Sen. John Kennedy (R-La) questioned Department of Energy Deputy Secretary David Turk today before the Senate committee on appropriations to discuss the 2024 budget request for the Department of Energy.
The following remarkable exchange ensued during the testimony, and it should be used to confront every climate change activist, believer, hysteric and expert, constantly and repeatedly, until they are forced to admit the truth:
Race-baiting, race bullying and using the threat of being tarred as racist have worked speculatively well as unethical political weapons since Barack Obama’s party and supporters perfected them. Thus it is gratifying to see a municipal body refuse to be intimidated when confronted with the demands of a shameless practitioner and her supporters.
Dane County Executive Joe Parisi nominated Rep. Shelia Stubbs (D-Madison) for director of Dane County Human Services, a position that oversees the county’s largest agency with a $240 million budget and around 800 employees. Almost simultaneously with her nomination Stubbs began mau-mauing those who had to approve the appointment. The weekend following the announcement from Parisi, Stubbs told members of the End Times Ministries International, a church she co-founded and serves as a pastor, that members of the board were putting her under scrutiny because she is black, saying “they have never had a black lead a department, and I would be the first.” She urged her congregation to email the Dane County Board supervisors and demand that she be confirmed. This was sufficient to inspire the good parishioners to threaten the board members with violence.
There were ample non-racial reasons to question Stubbs’ appointment. She was heard on video saying that she planned on keeping both her state legislative job and her new position once she was confirmed, thus acquiring two paychecks for two supposedly full-time jobs. “They said I can’t do two jobs at one time,” Stubbs says on the video. “I can walk and eat and talk if I need to. It’s my choice if I want to [resign].”
Now THERE’s something I never thought I’d put in a headline…
“FOX News Media and Tucker Carlson have agreed to part ways,” Fox News announced today in a statement. “We thank him for this service to the network as a host and prior to that as a contributor.”
Good.
There will be a lot of cheering from those on the political left who wanted to censor Tucker, but he brought this upon himself, and in fact the move was late in coming. Carlson’s was the network’s most-watched prime-time show, and the most popular and profitable news commentary TV show on cable. In 2022, “Tucker Carlson Tonight” averaged 3.32 million total viewers and received the largest audience with the golden 25-to-54 age demographic. But as Ethics Alarms has pointed out repeatedly, he is an ethics corrupter on the national scene, and the evidence in the Dominion defamation law suit that Fox just settled for three-quarters of a billion dollars proved that he couldn’t even be trusted to tell viewers what his real opinions were.
Ethics Heroes have been far and few between so far this year, but this one is not only an easy call, it’s from the world of Major League Baseball.
Andrew Toles played 96 games as a member of the Dodgers from 2016 to 2018. The speedy outfielder did well in limited playing time, but he did not report to spring training in 2019 and was subsequently diagnosed with bi-polar disorder and schizophrenia. A year later, Toles was arrested and charged with trespassing after he was found sleeping behind a FedEx building at Key West International Airport. He has been in and out of mental health hospitals ever since. But the Dodgers signed the now 30-year-old Toles to a contract in March, and revealed that the team has signed him to a contract every year since the 2019 season so he would be eligible for the organization’s health insurance.
Nice.
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Source: Sports Illustrated
Avi Silverberg, a Canadian male powerlifting coach, self-identified as a woman last week to participate in the women’s Heroes Classic Powerlifting Meet in Lethbridge, Alberta. (That’s “her” above.) As the current record holder, a transgender male-now-female, looked on, the large, bearded athlete broke the Alberta women’s bench press record. Appropriately, Avi didn’t even try to look like a girl. Priceless.
Silverberg could do this “fair and square” because the truly stupid Canadian Powerlifting Union (CPU) had established a liberal gender self-identification policy (the “Trans Inclusion Policy”) earlier this year, so any male can now compete as a woman as long as he/she feels like a woman on that particular day. “Based on this background and available evidence, the Expert Working Group felt that trans athletes should be able to participate in the gender with which they identify, regardless of whether or not they have undergone hormone therapy,” the policy document reads, deferring to the “inclusivity” guidance from the CCES (The Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sport)
Faced with a stark choice that other major law school deans (like the Georgetown Law Center’s Dean William Trainor) have botched during The Great Stupid, Stanford’s dean courageously chose the values of free speech, academic freedom and pluralism over the currently more popular progressive law student fad of censorship, mandatory wokism, and totalitarian tactics. She’s undoubtedly expecting a protest from her fetal lawyers, and surely will get it.
