Author: Jack Marshall

On The Censuring Of Rep. Gosar

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

Gosar

The U.S. House of Representatives yesterday voted along party lines, meaning the vote was close and NeverTrumps Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger voted with the Democrats, to censure Representative Paul Gosar, an Arizona Republican, for posting a juvenile animated video that portrayed cartoon violence against Democrats and illegal immigrants. This was the first censure since 2010 and only the 24th in the history of Congress. The vote also stripped Gosar of his committee assignments.

In a vacuum and in principle, Ethics Alarms applauds the move. When I wrote about Gosar’s moronic stunt ten days ago, I headlined the story “Why Do We Let People Like This Idiot Into Congress?” This naturally assumes that I would not be sorry to see this idiot kicked out of Congress. I also wrote, in conclusion,

“This isn’t the kind of video a member of Congress should be having made, or put on social media. It’s an embarrassment to Congress, his party, his state, and his country. By what bizarre concept of public service and the House ethics rules could anyone conclude that such an assaultive, offensive, infantile piece of agitprop belongs in the public square?”

Gosar should have been censured, BUT… Continue reading →

A Second Introduction To “Thoughts On What An Ethical Solution To The Abortion Ethics Conflict Might Look Like, Part 2: A Solution”

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ViewsOnAbortion_v02_KA_1637005673621_hpEmbed_1x1_608

I decided that it was finally time to complete and post Part 2, having promised it way back in September. The impetus is two polls on the subject released today and yesterday. But having read the polls, I feel like a second introduction to Part 2 is necessary. (The first introduction, posted a day after Part I, is here.)

The first introduction closed, “Absent something that causes a tipping point in public opinion on the same level of influence as “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” [on the public’s perception of slavery] the approach to abortion I offer in Part 2 is, and will ever be, impossible.” The two polls purport to tell us what the public’s current perception of abortion is. At least, that’s how they are being presented in the news media, which, as we all know, is completely unbiased on this topic as well as others.

I’m joking. Most of the media is ignoring the second poll, by Marquette, which makes the Washington Post-ABC poll that is more positive toward abortion incoherent. The Marquette poll found that more of those polled favored a ban on abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy than opposed it. Survey respondents were asked if they would favor or oppose a ruling to “uphold a state law that (except in cases of medical emergencies or fetal abnormalities) bans abortions after the 15th week of pregnancy.” This is a direct reference to to Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which SCOTUS will hear oral argument regarding on December 1. The case turns on the constitutionally of a Mississippi law that bans most abortions after….. 15 weeks of pregnancy. Allowing the law would, if not overrule Roe v. Wade, significantly limit it. Yet 37% of those polled approved of a decision upholding such a law, while 32% opposed such a result. The remaining 30% said they didn’t know enough to make a decision.

In most polls on other topics, that group that pleads ignorance are apathetic slugs, but on this topic, maybe they are the wise ones. How many Americans really know what Dobbs is about, or even what Roe v. Wade really says? My guess is considerably less than 50%. Maybe less than 25%. 10%?

The Post-ABC poll that is being waved triumphantly in the public’s face is the one summarized in the diagram above (the data is here) and claims that large majorities of Americans “support maintaining Roe v. Wade, oppose states making it harder for abortion clinics to operate and see abortion primarily as a decision to be made by a woman and her doctor, not lawmakers.” How can that be the case if a majority also believes that woman and doctors should not be able to decide to abort an unborn baby after only 15 weeks?

It can’t.

What’s going on here?

Americans, except for small numbers of activists on both sides, haven’t thought carefully about the issues in abortion sufficiently to have an informed opinion about it. That’s what.

I would like to have the groups polled by Marquette and ABC/Washington Post pollsters asked if they have read Roe. What’s your guess: how many would say they have? 5%? Less? How many have thought about when a fetus should have the right to live? If they were shown a photo of a fetus at 8 months, would they support aborting it? Six months? Three?

Of those who say they support abortions in the case of rape or incest, and were asked why how a human is conceived should change its right to live, how many could answer intelligently? How many have thought about it? How many have the education and critical thinking skills to analyze the problem competently?

