Bill Gates, nerd and “on the spectrum” sufferer that he is, also has the advantage of being sufficiently rich that he is insulated from Leftist fury when he defies wokist cant. Today the climate change scam collective is presumably freaking out because Gates has issued a memo saying, in effect, “Oopsie! What a stupid I am! I let a bunch of agenda-driven scientists and lying (or ignorant) activists convince me to waste billions of dollars on their dishonest hustle! Oh well, live and learn…”
“bias makes you stupid”
“Social Media Is An Idiot Detection Service,” Episode #789K
Today’s episode, from “X”:
Sharmine Narwani, we are told, is a well-known journalist and political analyst specializing in West Asian geopolitical issues. She believes that Islam was around six centuries before Muhammad was born. She wants to spread her ignorance far and wide.
The tweet has 25,000 “loves.” I regard it as a pre-holiday “Coming Attractions” feature, warning us of the fatuous Jesus=Illegal immigrants analogies we will be getting from our woke friends (and a lot of pulpits) all too soon.
(Pointer to Glenn Reynolds, who accurately notes, “Actually, of course, it was a Jewish kingdom when Jesus was born. And it didn’t become Arab or Muslim until the Mohammedan invasion of the 7th century. Today’s inhabitants of “Palestine” are settler-colonialists. Israel is fighting a war of indigenous resistance to colonization.”
For The Trump-Derangement Archives: Unethical Quote of the Week That Made Me Not Bother To Pay Any More Attention
“I Particularly Like the Line Where You Said Trumpism Is Seeking ‘To Amputate the Higher Elements of the Human Spirit — Learning, Compassion, Science, and the Pursuit of Justice, and Supplant Those Virtues With Greed, Retribution, Ego and Appetite.'”
—-Ancient and execrable Washington Post pundit E.J. Dionne (EA dossier here)) in the course of a metaphorical mutual masturbation session with NYT Stockholm Syndrome conservative David Brooks (EA dossier here), plus former host of NPR’s “All Things Considered” Robert Siegel, “Trump Has a Religion. What Do Democrats Have? Mamdani might be working in Democrats’ favor. But what about ‘No Kings’?”
Althouse flagged this, and I just couldn’t stomach reading it. Siegel’s bias is presumed from his long tenure at NPR, where, some readers will recall, I was blackballed for daring to defend Donald Trump on the air.
Ugh. The President pressuring universities to teach rather than indoctrinate and gutting the wasteful Cabinet department that had presided over catastrophic decline in pubic schools is “amputating” education. Enforcing the laws is “amputating” compassion. Refusing to waste trillions in response to politically-inspired climate change hype is “amputating” science. The arrogance and smug certitude of these close-minded assholes…double ugh. I’ll listen to and read my Trump Deranged friends when they say these things because at least they aren’t paid for it and are just bloviating emotion-based opinions. But these guys…
Who can keep reading their junk and its ubiquitous equivalents? (OK, I skimmed a bit and learned that they all think the stupid “No Kings” protests were wonderful.) More to the point, how dim and confused do you have to be to take this discussion as anything but sour grapes from a sad, elite sector of our culture that wildly overplayed its hand, got its bluff called, and was exposed as the sinister charlatans they always were?
Althouse just threw this raw meat to her readers without making any statement herself: I’m sure she knew what would follow. You should check out the red-pilled comments, which almost entirely drip with contempt.
You can read the exchange here (gift link) if you like. Me. I’ve got a sock drawer to organize.
Ethics Meltdown at American Family Field: Who’s The Ethics Miscreant? A Test…
Shannon Kobylarczyk (above, from the phone video that became her undoing) was attending one of the National League Championship Series games between the Dodgers and the Brewers at American Family Field when her interaction with another fan altered the course of her life.
Ricardo Fosado, an out-of-town visitor from L.A. who favored the Dodgers, engaged in a little friendly needling with Sharon, a passionate Brewers partisan, when the Los Angeles team took the lead. (The Dodgers eventually won the 7-game series, sending them to the World Series, which begins this week.) “Why is everybody quiet?” he asked.
Kobylarczyk was in no mood for gloating. She shouted at Fosado: “Real men drink beer, pussy!” and threatened to call I.C.E. on the apparently Hispanic spectator. She then told the man in front of her that he should sic immigration enforcement on Fosado. Now he was annoyed. “Call ICE! Call ICE. I’m a U.S. citizen, war veteran, baby girl. War veteran, two wars. ICE is not gonna do nothing to me. Good luck!” he said.
Why do we know all this? Because someone in the crowd who should have been watching the game and minding his or her own business was recording the whole confrontation.
