It’s been slim ethics pickin’s of late, probably because everyone is obsessed with the campaign and the Debate To Decide The Fate Of Democracy (or DTDTFOD for short). These things always launch ridiculous numbers of fake news items, like “How Trump and Harris Will Try to Attack Each Other at the Debate” on the Times website, a variety of what I call “psychic fake news;” “How Trump Has Used Debates to Belittle Women” (‘poisoning the well”) on its front page, and also “As Debate Looms, Trump Is Now the One Facing Questions About Age and Capacity.” Translation: The mainstream media Democratic shills want to make the election about “age and capacity.” Then we have the hilarious “Hillary Clinton Has Advice on Debating Trump: ‘He Can Be Rattled’” Taking advice from Hillary on how to beat Trump is like taking advice from George Foreman about how to beat Muhammad Ali. I chuckled at “Liz Cheney Accuses G.O.P. Trump Backers of Betraying Their Principles.” Kamala Harris literally represents the opposite of everything she and her father at least pretended to stand for until Trump Derangement struck. Still, there are some issues lying around that need to be cleared…
1. The fact that James Earl Jones, one of the great stage actors of the last 70 years, is described in most media headlines as “the voice of Darth Vader” highlights our increasing cultural ignorance. The man won a Tony (a what?) for playing Jack Johnson (who?), the astounding and defiant black heavyweight boxing champion at the height of Jim Crow (huh?) in the epic play “The Great White Hope” (you mean, like that whale?). I wrote about this phenomenon when Brian Dennehy, another one of my favorite actors, went to the Big Green Room in the sky.
2. They just never give up…again, the Supreme Court-packers want to force Clarence Thomas to recuse himself from cases because of what his wife says or does. Boy, am I sick of writing about this topic. It is another example of progressive hypocrisy: feminism dictates that women are completely independent of their husbands, that their husbands views should not be ascribed to them and their activities should not be constrained in any way by their husband’s work or career, and yet what Ginny Thomas writes and the causes she supports are supposed to prove that Justice Thomas is biased or create an “appearance of impropriety.”
The latest: Mrs. Thomas sent a message to First Liberty head Kelly Shackelford reading, “YOU GUYS HAVE FILLED THE SAILS OF MANY JUDGES. CAN I JUST TELL YOU, THANK YOU SO, SO, SO MUCH.” First Liberty has been involved in a number of landmark conservative court victories, including those protecting the ability of public school teachers to pray on the job; helping families obtain state funding to attend religious schools; and forcing private employers to be accommodate religious observance. The Horror. In this message, Justice Thomas isn’t alluded to, mentioned or even included in a “we” rather than Ginny’s “I.” Yet Judiciary Committee chairman Senator Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said in a statement, “The reported comments by Ginni Thomas are deeply problematic. She’s testified before Congress that she and Justice Thomas do not discuss each other’s work. That defense now rings hollow. Whether she’s inflating her knowledge of judges’ views on ethics reform or telling the truth, her apparent comments on behalf of judicial officers create a clear appearance of impropriety for Justice Thomas.” Durbin is such a predictable hack.
3. Speaking of the Supreme Court, retired Justice Stephen Breyer reveals himself to be a weenie. In an interview with the D.C. Bar’s member magazine, Breyer tap-dances around the Dobbs decision, making the argument that stare decisus (“that you don’t over-rule cases unless you have a very strong reason,” he says) should have protected Roe v. Wade, then brushes aside the argument that Roe was wrongly decided and ducks the “very strong reason” it needed to be an exception to stare decisus. You know, just trivial stuff like millions of unborn human lives at stake, an imaginary constitutional right, the Court legislating, and the federal government preempting a matter that the Constitution says should be left to the states.
My reading of his comments is that Breyer veered into the abstract to avoid clashing with his Leftist friends and colleagues by admitting that Roe was bad law and needed to go down.
