Comment of the Day

Comment of the Day 1, “All That Jazz” Edition: “Does Jazz Really Need DEI?”

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

The recent essay about the efforts of an apparently bonkers music school to apply DEI policies to the jazz world was really a “Bias Makes You Stupid” post, and perhaps I should have framed it that way. After all, nobody, no institution, no profession, no workplace “needs” DEI discrimination. As my father would say, the nation and society need DEI “like a hole in the head.” In fact, DEI is a metaphorical hole in the head of the nation allowing core American principles to leak out.

I found Sarah B’s Comment of the Day, prompted by Chris Marschner’s comment regarding the correlation between jazz improvisation ans mathematics ability, both fascinating and, as usual with Sarah’s comments, illuminating. (I also found the context of her use of the phrase “toot my own horn” brilliant. )Here it is, in response to the post, Does Jazz Really Need DEI?:

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As a woman musician and mathematician (my husband would claim engineers aren’t mathematicians, but the lay person sees no difference), I think there is one aspect of Jazz that you are forgetting. I tried Jazz and not only do I hate the sounds of Jazz (I like Chopin, Beethoven, and Holst as my personal preference), but I also found the emphasis on improvisation impossible. I cannot improvise music, or anything really. I have no skill at making up music, though if you give me sheet music not horrendously above my level, I’ll play it for you, at least with adequate practice. I can sing nearly anything (in my range) that you can throw at me in at least seven different languages, and with a little time, I can do them from memory. I have a repertoire of several hundred songs that I can pick up and perform adequately on a given day without much more than a little warmup. I read soprano and bass clefs before I read English (my only language). I dabble in 7 instruments, with 2 of those mastered “enough”.

All of this is not to toot my own horn. I have much I could do to improve my music, but I have other priorities and I am happy at “good enough”. However, with all this musical study, I have found that while I can do a lot, I CANNOT improvise, nor can I make up my own lyrics. This means that Jazz musicianship is beyond my reach. It takes a different type of mind than mine to be a good Jazz musician, and not just someone who knows the math and the theory. There is another element besides musical and mathematical thinking, that of a certain type of creativity.

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Twin Comments of the Day: “Popeye Time: I Am Finally Forced Into Responding To Woke Nonsense on Facebook”…

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Two longtime and esteemed commenters delivered worthy comments of the day on the same post almost back-to-back, and I’ve decided that they should be posted that way, since the second referred to the first. The original post concerned my response on Facebook to a particularly facile and lazy defense of DEI.

Heeeeeere’s Here’s Johnny and Chris Marschner in their tag team Comment of the Day on the post, “Popeye Time: I Am Finally Forced Into Responding To Woke Nonsense on Facebook“…

Well, one good point by [the banned commenter whose name must never be spoken, BCWNMNBS for short ]: Avoid a rush to judgment, as in “Now THIS is legitimate guilt by association”.

But [BCWNMNBS] is wrong about allowance of liberal comments here. I’ve made a few myself, sometimes sincere (I’m bi-polar when it comes to politics), sometimes playing the role of a progressive just to provoke an argument and force a stronger defense of a position. So far, I’m still here.

As to that Facebook post, the demand to be specific is rather ironic since neither DEI nor the component parts of that acronym have specific definitions.

Diversity — the high school where I taught in my second career had a welcoming sign in the lobby that said “Strengthened by Diversity.” My own thought on that was that we are strengthened by unity, but enriched by diversity. But, then, the enrichment can lead to strengthening. But, the enrichment and the strengthening come from voluntary association, not forced association which usually is counterproductive. What does the FB poster have in mind for diversity? Hmmm. Don’t know. No specifics.

Equity — for Progressives, this seems to mean equal outcomes, which is destructive of initiative, individual effort, perseverance, and so on. Or, does it mean ensuring a broadening of opportunities? Again, I don’t know what the FB poster has in mind.

Inclusion — Again, don’t know, but this sure sounds like something forced on people, which would be contrary to a basic right of freedom of association.

