Why would anyone—any nation, any organization, any business or individual—trust a nation that would do something like this?
A major tourist attraction, Yuntai Falls, at the Yuntai Mountain scenic resort in China’s central Henan province, has been promoted as China’s “tallest uninterrupted waterfall” to its millions of yearly visitors. But this week a hiker’s video revealed that the falls are fed by a secret network of water pipes. In a statement, officials admitted that they added water to the cascade to improve the viewing experience for tourists. OK, technically the waterfall admitted that it was phony, as the statement said, “Depending on the season, I cannot guarantee that I am in my best condition whenever my friends come to see me.”
Why would anyone present themselves to the world and strangers with a pose like that? (I am going to try to ignore another bias in this post, otherwise attractive people who wear nose rings, which I regard as the equivalent of deliberately having a booger hanging out of a nostril.) I’m a stage director: interpreting and evoking facial expressions and body language is what I do (and well, by the way). I would direct an actress to use that pose and expression if she were playing a character who was arrogant, defiant, remote, contemptuous of the world and hostile.
Someone who presents themselves in such a manner in real life is either so insecure that she is trying to keep everyone at a safe distance, or arrogant, defiant, remote, contemptuous of the world, hostile, and proud of it. This is a form of visual incivility. “Why should I waste time with you, peasant?,” that look says to me. And my response to that look is, “Oh, bite me. Get over yourself. Grow up.”
“We must face a simple truth.To protect America as a land that welcomes immigrants, we must first secure the border and secure it now.”
—President Biden, outrageously adopting Donald Trump’s long-standing position that he party has condemned as racist and “xenophobic” because his poll numbers are looking bad.
Seldom has the “Die Hard” clip (from the Ethics Alarms Hollywood Clip Archive) been more appropriate or infuriating. For more than three years, Joe Biden’s administration deliberately signaled to aspiring alien lawbreakers that they would be wink-winked into the United States despite defying immigration laws, let free to run amuck if that’s what they chose to do, and law enforcement would look the other way. Officials like Kamala Harris and Homeland Security Secretary Mayorkas gaslighted the public by insisting the border was secure when anyone with eyes or a camera could see it was anything but. An estimated 2.5 illegals have entered the country across this “secure border.” Awakening to the reality that the majority of the American public doesn’t view that as “a Great Replacement Conspiracy,” but simply as incompetent, irresponsible, dangerous and wrong—you know, like Donald Trump said in 2015 as he launched his (quixotic, everyone thought) candidacy for the Presidency and was tarred as a racist for it?—suddenly, Mirabile Dictu!, Biden is singing a different metaphorical tune.
What’s Nakba? It is a pro-Palestinian framing of the forever conflict in the Middle East between Israel and the Palestinians. Nakba refers to the beginning, when the United Nations announced its two-state resolution of the Palestine conflict with Israel getting one of them, and the Arab states along with the Palestinians attacked the new Israel territory with the objective of making the Israeli state a single Palestinian state. Israel won, and that historical episode is referred to as Nakba, “the disaster,” by the Palestinians.
I view it as the equivalent of the die-hard Confederacy fans in today’s South calling the Civil War “the war of Northern aggression.” It’s a false and biased framing that justifies everything the Palestinians do and try to do to Israel (like wiping it off the map), including terrorism. It is the reverse of the more correct and honest Israeli framing, which is that Palestinians could have had their state in 1948, tried to wipe out Israel instead, and now reside in the mess of their own making.
Soon after Hamas’s October 7 terrorist attack (the hostages appear to all be dead by the way, which should have been assumed by now), the Harvard Law Review asked Rabea Eghbariah, a Palestinian doctoral candidate at Harvard Law School and human rights lawyer, to prepare a scholarly article taking the Palestinian side of the latest conflict. Eghbariah, who has tried landmark Palestinian civil rights cases before the Israeli Supreme Court, submitted one, a 2,000-word essay arguing that Israel’s attack on Gaza following the Hamas act of war should be evaluated through the lens of Nakba, and within the “legal framework” of “genocide.”
