Sure, be happy and proud, Mr. Mayor! After all, you didn’t commit those murders, and better still, you weren’t the victim of any of them!
“I’m not committing the murders. And that’s what people need to understand. I’m not committing the murders. The police commissioner is not committing it. The council is not committing it. So how can you fault leadership? You know this has been five years of 300-plus murders, and I don’t see it as a lack of leadership.”
—Baltimore Mayor Jack Young,responding to criticism over another year of violent crime in the city, with the number of murders about to reach 300.
Any elected official foolish enough to make such a statement should just resign in disgrace. He is incapable of competent leadership, because he doesn’t understand what it is that leaders do. They are responsible for the welfare of those who follow them, depend on them, trust them. Because they have taken on this responsibility, they are accountable to everyone in the organization—in his case, a municipality—for a deterioration in conditions there. Continue reading →
“Elephant? What elephant?” The thing is, Jimmy was playing a CLOWN when he uttered that line, not a college president.
“Our intent in cancelling the production was to prevent further harm to members of our community who already feel marginalized. However, the decision to cancel the play has been interpreted by some as a form of censorship on the part of the College. Censorship is anathema to the core values of Washington College, and this was never our intent.”
—-Kurt Landgraf, president of Washington College in Maryland,in his letter to the campusregarding the decision to cancel a student production of Larry Shue’s 1980 farce “The Foreigner.”
Got that? “Censorship? What censorship? Oh, you mean that thing when we stopped a play from being performed? You call that censorship?”
Yes, the president of an institution of higher learning is really and truly saying in print that administrators cancelled the production of a play, as in “prevented it from being seen,” because of concerns over the content of said play, and the need to protect some students from seeing it, hearing it, or knowing it was being seen and heard by others, yet did not intend this to constitute censorship, which it was by definition.
I’ll publish the whole weaselly, embarrassing letter at the end of the post, because otherwise you might not believe it.
I have seen “The Foreigner.” It’s not a classic by any means, but there is nothing controversial about it, and nothing that would legitimately “trigger” anyone with the sense God gave a trout. Deciding that “The Foreigner” needs to be censored makes as much sense as blocking a production of “Arsenic and Old Lace.”
The comedy opened Off-Broadway in 1984 and won two Obie Awards and two Outer Critics Circle Awards as Best New American Play and Best Off-Broadway Production. Since then it has been a staple of regional theaters, community theaters, colleges and high schools. A very short version of the plot: Two Englishmen visiting a fishing lodge in rural Georgia foil the plot of an evil local Klansman to take over the lodge and use it as a KKK headquarters. The hero, Charlie Baker, pulls this off in part by pretending to be a non-English speaker and talking gibberish, as well as pretend language like ” Klaatu barada nikto” from the classic film “The Day the Earth Stood Still.” Because people think he can’t understand them, they openly discuss their various plots and schemes in his presence.
I ran out of space and a few items came to my attention right after I posted, so here are additions to the Warm-Up:
5. The obvious weakness of the current field of Democratic challengers has revived the Presidential hopes of several wannabe who—correctly—judged themselves unqualified and unlikely to be elected President in 2020. The latest to say “Oh,hell, why not?” is wan Obama-imitator Deval Patrick, the former Massachusetts governor.
In that other party, ridiculous Mark Sanford suspended his Presidential bid, making the much anticipated Sanford-William Weld debates a lost hope.
Has the United States ever had such a dearth of qualified and trustworthy political leaders, or two political parties so inept at meeting their obligations to the republic? I began re-watching the wonderful HBO miniseries “John Adams.” over the weekend, It was inspiring and depressing simultaneously. Continue reading →
Sirius XM already has two Christmas stations operating, emulating Hallmark, which is showing nothing but cheesy Christmas movies starring B and C list actors (Candace Cameron Bure is one of the better known ones) all day long. Is there some significance to this rush to get to Christmas? Is it because everyone is so nasty and hostile that there is some kind of collective yearning for peace on earth and good will toward men, womyn and non-binary trans-pan-sexuals to arrive by cultural fiat? My wife is betting that the effort will just make everyone thoroughly sick of Christmas by the time we get there. Elmo learned, in a Sesame Street Christmas Special, that if every day is Christmas, nothing is.
