Oh-Oh! President Trump Violated Another Norm!

Setting a new low in seeking reasons to criticize the President it and its readers love to hate, the New York Times devoted a full article (“Trump’s Blue Suit at Pope’s Funeral Draws Attention”) to President Trump’s choice of suit to wear to the Pope’s funeral. Get this:

President Trump, it seems, is fully committed to going his own way when it comes to international relations — even during the funeral of a pope. On Saturday, as he joined other world leaders to pay his respects to Pope Francis, he stood in St. Peter’s Square among President Emmanuel Macron of France (who was wearing black), Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain (in black), President Javier Milei of Argentina (in black) and Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni of Italy (in black). Mr. Trump? He was wearing blue.
And not even dark, midnight blue, but a clear, sapphire-like blue, with matching tie. Amid all the black and Cardinal red, it popped out like a sign.
The choice did not grossly violate the dress code for the event (which reportedly called for a dark suit with a black tie for men). Prince William also appeared to be wearing blue, though a shade closer to navy, and former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. wore a blue tie. But Mr. Trump’s look certainly skirted the edges.

Oh, bite me. Skirted what “edges?” This rates a Kaufman on Ethics Alarms. That is a situation where my concern about the controversy at hand equals George S. Kaufman’s famous description of how interested he was in the complaint by aging crooner Eddie Fisher (father of Carrie) that he was having trouble meeting and dating young women. The famous wit and playwright said (on a live panel TV show),

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The Guardian’s Blue Origin Flight Critique: Into The Mind of America Haters, Where No One Rational Has Gone Before!

What a fascinating article from the British hard left tabloid “The Guardian!” Simultaneously taking aim at a legitimate target and exploding into a furious attack on the United States and Donald Trump, it is invaluable for plumbing the depths of how the extreme progressive Left takes in information, filtering it through a confirmation bias to reach false but—for them—comforting conclusions. Stephen Green nailed some of what’s wrong here, “writer Moira Donegan’s utter lack of self-awareness while decrying our lack of self-awareness.” She uses Blue Origin’s all-female passenger flight to as evidence of U.S. decline, but the too-obvious-to-mention reality is that the U.S. has more than one private company capable of putting humans into space, and the crumbling U.K. can’t come close to producing the same.

How can an essay be simultaneously astute and idiotic at the same time? Easy. Donegan accurately writes that for the most part, the high visibility female celebrities taking this expensive joy ride embarrassed themselves and their sex by acting like sorority girls exclaiming, “Like, omigawd! Stars!” Leaving out the gratuitous political shots, Donegan writes in part,

Space used to be a frontier for human exploration, a fount of innovation, and a symbol of a bright, uncertain and expansive future. Now, it is a backdrop for the Instagram selfies of the rich and narcissistic….the flight, and its grim promotional cycle, might be most depressing for what it reveals about the utter defeat of American feminism. Sánchez, the organizer of the flight, has touted the all-female crew as a win for women. But she herself is a woman in a deeply antifeminist model. It is not her rocket company that took her and her friends to the edge of space; it’s her male fiance’s. And it is no virtue of her character that put her inside the rocket – not her capacity, not her intellect and not her hard work – but merely her relationship with a man….There are at least two women on the mission who can be credited as serious persons: Aisha Bowe, an aerospace engineer, and Amanda Nguyen, a civil rights entrepreneur…But most of the crew’s self-presentation and promotion of the flight has leaned heavily on a vision of women’s empowerment that is light on substance and heavy on a childlike, girlish silliness that insults women by cavalierly linking their gender with superficiality, vanity and unseriousness. In an interview with Elle, the crew members paid lip service to the importance of women…but mostly, they seemed interested in talking about their makeup and hair. “Space is going to finally be glam,” Katy Perry said…“Let me tell you something. If I could take glam up with me, I would do that. We are going to put the ‘ass’ in astronaut.” “Who would not get glam before the flight?!” asked Sánchez, who evidently can’t imagine that women might prioritize anything else. “We’re going to have lash extensions flying in the capsule.” Bowe, too, joined in, saying that she had gone to extreme lengths to make sure that she would be, of all things, well coiffed for the experience. “I skydived in Dubai with similar hair to make sure I would be good,” she said. “I took it for a dry run.”

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Some Funny Things Happened on the Way to the Ethics Alarms Friday Forum…

Last week’s open forum was wild, man, and I hope today’s can be as lively.

