I confess, I don’t know what to call this post, how to define NY Gov. Kathy Hochul at this point, or how to explain American citizens who would put up with her.
She’s had quite an exciting December. On the same day and just two hours after a psychopathic illegal immigrant set a sleeping woman on fire in a New York City subway train, Hochel sent out this…
Sarah B.’s perceptive and eloquent Comment of the Day about the inquirer to the NYT’s “The Ethicist” advice column who asked whether the threat of various catastrophes ahead (as she saw them) concluded with a sentence that reminded me of this famous speech from the film “Parenthood.” I’ve been looking for an opportunity to post it. Thanks Sarah B.
And thanks for this Comment of the Day on the post, What, If Anything, Is The Ethical Response To This Trump Derangement Victim’s Letter To “The Ethicist”?…
It is very easy to mock and deride someone who is silly enough to believe the mainstream media and all the horror stories the left has subscribed to. I like feeling superior for not believing in this version of fantasy land. I felt superior when I was not one of the wackos who declared themselves part of the Navi in Avatar, and I’m feeling the same general happiness when recognizing that I’m not so far gone as to believe this current set of beliefs. Indeed, it is tempting to feel even more so, because so many of my contemporaries follow this insane set of beliefs.
However, I think we need to dig deeper than the mocking laughter this letter so easily inspires. What is this woman really saying? First, she is discussing a desire to have children. This is a desire that fewer and fewer women are subscribing to, usually to their and to societies eventual sadness. Therefore, this desire should be encouraged. Second, she is fearing that we are entering a time of tribulation. Before addressing this in any depth, we should consider what she is probably meaning with these two concerns. The first worry is likely that she feels that bringing a child into this world in a time of trouble means that her child may suffer. The second worry is that in bring a child into this world in a time of trouble would cause this woman to suffer.
The concern of bringing a child into a world in a less than perfect time causing the child to suffer is not a valid one for several reasons. First, the USA, under Trump or not, is better than many if not most places in the world. In addition, the world in 2024 is a better place than nearly all of human history. Less people suffer, and they suffer less than in the past. The human misery index is very low. Children are a joy to the human race, and the hope for the future. Man has always had children, even in tougher times than any we can illogically expect to come about today. The idea that the child MIGHT suffer in the perfect storm is still less likely than the child having a normal life and enjoying every moment his parents lovingly gifted him. Besides, in the best of times, a child will get illnesses and injuries. That is part of growing up. To quote Calvin, quoting his dad, “being miserable builds character.” As some say, if it were not for the heat or the hammer, the steel could not be honed. Adversity is what helps us become the best version of ourselves.
The concern of a parent suffering because they brought a child into a troubled world is ridiculous, because parents will always suffer for their children. Labor is no picnic. Sleepless nights when breastfeeding are a form of suffering. Staying up with a sick kid, or sitting by a kid’s bedside when they are in the hospital for a tonsillectomy, appendectomy, or croup is not exactly enjoyable. Holding them still so a doctor can give them stitches is incredibly painful, even before they kick you. I certainly feel greater pain than my children when they are sick and in misery and I wish I could take their suffering from them, even if it is a good suffering. Heck, it really does hurt me more than my child when I have to discipline them. And again, in the perfect utopia of a Democratic paradise, a child will still cause their parents suffering. Children will be born with special needs. Children will slip past an exhausted or distracted parent and fall into a pool or run into traffic. Accidents will happen, no matter what we do. Also, children will grow up and make poor decisions that cause parents all kinds of heartbreak. (I could mention that many democratic policies make some of those decisions more likely, but that would be of little use talking with this woman.) In short, being a parent is accepting suffering in the course of bring joy to ourselves and others.
My final thoughts on this involve a song by Garth Brooks. “Our lives are better left to chance. I could have missed the pain, but I’d have had to miss the dance.” Today, too many people have become convinced that no dance is worth the pain we may have to suffer, especially if we only imagine what the pain may be. I choose the dance.
This must stop, here, there, and everywhere.
As frequent readers here know, Ethics Alarms has been referring to the Axis of Unethical Conduct (an Ethics Alarms term, and a fair one) as a totalitarianism-leaning, anti-American phenomenon for years now, as I have tracked the frightening progress on the 2016 Ethics Train Wreck and all of its many offshoots. I have used made this point frequently and, I recognize, emphatically to the point that many object to those and related labels as inflammatory and biased, which they are not because my assessment is objective and accurate. I could also say, with justification, “If the show fits, wear it,” and even “If the shoe fits wear it, you assholes.”