The Washington Times reports that the Democratic National Committee today will vote to change party rules so the party can quietly nominate Joe Biden via Zoom before its convention. Not only will this maneuver supposedly enure that an early ballot filing deadline in Ohio won’t keep Biden off the ballot there ( Gov. Mike DeWine has already signed a law to extend the filing deadline to make sure Biden is on the ballot, so the party’s claim that the virtual nomination is necessary for that reason is hooey), it will “eliminate any realistic chance disgruntled party members will try to replace Mr. Biden on the ballot with a more desirable candidate amid alarming poll numbers that show him trailing former President Donald Trump both nationally and in the critical battleground states.”
You know: can’t let that democracy thingy get in the way of The Party’s anointment of its Leader.
“Once President Biden is virtually nominated, then that will be it. He will be the presidential nominee of the Democratic Party and only death or incapacitation will prevent that moving forward,” said Josh Putnam, party rules expert and founder of FHQ Strategies LLC, a non-partisan political consulting venture. “There will be no substitutes.”
Nominating Biden ahead of the convention also has the advantage of minimizing the bad optics of the anticipated convention protests by several groups who believe Biden has betrayed their interests. It also will ensure that the convention, and thus the “mostly peaceful” protests get as little TV airtime as possible. A coalition of organizations under the banner “March on The DNC” announced they plan to “bring our demands” to the Democratic National Convention. They want permits to demonstrate near the convention center “to bring the people’s agenda to within sight and sound of the Democratic Party leadership.” Oh, can’t have that! To re-phrase a memorable line from “Dr. Strangelove”: “You can’t have a political demonstration here! This is the Democratic Party Convention!”
I suppose I should clarify that by noting that what the New York Times calls “extremists” are really “Americans who believe that organizations shouldn’t be aiding and abetting law-breakers and those who deliberately defy U.S. immigration laws.”
This Times story (again, I’m making a gift of it, because I pay the Times fees so you don’t have to) is a virtual cornucopia of fake news and progressive propaganda devices by the Times (but I will doubtless get a protesting email from self-banned Time apologist “A Friend” saying that it’s OK because some Times readers point out the dishonesty.)
Let’s see: the gist of the thing is that “after President Biden took office in 2021 promising a more humane approach to migration, these faith-based groups have increasingly become the subjects of conspiracy theories and targets for far-right activists and Republican members of Congress, who accuse them of promoting an invasion to displace white Americans and engaging in child trafficking and migrant smuggling. The organizations say those claims are baseless.”
I’m dizzy already:
“More humane approach to migration” means and meant “less enforcement of immigration laws against illegal immigrants.” Enforcing laws in general is considered cruel and racist by the 21st Century version of progressives.
“faith-based groups” is being used here to signal virtue and good intentions because that suits the writer’s agenda and that of the Times market. Being “faith-based” is considered meaningless, however, when the “faith-based” are opposing the killing of unborn children or objecting to being forced express support for same-sex weddings.
See that framing? Any objections to open borders is based on the “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory, sayeth the Times. That’s a lie by omission. Most Americans who object to letting illegal immigrants get away with breaking our laws do so because illegal immigrants shouldn’t get away with breaking our laws. I, for example, don’t care if they end up voting for Truth, Justice and the American Way. I wouldn’t care if they were all white, or albinos even. They don’t belong here. Let them get in line like they are supposed to. And the “human trafficking” stuff: this is a classic example of deceptive cherry-picking, making a position look ridiculous by only mentioning the bad arguments for it while ignoring the valid ones.
Sure, those claims are baseless. The claims that the “faith-based organizations” are aiding and abetting illegal conduct, however, are 100% true.
Major League Baseball’s absurd and self-wounding decision to lump all of the old Negro League season and career statistics in with those of its own players is impossible to defend logically or ethically. Ethics Alarms discussed this debacle of racial pandering here, three days ago. What is interesting—Interesting? Perhaps disturbing would be a better word—is how few baseball experts, statisticians, historians, players and fans are defending this indefensible decision or criticizing it. As to the latter, they simply don’t have the guts; they are terrified of being called racists. Regarding the former, there is really no good argument to be made. MLB’s groveling and pandering should call for baseball’s version of a welter of “It’s OK to be white” banners and signs at the games. Instead, both the sport and society itself is treating this “it isn’t what it is” classic like a particularly odoriferous fart in an elevator. Apparently it’s impolite to call attention to it.