Based on the early returns, there’s a lot to bloviate about in the ethics world. The amateur golf champ playing in the Masters was caught pissing into a creek on n the 13th hole at Augusta National golf course. Pennsylvania judge Sonya McKnight was just convicted of shooting her sleeping boyfriend in the head. (Seems awfully judgmental…). Almost all Democrats in the House voted against the bill requiring voter ID in Federal elections. Yes, their determination to prove the cognitive dissonance scale wrong continues apace! A black Congressman tried to discuss issues with a Trump-Deranged white female and was called a “race traitor”…

…and we learned that after VP JD Vance’s March visit to Pituffik Space Base in Greenland, the Col. Susan Meyers, the commander of the 821st Space Base Group who also oversees the Pentagon’s northernmost military base, issued a gratuitous email to the base’s personnel stating that he did not speak for her of the base. What an idiot. (She was fired.) Finally, we have this stupid incident, in which Frontier Airlines let a woman fly to Puerto Rico with her “emotional support parrot” but wouldn’t let the bird on the return flight. (Gift link.)

Be careful. It’s stupid out there…

Comment of the Day: “Tariffs Have Been Needed For Decades”

I meant to post this retort to Steve Witherspoon’s guest column yesterday (as it was “Tariffs Monday” at Ethics Alarms, but was waylaid by life. Canadian EA correspondent Humble Talent began a long and lively debate thread with his Comment of the Day, and I encourage you to read it all, here. Meanwhile, here’s Humble…

Oh! I almost forgot: I read another anti-tariff piece today titled “I Shot the Tariff.” I should have thought of that. Phooey.

I’m always disappointed when there’s something that I’m actually familiar with in the media, because a lot of the media smudging that happens around the areas that they’re familiar with stand out like a sore thumb.

Tariffs have been one of those things. And this attack on Free Trade is another.

You want to know what’s bullshit? The idea that any nation can pull of autarky (“a system where a country or region aims for self-sufficiency, minimizing or eliminating international trade and relying primarily on its own resources and production.”) No one can pull off autarky and maintain efficiency, product diversity, and quality of life. You will eventually need to trade for something.

You want an example for America? Potash. There are exactly three active potash mines in America, because the resource effectively does not exist in America. You import 96% of potash used for crop fertilizer. Without potash imports, you would be unable to add phosphorus to your crop input chemistry, and your yields would suffer. Which would then impact your already insufficient food production system. Your people would literally starve. Which means there will be trade.

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Tariffs Have Been Needed For Decades

Guest post by Steve Witherspoon

[It’s shaping up as “Tariffs Monday,” at least in the morning! JM]

I worked as a Manufacturing Engineer in a metal fabrication plant for thirty years (I wore many hats in this small company) and I personally saw what other countries (especially, China, Mexico, and Canada) were doing to undermine manufacturing in the United States of America. The USA should have put tariffs on at least these three countries 20+ years ago, but instead they were allowed to continue to unfairly practice “free trade” with us unabated.

China took one manufacturing and assembly job after another, then China used its financial capital to seriously undercut USA steel manufacturing causing steel mills in the USA to slow to a dead crawl and increase their cost a lot. In addition to that, the steel coming out of China was rusty and didn’t meet quality standards and distributors were having real problems providing quality steel to long term customers like our company. We had to slow production of some products as a result of supply problems and that hurt some of our customers and that trickled down to problems for some consumers.

Canada has been undermining aluminum and stainless steel manufacturing in the USA for over twenty years, as they practiced their unfair “free trade”  with us unabated. When Canada’s stainless steel production slowed we had to seriously slow the manufacturing of some products. One stainless steel product that had to be slowed we made for a local company and that product ended up on United States Navy submarines. I personally know people who worked (past tense) in aluminum mills and they watched as the plants slowed down to a crawl. People got laid off and retired early as Canada took over most of the market for some aluminums.

Then there is Mexico. That nation has been undermining USA assembly plants of all kinds for well over twenty years. Where do you think a huge portion of assembled consumer goods are coming from, including PC computers? Yup, it’s Mexico and usually just across the USA/Mexico border. These are not the only countries that have been unfair with all this “free trade” bull shit.

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Comment of the Day: Friday Open Forum [Tariffs Thread]

That’s the New York Times graph this morning showing stock markets since President Trump’s inauguration. The lowest line (in orange) is Japan; the next lowest line is the U.S. The reason for all of those declines are believed to be Trump’s tariff policies.

A commenter last week asked why Ethics Alarms hadn’t discussed Trump’s tariffs. My response was, 1) I didn’t see them as an ethical issue and 2) I wasn’t informed sufficiently on the topic to opine on it. Veteran EA commentator Chris Marschner said, “Hold my beer!” The post below is the result: you van review the whole thread, which includes more from Chris, here.

***

I don’t know if this is an ethics angle per se but the tariff objections illustrate without question America’s unwillingness to suffer any short term discomfort in order to obtain long term security. I keep hearing that Trump is a narcissist such that he has this inappropriate sense of sense but one of the clinical signs of narcissistic behavior is a sense of entitlement. The minute anything Trump does causes some immediate discomfort or loss many in the public feel they are entitled to what they had before.

