Month: June 2024

Wait—Why Is Snopes Choosing Now to Factcheck a 2017 Axis Big Lie That Has Been Used Against Donald Trump for 7 Years?

/ Jack Marshall / 26 Comments

Any theories?

Two day’s ago, Snopes, the thoroughly disgraced and discredited fact-checking site that routinely covers for Democrats and progressives while spinning to attack conservatives and Republicans, posted a factcheck headlined, “No, Trump Did Not Call Neo-Nazis and White Supremacists ‘Very Fine People.'”

I’ve written several posts about this persistent lie; it was in the original draft (in 2019) of the “The Big Lies Of The ‘Resistance’: A Directory” under Big Lie #4: “Trump Is A Racist/White Supremacist.” Before that, Ethics Alarms had posted in 2017 repeatedly about the Axis’s distortion of the Charlottesville riot; it was so long ago that I wasn’t even calling the “resistance”/Democrats/MSM propaganda trio “The Axis of Unethical Conduct”yet.

It would have been helpful if Snopes had weighed in then, but that would have undermined the Trump-smearing efforts of its supporters and allies. (Others have debunked this smear against Trump in the interim, such as CNN’s Jake Tapper. Joe Biden, for one, never stopped using it.)

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Curmie’s Conjectures: The Pedestrian Ways of the Wisconsin Supreme Court [Link Fixed!]

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

[Two Curmie’s Conjectures columns in a week! We are blessed. I was also thrilled to have this particular issue examined by a non-lawyer, because in many areas, legal training fogs clear thinking when it is supposed to do the opposite. Also, of the two options Curmie closes with, the majority of lawyers I’ve discussed this case with vote for the second.

Oh—Curmie had a standard pedestrian sign as his illustration for this post, but I saw another opportunity to use one of my all-time favorite Charles Addams cartoons, and went for it. I hope he doesn’t mind—JM]

I was tempted to call the recent decision by the Wisconsin Supreme Court in the case of Sojenhomer v. Egg Harbor a head-scratcher, but I fear that such an assessment might be a little too kind.

Sojenhomer LLC owns a brew pub/restaurant located along County Highway G in the village of Egg Harbor.  They used a small portion of that land, .009 acres, for patron parking.  The village, citing safety concerns, sought to put in a sidewalk where those parking spaces currently are.  To do so, they sought to condemn that small area under eminent domain regulations.

The problem with their plan is that Wisconsin state law bars the use of condemnation to acquire property to establish or extend “a pedestrian way….”  So the case boils down to whether or not a sidewalk is indeed “a pedestrian way.”  The majority opinion, written by Justice Rebecca Frank Dallet, says no, to which I reply, “then what the hell is it?”

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The Sunday Times, 6/23/2024: A Snapshot of Culture, Bias, Propaganda and Values

/ Jack Marshall / 32 Comments

I’ve been meaning to try this for some time, so “here goes nuthin.” These are the ethics-relevant headlines (with links) in today’s print version of the New York Times. If you tell me in the comments which ones you would like me to share in a special “gift” format that takes them out from behind the paywall (I can’t do that for all of them) I’ll go back and do that.

Here are the stories:

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Ethics Hero or Ethics Dunce? Gov. DeSantis’s Decision to Veto All Florida Arts Funding

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

As the late, great Arte Johnson would say (as Nazi soldier hiding in the grass) at least once an episode of “Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-in,” “Veeery interesting!”

Arts organizations in Florida were apparently completely blindsided this month when Florida’s conservative Republican governor Ron DeSantis struck all of the arts funding out of the state budget approved by the legislature. $32 million vanished in a flash and without warning. Arts groups large and small were counting on grants from that pool to balance their own budgets.

DeSantis, a Republican, gave no explanation other than to say that he made veto decisions “that are in the best interests of the State of Florida.” He vetoed nearly $950 million in total proposed spending, leaving $116.5 billion.

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Saturday Ethics Hot Mess, 6/22/2024: Willie, Schumer and the Duke…

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

I guess I’m strange: relatively trivial things are tipping points with me when it comes to trusting politicians and elected officials. As I’ve mentioned here more than once, I realized Bill Clinton was a pathological liar—much, much , much worse than Trump—when he told a crowd that Thomas Jefferson would be shocked today if he could see that the U.S. had no national health care. Clinton’s named after Tom, and knows that Jefferson believed that the less governments did the better: that was a ridiculous, insulting lie, and for me, signature significance. Now comes the PR photo of Senator Chuck Schumer (estimated net worth: $75 million) proving he’s a regular guy by grilling hamburgers. Based on that shot, Chuck has never grilled a burger in his life. Who puts a slice of cheese on a raw burger? This is a visual lie, and a really dumb one.