If you asked if a man who killed a woman who was three months pregnant should be prosecuted for killing one human being or two, what would the majority answer? If they answered “two” and then they were asked, “How can it be murder if an unborn child is killed by anyone else, but no crime if the killer is the mother?,” how many would mutter “Huminahumina”?

The vast, vast majority of Americans thinks about abortion so shallowly as to be ethically useless, simply following their peer groups, or joining one team of the other who band together under deliberately misleading labels: “pro-life,” which ignores on of the crucial interests in involved in abortion policy, and “pro-choice,” which ignores the other. Or they don’t think about abortion at all.

No political, legal or societal acceptable solution to the abortion ethics conflict is possible when the public remains this ignorant and apathetic. A condition precedent to any solution, therefore, is to bring about a dramatic shift in public consciousness and commitment—that tipping point I mentioned before. That’s what “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” did: it forced people who had never thought seriously about slavery and what it meant to think, and once they did, they opposed it.

Polls are easily manipulated and generally do more harm than good, but these two, taken together, show us a way out. The public needs something or someone who will make its members think about abortion and its issues, honestly and without the spin, obfuscation, emotionalism and bullshit. If a metaphorical slap in the face could be found for slavery, one can be made for abortion.

So getting to that slap is the first part of any solution.

Got it.

Now I’m finally ready to finish Part 2…

An Important Clarification Regarding The Rittenhouse Trial

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

Closing Rittenhouse

In yesterday’s post, And The Trayvon Martin-George Zimmerman/ George Floyd/ Kyle Rittenhouse Ethics Train Wreck Rolls On….., I wrote in reference to the certifiably terrible closing arguments by both sides in the Rittenhouse trial,

“It looks to me as if Judge Schroeder has stacked the deck: he allowed enough improper summation conduct from the State to ensure a reversal if Rittenhouse is convicted, and also allowed sufficient cheats by the defense to make an acquittal more likely.”

That statement is still accurate as far as it goes, but a friend, colleague and experienced trial lawyer just called to remind me that improper statements or actions in summary arguments in civil and criminal cases that would otherwise justify a mistrial are considered waived if opposing counsel doesn’t make a timely objection.

The judge can (and should) also intervene if an attorney crosses the ethical and legal lines in closing, but my friend emphasizes that most judges won’t, preferring to leave that task to the lawyers. Attorneys, meanwhile, are very reluctant to interrupt an opponent’s closing argument to object. If they do and are over-ruled, they lose credibility with the jury. Mid-closing interruptions are also seen as Golden Rule breaches, though that should not matter: the lawyer’s duty to the client surpasses any obligations to opponents.

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“The Bulwark’s” Contorted, Self-Indicting Defense Of The Mainstream Media

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

One reason Ethics Alarms highlighted Andrew Sullivan’s late-to-the-party sounding of his own alarm against the near total corruption of the mainstream media with Left-leaning bias—it was a bit like shouting “Fire!” in a theater that was already burned to the ground—was that I was curious to see if the mainstream media’s defenders would try to counter it. It can’t be countered honestly, you see. At this point, it’s like denying that the Earth moves around the Sun, yet denials are still the reflex norm both among journalists and those who appreciate news reporting working so hard to accomplish their obviously virtuous political agendas.

I did not expect “The Bulwark,” of all places, to defend the mainstream media against Sullivan’s statement of the obvious, but upon reflection, I should have. The Bulwark is the retreat site of poor Bill Kristol after he snapped like a a dry twig in a harsh wind and blew up his credibility, reputation and “The Weekly Standard” in a tantrum over am unmannerly and crude commoner like Donald Trump daring to get elected to the Presidency. Supposedly a man of principle and a true believer in conservative principles, neocom Bill declared that he would rather see those who oppose and would liquidate all of those principles to gain power than to tolerate someone so unworthy accomplishing policy objectives that Kristol would have endorsed a short time ago.

