U.S. Society

Mid-Day Ethics Cargo, 10/9/23, Or “Columbus Sailed All That Way For THIS?”

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

Almost every item in the collection that follows is annoying….

1. In St. Louis, Alderwoman Alisha Sonnier of Tower Grove East, and Aldermanic President Megan Green proposed legislation to “expand the rights of homeless people” at the expense of turning the city into a toilet. Among other things, the proposed law would exempt the homeless from the city’s laws against urinating and taking a dump in public. “After every sporting event, after Mardi Gras, we see (other) people engaging in public urination,” Green said at a news conference after the board meeting. “But … enforcing those laws against that segment of the population is not the same as the enforcement we see against our unhoused population.” So, obviously, rather than enforce the law uniformly, her solution, as woke as woke can be, is to allow some people to drop feces wherever they please. “What are we doing?” Alderwoman Pam Boyd responded, “This is not a third world country. This is St. Louis, Missouri. That’s so disrespectful to us as a community. That’s unhealthy.” Ya think? “Does society have any rules any more?” asked Alderman Tom Oldenburg, of St. Louis Hills. “Give me a break. Homeless people who need to relieve themselves should go to a shelter. That’s where bathrooms exist.”

There go those crazy conservatives again!

2. Larry Tribe strikes again! Showing that not only Democratic Presidents can leak IQ points, once-admired Harvard Law law professor (now Emeritus), made an ass of himself on Twitter/X, and not for the first time. Leaping to “X” to take a cheap shot, Tribes’ reaction to Israel declaring war on Hamas for a brutal surprise attack that killed Americans as well as Israelis was: “Is Netanyahu wagging the dog of war to take attention away from his own war on the independent judiciary? Can anyone put that past him?” This time, Tribe got so much flack that he backed down from his cretinism, which he hasn’t usually done since his brain turned to cream cheese. He wrote to Fox News: “I sent the tweet in response to Netanyahu’s reported comments before I saw the news of what Hamas had actually done, at which point I immediately deleted the tweet as a clearly premature, ill-informed and inappropriate response to incomplete information. I obviously condemn Hamas’s terrorist attacks and unthinkable atrocities against the Israeli people, including the murder and abduction of civilians, in the strongest possible terms and fully support Israel’s right of self-defense, notwithstanding my long-standing condemnation of the Israeli occupation of Gaza and its activities in the West Bank.” 

Imagine, this jerk was once promoted by progressives to be an Supreme Court Justice. If he had been black and female, he might be.

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Oh, I Can’t Let THIS Pass: David Brooks Abuses A Baseball Metaphor To Lie About Joe Biden

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

I read this yesterday, decided that it was a double Julie Principle abomination (“Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly, Biden’s demented, the Times gotta lie…“) and too outrageous to be worth even my pathetic time, and then it kept ticking away in my skull like a home-made bomb until I couldn’t stand it any more.

New York Times Stockholm Syndrome columnist David Brooks, once a conservative with intellectual pretensions, not just another Times progressive toady, actually wrote…

“The Republicans who portray [Biden] as a doddering old man based on highly selective YouTube clips are wrong. In my interviews with him, he’s like a pitcher who used to throw 94 miles an hour who now throws 87. He is clearly still an effective pitcher. People who work with him allow that he does tire more easily, but they say that he is very much the dynamic force driving this administration. In fact, I’ve noticed some improvements in his communication style as he’s aged. He used to try to cram every fact in the known universe into every answer; now he’s more disciplined. When he’s describing some national problem, he is more crisp and focused than he used to be, clearer on what is the essential point here — more confidence-inspiring, not less….”

