In truth, I’m hoping that here we can find fascinating ethics discussions that don’t involve the election at all, but maybe that’s expecting too much. Over at the asylum that once was my Facebook feed, several of my once rational friends appear to be genuinely investigating where to move, you know, like Spain or England, where there is less freedom of speech even than usual. Well, these people have turned into morons, and I’ll miss them, but moron are a burden in a democracy, so “Bye!”
The Project 25 hysteria was one of the Democrats’ more despicable gambits. I keep seeing that list above or similar ones posted as Trump’s agenda. The list is hilarious, and anyone who believes that’s what’s in the document thinks the Constitution was written by Donald Duck and begins, “There once was a man from Pawtucket….” The website of the exercise , essentially a brain-storming session among many conservative groups, is easy enough to check, but know, the Trump Deranged hysterics would rather use a phony meme designed to demonize the Right than discuss the real thing. They deserve to live in Spain.
There’s got to be something less stupid to discuss…..
Ethics Alarms 
Ah, the Mein Kampf of the Republican Party finally broken down into a reductionist meme!
Thanks for actually reading this list and responding to it. My eyes started to glaze over part way through it.
What annoys me no end: Trump – “I do not support a federal law banning abortions”. The media reports this as “Trump will ban abortions” and “Trump’s abortion bans.” I saw that sort of thing on many different subjects time and time again this fall. It drives me crazy.
I would also say, relative to state abortion restrictions: I think it is incumbent on hospitals to determine the legal limits on abortions, the legal status of ’emergency’ procedures, the legal status on taking care of miscarriages. And then to communicate those clearly to their staff, so that there is no confusion. To not do so is an abuse of their patients and violates their purpose in life of providing health care.
As a Red Sox fan I have not felt this giddy since 2004. My wife hated Trump and voted against him twice. She took the Red Pill and took policy over personality.
The Mrs. and I have been trying to figure out what we’re feeling. Exhaustion. Relief. Euphoria. It’s as if we realized we’ve been hit on the head with hammers for the last four years and it feels great once it has stopped. I’ve heard people say a weight’s been lifted off their shoulders. One friend said, “we have hope again.” Ironic, that one given Obama’s abuse of that term. Maybe it’s relief we will no longer be told white is black and up is down every single day anymore. Maybe we’re like abused dogs that are afraid to come out of our crate even though the door is open. I guess we didn’t know how unprecedentedly bad the assault on common sense has been over the last four years. It’s as if we’ve been under the threat of nuclear attack and finally the all-clear siren has sounded. Ding Dong, the witch is dead. And just ignore the man behind the curtain. We’re back in Kansas, Toto.
I really can’t experience any of that. I’m too bummed by the reaction of the people around me.
OB, the assault on common sense is not going away. The White is Black and Up is Down crowd is still there and madder than ever. They are just going to ratchet it up. They don’t understand why they lost and they don’t want to understand because the fact that they lost is wrong.
No disagreement here, AM. Mrs. OB quickly instructed me to not expect the media to all of a sudden stop doing what they’ve been doing. Although she has theorized ownership of media will make the talking heads calm down if their business goes to hell. My opinion is the media will continue to be able to attract consumers because they will continue to want to be fed the same propaganda. Preaching to the choir can be profitable, in my opinion. Even if the choir is nuts. Or, especially if the choir is nuts?
Be they ever so…um…humble; the irrepressible Babylon Bee: 4D Chess: Democrats Admit Trump Actually Won In 2020 And Is NOW UNABLE To Serve Third Term
PWS
Mrs. OB: “They’ll try anything!”
Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris campaigns on Oct. 25, 2024, in Houston.© Jordan Vonderhaar/Getty Images
The Associated Press’ description of the ad is harrowing: “In one ad, the woman identified only as Ondrea details how excited she was to have a girl only to find out that the baby wouldn’t survive after her water broke too early. She was denied an abortion and eventually went into labor. ‘Immediately after her birth, I was in the worst pain of my life,’ she says, as she and her husband are pictured in her living room near a framed photo of the baby’s ultrasound. She then developed sepsis, a life-threatening pregnancy complication.”
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Harris released the ad about this woman in Texas to alarm other women elsewhere. Her warning is clear: Vote for me, suburban women in Atlanta, Detroit and Charlotte, because you’ll end up like women in Texas if you don’t.
Opinion: Harris woos women but has lost men. It may cost her the election.
I am a conservative woman and a mother living in Texas, and I am pro-life. But I did take issue with aspects of Texas’ abortion law, which went into effect in September 2021.
I was specifically concerned about the vague wording of “medical emergency” in the statute. No pregnant woman should die because doctors failed to provide medical care because they were worried they would be sued or penalized for violating the state’s abortion ban.
