Health and Medicine

The President Sees Dead People: Ethics Observations

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments

The most important observation may be that the mainstream media is covering this disturbing episode rather than burying it.

From the New York Times:

President Biden looked in the audience on Wednesday for Representative Jackie Walorski, Republican of Indiana, during a White House conference on ending hunger, apparently forgetting that Ms. Walorski had died last month.

“Jackie, are you here? Where’s Jackie?” Mr. Biden said as he thanked lawmakers who had sponsored legislation on the hunger issue. The president appeared to be confused at her absence and said something under his breath about whether she had planned to be at the event.

In fact, Ms. Walorski was killed on Aug. 3 in a car accident in her district, along with two of her congressional aides, when a vehicle she was in collided head-on with another. The driver of the oncoming car was also killed.

Mr. Biden did not correct himself during the remarks, but the incident quickly went viral on Twitter and other social media platforms, with some people seizing on the moment as evidence that Mr. Biden, who is 79, lacks the mental capacity to be president.

“Some people”? Not to throttle a theme, but why just “some people”? Isn’t forgetting that someone is dead (when you made a public statement about her death just a month earlier) a classic sign of dementia? And why is this a surprise to anyone who has been paying even a little attention to Biden since before he was handed the Democratic Party’s nomination?

Of course, after that straightforward and factual account, the Times slipped back into familiar “Republicans pounce” territory. “The president’s political opponents have been pushing that attack since he took office.,” the news item says. It’s not an attack! It’s a legitimate concern for any American when it becomes obvious that the leader of the nation is sliding into senility. Again: why aren’t Democrats and the President’s supporters equally alarmed? Integrity? Honesty? Responsibility?

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On John Fetterman’s Speech Problems…

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

..and neck problems? What the hell is that thing?

I have tried to find the full video of Pennsylvania Democrat John Fetterman’s “John Fetterwoman” speech that is supposed to show how bad his speaking problems are post-stroke, but so far I’ve failed. I was going to post one of the  edited videos that highlighted his problems, but decided that I couldn’t trust any of them.

Now the mainstream media, and notably NBC News, is (predictably) trying to rescue Fetterman and their clients, the Democratic Party. NBC wrote, “The videos include slight edits, such as cutting out the sound of the audience to make it appear as if he had abruptly stopped speaking (some of the stops occurred when he was pausing during moments of applause and crowd reaction, according to unedited videos seen by NBC News). Other edits cut Fetterman off mid-sentence, to create the perception that what he was saying was nonsensical…. The videos could run afoul of Twitter’s rules against political misinformation, even though they are still available…. Experts have warned that such lightly edited videos, also sometimes called ‘shallow fakes,’ can be particularly effective pieces of misinformation.” Continue reading →

Look! The Washington Post Realizes That The John Fetterman Senate Campaign In Pennsylvania Is A Threat To Democracy!

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

Wow. CNN starting to criticize Democrats is remarkable enough, but the Washington Post biting the metaphorical hand that feeds it?

Theories abound. Maybe, as my freind Tom Fuller says, the Post editors have concluded that “there is some shit I will not eat.” Maybe Biden’s Speech From Hell that had fascist techniques all over it while calling half the nation fascist was too much even for these long-time accessories. I don’t know, but yesterday the Post editors erupted with rare disgust over the unethical machinations of Democrat John Fetterman, who is, essentially, trying to cheat his way to a victory in the crucial Pennsylvania U.S. Senate race.

Maybe what aroused the Post’s dormant sense of ethics was Fetterman’s absurd pandering to the pro-abortion crown in a 9/11 campaign rally—kind of appropriate, since 9/11 was about taking innocent lives just like abortion is—in which he shouted, “My name is John FetterWoman!” to a cheering crowd of idiots.  Fetterman reiterated his support for abortion until  birth, and pledged that he would vote to codify Roe v. Wade, which makes no sense since Roe outlawed most abortions after the first trimester.

“Women are the reason we can win. Let me say that again: Women are the reason we win.” Fetterman told the crowd. “Don’t piss women off!”

To quote Olson Johnson in “Blazing Saddles,” “Now who can argue with that?” Continue reading →

KABOOM! My Head Exploded Because I Underestimated Just How Bonkers The Values Of The Biden Administration Are. Again.

