Government & Politics

Ethics Observations On The Britney Griner Trade

/ Jack Marshall / 27 Comments

 Brittney Griner, the  U.S.-hating WNBA star who was sentenced to nine years in a Russian prison for violating Russian drug laws charges was traded to the U.S for international arms dealer Viktor Bout, an international criminal who was serving a 25 year sentence. Meanwhile, retired U.S. Marine Paul Whelan, also imprisoned in Russia and for nearly four years, remains there. He was convicted on espionage charges that the U.S. has called false, which doesn’t mean they are false, of course.

Observations:

  • You knew this was going to be the result, didn’t you? It was as certain as anything in foreign relations could be. Griner is black, a female and a lesbian as well as a sports celebrity who parrots progressive anti-American ideology. Biden might appoint her to the Supreme Court: she ticks all the right boxes.
  • The Biden Administration wasn’t wrong to seek her release. Russia had deliberately throw its metaphorical book at her; bu U.S. standards, her sentence was cruel and unusual. Our government is duty bound to try to rescue its citizens when foreign governments abuse them.
  • In baseball terms, this trade was like a team trading a superstar pitcher to its major divisional rival for a third-string catcher and a bag of stale peanuts. Griner has no national security or diplomatic use whatsoever; her sole value is political, as the Democrats will apparently do anything to pander to the three constituent groups Griner belongs to. Here’s a description of Bout, in contrast:

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The California Task Force On Reparations’ Proposal

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

I read something about the ridiculous recommendations forthcoming from California’s “Task Force to Study and Recommend Reparations Proposals for African Americans” a while back, and decided that it was just one more indicator of how the entire state had lost its collective mind, that The Great Stupid knows no bounds, and that some things are even too silly for me to write about. Now I think some attention should be paid. Because…

  • The task force reportedly will recommend giving $223,200 each to all descendants of slaves in California, on the theory that it will be a just remedy  for housing discrimination against blacks between 1933 and 1977. The  cost to California taxpayers would be about $559 billion, which is  more than California’s entire annual budget, and that doesn’t include the massive cost of  administrating the hand-outs and dealing with all the law suits it is bound to generate. Obviously, the recommendation is absurd for that reason alone, which makes it pure virtue signaling. The task forces is unethical by definition: spending public money to study an issue and issuing a recommendation that is politically and financially impossible to follow is irresponsible in the extreme.

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The Zugzwang Train In Georgia

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

As I write this, I have no idea who will win Georgia’s run-off for the U.S. Senate. Ethically, it doesn’t matter: the prospect of either result—Sen. Warnock’s re-election, or a victory for Republican Hershel Walker—is horrible. This is an even worse ethics zugszwang election than Hillary vs. Trump in 2016, except that the Presidency is obviously more important than the Senate, and an incompetent, dishonest, untrustworthy occupant can do far more damage there.

Ethics Alarms has discussed the awful choice offered Georgians many times over the past few months, mostly focusing on Walker, who is the most unqualified candidate for the U.S. Senate offered by a major party in my lifetime, and possibly ever. Warnock, however, is only slightly better, and he’s representing the political party that is slightly more unethical and incompetent than Walker’s party. Walker’s scandals are marginally more numerous and worse; his lies are more outrageous, his hypocrisy more stunning. But then Warnock says stuff like his ridiculous explanation (on MSNBC, naturally, with Joy Reid, of course) of why he is a radical abortion supporter:

“I have been studying the Scriptures my whole life. I’m committed to the faith. And, as a pastor, I have a profound reverence for life. And, as a pastor and a person of faith, I have a deep respect for choice.  If we care about life, black women are dying three to four times the rate of white women in childbirth, as a result of childbirth. And so, if you care about life, we ought to find a way and address the obvious bias in our health care system….I think it’s exactly what Jesus would do,”

Warnock isn’t just unfit to be in the Senate, he’s unfit to be in the clergy.

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Incompetent Elected Officials Of The Month: Rep. Mario Diaz-Belart (R-Fla.) And Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.)

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Also: two pathetic weenies.

Both GOP House members now are recanting their votes the so-called Respect for Marriage Act, which passed the House with 47 Republicans voting with the unanimous Democratic throng. Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.), chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, says his original vote was the result of “confusion” and because Speaker Nancy Pelosi “rushed” the bill through to the floor vote. Rep. Mario Diaz-Belart said yesterday,

“My record shows that I am a long-standing advocate against discrimination of all types. I, however, cannot support any effort that undermines religious liberties by failing to provide legitimate safeguards for faith-based organizations that object based on their deeply-held religious beliefs.”

What really happened is that conservatives on social media and in the punditry scorched the Republicans who voted for the measure, which is necessary, obvious, benign and a gift to the GOP if was capable of thinking straight, so now these two cowards are backing down and claiming that they didn’t mean it.

Look, the job of a House member is this simple: read a bill and decide if you support it or not. I can respect someone who votes for a bill and someone who votes against it, but doing what these two are doing is the equivalent of announcing, “I can’t do my job!”

Congress does not need incompetents, and it does not need weenies. It really doesn’t need incompetent weenies.

Ugh. This Again. Except That A Website Isn’t Like A Cake. [Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments

When Ethics Alarms first covered the case of a Christian website designer who was prosecuted for refusing to design a website celebrating a same sex wedding, I wrote at the top, “I will state up front that I am confident that this decision will get to the U.S. Supreme Court, and that if and when it does, it will be reversed.”