4. Not science, climate change hysteria propaganda. Harvard Magazine’s article is titled, “Climate Change’s Crippling Costs.” That headline is a lie, but typical of climate change fearmongers. “Economists,” we are told, “including the late research professor of economics Martin Weitzman and William Nordhaus of Yale, began in the 1990s to consider the potential economic effects of climate change. By their rough estimates and a large body of subsequent work, each 1-degree Celsius rise in world temperature would reduce world gross domestic product (GDP) by 1 to 3 percent.” Got it. A bunch of academics began with the assumption that climate change could be predicted accurately, then full of their own biases toward reaching an alarming result, created a model that reached one. Now, the article credulously reports, even smarter economists calculate that a “1-degree Celsius rise in global temperature…would lead to a 12 percent decline in world GDP.” ARRRRRRGHHHHHH! We’re doomed!
These are all guesses and speculations by activists with an agenda, and designed to prompt elected officials who don’t understand the models, how they were arrived at or even rudimentary science to inflict life- and economy-altering policies on the nation. If the first model could be off by 300-400%, so might the newer model. The headline should be “Climate Change’s Possible Crippling Costs, If There Is Climate Change.”
5. Finally, two debate notes:
- “Nah, there’s no mainstream media bias!” (A self-banned commenter here who mysteriously believes that the New York Times isn’t the flaming leftist propaganda agent that it is expressed confusion in a recent spammed illicit post regarding what that phrase means. Of course, except to those in denial, it refers to pieces like this one in The Hill, titled, “Trump could suffer the same fate as Biden in tonight’s debate — how will his party react?” No, in fact Trump couldn’t, unless he has a spontaneous stroke or some other unexpected catastrophic event. Trump’s stream of consciousness style has been attacked as proof of some kind of cognitive decline since before he was elected in 2016. He’s always talked like that, it’s worked for him, and it has nothing to do with age or dementia. Yes, it drives me nuts, but Trump doesn’t freeze and stare into space or mumble gibberish because he’s an unusually vigorous, engaged, energetic man for his age or any age. Yeah, I still don’t think people over 70 should run for the Presidency or sit on the Supreme Court. And Trump is always capable of sabotaging himself, but he won’t “suffer the same fate as Biden.”
-
Harris will stand at a scaled down podium during the debate tonight so she doesn’t look so much shorter than Trump in split screen shots. The different podium sizes will allow both candidates to look closer to the same stature, muting a source of inherent bias among voters toward tall leaders. Trump is 6’3″ or maybe an inch shorter, Harris is 5’4″ in heels. Presidents as a group are much taller than the average man and it has ever been thus; the taller candidate usually wins Presidential elections. It’s a hot-wired bias: leaders were usually the biggest and strongest in primitive societies, but it serves no purpose now. That doesn’t mean that appearing larger and stronger still isn’t an advantage.
I completely approve of Harris’s camp taking measures to minimize it.
Ethics Alarms 
#1) I was hoping you would cover this topic. That’s all I see is the voice of Darth Vader in the headlines. I remember going to the theater when I was just 12 and seeing the Great White Hope. The other movie he starred in that I enjoyed was, Cry the Beloved Country also starring Richard Harris. That’s the movie I most remember when James Earl Jones is mentioned. I’m not sure if it was a popular movie but for some reason I really enjoyed it.
“Who knows for what we live, and struggle and die? Who knows what keeps us living and struggling, while all things break about us? Who knows why the warm flesh of a child is such comfort, when one’s own child is lost and cannot be recovered? Wise men write many books, in words too hard to understand. But this, the purpose of our lives, the end of all our struggle, is beyond all human wisdom.”
Because of my daughters’ fixation with “The Lion King,” I’ve heard James Earl Jones as Mufasa numerically more times than as Darth Vader. But I think I like his role best as Terence Mann in “A Field of Dreams.”
On #4, I would like to see what their projects of world GDP amount to when the world has spent the hundreds of trillions of dollars to “decarbonize,” and have to keeping paying trillions annually to try to upkeep a “green” energy grid that is easily shattered by weather, unsuspecting wildlife, and deliberate sabotage from the world’s mavericks who know the entire system can be brought to its knees through one well-placed bomb.