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Talk about a flat learning curve. In my defense, I continue to bend over backwards (metaphorically) to believe that the people who work for Joe Biden are really trying to do the right thing, they just don’t have a clue what the right things are. Then they do something like putting corrupt Clinton operative John Podesta (remember his emails detailing the ways Hillary cheated during her campaign?) in charge of $370 billion for anti-climate change measures. Sure, put someone dishonest in control of $370 billion…what could go wrong? But hey, I think: it’s just a mistake. Joe is addled. Let’s not be too judgmental.

Then Biden puts the guy above as the White House monkeypox coordinator. That’s not a gag photo, and I’m not kidding. That’s Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, formerly the director of the CDC Division of HIV prevention. Okay, he’s flamboyantly gay: I have no problem with that, I guess. I’m old fashioned: I think government officials who represent the whole nation’s interests should avoid unprofessional demeanor and open exhibitions of fealty to particular groups, but I’ll keep an open mind.

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Be Proud, Mainstream Media And Health “Experts”! This Is Your Doing…

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

That is poor Vanessa Sun above, an obviously intelligent young woman (even though she does include her pronouns in her social media profiles) who has been turned into a mad phobic by years of pandemic hysteria, political manipulation and fearmongering. She writes on Twitter, “The universities said we are doing the personal responsibility approach so now I will be lugging this large air purifier to my classes 2x a week.”

Vanessa is an MIT geochemistry PhD student, and has been reduced to this.

Where is the accountability for turning millions of U.S. citizens into whatever this is?

Hump Day Ethics Harrumphs, 8/31/2022: Fake Science, Jumped Sharks, And Failures

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments

The Pennsylvania Senate race is an embarrassment to the state, both parties and democracy generally. One of the most important and influential states can’t do better than find two ridiculously unqualified candidates. John Fetterman, the Democrat, is obviously still suffering the after-effects of a stroke: if he had any integrity, respect for the process and sense of responsibility, he would step aside and let someone healthy and mentally able run. (Admittedly, in a nation that elected an obvious dementia sufferer as President, the temptation to shrug off a mere stroke must be strong.) Fetterman has made it clear that he’s going to avoid any debates, because the man has trouble thinking and speaking—a definite problem. Running against him is “Dr. Oz,” whose only qualification that I can detect is that he’s a Trump-endorsed celebrity. Well, he’s also not a stroke victim.

I see today that a new poll shows that Trump’s candidate Herschel Walker has pulled ahead in the Georgia Senate race. Are conservatives and Republican supposed to be excited about that? Walker is less qualified to be a Senator than Dr. Oz.

When do the parties (and the public) get serious about competent government? Or perhaps the better question is “When did they stop being serious about competent government?”

1. Pssst! Great leaders don’t have their governments fall apart apart on their watch. The news media’s lionizing of Mikhail Gorbachev is transparent and absurd. It is like celebrating the superb leadership of King Louis the XVI in France. Gorby didn’t deliberately bring down the USSR, he just never understood that the only way a Communist nation like that can stay intact is with a one-party, totalitarian system. He was a weak, naive, idealistic leader in a place that couldn’t support his ideals, and he failed. Why is he being given a hero’s send-off in the mainstream media? It is one more effort by the Left to refuse to give its detested bete noire, Ronald Reagan, a strong and successful leader, due credit for his greatest achievement.

2. Not having functioning ethics alarms and being stupid too is not a recipe for success. I guess it would also help to be literate in popular culture: seeing “A Simple Plan” or “No Country for Old Men” could be useful. Crypto.com, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world, was supposed to send Thevamanogari Manivel of Melbourne, Australia a small refund and deposited $10.5 million in her account instead. Now, running off and spending the money is obviously dishonest and unethical; it also should be obvious that the owners of that much money aren’t just going to let it go. Nevertheless, she indeed took the windfall and started spending it. The mess is now, we are told, “before the courts.”

I have often felt that when a bank or other entity makes a mistake like this, there ought to be some routine reward, a substantial one, if the recipient reports the error rather than taking the money and heading for the metaphorical hills.

