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Wait, WHAT? Ethics Observations On The Story Beneath This Headline: “Lawsuit: Mayor Lightfoot Berated Ex-City Officials Over Dick Size”
The 21st Century is just not turning out the way I expected at all.
The details of the underlying controversy can be read here, if you dare. What interests me is this part:
The suit was filed by former Chicago Park District deputy general counsel George Smyrniotis against the city and Lightfoot….The lawsuit alleges that when Lightfoot heard of the plan, she said she would cancel the parade’s permit, and she ordered an immediate Zoom call.
On that call, Smyrniotis says that Lightfoot “proceeded to berate and defame” the lawyers and questioned their credentials.
Lightfoot told them “not to do a [fucking] thing with that statue without my approval.”
“Get that [fucking] statue back before noon tomorrow or I am going to have you fired,” Lightfoot also said, according to the suit.
She is also accused of making obscene comments to Smyrniotis and King.
“You make some kind of secret agreement with Italians. … You are out there stroking your dicks over the Columbus statue, I am trying to keep Chicago police officers from being shot and you are trying to get them shot,” Lightfoot allegedly said. “My dick is bigger than yours and the Italians, I have the biggest dick in Chicago.”
Smyrniotis says the comments defamed him by claiming he couldn’t do his job.
Well all righty then! Continue reading
Morning Ethics Warm-up, 3/3/2022: Wow…Bias Really Does Make You Stupid!
Bias makes you stupid, and lets everyone know you are biased and stupid, except those who are also biased and stupid. It also destroys your credibility, and signals that you are untrustworthy. That simple meme above was briefly tweeted out by The Daily Show, which appears on Comedy Central, once a cable option that was devoted to making people of all backgrounds and orientations laugh…you know, like comedians used to try to do. But eventually progressives took over the media and entertainment, and as with the once bi-partisan late night talk shows and Saturday Night Live, decided that the only people who deserved to be made fun of were conservatives, religious Americans, Republicans and, most of all, Donald Trump, and the only people they cared about making laugh were the hard-biased woke, like these shows’ hosts, performers and writers.
Thus when the meme of the dying battery was issued during “Sleepy Joe’s” wreck of a State of the Union speech, fans of the show erupted in anger. “… how very republican rhetoric from you,” protested one user. What the fuck?!?! Who hacked this account?!? This is bullshit!!! @Trevornoah did you approve this?!?” read another tweet, which referred to the show’s reliably progressive messaging host.
So the meme was taken down. Bias also makes you a weenie, apparently.
I read about this after being thoroughly disheartened reading an exchange a very, very intelligent and informed college friend had on Facebook about Biden’s SOTU. One development that has been fascinating to observe is that after four years inwhich insulting and complaining about President Trump were my Facebook Friends’ daily pastime (and in which Facts Didn’t Matter, just raw hate and virtue-signaling), since Biden’s election there have been virtually no political posts at all regarding this President, favorable or unfavorable. No jokes, no memes, no observations.Thus this exchange really stood out, as my old friend expressed admiration for the speech and snidely offered that it was a big upgrade from “Drumpf.”
The verdict essentially echoed the mainstream media reviews in places like MSNBC and CNN, but they are paid to issue Democratic propaganda. How can anyone with two brain cells to rub together call that speech anything but dishonest, frightening and infuriating?
What–the hell-–does “go get ‘im” mean? How can anyone believe that the state of the union is “strong”? How can a nation spend its way out of crazy inflation? What sense does it make to lob verbal insults at Putin when you are still funding his invasion by buying his oil and making it clear that no military force will be used to stop him? Who but an idiot would find any of that impressive or reassuring?
Yes, Biden promised that the next time, Putin will really be in trouble. The next time. Sure. “And as I’ve made crystal clear, the United States and our Allies will defend every inch of territory that is NATO territory with the full force of our collective power — every single inch,” the President said. Like Obama defended the “line” he drew in Syria. Like Joe stuck by our commitment in Afghanistan.
