Government & Politics

I Lost On This Issue, But I Was Right

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

The New York Times tells us today, “Psychosis, Addiction, Chronic Vomiting: As Weed Becomes More Potent, Teens Are Getting Sick.”

Gee.

Who could have predicted such a thing?

Some of the more intense discussions on Ethics Alarms, primarily with libertarians, arose from the unshakable position here that the government’s capitulation to marijuana legalization efforts would accomplish nothing but short and long-term damage to vulnerable populations, the young, and the nation generally. I saw the writing on the cultural wall long ago, when arrogant elites in entertainment, politics, journalism and other spheres declared pot “cool,” and my college associates began seeking to sit around bleary-eyed and moronic to actually having interesting discussions and doing things.

Continue reading →

Failures Of Proportion Make Failed Leadership Inevitable

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

I am torn: this post screamed out for a Major Clipton introduction though the head-exploding tweet above by President Biden’s Chief of Staff (or head puppeteer) arguably needs no introduction. I think I’ll settle on both: we haven’t heard from the major for a while…

Proportion is an important ethical value that we don’t talk about enough. That idiotic tweet demonstrates a disastrous ethics flaw—not the only one, heaven knows–that underlies so much of the ongoing tragedy that is the progressive movement currently being inflicted on the nation by Biden and the Democrats.

Inflation is reaching crisis levels, harming virtually all Americans not candidates for a reboot of “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.” The national debt has reached and exceeded and then exceeded more any rational level that a responsible country should tolerate. Yet the White House wants a victory lap because two women instead of the traditional one will have their signatures on the currency. Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: Dave Chappelle

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

I hate to call comic Dave Chappelle a weenie and a political correctness panderer, so instead I’ll settle for Ethics Dunce. He badly miscalculated here.

Duke Ellington School of the Arts in Washington D.C. had planned to rename its performance theater —I once co-wrote directed a show there!—after alumnus Dave Chappelle for his “ongoing commitment and service to the school.” Chappell, fresh off of his controversial Netflix concert that was attacked for its jokes about transsexual activism, appeared at the school in November and faced a barrage of criticism from predictably oriented students. He challenged opponents of his work and his advocates to compete to raise the most money for Duke Ellington, promising to abide by the winning group’s wishes regarding the performing space’s new name.

Well, his fans out-raised the pro-trans mob, but nonetheless, at the dedication of the newly-named theater this week, Chappelle announced that he would refuse the honor, and declared that the theater would be henceforward called “the Theater for Artistic Freedom and Expression.”

Continue reading →

Morning Ethics Warm-Up, 6/22/2022: Let’s Hit The Ground Running!

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

1. It’s a joke!!! That tweet is just the tip of the moronic iceberg for Republican Senate candidate in Missouri Eric Greitens. In a new fundraising video for his U.S. Senate campaign released this week, Greitens, a former Missouri governor who resigned before he could be impeached on multiple grounds including sexual assault, holds a pump-action shotgun and introduces himself as a Navy SEAL. (He is not a Seal: he resigned shortly before announcing his Senate run this year.) The video then shows him with a group of men in tactical gear hunting “RINOs”—Republicans who are not conservative enough for his tastes. He says, “Join the MAGA crew! Get a RINO hunting permit. There’s no bagging limit, no tagging limit, and it doesn’t expire until we save our country!”

And Sarah Palin was once accused of inciting murder by having little gun-sights on a campaign map!

Predictably, the irresponsible ad is being used by the mainstream news media and Democrats to characterize all conservatives and Republicans while hyping more anti-gun hysteria. Here’s CNN:

Some of history’s leading fascist movements used the strategy of armed volunteer militias intimidating, threatening and attacking political opponents. And the implications of Greitens’ ad are stunning: Line up behind the most extreme right-wing policies — and implicitly behind former President Donald Trump — or be hunted down by armed, jackbooted thugs.

