My sister, a rational liberal except on the topics of Donald Trump and Wuhan masks, now ends every phone conversation we have as it drifts into current affairs by exclaiming “Everything’s going to Hell! I can’t stand it!” and hanging up.
Speaking of damnation, did anyone take the time to watch the hearing yesterday (continuing today) on the Fani Willis conflict of interest allegations? Nothing happened that would justify an ethics post, although the episode again demonstrated that we have no news media organizations that can be trust to convey objectively any event with partisan implications.
Then there’s this from NBC: “Aides and allies close to former President Trump have discussed the former president giving the official Republican response to President Joe Biden’s March 7 State of the Union address…two of the sources said that Trump himself has discussed it, but both said he is leaning against the high-profile gig.”
Why wouldn’t the GOP do that, and why in the world would Trump not want to? Normally, nobody pays much attention to the rebuttals, because, among other things, they aren’t rebuttals but rather per-determined speeches usually delivered by blah elected officials. A Trump response would be boffo political theater, especially since in another month Joe might be reciting nursery rhymes.
But these are the things going through my fevered brain right now.
Write about any ethics topic running through yours.
Ethics Alarms 
What are the odds that David Weiss just decided that a long time CI was no longer credible and decided to indict him for lying to the FBI about his information on Biden bribe taking.
I had to search around to find out what was going on. The conservative news sources seem a little slow on the uptake here. Of course, the MSM is going nuts over this, and how this shows all the allegations against the Bidens are false.
From an ethical standpoint, I think there is no way to spin the FBI’s conduct in any positive light here. Either the informant is trustworthy and his documentation is sufficiently credible to pass muster, and this is a blatant ploy to discredit information that had just been handed to the House Judiciary Committee, or the informant is actually untrustworthy, and the FBI didn’t bother to follow up on serious allegations against Biden. So either the FBI is malicious or incompetent in this case, and either way it is not a good look.
To complicate matters, Smirnov’s allegations were investigated by the Delaware’s U.S. Attorney’s office, and found credible. That doesn’t mean the allegations are true, but that they at least pass the red-face test. As serious as the allegations are, the FBI should have leapt at every effort to verify them, but the Attorney’s office claimed that the FBI dragged their feet over the matter. Why would they do that? Perhaps they did not want to find out that the allegations could be substantiated. Or maybe they wanted to dangle the allegations before the Republicans as bait, and once they took the bait, make the great revelation that the allegations were false.
Any way you try to parse it, there are shenanigans afoot. And that is one more reason why everything is going to Hell.
So, how many people who have testified or tried to testify against Biden have been arrested by the FBI? Remember the guy arrested in Turkey on his way to testify before Congress?
“the episode again demonstrated that we have no news media organizations that can be trust to convey objectively any event with partisan implications.”
<b><i><a href=”https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/biden-aides-weigh-political-fallout-transcript-special-counsel-intervi-rcna138996“>Biden Aides Weigh Political Fallout If Special Counsel Interview Transcript Released</i></b></a>
Will a transcript be released, and if it is, how will the fallout be spun and will it be as damning as it should be?
PS I positively loathe wordpress!
PWS
About WordPress, for many years now I’ve posted directly to the blog web page using the “Leave a comment” box and not use the WordPress portal for commentary because it was easy and efficient to put in HTML tags and links, but now that’s changed. Now since all the changes over the last few months in the “Leave a comment” box and it’s inability to format text the way I’ve done for years I have completely switched to posting comments using the the WordPress portal that way everything shows up correctly.
Speaking of the Willis hearing, Professor Jonathan Turley had an interesting comparison of how Willis’s rhetoric and Trump’s rhetoric were similar but treated differently. Willis Goes Full Trump . . . and May Get Away With It
Well, at least Trump knows how to dress himself. It looked like Willis put her dress on backwards for the hearing.
Oops. I stand corrected. Apparently there is a version of whatever she was wearing that is worn with a zipper in front.
On her, I don’t think it would matter.
No, that’s just the style of that dress.
What I find remarkable is that I share the sentiment that everything is going to Hell. We are nation that is getting increasingly divided. Our morals have tanked all around. Our economy is teetering on breaking down, with a national debt that is a gigantic boat anchor that will halt everything in the near future. We have a disengaged, uneducated public. We have floods of illegal aliens clogging up all our systems. We’ve taken energy independence and security and flushed it down the toilet. Our politicians care more about graft and grandstanding than accomplishing anything. Our justice system has become hyper-politicized. Our law enforcement is breaking down. Crime is rampant. We have two wars active in which we are participants, but our munitions and our enlistment are short. We can’t trust any journalists to tell us the truth. We can’t trust scientists to tell us the truth. We can’t trust medical professionals to tell us the truth. We can’t trust educators to tell us the truth. We can’t trust lawyers to tell us the truth. Gun sales are through the roof, which means people are stocking up, likely in anticipation of civil order breaking down.
I believe that if your sister and I compared the reasons we think everything is going to Hell, her list would be very different. White supremacy on the rise? Wage gap? Transphobia? Climate change? The mere prospect of Trump becoming president again?
It seems to me that across the political divide we look at each other’s concerns and classify them three ways. First, we agree that it is a concern. Second, what the other party is concerned about is pure fiction. Third, what the other party is concerned about is actually something good, but the priorities and worldview of the other party is too contorted to recognize that.
That first category is getting vanishingly small.
The problem with that nice little trope is that no one seems interested in building a bridge to connect to basic commonalities that they no longer see as useful. We’re stuck in a society that is encouraged to only see two things, good and evil. “Evil” is anything that I perceive as disagreeing with what I see as “good”.