So, to the FB poster, from now on, be proud of your opinions, state specifically what you mean, don’t hide behind a simplistic slogan, let everyone know exactly what it is you are promoting.

And, to [BCWNMNBS], who may still be lurking, what you see as sealioning could actually be a variant of the Socratic method. Motive matters, and often enough, the motive of the one asking the questions is perceived differently by an observer, but, in either case, the effect should be to cause a refinement or adjustment of an initial position on an issue.

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Soon thereafter, Chris Marschiner contributed Part II:

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Comment of the Day: “…Unethical Quote of the Week: David Axelrod”

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Prolific and historically literate EA commenter Steve-O-in NJ has been uncharacteristically scarce around these parts of late, but when he does weighed-in the quality of his commentary remains stellar. I’m going to have his Comment of the Day on the post “The Sequel to “Is It Ethical to Continue to Slam Former President Biden Now That It Has Been Revealed That He Has Metastatic Prostate Cancer?”— Unethical Quote of the Week: David Axelrod” kick off what bids fair to end up as “Why the Democratic Party Has Disqualified Itself From National Leadership” Monday.

Every single Democrat who runs for office should be confronted with the fact that their party spent four years defiling the Constitution and ignoring the will of their own voters. They should be asked, again and again, how do you dare associate yourself with a party that would do this? What’s your excuse? Why should any voter trust anyone who runs as a Democrat now? What does your party stand for, if it would exploit a man it chose to have the most challenging leadership responsibilities in the world knowing he wasn’t mentally able to do the job, as a means of letting backroom, unelected ideologues and partisan hacks secretly chart U.S. policy? Every Democrat office-holder or candidate should be forced to either condemn his or her party or beg for forgiveness and a second chance.

And the public’s response to their entreaties should be the same as mine: “Never!”

Here’s Steve-O…

***

There’s no way I can be other than disgusted by this manipulative tactic by the same party who regularly bashed Reagan for being a senile old man while in office and came up with at least 20 ways to attack Trump as unfit. Reagan stumbled twice in eight years, once after being shot and having major surgery, again after seven years in office plus that and according to the left he was unfit the entire time, despite no one from the White House staff and no personal or government physician coming forward to verify any allegation of senility. No one unbiased has come forward to say Trump is unfit. His biased niece doesn’t count, and neither do disgruntled former employees. Former vice president Pence, former ambassador Nikki Haley, and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo all have nothing to lose by spilling now, and every reason to do it after being publicly shut out of this administration, but none of them have.

Yet we all watched Biden deteriorate before our eyes, to the point where he could barely walk and couldn’t answer even softball questions, and the left tried to gaslight this nation by saying it was all Republican dirty tricks. This, the party of Dick Tuck, the original political dirty tricks man, whose members regularly insult the GOP as being a party made up of idiots and morons, had the audacity to accuse the same party of being masters of dirty tricks. This, the media who parlayed a single stumble, a golf swing, and a tennis serve gone wrong into a lasting image of Gerald Ford as an oaf and a klutz who couldn’t do anything right, had the audacity to bury multiple stumbles, an obvious old-guy shuffle, multiple obvious needs to be shown where to walk after initially going the wrong way, inability to answer easy questions, and a hundred other obvious signs of deterioration and THEN accuse those who pointed them out of trying to lie and deceive. If Biden hadn’t finally fallen apart in full view of the entire nation to the point where no farther denial was possible, these people would still be lying to us about Biden being sharp as a tack and having more energy than someone half his age.

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Comment of the Day: “BREAKING! Verizon Sucks!”

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Much thanks is due to Ryan Harkins for helping to keep this from becoming “Jake Tapper is an Asshole” Tuesday with some thoughtful commentary about why customer service is almost universally terrible. This comes in the wake of my beginning a vendetta against Verizon, which damaged my business, lied, cost me money, wasted my time, raised my blood pressure, and made it all worse by generously offering me eight dollars and change for my trouble.

Here is Ryan’s Comment of the Day on the post “Breaking! Verizon Sucks!”