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Breaking News On The Stolen Election “Lie”

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

I still see it almost every day: a reference to Donald Trump’s stolen election “lie.” Trump, as is his wont, makes this slur too easy by his usual sloppiness of expression. First, he employs the language of certainty to express a belief that cannot be verified, and second, he keep focusing on voter fraud. However, as Ethics Alarms had indicated on many days in in many ways, there is a substantial likelihood that Trump’s second term was stolen from him (and the nation), not by fraud but by the continuous series of deliberate and unethical acts of sabotage committed against his Presidency, administration and campaign by Democrats, progressives, the news media, social media, popular culture, Big Tech, NeverTrump Republicans and the “Deep State.” (As an aside, the denials by the Left that the Deep State exists remind me of the once commonplace denials by Italian-Americans that the Mafia existed.)

This week, two bits of evidence supporting this position emerged:

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Unethical Quote Of The Month: Ethics Villain Dr. Anthony Fauci

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

“Well, I don’t think it’s forever irreparably damaged anyone.”

—Dr. Anthony Fauci, architect of the disastrous Wuhan virus response, to Fox News’ Neil Cavuto’s question, “In retrospect doctor, do you regret that it went too far? … Particularly for kids who couldn’t go to school except remotely, that it’s forever damaged them.”

How Clintonian of the good doctor, picking up on Cavuto’s awkward “forever” and adding “irreparably” to make it seem especially extreme. Maybe the lockdown forever damaged people, but it didn’t forever irreparably damage people. The lockdown caused more than 200,000 small busineses to shut down during 2020 alone. Gee, is that “forever enough”? It murdered the economy, the arts, and sports; it was significantly responsible for the George Floyd riots. The education and social development of young children were indeed retarded permanently by the isolating experience of remote schooling, as increasing numbers of assessments indicate. The corruption of US elections in 2020 arising out of the lockdown did long-term damage to the public trust in elections; whether it is “forever permanent” is yet to be seen.

It wrecked our small business, our savings, and our development permanently.

What an asshole.

The NY “Body-Snatchers” Case: Why Do Good People Do Bad Things? It May Be That They Aren’t The Good People They Think They Are….

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

I intended to write a post after seeing Tony Dye’s 2010 documentary “Body Snatchers of New York” a few years ago. Through a series of interviews with law enforcement officials, lawyers, journalists and victims, it tells the story of a sensational case out of Brooklyn in 2006 where a former dentist and his associates operating a company called Biomedical Tissue Services of Fort Lee, New Jersey, conspired with funeral homes to steal human bone and skin from dead bodies. The tissue was then sold to various processing companies to make medical products, including dental implants and spinal disc replacements. These, in turn were sold to hospitals to be transplanted.

In some cases, the families of the deceased individuals were told that their loved ones had been cremated when in truth they had been carved up and skinned. One such body belonged to the late Masterpiece Theater host, Allistair Cooke. Biomedical Tissue Services made as much as $250,000 from processing each body. In addition to lying to families and not receiving consent to distribute tissue and bone from corpses, the company also routinely sold body remnants from dead individuals who had suffered from drug and alcohol addiction, cancer, AIDS, hepatitis, and other diseases that compromised the safety of the tissue without informing their purchasers, tissue recipients or their doctors.

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From Acceptance To Celebration: An Ethics Conflict (Don’t Bother Trying To Explain This To Bill Maher)

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

With his uncanny instinct for taking bows for making an obvious observation while missing the point, pseudo-comic Bill Maher once again engaged in his favorite topic of fat-shaming last week, this time with a “Eureka!” to share. The U.S. has inexplicably gone from fat acceptance to “fat celebration,” which the HBO wit <gag!choke!> calls a “disturbing trend.”

This isn’t a “trend,” nor is it disturbing, and it isn’t a phenomenon confined to obesity. Bill could have educated his audience—which, as usual, arfed and clapped like the human seals they are—but instead ignored the real problem, which is partially fueled by people like him.

And it’s an ethical one. Society’s goal is to make the human beings within it safe and happy. This requires setting standards, much of which it accomplishes with law and law enforcement, and the rest it pursues by making values, virtues and positive, societally beneficial conduct clear. Society then encourages and rewards those who meet those standards, and shames, disapproves and rejects those who defy them.

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