Kobylarczyk escalated: she went to stadium security and reported Fosado for disrupting her baseball experience, or something. They ushered him out of the stadium citing “public intoxication.”
The team is the Milwaukee Brewers, mind you.
But wait! There’s more! The asshole who videoed the episode put it on social media, where it went “viral.” This resulted in Kobylarczyk being labeled a racist, so her company, a Milwaukee-based recruitment and staffing outfit called the Manpower Group, fired her ( she was the associate general counsel) and issued a standard virtue-signaling announcement to take credit for standing up for “a culture grounded in respect, integrity, and accountability.” Then Kobylarczyk was forced to quit the board of directors at Make-A-Wish Wisconsin, which also issued a statement condemning her. Naturally the Brewers also had to get into the act, so they released this statement:
“The Brewers expect all persons attending games to be respectful of each other, and we do not condone in any way offensive statements fans make to each other about race, gender, or national origin. Our priority is to ensure that all in attendance have a safe and enjoyable experience at the ballpark.”
Then the team banned both Fosado and Kobylarczyk from the ballpark forever. Yeesh! Talk about a mini-Ethics Train Wreck!
The candidates for Worst Ethics Dunce is this mess are:
Pop Quiz: Which Answer From This Pathetic Couple Is Worse?
I just rejoined “X” so I could pick off a post here and there, but I won’t be tricked into paying for a “blue check” again. That telling scene above just came to my attention. I was about to file it for a future “warm-up,” but decided to get it out of the way now.
At one of the stupid “No Kings” rallies Saturday, these two were asked if they supported the deportation of illegal immigrants. The guy, obviously the beta in the relationship, stutters, “Yes,” only to be admonished by his audibly sighing female companion. She then answers the same question with a “no” and explains, “It’s not illegal.”
Oh. Fascinating thought process there! Then the bearded guy, having been persuaded, almost, by her 1) dirty look and 2) her brilliant legal analysis, changes his answer to “I’m not sure.”
Which answer is worse, once we eliminate the ethical answer, which was “yes”? My vote goes to the weenie’s “I’m not sure”— stupid, cowardly, obviously insincere and still enabling law-breaking. That guy and his ilk are the ones who let the Left get away with its habitual “It isn’t what it is” strategy.
I hope the interviewer didn’t end that relationship. Those two deserve each other.
Confronting My Biases: Episode 23: Anyone Who Would Post or Sign or “Like” This Social Media “No Kings” Screed
This certifiably awful, annoying, hysterical, factually wrong, ignorant, stupid, smug and inarticulate thing turned up on my Facebook feed last night for the first time. Except for the nice, once intelligent friend who posted it, none of the signatories—there are hundreds—were known to me, but I’m sure that will change now.
I had to wrestle with myself longer than usual not to append a sharply worded comment to it: I would have been the first one. As we have established here in the many posts (too many, I suppose) I have written about the tragedy of Trump Derangement, it is futile to argue with these people, as they are beyond enlightening or reason.
But I know, I KNOW, that many wonderful people I respect, admire and care about will blindly sign on to this statement, manifesto, letter, whatever you want to call it, and that some of them would turn on me viciously if I ventured to point out the document’s undeniable flaws. So I want to treat this as I would a giant wart on a friend’s nose, a birthmark, a stutter, an annoying speech pattern or habitual bad breath, but boy, it’s hard.
So behold the monstrosity!
Addendum: “And the Charlie Kirk Assassination Ethics Train Wreck Rolls On…”
I started writing this as a comment to the lively thread that has followed last night’s post, but decided to make it a separate post because the discussion raises its own ethical issues.
The Kirk denigration since the Turning Point USA founder’s death resembles that old kids game “telephone.” You would whisper a statement into the ear of the kid next to you who would pass it along down a line of ten or more and finally compare the original message to what the last one in the line heard. Hilarity usually ensued, as the vagaries of oral communication and the reception thereof resulted in “Mikey has a crush on Sue Brandeberry” turning into “Nike is suing someone who smeared crushed berries on its brand.” “Telephone” is a benign interpretation of a lot of the slander and libel against Kirk’s character and legacy; the non-benign interpretation is that people are just lying.
In the thread, a respected commenter here sparked some angry responses by answering my repeated question in the original post [“What did Kirk do or say that could possibly justify these freakouts?”] thusly: “At a guess, it might be his statement that passing the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was a mistake that might have been an issue. Or his highly uncomplimentary statements about Martin Luther King Jr and the approval of his assassination. Freedom of speech and all that.”
I have heard or read several equivalent versions of that answer since Kirk’s death, and they are worth clarifying and discussing.