And, of course,we saw and heard the usual signs of Biden’s mental decline, like when he tried to ad-lib and said, “We’ve sent 475 Million vaccine doses to 112 countries, more than any other nation. And we won’t stop, because you can’t build a wall high enough to keep out… a vaccine…the vaccine can stop the spread of these diseases.” Joe also called the Ukrainians “Iranians.”
To be fair, he did this kind of thing even before his mind started turning to oatmeal. Still, how much biased-fueled denial does one have to embrace to watch that speech and think, “Wow, that was GREAT!!! I am so confident in the three years lying ahead!” ?
1. Yet another unethical and incompetent Republican House Member…Van Taylor, a Republican U.S. Congressman from Texas, dropped out of his re-election race after it was revealed that he had been in an extra-marital relationship with a woman whose previous marriage was to an ISIS commander. Taylor has a wife and three daughters. He paid his paramour $5,000 to keep quiet about the affair.
All you have to do, once you are elected to Congress, is resolve not to get involved in sex scandals, adultery, child porn or sexual harassment for two short years. How hard can that be? If a politician can’t control himself or herself to that minimal extent, then they should be in another line of work.
In his apology, Taylor admitted to a “mistake.” This means that at some point he must have thought having an adulterous affair with a women connected to a terrorist organization while he was serving in Congress was a good idea. He has dead ethics alarms. He shouldn’t be trusted to sell hot pretzels on the street.
2. Where are those Democratic District Attorneys when you need them? While DAs in various Democratic run cities are declining to prosecute shoplifting, drug possession and defecating in public, two Cape Coral, Florida children are facing battery charges because they shot two other kids….with Silly String.
Comment Of The Day: “Ethics Quiz: The All-Black Sports Platform”
This Comment of the Day by Here’s Johnny on “Ethics Quiz: The All-Black Sports Platform” needs no introduction.
Here it is:
***
In my early years (40s, 50s), there was racism aplenty. The small community I lived in, the schools I attended, the activities I was involved in, all were white and as WASPish as they come. My parents didn’t seem to be especially racist, but one comment I do remember was my mother saying that Negroes (the accepted term way back then, although ‘colored people’ was also used) were okay so long as they “stayed in their place.” Their place was the segregated part of the nearby rather large city.
Fortunately for me, my career path took me away from both that mentality and that kind of segregation, via a military that was integrated and a second career in education in a community even more thoroughly integrated. Times changed. I changed. And, now, I am supposed to accept segregation once again? Well, count me out. Continue reading
“You Know, Morons!” Three GOP House Members Embrace Their Inner Ethics Dunce
It really is depressing the number of irredeemable, ethically-clueless fools the American public elects to Congress. Yesterday came another reminder:
The House of Representatives passed a resolution declaring its support for Ukraine as the nation fights to resist the Russian invasion, and demanding an “immediate cease-fire.” The resolution, which is nonbinding, says that the House “stands steadfastly, staunchly, proudly, and fervently behind the Ukrainian people in their fight against the authoritarian Putin regime” and calls for the U.S. and its allies “to deliver additional and immediate defensive security assistance to help Ukraine address the armored, airborne, and other threats Ukraine is currently facing from Russian forces.” Congress, the declaration says,“will never recognize or support any illegitimate Russian-controlled leader or government installed through the use of force.”
As a non-binding resolution, all the measure does is announce an official sentiment without committing the House to any action. It passed 426-3. The votes in opposition were those three Republicans: Reps. Paul Gosar of Arizona, Thomas Massie of Kentucky, and Matt Rosendale of Montana.
Morons. Continue reading
Ethics Overdose, 3/2/2022: Follow The Scientists, More Bad Ideas, And Continuing To Remember The Alamo
As story of the Alamo heads to its bloody and legendary climax on March 6, 1836, commenter Michael West filed another update on what transpired on yesterday’s date, March 1, but corresponding to today, because 1936 was a Leap Year. Michael’s running account is indispensable, and I am so grateful for it. He writes,
March 1, 1836: The Alamo defenders are down to their last 5 full days.