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My wife and I just encountered a situation with Spectrum, for internet services, and Ameritas, for life insurance. In each case, speaking with a different customer service representative ended up in wildly different stories and results, and in each case has left us angry and considering cancelling and seeking another company.

On the Ameritas front, my wife has a life insurance policy that was issued when she was a baby (I’m not permitted to say how many years ago, but she’s an early Millennial…), and we’ve been dutifully paying the annual premium for years for the $50k whole life policy. The problem is that since the policy is so old, the company apparently has no idea how to handle it anymore. It isn’t available to view through their website. Apparently it can’t be converted to a different policy that is able to be posted online. When discussing what to do moving forward, we’ve been told

  • We’ve actually paid all the premiums, and now we have the policy in full, no further payments are needed until an unknown date a few years from now
  • We’ve actually paid all the premiums, and now we have the policy in full, no further payments are needed until an unknown date far in the future
  • We haven’t paid all the premiums and need to pay late fees for not paying this last year’s premium
  • We don’t have to pay late fees, but we do need to pay the premium (that we’ve already paid)
  • We’ve not paid the premium that we have paid and are in danger of losing our policy altogether
  • We’ve not paid the premium that we have paid and our policy is changing into a different, inferior type of policy

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Comment of the Day: “Oh Yeah, THIS Will Work Out Well: Minnesota Rules That Women Going Bare-Breasted in Public Isn’t Illegal”

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

Here is Sarah B.’s Comment of the Day on the post, “Oh Yeah, THIS Will Work Out Well: Minnesota Rules That Women Going Bare-Breasted in Public Isn’t Illegal.” There isn’t a thing I could say as an introduction that would improve on it….

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For most of history, the idea of modesty had nothing to do with the idea that the human body or sex was evil.  The idea was that the penis and vagina, as well as the female breasts (the focus of which is the feeding of babies) were indeed focused on reproduction, life giving, holy, and thus reserved from public consumption.  Avoiding public showmanship of the reserved and holy has been a common theme throughout most cultures, religions, and peoples throughout history.  We have a time, place, and occasion for every action in our lives.  Why do we not urinate/defecate in public?  I don’t want to see you do so, and frankly, nor do I want to see your sexual characteristics.

Though this is not a phrase thought well of on this site, we do need to think of children.  There is measurable harm that occurs to children who are exposed to the sexual before puberty.  Modesty, such as not going around bare breasted, is a protection for the children.  We don’t expose sexual characteristics to protect children’s innocence.  Sure, kids know they have these parts, but for the most part, what is not in sight is not emphasized.  We focus on teaching kids about their private parts and how to avoid excess attention focused on them for their safety.  We don’t want more teen pregnancies, child sexual abuse (which includes inappropriate exposure), or normalizing sexual attraction to minors, especially in the form of pederasty, which focuses on the fully developed sexual characteristics, like breasts, that the judges seem to be suggesting we should allow to be in full display. 

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Comment of the Day: “Important Note on the News Media’s War on President Trump”

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Yesterday was another Axis media freak-out day over Trump Administration II. The first hundred days were officially over, thus it was a fine time for the Trump Deranged pimping for a socialist future and trying to pretend that they hadn’t propped up a fake President for four looooong years to tell us the nation is doomed because this time we know who is President and he is orange Hitler-Satan. It was really quite a spectacle, almost screaming-at-the-sky-level nuts. I regret not posting Chris Marschner‘s excellent Comment of the Day on tariffs then for contrast. It’s clear that the vast, vast, vast number of your progressive friends and mine literally don’t know what the hell they are talking about regarding tariffs, and the news media most people are likely to read as well as broadcast news regard the topic as the equivalent of a public reading of Proust. So all the whiners in the echo chamber know is that tariffs are bad. Then again, today’s doomsday chorus is almost as vocal as yesterday. Let’s see…there are at least eleven “Trump is a monster and going to destroy us” headlines on the New York Times home page if you count cleverly deceptive ones like In an Uncertain Economy, McDonald’s Sees Spending Decline. (McDonald’s has been charging obscenely high prices for crummy food since Democrats inflicted higher minimum wages on their unskilled workforce and inflation spiked during Biden’s presidency, so the “spending decline” has nothing to do with Trump. I’ve declined to go to a nearby Mickey D’s when I want a quick semi-edible meal since in 2022…)

Here is Chris’s Comment of the Day on the post, “Important Note on the Newsmedia’s War on President Trump”:

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Americans in general have become spoiled. They do not seem to want to look beyond the immediate present to consider what is best for the nation in the long term.