I’m pretty sure I’ve been watching Joe Biden longer than David Brooks has, and I’m dead certain I know more about baseball than he does, so I must offer this correction. If you must compare Biden to a pitcher, it would not be one who once had a 94 mph fastball (actually, today that’s not very impressive, as most successful pitchers throw at least 96 or so), but rather a journeyman hurler who at his peak could throw maybe 86 or 87 at best, and who has bounced around from team to team as an innings-eating mop-up man for an inexplicably long time, never being more than the guy who barely makes the last slot on the squad out of Spring Training, never given a start in a big game or brought on in relief in a “high leverage situation,” and who holds on to a job by being an upbeat presence in the clubhouse, loyal to his managers, and encouraging to younger, more talented pitchers coming up. There is no baseball analogy to Biden after that, because when pitchers obviously decline in their abilities and those abilities were nothing to get them on a Wheaties box in the first place, they get cut. If they are lucky, maybe they get a job as a pitching coach on a minor league team in Altoona.

[I should mention that the geezer making that horrible pitch in the GIF above is the great Nolan Ryan.]

Almost no pitchers who weren’t Hall of Fame level at their peaks can survive if they lose 7 miles an hour off their fastballs. As it happens, the Boston Red Sox this season learned this the hard way. Corey Kluber was a two-time Cy Young winner, one of the best pitchers in the game, when he threw 93 miles an hour. Then little by little he lost it, had arm trouble, and by last year barely managed a .500 record with a team that played winning ball, the Tampa Bay Rays. They wisely didn’t re-sign him, but the Red Sox did, though Kluber’s best fastball was then about 87. He got clobbered, ending the season with an earned run average over 7, which is the level of a batting practice pitcher.

But Kluber was at least a great pitcher once. Nobody ever thought Joe Biden was a great U.S. Senator. I was writing about what an obvious dummy he was decades ago, and I was far from the only one. I think it was about 2018 when I noticed that what little glint of intelligence that had been in Joe’s eye had vanished, along with his energy level and orientation. I was stunned that he ran for President, stunned that his wife and family allowed him to do it, and I would have been stunned that the Democratic Party nominated him except by that time I realized that it had become so Machiavellian that it would have nominated—oh, pick any celebrity moron—if it calculated that he would attract more votes than the awful group of 2020 election contenders.

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Saturday Morning Ethics Warm-Up, Oct. 7, 2023: It’s Not Like The Old Saturday Morning Cartoons, But It Will Have To Do…

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

Some upsetting ethics episodes, like a Democratic Congressman behaving like a 7th grade jerk, lying about it, and being supported by his party and the news media, and this story, sufficiently monopolized my time and thoughts this week that quite a few issues and stories that need exposing risk being left behind…so here we are.

And I find myself wishing there was some Saturday morning adult TV equivalent to the old array of Saturday morning entertainment shows for kids that used to begin my weekends when I was just a sprout. Those shows above were actually a later generation’s (inferior) options. For me, my Saturday mornings were affirmatively weird, including non-cartoon fare like Andy Devine’s show (“Twang your magic twanger, Froggie!”), Ventriloquist Paul Winchell with his dummies Jerry Mahoney and Knucklehead Smith (why Edgar Bergen didn’t sue, I’ll never know) , lisping vaudevillian Pinkie Lee (“Hello, it’s me! My name is Pinky Lee! With a checkered hat and a checkered coat, a funny tickle in my throat, and a silly laugh like a billy goat…”) and of course, “The Howdy Doody Show.” Cheap Hanna-Barbara cartoons were just starting to take over: “The Adventures of Ruff and Reddy” was the camel’s nose in the tent.

Well, maybe I’ll see if I can get early morning Saturday ethics entertainment up on Ethics Alarms for adults and ethics-minded teens needing stimulation. I guarantee it will be better than “The Banana Splits.”

1. Trick or Treat! Where to begin? Well, Halloween has become a frolic for The Great Stupid in recent years, and 2023’s scary days are starting off in a similar vein. In my increasingly silly state of Massachusetts (which is considering killing Columbus Day and replacing it with “Indigenous Peoples Day”) the Northboro Public Schools sent a letter to parents this week noting that students aren’t allowed to wear costumes to school for Halloween and the traditional parade through the hallways was canceled. Why? Oh, come on, it’s easy. DEI! The banning of the Halloween fun will supposedly advance the district’s “core values of equity and inclusion.” How, nobody would say. Instead of costumes and a parade, the school district told parents that students would participate in a “Fall-themed spirit day.” Catchy! I feel more inclusive already. Still, nobody really explained why not letting kids dress up in costumes one day a year advances “diversity, equity and inclusion.” One knee-jerk woke parent quizzed about it ventured, “There is the money aspect: Not everyone can afford a Halloween costume.” BUZZZZZZZ! Wrong, Equity Face. Great Halloween costumes require creativity, not money. Schools are supposed to cultivate creativity. Dumb, woke, incompetent people are running public schools, and the result is going to be more dumb, woke, incompetent citizens.

