The scientists argue that longer flights could be offset by more efficiently organized airports with fewer holdups. Apparently these people haven’t flown recently. Can distinguished scientists also be deluded morons? It’s a rhetorical question.
Apparently a biological male who “identifies as female” plays on the Plymouth Regional High School girls’ soccer team in New Hampshire. When the team played its regional rival Bow High School, some Bow parents, protesting the presence of the player whom they regarded as a danger to the born-female players on the Bow team, wore wristbands like the ones above as a silent protest. The Bow High athletic director had told concerned parents before the contest that “in the wake of a federal judge’s ruling that the term ‘girl’ includes males who identify as female,” he felt he was powerless. (He’s a weenie. If he agreed with the parents, he could simply have his team refuse to play the Plymouth team, accept the consequences, and raise the issue.)
When the parents’ “XX” bands appeared at the game, school officials stopped the soccer match, ordered the parents to remove the wristbands, and even “issued [a] police-enforced ‘No Trespassing order’” against two parents who refused.
I got sick of “Law and Order: SVU” long ago, so this 2019 episode, from the 20th season (and it’s still going!) escaped my ethics radar until I reached it by accident this morning and had to watch the whole thing as an obligation to Ethics Alarms.
The episode titled “Part 33” is a perfect example of how popular culture is corrupting American values and ethics problem-solving skills with Hollywood’s constant propaganda opposing personal responsibility, the Rule of Law, and promoting emotion-based judgement rather than decisions based on fact and logic.
The Trump-endorsed Republican candidate for governor in North Carolina, Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, either went nuts, is nuts, or has been nuts all along. CNN’s Andrew Kaczynski reported that Robinson called himself a “black NAZI” and a “perv” online, boasted about sneaking looks at nude women in public showers, loving pornography (“I like watching tranny-on-girl porn! That’s fucking hot!”) and reinstituting slavery. “Slavery is not bad. Some people need to be slaves. I wish they would bring it (slavery) back. I would certainly buy a few,” the black politician wrote. All of this was on Nude Africa, a message board for sharing porn.
Naturally, Robinson is denying everything, says he won’t be forced out of the race, yada-yada. He’s an idiot. Be proud, Republicans! How do utter jerks like Robinson—although he does appear to be a very special kind of jerk— keep getting nominated and elected? The parties don’t vet them, the media doesn’t vet them, and the public doesn’t check on what it is voting for either until the damage is done.
May I also suggest that Donald Trump try to have someone on staff perform a little due diligence on such characters before he endorses them?
I hate to pick on well-intentioned commentary from the resident Ethics Alarms Reasonable Cephalopod, but so be it: I can’t let this pass. Several commenters were lining up to defend this bit of circular argle-bargle from Kamala Harris yesterday:
There must be stability and peace in that region, in as much as what we do in our goal is to ensure that Israelis have security, and Palestinians in equal measure have security, have self-determination, and dignity. That there be an ability to have security in the region, for all concerned, in a way that we create stability, and—let us all also recognize—in a way that ensures that Iran is not empowered in this whole scenario in terms of the peace and stability in the region.”
Extradimensional Cephalopod, as always trying to arbitrate, wrote, “Jack, if we separate the statement from the person saying it, the statement itself is fine. It’s a statement of the ideal outcome.”
That was USA Today’s reporting of the Trump assassination attempt yesterday. (I haven’t checked to see if it has been changed.)
The sub-head is a non-sequitur unless the reader is supposed to conclude that there is a causal connection between Trump’s Truth Social post, Vance’s provocative comments on Sunday Morning TV, and the later assassination attempt.
There is no defending such blatant partisan hackery from a news source. The fact that this nonsense could make it to the USA Today site without a sane professional putting a stop to it is damning. Are we supposed to conclude that the shooter was an offended Taylor Swift fan? USA Today might as well have written, “The incident occurred that same day that Trump had hush puppies for breakfast.”
Again, this is how you try rig an election, at least if you’re aiming at the moron vote—which is, sadly, considerable.