But I digress…The reason I noted this was that I just heard Kelly Clarkson’s “My Grown-Up Christmas List” on the “Holiday Traditions” channel (I deemed it a better bet than The Doors, and “:Please Mister Custer”) and finally listened to the lyrics:
So here’s my lifelong wish My grown up Christmas list Not for myself but for a world in need No more lives torn apart That wars would never start And time would heal all hearts And everyone would have a friend And right would always win And love would never end, no This is my grown up Christmas list.
Yeesh. Those are grown-up wishes? They are if “grown up” means ten-years-old.
Or you’re John Lennon.
I. One more ominous example of the Left channeling old fashioned totalitarianism..I knew that San Francisco was erecting a mural dedicated to the Climate Change Bullies’ own Joan of Arc, creepy Greta Thunberg, but I didn’t realize how huge it was going to be. The conservative satire site the Babylon Bee joked that her eyes would be equipped with lasers to zap SUVs, at least I thought it was a joke. Legal Insurrection writes,
Instead of focusing on issues of sanitation, job creation, or at least ensuring there are more high school students than drug addicts in the city, activists have chosen to honor Swedish “climate crisis” activist Greta Thunberg with a giant mural that will grace the skyline.
Andres “Cobre” Petreselli, an internationally renowned artist, is painting the activist teen with big blue eyes and a Mona Lisa smile.
The mural is still a work in progress, as Cobre is spending his days hoisted high up on a platform about 10 stories above Mason street, on the side of the Native Sons building near Union Square.
Thunberg is the 16-year old from Sweden who has inspired young people all over the world to take to the streets and let older people know they want climate change to be taken seriously.
“What I want from people is to realize have to do something for the world,” Cobre said. “Otherwise, it’s going to be the beginning of our extinction.”
1. Clean-up on the baseball aisle! Last April, I wrote a post urging Baltimore Orioles first-sacker Chris Davis to retire and save his desperate team some money, since it is clear that he can no longer play at a major league level despite being paid 23 million dollars in 2019, with a similar amount due him through 2022. At the time, Davis Davis was 0-for-23 with 13 strikeouts and hitless in 44 at-bats since the previous season, when Davis batted .168, the worst in major league history for a regular, with a horrible .539 OPS (On base percentage plus slugging percentage), and a -2.5 WAR, meaning that the Orioles would have won 2.5 more games with a borderline major leaguer from the minors playing in his place.
Several readers have emailed me asking how things turned out for Davis, who did eventually get a hit, and who was still in the starting line-up frequently enough to hurt the team. The answer is that Davis was better than he was in 2018, but he was still horrible. He batted only .179, with a -1 WAR, and an OPS of .601. He earned more than $418,000 per hit.
He’s earned almost 119 million dollars in his career, yet appears willing to continue to embarrass himself and hurt his team and team mates for three more sure-to-be-ugly seasons in order to collect another 69 million.
Yechhhh.
2. More on Joy Behar’s terrible, no good, very bad week: The highlight of Donald Trump Jr.’s visit to “The View” came after Behar recited the typical and overly-familiar talking points about Trump Sr.: “[President Trump] called some Mexicans rapists [Correction: He referred to illegal immigrants from Mexico as rapists who were rapists] , he attacked the handicapped, [No, Joy, he mocked a single handicapped reporter, and there is some evidence that he didn’t even do that], he bragged about it” [Huh?], and “We heard the ‘Access’ tape, where he bragged about grabbing women by their genitalia.” [No, he never said that he had personally grabbed any women “by the pussy.” Boy, am I sick of THIS narrative..] Rather than quibble with her, DJT Jr, had come armed and ready, and replied, “We’ve all done things that we regret, I mean, if we’re talking about bringing a discourse down, Joy, you’ve worn blackface.” Continue reading →
They are whooping it up at the Trump-Haters Club, because President Trump will have to pay $2 million in damages to nonprofit groups as a penalty for what can only be called a fraudulent use of his foundation in 2016. As part of the settlement agreement, the President had to admit misusing funds raised by the Donald J. Trump Foundation, accessing them to assist his campaign, pay off debts of businesses he owned, including Mar-a-Lago and the Trump National Golf Club in Westchester County, and, as an especially obnoxious move, purchasing a $10,000 portrait of himself to hand in one of his Florida hotels. New York’s Attorney General filed suit accusing the Trump family of using the foundation to benefit various businesses and assist Trump’s presidential run. You can’t use a non-profit like that; this is the kind of scam that got Tom DeLay thrown in prison.