Today I was sent promotional spam by my old hometown newspaper, the lone surviving conservative #2 paper in Boston (The Dominating Axis representative is the always Democratic Boston Globe) after the slow amalgam of four newspapers with long histories of service to the people of New England: The Boston Herald, the Boston Traveler, the Boston Record and the Boston American. That headline above was all I needed to spark a head explosion with several subsequent explosions that left bits of brain and bone on my keyboard and computer screen after I read the entire report.
Really, that Washington Post headline from yesterday is impressive. It has just 13 words, and yet there are six separate pieces of misinformation in it. Bravo!
1. and 2. Elon Musk didn’t “force” anything.
3. The Trump Presidency hasn’t started yet. If it had started, that would be a Constitutional crisis, and Milloy as well as the Washington Post are among those responsible for it, since they deliberately ignored the scandal of a diminished capacity White House resident for almost four years.
4. Uh, there was no shutdown, and only an idiot would have thought there would be.
5. A Presidency that hasn’t begun can’t collapse by definition.
6. Chaos is what the Biden Presidency is in now.
Details aside, it is also an excellent example of the fake news category I call “future news.” When what is happening doesn’t supply sufficient fodder for reports and pundits to attack Republicans and their favorite ideology’s opponents, attack those you want to hold responsible for what might happen.
It is hard to choose among Milbank, the despicable Phillip Bump, the deluded E.J. Dionne, dim bulb Ruth Marcus, old hack Eugene Robinson, boringly predictable Kathleen Parker and the certifiably bonkers Jennifer Rubin (all of whom have damning EA dossiers) as the most egregious partisan propaganda agent on this rapidly declining newspaper. Milbank would certainly be a worthy choice. Despite Jeff Bezos’s intermittent efforts to drag the once esteemed paper back from the brink, its staff is obviously so biased and lacking diversity of thought that the task seems impossible.
I keep my digital subscription to the Post because I need to check it for Ethics Alarms issues, because it’s my local paper, and mostly because it reminds me that the New York Times could be worse. But I do believe that bias has made the Post too stupid to survive: I wonder if it will last the next four years.
Why wouldn’t any sane and ethical editor tell Milbank, “Dana, I love ya, but that column makes you look like an apoplectic old fool and this paper look ridiculous. Now that you’ve gotten that out of your system, go write something that won’t cause spit-takes all over America”?
…by making stuff up and publishing it!
From the BBC: “The BBC made a complaint to the US tech giant after Apple Intelligence, which uses artificial intelligence (AI) to summarise and group together notifications, falsely created a headline about murder suspect Luigi Mangione. The AI-powered summary falsely made it appear that BBC News had published an article claiming Mangione, the man accused of the murder of healthcare insurance CEO Brian Thompson in New York, had shot himself. He has not. Now, the group Reporters Without Borders has called on Apple to remove the technology. Apple has made no comment.”
This must make human journalists shiver in their boots! If an AI bot can create fake news stories like Hunter Biden’s laptop being just Russian information, the U.S. economy doing great, President Joe Biden being sharp as a tack and Donald Trump emulating Nazis by holding a rally in Madison Square Garden,” who needs live lying reporters to mislead the public and generate fake news?
Reporters Without Borders, also known as RSF,sadit was was “very concerned by the risks posed to media outlets” by AI tools like Apple’s. See? They see the threat!
The group also said the BBC incident proves that “generative AI services are still too immature to produce reliable information for the public.” But hat proof evident long before this incident: Remember “Hunter de Butts?” Michael Cohen’s AI fiasco?
Vincent Berthier, the head of RSF’s technology and journalism desk, explained the obvious: “AIs are probability machines, and facts can’t be decided by a roll of the dice. RSF calls on Apple to act responsibly by removing this feature. The automated production of false information attributed to a media outlet is a blow to the outlet’s credibility and a danger to the public’s right to reliable information on current affairs.”
Wouldn’t you think an alleged ”’factchecking” organization would understand what a lie is? Well, the organization is Politifact, so it’s a trick question. It’s a Democratic Party/progressive propaganda outfit and facts are the last thing it cares about: that group of hacks is easily the most dishonest and unethical of all of these thing, much less trustworthy than second in line from the bottom, which might be Glenn Kessler and the Washington Post’s intermittently fair “The Factchecker” feature. And so it was that as the end of 2024 approaches, Politifact announced that this was its “Lie of the Year,”what Trump said on September 10:
“‘In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs.The people that came in. They’re eating the cats. They’re eating, they’re eating the pets of the people that live there. And this is what’s happening in our country. And it’s a shame.”
“With this claim, amplified before 67 million television viewers in his debate against Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump took his anti-migrant, the U.S. border-is-out-of-control campaign agenda to a new level,” Politifact moaned.
