In a 20-0 vote, the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA for short), the governing body for small colleges, ruled that it was unfair to allow transgender athletes to compete against biological women in women’s sports. The NAIA now becomes the first college sports organization to have the courage and integrity to make such an obvious and necessary rule to protect women’s advances in athletic, as the other groups, like the NCAA, waffle, stall, engage in double-talk and duck the issue while female athletes are hurt.
Yesterday the National Organization for Women, which has betrayed women in this controversy in order to keep its Far Left creds burnished, quietly took down its tweet of last week claiming that “White supremacist patriarchy”was behind objections to cheaters like Lia Thomas (above) dominating female competitors in college competitions. South Carolina’s women’s basketball coach Dawn Staley, similarly bowing down to Woke World and making no sense in the process, blathered that “If you consider yourself a woman and you want to play sports, or vice versa, you should be able to play.” Wags on social media had fun musing about what “vice-versa” meant in that statement: “If you consider yourself a sport and want to play women”? (Staley’s an idiot.)
As I noted in an earlier post today, extreme Trump Derangement rants are less tolerable from genuine professionals of whom the public reasonably expects better than from the Robert De Niro, Bette Midler, Jimmy Kimmel, Rob Reiner, and “The View”-type celebrity pundits who are loud of mouth, large of ego and megaphone, and short of wisdom. Thus the letter Steve-O-in NJ reveals and critiques in his Comment of the Day is particularly disturbing. As you will see, it is sloppy, miserably researched, steeped in emotion and bias, and, frankly, I’m embarrassed for my profession after reading it. That the writer, as he informs us by way of appealing to his own authority, was on short lists for a cabinet position either speaks to the incestuous nature of our political elite, or the frequency of age-triggered cognitive decline. And he wants this self-indicting swill widely circulated! The lack of self-awareness among the Trump Deranged is a source of wonder.
I also need to say that I have not recognized Steve’s often detailed, erudite and perceptive comments frequently enough. I attribute this to taking blessings for granted (one of my myriad flaws): so many of his posts are outstanding that I’m not sufficiently impressed by them any more. My fault, and my apologies to Steve.
Paul Grossman, supposedly a conservative, wrote the following, which should tell you all you need to know about Trump Derangement. He’s is a nationally known employment defense lawyer at Paul Hastings and a Republican. He has encouraged that it be shared.
“April 5, 2024TO:
My Friends and Acquaintances
FROM: Paul Grossman
SUBJECT: The Upcoming Presidential Election
In most elections, candidates differ in philosophical approach regarding how best to solve commonly appreciated issues and shared challenges such as the large federal deficit.In 2024, we are faced with a departure from this normal paradigm in which we can presuppose the integrity of the candidates and their desire for a better United States now and in the future.
For the first time in my lifetime, one of the two major candidates for President of the United States has proven himself to be not just unfit for office but affirmatively evil. I am a Republican. Until our former President came along, based on the issues, I voted for The Republican candidate for President. Ronald Reagan wanted me to run the Department of Labor forhim. I had serious hopes of being Mitt Romney’s Secretary of Labor. I would have happily voted for Nikki Haley over Biden, with whom I differ on numerous policy issues. But for the reasons set forth below, in this election differences in character are more important than the underlying policy issues.
Please vote. Sitting out this election is not a reasonable choice.Is the former President evil? Yes. There can be no doubt. Consider the following: He incited the January 6th riots. He refused to take action for hours that day while watching the riots on television. He has promised to pardon the convicted rioters despite the deaths and destruction they caused. He calls racists “good people.” He still claims the 2020 election was “stolen” – he lost it by 7 million votes. He calls his opponents demeaning nicknames – a tactic used by grade school bullies. He is a serial liar. His trade policy is protectionist – he ridicules serious economists. He has engaged frequently in unwanted sexual touching of females – as he put it in a recorded statement, he “grabs pussy.”
He has been found by a court to be guilty of sexual assault. He avoided military service; at a military cemetery he labeled those who served “suckers.” He initially denied the existence of the recent pandemic. He rejected medical evidence in relation to the recent pandemic and demeaned medical experts. He makes fun of climate change. He embraces nonsensical conspiracy theories.
[My problems with Biden include his age, immigration, the Afghanistan exit, unconditional sympathy for trade unions, overspending, and contentions the wealthy are not paying their “fair share” of taxes. But I must admit despite my reservations about Biden, the economy is doing quite well.]