Now the case has indeed arrived at the Supreme Court. Its likely reversal (the website designer, a trial and a appeals court ruled, could not refuse to design a website celebrating a same-sex wedding) is being blamed by the LGBTQ suck-up media on all those evil conservatives who have invaded the Court since it ducked the matter of Christian baker Jack Phillips, who refused to bake a cake for a same-sex wedding. SCOTUS decided in favor of Phillips on technical rather than substantive grounds, with a waffling majority opinion by Justice Kennedy, who specialized in such things. Kennedy is gone, but the reason the web designer is likely to win isn’t the change in the composition of the Court, but because the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals was dead wrong when it ruled in 2021 that Lorie Smith and her company, 303 Creative, violated a Colorado law by refusing to create a website for a same sex union.

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What Shannon Epstein Does Is Not National News And It Is Unethical Journalism To Pretend It Is

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

From The Blaze:

On Thanksgiving Day, Shannon Epstein, 25, climbed aboard a Spirit Airlines flight headed from New Orleans to New Jersey. However, after the plane left the gate but before it could take off, Epstein allegedly began causing a scene, accusing a Latina family seated near her of “smuggling cocaine.”

Because of the wild accusation, airport officials decided to redirect the plane back to the gate so that Epstein could be removed. However, she refused to cooperate, reports say. When deputies tried to force her to deplane, she became “extremely combative,” said Capt. Jason Rivarde of the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office.

During a scuffle with six deputies at Louis Armstrong International Airport, Epstein supposedly caused several injuries. She has been accused of biting one officer in the arm to such an extent that she broke the skin. She has also been accused of kicking another officer in the groin.

Many other news sources including NBC News, Yahoo! and The New York Post are headlining this story and giving it far more circulation and attention than the typical “wacko goes nuts on an airplane” tale.

Why do Shannon Epstein’s antics matter? They don’t. She’s irrelevant to the nation, national security, the economy and the culture. Thousands of more substantive crimes have been committed by similarly insignificant people since she had her meltdown.

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It’s Asshole vs. Jerk vs. Troll, And May The…No, Let’s Hope They All Lose

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

It now appears that the controversial dinner former President Trump had with suddenly radioactive wacko Kanye West and racist, sexist, proto-fascist Nick Fuentes was a diabolical trap set by the “deliberately offensive former Breitbart editor, alt-right cheer-leader, misogynist and professional troll Milo Yiannopoulos, whom Ethics Alarms foolishly assumed was kicked to the curb for good (and I do mean good) when a tape surfaced of him making light of pederasty in an interview. Milo lost a book deal and his star status on the Conservative Creep Speaking circuit as a consequence. In declaring his professional demise, I wrote (in 2017), “Society and political discourse will be better off and more ethical without Milo’s hateful bile polluting them. That is a good thing.”

What do I know? Milo got himself hired as a staffer by Republican Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, herself an Ethics Alarms designated waste of space. Ethics Alarms, 2021: “This, my friends, is a crazy person, and no party can ignore or tolerate a House member who embodies the worst and most fevered stereotypes spread by that party’s opposition. Rep. Greene…needs to be marginalized and isolated in Congress so that not only can she do as little damage as possible, but so that when she says ridiculous and offensive things, nobody can say that this loose cannon speaks for the party.”

Milo, who is also apparently “Ye’s” Presidential campaign manager (of course he is!), takes full responsibility for setting up the dinner that has even former Trump lackeys calling the hopeful Presidential candidate a fool for hosting. Milo:

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“You’re The Dog”

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

The Wall Street Journal’s James Taranto—how I miss his blog!— famously wrote of accusations that something was a “racist dog whistle”:

“The thing we adore about these dog-whistle kerfuffles is that the people who react to the whistle always assume it’s intended for somebody else. The whole point of the metaphor is that if you can hear the whistle, you’re the dog.”

Bingo. In the last week we have seen two particularly vivid examples of this phenomenon. The most recent is peak Great Stupid: the World Health Organization announced  that it will begin referring to monkeypox as “mpox.” Why? Well, there were complaints that its name constituted “racist and stigmatizing language.”  Yes,  all it takes to make WHO jump is complaints from morons, or perhaps power-seeking activists who want to see how easily they can bend organizations to their will, just to prove they can. Continue reading →

Who Would Have Suspected That A Historic Appointment Like Sam Brinton Would Embarrass The Biden Administration?

/ Jack Marshall / 27 Comments

I wish I could say “I told you so,” but I didn’t, exactly. The last time Ethics Alarms discussed Sam Brinton, Energy Department’s chief of nuclear waste disposal, it was in an Ethics Quiz that asked, “Is it competent and responsible for someone like Sam to hold an executive  position of trust in a Cabinet Department?” To this I added,

“Within this quiz are several other questions, like “Should an individual representing the administration, the Energy Department and the U.S. government be publicizing his kinky ways?” and “Is the judgment of an official who behaves in pubic like Sam inherently questionable?” and “Is there a Simulated Sex with Puppies Deputy Assistant Secretary Principle?”

Yes, one of Sam’s passions is simulated sex with puppies. But he’s just pretending.

I said I would reveal my answers after the commentariat weighed in, but I never did. Now comes the news that Brinton, who was hired by the administration in February, was filmed allegedly stealing a woman’s roller bag at the airport’s baggage claim area by security cameras on Sept. 16, according to a criminal complaint filed on Oct. 27. Security footage also showed Brinton taking the woman’s luggage from the baggage carousel and then removing the tags before leaving the scene at a “quick pace,” according to the complaint. Brinton initially told police that be grabbed the bag and no clothes or objects had been removed. Later he changed his story. The contents of the bag, valued at $2000, have not been found.

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