History

The Sec. of Transportation Tells Kim Kardashian That She’s an Irresponsible Ignorance-Spreading Fool. Good!

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

In an episode of the reality show “The Kardashians” (My god, is that still on?) Uber Kardashian Kim, the only one of the breed who earned her celebrity (with a sex tape and a huge derriere), told actress Sarah Paulson that she had watched interviews with Buzz Aldrin, who was on the Apollo 11 mission with Neil Armstrong and the second person to walk on the moon, and they convinced her that the moon landing was a government hoax.

“I don’t think we did. I think it was fake,” the Kimster announced. “I’ve seen a few videos on Buzz Aldrin talking about how it didn’t happen. He says it all the time now, in interviews.” Does anyone know what the hell she’s babbling about? The last time I heard about Aldrin in relation to the moonwalk conspiracy theory, he punched a guy in the face for claiming it was true.

Then Kardashian repeated a trope of the ancient conspiracy theory: “There’s no gravity on the moon. Why is the flag blowing?” I view that statement all by itself as signature significance: anyone who says it once is too gullible to be let outside without a keeper, and anyone who says it publicly is an idiot. The “mystery” can be answered by viewing the archived videos or by 3 seconds of googling. Who goes on TV and asserts a non-fact that anyone, including her, can prove false in a trice?

This time, however, big guns were trained on the specific idiot. Sean Duffy, the US Transportation Secretary and acting administrator of NASA, rebutted the whatever-she-is on X. He wrote: “Yes, Kim Kardashian, we’ve been to the moon before … Six times! And even better, NASA Artemis is going back under the leadership of [President Trump]. We won the last space race and we will win this one too.”

Madison, Wis, bloggress Ann Althouse, in one of her “it’s not the topic, it’s the tangents” posts, asks,

“Why is a government official calling out a private citizen who expresses interest in a conspiracy theory? We’re Americans. We have our conspiracy theories. Keep your government nose out of our business. You’re only giving more ammunition to the conspiracy theorists. Why stick your neck out to deny what isn’t true? You’re making it more fun to believe the theory!”

Ann is evoking the “Streisand Effect” with her “You’re only giving more ammunition to the conspiracy theorists.” She’s wrong, maybe even at an Ethics Dunce level. This conspiracy is hardly unknown: there was even a movie about it, and I have encountered moonwalk skeptics periodically ever since the event. “Why is a government official calling out a private citizen who expresses interest in a conspiracy theory?” Because, Ann, celebrities are not “private citizens.” They are public citizens; they make their millions by being famous and by appearing, speaking and misbehaving in public. More Americans by far know who Kim Kardashian is than who know who Sean Duffy is. A disturbing number of Americans, maybe even a majority, believe that being a celebrity (and appearing on TV) indicates virtue, wisdom and intelligence. Celebrity culture helped get Donald Trump elected President. Doesn’t Ann Althouse understand that? Hasn’t she ever heard the rejoinder, “If you’re so smart, why aren’t you rich?”

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Ethics Hero For The Ages: Elon Musk

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

I have long planned on writing a thorough post about how much the United States, its culture, its future as a viable democracy and its avoidance (so far) of a close call with progressive neo-totalitarianism owes to Elon Musk. This isn’t it. However, once again he has used his boundless wealth and creativity to strike down an engine of cultural indoctrination and Orwellian twisting of knowledge and history. Buying Twitter and ending its flagrant partisan bias was a landmark in American freedom of speech, one that may well have made the election of Donald Trump possible. His latest adventure may be even more important.

He has launched Grokipedia, the desperately needed alternative to Wikipedia. It is still a work in progress, as Musk admits, but by being AI-driven (the bot in charge is Elon’s Grok), the online living encyclopedia avoids the progressive bias and vulnerability to partisan manipulation that had caused me to only resort to Wikipedia when the topic was immune from political bias.

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President Tyler, President Trump, The East Wing, And Leadership [Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 43 Comments

John Tyler was our 10th President (1841-1845) and the first Vice-President to reach the White House via the death of his predecessor. That was the ill-starred William Henry Harrison, the oldest elected POTUS until our recent spate of geriatrics, who died shortly after being sworn in. Tyler is regarded as an obscure and rather dishonored President—he served in Jefferson Davis’s Cabinet during the Civil War, but his one big decision was a crucial one that took guts and audacity. The U.S. may not have survived without it.