[Commenter] Marrissa said “Everyone including people who love Trump want a good economy, low prices, and not have our important information leaked by someone who knows better.”

The question is at what cost? Low prices come at a cost to someone. Every dollar we give to China is one more they use to advance their Belt and Road strategy of global dominance. We fought a war here over the issue of slavery because it was at our doorstep but today we turn a blind eye to factory farms of China on which people are virtually imprisoned so we can get low prices on all sorts of products. I suppose it is not that we are against slavery we just don’t want to see it.

Just ten years ago the MXN Peso was worth about a dime and it is now worth less than a Nickel which means goods produced there cost half as much in terms of dollars. How is that possible if the US trade deficit with Mexico has exploded in that time frame? Demand for Mexican goods drive the value of a countries currency. The answer is foreign government manipulation.

What exactly does a good economy look like? Does it mean full employment even if that employment means part time work in multiple jobs or does it mean a balance between temporal value creation in service work and long term value creation in manufacturing. I say it means the latter even if it requires periodic realignments of resources between industrial production.

[Commenter Extradimensional Cephalopod] stated “People don’t like Trump because he seems almost actively hostile to the idea of demonstrating foresight and conscientiousness, even when it would work out better for his actual goals and his public image.”

How can EC say this? Is EC privy to the President’s deliberations? Trump had four years to develop a strategy and the say that he is hostile to demonstrating foresight and conscientiousness comes only from what he is able to glean from news reports. The exact same argument can be turned around on Trump’s critics because they are only looking toward the next election and not the impact on future generations.

EC questions the use of tariffs but there are few other tools in a presidential arsenal to limit the amount of American wealth being transferred to the CCP. How effective would moral suasion work on the American people with a fireside chat by Trump explaining the need to buy American products to protect our industries? It wouldn’t. Every country believes its consumers are an economic asset. Every dollar they spend on domestic goods and services directly benefits the domestic economy. Imports are treated as wealth leakages. We try to offset our wealth leakages with our exports that brings new wealth to our economy.

Much ink has been spilled condemning the tariffs but very little on some of the positive effects.

U.S.-based investments in President Trump’s second term:

Source: TRUMP EFFECT: A Running List of New U.S. Investment in President Trump’s Second Term – The White House