Were it not for the apparently huge number of women willing to make a radical incompetent, Kamala Harris, the leader of the nation because she favors allowing mothers to kill their unborn children at will, the Democrats would be facing the prospect of a landslide loss come November. Almost every other major demographic group has moved toward Trump and for a very obvious reason: the Biden Presidency has been a disaster, and the Democratic Party has abandoned any fealty to American values, principles and democracy in pursuit of unbridled power. Yet a growing number of voters now say abortion is their top issue in 2024. Amazing. Amazing and indefensible morally and ethically.
Think about that. Abortion—killing unborn human beings—is the most important issue for millions of voters. This isn’t a virtue or a process embraced by admirable cultures: the Soviet Union used abortion as a primary form of birth control, and so has China. These are nations that do not value human life as our founding documents declare that our unique society does. Abortion doesn’t make America stronger economically, or keep the world safe from ruthless foreign regimes, or help small businesses thrive, or make the nation energy independent; it doesn’t make our public education any better, reduce crime, drug addiction and disease. In the vast majority of cases, abortion accomplishes two objectives: it allows women an extra level of protection if their sexual activity results in an inconvenient pregnancy, and it lets mothers employ medical professionals to kill their unwanted children before the law protects those innocent lives.
As he does so often, Donald Trump accepted something he read or heard as gospel truth and repeated it as fact, this time in a Presidential debate, and was promptly ‘factchecked” and subsequently ridiculed. The back-ground: a large number of Haitian “migrants,” who may or may not be here legally, seem to have ended up in Springfield, Ohio. One resident complained that they were eating pet geese and cats, her claim went viral, and the meme-makers have had a field day…
Winston Churchill is often quoted as as observing that democracy is “the worst form of government except for all others.” In truth he was not so cynical: what he really said in a speech to the House of Commons in 1947 was that “it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time; but there is the broad feeling in our country that the people should rule, and that public opinion expressed by all constitutional means, should shape, guide, and control the actions of Ministers who are their servants and not their masters.”
If he were around today and watching recent developments in our depressing Presidential race, however, I think Winston might go with the misquoted version.
Item: MoveOn, a progressive public policy advocacy group that has been much-derided on Ethics Alarms over the years, is partnering with Ben & Jerry’s radical Left co-founders Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield to release a special Kamala Harris-inspired ice cream flavor. (Send in related joke suggestions, by all means.) Limited edition pints of “Kamala’s Coconut Jubilee”are being released in a limited edition; it is a coconut flavored ice cream layered with caramel and topped with red, white and blue star sprinkles. Why coconut? This, apparently. (Winston is starting to roll already.)
The new flavor will be the center of the “Scoop the Vote” free ice cream truck tour that kicks off next week. Cohen and Greenfield will be on board while the truck makes 20 stops in the so-called battleground states as part of a push to register voters. Rahna Epting, executive director of MoveOn, told USA TODAY that the tour aims to inspire voters to register and cast their votes for Harris in the 2024 presidential election, noting that even non-political activities like getting free ice cream have an impact on the election.
It’s been slim ethics pickin’s of late, probably because everyone is obsessed with the campaign and the Debate To Decide The Fate Of Democracy (or DTDTFOD for short). These things always launch ridiculous numbers of fake news items, like “How Trump and Harris Will Try to Attack Each Other at the Debate” on the Times website, a variety of what I call “psychic fake news;” “How Trump Has Used Debates to Belittle Women” (‘poisoning the well”) on its front page, and also “As Debate Looms, Trump Is Now the One Facing Questions About Age and Capacity.” Translation: The mainstream media Democratic shills want to make the election about “age and capacity.” Then we have the hilarious “Hillary Clinton Has Advice on Debating Trump: ‘He Can Be Rattled’” Taking advice from Hillary on how to beat Trump is like taking advice from George Foreman about how to beat Muhammad Ali. I chuckled at “Liz Cheney Accuses G.O.P. Trump Backers of Betraying Their Principles.” Kamala Harris literally represents the opposite of everything she and her father at least pretended to stand for until Trump Derangement struck. Still, there are some issues lying around that need to be cleared…
Ethics Alarms 