Responding to the school’s national embarrassment when a mob of students shut down the speech of an invited federal district court judge whose opinions they didn’t like—aided and abetted by the school’s “DEI” dean—Stanford’s Jenny Martinez announced yesterday that the students involved as well as the rest of the student body will attend a mandatory half-day training course on “freedom of speech and the norms of the legal profession.”
You may not believe this, given how often it is I have to do it, but I hate repeating myself. This post is essentially identical to this one, from January: same issue, same pandering, power-abusing sports league (the NHL), same awards (Ethics Hero and A “Bite Me!”), same despicable news media coverage; different team (the Sharks in place of the Flyers) and different player (Sharks goalie James Reimer replacing the Philadelphia Flyers’ Ivan Provorov…during the game against the Islanders,).
As in the case of the Flyers two months ago, the Sharks hosted a Pride Night (what someone’s sexual activities have to do with hockey and why they are something to be proud of remains a mystery to me), and announced that, in addition to offering silly LGTBQ+ themed, “Great Stupid”classic items like these…
…during the game against the Islanders,and promoting it with pandering blather like this…
…the team also committed its players to wearing special pride-themed jerseys during pre-game warm-ups. Well, you can’t do that, not ethically. It’s compelled speech by an employer with a threat of negative consequences for any employee who doesn’t comply. I would (and have) refused to go along with such edicts as an employee in the past even when I happened to agree with the sentiments I was ordered to endorse.
Like Provorov, the Sharks goalie declined to be pushed into endorsing something he chose not to, stating,
“For all 13 years of my NHL career, I have been a Christian — not just in title, but in how I choose to live my life daily. I have a personal faith in Jesus Christ who died on the cross for my sins and, in response, asks me to love everyone and follow him. I have no hate in my heart for anyone, and I have always strived to treat everyone that I encounter with respect and kindness. In this specific instance, I am choosing not to endorse something that is counter to my personal convictions which are based on the Bible, the highest authority in my life,”
He should not have been placed in a position where he had to make such a statement. (I would have preferred to see a shorts statement about compelled speech and political endorsements in general, but that’s just me.)
Predictably, and just as in the case of Reimer, the Woke Borg, Mainstream Media Division, attacked. One hockey writer described Reimer as “absolutely a homophobe” and beclowned himself by writing, “Here’s also what I believe, Jesus would unequivocally love and celebrate the LGBTQ+ community. He’d be the first to wear a rainbow.” Another sports writer wrote that Reimer is “hiding behind the Bible to refuse to endorse gay people having rights and existing.” A bit less mainstream, a newsletter about sexism in sports spat out, “Under the umbrella of disingenuous bullshit, you can fuck right off with this statement. If you truly believed the queer community is welcome in hockey, you’d wear the shirt. You do not get to have it both ways. Jesus is not impressed.” More assumptions about that well-known hockey fan, Jesus of Nazareth!
The NHL and the Sharks are the ethics villains here for putting their players in this position.
The NHL and the Sharks are the ethics villains here for putting their players in this position. The Sharks tried to both double down and weasel out, issuing this:
I regard the siege of the Alamo one of the signature ethics events in U.S. history, both for what it was and what it came to represent. There have been many posts on the subject as well as many references to the Alamo in other posts, all of which are accessible here.
Today, March 6, marks the fall of the converted mission. Ethics Alarms has two pieces from its archives to present:
I. Last year, Texan and Ethics Alarms stalwart Michael West’s provided Ethics Alarms readers with a day by day account of the Alamo’s the final days, March 5 and March 6. Here it is:
After the previous day’s war council (on March 4), Santa Anna was content that his glorious assault would occur. But evidently, according to several reliable Mexican sources, a civilian woman from the town, who had retreated to the Alamo with the Texans, made it out of the Alamo during the night and gave dire information to the Mexicans. Evidently the Texan garrison was increasingly despondent. According to the lady who escaped, Travis and the garrison had discussed their options and one of the more forceful arguments made was that they should consider surrender.
Santa Anna wanted none of this, and accelerated his assault time-table (which he hadn’t necessarily meant for the 6th of March but for the 7th or even the 8th).
