Character

Getting To Know Kamala Harris

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

Most Americans, even and indeed perhaps especially those who voted for the Biden-Harris ticket have scant knowledge of who Kamala Harris is, and for Democrats, that was a good thing.

She was chosen as Biden’s running mate purely because he had to pick a woman and one “of color,” and if Oprah wasn’t available, the field was far from stellar. Those who did know much about Harris, the Democrats who paid attention to her cringe-worthy debate performances and who watched her various giggling, pandering interviews, were sufficiently unimpressed to withhold their votes, even when the alternatives were as weak, or weaker, than the cognitively fading, accused sexual harasser former Vice President, and even while the news media was openly cheer-leading for her.

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Monday Morning Ethics Warm-Up, 12/28/20: Happy Birthday, Woodrow Wilson!

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

2020 end

As 2020 staggers to a conclusion, Ethics Alarms wants to express its gratitude to the core of devoted Alarmist commentators who kept the dialogue going during what is always an annual cratering of blog traffic. I appreciate it. I also appreciated the many kind holiday wishes, in what has been a muted Christmas for the Marshalls for a number of reasons I won’t bore you with.

In case you were among the missing, I draw your attention to…

…among other hopefully edifying and entertaining posts.

1. After signalling otherwise or perhaps just trolling, President Trump signed the truly awful pandemic relief and omnibus spending bill, really sending the national debt into orbit. One theory is that doing so was necessary to avoid a Democratic sweep of the two Senate seats up for grabs in Georgia. I will file the event as one more car on the Wuhan Virus Ethics Train Wreck, and one that will do more damage in the long run than most of them.

2. In Nevada, Gabrielle Clark filed a federal lawsuit against her son’s charter school last week for refusing to let him opt out of a mandatory class that promotes anti-white racism. It claims that Democracy Prep at the Agassi Campus forced William Clark “to make professions about his racial, sexual, gender and religious identities in verbal class exercises and in graded, written homework assignments,” creating a hostile environment, and subjecting he son’s statements ” to the scrutiny, interrogation and derogatory labeling of students, teachers and school administrators,” who are “still are coercing him to accept and affirm politicized and discriminatory principles and statements that he cannot in conscience affirm.” The lawsuit includes nearly 150 pages of exhibits documenting the curriculum in the graduation requirement “Sociology of Change,” which promotes intersectionality and critical race theory, in breach of what was promised when the Clark’s first sent their son to the school.

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Once Again, America’s Best-Known Scientist Demonstrates Why We Can’t Trust Scientists, Especially If They Are Progressive, Pandering, Political Correctness-Obsessed Jerks Who Apparently Get Their Information From Cartoons [Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

Not for the first time, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, the anointed successor to the far more serious and reliable Carl Sagan, abused his reputation as the nation’s most-recognized scientist by grandstanding for the progressive mob, his allies and pals.

On Christmas Eve, he tweeted,

“Santa doesn’t know Zoology: Both male & female Reindeer grow antlers. But all male Reindeer lose their antlers in the late fall, well-before Christmas. So Santa’s reindeer, which all sport antlers, are therefore all female, which means Rudolf has been misgendered.“

One of the annoying things about Tyson is that he is a know-it-all, and like most know-it-alls, he doesn’t know as much as he thinks he does. When someone sporting the mantle of scientist is delving into the accuracy of the alleged features of Santa’s reindeer, he should be aware of the origin of the assertions he is debunking. Tyson obviously isn’t. Indeed, he is apparently illiterate.

The first mention of Santa’s reindeer is in the 1822 poem “A Visit from St. Nicholas,” better known today as “The Night Before Christmas.” He refers to “eight tiny reindeer.” Reindeer aren’t tiny, at least the reindeer we know about. If Santa’s reindeer are indeed tiny (in the poem they are pulling a “miniature sleigh”) , then they must be a species unknown to us and science, and thus the male members of the breed might retain their antlers. We have little information on this question. Scientists are supposed to investigate such things, not leap to conclusions. Tyson just assumed tiny reindeer are the same as the usual kind, or, more likely, he didn’t consider the issue at all. That’s sloppy, agenda-driven science, and malpractice by Tyson.