Meanwhile…

1. Maybe THIS is the dumbest question anyone’s ever asked “The Ethicist”: Is it okay for her friend to secretly slip a drug into her “manic” husband’s drinks? Apparently the guy is a little too intense, so the friend spikes her spouse’s water bottles with melatonin. The query prompted the shortest answer I’ve ever seen Professor Appiah offer, and it was just what you’d think.

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Comment of the Day: “From the Res Ipsa Loquitur Files: the Woke Shackles Tighten…”

/ Jack Marshall / 35 Comments

I wanted to get the previous post about artificial intelligence and the unintended consequences of technology up before this timely Comment of the Day by jdkazoo123 from yesterday regarding social media. Mark Zuckerberg didn’t consider all of the social pathogens he was loosing on civilization when he launched Facebook, or even if he foresaw some of them, he went ahead anyway. After all, there were millions of dollars to be made. The message of this COTD is, in brief, “Now what?”

The alarm as well as the puzzlement are justified. Still, one cannot pretend that the benefits that Zuck and others believed were being conferred on society by social media are insubstantial. I’ve experienced one of them very recently: through Facebook I have been able to let my friends, associates and colleagues know about the tragic sudden death of my wife, and to say that the support they are still providing me has been crucial to my sanity and survival is an understatement. Social media also has greatly reduced the power and influence of journalism, which, since journalists have been abusing those and the public’s trust for decades, is a win for truth, justice, and the American way. Nevertheless, the negative effects of the platforms are substantial, as jd notes. Are these benefits worth the costs? Don’t ask me right now: I’m biased.

Here is jdkazoo123’s Comment of the Day on the post, “From the Res Ipsa Loquitur Files: the Woke Shackles Tighten…”

***

I don’t know if this is a reason to regulate social media, but it is an example of why they are so different and troubling. I think they are a big cause of the polarization that we see here at EA and across the country. I think about my dad and his brother, my uncle. Even though my uncle was 7 years older, they were very close by the time I showed up. I grew up seeing my uncle about 1-2 a year. And as I got older, I noticed my dad and his brother joshed a lot about politics. My uncle was hard core Republican from suburban Pittsburgh, an executive in manufacturing. My dad was a solid Democrat working in military intelligence and the AF reserves. It was fun to see them josh. My uncle would say “Kid, your dad thinks I’m a Republican because I’m rich. What he doesn’t understand is I’m rich because I’m a Republican!”

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Ethics Dunce: Geoffrey Hinton, “The Godfather of Artificial Intelligence”

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

You should know the name Geoffrey Hinton by now. To the extent that any one scientist is credited with the emergence of artificial intelligence, he’s it. He was among the winners of the prestigious Turing Prize for his break-through in artificial neural networks, and his discoveries were crucial in the development of advanced Artificial Intelligence (AI) software today like Chat GPT and Google’s Bard. He spent 50 years developing the technology, the last 10 pf which working on AI at Google before he quit in 2023. His reason: he was alarmed at the lack of sufficient safety measures to ensure that AI technology doesn’t do more harm than good.

And yet, as revealed in a recent interview on CBS’s “60 Minutes,” Hinton still believes that his work to bring AI to artificial life was time well-spent, that his baby was worth nurturing because of its potential benefits to humanity, and that—-get this—all we have to do is, for the first time in the history of mankind, predict the dangers, risks and looming unintended consequences of an emerging new technology, get everything right the first time, not make any mistakes, not be blindly reckless in applying it, and avoid the kind of genie-out-of-the-bottle catastrophes that world has experienced (and is experiencing!) over and over again.

That’s all!

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The Guinness Book of Records Is a Catalyst For Self-Destructive Conduct, Not That There’s Anything Wrong With That…

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

I guess it’s that time on a sweltering Friday afternoon that I am not quite up to finishing any of the more substantive posts on the runway, and only feel like tackling the stupid stuff. (These are the posts long-time critic/commenter Neil Dorr prefers. This one’s for you, Neil!)

Tara Berry just set the Guinness Book of Records record for “‘most tattoos of the same musician on the body.” She has 18. ( The former record-holder has 15 portraits of Eminem tattooed on her body.) A big Madonna fan from the beginning of The Material Girls’ pop-culture ascent in 1983 ,Tara only started her Madonna tattoo collection in 2016 when she was looking for fans who had Madonna’s image tattooed on their bodies to feature in a video. I guess she’s suggestive (or <cough> or something): she had an overwhelming urge to get her own Madonna tattoo. Once she started, she couldn’t stop.

Well, bless her heart. It’s her skin and her body: this is one example of “choice” that doesn’t hurt anybody except the chooser. Hey, if she wants to go for 20, or 50, I won’t criticize.

