Several readers mentioned that EA did not have contain any mention of September 11, 2001 yesterday. The fact is that I didn’t have anything new or perceptive to say. I was also nauseated into paralysis by Virginia’s Mark Warner (D), one of my state’s Senators, appearing on “Face the Nation”with the assignment of comparing a sneak terrorist attack from a foreign country that killed 2,977 Americans to the one-day riot by a mob of demented assholes carrying sticks and bear-spray. Asked by CBS News anchor Margaret Brennan’s question about where the country is 21 years after the terror attacks, the chair chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee couldn’t resist resorting to his desperate party’s current strategy of fearmongering about “election deniers” as existential threats to the nation. “The stunning thing to me is here we are 20 years later and the attack on the symbol of our democracy is not coming from terrorists, but it came from literally insurgents attacking the Capitol on January 6,” Warner said, confirming his reservation for an eternal place in Hell. “So I believe we are stronger, I believe our intelligence community has performed remarkably, I think the threat of terror has diminished, I think we still have new challenges in terms of nation [and] state challenges,” he continued. “Russia and longer term, a technology competition with China, but I do worry about some of the activity in this country where the election deniers, the insurgency that took place on January 6, that’s something I hope we can see that same kind of unity of spirit.”

1. To be fair, Sen. Warner’s comments still didn’t bother me as much as another Kamala Harris horrifying lies-and-babble-fest, which I didn’t see live. Harris’s latest occurred on “Meet the Press,” which I have ceased watching permanently until, at very least, super-hack Chuck Todd is replaced as host. Todd asked Harris about the ongoing Biden-made crisis at the southern border where a record number of illegal immigrants are entering the United States. “Would you call the border secure?,” he queried, perhaps referencing the recent asinine assertion by the Secretary of Homeland Security that indeed the porous border is secure. Harris answered that “the border is secure, but we also have a broken immigration system, in particular over the last four years before we came in, and it needs to be fixed.” That’s a new “It isn’t what it is” dodge: Trump is responsible for the current crisis at the border? Harris’s claim that the border was “secure” provoked a rare expression of amazement from a mainstream media talking head at a Democrat’s lie, and from Chuck Todd, no less, who usually sees his role as a propaganda facilitator.

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The original story seemed so, so stupid to me that I didn’t deem it worth commenting on. Podcast Movement, the podcast industry’s biggest conference, took place in Dallas two weeks ago. Most major audio companies were represented there, including The Daily Wire, conservative pundit Ben Shapiro’s media company. The Wire paid for a booth at the exhibition hall, and Shapiro showed up at the conference to visit his own company’s booth, which is not abnormal in any way.  Never mind: some of the usual Censorious Creeps from the Bitter Left complained like Shapiro was a leper or a contagion or Donald Trump or something: many complained that Shapiro made them feel uncomfortable and “unsafe” as women, people of color, and transgenders… because of his opinions. That was enough for Podcast Movement’s organizers to issue a groveling Twitter apology: Continue reading →

The panic is all mine: this really had to be a productive and efficient day, and it wasn’t: life, clients and chaos all got in the way. Now I’m facing down a serious deadline and running out of time.

Nonetheless, Ethics Alarms will not be denied.

This is an unusually relevant  landmark ethics date: On September 8, 1974, President Gerald Ford infuriated Richard Nixon’s many enemies and pardoned him for any crimes he may have committed or participated in while President. It was a uniquely courageous act that defined (and probably doomed) Ford’s Presidency. In my view, it was also the right and and wise thing to do. Ford, like Joe Biden, was an undistinguished career politician and hardly a towering intellect, but unlike Biden, he understood what was in the best long-term interests  of the nation.  Democrats made him defend this controversial action before the House Judiciary Committee, and Ford said he wanted to end the national divisions created by the Watergate scandal. To this day, there are still those who believe that he cut a corrupt deal with Nixon when he was appointed. Ford was well aware that the pardon would place his leadership under a permanent shadow. “Mister we could use a man like Gerald Ford again!”

1. Since you mention it...I was going to ignore D-list celeb Kathy Griffin’s comment yesterday that “If you don’t want a Civil War, vote for Democrats in November. If you do want Civil War, vote Republican,” mainly because, like Alyssa Milano, Bette Midler, Rob Reiner and so many others, nobody should care what Kathy Griffin says, tweets or thinks. But commenter Willem Reese wrote,  “Were she a sentient creature, she might have realized that her statement was an admission that it is democrats who are prone to violence when they don’t get what they want.” I can’t let that pass. I think Griffin said what she meant, and that it was a threat. She was also correct: Democrats have proven that their current breed believes in violence as the appropriate reaction to events, elections and decisions they disagree with. I fully expect riots if the GOP takes Congress. Griffin is vile and revolting, but she’s not stupid.

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Close calls: I recently stumbled upon some polling from the period preceding World War II regarding the American public’s position on whether the U.S. should fight Germany. Here’s the most depressing of the surveys:

Another set of figures, from Gallup, are a bit better. These old survey results lead to the following notes:

• What would the world be like today if Japan had not attacked Pearl Harbor, and Hitler had not preemptively declared war on the U.S.? The attack might be one of the best examples I know of how a terrible event can lead to an objectively beneficial outcome: moral luck exemplified.
• Karine Jean-Pierre, who speaks for the White House, said last week that “when you are not with where a majority of Americans are, then, you know, that is extreme.”
• You know: polls.

1. I did not know this, and I’m now sorry I do. But not especially surprised: a Pew survey from 2019 revealed that the “U.S. has world’s highest rate of children living in single-parent households.” I see no reason for the data to have improved in three years, do you? And, of course, the reason this terrible condition exists is for the reason discussed frequently here: an elimination of crucial ethical norms because the society decided that it was more important not to shame or stigmatize irresponsible and damaging conduct than to minimize it. The consequences flowing from this failure in maintaining ethical standards is wide-ranging, disastrous, and too extensive to analyze here. Continue reading →