…unless, of course, we should have compassion and empathy for unapologetic, self-destructive idiots like Anaya Peterson.
Peterson is a mother of five and—KABOOM!—a law student, but nonetheless thought it would be a good idea to get her eyes tattooed. After all, Australian model Amber Luke tattooed her eyes a vivid blue and only went blind for three weeks! That was good enough for Peterson, whose seven-year-old daughter cautioned her that the procedure was too risky. “What if you go blind?” the kid asked? Oh pshaw, Mom answered; adults know best.
Now it looks as if Mother may go blind after all. “I don’t have 20/20 vision anymore. From a distance, I can’t see features on faces,” Peterson told the media. “If I didn’t have my eyeballs tattooed, I wouldn’t be having this problem. Even today I woke up with more floaters in my eyes. And that is dangerous.” Continue reading →
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 →
That’s Dustin Hoffman in “Little Big Man” above, which he narrates as “Jack Crabbe,” a 121-year-old survivor of Custer’s Last Stand.
It is amazing to me that anyone seriously argues that elected officials, judges and other individuals with challenging jobs should NOT be required to retire at a reasonable age. [Yes, I omitted “not” in the original post. Idiot.] Many do so argue, however, especially those who are past that reasonable age, whatever it may be. Here’s a letter in the New York Times today; let’s call the writer “Jerry”….
Yet another article casting doubt on President Biden’s fitness to run again because of his age: 80 this coming Sunday. On the front page no less, as we celebrate his key role in dodging the predicted red wave.
Next month I turn 84. I still work at my computer every day, practice yoga regularly and ride my bike 10 to 20 miles a week. For sure, I can’t run as fast, or recall every name with the same ease, but in my mind I still feel young most days. And I’m far from alone among my cohort.
Eighty is the new 60. We need to get used to it as the baby boomers begin to turn 80 in just three years.
When we pick a presidential candidate, age is less important than character, experience, wisdom, judgment, kindness, resilience, mental health and track record, to name a few. Every candidate will have his or her flaws, but it’s insulting and foolish that someone should be disqualified simply based on age.
Oh, hell. I’ve always liked Ann Hathaway. Now I have to continue liking her despite knowing she’s a brain-dead, self-awareness-lacking, ethics dummy.
Just so I’m not accused of misrepresenting Hathaway’s moronic and offensive claim, here is her full sentence:
“[In] my own personal experience with abortion and I don’t think we talk about this enough, abortion can be another word for mercy. We don’t know. We don’t know. We know that no two pregnancies are alike, and it follows that no two lives are alike, it follows that no two conceptions are alike. So how can we have a law, how can we have a point of view on this that says we must treat everything the same?”
Someone can only make such an absurd statement by refusing to acknowledge what an abortion is, and that two lives are involved, not just one. If she were arguing for abortion when a fetus is hopelessly deformed or certain to have devastating maladies, that’s a legitimate ethical debate to have. Abortion then might be described as merciful. (But some advocate aborting Down Syndrome babies as similarly “merciful.”) Hathaway wasn’t considering the unborn at all, however. In her warped (but too common) view, it is mercy for the mother to allow her kill the child for her own benefit.
Even though more than the usual number of mainstream media lackeys have been willing to suck it up and admit that the Fetterman-Oz debate last night was a disaster for Democrats, enough integrity-free hacks have reached for way to blame everyone but the candidate. But as Leo Bloom memorably said when his scheme failed in “The Producers,” “No way out…no way out….” This can’t be blamed on anyone but John Fetterman, his party and his staff. He should have withdrawn after his stroke in May. He should have been transparent about his medical condition. If he couldn’t talk right, and couldn’t process what he heard, then he should have just said he wasn’t capable of debating, and let voters deal with that as they chose. Instead, he subjected listeners to these painful moments:
I was preparing a post on the absurd lengths Democrats and journalists are going to try to minimize the damage., and then stumbled upon what Joy Behar added to the whitewash effort on “The View.” This deserves a special spotlight. It is not only the dumbest attempt to help Fetterman, it is not only peak commentator stupid, but it is peak “The View” stupid and peak Joy Behar stupid as well.
I’ve never seen anything like the memo above sent via Twitter by the John Fetterman Campaign in advance of tonight’s only debate between the GOP and Democratic candidates for U.S. Senator, and I don’t mean just in politics. The Philadelphia Phillies are preparing to play the American League Houston Astros in the World Series, and are obviously out-matched: the Astros were the best team in their league and have won every post-season game so far. The Phillies didn’t even win 90 games (the Astros won 106) and finished third in their own division. Yet the team hasn’t issued a press release saying, “The Astros are the superior team, so we don’t want baseball fans to expect very much from the Phillies. Frankly, we’re just not that good.”
