[Having whined sufficiently for several months in the introduction, I finally present the ethics items…]
1. Is this really an appropriate column for the Opinion Section of the New York Times? Even by her own standards, the latest column by Maureen Dowd is particularly nasty, catty, and offensive. It is just slightly more fair and civil than Keith Olbermann tweeting out “Fuck Trump!” 50 times. Like so much we are hearing from the humiliated and exposed Axis these day, this is just a tantrum by Dowd (other tantrums from the Times opinion page: this, by Roxanne Gay: “Donald Trump Is Already Starting to Fail,” by NeverTrumper David French) who writes in part,
“Melania wondered if the notion of “respect” had become obsolete. Good question to ponder as we watch people with no respect for Washington tearing it apart from the inside — starting with her husband’s bizarre nominations of people with contempt for the institutions they would run, a quartet of scandalous foxes in the hen houses: R.F.K. Jr., Pete Hegseth, Tulsi Gabbard and Matt Gaetz. (If the odious, barely-a-lawyer Gaetz is confirmed, which is a long shot, even with obedient Senate Republicans, will he heed MAGA calls to reinvestigate 2020 with an eye toward proving Trump won?)”
It’s pretty audacious for a member of the cabal that refused to extend to Donald Trump any respect or the traditional deference due to any President to complain that he is not being properly “respectful” to the corrupt and incompetently run “institutions” he now controls. Why should anyone respect the politically weaponized Justice Department of the Biden Administration? The DEI obsessed Defense Department? The incompetent State Department, still chasing the impossible “two state solution” and validating terrorism in the process? Education? Transportation? Homeland Security, run by a DEI toady who laughably declared the Southern border “secure”? Respecting incompetence and lack of responsibility is a dangerous habit.
2. The Rest of the Story: Scientific American’s woke editor-in-chief is “stepping down” following her outburst attacking Trump voters on Twitter/X, which she followed with an insincere (and ludicrous) apology. She was fired, and the magazine’s management should have made it clear that she was fired if they wanted to have any hope that their absurdly politicized publication might crawl back to respectability.
3. The Rest of the Tantrum: Americans seriously considering fleeing the country because their favorite candidate lost the election are, in order, bad citizens, sore losers, infantile, civically lazy, and, finally, pitiful victims of Axis scaremongering. The Washington Post even published a guide for fleeing cowards not worthy of the name “American.” They should be exposed, criticized, excoriated and mocked, for they don’t get that “democracy” thingy. The ethical response to their crybaby act is “Bye!”
4. More “Rest of the Tantrum”: Then there are the totalitarian progressives and Trump-haters—Don Lemon, Mark Cuban, Mia Farrow, Jamie Lee Curtis, idiot (but talented!) Bette Midler, Lizzo, who brilliantly told voters that Kamala Harris would make the whole country look like Detroit, and more, announcing that they are quitting Twitter/X for “BlueSky,” (an “X” competitor that censors conservative speech), Threads, or one of the others. These “Good Germans” want an echo chamber; they want censorship of opinions (and facts) that the Left finds inconvenient. They also want to punish Elon Musk for rescuing Twitter from its partisan bias and for daring to support Donald Trump. Segregating opinion and the marketplace of ideas will only exacerbate the nation’s divisions, but never mind: progressives know that they are moral, 100% correct, and on the “right side of history.” So there.
5. Incompetence is a good reason to quit, and so it is that pollster Ann Selzer, who tried to galvanize the Harris campaign by claiming that Iowa was ready to turn True Blue, is ending her election polling career and moving on “to other ventures and opportunities.” Good. If only the rest of the incompetent, biased and untrustworthy people in her field would do the same!
6. Nah, Trump’s claims that the 2020 election was stolen by Democrats is completely groundless! I consider this “grounds”: Even the editorial board of the Washington Post among other critics, is shocked—shocked!—that Democrats in Pennsylvania have voted in favor of counting ballots that were ruled invalid by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court as they try to rescue Democratic Senator Bob Casey, who lost to Republican Senator-elect Dave McCormick in the election, from defeat by “any means necessary.” But why would anyone think these same politicians messed with the Presidential vote in 2022? Crazy conspiracy theorists….
7. Now THIS is delusional. Ann Althouse pulled this bias-makes-you-stupid nonsense from NBC: “Of course, Harris might make a third bid for the White House, though her loss to Trump after raising over $1 billion will weigh heavily on many Democrats’ minds. On the flip side, Harris was within a few swing-state percentage points of the presidency after spending just over 100 days in the race and battling economic headwinds that have sunk parties in power around the world. Whether Harris is up to another campaign is a different question, a senior aide noted, and the answer will only come with time. ‘We’re barely a week after the election,’ the person said.”