Right. The implications of Greitens’ ad are that he’s a liar and an asshole, and that he is only slightly more fit to serve in the Senate than Herschel Walker, who defines the bottom of the bottom of the barrel… but presumably Missouri voters know that already. The ad and Greitens himself are metaphorical albatrosses around the GOP’s neck, but the party hung them there. He has been endorsed by several GOP luminaries, though so far, not by Trump.

2. Poll check: President Biden’s latest Civiqs approval rating hit 32%, with 56% disapproving of Joe. Again I ask: Who are those 32% that approve of Biden? What is it they approve of? What democracy can function if fully a third of the electorate have the IQs of flatworms and are happy to see the country rot?

Continue reading →

Protest Ethics: From The Self-Immolation School Of Outrage, But Even Dumber

/ Jack Marshall / 34 Comments

I can’t assign this to The Great Stupid files, but it’s still astoundingly stupid.

Ren Gladu, owner of Ren’s Mobile Gas Station in the college town of Amherst, Massachusetts (Hampshire College, Amherst and UMass are nearby), announced that he will stop selling gas to protest high gas prices.

“I don’t want to be part of it anymore,” Ren Gladu, owner of Ren’s Mobile, told the Daily Hampshire Gazette. “This is the biggest ripoff that ever has happened to people in my lifetime.”

Gradu decided he would not charge customers any higher than $4.75 earlier this month, and when ExxonMobil increased the price per gallon by 20 cents for two consecutive days, Gradu put up signs that read “Out of Gas.”

“Dealing with Mobil, they don’t think through their pricing policies anymore,” Gradu stated. “I’ve served their product, but I refuse to do it anymore, because they’re only getting richer.”

Mobil hasn’t thought through its pricing policies? Won’t one of those well-educated college students drop by and explain supply and demand to this poor guy? They might also try to explain that he needs to stop listening to people like Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders and Rep. Ocasio-Cortez as they try to spin their party out of its self-inflicted inflation disaster.

Continue reading →

Another CVS Adventure: Observations On A Revealing Juneteenth Encounter

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

The  CVS on Quaker Lane in Alexandria, scene of many ethics adventures…

I am still at war with CVS, which has so far ducked all of my efforts to seek an appropriate response for our local branch’s unethical treatment of a 30-year regular customer (me) last year. I still haven’t gotten around to moving all of my drug prescriptions to Walgreen’s, Harris Teeter or Safeway, however, so yesterday I was once again involved in a long, complicated mess regarding the filling of one of my more crucial pharmaceutical needs. (My CVS doesn’t do well with its pharmacy service either, especially since it used the Wuhan freakout to justify cutting staff down below a minimum level.)

Luckily, I was dealing with my favorite member of the current staff, a smart, young African-American assistant pharmacist with superb interpersonal skills. In the course of our discussion, I mentioned that most of the stores were closed (this is Northern Virginia) since the state was one of those making the Monday after Juneteenth’s arrival on a Sunday a holiday.

She had no idea what I was talking about.

Continue reading →

It’s True That The Mainstream Media Is Attacking Herschel Walker As It Would Never Attack A Black Progressive Senate Candidate…It’s Also True That He Deserves It

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

There’s a new scandalous revelation involving Herschel Walker. I’m certain there are more to come. But first, some perspective.

A lot of terrible candidates will be running for powerful positions across the country in November. Neither party has a monopoly on them, or the shame the parties deserve for inflicting them on the nation. Naturally, the unqualified, dishonest and otherwise awful candidates offered by the Republicans have received and will continue to receive the vast majority of criticism from the news media, which, after all, has its mission. That imbalance is unfair, but only in the sense that embarrassments like Maxine Waters, Ted Lieu, Adam Schiff, “The Squad,” Cori Bush and so many indisputably unethical Democrats are allowed to continue to soil the democracy. But in cases like Republican Georgia Senate candidate Herschel Walker, no amount of negative news media exposure is too much. In his case, the news media is doing its job.