This elitist bit of bigotry (duplicated by other NeverTrumpers like George Will) deserves an eventual clinical analysis. Something similar to one was just focused on one-time conservative pundit for the Washington Post Jennifer Rubin over at “The American Thinker,” where Thomas Lifson writes that Rubin “stands out as possibly the most extreme case of Trump Derangement Syndrome among the former conservatives…Her hatred of Trump and the party that now is dominated by him and his supporters is so extreme that she wants the media to stop treating it as a legitimate representative of the roughly half the populace that votes for it.” Kristol’s agents’ at “The Bulwark” hatred is so extreme that it will defend the mainstream media’s constantly distorting the news to make conservatives and Republicans seem illegitimate. Which is worse? A Leftist media deliberately deceiving the public to warp the democratic process, or a conservative publication enabling it because they share a fanatic hatred? It’s a tough call.

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This Republican Maryland Mayor Just Doesn’t Get The Whole “Community Role Model” Thing

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

andrew-bradshaw

Cambridge, Maryland Mayor Andrew Bradshaw, the youngest mayor the city ever elected, now faces 50 counts of distributing revenge porn. State prosecutors announced yesterday that Bradshaw used Reddit to distribute intimate photos of a woman with whom he had previously been romantically involved. Prosecutors allege that he used photos of the victim’s face and “intimate parts” on a Reddit created to facilitate degradation and humiliation, and subreddits devoted to sexual “raceplay.” Bradshaw posted racial slurs there.

Maryland’s Revenge Porn Statute, Maryland Criminal Law Article § 3-809, prohibits “the non-consensual distribution of a private visual representation of another which exposes their intimate body parts or displays them engaged in sexual activity, with the intent to harm, harass, intimidate, threaten or coerce the person depicted.”

The woman, called “Victim I” in the charging document (here), did not consent to the use of her photos. She contacted law enforcement in May about the unauthorized posts, and a police investigation led to yesterday’s charges. Bradshaw faces a maximum penalty of two years of incarceration and a $5,000 fine for each count if convicted.

Observations:

  • This isn’t going to do much for the Maryland GOP’s efforts to make inroads against the Democratic monopoly in the state.
  • How do people this stupid get elected? I just don’t understand it.
  • When they do get elected, can’t they control themselves sufficiently not to do something like this?
  • I suspect Bradshaw’s political career may be stalled for a while.

Tuesday Ethics Exultations, 11/16/2021 (Okay, Not Including The First Part…Or #2. All Right, #4’s Not So Good Either…)

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

Snoopy dance

This is another banner date in the long history of bad ethics. On November 16, 1532, Francisco Pizarro, the Spanish explorer and conquistador, performed an epic double cross on the trusting emperor of the Incas, Atahualpa. Vastly outnumbered with only 200 soldiers to overcome several thousand Incas, Pizarro set up a feast in Atahualpa’s honor and then opened fire on the unarmed Incan guests. Trapped in tight quarters, ambushed Incan soldiers had no chance. Pizarro’s men slaughtered 5,000 Incans in an hour. Pizarro suffered the only Spanish injury: a cut on his hand. After the massacre, Pizarro captured Atahualpa, forced him to convert to Christianity, and finally had him murdered by strangulation.

On the positive side, the story was the inspiration for a spectacular Broadway hit, “The Royal Hunt of the Sun,” by Peter Shaffer, before he had even bigger successes with “Equus” and “Amadeus.”

What a horrible story.

1. Good. In Connecticut, repulsive right wing conspiracy contagion Alex Jones lost in court again, as a judge granted victory to the families of eight people killed in the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown. They had sued the perpetually lying broadcaster and his Infowars media outlet for defamation. I’d say that was fair: Jones had claimed on his show that the attack that killed 20 first graders and six educators was part of a government-led plot to confiscate Americans’ firearms and that the victims’ families were “actors.” How sick and stupid did someone have to be to believe such garbage? Whatever the answer, there were enough of them to harass the families on the street and at events honoring their dead children and threaten them online and in person. The decision, combined with previous rulings in Texas , means that Jones has lost all the defamation lawsuits filed against him by the families.

I would say that Jones is appealing, but that would be misleading. He says he’ll try to get a higher court to reverse the ruling.