The Mexican soldiers would have received their orders in the morning and spent the rest of the day making preparations. There was little physically they had to do other than check the locks of their muskets, ensure they had the requisite number of extra flints (which would occasionally break in battle – testing the coolness of even the most experienced soldier), or assist in the production of several ladders Santa Anna had commanded each battalion to have prepared.
No, most of the preparation would have been mental. A deeply Catholic people, the Mexican soldiers would have spent their energies on prayer and confession. New soldiers would have been nervous about how they would perform under fire, simultaneously trying to hide their nerves from the experienced soldiers, who would have recognized the unique challenge before them. Almost none had been asked to climb tall walls after traversing several hundred yards under fire against an enemy who had, in the previous 12 days, proven that their rifled muskets out-ranged the standard Mexican issue musket by nearly 300%Some of Santa Anna’s soldiers were eager to get into the fight – to uphold the honor of the Mexican nation against, not only rebels, but rebels seemingly motivated by pro-American attitudes. Some of Santa Anna’s soldiers had been farmers pressed into service only months before, who would have had a partially begrudging attitude and were mostly leaning towards “let’s get this over with so I can get home.” Some of the dictator’s soldiers were convicts for whom the upcoming bloodshed was just one more act of brutality to endure in an already brutal and brutalized life. For a large number of the soldiers, for whom soldiering was life, this would be a terror that they knew would be expected of them. Regardless of their motivations, there would be no getting out of the upcoming ordeal and every single one of them would be in the same peril when a Texan cannon roared out at their formation.
Set to wake up at midnight to begin movements to their attack positions, the few soldiers could fall asleep would have tried to do so by twilight.
Inside the Alamo, evening would draw a miserable day to a close. Earlier that day, according to Enrique Esparza, aged 8 (who’s father, Gregorio, was fighting with the Texans), the faeful courier entered the Alamo with news that despite all the hopeful reports, no immediate help was on its way. Travis would have discussed with the men their options – a break-out attempt in case of a successful assault would be their best recourse. A break out during the day would be impossible and one at night would be extremely risky. Whatever was said, it appears all but perhaps one of the men decided to stay
For the Texans, sleep would come quickly that evening. For the first time in 12 days, Santa Anna’s cannons didn’t create chaos inside the compound. It was silent. There could be no doubt that the defenders knew what this meant, but they were exhausted. They would have kept watch and pure anxiety might have boosted their necessary alertness. Nonetheless, they began succumbing to sleep deprivation and may have been deep in dreams of life after the war – or perhaps of life before the war.
Before collapsing in whatever position suited rest, most would have reviewed their plans in their minds of how to get out once they’d done what they could to slow or halt the Mexican advance. No shame in that: when a battle is clearly lost and standing your position doesn’t buy anyone else on the battlefield any opportunity to turn the tide, there’s no principle of warfare that requires that a soldier die on principle.
Most would have recognized that with San Antonio immediately to the west, and several Mexican artillery batteries to the north and south, the east would be the best direction to break out for should the situation so demand. That was also where the gathering Texan army could be found, eventually.
Right after dusk, Travis dispatched the final courier on yet another appeal for assistance. Then, as in each night during the siege , Travis assigned several men outpost duty beyond the walls of the Alamo to provide an early warning before turning the watch over to another officer.
He hoped to get a little bit of sleep himself.
The Mid Vermont Christian School girls basketball team, the Eagles, were set to play against the Long Trail Mountain Lions in the fourth game of state championship tournament playoffs last week. But the Eagles forfeited the game and lost their place in the tournament, taking the position it was unfair and unsafe for a high school girls team to have to play against a team with a biological male on its squad.
Which, of course, it was and is.
[That’s another trans member of a women’s basketball team above, but illustrative of the problem…don’t you think?]
And there it is: the difference between CNN’s ex-fake media ethics watchdog Brian Stelter, and current Fox News media ethics reporter Howard Kurtz, whom Stelter succeeded as host of “Reliable Sources.”
Kurtz informed his viewers today that his network will not allow him to cover details in the defamation lawsuit filed by Dominion Voting Systems against Fox. On his show “MediaBuzz,” Kurtz announced that his bosses are not allowing him to report on the case, despite his conclusion thati t is a “major media story.” (Of course it is.) So, he says, he cannot talk about the case at this time, but will let his audience know if that policy changes.
Ethics Alarms 