The President admitted that the alleged charity charity gave his campaign complete control over the $2.8 million that the foundation had raised at an Iowa fund-raiser for veterans in January 2016. It was in fact a fund-raiser for the campaign, not veterans.
I am finally devoting a dedicated post to this list, in part because I am sick of searching for the thing every time I want to reference it. I will eventually deposit the list along with the Apology Scale and the Rationalizations List as another separate page in the “Rule Book” to your right.
One note on the use of the term coup. Some media pundits, their hands already bloodied, have been making the sophist claim that what has been going on since November 2016 isn’t a coup under the dictionary definition, which requires violence and usually a military take-over. Using cover-terms and euphemisms is a form of lying, and it is an especially common practice from the Left right now, though the Right has its moments.
A “soft coup,” also known as a silent coup, does not use violence, and is typically based on a conspiracy or plot aimed at seizing power, overthrowing existing legal authority, exchanging political leadership, changing the political system or the current institutional order. We are watching a long-running soft coup. A soft coup is still a coup.
There have been 19 Plans to abuse various processes, laws and theories, all put forward and promoted by members of the Democratic Party/”resistance”/mainstream news media alliance since President Trump’s election. The desired effect of this barrage, apart from serving the goal of removing him without the bother (and risk) of an election, has been to make it impossible for the President to govern, and to destroy his support among the public.
When Plan S, which late novelist Robert Ludlum might have called “The Ukrainian Perversion” if it had been one of his novels, fails like the rest, or if President Trump is re-elected, the list will keep growing.
Call it demagoguery, grandstanding, ignorance, rabble-rousing or whatever you choose, an elected representative of the government tweeting such nonsense to those foolish enough to follow her is irresponsible in the extreme.
Hundreds of protesters hit the streets Friday and Saturday in Brooklyn to protest police brutality by the NYPD and its crackdown on subway fare evaders. Naturally the demonstrators chanted “No justice, no peace,” the current content free, no thought required slogan of choice by those who couldn’t articulate what they consider justice if they had a teleprompter. Continue reading →
McDonald’s has either fired CEO Steve Easterbrook or forced him to resign (it’s unclear which) after it was determined that he had a sexual relationship with an employee, and thus a subordinate. The relationship was determined to be “consensual,” to the extent a non-workplace, intimate relationship with a superior who controls your livelihood and professional advancement can ever be regarded as truly consensual. The position of Ethics Alarms is that it can not be; this was once the official position of the National Organization for Women until the principle threatened the tenure of Bill Clinton in the White House, whereupon Gloria Steinem suddenly declared that such relationships were swell.
“Mickey D’s” Board of Directors found Easterbrook had “demonstrated poor judgement,” the company announced today, and had violated written company policy. Easterbrook, 52 years old, had seen the company’s shares nearly double in value since he became chief executive in March 2015. The board therefore definitively rejected the King’s Pass, sending an unequivocal message to other managers that treating the workplace as their personal dating bar wouldn’t be tolerated no matter how important they were or how effective they were at their jobs.
All involve the basic concept that when one has a job that requires respect, an image of dignity, the perception of good judgment and role model status, allowing naked, semi-naked, sexually provocative or otherwise compromising photos to be created, and they eventually find themselves online and available to those the individual thus exposed is responsible for leading, teaching, or guiding, the individual cannot reasonably protest if this results in their losing their job. This is true even if the Naked Teacher or equivalent has been betrayed, victimized, or wronged. The Naked Teacher Principle involves strict liability. The lesson: if you intend to have a career requiring the public trust, don’t get photos made of yourself that you would not want to show to your mother or have appear on the front page of USA Today.
Now Democrats, feminists and progressives are defending Democratic Rep. Katie Hill elected in 2018 as the first openly bisexual congresswoman from California. In connection with allegations that Hill had extramarital affairs with a female campaign staffer and a male congressional aide, RedState, a conservative news website, and The Daily Mail, a British tabloid site, published sexually explicit photos of Hill engaged in various versions of flagrante delicto. These are now viral. Some are porn mag-graphic; I’m not even going to discuss the bong she appears to be using in one of them. (And who was taking those photos?)
Ethics Alarms 