for how I should approach any celebrity guest I wish to meet.
I get tired of holding the hands of new convention-goers who don’t understand the rules, ask for clarification and end up not following my advice. I get tired of veteran convention-goers who think they have the right to get around the rules. For entitled people who cut lines, who try to sweet-talk the guest into extra perks and who make little to no effort to ask polite, intelligent questions. They make everything harder on everyone else. Celebrities won’t want to attend these things if people don’t understand or respect boundaries. I have too many stories to recount of fans acting like inconsiderate asses and those stories are from before the pandemic.
We are already an entitled enough culture that treats celebrities like commodities, as if buying a movie ticket or following a TV program requires that anyone who appeared in the same owes us unlimited time, an autograph, a selfie, a kidney… One of the best things about the strike is that it’s finally becoming somewhat public knowledge that most actors aren’t millionaires.
We treat others like us even worse. Not only do we not put most of our fellow citizens on pedestals, but we don’t even afford them the basic respect of treating them the way we would want to be treated. As long as there’s something in it for us, I guess…
Somehow, qualities of character, such as honesty, integrity, patience, kindness, self-control (sorry, I think I wandered into the Fruits of the Spirit from the Bible) seem to have been lost very quickly. We are a mess as a culture and there’s a lot of blame to go around, not least because we have forgotten the Golden Rule.
Why Big Lies Work: A Case Study
Well, another one.
Democrats and the mainstream media decided to go nuclear with the false accusation that the new Florida history guidelines, championed by Gov. Ron DeSantis, want schools to teach that slavery was beneficial to enslaved African Americans. It’s an outright lie, as anyone who reviewed the guidelines could see, and as Ethics Alarms explained. The Vice President of the United States made the accusation in multiple venues before African American audiences. (Yes, she’s an idiot, but she’s still Vice-President, and her statements are publicized widely). The usual race-baiters and liars among the partisan punditry, like MSNBC’s vile Joy Reid, repeated the lie, and even a GOP Presidential hopeful, weak, cowardly Sen. Tim Scott, gave it credence.
Far from being evidence of racism, white supremacy or prejudice, the guidelines are really evidence of how extremism succeeds by producing “compromises” that are irresponsibly radical anyway. The slavery history teaching guidelines require an absurdly disproportionate emphasis on slavery in grade school, and will result in inadequate instruction on many other more essential topics and skills. Never mind though: as Hitler and Goebbels explained, the purpose of Big Lies is to get a damaging narrative widely distributed, so much so that the target has to respond to it, giving the lie legitimacy and keeping it in the public consciousness.
MAGA Loyalists: Do You REALLY Believe That Anyone Who Makes A Public Threat Like This Can Be Trusted To Be President? Because He Can’t…Ever
Astounding. It’s not astounding that the former President thinks this way, it’s astounding that he is so devoid of ethics alarms, self-restraint, common sense and an understanding of the justice system that he would post such smoking gun evidence that he is a dangerous bully with the instincts of a badly-raised child. Donald Trump actually and truly posted this threat yesterday, in all caps as usual, on his social media site, Truth Social:
That’s the tipping point for me, and it should be for any sane American. I believe that it is existentially crucial that the increasingly anti-democratic Democrats be punished for their unethical conduct and totalitarian aspirations over the past eight years. I would vote for almost anyone over Joe Biden after his complete capitulation to the Dark Side, but “almost anyone” does not include, for example, Putin, Dracula, Diane Feinstein, Rob Reiner, Mitch McConnell, or Cujo…or Donald Trump. Not after this. Hillary Clinton jumps in front of Trump after this. So do some others on that list.
New From The “Nation Of Assholes”: Movie Theater Of Assholes
Back in 2015, Ethics Alarms sagely predicted that an election of Donald Trump as President would begin a death spiral of American manners, civility and societal comity. It proved to be a lot more accurate than any cliamte change predictions so far, but it was still too optimistic. As EA has documented since, all ends of the political spectrum have devoted themselves to trashing respect, manners and decorum since 2016. Yes, Trump has been a catalyst, but so has “the resistance,” Democrats, Black Lives Matter and popular culture. And the destructive pandemic lockdown: don’t forget that.
We continue to discover the breadth and width of the unanticipated carnage of that dumb policy, from children who can’t read to the horrible “ghost runner” in Major League Baseball extra-inning games. Now, the Wall Street Journal reports:
Unethical (And Stupid—But Funny!) Quote Of The Week: Al Sharpton [Updated And Expanded]
“Can you imagine our reading that James Madison or Thomas Jefferson tried to overthrow the government so they could stay in power?”
—-Al Sharpton, MSNBC host and history scholar.
Personally, I have a hard time imagining Al reading.
People actually listen to this guy and care what he thinks. Barack Obama listened to this guy. He is paid to inform MSNBC viewers. No really, he is!
Al takes “bias makes you stupid” to new vistas.
Added: Just in case you think this was an anomaly, here is Al mocking a GOP Congressman for pointing out that the United States is a republic, as if he’s the idiot:
Ethics Villain: Rudy Giuliani Accuser Noelle Dunphy
What a terrible human being.
I don’t mean Rudy Giuliani. Maybe the former mayor of New York City really did harass and “sexually assault” Noelle Dunphy, seen above with Rudy, after he hired her (she says) in January 2019 when the old prosecutor was 75 years old. Even if that is true—and, frankly, no man over 60 these days is likely to be able to avoid committing legal harassment, as in creating a “hostile work environment,” working closely with a young woman who is looking for offenses to protest (See: Joe Biden, the late George H.W. Bush, and too many others to count.)—Giuliani is at least partially the victim here. Use the wrong word and it’s pervasive sexism; touch a shoulder without consent and it is “assault.” Yes, there is no excuse for men of any age not to keep up with the evolution of ethics in this area and others, but kindness, compassion and the Golden Rule dictate a reaction other than lying in wait for an opportunity to exact revenge or worse, exploit a past relationship for current personal gain.
Rudy is currently under attack from all sides, primarily as part of an organized effort to punish the allies of Donald Trump, particularly the lawyers. Already named as a co-conspirator in the latest indictment of Trump, Giuliani is in the process of being disbarred in the District of Columbia on the theory that he “helped destabilize our democracy” and “done lasting damage” to the oath to support the U.S. Constitution that he had sworn when he was admitted to the bar. [No further comment from me: I have a conflict in this matter] Dunphy or her lawyer decided that this was the perfect time to pounce, with Giuliani already being savaged in the news media like anyone who doesn’t publicly reject Trump. So she not only chose now to sue him, she also included embarrassing quotes the old man made when he thought the two were alone and his comments were private.
She was, you see, secretly recording him.
And thus we have today’s New York Times headline, “Giuliani Maligns Jews and Women in Transcript Filed in Harassment Case.” What was the comment that “maligns Jews”? This:
“Jews! They want to go through that freaking Passover all the time. Man, oh, man. Get over the Passover. It was like 3,000 years ago. OK, the Red Sea parted. Big deal. Not the first time that happened.” Says the Times, “In another portion, he engaged in a derisive discussion of the size of Jewish men’s genitals.”
Sexism? “In another transcript, Mr. Giuliani says that he is physically aroused by Ms. Dunphy’s intelligence, adding, ‘I’d never think about a girl being smart. If you told me a girl was smart, I would often think she’s not attractive.'”
Ethics Alarms 