Character

“The Cassidy Hutchinson Fiasco”…Addendum

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

Lest I be accused of minimizing the Cassidy Hutchinson testimony before the House January 6 Star Chamber this week, I direct EA readers to to this National Review article by the usually fair and perceptive Andrew McCarthy, a former federal prosecutor. He calls the testimony “devastating” and inveighs, “Things will not be the same after this.“

I don’t know what he thinks isn’t going to be the same; maybe you can enlighten me. Are there really people out there who will be surprised that Trump threw tantrums, objects and ketchup bottles, or that when he was angry and excited, he was irrational? Does McCarthy really not know that many Presidents, in private, with staff, in meetings, and similarly dealing with the most stressful jobs imaginable, have behaved outrageously, except that in their case did not have dozens of leakers, disloyal aides and other staff and others determined to undermine them as well as an almost unanimously hostile press to publicize rumors, gossip, suspicions and facts indiscriminately? Really? Presidents, as a group, are not normal or emotionally healthy: if they were, they wouldn’t have sought the Presidency or achieved it. Is Trump worse than most, or even all in this regard? Maybe, probably; why do you think Ethics Alarms kept repeating for over a year that he must never be elected? Does McCarthy not know the history of the Type A CEO personality in this country? About Henry Ford employing a guy whose sole job was to chop the desks of fired Ford Executive into kindling so they would know they had been fired? Nevertheless, the fact that Trump acted and talked like anyone paying attention knew he would act and talk doesn’t mean he committed crimes.

Furthermore, once again we are getting “Trump wanted to do X” and “Trump said Y” while his staff and the Secret Service obstructed him when his stated desires were extreme, rash, an abuse of power, or just plain nuts. The staff did their jobs, in other words, just like dozens of Presidential staffs have done in other administrations. I’m impressed, in fact: Trump, thanks to the most competent old hands in the Washington swamp being bullied away or scared off for fear of becoming pariahs and not getting invited to swank Capital Hill wine parties, had a distinctly sub-par batch of advisors. They came through when they had to. Good for them. They were far from the first to stop a POTUS from doing stupid or reckless things.

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On Ghosting, Ducking, Evading, And The Duty To Explain

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

One of my best and dearest friends is currently distraught because someone he has been very fond of and close to for many years suddenly stopped communicating with him, or in the parlance of the day, has “ghosted him.” All of a sudden, for no reason he can imagine, his vanished friend refused to answer his phone calls, texts, emails or social media entreaties. It’s driving him nuts. No, his friend hasn’t died or been kidnapped. He’s just been cut out, dropped like the proverbial hot potato.

I thought about my friend’s pain during a recent work mystery: I was supposed to review an agreement for ethics issues, and time was supposedly of the essence. The company that had proposed the deal, however, kept stalling in sending the draft. First it was an email with the infuriating missing attachment; next it was the wrong file. Time was ticking: my client wanted to know what was causing the delay on my end.

I called everyone on the conference call that had ended with the document review as being agreed upon as the next step: nobody answered. Nobody answered my emails either. I called the lawyer orchestrating the deal. He was “out” but would call me later that day. He didn’t. I called again, telling his secretary that this was not making me confident about the company’s worth as my client’s business partner. I was told the lawyer’s assistant would call me “quickly.” Two hours later, after receiving no call, I called again. I was, shall we say, sharp. The secretary apologized and connected me to the lawyer’s assistant. She was professional, understanding, cooperative. She said there was no reason for me not to have received the document. “I’m going to storm into his office right now, and you’ll have the agreement to review in five minutes” were her exact words.

I never received the file, and I never heard from the assistant again.

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From The “Res Ipsa Loquitur” Files: How Unethical Is This?

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments

I count three distinct ethics fouls, but there may be more. For example, is it ethical to have children if you’re this stupid?

___________________

Source: Not the Bee.

How Long Will Women, Parents And Feminists Tolerate This? [Photo Added]

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

I don’t understand the persistence of such a blatantly unethical situation at all. It is the apotheosis of “It isn’t what it is.” Any group, movement, elected official or individual who approves of such an obvious injustice should be branded as untrustworthy, whether it be due to intellectual deficiencies, dishonesty, delusion or cowardice.