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Boxing Day Ethics Warm-Up, 2020: A Tip, An Obituary, A Prank, A Tell, And A Slug

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Gifts

Now this is a dedicated grandmother: my sister, who has been risk-averse her whole life, and who is my model of a Wuhan virus phobic, bought a used Winnebago, loaded up her old Havanese, and drove from Virginia to Los Angeles to spend Christmas and another three weeks with her son, his wife, and their seven month-old daughter. On the way cross country she parked her vehicle outside the homes of a series of strangers she was connected to by friends and friends of friends. Amazing.

1. There seem to be a few of these Christmas Ethics Heroes every year. In Bartonsville, Illinois, an occasional restaurant customer on Christmas Eve morning left a 2,000 dollar tip—in cash—for the 19-person staff of the Bartonsville diner. The man didn’t even leave his full name, just “Tony,” though he is apparently the son of a regular who joined him for breakfast. “He just said, ‘Merry Christmas,'” the owner told reporters. “How generous of somebody to do that, especially somebody who doesn’t come in that often. Nobody was expecting it, that’s for sure.”

2. How do you write an obnoxious obituary? Here’s how you write an obnoxious obituary. The Lagacy.com. entry for Grace McDonough, who died on December 21, concludes with this gratuitous and graceless—no pun intended—text:

The actions and inactions of the United States government regarding the Covid-19 virus has caused Grace McDonough and thousands of other nursing home residents to lose their lives to the Covid -19 virus. These same residents had successfully fought and won great battles against other diseases and conditions and yet were placed in harm’s way during the pandemic. These frail, elderly, sick and vulnerable innocents were not protected by the government they supported, fought for, contributed to and now depended on. Shame on the United States government! We, as their loved ones, have the right to be profoundly sad and profoundly angry at the same time. May our loved ones now rest in peace. It is the least they deserve.

Grace was 95 years old. She lived in a nursing home, where residents are in close confinement and where pandemic infections were and are especially deadly. Attributing the death of a 95-year-old on the undefined “actions and inactions” of the government demonstrates a) a dangerous gullibility to Democratic propaganda b) denial of reality and c) the continuation of  what is probably a pattern of looking for someone to blame for every misfortune. Fark, the humorous news aggregator website infected itself with predictable leftist bias, termed the obituary “fierce.” I would call it signature significance indicating a family teeming with jerks.

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Unwrapped Ethics, Christmas, 2020, Because Ethics Never Takes a Holiday [Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

christmas-hero-H

I hope everyone manages to have the best, most love-filled, happy Christmas possible. Everyone but me and the dog are sick, depressed are both in my household, but I’m making it work. It will be a “Christmas Story”-style Chinese food Christmas, though, the way it’s shaking out.

1. Now THIS is an unethical home Christmas decoration…

0002-Kmart-Sign

…except that according to the story, the neighbors don’t mind. At great expense, Jason Pieper erected this 900 pound thing after purchasing it at an auction for over $2,000. He then decorated surrounding trees with blue and white lights to follow the theme: remember those blue light specials? To me, this would seem to be a bit out of whack with the spirit of the holiday, but perhaps no more than the giant Christmas Imperial Walker, the 20 foot inflatable penguin and some of the monstrosities in my neighborhood.

2. Workplace ethics. Jeffrey Toobin should feel too bad. An L.A. County Sheriff’s deputy had his radio mic open while he was in flagrante delicto. His sex partner was moaning over his panting as the dispatcher from the Sheriff’s station tried to get her deputy’s attention without success. “The deputy was immediately relieved of duty,” the Sheriff’s office informed the media.

Americans are becoming such prudes.