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Do Progressive Voters Comprehend The Significance Of Their Elected Officials’ Hypocrisy And Flip-Flops?

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Rhetorical question. Based on the evidence, the clear answer is “No.”

Exhibit A for today is that part of the 16th St. “street mural” that Black Lives Matter protesters painted next to the official “Black Lives Matter” lettering ordered up by Democratic Mayor Murial Bowser in 2020, when she pandered disgracefully to the Marxist, racist, scamster movement by re-naming the area running directly to the White House “Black Lives Matter Plaza.” At the time this stunt was intended by Bowser and teh D.C. City Council as a rebuke to then-President trump, but its syill there, even though Bowser has, weasel-like insisted that the “Defund the Police” message isn’t part of the official D.C. mural. Typical Bowser: the protesters are correct; that’s an equal sign to the left, making the full message “Black Lives Matter = Defund the Police.” BLM does stand for defunding the police, among other things (riots, unpunished crime, thugs resisting arrest…). Three years ago, Bowser dodged the a question on ABC’s “This Week” as to whether she would remove the unauthorized message. “It’s not a part of the mural,” mewled, adding that she hadn’t “had the opportunity to review it.” It’s still there, of course.

Nonetheless, just a few days before the embarrassing episode where a Democratic Congressman had his car hijacked at gunpoint, Bowser, whose city is in a crime wave like so many other Democrat-run cities in the thrall of the George Floyd Freakout and The Great Stupid, announced that her city needed more police. “We don’t have the officers that we need, and sadly we’ve lost three to four hundred officers in the last four years,” she said. “We haven’t had officers in our schools, and we have policies that make it difficult to recruit new officers.”

The obvious rejoinder should be, “And whose fault is that, you dummy?” But it isn’t. Joe Biden’s intellect-challenged mouthpiece blamed Rep. Cuellar’s hijacking on Republicans, though the party virtually doesn’t exist in the nation’s Capitol. Moreover, who voted for Bowser, not to mention that long trail of incompetent and/or corrupt Democratic mayors before her stretch back to convicted felon and crack-head Marion Barry (who has a statue honoring him downtown)?

When elected officials act like Bowser, it is convincing evidence that they can’t be trusted. Changing one’s position in the wake of facts that show you were wrong is simply competent leadership, but arguing two positions that are mutually exclusive is the mark of a politician who lack integrity, accountability, and sufficient brain cells to rub together to make small fire. We are seeing this self-indicting conduct coast to coast, from New York—where New York City’s major and the state’s governor still insist that they govern “sancuaries” for illegal immigrants but who are complaining that they don’t have the space or funds to actually be what they say they are—to California, where Gavin Newsom, hoping to fool an entire country into giving him power when he has presided over the ethics and societal rot that is now California, is brazenly taking contradictory positions on a slew of issues. President Biden, much to Donald Trump’s amusement, is now trying to build Trump’s “wonderful wall.”

Hypocrisy and a flagrant flip-flopping apparently means nothing to voters, perhaps because they have been raised to lack integrity themselves.

Meanwhile, back in D.C., the CVS in the Columbia Heights neighborhood of D.C. regularly looks like this:

You see, black lives matter, and black teens, gang members and thieves regularly loot the store, leaving almost all the shelves empty. “A big group of kids, like 45 or more, walk in before school, after school and late at night to steal chips and drinks,” local station Fox 5 reported this week. “They even throw the food and beverages on the ground and stomp on them, leaving behind a big mess. Staff at CVS have been alerted that thieves are aware of when new shipments come in and that’s when they target the store.” Street vendors are allegedly paying people to go in and steal the merchandise so they can resell it.