2. Not surprisingly…mainstream media flacks and hacks desperate to run interference for Biden and the Democrats have been giving Yoo’s Rationalization, “It isn’t what it is,” a workout. (It’s also called “gaslighting,” “spinning,” or “lying.”) Recent examples:

  • The reliably awful Brian Stelter of CNN’s “Reliable Sources” implied that the supply chain problem was one more Fox New myth with a mocking tweet showing  fully stocked shelves of milk at a supermarket. He really is that arrogant and stupid. This constantly amazes me. Who hired him? Who lets him keep doing this? My son, who is a Nissan auto mechanic, says supply chain problems have crippled his business for months, with direct impact on his income as well as the ability of vehicle owners to get their cars functioning properly.
  • NBC business correspondent Stephanie Ruhle, meanwhile, shrugged off the near record leap in inflation, saying,  “The dirty little secret here … while nobody likes to pay more, on average, we have the money to do so. Household savings hit a record high over the pandemic. … For those who own their homes, the value of our homes are up. And while the stock market isn’t the economy, you’ve got over half of American households with some investment in the markets, [which] have hit record highs.”

Now there’s a rationalization for the ages! If one can scrape up the extra money to pay for something that shouldn’t cost so much, there’s nothing to complain about! Of course, what one now has to pay for X removes assets that one would have had, and was planning on having,  to pay for Y. And, reasons Ruhl, as long as well-off, prudent savers who have invested wisely and own their own homes aren’t devastated by an extra dollar or more on the price of key products, who cares about those other losers? After Ruhle got roasted on social media for her elitism, she came back with a lament about “the two Americas.” See? She cares after all!

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And The Trayvon Martin-George Zimmerman/ George Floyd/ Kyle Rittenhouse Ethics Train Wreck Rolls On…..

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments

Prosecutor-square

In the tricky practice of ethics train wreck taxonomy, placing the Rittenhouse trial in the proper category is a challenge. Is the Tale of the Gun-toting Teen its own media bias and activist -fueled social and legal disaster, or is it just an extension of another?

I lean toward assigning this fiasco to the latter category, making it just one more extension of the Trayvon Martin-George Zimmerman Ethics Train Wreck, which eventually begat the George Floyd Freakout, which in turn led to the contrived outrage over the police shooting of Jacob Blake that spat out Rittenhouse’s unhelpful improvisation. After all, Martin, Floyd and Blake all were episodes that had nothing to do with race but that were hyped into divisive racial controversies and trials by irresponsible demagogues, protesters, politicians and reporters.

What I especially like about attributing all of this societal wreckage into a single ethics train wreck is that it demonstrates just how disastrous President Obama’s inflammatory comments equating Martin to “his son” were—as Ethics Alarms pointed out at the time. Maybe if the blame is squarely placed at the metaphorical fish head, Presidents will stop shooting off their mouths like that. (President Biden, do recall, falsely called Rittenhouse a white supremacist.)

This is all prelude to pointing out what a projectile vomit debacle yesterday’s closing arguments were. Both the prosecution and the defense stomped all over proper criminal trial practice and professional ethics.

For the prosecution…

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Horror Movie Ethics: “It Follows”

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

I just watched “It Follows” for the third time in six years. (That’s why I’m writing this post at 4:10 am.)The 2014 horror film is original and avoids the usual cliches: there is no cabin in the woods, no zombies, no heavy-breathing slasher in a mask, no demonic possession or haunted family heirloom. The first time I saw it, all I could think about was how creepy it was. The second time, my attention was drawn to the writing and direction, which are excellent.

This time, all I could think of was ethics.

Horror, like science fiction, is a genre that frequently lends itself to ethical considerations, creating rare, indeed weird, problems and dilemmas that nonetheless need to be solved by traditional ethical decision-making processes. “It Follows” is a great example.

