Health and Medicine

Peak “Great Stupid” in Oregon (Again)

/ Jack Marshall / 28 Comments

I heard some mocking talking heads on Fox News joking about this yesterday and it made no sense to me at all, so I ignored it. Then I found out what had provoked all of the giggling about turtles.

The state of Oregon has appointed JD Holt to an Oregon Mental Health Advisory Board. JD says her pronouns are “they/them/terrapin.” She/they/it is not kidding. So she is out of her frickin’ mind.

From Fox News: “JD Holt, who also goes by “JD Terrapin” on Facebook, is one of roughly two dozen “consumers” on the OHA’s Consumer Advisory Council (OCAC). The council, established by administrative statute, is appointed by OHA Director Dr. Sejal Hathi, who was appointed by Gov. Tina Kotek (D, of course.) The purpose of the OCAC is to advise Hathi on the state’s provision of mental health services, including through investigations and reviews of current practices.”

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The 2024 Gallup “Americans’ Ratings of Honesty and Ethics of Professions”

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

I write a post about this annual Gallup survey every year, but my observations apart from the obvious have been increasingly redundant. This will be reflected in my comments this year as well, largely because little has changed significantly since 2023. Gallup writes in its introduction,

Gallup began measuring public trust in various professions in 1976, initially covering 14 jobs. Over the years, the list has changed, with some occupations added and others removed. Since 1999, 11 professions have been tracked annually, while others have been included periodically.

The average very high/high ethics rating of the core 11 professions has decreased from routinely 40% or higher in the early 2000s to closer to 35% during most of the 2010s. It rose slightly in 2020, to a seven-year high of 38%, reflecting enhanced public trust in healthcare workers and teachers during the pandemic. Thereafter, the average declined each year through 2023, when it reached 30%, and it held there in 2024. This mirrors the long-term decline in Americans’ confidence in U.S. institutions.

There is mordant humor in that text: the enhanced public trust in healthcare workers and teachers was wildly misplaced. The healthcare profession was inept and dishonest during the pandemic, and the teachers unions crashed the economy by lobbying to keep the schools closed for their own interests. It also reflects the trend I’ve see in these surveys for years: the public tends to trust occupations they have to trust, explaining why pharmacists and nurses have always been among the most trusted professions.

One reason the trust freefall has slowed, I believe, is that so many professions are trusted so little now that there isn’t much farther for them to fall. Only 8% of those surveyed trust Congress strongly: I’d assume that just the number of apathetic ignoramuses in the population would account for that number. It will be interesting to see if this clown show…

…drives trust in Congress lower still in the 2025 survey. And who knows what horrors are to come?

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Comment of the Day: A Spammed Commenter…

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

…who shall remain nameless.

This:

“Experience the future of companionship with an AI girlfriend chatbot. Designed to listen engage and respond with intelligence and warmth this virtual partner offers meaningful conversations, emotional support, and personalized interactions. Whether you seek a friend a confidante or just casual chats this ai girlfriend chatbot companion is always there for you anytime anywhere. Enjoy a unique ever-evolving connection powered by artificial intelligence.”

I think a blow-up doll is more ethical. The product is as perilous as crack or heroin, and destined to cripple and manipulate vulnerable, lonely people, like, say, me. It is the logical and inevitable next step from 800 sex chat phone lines. They can’t be made illegal; someone will undoubtedly argue that AI girlfriend chatbots can be therapeutic and even, on balance, capable of accomplishing more good than bad.

Sure. As for me, I’m reminded of this post from 2017: The Unibomber Had A Point.

Res ipsa loquitur.

MORE From The Res Ipsa Loquitur Files: White Mother, Black Baby

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Several times in the past I have cited the famous case of the severed toe in the plug of tobacco. It stands for the proposition that certain occurrences are so clearly a result of unforgivable human error that no further evidence is needed. This is the doctrine of res ipsa loquitur, “The thing speaks for itself.” The Mississippi Supreme Court stated that try as it might, it could “imagine no reason why, with ordinary care human toes could not be left out of chewing tobacco, and if toes are found in chewing tobacco, it seems to us that somebody has been very careless.” I’m confident that those judges would have come to the same conclusion in the case of the botched IVF procedure that ended up with a mother giving birth to another couple’s baby.

Someone was very careless….