I do hear a bit of a ping one of my smaller ethics alarms about the Guinness Book of Records. Why does it even have a record in this category? I’ve touched on the issue in the past: the GBOR seeds the needs of narcissists and sad, insecure people searching for some level of fame or notoriety with records that can only be set or sought with some danger to the aspiring record-setter. There were “the Biking Vogels,” the various children endangered by their parents to have them be the “youngest” to achieve some pointless and dangerous goal, and my personal favorite, Sheyla Hershey, who ended up with size M breasts to set the Guinness record for “largest breast implants.” I concluded that 2010 post by stating that it was unethical for Guinness to publish “records” that can only be achieved by risking long-term harm.

And yet…blaming Guinness for Tara Barry mutilating her body is like blaming hip-hop records and violent TV shows or movies for people doing in reality what is only sung about or shown on a screen. It was her choice, albeit a crazy one. Tara is supposedly an “artist,” so maybe being festooned with pictures of a washed-up and aging pop-star won’t harm her at all, as long as she doesn’t seek employment at a school or a bank. Or with me.

As I said, that ethics alarm isn’t pinging very loudly. The GBOR doesn’t make anyone do anything. But the alarm has been pinging, however faintly, for 13 years.

What Is Most Ethically Significant About United States v. Rahimi…

/ Jack Marshall / 42 Comments

“When an individual has been found by a court to pose a credible threat to the physical safety of another, that individual may be temporarily disarmed consistent with the Second Amendment.”

That, in a nutshell, is the holding in United States v. Rahimi, the SCOTUS decision handed down this morning.

I’m a hardliner regarding “pre-crime,” and I am unalterably opposed to measures removing citizens’ rights without a finding of guilt in a criminal prosecution. However, Justice Roberts’ majority opinion is well-reasoned and carefully limited, with “temporary” being the key word. I also think it is crafted in such a way that so-called “red flag” laws are not going to be able to use this case as precedent to survive constitutional challenges. I have not yet read all of the concurrences, of which there are many.

What is perhaps more significant than the decision itself was the vote: 8-1 in favor of the law in question. (Anyone who can’t guess who the lone dissenter was, as well as the basis for his dissent, has not been paying attention.) This, along with the less consequential decisions handed down yesterday, powerfully counters the false Democratic narrative that the current Supreme Court is an ideologically biased body unalterably allied with the far right, as three heroic and caring progressive women futilely battle for the soul of the nation.

This unethical framing has been concocted to justify an assault on the legitimacy on the Court and its decisions, all as part of the “Stop Trump or it will be the end of democracy!” campaign. In reality, the characterization is garbage, and has always been garbage. The lie is still effective because the percentage of the public that reads SCOTUS decisions, never mind understands them, can reliably be estimated to be in single digits.

None of yesterday’s decisions split along the supposedly frozen-in-granite 6-3 blocs, and today’s decision infuriating Second Amendment absolutists even had the hated Justice Alito voting with the majority.

Of course, I suppose he should be expected to favor red flag laws….

‘Everything Is Seemingly Spinning Out of Control!’ Open Forum

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

See if you can make any sense of things, ethically of course.

Everywhere I’m looking today, I see insanity and chaos. Conservative activist Scott Presler is being applauded for saying,”If every Christian voted, we would never lose another Presidential election ever,” noting that many evangelicals are not even registered to vote.  This same statement could be made about almost any group imaginable: it’s not news, it’s not remarkable, its not perceptive, and its not useful.

Then, in a “Great Stupid” incident that shocked even me, Fani Willis toy-boy Nathan Wade appeared on Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show” in its feature “Choppin’ It Up With ‘Quon,” where he was interviewed by satirist Marlon Wayans playing ‘Quon. (The character Quon has been described as a “Hip-hop Borat.”) Yeah, this will help the case that he was hired to help Willis prosecute Donald Trump on his merits as a serious, qualified lawyer! Wade apparently thought he could defend his sexual relationship with Willis in the appearance as Wayans, who is approximately 6.78 times smarter than Wade, used his improvisational talents to make Wade look like the idiot he is.

“How can you not hit that?! How can you not?!” Wayans/Quon declared, as Wade laughed. “We spending that much time together, we doing everything, we might as well!” Anthony Michael Kreis, a constitutional law professor at Georgia State University College of Law, tweeted, “This is gross. Nathan Wade should be embarrassed. And Fani Willis, whatever her mistakes, deserves better than this. As do the people of Fulton County.”

How does Willis “deserve better” if she’s the one who hired Wade, almost certainly sabotaged her own dubious prosecution of Trump by mixing her prosecution duties with nookie, and, like Wade, has continued to argue that using a high-profile case for personal benefit is no big deal? How does Fulton County “deserve better” if its voters elected someone that incompetent?

Don’t get me started. You start instead…