[Donald Trump] makes fun of people with disabilities. He dehumanizes immigrants – all four of my grandparents were immigrants. Those who have worked most closely with the former President are unstinting in their assessments: He has been privately labeled a “moron” by his First Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson. He has been called dangerous by his former Secretary Of Defense, Mark Esper, who will not vote for him. He has been accused of undermining our NATO alliance by his former Secretary of Defense, James Mathis. His Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao resigned in protest of his January 6th related actions and inactions.
Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell called the January 6th mob violence a “failed insurrection.” He tried to bully his vice president to refuse to perform his vice presidential duty and certify the election results:Mike Pence, an honorable conservative, has announced he will not vote for the former President. He used to be pro-choice – he switched when he became a Republican and needed the evangelicals. He admires Putin and for good reason – both are evil and serial liars.
He could not care less about Ukraine’s heroic stand against Putin and Russia.Please join me in voting for the candidate who is a decent human being, and against the candidate who is evil.
Please forward this email to your circle of friends. I truly fear for our democracy if the evil candidate again becomes President. I think it possible, perhaps likely, that if elected in 2024, as the 2028 elections approach, despite the Constitution, he will do whatever he deems necessary to stay in power. Prominent conservatives including Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney, Liz Cheney, and Lisa Murkowski have publicly announced they will not vote for the former President. It is not clear whether they will abstain. But an abstention or a vote for a candidate who has no chance makes it easier forthe evil candidate to win. Thank you for considering my views.”
“[T]his display of the Vice President’s mental capacity and self-awareness is a warning that extends beyond basketball. It’s deeply disturbing…”
—Ann Althouse, assessing an epic Kamala Harris word salad so stunning that t set off even more ethics alarms than her inane babbling usually does
That’s what I get for giving Harris the benefit of The Julie Principle. I figured, hey, the poor woman is over her head, she’s obviously a dolt, she spews jabberwocky compulsively—what’s the point in complaining about what she can’t change? And then she goes and vomits up this Authentic Frontier Gibberish:
“Do you know — OK, a bit of a history lesson — do you know that the women’s teams were not allowed to have brackets until 2022? Think about that, and… talk about progress, you know, better late than never but progress. And what that has done, because of course — you know, I had a bracket, it’s not broken completely, but I won’t talk about my bracket. But you know what? How we love — we love March Madness, even just nowallowing the women to have brackets and what that does to encourage people to talk more about the women’s teams, to watch them, now they’re being covered. You know, this is the reality. People used to say, ‘Oh, women’s sports, who’s interested?’ Well if you can’t see it, you won’t be. But when you see it, you realize, Oh….”
I miswrote a few weeks back when I stated that an assertion by a DEI pimp that “studies show that diversity” makes organizations more successful and effective was a Big Lie, one of those “facts” (like the alleged percentage of women who are sexually molested, or women only making 76 cents for every dollar earned by men for the same job) that have gained currency by repetition by activists without solid evidence to support them. There are studies that purported to support the DEI contention, all from the same management consulting firm McKinsey & Company, carving out a profitable little niche for itself. Aside:I have worked for and with consulting companies. Consulting is a business, not a profession, and such companies strongly tend to give clients what they want to hear, thus making such firms popular and wealthy. Sadly, this is also true of ethics consulting firms and ethics consultants. I won’t provide an expert opinion crafted to make a client happy, and that is why I’m about three months from living in a cardboard box.
Back when I accepted gigs to do training in “diversity” for bar associations, there were no such studies, and because the diversity virtue-signaling fad was already galloping along then, I carelessly assumed that some enterprising “researchers” hadn’t manufactured “science” to support what was already conventional wisdom in the years since I decided that I couldn’t in good faith keep accepting money to teach politically correct nonsense. The McKinsey & Company studies, all claiming to “prove” the value of “diversity,” were published in 2015, 2018, 2020, and 2023, thus giving the private sector, government, the military, the professions and academia something to justify their woke crusades.
Biden called for an “immediate ceasefire” yesterday in a phone call with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, telling him that “strikes on humanitarian workers” and “the overall humanitarian situation” are “unacceptable.” Biden also, we are told, “U.S. policy with respect to Gaza will be determined by our assessment of Israel’s immediate action” and on steps to “address civilian harm, humanitarian suffering, and the safety of aid workers.”