Has no one actually been paying close attention to Germany, who has managed to get above 57% of its electricity from “renewables” (of which 13% or so is from biomass and hydroelectric), and ranks fourth or fifth for highest electricity prices in the world? The cost is driving production elsewhere because industry can’t turn a profit from such high energy bills. Perhaps I don’t understand GDP well enough when I ask this question, but what does it do to GDP when more and more money goes to pay the utilities for the same amount of deliverables?
Reason (the magazine/website) did an analysis quite some time ago about the estimated cost of unchecked warming (the 1% cited above) vs the estimated costs of implementing some of the proposed measures.
it was laughably bad to waste the money, even taking the projection at face value. Obviously, they got the memo and had to increase their scientifically chosen garbage in to get a better garbage out.
Ryan
High energy costs at the production level are not factored in to the real GDP value directly. Most of the hike in costs are tempered by other products in the market basket whose costs do not rise as fast. Real GDP is measured in terms of what the cost of the market basket was in a prior period and what it is now. Energy falls into both the consumer market basket which is used to deflate nominal GDP to Real GDP and the bundle of goods that comprise the Producer price index.
Any highly inflated cost or price will be averaged lower when combined with other goods that are weighted higher in the basket or rose in price less than the higher single item. As a result the nominal ( non inflation adjusted) GDP number will be deflated by a lower inflation rate creating the illusion that the cost of energy rose slower than it actually did.
2. They just never give up…again, the Supreme Court-packers want to force Clarence Thomas to recuse himself from cases because of what his wife says or does.
Now do Judge Merchan.
Here you go: https://ethicsalarms.com/2024/04/01/does-justice-merchan-have-conflict-of-interest/
Key quote:
“The presumed benefit Loren Merchand may get from the case against Trump is awfully attenuated to try to argue that it is likely to influence her father’s handling of the case—far more attenuated, in fact, than arguments that Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’s conservative activist wife creates a conflict of interest and appearance of impropriety for him. Those arguments, it should be noted, are vehemently opposed by Republicans.
Judges are presumed to be fair, honest and unmoved by alleged conflicts unless they involve the judge’s own direct benefit from rulings or there is strong evidence that the interests of individuals close to him or her are warping the judge’s perceptions. I don’t see either here. If Merchan’s daughter were shown to have guaranteed that her father would slam Trump because she has his ear, that would be a different matter. Trump, of course, knows nothing about the ethical standards judges are held to. What he’s telling us is that his own decisions as President are influenced by their likely effects on his children.”
Regarding the Cheney endorsement: Dick Cheney during his tenure in office was routinely criticized by the left for his association with Halliburton. Halliburton is a logistics firm with significant revenues from contracts with the Government. Many of these contracts are a result of American inteventionism overseas. I doubt seriously if the Cheney’s no longer derive dividends from the military industrial complex that includes Halliburton.
Because Trump is a proven non-interventionist the Cheney revenue streams will be threatened if Trump seeks to deliver peace through strength.
While in Congress Liz Cheney helped keep daddy’s connections fresh.
The Cheneys we now know are part of the swamp that derives rents through government spending. They will be happy to sacrifice principles in order to maintain their ability to collect taxpayer dollars through their investments in government contracting firms
Dick Cheney and Liz are the grifters the liberals claimed they were during his time as VP. Don’t get me wrong the liberals have their own grifters too.
Great points, Chris; I plan to lift them…with proper citation, of course.
PWS
No attribution necessary Paul unless you feel it necessary.
“Many of these contracts are a result of American inteventionism overseas. I doubt seriously if the Cheney’s no longer derive dividends from the military industrial complex that includes Halliburton.”
This is a very good point. Like all Republican Never Trumpers, the Cheneys are useful idiots to the Democrats and their motivations will be considered entirely pure until Donald Trump is no longer a candidate or in office.
Once that’s over, the Cheneys go right back to being eeeeeeevil.
We very often hear about “small man syndrome.” Putin is slimed with it quite regularly. Why isn’t there a “small woman syndrome?” I’d say Hillary Clinton could be tarred with it, as could Harris.
I agree minimizing the size differences is acceptable, but it’s also deceptive.
One of the major functions of a president is to provide a presence on the world stage among other world leaders.
Sure it’s not fair, but one of the criteria voters weigh, (and rightly should) is how their leader appears in things like G7 group photos.