The neighborhood is almost exclusively black, so the majority of law abiding citizens in the area are the ones being most harmed by the collapse of the rule of law in the District (Black Lives Matter = Collapse of the Rule of Law), but you watch: they’ll still vote for Bowser next time around, or if not, someone as bad or worse. This was the result in Chicago, when voters got rid of one incompetent, lying, leftist mayor only to replace him with someone more radical and inept than even she was.

As Pete Seeger, himself a reality-challenged Marxist, sang in his best composition, “When will they ever learn?” It’s beginning to look like the answer may be “Never!”

Friday Open Forum!

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

An administrative note: I know WordPress’s pointless and gratuitous “improvement” of its comment registering system is confusing. But it does work: I spent an hour last week with a “Happiness Engineer” who tested it out with me. I’m sorry for the frustration and inconvenience: from my end, new glitches from WP innovations are a daily feature of writing the blog, so believe me, I feel your pain.

Coming attractions: the rest of the disturbing and perplexing Trevor Bauer saga; the significance of Biden’s second German Shepherd banishing; the education apocalypse, and D.C.’s Black Lives Matter-lovin’ mayor suddenly deciding that police are necessary after all. Lots of other issues rattling around, but as long as you don’t scoop me (or Curmie, who has a guest post coming) on those three, write about any ethics matter you choose.

Ready…on your mark…get set…GO!

Ethics Tip: “Ha Ha! Serves You Right!” Is Not A Productive Response To The Violent Death Of A Social Activist

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

This kind of thing just worsens the hate and division.

Writing cheerily about a “NYC Activist Who Pushed for the ‘Right’ of Homeless Drug Addicts to Shoot Up on the Street” being stabbed to death by a homeless man, conservative provocateur Ace of Spades, writes, “How could this have possibly happened??? You break it, you bought it. What is that wonderful thing the left does when people in Red States are killed by “global warming”…? You know, when they cheer and say “I’m not saying I’m happy they’re dead, but I’m not not saying that…” Enjoy your crime-ridden murder-pit shitholes, future murder victims!”

The news media had reported, “A stabbing took place early Monday morning in Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood, claiming the life of poet and far-left activist Ryan Carson. The 32-year-old was walking down the sidewalk with his girlfriend when he was attacked by a stranger.” Ace went on to add, “His whore-pig of a girlfriend has previously declared that “All Cops Are Bastards” and argued for defunding the police.”

Nice. Me, I prefer to send a Nelson to San Francisco’s woke Mayor London Breed, one of the main culprits in spreading the crime wave and decline of quality of life across major U.S. cities (run by Democrats, naturally). Now facing a public backlash she richly deserves and facing re-election problems, Breed announced a policy that will require recipients of county welfare to seek drug treatment.

“No more handouts without accountability,” Breed said at a press conference. “People are not accepting help. Now, it’s time to make sure that we are cutting off resources that continue to allow this behavior.” Huh! What a concept. Wait, hasn’t it been “Nazis” suggesting policies like that? From January to August, the city coroner ruled 563 deaths accidental overdoses. The same period last year saw 400; in 2021, the figure was 435. Surely San Francisco’s extreme hands-off non-violent criminals policies couldn’t have led to this deadly deterioration of societal conduct?

Ha Ha!

Ethics Quote Of The Month: “The Federalist’s” John Daniel Davidson On The MSM’s Lies About Rep. Bowman’s False Alarm

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

“When the government and the establishment press just spout the most outlandish lies and excuses, demanding we believe them, it’s much more dangerous and frankly tyrannical than a government and press that subtly or believably lies.When governments and politicians and the media dissimulate reality in this blatant way, it suggests they no longer respect or feel accountable to the populace, and are confident that all pretense to the naked exercise of power can be dropped. They will simply tell you what to believe, what reality is, and you will accept it — no matter what your lying eyes tell you.”