  • Project Stargate, led by Japan-based Softbank and U.S.-based OpenAI and Oracle, announced a $500 billion private investment in U.S.-based artificial intelligence infrastructure.
  • Apple announced a $500 billion investment in U.S. manufacturing and training.
  • NVIDIA, a global chipmaking giant, announced it will invest $500 billion in U.S.-based AI infrastructure over the next four years amid its pledge to manufacture AI supercomputers entirely in the U.S. for the first time.
  • IBM announced a $150 billion investment over the next five years in its U.S.-based growth and manufacturing operations.
  • Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) announced a $100 billion investment in U.S.-based chips manufacturing.
  • Johnson & Johnson announced a $55 billion investment over the next four years in manufacturing, research and development, and technology.
  • Roche, a Swiss drug and diagnostics company, announced a $50 billion investment in U.S.-based manufacturing and research and development, which is expected to create more than 1,000 full-time jobs and more than 12,000 jobs including construction.
  • Eli Lilly and Company announced a $27 billion investment to more than double its domestic manufacturing capacity.
  • United Arab Emirates-based ADQ and U.S.-based Energy Capital Partners announced a $25 billion investment in U.S. data centers and energy infrastructure.
  • Novartis, a Swiss drugmaker, announced a $23 billion investment to build or expand ten manufacturing facilities across the U.S., which will create 4,000 new jobs.
  • Hyundaiannounced a $21 billion U.S.-based investment — including $5.8 billion for a new steel plant in Louisiana, which will create nearly 1,500 jobs.
    • Hyundai also secured an equity investment and agreement from Posco Holdings, South Korea’s top steel maker.
  • United Arab Emirates-based DAMAC Properties announced a $20 billion investment in new U.S.-based data centers.
  • France-based CMA CGM, a global shipping giant, announced a $20 billion investment in U.S. shipping and logistics, creating 10,000 new jobs.
  • Merck announced it will invest $8 billion in the U.S. over the next several years after opening a new $1 billion North Carolina manufacturing facility.
  • Clarios announced a $6 billion plan to expand its domestic manufacturing operations.
  • Stellantis announced a $5 billion investment in its U.S. manufacturing network, including re-opening its Belvidere, Illinois, manufacturing plant.
  • Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Inc., a leader in biotechnology, announced a $3 billion agreement with Fujifilm Diosynth Biotechnologies to produce drugs at its North Carolina manufacturing facility.
  • NorthMark Strategies, a multi-strategy investment firm, announced a $2.8 billion investment to build a supercomputing facility in South Carolina.
  • Chobani, a Greek yogurt giant, announced a $1.2 billion investment to build its third U.S. dairy processing plant in New York, which is expected to create more than 1,000 new full-time jobs — adding to the company’s earlier announcement that it will invest $500 million to expand its Idaho manufacturing plant.
  • GE Aerospace announced a $1 billion investment in manufacturing across 16 states — creating 5,000 new jobs.
  • Amgen announced a $900 million investment in its Ohio-based manufacturing operation.
  • Schneider Electric announced it will invest $700 million over the next four years in U.S. energy infrastructure.
  • GE Vernova announced it will invest nearly $600 million in U.S. manufacturing over the next two years, which will create more than 1,500 new jobs.
  • Abbott Laboratories announced a $500 million investment in its Illinois and Texas facilities.
  • AIP Management, a European infrastructure investor, announced a $500 million investment to solar developer Silicon Ranch.
  • London-based Diageo announced a $415 million investment in a new Alabama manufacturing facility.
  • Dublin-based Eaton Corporation announced a $340 million investment in a new South Carolina-based manufacturing facility for its three-phase transformers.
  • Germany-based Siemens announced a $285 million investment in U.S. manufacturing and AI data centers, which will create more than 900 new skilled manufacturing jobs.
  • Clasen Quality Chocolate announced a $230 million investment to build a new production facility in Virginia, which will create 250 new jobs.
  • Fiserv, Inc., a financial technology provider, announced a $175 million investment to open a new strategic fintech hub in Kansas, which is expected to create 2,000 new high-paying jobs.
  • Paris Baguette announced a $160 million investment to construct a manufacturing plant in Texas.
  • TS Conductor announced a $134 million investment to build an advanced conductor manufacturing facility in South Carolina, which will create nearly 500 new jobs.
  • Switzerland-based ABB announced a $120 million investment to expand production of its low-voltage electrification products in Tennessee and Mississippi.
  • Saica Group, a Spain-based corrugated packaging maker, announced plans to build a $110 million new manufacturing facility in Anderson, Indiana.
  • Charms, LLC, a subsidiary of candymaker Tootsie Roll Industries, announced a $97.7 million investment to expand its production plant and distribution center in Tennessee.
  • Toyota Motor Corporation announced an $88 million investment to boost hybrid vehicle production at its West Virginia factory, securing employment for the 2,000 workers at the factory.
  • AeroVironment, a defense contractor, announced a $42.3 million investment to build a new manufacturing facility in Utah.
  • Paris-based Saint-Gobain announced a new $40 million NorPro manufacturing facility in Wheatfield, New York.
  • India-based Sygene International announced a $36.5 million acquisition of a Baltimore biologics manufacturing facility.
  • Asahi Group Holdings, one of the largest Japanese beverage makers, announced a $35 million investment to boost production at its Wisconsin plant.
  • Cyclic Materials, a Canadian advanced recycling company for rare earth elements, announced a $20 million investment in its first U.S.-based commercial facility, located in Mesa, Arizona.
  • Guardian Bikes announced a $19 million investment to build the first U.S.-based large-scale bicycle frame manufacturing operation in Indiana.
  • Amsterdam-based AMG Critical Minerals announced a $15 million investment to build a chrome manufacturing facility in Pennsylvania.
  • NOVONIX Limited, an Australia-based battery technology company, announced a $4.6 million investment to build a synthetic graphite manufacturing facility in Tennessee.
  • LGM Pharma announced a $6 million investment to expand its manufacturing facility in Rosenberg, Texas.
  • ViDARR Inc., a defense optical equipment manufacturer, announced a $2.69 million investment to open a new facility in Virginia.