By pure accident, the first thing I saw was Pentagon spokesman John Kirby (he’s the smart and competent one of the two primary White House paid liars) gaslight the press when asked how the U.S. policy toward the support of Israel in the war could be “unwavering” (as described by officials) and yet the Administration is also saying that it is considering changing that policy in light of the civilian casualties in Gaza. Kirby, with a straight face. said that the two statements were not inconsistent, prompting incredulity from his questioner. Of course they are inconsistent; in fact, they are contradictory. This is one more example of Democrats deliberately playing to the ignorant and uncritical voter.
Branding all critics and opponents racists has been a standard progressive and Democratic Party ploy for a long time, though it shifted into high gear when that was the primary argument used to deflect legitimate observations that Barack Obama was poor POTUS with a great PR machine. Then it shifted into higher gear as the “Get Trump!” effort became an ongoing crusade. Trump didn’t oppose letting illegals cross the border with impunity because it was, you know, insane policy for any nation; his opposition was based in racism. The tactic is dishonest, unfair, divisive, despicable and indefensible, but as the late Harry Reid—forwarding address: Hell—explained cheerily as he defended the Big Lie he circulated about Mitt Romney in the 2012 campaign, it works.
I am now noticing that the Race Card has been designated as the Axis’s official counter to the looming GOP recycling of Ronald Reagan’s effective question during the 1980 campaign: “Are you better off today than you were four years ago?” By almost every objective measure, as with Jimmy Carter’s failed Presidency, the unavoidable answer today is “Are you kidding? NO!” It’s a powerful weapon. So the Axis has declared it to be racist.
Commenter Dr. Emilio Lizardo revealed this morning in the comments to “At Princeton, Students Feel “Unsafe” in the Company of a Conservative Professor” that the policy at issue had already been reversed by the time I wrote about it:
“By April 2, the policy was reversed after an intervention from the club’s Graduate Board. In the seven days in between, debate over the policy rose from the club’s private GroupMe to the headlines of national right-wing publications. Club leadership maintains that the reversal was not due to national media scrutiny.”
So Ethics Alarms can’t claim even a smidgen of credit for the reversal. Nonetheless, the lesson here, as we have already seen elsewhere, is that when organizations and institutions install discriminatory and self-evidently unethical procedures and policies in the name of wokeness, political correctness, aspiring fascism of the far left, DEI or other perversions of core American principles and are quickly exposed, assailed and embarrassed, they usually back down. (Usually.)
A further lesson is that the organizations and institutions know that what they are doing is indefensible except from the “by any means necessary” perspective driving the Left in its crusade to re-make America. They know it, but they try anyway, hoping that any single instance will fly under the metaphorical radar long enough to become institutionalized. When they get caught, their reaction is, “OK, too soon. We’ll hold off on this one for now.”
Their assumption, and it is, frighteningly, probably correct, that the current DEI, Black Lives Matter, open borders, climate change hysteria, anti-free speech…freedom of association…equal treatment under the law and due process wack-a-mole contest it has forced our society into playing will inevitably result in a slow, steady ratcheting-up of anti-democratic practices that become accepted as norms. This is how the public education system became an indoctrination process. It is how the initially admirable goals of affirmative action became the racist practice of “diversity, equity and inclusion.” It is how journalism in the US. became partisan propaganda.
The fact that only conservative publications and news sources treated the Princeton story as “fit to print” and necessary illumination to stop democracy from “dying in darkness” is also significant. This doesn’t mean that the story wasn’t important or objectively worth reporting on. The conduct of the mainstream media in ignoring it proves that its purpose is not to keep the public informed, but to assist the Far Left in laying waste to America’s traditional interpretation of democracy. The Princeton story is important, and the fact that only conservative sources publicized it (only Fox News among the news networks picked it up) doesn’t prove their bias. It proves the sinister, deliberate complicity of the mainstream media as it attempts to keep Americans from realizing what is going on right under their noses until it is too late.
The Princetonian wrote that a debate over the policy arose only after “headlines of national right-wing publications” exposed it. If the story sparked a debate, it means it was a story worth reporting. The MSM didn’t report on the story because the Far Left doesn’t want any debate. In an honest debate they lose, just as they lose on abortion, illegal immigration, and so many other issues. If they felt they could win on the merits, then they would want debate. Instead, their media tries to bury the facts. This isn’t a conservative “conspiracy theory.” It is reality.
Finally, the club’s claim that “the reversal was not due to national media scrutiny” is another damning piece of evidence. Gaslighting, denial, “Jumbo”-ism and “It isn’t what it is” (Yoo’s Rationalization,” #64) mania have become such reflex tools of the Left that comparisons with “1984” are unavoidable. The border is secure. Bidenomics is a success. Inflation isn’t a problem. The President didn’t extol the “Transgender Day of Visibility” on Easter. He’s as sharp as a tack. The Trump prosecutions aren’t political. January 6 was an insurrection. Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia.
