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.
“It’s all I can stands, ’cause I can’t stands no more!”—Popeye, sailor and American icon.
The column (below) by periodic New York Times opinion writer Wajahat Ali has been bothering me for over a week now. The moment I read it, I wanted to rush to my PC and tear it apart. Then I began questioning the exercise on a cost/benefit basis. Lunatic, hateful, biased pieces like this come out in the mainstream media every day; I can’t, and shouldn’t, use my limited time for Ethics Alarms debunking them all, for to objective, discerning readers, they debunk themselves.
Yet, as Thomas More futilely, fatally and correctly maintained at his trial, silence implies consent. This stuff is poisonous to our society and civil discourse. Moreover, Ali’s bile is especially illustrative of the Left’s current anti-America propaganda: it hits almost every one of the Big Lies, false narratives, hypocrisies distortions and fear-mongering appeals to emotion that threaten to tear the nation apart. It transcends unethical to border on evil. So after having this thing impinge on my sleep for a fifth night—I’m not exaggerating— I have to vivisect this monstrosity, for my own sanity if for no other reason.
Here is the whole essay, which was originally published at the now thoroughly deranged Daily Beast. (There’s hope in this: maybe it was too far off the rails even for the Times.) Read it, please. Its title, flagrant clickbait, is “Is It Time for Me to Leave America?” (Go ahead and read it on Yahoo, where that link takes you.) I’ll be back soon in Part II to take it apart.
You can also read it below….
I defended Gov. Ron DeSantis’s cancellation of Disney’s long-standing special status with the state of Florida, because, ethically, partners shouldn’t publicly attack partners without consequences, and because Disney’s privilege of self-government was in great part a product of the company bolstering core American values and a family-friendly culture. No, I pointed out more than once, this was not a case of a corporation being singled out to be punished for a political position the state opposed, but a situation where special benefits could no longer be justified if Disney was no longer going to hold up its end of the original mutually-beneficial deal of yore, which could be reasonably seen as “You don’t meddle in our business, and we won’t meddle in yours.” Moreover, giving Disney special benefits that other theme parks in the state didn’t have could not be justified as fair and reasonable any longer.
It now appears that I may have been giving Gov. DeSantis more credit than he deserved, and that his slap at Disney was, at least in part, an example of a state government punishing a company for a political position it had every right to hold, state, and act upon. Yesterday we learned that DeSantis intends to veto a $35 million bill for Florida to pay for a Pasco County facility that would serve as for the Tampa Bay Rays’ spring training home. The reason is, apparently, the baseball team’s public message above.
Forget it, Jake, it’s California Town.
Two days after the Uvalde shooting, as all of California Democrats, progressives and anti-gun zealots were metaphorically screaming “Murderers!” at those who aren’t willing to gut the Second Amendment to pretend that various restrictions would stop evil lunatics like Ramos, the California State Senate voted to end a legal requirement that students who threaten violence against school officials be reported.
The old law mandated that whenever a school official was “attacked, assaulted, or physically threatened by any pupil,” staff must “promptly report the incident to specified law enforcement authorities.”
Gone. So, for example, the teacher in that screenshot above, taken from a video of an in-class assault, would not be obligated to report it. How odd that the state would eliminate such a restriction as the question rages over how so many people aware that the Uvalde shooter was an anti-social, gun-obsessed menace never alerted authorities. What could possibly be California’s thinking?
Oh, come on. It’s easy! I guessed—that proves it’s easy. The ACLU’s statement on why it supports the repeal tells all:
Decades of research show the long-term harm to young people of even minimal contact with the juvenile or criminal legal systems. Once students make contact with law enforcement, they are less likely to graduate high school and more likely to wind up in jail or prison. These harms fall disproportionately on students from marginalized groups: Black, Indigenous, and Latinx students, as well as students with disabilities, are disproportionately referred to law enforcement, cited, and arrested.
Taking the photo above as an example, that student is merely the victim of centuries of systemic racism, and justifiably enraged by a racist white supremacist culture. Reporting him just compounds the injustice.
—-The forewoman in the just completed Sussman trial, which acquitted Clinton Campaign lawyer Michael Sussman of lying to the FBI when he presented bogus evidence of Trump campaign “collusion” with Russia and said he was doing so as “a private citizen” when in fact he was carrying out the strategy of Hillary Clinton and her campaign.
The breaking story yesterday, covered at Ethics Alarms here, had less than 24 hours hours of innocence in which the responsible response (and mine) was “we should give the jury the benefit of the doubt; they were in the courtroom for the whole trial, we were not.” Now we know, thanks to this woman, that the jury members were under the influence of progressive-programed confusion and bias, and were either incapable of fulfilling the duties of a jury, or prompted by the leadership of this proudly unethical fool, chose not to. Continue reading
There is a point where loyalty, unconditional love and bias-born blindness can no longer be tolerated nor excused, and Adriana Reyes, the mother of mass murderer Salvador Ramos, reached that point and passed it.