But clarifications have been made since the law was enacted. In August 2023, Gov. Greg Abbott signed a bill that allows doctors to perform abortions in cases of ectopic pregnancy or when a mother’s water breaks early. It also provides a defense for doctors from lawsuits and criminal penalties.
This June, the Texas Medical Board adopted guidance that clarifies that for an abortion to be allowed under the law, a pregnant woman’s death does not need to be imminent.
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©Jay Janner / American-Statesman
Dr. Ingrid Skop speaks at the Texas Medical Board meeting to discuss guidance around physicians for medical exceptions to the state’s abortion ban laws at the George H.W. Bush State Office Building Friday March 22, 2024.
According to a report from the Texas Health and Human Services Commission, doctors reported performing 52 abortions in 2023 under the medical exceptions.
Even so, these facts may sound draconian to a generation of women who were told until recently that they could have an abortion on demand and be proud of it.
While the Texas statute is imperfect, a law that attempts to save women and save babies is pro-life, pro-woman and pro-family.Harris promotes a false narrative about abortion
Despite the message of Harris’ ad, most women don’t have abortions because their lives are at risk or their unborn babies have a life-threatening disease. They have abortions because their pregnancies are unplanned. They don’t want a baby to interfere with their lives.
I feel for women who seek an abortion because they feel they have no other choice and for those who are consumed with grief after it.
Pro-life laws are not perfect, but they seek to preserve babies and mothers. Republican leaders have improved considerably over the years in offering tangible resources to help mothers with unplanned pregnancies, so both mom and baby can be happy and stable. Texas has, too.
Harris stopped in Texas to promote the lie that life was better when abortion was readily available.
That lie is built atop another lie: that when Roe mandated legal abortions throughout America, women were more free and more joyful.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
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So many of these staged photos of bleachers filled with blood-thirsty, rabid abortion proponents. I wish they’d just piled up fetuses in back of their speakers
Oops. Sorry Jack. All I wanted to post was the second to last photo above and my comments below at the end. Please edit or delete entirely. Sorry to clog up the comments section.
What the heck is going on in Nevada and Arizona, those tow states have not been called in the Presidential election yet? Is there a problem with the election in those states?
I just found this…
I suppose that’s a decent explanation of the problems.
Hi Steve, Betsy’s read about this in the local media. Evidently Arizona allows people to deliver mail in ballots even on election day. They evidently received three hundred thousand ballots on election day. They then go through some sort of cumbersome validation process where they try to determine if the signatures are valid. Insofar as I probably have at least three different signatures, I’m not sure how the hell they do this or why they even make the attempt. Do they hire handwriting experts? Crazy. The state should just go back to in person voting. Period. End of story.
Then perhaps they need to reform their state’s laws. Contrast Florida’s 2000 hanging chad fiasco with what they have today – very efficient, streamlined, and they got the results out early on election evening.
Here in North Carolina, we had 4.2 million early in person votes, plus 270k mail in voters. That contrasts with about 1.2 million who voted on election day. Yet we also had results on election evening. Not as early as Florida, but the election was a lot closer here.
I was even able to check out the NC legislature results before I went to bed Tuesday night (I actually want to recheck since there were some extremely close races). Republicans actually didn’t fare quite as well as 2020/22 — they lost the governor’s race (again!), Lt. Gov and several of the Council of State races, and I think they lost their supermajority in the House by 1 seat. But, with late breaking results, it looks like they again swept all the statewide judicial races including an extremely close Supreme Court race. I think that makes the court 7-2 Republican now.
It is possible to have timely, efficient, and accurate election counting. But not unless the state government is committed to it. Pennsylvania: I and Benjamin Franklin are looking at you. Thank god it wasn’t close there.
https://uk.legal.narkive.com/2yJKQ14C/gaza-must-uncondtitionally-surrender#
It is now completely clear.
Gaza must unconditionally surrender.
Or else.
I saw a meme that said, among other things, that “men voted for their wives and daughters to die from miscarriages”.
What now? I realize they connect this to abortion, which thanks to the overturning of Roe, is completely untouchable by Trump but someone explain this with crayons and small words because I’m at a complete loss. Oh and some are convinced he’ll never leave now that he’s again president. I can even understand this perspective even though I feel it’s a complete fear tactic.
The rest of the meme is just as confusing to me.
”immigrants voted for deportation raids”
”seniors voted to gut Social Security”
”women voted to have fewer rights than men”
I at least understand “police voted for a convicted felon” and “poor people voted for tax cuts for billionaires”.