Here is the memo’s equivalent effort at lowering expectations…to the floor:
Those who fervently believe that it is important to the future well-being of the nation to get the U.S. Senate out of clutches of the Democrats understandably regard the U.S. Senate race in Georgia, where ex-football hero Herschel Walker is attempting to knock Sen. Ralph Warnock out of office using celebrity, Donald Trump’s endorsement, an “R” next to his name and little else, as a crucial battleground. However, one can’t espouse ethical principles and discard them when they become inconvenient. (Well, one can, but it is dishonest and wrong.) The same people who rightly insist that John Fetterman’s lingering disabilities resulting from a May stroke make it irresponsible for him to continue running for Senator in Pennsylvania are choosing to ignore Herschel Walker’s claims that he has been “cured” of dissociative identity disorder (DID), aka. multiple personality disorder, that favorite mental aberration of Hollywood horror movies. Continue reading →
Almost as infuriating as the unholy alliance between a totalitarianism-aspiring political party and the large majority of the news media determined to play Pravda is the persistent denial that such an alliance exists despite mountains of daily evidence. (It’s a right wing conspiracy theory, you know.) This episode, small as it might seem, shows both reporters and Democrats outing themselves.
NBC reporter Dasha Burns commented on the air that Pennsylvania Senate candidate John Fetterman appeared to have trouble understanding their conversation prior to their interview, because his closed caption device allowing him to read questions in text while she was asking them wasn’t on yet.
This kind of information used to be known as “reporting,” back when journalists saw their jobs as informing the public about objective facts they needed to know. But Fetterman, who is still recovering from the effects of a major stroke that would have prompted an ethical candidate to withdraw from a Senate race is going to great lengths to avoid letting the public know how serious his comprehension and communications problems are. Naturally, his party, desperate to hold on to control of the Senate, wants to keep Pennsylvania voters in the dark as well. Also naturally, the mainstream progressive media, of which NBC is a card-carrying member, is expected to assist in this deception, and certainly not undermine it with that old-fashioned “reporting” stuff.
I actually witnessed this exchange three days ago, as part of my four-day Alexandria, VA hospital adventure:
Woman: Put on a mask! This is a hospital!
Man: Why should I? You’re not wearing one!
Woman: I am!
Man: You’re wearing it under your nose!
Woman: I’m still wearing it! Put one on, or I’m reporting you!
Man. Go ahead!
Whereupon the woman turned to the elderly volunteer manning the desk at the entrance. He wasn’t wearing a mask.
Are the idiotic pandemic masks the official symbol and attire of The Great Stupid? I think so. My experience at the INOVA hospital convinced me. At the Emergency Room entrance. a large sign mandated masks. A security guard ordered me to put one on (but not my wife, who was being checked in). The masks being handed out were those cheap paper things that are either completely useless or mostly useless, depending on who you talk to. During the four days of hospital visits, I didn’t see a single N95 mask on the faces of staff, patients or visitors.
Around the busy ER waiting area, there were unmasked people, masked people, and people wearing masks under their noses or chins. When my wife was being checked in, nobody appeared to care about the masks at all. The nurse processing us wore no mask. I didn’t; my wife didn’t. The attendants who took her to the temporary room did. Later on, all of the nurses and techs were masked, but some doctors were not. Nobody ever asked me or my wife to put one on. In the nearby rooms, the typical scene was an unmasked patient and a mixed crowd of masked and unmasked family members, shoulder to shoulder.
Later, when my wife was moved to a regular hospital room, the signs even disappeared. The Patients Entrance and Visitors entrance had cheap masks available, but there were no apparent requirements. Sometimes the receptionists were masked, sometimes not. Sometimes one was and the other wasn’t. I walked in maskless (let’s see…) eight times, and nobody said a word.
What’s going on here?
Madness, as Major Clipton said. Virtue signaling. Confusion. Mixed messages. Chaos. Fear. Stupidity.
I’m running back and forth to the Alexandria hospital’s Emergency Room today (don’t ask why). It’s been at least 6 months since the last unpleasant visit, and something new has been added in the check-in area. It is a large sign warning that “aggressive, threatening or inappropriate conduct or language” will not be tolerated, and may result in refusals to offer treatment.
It was immediately evident why the hospital felt such a threat was necessary. The place was a disaster. It was obviously understaffed, and the staff members that were there were rude, distracted, slow and harried. I watched a 90-year old woman stand at the check-in window as the woman behind it left without explanation abandoning the potential patient who was literally whimpering as the minutes ticked by. “At least there’s no emergency,” I said to the angry lady. She was not amused.
As with so many other places in which professional, timely service is expected and once, before the pandemic gave them an excuse to go with skeleton staffing, was delivered, the ER was lowering its standards and telling people that they could like it or lump it, but they had better not complain or express frustration.
And life in the USA gets just a little bit shittier.
Ethics Alarms 