Her various efforts to defend her now fortunately dead son or to mitigate his incomprehensible crimes do nothing but harm. They contribute just this to understanding of the tragedy: Ramos was raised by a stupid, distracted mother with the ethical instincts of a sea sponge. Thanks, Adriana, but we kind of figured that out. We don’t need the reminders.
Reyes has now said…
—Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi on CNN yesterday
Almost exactly four years ago, progressives, Democrats and the news media accused Donald Trump, then President, of racism because he referred to border-jumping MS-13 gang members as “animals.” At that time, Pelosi delivered this pious rebuke:
We believe some of us who are attracted to the political arena and to government and public service that we’re all God’s children. There’s a spark of divinity in every person on Earth and that we all have to recognize that as we respect the dignity and worth of every person. … And so when the president of the United States says about undocumented immigrants, ‘these aren’t people, these are animals,’ you have to wonder, does he not believe in the spark of divinity? The dignity and worth of every person? ‘These are not people, these are animals,’ the president of the United States. … Calling people ‘animals’ is not a good thing.
Of course it was a cheap shot by Pelosi, but she specialized in cheap shots during the Trump years. If one is going to call anyone an animal, the brutal, lawless MS-13 gang members are a good choice. Now, however, Pelosi calls a President of the United States a “creature,” which is even lower than “animal,” evoking slimy insects, reptiles, and this guy…
A black college senior named Caleb Francois who is currently attending George Washington University in Washington, D.C. persuaded the Washington Post to publish his op-ed of surpassing ignorance and stupidity. His thesis (or theses)?
The racist visions of James Madison, Winston Churchill and others are glorified through building names, programs, statues and libraries that honor their memory.
The controversial Winston Churchill Library must go. The university’s contentious colonial moniker must go. Even the university’s name, mascot and motto — “Hail Thee George Washington”— must be replaced. The hypocrisy of GW in not addressing these issues is an example of how Black voices and Black grievances go ignored and highlights the importance of strong Black leadership.
The Post is being roasted in various conservative forums for publishing the 800-word essay. One pundit (at Breitbart) writes,
The arrogance of the Post knows no bounds. Publishing this editorial is just another troll from the Post, a way for the Post to stick its finger in the eye of its critics by relishing the hypocritical double standards the former newspaper now lives by.
I hate to defend the Post, but I don’t think for a second that the paper finds the student’s argument persuasive. It’s just provocative, and like other off-the-wall opinion pieces published by both the Post and The New York Times (remember the op-ed recommending that children and babies get to vote?), publication doesn’t imply endorsement. Yet the author in this case isn’t a historian or a crackpot professor; it’s a maleducated, indoctrinated young black man imbued with the 20-something’s unique certitude that he has everything figured out. If Caleb learns anything after graduation, I think it is very likely that he will want change his name and keep a bag over his head. Should a national newspaper help a young man to make a fool of himself?
Predictably, even the Post’s progressive readership entered an overwhelmingly negative verdict on the piece (which the author will surely dismiss as more racism and white supremacy.) Here is the “most liked” and the most representative of the over 1200 comments:
History professor here. If GW was only known for being a Confederate General or a slave owner, cancel away and rename away. But he was not. He is known for so much more… one of the biggest things is the idea that a president is not a king. And the office is not for life. Without him, our country would not be free. He kept order at a time when fractions would have torn us asunder. For God’s sake, do not rename George Washington University… I’m a liberal, and I believe in equality for all. But this is just stupid.
Huh? Why wouldn’t they remain not just “mostly silent,” but entirely and forever silent? What does abortion have to do with gaming? What possible justification would there be for the video game industry to take a position on the legal and Constitutional issues relating to Roe? What can they add to a productive discussion besides noise and ignorance? Why should the U.S. Supreme Court pay any attention at all to uninformed opinions by those who are brick-ignorant about the law?
This isn’t just an example of “If the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.” This is “If all you care about is a nail, everything looks like a hammer.”
Oh…and it’s not “repeal” you ignoramuses. Laws are repealed. Roe v Wade isn’t a law. SCOTUS rulings are overturned.
It’s rare that one sees blunt incivility in an old and revered political publication like the National Review, but here was the headline of Charles Cook’s column there yesterday:
I had read the editorial and my reaction had been the same, except that I would have been tempted to leave out “apparently.” I’d also categorize this as old news, at least to readers of Ethics Alarms. Then, for a nonce, I regretted the absence of self-exiled commenter “A Friend,” since his predictable efforts to defend the indefensible in the Times would have been particularly entertaining in this case.
Here’s the the paragraph Cooke was reacting to:
Imagine that every state were free to choose whether to allow Black people and white people to marry. Some states would permit such marriages; others probably wouldn’t. The laws would be a mishmash, and interracial couples would suffer, legally consigned to second-class status depending on where they lived.
This is the newspaper that is regarded as the flagship of the news media. This is the newspaper that holds itself up as a paragon of objective news analysis. This is a newspaper that claims that its perspective isn’t skewed by a progressive bias.
This is the newspaper I have been paying almost 90 bucks a month to have delivered every day for four years. Yes, I’m stupid too.
Here, in part, is what Cooke writes in his understandable disgust: Continue reading
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