Author: Jack Marshall

Why I Won’t Be Watching the Biden-Trump Debate

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

The short answer is that I don’t feel like cleaning up all the brains, blood and bone after multiple head-explosions. The long answer follows.

The fact that a Presidential election (Is it “the most important Presidential election” ever? This has been claimed about almost every election I can remember, and I remember all of them since I was 10 years old. The Chicken Little Principle applies. Maybe it is, but the whole concept has been abused) is really and truly going forward with these two epically bad candidates as the public’s only serious alternatives represents a catastrophic failure of our system on many levels. This is not a good sign. We could not reach such a dire point if both parties, the public, our institutions, culture and values had not fallen apart in chunks. For me, watching the debate would feel like watching a bloody car crash involving close friends and relatives, except in their car seats instead, without seat belts, will be the United States of America.

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Ethical Quote of the Month: Heritage President Kevin Roberts

/ Jack Marshall / 36 Comments

“That’s sweet. They’re illegal aliens.”

—-Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts, “torn between two morons,” as Mary MacGregor might sing, on an MSNBC segment when informed that “we don’t use the term ‘illegal’ for undocumented individuals.”

No weenie he! If only every thinking person confronted with this standard “it isn’t what it is” dodge by open borders advocates responded with similar force. Unfortunately the best part, “That’s sweet!” was muffled by the cross-talk.

Symone Sanders-Townsend is trying hard to catch up to Joy Reid as MSNBC’s most repulsive ideologue. Imagine: Bernie Sanders actually employed this woman as his spokesperson! While discussing an illegal immigrant’s rape and murder of a 12-year-old girl, what Sanders-Townsend is most concerned about is describing him in a manner that hides the criminal’s actual status. How can anyone of sound mind and ethical orientation respect people like this, much less vote for the party they are working for?

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Comment of the Day: “Ethics Quote of the Month: Banned EA Commenter ‘David’” (2)

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

As I just banned another misbehaving commenter who stopped off here just to show he was smarter than me and to defend Snopes (“…But for Snopes?”), it seems a propitious time to post this Comment of the Day, the second (the first is here) to be inspired by my post about another banned commenter calling me a “Trump supporting fascist.” And he was much smarter than the jerk I just banned.

Here is A M Golden’s Comment of the Day on the post, “Ethics Quote of the Month: Banned EA Commenter ‘David’”:

***

When I was about 11 years old, my grandparents’ church showed a movie called “The Hiding Place” about a Dutch family that hid Jews from the Nazis. I was fascinated by the idea that there could exist a country so very unlike America where people could be punished for helping others. Since I was already very interested in history, I began what is now a 40-plus-year study of the Third Reich and Hitler, in particular.

I do not consider myself an expert; however, I am certainly more knowledgeable than the average layperson. I have read hundreds of books over the years concerning Nazi Germany and not just the military build-up and harassment of Jews. I’ve read a lot about the culture, the education and the day-to-day life of Germans.

And, of course, I’ve read multiple biographies of Hitler himself. Not every biography is created equal, though (Don’t get me started on movies about Hitler. The last one I tried to watch was a TV movie called “Hitler: The Rise of Evil” starring an otherwise fine actor named Robert Carlyle. I turned it off after 10 minutes due to the blatant misrepresentations and outright fabrications of Hitler’s early life. Apparently, the expert consultant had his name taken off of it for the same reason). Some biographies are pretty bad and postulate things that are not likely to be true. A good example of this are the ones that try to push the idea that Hitler was a homosexual.

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No, Doctors, “Do No Harm” Does Not Mean “Make Anti-Israel/Gaza War Statements in Your Hospital”…

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

We knew, or should have, that the medical profession was not immune from the ethics rot brought upon us by the advent of The George Floyd Freakout, the 2016 Post-Election Ethics Train Wreck, The Great Stupid (and its DEI sub-cult) and the rest. Here is a throbbing example.

At the University of California, San Francisco, one of the nation’s most respected medical schools and teaching hospitals, medical students and doctors have been protesting the war in Gaza. Chants of “intifada, intifada, long live intifada!” could be heard by patients in their hospital rooms at the U.C.S.F. Medical Center. It doesn’t really matter what the chants were: they could bebeen “Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?” (one of my personal favorites.) Medical personnel should never promote political views in a hospital. Why isn’t that obvious?

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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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