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Guest Post: Revisiting the Promises and Realities of Obamacare

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

By AM Golden

[I’m grateful to AM Golden’s guest post for many reasons, among them the chance to revisit (above) the moment when the late Senator John McCain‘cast a petty and unethical vote to save the Affordable Care Act, which he had opposed, from repeal just to spite Donald Trump. I am also glad, I guess, to have AM remind us of the decietful manner in which it was passed, with Democrats insisting that the ACA was not a tax, then later defending it before the Supreme Court on the grounds that it was a tax. JM]

One of the government expenditures I’d like to see looked into by DOGE is the cost and usefulness of the Affordable Care Act, particularly the tax subsidy

Full disclosure: I work for a nationwide health insurance company. 

Not long ago, I commented how taxpayers are often gouged when the government spends our money.  We’ve seen inflated prices by government contractors.  We’ve read about the massive fraud perpetuated by those who got loans during the Pandemic to allegedly keep their businesses afloat.   I suggested in that earlier comment that the availability of student loans has doubtlessly caused tuition rates to rise.  The temptation of bottomless coffers of cash is hard to resist.  I suspect it has resulted in higher costs for medical care submitted through Medicare/Medicaid.  I noted then that government-paid health care would cause medical costs to go even higher.

It isn’t that U.S. citizens aren’t sympathetic to people who are sick, especially to those severely injured in accidents through no fault of their own or born with congenital conditions.  In the 1990’s, government regulations established, among other things, requirements that health insurance carriers offer two of their most popular plans as Guaranteed Issue plans for those who could not get insurance elsewhere.  These plans were expensive, but they put the onus for paying on the policyholder and not the taxpayer.  It was a step, but, like other attempts at helping sick people get coverage, it didn’t address the cost of medical care. 

And neither would the next attempt.

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Today’s Sad and Desperate Argument From a Facebook Friend Who Once Was Too Smart To Post Something This Stupid…

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Unbelievable.

That idiocy was posted by a lawyer, former law dean and law professor. How is this possible?

It is like saying that if you believe the French Revolution was a human and political disaster, you should have to explain why you object to each section of “Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité.” It is like saying that it’s a cop-out to claim that “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be Free” is a hateful call for the eradication of Israel, unless you explain: “What’s so bad about starting at the river? What’s so wrong about going to the seashore? What do you find so objectionable about freedom?”

Whoever thinks this meme is a devastating rebuttal of opposition to DEI as a social, employment, and organizational policy doesn’t comprehend a foundational principle of language, which is that words in particular contexts and combinations often mean something entirely different from what the words mean individually and in a vacuum.

Sure, diversity can be nice, but not as an enforced value, and not in every context. I don’t see anyone advocating more racially diverse NBA teams, for example. Most of the time diversity isn’t even an ethical value, just a feature that may or may not have benefits to a group. Equity, the only concept of the three that I see on my wall as one of the ethical values, means fairness. But fairness is extremely subjective, making it one of the more tricky ethical values, and when it is used as it is used in the context of the DEI Division of The Great Stupid, what it means is “equal outcomes for all.” That is Marxist Cloud Cuckoo Land garbage. Life doesn’t, shouldn’t and can’t work like that. There are winners and losers; enterprise, talent, diligence, intelligence and skill matters, as well as luck. Trying to fight that fact of existence is a fool’s errand, or, more often a con artist’s scam.

“Inclusion” is the weird one: what it means in context of the DEI movement is that all exclusion is malign and sinister, the result of deliberate discrimination on the basis of invidious factors. False.

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Fake Ethics Hero: Pamela Hemphill, A.K.A. “MAGA Granny”

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Does anyone say “Color me X” any more? Oh hell, I don’t care: Color me unimpressed with “MAGA Granny” rejecting her pardon from President Trump for her role in the January 6 Capitol riot that was the worst thing to happen to the United States since 9-11. Or Pearl Harbor. Or the Civil War.

She’s the retired 72-year-old drug and alcohol counselor from Boise, Idaho who pleaded guilty in January 2022 to a misdemeanor for entering the Capitol during the riot and was sentenced to 60 days in prison and three years of probation. She was one of those “rioters” who was basically walking around. The Axis media is singing her praises because she announced that she says won’t accept the pardon.