That doesn’t even include the U.S. investments pledged by foreign countries:

  • United Arab Emirates announced a $1.4 trillion investment in the U.S. over the next decade.
  • Saudi Arabia announced it intends to invest $600 billion in the U.S. over the next four years.
  • Japan announced a $1 trillion investment in the U.S.
  • Taiwan announced a pledge to boost its U.S.-based investment.

I don’t recall the media making much about this at all.

I challenge those who believe that Trump is leading us down a road to ruin with tariffs to put forth an alternative. If we would have recommended that all goods imported into the United States meet our stricter environmental and workplace safety standards in lieu of tariffs it would mean that virtually no Chinese goods could enter our consumption stream. Electric vehicles would become impossible to produce because the costs of extracting the raw materials would be prohibitively expensive without the child labor employed. Global workers would have to be paid in accordance to our minimum wage laws. We can’t have that either because we all want more stuff at the lowest possible price. Our grandkids be damned. Let them pay the bill.

Comment of the Day: “Oh-Oh! President Trump Violated Another Norm!”

/ Jack Marshall / 35 Comments

I confess (and it has been many months since my last confession): I was hoping to trigger this Comment of the Day or its equivalent with my criticism of the late Pope and the degree of influence and respect the position is still accorded by the news media and world leaders. Had I thought about it, esteemed commenter proe32754 would have probably been my top candidate for providing it too.

I will only point out by way of rebuttal is that Pope Francis’s Ethics Alarms dossier is a long as other prominent individuals who I have, fairly and correctly, designated Ethics Villains. Let’s see: he had four official Ethics Dunce awards and a couple more that I chose to frame differently. He has many Unethical Quotes on his record. He repeatedly presumed to meddle in the policies and politics of the United States (but his Holy predecessor during World War II refused to ever condemn Hitler’s Third Reich by name.) I have so many favorite outrages to choose from, but I think my favorite was when he dared to address Congress to pimp for the Democrats’ dream of open borders, despite severely limiting who is allowed to live in his own domain, The Vatican. Normally, anyone with a record like Pope Francis would be the star of a funeral no world leaders would dare to attend, lest they enter Cognitive Dissonance Hell with public opinion.

Yes, I suppose my remarks about the late Pope were “snide,” but I stand by them (and I do believe they were “called for.”) They were even mild compared to what I have written before; for example, here was my introduction to a post after the Pope’s visit in 2015:

I have been touched by the passionate defenses of the Pope during his visit here, by sincere believers who desperately wanted not to see what was going on. If only Pope Francis respected his supporters enough to live up to the ideals they projected on him, which included insisting, against all evidence, that he was merely talking in broad, moral generalities to Congress rather than lobbying for progressive policies, like making illegal immigration legal.

He was, we were told, only showing us where “true North” was according to the Church. I guess he just forgot to bring up abortion, which the Church regards as murder (and Joe Biden too, when he’s not playing politics) as he was lecturing our legislators about “human rights.”

The second he returned home, the Pope threw gay couples under the Popemobile, stating that Kim Davis’s position as a government official refusing to obey the law was a “right.” Again, his defenders insisted that this was just an abstraction. Now we hear from Davis’s lawyers that she had a secret meeting with Pope Francis. Davis says that he hugged her, gave her a rosary, and told her to “stay strong.”