These fools really can’t process reality! Harris was a terrible candidate, ran a terrible campaign, and showed no ability appropriate for a national leader at all. Why can’t everyone, and I mean everyone, just admit that? Saying that she has a chance of being the nominee in 2028 is more delusional than Mike Pence running for President. How can anyone trust a news source that ignores reality to such an extreme degree?
8. Gee, what a surprise. The absurdly hyped boxing match on Netflix between 58-year old Mike Tyson and social media “influencer” turned pro boxer Jake Paul, who is more than two decades younger, was terrible, and anyone could have told you that it would be terrible, but millions of Netflix viewers tuned in to the thing anyway, then complained that it was terrible. Morons—not the combatants; they made millions to embarrass themselves, and obviously thought it was a sweet deal, but the American who had sock drawers to attend to or who could have been reading Ethics Alarms. Abe did say that you can fool some of the people all of the time.
Ethics Alarms 
6. Dems looking for eight million votes that “vanished.”
Staggering graph shows how eight million Democrat voters ‘vanished’ | Daily Mail Online
Or were there simply eight million phantom Democrat votes in 2020? Eight million people who voted for Biden in 2020 decided to sit out the most important election in the history of the country? The one that would save democracy? The one that would be the last election if Harris didn’t win? Were they so confident this time based on bad polling they didn’t cheat?
So, how do you explain this without the voters rejecting her? How do you explain that there weren’t millions of fraudulent votes in2020? Well, you could join the conspiracy theorists and say they were all part of the excess deaths since 2020. That number ranges from 1 million to 20 million depending on the source. I’m sure they can find a source with a suitable number and make it fit in there. So, there. Not fraud, not a rejection of Harris, just that they are now dead. So much better.
A loss of that many Dem votes from one Presidential election to another is simply unfathomable. Somebody has some ‘splainin’ to do, Lucy.
I’m sure someone can show it is excess vaccine side effect deaths. It doesn’t have to be anything suspicious or sinister. ;’)
7. Speaking of delusion, get a load of this from what Victor Davis Hanson calls the Young Adult section:
Why did Kamala Harris lose the 2024 election? The left has some theories. | Vox
A few highlights:
“[The Trump win] amounts to a catastrophe for anyone who values liberal democracy, egalitarian economic policy, and social equality for all marginalized groups. As someone who has spent the past decade advocating for more expansionary immigration policies, a larger social safety net, criminal justice reform, and decarbonization, it is difficult to see my country embrace a man who evinces contempt for all of those causes.”
Why would anyone who’s an American be in favor of any of those things? Egalitarian economic policy is Communism. Social equality is Socialism. More unfettered immigration? An even larger social safety net? Criminal justice ‘reform,’ i.e., more criminals let loose onto the streets? Decarbonization for no apparent reason when there’s no alternative to carbon? Then he delivers the coup d ’gras:
“Being progressive, in the best sense of that term, means putting the interests of the most vulnerable above one’s own comfort.”
Buzz off, buddy. Start yourself a church. Let the rest of us enjoy our freedom to make a life for ourselves and our families.
What is amazing is that apparently there are folks who think Harris lost _because_ she tried a little pivot towards the center, even if no one believed she was serious.
Or that she lost because she only had 107 days to campaign. I’ve heard that one myself and it seems to me that she did as well as she did because she only had a 107 day campaign. If people had gotten to know her better she would have done even worse.
Just about every demographic you care to look at, Harris did worse than Biden did four years ago. That’s not easy!
I view this election as our generation’s equivalent to the 1984 election landslike. After all, both candidates carried both Minnesota and D.C. Harris came reasonably close to losing a lot more than just the Blue Wall states.
Oh, I think 1980 is the analogy. There was never any doubt that Mondale would lose, and lose big. The Reagan win over Carter was the political earthquake that the news media and smug left didn’t see coming. The Post’s cartoonist, Herblock, drew a cartoon the day after the election showing cave men carrying clubs and riding Mastodons parading into D.C.
You don’t think 2016 was more equivalent to 1980?
Has anyone heard of “Your Body, My Choice”.
Many on Threads are claiming that boys have been saying this to girls.
I wonder why boys would start acting like public health officials.
Nick Fuentes put it up on X. He’s a right-winger who has been banned from YouTube for being a Holocaust denier, among other things. He sounds like a peach. For the comment , he was doxxed and people started showing up at his house. Some people thought the line was funny as a pick-up line, and teenagers started spreading it, feminists claim it’s a rape threat. I have no idea how prominent it actually is, as the internet is prone to unfounded hysteria.
That’s my understanding. Some teenaged trolls get blown up into a violent intelligence sect.
I’ve got to stop using my phone for these comments. The autocorrect gets me every time.