Unethical (and Stupid) Quote of the Day: Comic/Pundit Jon Stewart
“Fuck You, James Madison!”
—“Clown nose on/clown nose off” Comedy Central comic Jon Stewart, in the course of blaming the Founders for the current Democrat Party shutdown of the Federal government.
Imagine: a large proportion of young Americans look to this fake authority for their news and political analysis. True, they could do even worse: Kimmel or Colbert; MSNBC, NPR, you know, what Capt. Renault in “Casablanca” would call “the usual suspects.” This latest outburst from the smug, intermittently witty know-it-all, failed actor (like Bill Maher), however, may represent his absolute low point, and he has had many previous stinkers.
But with his latest rant, we can see just how useless, ignorant and incompetent Stewart is when he isn’t mugging or being funny. At the end of the latest “The Weekly Show” podcast, Stewart was asked who to blame for the government shutdown. Of course he wouldn’t say “The Democrats, dummy!” though that is the only factual answer. Instead he blamed the Founders. Here’s his “hilarious” answer:
“Who is responsible for the government shutdown? I’m gonna go with the Founders, who came up with this fucking fakakta, overly complex bureaucratic web of nonsense that it takes to get anything done, and I think it’s very difficult when one political party that represents 75 million voters has zero say, authority, heft, and in a functioning political environment that isn’t a zero-sum game, there would have been conversations up until now that took some consideration. Some, I’m not saying a lot.”
Oh, stop, stop, Jon, my sides are splitting! The funny man went on,
Ethics Observations on Another Progressive Academic Meltdown
On his usually excellent blog, Prof. Jonathan Turley tells readers about Derek Lopez, a teacher’s assistant and graduate student at Illinois State University. This jerk—-signature significance!—was caught on video attacking a Turning Point USA table on his campus and verbally abusing the conservative students manning it. The 27-year-old Lopez says to the students as he overturns their table, “Well, you know, Jesus did it, so you know I gotta do it, right? Thanks, guys, have a great day!” Then he tears down a TPUSA flyer on a nearby bulletin board.
He was later arrested. Will he be fired? He should be, but don’t bet on it. He is a part of a dangerous ideological movement in this country that believes that violence and the abuse of political adversaries is justified as the “means necessary” to remake America. He is not an aberration.
Ethics Observations:
This Is How Websites Get Blacklisted on Ethics Alarms: “Not The Bee’s” #22 Rationalization Orgy
“Not the Bee” is a conservative commentary site that, in the spirit of The Libs of TikTok, highlights supposedly outrageous news from the political Left. It is already on thin ice with me as a source of ethics stories, in part because its tendency to mix politics with Christian proselytizing is an irritant. Another problem, which the issue at hand illustrates, is that apparently in the proprietors’ jaundiced eyes, the Right can do no wrong.
In this story, much discussed in the Axis media (of course), it was revealed that a disturbing number of leaders in the Young Republican organization are preening, juvenile assholes who think praising Hitler, joking about rape and killing Jews, and making racist slurs is funny or acceptable. These were captured in a leaked series of group chats that, it is fair to day, did not cast the future leadership of the GOP in an encouraging light, nor did it help disabuse progressives of their incessant narrative, highlighted by the previous sort-of President…
…. that Donald Trump, MAGA, conservatives and the Republican Party are aspiring fascists driven by “toxic masculinity.”
I wrote of the revelation in part, “Smoking guns are no less damning whenever they surface. Politico writes, “The chat offers an unfiltered look at how a new generation of GOP activists talk when they think no one is listening.” I don’t see how anyone can quibble with that.”
So Not the Bee, said, in effect, “Hold my beer!” “The primary point of debate is not whether the comments were morally wrong, but whether or not it should be a national news story,” it intoned. What? It certainly is a national news story, as it casts a harsh and appropriate light on the culture in some of the dark corners of the conservative movement and the mind of its participants as well as its leadership. So did the reaction of NTB, which mirrors the reflex instinct of the Axis, which is that any scandal involving Democrats is a “nothingburger.” You know, like Hunter Biden’s laptop, evidence that Obama helped orchestrate the Russian Collusion hoax, evidence of witnesses called by Liz Cheney et al. to suggest Trump incited the J-6 riot being coached, Fulton County’s DA using her pursuit of Donald Trump to fund a tryst with her adulterous lover, Joe Biden being accused of rape by a Senate staffer, more recently the astounding number of progressives who cheered the assassination of Charlie Kirk, and so on, ad infinitum.
Not The Bees’s device? Why, go right to #22 on the Ethics Alarms Rationalization List:
Ethics Alarms 