I feel like I need to at least understand the premise of this perspective, but I believe most didn’t vote “for” anything. I believe most voted against something else. I personally voted against someone I felt had no business being president. I voted against far left ideology particularly the gender lgbtq+ indoctrination at a young age in public school, against illegal immigration and against war. Trump might be many things I personally dislike but he is definitely opposed to war. It is one of his more consistent stances since 2015 when he became entrenched in politics. That they assume I voted for “daughters to die of miscarriages” I simply don’t know where to go with that. That’s shoving millions of people who voted into a presumption that they are a “monster”.
It’s typical hyperbole of the Sky-is-Falling kind now that Trump was re-elected.
“men voted for their wives and daughters to die from miscarriages”.
Because some states have strictly limited abortion, there is some confusion – real or imagined (or possibly even deliberate) – among medical personnel about what conditions allow for the procedure or the process for removing a dead fetus after a miscarriage which could cause medical complications for the women.
“”immigrants voted for deportation raids”
Latinas (legally residing in the U.S.) came out big for Trump. Identity politics are everything to the Left. If you are a Latina and you voted for Trump, you betrayed your illegal …sorry, undocumented …brothers and sisters who just want a better life to be yanked from their beds in the middle of the night and kicked out of the country by the ICE Gestapo.
”seniors voted to gut Social Security”
Elderly people alarmed by the cost of living and hits to their retirement funds also voted for Trump. In other words, the stupid Boomers will make sure they’re fine while the next generation won’t get the benefit of Social Security after Trump and his greedy uncaring allies privatize it or use the money to fund Putin’s War Against Ukraine…or something.
”women voted to have fewer rights than men”
They still think women make 77 cents on the dollar as men. They think not being allowed to murder unborn children is fascist. They think free birth control is a right. So, those crazy white women who can’t buy milk at the grocery store without asking their husbands’ permission made sure that all those things the Left was doing to discriminate against men in favor of women won’t happen which gives them less rights. And again – abortion, birth control and, ya know, healthcare.
I’m surprised the meme didn’t take on African-American men and how their votes for Trump ensured burning crosses on their lawns for the next four years.
Thanks for the clarification. It’s really simple, and it shouldn’t have changed. The mother is the primary person. Her surviving is critical to the unborn child for most of the term. If the baby is already dead, there’s no issue. If the mother is at risk, you do what you can to SAVE the baby too. That’s it. That’s the difference between abortion and a medical procedure. You try to save the unborn, if possible, but the mother has to be priority, since without her the baby is dead anyways. IF this isn’t the case they’d do a c section and send the baby to NICU. TRUMP has zero control. I forget this is an issue in some places. My state will let you abort to term just because.
On a non-election topic:
I thought about commenting on your post about “The Diplomat”, but got too busy, then it got too late. I too have thoroughly enjoyed the series. I watched season 2 over the course of 2 nights. I enjoy the writing, the attention to small details (I am often amazed at how many programs show people using cell phones inside classified spaces, which The Diplomat does not). My comment is about Grace Penn’s “Hard Choices” soliloquy justifying her actions.
I have heard this one often, usually to argue why the individual making the choice should not be judged/punished. I would actually suggest a “Hard Choices Rationalization”; the closest I could find on your list is 19C-Murkowski’s Lament.
The general argument is that the problem in question was of such significance that the individual was left with 2 choices: Choice 1 was to do nothing, or employ diplomacy, the law, international organizations, etc. and potentially fail or Choice 2, to act outside of the law, morality and ethics to solve the problem and “save the world”. The rationalization is that the individual, in this case Grace, recognized the problem and the solution and had the strength and bravery to make the “Hard Choice” that no one else could make: It also includes a certain “if you were in my shoes, could you make the “Hard Choice””? This is all with the intention of subverting judgement, preventing criminal charges or leaks to the media (or divorce, job-loss, estrangement).
The fact is that it is the consequences, whether personal, professional or legal, that make these decisions “Hard”. Most of us would like to think that a person’s conscience would play a large role in the “Hard Decision”, and sometimes it does. The fact is that we have laws and regulations because conscience is often and regularly NOT enough. In the case of Grace Penn those consequences are loss of position, international condemnation, legal consequences and historical villification. If Grace Penn knew that she could make her decision with no consequences, her “Hard Choice” suddenly becomes very easy. Worse still, once the first choice is made without consequence, the next choice becomes easier, then the next, until Choice 1 is no longer a consideration; Choice 2 becomes the only choice.
Another piece of good news. It appears that Alaska has repealed ranked choice voting, by a narrow margin.
Unfortunately, their House race was held under the RCV system and the Republican candidate got a smidge under 50% last time I checked. So in a couple weeks we’ll get to hear the real results. With any luck he’ll end up the winner.
I am actually somewhat surprised that both these races were so close when Trump easily won the state. The power of incumbency I guess.