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Ethics Dunce, Rogue And Fool To Be Held Up As An Example Forever More: Dr. Anthony Fauci

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

Fauci

From the New York Times:

“In the pandemic’s early days, Dr. Fauci tended to cite the same 60 to 70 percent estimate that most experts did. About a month ago, he began saying “70, 75 percent” in television interviews. And last week, in an interview with CNBC News, he said “75, 80, 85 percent” and “75 to 80-plus percent….In a telephone interview the next day, Dr. Fauci acknowledged that he had slowly but deliberately been moving the goal posts. He is doing so, he said, partly based on new science, and partly on his gut feeling that the country is finally ready to hear what he really thinks. Hard as it may be to hear, he said, he believes that it may take close to 90 percent immunity to bring the virus to a halt — almost as much as is needed to stop a measles outbreak.“

No, what is hard to hear, though at this point hardly a shock to anyone with a functioning brain, is that Fauci now admits he’s been lying….you know, “for our own good.”

Don’t heed the spin, the double-talk and the euphemisms: when someone tells you something other than what he or she knows to be true or believes to be true, that individual is deliberately attempting to deceive you by communicating what they believe to be untrue as true. That’s lying. No debate. No defense. That’s what it is, by definition. “I did it for your own good” is a rationalization.

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Unethical . . . But Funny! Well, Stupid, Really . . .

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Gross netting

This week, Superior Court Judge Kimberly Knill ordered the billionaire bond investor Bill Gross and his partner Amy Schwartz, to stop violating the noise ordinances of the Laguna Beach municipal code by playing the “Gilligan’s Island” theme song music on their outdoor speakers. Evidence showed that music was played so loudly it could be heard inside neighbor Mark Towfiq’s—he’s also a billionaire— home despite concrete construction and half-inch-thick, dual-pane windows.

Why was the couple inflicting the infamous earworm on their neighbor? It seems the music started when Towfiw objected to the Gross estate erecting the ugly plastic netting around a huge glass sculpture that they had installed in their back yard. When he complained, Gross, 76, and Schwartz, 51 retaliated by claiming their neighbor was a Peeping Tom. Then the the couple started inviting him to sit right down as they told a tale about a three hour tour, night after night.

The litigation, which involved teams of high-priced lawyers on both sides, commenced November 9. A city code enforcement official testified that Gross and Schwartz said they would lower the music if Towfiq dropped his complaint about the sculpture. Towfiq’s lawyers presented a text from Gross responding to their client’s request to turn down the music in which Gross wrote, “Peace on all fronts or we’ll just have nightly concerts big boy.”

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On Revenge, Tit-For-Tat And The Biden Presidency

/ Jack Marshall / 32 Comments

tit for tat

I would really like to accept the Biden Presidency as I have accepted every Presidency in my life so far, and without giving away secrets, there have been a lot of them. You see, I really believe what Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton lectured Donald Trump about when they were certain Hillary would win the 2016 election. I believe that the American public, no matter who each individual voter may have favored, ought to welcome the newly elected President with hope and good will, pronounce the past irrelevant, and pledge to do whatever is necessary to make the incoming administration successful. In other words, every American should behave exactly as Democrats (including Hillary and Nancy), progressives, the resistance, numerous professional groups and the vast majority of the news media did not behave when President Trump was elected.

Why do I believe this? As I have said so many times I am sick of me, I believe this because that response is the only way republics can survive, and because that is how this republic has survived and thrived since the Civil War. If you would peruse the Ethics Alarms posts on the topic and related ones since November 2016, as I viewed the impending Presidency of Donald Trump with the approximate enthusiasm of one diagnosed with genital warts, one message was consistent: we break this tradition at great risk. If the Axis of Unethical Conduct (I didn’t call them that for a while, but that’s the alliance that was responsible–-the resistance, Democrats, and the news media) devotes itself to savaging and undermining the nation’s duly elected President by any means necessary, it-they will guarantee a cycle in which political warfare, which once was de-escalated every four years, will be a constant, making cooperation, unity, and competent government impossible.

Is Joe Biden “my” President? Sure he is. I’m an American, and our system made him President. Do I want him to succeed? Sure I do. Failed Presidencies are bad for all Americans, the nation and the world. If Joe Biden asked me to take on a project, a job or an assignment, would I say yes? Unless I found the substance of what I was asked to do objectively unconscionable, yes I would.