Ricci Tres, a 29-year-old transgender woman, defeated 13-year-old Shiloh Catori, to win the $500 top prize in a women’s division of New York City street skateboarding competition. The real girl got $250. Four of the six finalists were under the age of 17, with the youngest being 10-year-old Juri Iikura, who came in fifth. Tres was the oldest contestant. Tres had previously failed to qualify for the Women’s Street USA Skateboarding National Championships in a bid to qualify for  the Olympics, but was rejected because of an excess of testosterone, according to The Daily Mail. Obviously, Tres is the victim of transphobia.

So she decided to beat some little girls and pick up an easy 500 bucks. It should cover shaving costs. Continue reading →

Morning Ethics Warm-Up, 6/22/2022: Let’s Hit The Ground Running!

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

1. It’s a joke!!! That tweet is just the tip of the moronic iceberg for Republican Senate candidate in Missouri Eric Greitens. In a new fundraising video for his U.S. Senate campaign released this week, Greitens, a former Missouri governor who resigned before he could be impeached on multiple grounds including sexual assault, holds a pump-action shotgun and introduces himself as a Navy SEAL. (He is not a Seal: he resigned shortly before announcing his Senate run this year.) The video then shows him with a group of men in tactical gear hunting “RINOs”—Republicans who are not conservative enough for his tastes. He says, “Join the MAGA crew! Get a RINO hunting permit. There’s no bagging limit, no tagging limit, and it doesn’t expire until we save our country!”

And Sarah Palin was once accused of inciting murder by having little gun-sights on a campaign map!

Predictably, the irresponsible ad is being used by the mainstream news media and Democrats to characterize all conservatives and Republicans while hyping more anti-gun hysteria. Here’s CNN:

Some of history’s leading fascist movements used the strategy of armed volunteer militias intimidating, threatening and attacking political opponents. And the implications of Greitens’ ad are stunning: Line up behind the most extreme right-wing policies — and implicitly behind former President Donald Trump — or be hunted down by armed, jackbooted thugs.

Right. The implications of Greitens’ ad are that he’s a liar and an asshole, and that he is only slightly more fit to serve in the Senate than Herschel Walker, who defines the bottom of the bottom of the barrel… but presumably Missouri voters know that already. The ad and Greitens himself are metaphorical albatrosses around the GOP’s neck, but the party hung them there. He has been endorsed by several GOP luminaries, though so far, not by Trump.

2. Poll check: President Biden’s latest Civiqs approval rating hit 32%, with 56% disapproving of Joe. Again I ask: Who are those 32% that approve of Biden? What is it they approve of? What democracy can function if fully a third of the electorate have the IQs of flatworms and are happy to see the country rot?

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It’s True That The Mainstream Media Is Attacking Herschel Walker As It Would Never Attack A Black Progressive Senate Candidate…It’s Also True That He Deserves It

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

There’s a new scandalous revelation involving Herschel Walker. I’m certain there are more to come. But first, some perspective.

A lot of terrible candidates will be running for powerful positions across the country in November. Neither party has a monopoly on them, or the shame the parties deserve for inflicting them on the nation. Naturally, the unqualified, dishonest and otherwise awful candidates offered by the Republicans have received and will continue to receive the vast majority of criticism from the news media, which, after all, has its mission. That imbalance is unfair, but only in the sense that embarrassments like Maxine Waters, Ted Lieu, Adam Schiff, “The Squad,” Cori Bush and so many indisputably unethical Democrats are allowed to continue to soil the democracy. But in cases like Republican Georgia Senate candidate Herschel Walker, no amount of negative news media exposure is too much. In his case, the news media is doing its job.

Good heavens, what a disgrace! The former college and pro football star has lied about his record as a businessman, his role in a for-profit program alleged to have exploited veterans while defrauding the government, his academic record and more. What Walker has admitted to is also pretty disturbing: in his autobiography, he described playing Russian Roulette, engaging in domestic abuse, and stalking more than one individual with the intent of doing them harm. These are framed as part of a redemption saga, which would be more convincing if Walker wasn’t continuing to lie, obfuscate and generally behave like a con artist on the campaign trail.

