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

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.

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

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]

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.

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Res Ipsa Loquitur: The Ugly And Unethical Pro Abortion Mob

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 →

George Washington University Insults The Nation’s History

Of course, we have seen this coming for a long time, and I will be surprised if the creeping, craven effort to erase George Washington and the legacy of the Founders from the school that now bears his name will stop; it may even accelerate.

The George Washington University Board of Trustees finally decided to discontinue the use of the school’s “Colonials” moniker based on the recommendation of —believe it or not—the “Special Committee on the Colonials Moniker.” In case you have the historical literacy of a horseshoe crab, before what is now the United States of America won its independence, it was made up of colonies, and its occupants fighting for their nascent nation were often called “colonials” because that’s what they were. These colonials were completely responsible today for the United States’ existence and everything it has achieved. The leader of the army of colonials was George Washington, and the first President of the radical new nation established by those colonials was that same great man. Thus to conclude that referring to various teams and groups associated with the educational institution named in his honor as Colonials is anything but descriptive, justified, and an honor is, to be blunt, bats.

However a gross majority of the people running the institutes of higher education in the U.S. are shallow, fearful, pandering fools, and GW’s leaders are clearly in that group. Here is the revolting statement by Board Chair Grace Speights: Continue reading →

January 6 Commission Witch Hunt Update

The January 6 Commission, as many have pointed out, branded itself as nothing more than an extension of all the “Get Trump and Punish His Allies!” plots, lies an and conspiracies that began almost from the moment he was elected. The mark was indelible as soon as Nancy Pelosi refused to allow any Republican to participate who had not already proved to be a NeverTrumper, eager to pin something on the ex-President. Lots of investigations are called witch hunts in Washington, D.C., but this really is one: the goal is to keep digging until the commission finds something new to use as a metaphorical stake to thrust into Trump’s political heart. This is, of course, unethical. deciding that someone must be guilty of something and spending more than a year and millions of dollars to figure out what is the essence of unethical prosecution as well as totalitarian instincts.

I keep wondering when the public will figure out just how rotten the exercise is. Televising the fiasco in prime time may well be a major blunder.

Here are two recent noxious developments:

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Most Unethical Jan. 6 Show Trial-Related Quote Of The Month: Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE)

“What Senator Schumer was saying was that he was upset. He was alarmed, he was concerned at the prospect that justices would reverse decades of a well-established fundamental constitutional right in our country. What he did not say was let’s go attack them.”

—–Sen. Chris Coons on Fox News, explaining why Sen. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s direct threat to Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh that they “have released the whirlwind and you will pay the price. You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions” was not a call for violence, while President Trump’s address to supporters on 1/6/2020 was inciting an “insurrection.”

Yes, I’ve decided to establish a separate sub-category of Unethical Quotes of the Month until the despicable January 6 Committee blight on ethics and democracy has run its course. Virtually every utterance by a member of that committee is a lie, a veiled partisan attack, or a pretense of legitimate Congressional process in the midst of a disgraceful show trial. The contemptible Rep. Adam Schiff, just as he did (falsely) regarding the Mueller investigation, has promised that he has seen “conclusive” and damning evidence without ever producing it. Liz Cheney is unethical almost every time she opens her mouth, and even when she doesn’t open her mouth: for example, the committee has subpoenaed Bill Stepien, a former Trump campaign manager, who is currently advising Cheney’s opponent, Harriet Hageman, for the Wyoming primary in August. As George Costanza would say, “Worlds are colliding!” Cheney has a direct interest in undermining a political opponent, and that conflicts with her duty to serve on the committee objectively and…oh, what am I saying? The whole J6 effort is a obvious partisan effort to smear Republicans in general and Terrifying Trump in particular. Never mind.

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Here’s Today’s “Gee, It Would Be Nice If We Had Some Kind Of Profession That Would Objectively Inform Us About Important Events Without Lying, Spinning, And Manipulating” Note: The SCOTUS Security Bill

You’re on again, Dana…

Gee, Dana, I don’t know what’s happening, because “journalists” and the untrustworthy, irresponsible, incompetent news organizations they work for refuse to tell us without their own special sauce drowning its essence. The special sauce is arrogance and bias.

