Unethical Quote of the Month: MSNBC’s Jen Psaki

“Prayer is not freaking enough. Prayer does not end school shootings. Prayers do not make parents feel safe sending their kids to school. Prayer does not bring these kids back. Enough with the thoughts and prayers.”

—-Former Biden paid liar (no, not her, the smart one) Jen Psaki, now an MSNBC propagandist, joining in the mandatory Axis spin following another mass shooting.

For some reason a memo went out from Totalitarian Central in the Axis network telling all loyalists to attack the obligatory references to prayer after two children were killed and more than a dozen others were injured this week when a shooter opened fire during Mass at Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis.

Psaki’s anti-prayer outburst on Twitter along with several other progressive anti-gun demagogues can go in to a dictionary definition of “straw man.” Nobody suggested that prayers were sufficient to address mass shootings and criminal gun violence. Nobody suggested that praying would bring the dead back either. Nor does anyone seriously believe that the victims were killed because they were praying: churches and schools have become crime scenes of choice by the murderously deranged because those are places that ban or prohibit fire arms, so a law-abiding gun owner is not as likely to be around to stop the carnage. Never mind: the Usual Suspects were instructed (no, I don’t think it is a coincidence) to denigrate Americans of faith—after all, too many of them support Evil President Trump.

“These children were probably praying when they were shot to death at Catholic school. Don’t give us your fucking thoughts and prayers. Trump got rid of the Office of Gun Violence and Prevention. Trump gutted the resources that were in place to keep our communities safe,” Rep. Maxwell Frost, D-Fla., wrote on social media. Good one, Max! There is no evidence that the Office of Gun Violence and Prevention prevented any gun violence or could: it was just another “do something” waste of government funds. Meanwhile, WHAT resources “that keep communities safe”? Frost didn’t say, because anything he said would be idiotic or a lie. He did get a chance to say “fuck,” though, since that proves that a Democrat is serious.

Continue reading

Professor Jacobson Asks, “What Happened To Tucker Carlson?” EA’s Answer: Nothing! He Was Always Like This!”

Prof. William Jacobson of Cornell oversees an excellent, well-researched conservative blog that often delves into the world of ethics, often from a legal perspective. One of his current posts is titled “What Happened to Tucker?,” as the Prof. laments what he sees as Carlson’s turn to the Dark Side. “He’s turned out not to be the person I thought he was,” Jacobson writes. “After leaving Fox News, he has done more to normalize Jew-hatred and bring it into the MAGA movement through the “woke right” than any other major ‘conservative’ personality…Something has gone very wrong. Maybe his true self finally was freed of the constraints of corporate news, or maybe something else influenced him. But now he is — in my estimation — a malign force and not just as to Jews and Israel, but also to the Trump agenda which he seems determined to undermine.”

You see Fredo above in his pathetic protestations of intellectual acumen from “Godfather II,” one of my favorite entries in the EA Hollywood Clip Archive, because in this instance, I was way ahead of Prof. Jacobson. Last December I issued this post, in which I quoted from an earlier “Why can’t everyone see that Carlson is an untrustworthy asshole?” essay that said in part,

“ [Tucker Carlson is] a smug, narcissistic, ethics-challenged, unprincipled, Machiavellian demagogue who helps pollute our civic discourse rather than enhance it.…since Fox News fired him (one more example of doing the right thing for the wrong reasons), several publications have noted that Carlson’s focus has descended into cheap tabloid territory as he desperately seeks publicity, clicks and eyeballs. Of course he has! Carlson doesn’t need the money (he’s a trust fund kid and has a net worth estimated at $30 million); he could easily maintain whatever integrity he had and present serious, useful analysis from the conservative side on whatever platform he used as he waits for his Fox contract to run out. Nah, he wants fame and power.”

Continue reading

Open Forum, and a Note Having (almost) Nothing to Do With Ethics

It’s Friday, time for the last Open Forum of the month, and my infected leg is much better, thanks, so EA should be returning to normal soon.

Probably not quite to normal, because from now until mid-September all of my nights and weekends will be occupied as I return to my theatrical side, in mothballs for a decade, to direct and write a musical revue to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Georgetown Law Center Gilbert and Sullivan Society, the only student-run theatrical organization at an grad school in the country. Alums will be flying in from all over; the show itself is going to have a student-alumni cast of more than 70, and it promises to quite an adventure.