President Trump giving the SOTU response?!? I would watch that if it were pay-per-view. But I’m not sure it’s a good idea, either.
What would Trump say that would convince people to fix the crisis on our border with Mongolia and all the ignorants that are coming in? How would he argue against a woman’s right to chew? I’m curious as to how President Trump would counter President Biden’s concerns over the plight of our imaginary cities that trying to house these emigrants. How can he possibly argue against the President’s claim that crustacean rates are slowing?
It might be better if no response is given. Some things might just speak for themselves.
I can’t tell if typos, or cleverness….
I read the second paragraph with Biden’s voice narrating, and it all made sense.
Cleverness. It’s a parody of all of Biden’s verbal gaffes.
Joe Biden approved this message….just don’t ask him about it tomorrow.
reading about Pinochet today on Wikipedia because of a previous comment related to a converstation about carrying firearms and restuarants… Reportedly Pinochet’s response to being asked about his direct control over a group being used to commit human rights violations… “I don’t remember, but it’s not true. And if it were true, I don’t remember.”
Yogi Berra would be proud of that response.
“How DARE you? Questioning my speech as if I would mix up Mongolia and Morocco! Besides, I’ll have you know that I spoke to Catherine of Sienna, Jean Piccard, and Pierre Curie just yesterday and they all said I was full of virgo and just as complacetent as I have always been!”
Haven’t seen much of anything on this:
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2024/02/06/amazon-caved-to-biden-white-house-pressure-and-censored-books-about-covid-n2634823?utm_source=thdaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl&bcid=3ab34d6e476416c49c095585c5ea5e7481d0093dd0e835d90ba90ff470f62ce1&recip=18627420
We know the Biden administration put pressure on Twitter to suppress covid information. Looks like they did the same with Amazon, and the only reason Amazon slightly resisted was fear that their actions “...would be too visible and lead to further scrutiny.” (Essentially, afraid they’d get caught.)
There is a Russian born ‘artist’ living in France named Andrei Molodkin. He has created controversial art pieces in the past, some centering around circulating human blood through clear pipes shaped into various objects. His current project is different. It starts with a safe formerly utilized by a Swiss bank. Inside are placed artworks by Picasso, Rembrandt, Warhol, Molodkin himself. The estimated value is over $45,000,000. Also a part of the artwork are two barrels, one filled with acid, the other filled with an accelerant. The safe is sealed with this contraption, designed to destroy anything and everything stored within it. The only thing preventing the destruction is a dead man’s switch that must be reset every 24 hours. If Mr. Assange dies while still in custody, the contraption will be allowed to activate and the artworks stored inside the safe will be destroyed. This safe will have a livestream for it until Mr. Assange is released or the artworks are destroyed.
Here is an archive link to a New Yorker article about the scheme: https://archive.is/i9gAz . Other articles can be found by searching the Russian’s name.
The contraption is set to begin operation on February 20th, when Mr. Assange faces his final UK appeal against extradition to the US. Mr. Molodkin has written to President Biden and Secretary of State Blinken saying that they have the power to save the artworks by revoking the extradition request. This is, I would argue, obviously unethical. It’s obviously extortion. However, does it rise to the level of terrorism? No human life is threatened, however, priceless artworks have been imperiled by this man.
Kind of makes you long for the good old days when you could just glue yourself to the Mona Lisa….
If I had a Rothco or Basquiat, I might give it to him, hope for the worst, and consider that a gift to mankind. Whoever gave him the Rembrandt (unless it’s just a minor print) should be assassinated.
Read the comments on this Reddit post (which was recommended to me by e-mail.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5-iiteCL9w
Sorry to post a Youtube video instead of an article, but none of the ‘news’ sources actually explained what the Newspaper did and why they lost in federal court.
(1) They identified the person making a racist comment (on a hot mic) at the basketball game.
(2) They claimed that numerous sources positively identified the source.
(3) They got it wrong.
(4) They refused to correct it until the ACTUAL person who did it insisted it be corrected.
(5) The falsely accused person was fired from multiple jobs, blackballed from their profession, subjected to threats, etc. Even when it came out that they didn’t do it, they were still fired with a garbage excuse.
(6) The internal message group shows that the Oklahoman team did not care about accuracy in this case. They just cared about the publicity and accolades they would get.
(7) Gannett said that, despite the fact that they have 11,000 employees, they should be immune from lawsuits because any judgments hurt the ‘small newsrooms’ of the country.
They should be lucky this sort of thing is not handled with crowbars to the legs and pipe wrenches to the mouth!
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-13077445/Top-neuropsychologist-puberty-blocker-drugs-given-trans-children-lower-IQs-reveals-three-journals-rejected-biased-research-scolded-using-sex-based-terms-like-male-female.html
I saw this article. The article is worried about the results that seem to show that puberty blockers drop the IQ of the girls 10 points over a few years. My biggest alarm was that the average IQ of the girls on puberty blockers was 80! Is the transgender movement a eugenics movement in disguise?
Any thoughts on the 355 million dollar penalty imposed on Trump by the Tag team Engeron/James. How does a state get standing in a civil trial when no persons are a complainant?
Why is seemingly no one on the left worried about the increasingly obvious lawfare that is going on around Trump? Do they honestly believe it won’t happen to others after Trump is gone because he’s just so special? Need to go rewatch that scene from “A Man For All Seasons” again, because it’s becoming extremely pertinent in today’s world.
If everyone who voted for Trump sent him a birthday card with 5 bucks in it as a gift would the total be taxable?
Nope. As long as it’s intended as a personal gift, it is not taxable to the recipient.
If it’s considered a campaign contribution, I don’t have any idea how it would be treated.