Today’s nauseating example: Are Nancy Pelosi and her House Democrats deliberately stalling the special SCOTUS protection measure that passed the Senate last month as part of an effort to intimidate the conservative justices and play politics with their lives?

The National Review reported,

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From The “Nah, There’s No Mainstream Media Bias!” Res Ipsa Loquitur File…

Assassination attempt on Justice Kavanaugh? Who’s “Justice Kavanaugh”?

Yes, it’s a Jumbo. But it’s worse than that…

Newsbusters reporter Kevin Tober recorded the relative minutes of coverage on the Sunday news talk shows for the January 6 Capitol riots show trial and the attempted assassination of Justice Brett Kavanaugh. The totals:

ABC: Capitol riot: 19:11; Kavanaugh: 0:00

CBS: Capitol riot: 19:31; Kavanaugh: 0:00

NBC: Capitol riot: 36:25′ Kavanaugh: 0:00

CNN: Capitol riot: 18:10; Kavanaugh: 0:00

We already know that MSNBC wants Kavanaugh dead, so there is no need to include that network’s ration. NPR was little better, twice mentioning the Kavanaugh episode without actually reporting on it: “a man arrested near Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s house.,” and “we learned of the arrest of an armed man outside Justice Kavanaugh’s house.” That was it. This is what your tax dollars get you in timely news reporting. Continue reading →

Lapsed Sunday Sundown Ethics, 6/12-13/2022: Something!

[I hate when this happens: I had yesterday’s ethics short (well, shorter) notes almost ready to post,  things got complicated, and now it’s the next day. Well, I like that sundown photo, so to hell with it.]

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There are not too many speeches that have had a tangible impact on world events, but June 12 is the anniversary of one of them:  President Reagan challenging Soviet Leader Mikhail Gorbachev to “tear down this wall” in 1987.  Two years later, on November 9, 1989, the Berlin Wall came down. Liberals and left-leaning historians disliked Reagan so much that to this day they deny him his well-earned credit for undermining Soviet communism. On the anniversary of his death last week, Twitter was full of ugly, vicious attacks on his achievements and character. Nothing inspires hate more than someone who proves that your fondest beliefs are garbage. Here is what Reagan said to the crowd of West Berliners:

“There is one sign the Soviets can make that would be unmistakable, that would advance dramatically the cause of freedom and peace.” He then called upon his Soviet counterpart: “Secretary General Gorbachev, if you seek peace—if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe—if you seek liberalization: come here, to this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.”

All delivered, as usual, with the skills of a professional and experienced actor.

1. Ugh. Why is the principle of moral luck so elusive? A baseball controversy erupted in Chicago last week because ancient and “old school” White Sox manager Tony LaRussa intentionally walked Dodgers shortstop Trea Turner with a runner on second base  and a count of one ball and two strikesin order to have relief pitcher Bennett Sousa face Max Muncy instead. Muncy promptly hit a three-run home run to give the Dodgers a 10-5 lead in a game they would eventually win 11-9. A live microphone  caught one fan yelling “He’s got two strikes, Tony!” and “Tony, what are you doing?” before Muncy homered. The intentional walk is a baseball strategy that has largely gone into disuse because statistics don’t support it except in very specific situations. The White Sox have been a disappointing team so far this season, and that tactic by LaRussa seemed to catalyze a fan consensus that he is too old, behind the times, and the reason for the team’s performance. (He was booed in Chicago the last two games, and also faced “Fire Tony!” chants.)

So here comes ESPN’s esteemed David Schoenfield to write, “Now, to be fair here, the pounding on La Russa is also a little unfair. If Muncy strikes out, it looks like a good move.”

No, no, NO, you idiot! Whether or not the tactic is a wise one must be determined when it is executed, not after its results are known. La Russa had no control over whether Muncy homered or struck out once he had ordered the intentional base on balls. What a third party, or subsequent events, do cannot change whether a decision was competent or incompetent. That’s just luck. Continue reading →