Hemphill said in an interview this week that she was turning President Trump’s gift down. “It’s an insult to the Capitol Police, to the rule of law and to the nation,” she said. “If I accept a pardon, I’m continuing their propaganda, their gaslighting and all their falsehoods they’re putting out there about Jan. 6.” She now says she doesn’t support Trump or (in the words of the New York Times) “believes his lie that the 2020 election was stolen.” (For the thousandth time, that is not a lie but an opinion that cannot be proven or disproven). A therapist had helped her change her view of the episode, you see. Now she realizes, she says, that the “Stop the Steal” movement. “was a cult, and I was in a cult.”

Winston Smith knows just how she feels.

I wonder if that therapist put a cage of hungry rats on her face to prompt Pam’s epiphany?

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Clearly Tattoo Artists Need An Ethics Code or Better Yet, the Common Sense God Gave a Cabbage

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

That’s a photo of a brand new tattoo on the arm of a nine-year-old girl.

The tattoo artist, who goes by the Instagram handle of “Cutzsosa,” posted a video of him giving the girl the permanent brand, and now he’s shocked that he’s getting a bad reaction on social media.

Yes, he’s an idiot. And an Ethics Dunce.

Now, it seems clear that the girl’s parents are worse: Cutzsosa says the girl and her parents traveled to his tattoo parlor, the Black Onyx Empire Tattoo parlor in Yuma, Arizona, from out of state specifically to get her the tattoo she wanted. What she wanted was a portrait of Donald Trump on her neck, and apparently her loving parents were determined to give their little darling what she desired. The artist claims he talked the girl into letting him ink a US flag on her arm instead. He thinks he deserves credit for that, since the neck-tattoo of Trump would probably get her beheaded in California. This is currently the basis of his Rationalization #22 (“There are worse things”) excuse for putting a tattoo on a child who cannot give informed consent for, well, anything, except maybe puberty blockers, but that’s “gender affirming care,” see, so it’s benign.

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Now THAT’S A Provocative Lawn Sign!

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

And apparently a real one, the creation of Democrat for an Informed Approach to Gender. Its website is here.

I wonder how that sign would go over in my neighborhood, where the standard woke virtue-signaling signs (“No human being is illegal”…”Love is love,” etc.) sprout like poppies in Flanders Field.

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Pointer: Dr. Emilio Lizardo

“The Ethicist” Begins 2025 With a De Minimis Ethics Dilemma and an Impossible One

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

2024 was a bad year for the New York Times’s ethics advice columnist, Kwame Anthony Appiah. “He”The Ethicist” showed unseemly sympathy for the Trump Deranged all year, and not of the “You poor SOB! Get help!” variety, but more frequently of the “You make a good point!” sort, as in “I can see why you might want to cut off your mother for wanting to vote for Trump!” I was interested to see if the inevitability of Trump’s return might swerve Prof Appiah back to more useful commentary on more valid inquiries. So far, the results in 2025 have been mixed.

This week, for example, Appiah thought this silly question was worth considering (It isn’t):

“I am going to tell a brief story about my friend at his funeral. The incident happened 65 years ago. The problem is that I am unsure whether the details of the story, as I remember them, are factual or just in my imagination. No one who was a witness at the time is still living. Should I make this story delightful and not worry about the facts, or make the story short, truthful and perhaps dull?“

Good heavens. This guy is the living embodiment of Casper Milquetoast, the famous invention of legendary cartoonist H.T. Webster. Casper was the original weenie, so terrified of making mistakes, defying authority or breaking rules that he was in a constant case of paralysis. The idea of a story at a memorial service or funeral is to reveal something characteristic, admirable or charming about the departed and, if possible, to move or entertain the assembled. This guy is the only one alive who can recount whatever the anecdote is, so to the extent it exists at all now, he is the only authority and witness. So what if his memory isn’t exactly accurate? What’s he afraid of?

The advice I’d be tempted to give him is, “You sound too silly to be trusted to speak at anyone’s funeral. Why don’t you leave the task to somebody who understands what the purpose of such speeches are?” Or maybe tell him to watch the classic Japanese film “Rashomon,” about the difficulty of establishing objective truth. “The Ethicist,” who shouldn’t have selected such a dumb question in the first place, blathers on about how “everybody does” what the inquirer is so worried about and cites psychological studies about how we edit our memories. Blecchh.

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