Good heavens, what a disgrace! The former college and pro football star has lied about his record as a businessman, his role in a for-profit program alleged to have exploited veterans while defrauding the government, his academic record and more. What Walker has admitted to is also pretty disturbing: in his autobiography, he described playing Russian Roulette, engaging in domestic abuse, and stalking more than one individual with the intent of doing them harm. These are framed as part of a redemption saga, which would be more convincing if Walker wasn’t continuing to lie, obfuscate and generally behave like a con artist on the campaign trail.

Continue reading →

Democratic Senators Push Google To Limit Information In A Letter That Google Is Burying

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

This is a genuinely ominous story for several reasons. It’s also consistent with a recent theme on Ethics Alarms and in the Left’s increasingly anti-democratic philosophy of governing.

Reuters (and so far no other news source that I can find) is reporting that

U.S. lawmakers are urging Alphabet Inc’s leading Google search engine to give accurate results to people seeking abortions rather than sometimes sending them to “crisis pregnancy centers,” which steer woman away from the procedures. The request came in a letter, whose top signatories are Senator Mark Warner and Representative Elissa Slotkin, being sent to Google on Friday.

The letter was prompted by a study released last week by the nonprofit Center for Countering Digital Hate. The study found that 11% of the results for a search for an “abortion clinic near me” or “abortion pill” in some states were for centers that oppose abortion.

…The letter to Alphabet Chief Executive Sundar Pichai and was signed by 13 senators and three members of the U.S. House of Representatives as of midmorning Friday. All are Democrats.

“Google should not be displaying anti-abortion fake clinics or crisis pregnancy centers in search results for users that are searching for an ‘abortion clinic’ or ‘abortion pill,'” the lawmakers wrote.

“If Google must continue showing these misleading results in search results and Google Maps, the results should, at the very least, be appropriately labeled,” they wrote…

So far, nobody, including Reuters (and definitely not Google), has made the full text of the letter public. If the Reuters report is accurate, however, this effort isn’t just unethical, it is sinister. Continue reading →

Can Of Waning Work Week Ethics Worms: Race-Based Justice And Other Revolting Creatures [Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

1. I hate to take pleasure in anyone’s career setbacks, but...the word that CNN’s unethical media watchdog, Brian Stelter, is about to get dumped is good news for everyone but him. It also means that CNN will have rid itself of its two most flagrantly partisan and dishonest talking heads, the other being Chris Cuomo. Stelter took over “Reliable Sources” from the flawed but qualified Howard Kurtz, who had covered media conduct for the Washington Post, and at least tried to be objective (and still does at Fox.) Stelter immediately transformed the Sunday show into a CNN-fawning, Fox News-bashing epitome of what a news ethics show must not be. The last hack standing among CNN’s worst is now Don Lemon, who because he is black, gay and cute apparently is immune from his just desserts. As Meat Loaf memorably observed, however, two out of three ain’t bad.

2. Wait, what? Tim Allen isn’t the voice of Buzz Lightyear in the new Pixar film? The Buzz origin film, which has Chris Evans as the new voice of the popular character from “Toy Story” 1-4 is already creating controversy because it features a lesbian kiss. You know: that’s Disney’s way now. The movie’s director Angus MacLane “explained” that the recasting was necessary because the new animated film called for a more serious Buzz. Does anyone believe that? Allen was replaced because he’s an outspoken conservative, and Disney/Pixar wanted a star who would vigorously defend lesbian smooches in a kids movie, because that is apparently it’s priority these days. If the director wanted Buzz to sound more serious, he could direct the voice actor to voice him that way.

Continue reading →

Res Ipsa Loquitur: The Ugly And Unethical Pro Abortion Mob

/ Jack Marshall / 32 Comments

Well that doesn’t leave much question about where CNN stands, does it? These health centers being targeted for violent attacks by the domestic terrorist group Jane’s Revenge (“If abortions aren’t safe, then neither are you”) are pregnancy clinics which help expectant mothers seek other solutions to their plight that don’t kill anything. “Anti-abortion” is an accurate and direct description of political efforts to limit abortions, but clinics are medical, not political, and are correctly called crisis pregnancy centers. CNN’s use of “anti-abortion” is a deliberate effort to rationalize the bombings. I don’t know why I’m surprised…. Continue reading →