However, it is clear as day now that there is no way Democrats and progressives can avoid the consequences of their shattering the norm that once gave Presidents a “honeymoon” and that guaranteed every President-Elect overwhelming public support simply by his stepping into the metaphorical shoes of Washington and Lincoln. Could there have been a way? The manner in which Biden and his supporters have handled the transition so far would have killed any wisp of a chance if there were one, and I doubt there ever was. The “now that we’ve regained power by breaking the rules, we hope everyone will go back to following them again for the good of the country” routine is too insulting and cynical to generate anything but resentment.

Still, what f Joe had come out in November and said,

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Still Employed At The New York Times, Where Facts, Apparently, Don’t Matter

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Hannah-Jones

….at least when promoting anti-American and anti-white propaganda is concerned.

New York Times reporter Nikole Hannah-Jones has no training in history and has the one-way bias of a typical intractable activist. Nevertheless, she was allowed to lead the Times discredited “1619 Project,” which asserted without evidence that the United States of America was created by slavery, and that the Revolutionary War was begun to protect slavery. This fantasy not only won the Pulitzer Prize for Hannah-Jones and the Times, but was quickly installed in thousands of school systems as part of the history curriculum despite being pure agitprop. After one distinguished historian after another pointed out its multiple falsehoods, the “1619 Project” was edited by the Times, without being retracted in its entirety, which would have been the responsible thing to do.

As for Hannah-Jones, she has adamantly refused to admit that her work was, well, crap. Tweeting under the moniker of “Ida Bae Wells” for some reason (I’m sure there is one, I just don’t care what it is), the reporter got in a revealing back-and-forth with Timothy Sandefur, the Vice President for Litigation at the Goldwater Institute’s Scharf-Norton Center for Constitutional Litigation who holds the Duncan Chair in Constitutional Government. He corrected Hannah-Jones’ attempted rebuttals to a point made by Reason editor-at-large Nick Gillespie and senior editor Damon Root, who noted that Frederick Douglass had called the Constitution a “glorious liberty document” that guaranteed the rights of all—which indeed it is. Hannah-Jones essentially refused to acknowledge the historical record, and did so in the sarcastic, arrogant, insinuating rhetoric that has characterized all of her defenses of the “1619 Project.”

The real question is why the New York Times continues to employ an openly biased and agenda-driven “reporter” who refuses to correct her false reporting and who believes that her role is to distort facts for political purposes. If that approach to journalism is acceptable in her case, why should we trust any of the Times reporters, or indeed the Times itself?

Here is the Twitter exchange, courtesy of Twitchy: Twitchy’s editorial comments periodically turn up between the tweets; if it were not for the hassle of removing them, I would have. They are unnecessary. The tweets, and Hannah-Jones obstinacy, speak for themselves.

I will point out my favorite part of the debate, where Hannah-Jones, having been definitively schooled regarding the historical fact that Douglass repudiated his earlier criticism of the Constitution, resorts to the desperate argument that he held “both views,” one of which she conveniently neglected to mention when she was pointing to the civil right’s icon’s words as supporting her anti-American thesis. Douglass did not hold both views simultaneously. Unlike the Times reporter, he was capable of growth and learning: when he concluded his previous view was wrong, he abandoned it. Saying Douglass held both views—that the Constitution protected slavery and that it is a pro-liberty document contained the principles essential to ending it—is like arguing that Barack Obama is still opposed to gay marriage, that Donald Trump is a Democrat or that I believe in Santa Claus.

Such are the people who are dismantling U.S. culture now.

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The Throw-Away Puppies

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

That was a Facebook post relayed for comment on Reddit. I read it with a large, happy rescue dog snoring on my lap; he had already been given up to shelters twice in his young life. I found myself wondering how many innocent, loving, trusting animals would be experiencing the same cruelty, not just after Christmas but after a pandemic in which shelters have been depleted by people seeking companionship while they are stuck at home.

I suppose it is a good thing the Facebook user who composed this had her name redacted: some crazed PETA members–or my wife—might have tracked her down with mayhem on their mind. I have known people like the writers—still do, in fact—and they all regard themselves as decent, ethical people whose values are in order. In truth, they have the same ethical vacuum as dog-fighting enthusiasts, just from a different socioeconomic perspective

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