I’m overseeing the show because I unwittingly started the tradition with a guerilla production of “Trial by Jury” when I was a first year student, directed the next six yearly shows after that, and have returned to the scene of my former triumphs (that’s a Gilbert quote: which show?) for the 20th, 30th, 40th and now 50th anniversary blow-outs (actually this is the 52nd anniversary because of two postponements.)

That’s a cast photo from the 1977 production of “H.M.S Pinafore” that I directed in GULC’s Hart Moot Courtroom above. (Can you spot me?)

The lesson of this saga is that you never know what the things you do in life will prove to be most significant. That organization has launched successful show business careers, sparked romances, marriages, and lifetime friendships, changed the culture of the school, and made many thousands of people laugh and cheer over the course of over 150 productions including the G&S canon, Broadway musicals, dramas, comedies, Shakespeare, and a production of “Twelve Angry Men” (my first) that is credited with starting the process of turning the classic movie into a successful stage show.

Me, I was just trying to address my boredom with law school and had no idea what I was starting. Yet if I get squished by a piece of space junk tomorrow, I’m pretty sure that theater organization will be my most lasting legacy.

Go figure.

But that’s enough about me. Time to write about ethics…

Finishing Wars in a World of Weenies [Photo Replaced]

[Apparently the previous graphic I sued to represent a nuclear bomb explosion either intentionally or by happenstance resembled Bozo the Clown. Amusing, but in this case, a distraction. That’s Hiroshima above. Not funny…]

I don’t know when the United States began its disastrous slide toward weenie-ism, but it’s just got to stop. Unfortunately there are so many cultural pathogens running amuck that the Trump Presidency has to try to solve—multiculturalism, transmania, gun-phobia, censorship, the death of journalism, the corruption of the professions, “the good illegal immigrant,” DEI, and on, and on—getting around to the weenie epidemic will be a long shot at best. But I can dream…

The latest example of the Weenies making trouble is the Israel-Gaza war. Israel’s situation could not be clearer: it has to eliminate Hamas once and for all, or else resign itself to more attacks on citizens in perpetuity. To eliminate Hamas, Israel will have to kill some citizens, destroy some buildings, harm children. Hamas wants to make them do that. But the responsibility for the war lies with Hamas, as does the responsibility for ending it. Hamas can surrender.

Ah, but the Weenies are out in force, condemning Israel for doing what nations that are attacked have to do: strike back decisively, and make certain that the aggressors are never in a position to attack again. The United States understood this in World War II, but a confluence of factors that I have neither the time nor patience to expound on now—though a major one is the ascendancy of women in politics, punditry and the professions—has blurred the clarity of that principle, resulting in such fiascos as the Vietnam War, the first Iraq war, the second Iraq War, and Biden’s Afghanistan debacle.

Arguably, the situation facing Israel is even clearer than any of those, but even in Israel itself, weenie-ism is rotting the moral and ethical core of society. That is another nation, like the U.S., which one would think would have the guts, determination, and courage to do the right thing even when, as the poet said, all about them are losing their heads and blaming it on Israel, and can trust itself when everyone doubts them.

I hope Israel does, but the Weenies are powerful in their weakness, and people will die if they gain the upper hand.

   

Trump Is Heckling MD. Gov. Wes Moore Over His Bronze Star Lie. Good!

I wrote about Md. Governor Wes Moore’s long-term lie about being a Bronze Star recipient in August, when another Democratic Governor who had lied about his military service, Tim “Knucklehead” Walz, was running to be a heartbeat from the Presidency. Apparently Marylanders—Democrats? Progressives?—don’t care about politicians pretending to be war heroes when they weren’t. Interesting. I know my Dad, who was awarded a genuine Bronze Star for battlefield valor as well as a Silver Star, would have considered Moore’s lie disqualifying for public office, and I’d agree with him.

Now, as Trump feuds with various Democratic governors over his threat to send in the National Guard into their crime-ridden cites represented as otherwise with fake statistics, he’s stooped to his usual ad hominem methods regarding Moore, referencing his stolen valor history. Normally, I would regard such tactics as a cheap shot: Moore’s position on the Baltimore crime rate has nothing to do with his military record.

Continue reading

The Red-Pilling of Jonathan Turley

Yesterday George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley registered one of his increasingly frequent columns mocking the Democratic Party. Conservative pundits, blogs and websites continue to describe him as a liberal Democrat professor because it makes his criticism seem more damning, but I’d be shocked if Professor Turley continues to support his old party.