“That was a great encouragement. Just knowing that the pope is on track with what we’re doing, it kind of validates everything to have someone of that stature,” Davis said.

Naturally, those who can’t handle the truth will say she is lying. There is no evidence that Kim Davis is untruthful, and her lawyer would be facing discipline if they falsely reported what did not occur. This really happened.

Got that, Popophiles? While a guest in this country, while progressives were tripping all over their usually Christian-mocking selves to proclaim him as a moral exemplar for setting U.S. policy, while he was being honored by the President and treated with more deference by the news media than any foreign leader, Pope Francis was surreptitiously encouraging an anti-gay zealot to defy the U.S. Supreme Court and the rule of law, while withholding the human right to be married from gay Americans.

I have already pointed out that the Pope is a hypocrite and a coward. With this conduct, he showed that he is a sneak as well, and blatantly disrespectful of the laws of the nation in which he was an honored guest. This was a breach of manners, protocol and a betrayal of trust on a massive scale.

I understand that religious faith by its very nature is an exercise in “My mind’s made up, don’t confuse me with facts,” and also that organized religion has a traditional and important role to play in maintaining civilization in a world where the vast majority of human beings won’t be civilized on their own. Thus I am not only sympathetic but in some respects encouraged by the passion and the passion and the loyalty of Catholic Church defenders like proe32754, who is obviously more articulate and capable than most.

Here is the Comment of the Day on: “Oh-Oh! President Trump Violated Another Norm!”…

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Comment of the Day: “’What’s Going On Here?’ Is This Incident Just A Single Teenage Idiot In Love Or Does It Have Larger Cultural Significance?”

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

I wanted to start Easter (and Greek Easter: for once the calendars agree) morning off on a moral note, and Glenn Logan‘s ringing Comment of the Day on the revolting Axis admiration of murderer Luigi Mangione provides exactly that. Glenn was a prolific blogger himself, has been a regular commenter here from the beginning (2009) and I have recognized him here too seldom, probably because he is economical with his pronouncements.

Yesterday was pretty quiet around these parts with few comments, but, as Spencer Tracy says of the “meat” on Katherine Hepburn’s person in “Pat and Mike,” what there was “is cherce.”

Here is Glenn Logan’s COTD on the post, “What’s Going On Here?” Is This Incident Just A Single Teenage Idiot In Love Or Does It Have Larger Cultural Significance?

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Comment of the Day: “How Should We Deal With Friends Who Believe Ridiculous Conspiracy Theories?”

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Another epic and irritatingly rational Comment of the Day from Extradimensional Cephalopod, this one on the thorny topic of discussing unlikely conspiracy theories with true believers. Almost all of E.C.’s contributions to Ethics Alarms topics are helpful and impressive; this is one of his—its?—best.

This is Extradimensional Cephalopod’s Comment of the Day on the post, “How Should We Deal With Friends Who Believe Ridiculous Conspiracy Theories?”:

Your friend has arrived at a conclusion that is based on, generously speaking, an implausible interpretation of the evidence surrounding the Titanic’s disaster. If he were looking at the evidence with no biases, he presumably would not have come to this conclusion. Therefore, I suspect that he has either an emotional attachment to the conclusion, or an emotional attachment to the process he used to reach it.

An person’s attachment to a conclusion might be as personal as a belief about what that conclusion says about them or someone they respect, or it might be as impersonal as preferring a more pleasant view of the world, such as one where disasters don’t just happen by accident.

An attachment to the reasoning process may be based on a fear of not having a good alternative reasoning process to turn to, a fear of what conclusions those alternative processes might lead to, or (similarly) an attachment to another conclusion that they arrived at through their current process. For example: “I have to believe this person wearing a cape is a bad person, because if people who aren’t bad can wear capes, that means that maybe I did a bad thing by attacking those other people for wearing capes.”

I’d like to talk with your friend and see how his worldview compares to what I suspect it is. My preliminary hypothesis is that your friend’s subconscious reasoning process is loosely based on the following premises, which I am not rendering judgment on at this time:

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

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

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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