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Comment Of The Day: “…Andrew Sullivan Finally Sees Clearly That The News Media Is Completely Corrupt And Untrustworthy”

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments

idiot meme

This latest opus by Steve-O-in NJ probably qualifies as a rant; I picture him furiously scribbling on paper in a trance, as in “automatic writing” when a medium is channeling Jean Dixon from the beyond. But it’s very good and thoughtful rant. I hope I edited it properly. Oh…I should mention that the tweets above echoing the meme Steve mentions at the start surprised me. I really didn’t think those celebrities could possibly be that stupid.

This is Steve-O-in NJ’s Comment of the Day on the post, “Well What Do You Know! Andrew Sullivan Finally Sees Clearly That The News Media Is Completely Corrupt And Untrustworthy.”

***

I saw a meme yesterday that kind of says everything about where the mainstream media and the left (but I repeat myself) are coming from now. It had no picture, it simply said “I want to live in a country where Colin Kaepernick is regarded as a hero and Kyle Rittenhouse is regarded as a terrorist.” I bit my tongue and didn’t say what I was thinking: that ostentatious disloyalty doesn’t make you even close to a hero and let’s let a jury decide what Rittenhouse is, because 1. I wasn’t changing the poster’s mind; and 2. The problem was bigger than those specific examples. Anyone who writes or reposts something like that is in effect saying “I want everyone to think like me and agree with me.” The left and the media have been thinking like that since probably the Clinton days. There’s a reason CNN was then called “the Clinton News Network.”

I have to ask, though, why is Andrew Sullivan just getting this now? Oh, that’s right, the right was opposed to a sudden and seismic cultural shift involving one of the basic building blocks of society, and nothing else mattered, it was all about the belief that heterosexual and homosexual couples were exactly the same and should be treated exactly the same. Single-issue voting is short-sighted, single-issue partisanship is just stupid. Like any other bias, it makes the objective inobjective, the wise foolish, the smart stupid, and the truthful liars.

Dutch missionary Andrew van der Bilj, aka “Brother Andrew” and “God’s Smuggler” used to pray “God, you have made blind eyes see, please make seeing eyes blind,” when he crossed the borders into Communist countries, carrying Bibles and other religious literature that would be considered contraband. Bias seems to do a far better job than God ever did blinding people to a lot more than a few Bibles being brought into an atheistic country.

I wrote three years ago,

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Morning Ethics Warm-Up, 11/15/21: Peloton, Kubuki, Kamala, Detachment, and Anti-White Bigotry Is Hilarious

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

November, September, same difference…

Well, yesterday’s “Moby-Dick” reflections were supposed to be the intro to a warm-up that never was; it got too long and ate the post, just like Moby (or Mocha) would have. So here is what was supposed to follow, with a few updates…

1. This was almost an ethics quiz, but I’m pretty certain about the answer. Peloton has blocked users of its website from displaying hashtags reading “Let’s go Brandon” in their personal profiles.The company says the phrase violates their guidelines. The question is, does it? “Hateful, offensive, or obscene speech is strictly forbidden on the Peloton Service,” the company’s guidelines say. “This includes any leaderboard names, locations, profile pictures, Tags or any other User Content that promotes, relates to, or condones lack of respect, discrimination, or violence of any kind against individuals or groups based on [the usual list]… or political affiliation.”

Since “Let’s go Brandon!” is code for “Fuck Joe Biden,” it is “Fuck Joe Biden” just like “SOS” means “Help!” That certainly is somewhere in “hateful , offensive, or obscene” whether some people find it funny or not. [Pointer: JutGory]

2. The cliche for this is “kabuki theater.” The sham of the Glasgow climate change summit was highlighted at the very end, when China and India, among the world’s biggest burners of coal, raised last-minute objections to language in the unenforceable pact pledging a “phase out” of coal and demanded that it be changed to “phase down,” whatever that means. Since their only option was to accept this crucial weakening of the terms or not to have an agreement they could wave to claim “progress,” the change was accepted. COP26 President Alok Sharma said he was “deeply sorry” for the let-down. “I understand the deep disappointment. It’s also vital we protect this package,” Sharma said. Without China and India’s full commitment and supportive action, the goals of the climate change reforms can’t be met, making the sacrifices, if really made, by the United States and other nations virtue signaling without purpose….you know, like the Biden administration shutting down pipelines.

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