A few teenaged trolls get blown up into a violent Incel sect.
It is also likely that most of these reports are false and are being used to get attention. I have seen a few of these and it seems at least probable that they are making it up for the sympathy and views.
I came across it, and it sounds like the shitty pseudo rumor the Left so commonly embrace. It doesn’t matter if someone on the right actually said it, it just sounds like something they would say, so they mercilessly mock it (ignoring how ridiculoous it makes the Left look).
When I encountered it, it was in the form of a meme: “Your Body My Choice is a strange thing to say when your house is built of flammable materials!” ignoring how a similar meme from the right would cause them to rend their garments in fear of violence.
See this Thread.
https://www.threads.net/@absurdistwords/post/DCem3tZJyV9
Things That Will Disappear In the Next 4 Years (A non-exhaustive list)
Abortion rights
Contraception
No Fault Divorce
Violence Against Women Act
Civil Rights Act
Voting Rights Act
First Amendment Protections
Birthright Citizenship
Naturalization Protections
Environmental Protections
Consumer Protections
Fraud Protections
Police Brutality Consent Decrees
Habeas Corpus
Three Co-Equal Branches of Govt
Gender-Affirming Care
Hormone Replacement In Vitro Fertilization
Gee, I’m sure glad “Threads” fight disinformation, unlike Twitter. And it’s kinda nice that there’s a social media platform for the cliinically insane.
But many on the left believe this. They believe it because everything on this list an more has been stated factually on mainstream media. You forgot that women will be enslaved, given to random Republicans, and used for forcible reproduction. You forgot where it was stated that Trump would send the military to arrest every single black male in the country. My favorite is the one that all people in interracial marriages will be arrested and the minority spouse will be deported.
I think we should encourage all the people who believe this to seek asylum in Canada immediately. Canada can help them. Canada has ‘free’ healthcare. How do you think Canada would ‘help’ a huge number of delusional, mentally-ill Americans streaming across the border? Well, their go-to treatment is MAID. Now, at the moment, they aren’t allowed to use MAID on people who ONLY have a mental illness. They have to have some other malady (diabetes, hair loss?). The expansion to ONLY mental illness MAID has been delayed because the system just can’t handle killing that many people yet.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-68120380
Jack, I think I have an idea that might put a smile on your face. The song from Mel Brooks’ The Producers has been making the rounds of us gleeful SF conservatives. Springtime for Hitler has a great upbeat tune and serves as a modern-day double entendre. I especially like the musical pause for this line: Don’t be stupid, be a smarty, Come and join the Nazi party . . .
…which Mel Brooks himself sings in the original!
JG. You are truly a rare bird: a conservative in the City by the Bay. Whew!
3. I am amused that Stephen King is having to leave Twitter/X. Not to be outdone by the celebrities who vowed to move to Canada or Europe, he previously said that he would feed himself into a wood chipper if Trump won. In response to his tone-deaf and insulting (to 1/2 the country) rants, people are asking him when he will fulfill his promise and will it be on Pay-Per-View. Sorry, no sympathy there. He virtue-signaled himself right into that.
4. BlueSky is suffering under the ‘hate speech’ reports. Apparently, all the liberals who left X went to BlueSky and immediately started reporting everyone else for not being ‘woke’ enough for their tastes. Their ‘hate speech’ and ‘misinformation’ reports have gone from 350,000 in all to 2023 to over 40,000/day since the election. Of course, some moderation requests probably can’t even get in because they are busy.
On #4: a perfect Nelson. Ha-ha! (Assholes)
On 7:
“Why can’t everyone, and I mean everyone, just admit that?”
Some can… I mean, it’s been a while since you wrote that, but there’s this circular firing squad going on right now, with the willfully obtuse firing at people like James Carville, who accurately pointed out the obvious on Bill Maher, pre-election even. It’s like there’s this Blue Wall of Disinformation on public media, but if you go just one step back from mainstream, to the established names on sites like YouTube or various Padcasts, they’re generally looking at this relatively reasonably.
I mean, your experience might differ, but I actually think that there’s a sense of relief that Trump won. Carrying as much water as Democrats tried to do for candidates that were senile or vapid had to be backbreaking labor, apparently only made tolerable if you’re being paid literal millions of dollars to do so. It seems so much easier in comparison to settle back into the comfortable old resistance narratives, where you at least aren’t lying against your interest eight hours a day. Democrats, the rank and file, knew their candidate was bad, know that Trump isn’t literally Hitler, and are probably, whether they want to admit it or not, looking forward to four years of relative normalcy, or at least familiarity.
Here is an interestong perspective.
https://fortune.com/2019/03/28/trump-2020-russia-no-collusion/
Michael Tracey was off by only four years.