Oh, this is too good. If the Ethics God is responsible for this, she’s a genius.
You know that supposed “Stop the Steal”-connected flag that the Alito vacation home had flying over it briefly last summer? The flag that “proved” that the conservative Justice was either a serial mad flag-flyer who had engaged in “the appearance of impropriety” by showing his sympathies for the January 6 Capitol rioters twice, previously with an upside-down U.S. flag, or had wrongly “permitted” his wife to express such sentiments via flag twice, the first time almost four years ago? That flag?
That flag, the “Appeal to Heaven” flag, has been displayed along with other historic U.S. flags outside San Francisco’s City Hall for more than half a century. Along with 17 other flags representing different moments in American history, the flag favored by Mrs. Alito (of course the flag conspiracy purveyors are certain that the Supreme Court Justice is lying and that he is the real culprit, just because) appears in the Pavilion of American Flags in Civic Center Plaza.
Major League Baseball announced yesterday that it is now incorporating statistics of the Negro Leagues and the records of more than 2,300 black players who played during the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s into its own record books. This, of course, makes no sense at all: it is The Great Stupid at its dumbest. It is the epitome of DEI fiction and manipulating history. And, naturally, when everyone wakes up and realizes how brain-meltingly stupid this was, it cannot be reversed.
Because doing that would be “racist.”
Thus, lo and behold, legendary catcher Josh Gibson (above) becomes Major League Baseball’s career leader with a .372 batting average, surpassing Ty Cobb’s .367. Gibson’s .466 average for the 1943 Homestead Grays became the season standard, followed by the immortal (I’m kidding) Charlie “Chino” Smith’s .451 for the 1929 New York Lincoln Giants. These averages surpasse the .440 by hit Hugh Duffy for the National League’s Boston team in 1894.
Gibson also becomes the career leader in slugging percentage (.718) and OPS (1.177), moving ahead of Babe Ruth (.690 and 1.164). Gibson’s .974 slugging percentage in 1937 is now the MLB season record, with Barry Bonds’ .863 in 2001 dropping to fifth (that stat is also corrupted, but for a different reason). Bonds now trails legendary (kidding again) Mules Suttles’ .877 in 1926, Gibson’s .871 in 1943 and Smith’s .870 in 1929. Bonds’ prior OPS record of 1.421 in 2004 dropped to third behind Gibson’s 1.474 in 1937 and 1.435 in 1943.
…the main one being that the distress signal is appropriate, because the Axis of Unethical Conduct proved with this fiasco that it is ruthless, shameless, untrustworthy, and will do anything in 2024 to mislead the public if it might mean a few extra votes for Democrats. Or maybe the main one is that your friendly neighborhood ethicist was right about this story from the very start, which is why Fredo asked to make another appearance as my spokesman.
And this, my friends, is why we can’t have nice things.
Or a functioning republic.
Let me not get to far ahead of myself. Right now, the whole, biased, corrupt, anti-Trump, anti-conservative, Biden-protecting propaganda-spewing mainstream news media, the third partner in the Ethics Alarms-dubbed Axis of Unethical Conduct (“the resistance,” and Desperate Democrats completing the troika) is doing a mass Jumbo (“Flags? What flags?”) regarding what was its favorite earth-shattering scandal a week ago. This sudden amnesia was brought on because the Washington Post, perhaps seeking to embarrass its old rival, effectively eviscerated the Times’ “Get Justice Alito!” scoop, which EA first discussed here, and subsequently here, here, and here. (Don’t make me describe it again: I was sick of it days ago.)
Two days ago, the Post revealed that it had known about the first flag episode more than three years ago and had decided that it wasn’t newsworthy (because, as the revealed facts showed clearly, it wasn’t). Now-retired SCOTUS reporter Robert Barnes traveled to the Alito’s home on January 20, 2021, the day of Joe Biden’s inauguration, to follow-up on an anonymous tip he had received from some Alito-hating asshole neighbor about the flag. After investigating, Barnes and the Post concluded there was no story, because the flag-raising appeared to be the work of Martha-Ann Alito, Alito’s wife, not the Justice, as part of her dispute with her neighbors.
Ethics Alarms 