As with many parts of the Constitution, the Founders were infuriatingly vague on the question of Presidential succession. It was unclear whether the VP was to serve as an acting President until a special election was held, or whether he became President for the rest of the dead President’s term. Tyler was a Democrat who ran on a ticket with a Whig President, so settling the issue promised to be a political battle that could have escalated into a dangerous crisis. Tyler didn’t wait for Congress to debate the matter: he just took the oath of office, said “I am the President at least until until the 1844 election,” and dared anyone to try to block him. Nobody did. That set “The Tyler Precedent,” and we should all say a silent prayer to John Tyler for it.

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“Social Media Is An Idiot Detection Service,” Episode #789K

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

Today’s episode, from “X”:

Sharmine Narwani, we are told, is a well-known journalist and political analyst specializing in West Asian geopolitical issues. She believes that Islam was around six centuries before Muhammad was born. She wants to spread her ignorance far and wide.

The tweet has 25,000 “loves.” I regard it as a pre-holiday “Coming Attractions” feature, warning us of the fatuous Jesus=Illegal immigrants analogies we will be getting from our woke friends (and a lot of pulpits) all too soon.

(Pointer to Glenn Reynolds, who accurately notes, “Actually, of course, it was a Jewish kingdom when Jesus was born. And it didn’t become Arab or Muslim until the Mohammedan invasion of the 7th century. Today’s inhabitants of “Palestine” are settler-colonialists. Israel is fighting a war of indigenous resistance to colonization.”

Breaking Ethics News: There’s a Major NBA Gambling Scandal! (Gee, What a Surprise…)

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

(Of course, the obligatory…)

Here is the latest report, from the New York Times (gift link!).

Right now I don’t care about the details, which are just emerging. The point is that this was 100% inevitable as soon as the professional sports leagues got into metaphorical bed with the online gambling companies. Ethics Alarms has warned about this many times (here, for example). I couldn’t justify using the “I’m smart!” clip from “Godfather 2” (my usual “I told you so!” introduction) this time, though, because even Fredo would have seen this coming…especially in pro basketball.

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Hypocrisy Watch…

/ Jack Marshall / 32 Comments

And people wonder why Trump beat the Democrats in 2016. Bernie is, to his credit, open and unrepentant about his hypocrisy, but it is kind of amazing that he still gets away with statements like this. He’s multimillionaire communist who rants about income distribution, and not only has a private jet but who mocks the little people who have to wait in lines for commercial air flights, and he fear-mongers about cliamte change while spewing more carbon into the atmosphere than any random 1000 Americans.

He can get away with this because he correctly assesses the IQ (low) and ethics alarms ( busted) of the average progressive.

And then there is Hillary Clinton. Saying, in effect, “Hold my beer!” the sad, bitter and irrelevant almost-first female POTUS (I feel sorry for Hillary, I really do) went for hypocrisy gold with this post on “X”:

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Unethical (and Stupid) Quote of the Day: Comic/Pundit Jon Stewart

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

“Fuck You, James Madison!”

—“Clown nose on/clown nose off” Comedy Central comic Jon Stewart, in the course of blaming the Founders for the current Democrat Party shutdown of the Federal government.

Imagine: a large proportion of young Americans look to this fake authority for their news and political analysis. True, they could do even worse: Kimmel or Colbert; MSNBC, NPR, you know, what Capt. Renault in “Casablanca” would call “the usual suspects.” This latest outburst from the smug, intermittently witty know-it-all, failed actor (like Bill Maher), however, may represent his absolute low point, and he has had many previous stinkers.

But with his latest rant, we can see just how useless, ignorant and incompetent Stewart is when he isn’t mugging or being funny. At the end of the latest “The Weekly Show” podcast, Stewart was asked who to blame for the government shutdown. Of course he wouldn’t say “The Democrats, dummy!” though that is the only factual answer. Instead he blamed the Founders. Here’s his “hilarious” answer:

“Who is responsible for the government shutdown? I’m gonna go with the Founders, who came up with this fucking fakakta, overly complex bureaucratic web of nonsense that it takes to get anything done, and I think it’s very difficult when one political party that represents 75 million voters has zero say, authority, heft, and in a functioning political environment that isn’t a zero-sum game, there would have been conversations up until now that took some consideration. Some, I’m not saying a lot.”

Oh, stop, stop, Jon, my sides are splitting! The funny man went on,

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The Pentagon Insists That Reporters Don’t Publish Secrets and Information It Doesn’t Want Revealed? Good!

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Ethics verdict: it’s about time!

This is one of those situations where my ethics alarms steered me to exactly the opposite position of almost everyone I know. Like the Axis media, they are generally pronouncing Sec. Hegseth’s cracking down on leaks at the Pentagon as one more “assault on democracy.” No, it is just another example of the Trump Administration having the guts to do what should have been done long ago.