But even if the “Their eating pets and wildlife from the parks!” story had been a deliberate lie, it obviously was neither the “Lie of the Year” in either of the two categories relevant to the choice: it wasn’t the most destructive lie, and it wasn’t the most indefensible lie. This was: Continue reading
“Here come de judge!”
Above are some examples of SCOTUS Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson making a spectacle of herself in her Broadway turn last weekend in the musical “& Juliet,” a LGBTQ adaptation of William Shakespeare’s “Romeo & Juliet.” Jackson portrayed Queen Mab, described as a “she/her” character on a production poster, in two scenes written especially for her. “I just also think it’s very important to remind people that justices are human beings, that we have dreams, and that we are public servants,” Jackson told“CBS Mornings” prior to the performance. One of her dreams was apparently to be an actress, long ago. (She made the right choice going into law.)
Except that judges, and especially Supreme Court justices, don’t have the option of doing whatever they feel like or dream about, as least if they are conservative justices. All of the criticism of the Roberts Court in the past few years has been over alleged ethical violations by the Justices making up the 6-3 conservative majority. The Justices appointed by Democrats Obama and Biden are, of course, as pure as Ivory Soap. And yet…
—-Failed Democratic VP candidate Tim Walz in an interview with Minnesota Public Radio. Jeez, somebody tell him…
Thus does the Gov. of Minnesota and the most embarrassing major party Vice-Presidential nominee in recent history (yes, even worse than Kamala and Joe Biden) demonstrate the fealty to group identification and bias over substance, ability, and merit as the basis for success in our society.
Will somebody try to explain to Walz, who might look in the mirror if he wants to understand “how in the world” the Democratic ticket lost, that in the United Sates of America it is what people do, say, accomplish and believe that matters, not whether their occupations and labels are the “right” ones. Do include in the probably hopeless attempt that being a “country lawyer” ( Is that what Kamala Harris is?) and a high school teacher suggest no likely acumen at leading a nation. I do give Walz some credit for picking “billionaire” as his label for Trump rather than “convicted felon” or “adjudicated rapist,” the labels that his party worked so hard to slap on Trump using a politicized, unethically manipulated justice system, or the ever-popular “reality TV star.” (The appropriate description was “former President of the United States.”)
“I thought it was a real flex when the Wall Street Journal pointed out that I might have been the least wealthy person to ever run for Vice President,” Walz told MPR News. You did? Then you’re an idiot.
I really tried to write a parody of the “Sound of Music’s” opening ditty “How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?” about UPenn’s disgraceful Professor Julia Alekseyeva, but her last name defeated me. Do you know that no English words rhyme with “eva”? Anyway, she proved beyond a shadow of any doubt that she is not fit to be entrusted with young minds.
First the assistant professor indulged in a disgusting outburst of admiration for Luigi Mangione, whom we are supposed to call a suspect in the ambush assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, but who is obviously the killer. Then her absurd Pazuzu Excuse apology proved beyond any doubt that she is a liar. Be proud, University of Pennsylvania alumni! No wonder your alma mater belched up a murderer when it hires faculty like this.
Alekseyeva responded to the arrest of Mangione by posting a video of her smiling and bopping to the “Les Miserable” anthem “Do You Hear the People Sing” with the comment “[I]have never been prouder to be a professor at the University of Pennsylvania,” which Mangione attended. Alekseyeva then called him “The icon we all need and deserve.” To be fair, that part’s a bit ambiguous. If by “we” she means the nation’s deranged progressive assholes, she might have a point.
The University of Pennsylvania knows bad publicity when it sees it, so a spokesperson stated, “Much concern was raised by recent social media posts attributed to Assistant Professor Julia Alekseyeva. Her comments regarding the shooting of Brian Thompson in New York City were antithetical to the values of both the School of Arts and Sciences and the University of Pennsylvania, and they were not condoned by the School or the University.”
Heck, even CNN reported it (but not MSNBC). Crystal Mangum, the exotic dancer who in 2006 accused three Duke lacrosse players of rape launching an ethics train wreck that ended up costing the city of Durham damages, derailed the academic careers of the three students, got the lacrosse team coach fired, and resulted in a rare instance of a prosecutor being disbarred, finally admitted what everyone should have figured out by now.
“I testified falsely against them by saying that they raped me when they didn’t, and that was wrong. And I betrayed the trust of a lot of other people who believed in me,” Mangum announced on the podcast “Let’s Talk with Kat.” “I made up a story that wasn’t true because I wanted validation from people and not from God.”
Oh.
What?
Ethics Alarms 