This quote, from “Here’s Why The Media’s Lies About Rep. Jamaal Bowman Should Concern You” by John Daniel Davidson in “The Federalist,” perfectly expresses why I’ve already posted four times previously on this incident with this being the 5th, and a 6th coming right up. The brazen and what would in a normal, ethical environment, stupid actions of Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) in setting off a fire alarm to disrupt a House vote and then lying about it with a risible excuse should have attracted universal condemnation from our supposedly objective and non-partisan news media and even members of Bowman’s own party, it it were not so corrupt. Instead, both have inflicted the equivalent of gaslighting, implying anyone is crazy who does not accept Bowman’s claim that he pulled a fire alarm because he thought it would open a door.

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Rep. Jamaal Bowman’s Illegal And Unethical Fire Alarm Stunt Aftermath Update

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

The House of Representatives has descended into chaos after House Speaker Keven McCarthy was ousted today, so the mainstream news media is using this purely political event (which was entirely predictable, given the slim support McCarthy had in his own party from the beginning of his Speakership and the fact that he’s a weak and not-all-that-sharp leader) to let them bury a far more significant story on the ethics side of the news: a Democratic Congressman breaking the law to disrupt a floor vote by setting off a fire alarm and subsequently lying about it so obviously that even Bart Simpson would be embarrassed by his efforts.

Ethics Alarms has posted on this sickening story—and it’s an ongoing sickening story until Bowman is punished three times already, and this is the fourth. Attention, as Mrs. Loman tells us, should be paid. This is why Americans are disgusted with Congress. This is why so many no longer trust our institutions or the politicians elected to maintain them. This is why so many have so little respect for the communities that elect disgraceful public servants like Bowman. This is why it is becoming frightening clear that “laws are for the little people.” This why there is no reason to believe or trust the mainstream media, and every reason not to.

This is why totalitarianism is a greater thereat now than at any time in our history.

The fourth installment of Ethics Alarms “Bowman and the Fire Alarm,” we begin with Marjorie Taylor Greene’s devastating video above, showing exactly how insulting and absurd Bowman’s lies about how he came to pull the fire alarm in the Cannon Office Building are. I have no admiration for Greene, and if the Republicans and Democrats could come to an agreement in which both Representatives were kicked out of the House, I would view it as beneficial to all. In this case, however, she performed a public service doing what she does best, being snide and snarky. Bowman deserves every bit of it, and so do his defenders.

Other developments of note:

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Confronting My Biases, Episode 1: The Slow Walkers

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

This may be a continuing series: I have thought about the issue for quite a while.

Despite the fact that several woke bar associations have paid me in the past to create and teach “elimination of bias” seminars (I don’t accept those jobs any more), I know that bias can’t be “eliminated.” All biases can be is recognized and handled, and even that’s not easy. It is important to try, however. “Bias makes you stupid” is one of Ethics Alarms’ mottos, and I remain quite confident of its accuracy.

I have a lot of biases, positive and negative, many of which appear here regularly. Some I am quite attached to: for example, I am biased against unethical politicians no matter how much I may agree with their policies or their accomplishments. At this point, I am biased against all journalists,and I believe that is the necessary starting point for anyone following what we laughingly call “the news.” However, there are some biases I hold that I recognize as unfair and that distort my judgment to an unethical degree.

This brings me to the subject of slow walkers.

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Ethics Quiz: The Rehabilitated Brain-Eating Cannibal [Link Fixed]

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

That pleasant-looking chap above is Tyree Smith of Bridgeport, Connecticut. In 2013, he killed a homeless man and ate his brain and eyeballs. (After that appetizer, he went to Subway.) Smith was found not guilty of murder by reason of insanity, and committed to a state psychiatric hospital for 60 years. Just ten years after Tyree’s bold gourmet adventures, however, the state Psychiatric Security Review Board has ruled that Smith is ready to be transitioned back into the community.

So he’s out.

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day:

Is it responsible to ever release someone like Tyree Smith back into the public?

The report on Smith’s release said in part: “He denied experiencing cravings but stated that if they were to arise, he would reach out to his hospital and community supports and providers.”

Oh. I feel much better now.