The Princeton student club episode is an important one for American to understand. They can only understand it if they know about it.
Boy I wish I knew how to get the readership here back on the rising curve it seemed to be on in 2016...
Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) tried to speak at the University of Maryland at the end of last month on the topic of “Democracy, Autocracy and the Threat to Reason in the 21st Century.” He was not permitted to get into the text of his speech, however. Raskin is one of the foolish Hamas-enabling, having-their-cake-and-eating-it-too Democrats who wants to make Israel stop its existentially necessary war effort to end the “violence and pervasive suffering in Gaza” and “provide for a massive surge in humanitarian aid”—to the region the U.S. is supposedly supporting the Israeli attacks on. Brilliant!…but I digress.
“Progress in history requires not just reasoning, which is certainly necessary, but it’s not sufficient, because it also requires the addition of the pro-social emotions, as the psychologists call it, of solidarity, empathy, love and the political virtues of justice and equality and freedom,” Raskin began. Then pro-Palestine protesters began shouting at Raskin, accusing him of being “complicit in genocide.” You know: morons. Student morons.
The progressive congressman pleaded with the pro-Hamas mob to have a dialogue with him rather than “heckling,” and that tactic worked as well as it always does. Raskin stopped his speech, pivoting to a spontaneous question and answer format, but the protesters’ chants and jeers made that approach impossible too.
University of Maryland President Darryll Pines (seen grinning above) stepped in and declared the event over as Raskin was effectively silenced. Pines then issued a disgraceful statement to the media, representing the shouting down of a member of Congress as a good thing, either because he was terrified of criticizing the far left on his campus, or because he’s an unethical fool. I suspect the latter.
President Joe Biden’s apparently radical nominee to the Philadelphia-based 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Pakistani-American lawyer Adeel Abdullah Mangi, looks doomed after Senator Jacky Rosen of Nevada became the latest Democrat to publicly announce that she could not support him. Earlier, the other Nevada Democratic Senator Catherine Cortez Masto had joined lame duck maverick Joe Manchin of West Virginia in opposing the nomination, a DEI pick if there ever was one.
In addition to having no judicial experience, Mangi supports two radical organizations that have signaled some rather alarming values, indeed he helps lead them, by serving on the advisory boards of Rutgers Law School’s Center for Security, Race, and Rights and the Alliance of Families for Justice.
The Rutgers center, which Mangi has contributed thousands to support, is under investigation by the Senate Judiciary Committee for hosting an event on the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks featuring pro-terrorist Sami Al-Arian, who was convicted of providing material support to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The Center’s director, law professor Sahar Aziz, regularly enlivens his Twitter/”X” feed anti-Semitic rhetoric. Now, these issues could be addressed, explained and defended (though perhaps not successfully), but the aspiring judge used the excuse that he had no knowledge that either of these had occurred in the organization he serves in an advisory capacity when Sen. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) asked him about the group’s programming and Aziz’s anti-Semitism.
Ok, we need a new rule, as Bill Maher likes to say.
Politicians who don’t have the integrity, energy, tech savvy or whatever else it takes to run their own social media accounts may not deny that what was posted in their names, with their permission, by their paid agents, are their true sentiments. I regard the practice of proxy tweeters and Instagrammers per se unethical anyway: the message says it’s from, say, “Joe Biden,” but it’s really from 22 year-old Ohio State grad Stanislaus “Blinky” Furbusher, a former circus geek whose uncle is a big Democratic donor, and whose opinion about anything would normally not get the national attention a typical Oakland A’s day game gets. That makes such a ghost-posted message a lie, flat out. Say what you will, and I have, about Donald Trump’s often stupid and obnoxious tweets, at least he’s the one who sends them, and he accepts full responsibility for them too. (And he knows how to send them, which admittedly isn’t much, but I bet Joe Biden hasn’t sent a tweet in his life.)
This is all by way of noting that when asked about the political and religious controversy about Biden proclaiming Easter Sunday “Transgender Day of Visibility” [Item #3] (the ridiculously named and conceived “day” pandering to the tiny minority represented by the “T’ in LGBTQ and dedicated to destroying women’s sports), the President, who doesn’t lie like Donald Trump and has a mind like a steel trap (we are told) denied that he had done it.