What Hegseth called in a tweet “Press Credentialing for Dummies,” news organization reporters are now subject to the following rules:

1. No roaming free in the Pentagon. Good.

2. Reporters must wear badges identifying them as such. Good.

3. Press can not solicit criminal acts. Best of all.

Ethics Alarms has long held the position that “journalists” abuse their privilege under the First Amendment by freely (smugly, irresponsibly) engaging in information laundering by publishing leaks from individuals who broke the law or their ethical duties by telling reporters what they were forbidden to reveal. Since we now know that these untrustworthy professionals (which means they are not professionals at all) do not have the best interests of the nation at heart, making news organizations agree to reasonable restrictions as a condition of holding press credentials is the responsible course.

I endorse the analysis at Victory Girls on this issue, which wrote in part,

Freedom of the Press means that you get to REPORT news items. It does not mean you get to demand and be granted access to wherever you want. The media and far too many politicians have forgotten or are willfully ignoring that salient point….in World War II there was a slogan. A very important slogan: “Loose lips sink ships.” To be blunt, people were shitcanned from their jobs or even thrown in prison during that time period for breaking those rules. [But]in the last twenty years at least, Pentagon weenies and the media have cultivated relationships that have led to media breaking stories chock full of those “unnamed sources” about Pentagon dealings. Too many of those reports, especially during President Trump’s first term, were designed as hit jobs. 

Couldn’t have said it better myself. In protest of the new restrictions, most of the news organizations covering the Pentagon, even Fox, are boycotting the assignment rather than agree to Hegseth’s terms. The news media brought this on themselves; they will find no sympathy here. They have been, after all, “enemies of the people.” I see no reason to trust enemies with access to Pentagon secrets. In fact, doing so is unethical: incompetent and irresponsible.

Ethics Alarms Encore: “Unethical (And Stupid) Columbus Day Quote of the Decade: Kamala Harris”

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

[ This was last year’s Columbus Day post, and I decided that I couldn’t improve on it, so up it goes again. It is, after all, the proverbial two-bird stone: a straight reminder of how much we, and the world, owe to Chris, and how narrowly we avoided electing a pandering idiot as President. Another Columbus Day Ethics Alarms post worth visiting is this one, because it has the link to Stan Freeberg’s immortal Columbus riff on his “Stan Freeberg Presents the United States of America,” one of the most inspired pieces of musical satire ever.

But back to Columbus Day: its cancellation in some woke-lobotomized states (Indigenous Peoples Day) was part of the “America is evil and we should all be ashamed” cultural poison that the Mad Left has been trying to choke our society with for a long time. President Trump has more pressing challenges as he takes on the herculean task—it compares to Herc cleaning out the Augean Stables, the last and most disgusting of his Twelve Labors—of repairing our culture, but clarifying the significance of Columbus finding the New World is part of it. Let’s be clear: by any utilitarian analysis the European migration to North America was a very good thing indeed, probably inevitable, and beneficial to the entire world. Thank-you, than-you, thank you, Columbus. ]

“European explorers ushered in a wave of devastation, violence, stealing land, and widespread disease.”

—Kamala Harris in 2021, pandering to the “America is a blight on the Earth and the world would have been better without it” bloc in the Democratic Party  in a Columbus Day address.

Boy, what an idiot. Continue reading →

From the Res Ipsa Loquitur Files: The President’s Quick Quip

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Two permanent fixtures of the Trump Derangement narrative are:

  • President trump has no sense of humor.
  • President Trump is slipping into dementia (like Joe Biden), and should therefore be removed via the 25th Amendment.

Both of these are demonstrably false, even absurdly false. Demented people don’t have the quick wit to pick up on a straight line like that. And Trump even had the sense to “go out on the big laugh,” as the old vaudevillians used to say. When you get a big laugh, it’s time to end your appearance.

That incident today doesn’t prove that this President is wise, right, responsible or even well-intentioned. But the fact that the Axis of Unethical Conduct that has been working without pause to destroy Donald Trump since 2016 may be explained by another fact: that their hate and bias makes it impossible for them to avoid underestimating their foe.

As Sun Tsu said (but in Chinese), “There is no greater danger than underestimating your opponent….Never underestimate your opponent or your enemy. Looks can be deceiving. You really don’t know what your opponent knows or what kind of skills he or she may have.” In the same vein, Machiavelli’s writings also repeatedly warned against underestimating an opponent, and to assume that your adversary is “always capable and cunning.”

The ethics values at issue here are competence, prudence, objectivity, professionalism, respect, fairness, and perspective.

Morons…