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George Washington University Insults The Nation’s History

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Of course, we have seen this coming for a long time, and I will be surprised if the creeping, craven effort to erase George Washington and the legacy of the Founders from the school that now bears his name will stop; it may even accelerate.

The George Washington University Board of Trustees finally decided to discontinue the use of the school’s “Colonials” moniker based on the recommendation of —believe it or not—the “Special Committee on the Colonials Moniker.” In case you have the historical literacy of a horseshoe crab, before what is now the United States of America won its independence, it was made up of colonies, and its occupants fighting for their nascent nation were often called “colonials” because that’s what they were. These colonials were completely responsible today for the United States’ existence and everything it has achieved. The leader of the army of colonials was George Washington, and the first President of the radical new nation established by those colonials was that same great man. Thus to conclude that referring to various teams and groups associated with the educational institution named in his honor as Colonials is anything but descriptive, justified, and an honor is, to be blunt, bats.

However a gross majority of the people running the institutes of higher education in the U.S. are shallow, fearful, pandering fools, and GW’s leaders are clearly in that group. Here is the revolting statement by Board Chair Grace Speights: Continue reading →

Unethical Quote Of The Month: Ethics Mega-Dunce Kim Sill

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

“If your beliefs are not in line with ours, we will not adopt a pet to you.”

—Kim Sill, founder of the Shelter Hope Pet Shop in Thousand Oaks, California in her shop’s weekly newsletter.

Pro tip for Kim: if you are going to say something really stupid and offensive in public, at least do it grammatically.

Other than that, this obnoxious, virtue-signalling Constitutional scholar is informing all that she wants to tear down a crucial support-beam in the entire democratic structure of the United States. While discrimination on the basis of political affiliations and viewpoints is not forbidden under civil rights and public accommodation laws, it is a surefire way to guarantee civil unrest and a society that is divided and miserable in which to live. The pet store’s bigotry—and that’s what it is, bigotry—violates the spirit of the First Amendment and the well-established formula for a fair and open society.

But never mind, Kim knows best.

Here is the rest of her screed: Continue reading →

Ethics Hero: Flaviane Carvalho

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

I love this story, and not just because it supports several Ethics Alarms principles, like the duty to confront, the duty to rescue, and the duty to fix the problem.

In Orlando on January 1, 2021, Mrs. Potato restaurant employee Flaviane Carvalho noticed that a young boy was sitting secluded from his parents and a a young girl. Carvalho said the boy was wearing a mask and hoodie as he sat at the table along with two adults and a young girl. She also noticed that he had a scratch in between in his eyebrows and wasn’t eating, even though food had been brought to the table. She asked the table if their food and drinks were all right, and when the one of the adults replied that the boy would eat his dinner at home, Carvalho said she began to think something was seriously wrong.

She did not decide to “minding her own business,” but instead decided that as a proactive and ethical member of society, this was her business. Carvalho stood behind the boy’s parents and held up a note asking the boy if he was OK. When the 11-year-old shook his head, she wrote a second note asking, “Do you need help?”  This time, the boy nodded yes. Carvalho called her boss and then called 911.

Police arrived and questioned the child, who told detectives he had suffered abuse at the hands of his stepfather, identified as Timothy Lee Wilson II.  Wilson was arrested at the restaurant, and the boy’s mother, Kristen Swann, was taken into custody on later that week after the boy made additional disclosures of alleged abuse.

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Ethics Dunce: GOP Congressional Candidate Carl Paladino…Oh Yeah, This Is Just The Kind Of Person Congress Needs

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Carl Paladino, a Buffalo businessman and former candidate for New York governor now running for Congress as a Republican, re-posted to Facebook a ridiculous conspiracy theory by a fellow idiot claiming that the mass shootings at the supermarket in Buffalo and the school in Uvalde were “false flag” operations. There are screenshots of the since-deleted post, which you can read at your peril.

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