A large percentage of the stock market gains are illusory because much of that growth was driven by inflated profits and subsequently inflated stock prices. Consumer and producer prices rise before costs are actually incurred because labor costs are negotiated on longer term contracts as are so many of our commodities. The Biden administration fueled those inflated profits – and he said as much in a speech in the port of Baltimore – when he poured 2 trillion dollars into the economy with too few goods to buy. Employment gains in the last 4 years were in large measure government jobs that produce intangibles whose values are only measured in terms of their employment.

People need to realize that the algorithms used by traders are driving much of the sell off because tariffs are deemed to be anti-growth. What the buy/sell programs are not factoring in is the 6 trillion dollars worth of investment commitment which will revitalize our semi-conductor industry and other strategic industries. We have to buy spare avionics parts for our military and the base materials for our medicines from our political adversary who has a 100 year plan to dominate the globe.

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And the “Great Stupid” Continues to Spread Its Dark Wings Across the Earth…

On the bright side, I guess, it appears to be much stupider across “the pond” than here, which is astounding. However, the fact that anybody has been so addled by the various Woke and Wonderful agenda items as this story indicates has to concern everyone. My reaction to it is barely contained in the catch phrase, “I can’t even…”

Emma Pinchbeck is chief executive of the U.K.’s Climate Change Committee (CCC). She recently announced the group’s conviction that frequent flyers should pay higher taxes so that less affluent Brits can take nicer vacations.

Oh. What??

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Gee, I Wonder Why Americans Are Losing Trust In Their Nation’s Institutions? It’s a Mystery!

Science, Academia, Journalism, Government.

On June 3, 2022, the young protestor above tied her neck to the net during a tennis match at the French Open, with her shirt reading “We Have 1028 Days Left” sending the critical message to the world that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change had decreed that if massive de-carbonization was not implemented before that (literal!) deadline, it would be too late to save the planet from a climate change apocalypse.

The 1,028th day was last week, Thursday March 27, 2025. Does that young woman feel ridiculous? She should. Now, she probably is one of those fanatics who won’t procreate because children are bad for the environment, but if she does, her kids will have a ball with that photo. I know I would have, just as if there was a photo of my mother as a teen dressed as a banana, or my father with dicks on his face after having them drawn on while he was asleep.

The Totalitarian Left in the U.S. has been citing “science” to justify irresponsible policies for years, indeed decades, and accountability is at hand. If the science of climate change is so “settled,” why are all the predictions and deadlines proven ridiculously false? Even our currently under-educated, critical thinking deprived rising generations are smart enough to figure out a con when they see, well, when they see the same con over and over again. Here’s an article about how the Great Barrier Reef that we were told was being destroyed by global warming (Science!) has more than doubled in a decade and its size and health is the highest ever recorded.

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In What Is Shaping Up As “Incompetence Monday” on Ethics Alarms, THIS…

Yes, that is indeed a woman’s hand stuck in that Chinese gentleman’s mouth. Two morons for the price of one. (Ha! I originally typed “rice of one”!)

Doctors at a hospital in Jilin, China treated a couple that came awkwardly walking into the emergency room. The woman had her hand stuck in her boyfriend’s mouth. They were trying to shoot a funny video, see, to post online so it would go “viral.” The woman, who has a small fist (but unfortunately not quite small enough) managed to stuff her hand in the guy’s mouth but when she tried to pull it out, his mouth muscles spasmed and his jaw clamped down.

The woman told the puzzled medical staff that her boyfriend’s face turned red as her efforts to yank her hand free proved futile. He was drooling and his throat made a gurgling sound, while his teeth dug into her wrist. “Saliva ran down my wrist to my elbow,” the woman said, but in Chinese. “It felt like my hand was stuck in a meat grinder.”

Doctor Zhang Mingyuan, who finally got the woman’s fist free, explained that the couple had triggered a dangerous cycle in which the increasing pain in the boyfriend’s jaw caused his jaw muscles to contract more. The medical staff tried to prevent the man from choking or vomiting by playing soothing music—you know, like “Feelings,” though I would think that would increase the vomiting risk—then used a mouth opening device to pry open his jaws sufficiently to inject a muscle relaxant. It took 20 minutes, but Doctor Zhang eventually was able to rotate the woman’s wrist enough to carefully slip it free.

Well, they got their viral video!

From the Res Ipsa Loquitur Files: The Hypocrisy of the Climate Change Racket

From the BBC:

“A new four-lane highway cutting through tens of thousands of acres of protected Amazon rainforest is being built for the COP30 climate summit in the Brazilian city of Belém. It aims to ease traffic to the city, which will host more than 50,000 people – including world leaders – at the conference in November.

“The state government touts the highway’s “sustainable” credentials, but some locals and conservationists are outraged at the environmental impact. The Amazon plays a vital role in absorbing carbon for the world and providing biodiversity, and many say this deforestation contradicts the very purpose of a climate summit.

[Insert snide Ethics Alarms aside: Ya think??]

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