In the post he writes, a bit in his academic weenie mode, unfortunately, “As many know, I was raised in a politically active, liberal, Democratic family in Chicago and worked much of my life for Democratic candidates and campaigns. This week again reminded many of us how far the party has moved from its more centrist history. That includes another call to pack the Supreme Court with liberals to force or ratify sweeping political and social changes.”

What Turley is really saying is that his old party is now thoroughly nuts, and he’s embarrassed to be associated with them….as he should be. As anyone should be.

Continue reading

August’s “Imagine” Award Goes To…

…that ridiculous meme, spotted today on social media. The Ethics Alarm’s “Imagine” Award is named after John Lennon’s worst song—well, depending on how you feel about “The Ballad of John and Yoko”—and the absurd utopian fantasy delusions it represents. (John wasn’t even serious about it, but progressives still get misty-eyed when they hear his con-job.)

Ah yes, the perfect society, where everyone succeeds regardless of effort, ability or character! Also where money grows on trees, nobody dies, food and mansions are free, children run and play and never are sad, and pigs fly. Some smart people really think about this crap.

Whoever led them to waste their time, passion and energy bemoaning the fact that up is up, down is down, life is unfair and human beings can never create perfect anythings has a lot to answer for, and yes, I include Jesus and Karl Marx in that group.

Unethical Quote of the Week: Jeffrey (Ew!) Toobin

“This criminal crusade against political adversaries is completely unprecedented in all of American history.”

—CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin (and why is he still allowed on the air by an allegedly respectable news network?) regarding the so-called Trump revenge plot against Democrats.

It is amazing that any journalist, pundit, progressive or Democrat would have the gall to say that. It is true that weaponizing the justice system to attack, hobble, and eliminate political foes is a totalitarian tactic that the United States had been wise to avoid, but if there was ever a valuable “democratic norm” the Left must take full responsibility for shattering, it is this one. “Unprecedented!” Incredible.

I would say “You’ve gotta hand it to Toobin,” but that would lead me into a joke that I would hate myself for making…

Continue reading

Ethics Verdict On President Trump and the Silly Cracker Barrel Episode

Verdict: President Trump abused his position, power and influence by weighing in on a private company’s choice of logo and continuing to make declarations about it as if it is any of his business or a proper matter of concern for the President of the United States.

Continue reading

The Lisa Cook War

Maybe President Trump has read more history than his detractors give him credit for. Trump 2.0 has appeared to take a lot of inspiration from the transformational “If I have the power, why not use it?” Presidency of Teddy Roosevelt, and in his attempt to wrest control over the economy from the Fed (created by The Second Worst President Ever before Biden wandered into the White House, Woodrow Wilson), Trump seems to be emulating another effective and transformational President whom he has previously praised, “King Andy Jackson.”

Jackson famously killed the predecessor to the Federal Reserve, the Second Bank of the United States. The Second Bank of the United States had been chartered for twenty years before Old Hickory took aim at it. It was a hybrid creation, a private institution with exclusive authority to manage the nation’s economy, particularly through the management of currency, without Presidential or Congressional interference. on a national scale. Jackson believed that the decisions of Nicholas Biddle, the president of the Bank, was biased, in league with Republicans, and not worthy of the trust the bank’s dubious authority required. Sound familiar? He also believed that the Bank of the United States was unconstitutional.

In early 1832, Biddle, in open alliance with the Jeffersonian Democratic- Republican Party’s leaders Senators Henry Clay and Daniel Webster submitted an application for a renewal of the Bank’s twenty-year charter four years before the charter was set to expire. This was a partisan political move to force Jackson, leading a new breakaway populist offshoot party into making a contentious decision prior to the 1832 presidential election in which Jackson’s Democrats were likely to have to defeat Clay. Jackson was not the man to back away from a fight. (Sound familiar?) When Congress voted to reauthorize the Bank, President Jackson vetoed the bill with a veto message accusing the Bank of the United States of pitting “the planters, the farmers, the mechanic and the laborer” against the “monied interest” that represented the elite and powerful against the interests of the American public. Guess who had the public behind him, and who won what was called “The Bank War,” the popularly elected President of the United States?

Now we have the War against Lisa Cook. President Trump said on Monday that he was taking the extraordinary step of removing Lisa Cook, a Biden appointee to the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve in 2022, in what the always objective New York Times calls “a legally dubious maneuver that could undermine the independence of the nation’s central bank.” Or did they write that in 1832?

Continue reading