The “Mina Volunteers” — a militia unit from Bastrop, Texas—departs for the rendezvous in Gonzales. Captain Joseph Lynch begins recruiting up and down the Brazos River to form a company and march to Gonzales. Captain Phil Coe does the same up and down the Colorado River. Captain Robert McNutt and his 2nd in Command Gibson Kuykendall activate a company in San Felipe (west of what would eventually be Houston).
These are just a handful of the many companies gathering across Texas as rapidly as they could to make their way in answer to Colonel Travis’s plea for aid, all while the civil drama plays out in Washington-on-the-Brazos. Texas’s Declaration of Independence, to be officially declared the next day, was finalized by George Childress.
Behind enemy lines, south of Urrea’s “Coastal Column” a somewhat interesting character, Dr. Grant, and the fledgling remains of his wild mission to raise a rebellion in Matamoros continues to wander north, soon to meet its fate in a far less spectacular end that Grant probably had envisioned for himself. Meanwhile, at the Alamo, the truce apparently has come to an end as Santa Ana noted the Texans fired a cannon, ending the truce and apparently cancelling any offer of amnesty he had made. In further Alamo lore involving a fact that seemed too perfect to be true, the shot from one the cannons fired that day actually struck the house that the dictator was occupying.
Santa Ana’s army was still not at full strength, and was not expected until the 3rd of March.
The most distant Texan reinforcements were about 150 miles from the Alamo, the rest closer. At a rate of about 30 miles per day on horseback, the farthest reinforcements could reach the Alamo in five days. As the men rushed westward with all their zeal, they would have been quietly reminded that they were each groups of 15 to 45 men charging headlong out of wooded terrain and into open prairies, towards a Mexican army of several thousand.
Now in more mundane and present day ethics matters;
1. Now THIS is hubris! Talk about not knowing your lane…Dr. Bruce Glavovic, 61, a professor at Massey University in New Zealand, has joined two colleagues in the field of environmental research to declare, in an academic journal, that climate scientists should stage a mass walkout and stop their research until nations take action on global warming. Continue reading
Unethical Quote Of The Week: President Joe Biden [Updated]
“So on this night, in our 245th year as a nation, I have come to report on the State of the Union. And my report is this: the State of the Union is strong—because you, the American people, are strong. We are stronger today than we were a year ago.”
—President Joe Biden in his State of the Union speech before Congress last night, talking nonsense.
I mentioned yesterday that I would have gained respect for Joe Biden if he had the integrity to say last night, as Gerald Ford did in 1975, “The State of the Union is not good.” I did not expect him to do so, because Biden has no integrity, as the rest of his speech proved.
Unlike most SOTU messages, Biden waited until the very end to give the report to Congress that is supposedly the justification for the whole useless, increasingly embarrassing ritual. Doing so, he might as well have said, “Everything I’ve said before this is calculated dishonesty, just like this false assessment of our nation’s state. But what else am I supposed to do?” One astute wag wrote that the unspoken message of Biden’s speech was perfectly embodied in this immortal “Animal House” clip:
Who, including Biden, could possibly believe that the State of the Union is anything other than in deep, deep trouble, or that—this is even more ridiculous—that it is “stronger today than we were a year ago”? By what measure could that be true?
Consider: Continue reading
Ethics Observations On An Unethical NYT Column That Should Never Have Been Published About A Destructive Movement That Never Should Have Begun
It is not exactly an upset that this column, as dishonest and irresponsible as any I have seen in the New York Times, which is saying a lot, came from the poisoned, bitter and unscrupulous mind of Charles M. Blow. Blow, the most consistently unethical of the Times huge reserve of unethical pundits, never lets fairness and facts get in the way of an anti-white, anti-cop, anti-Republican diatribe when he isn’t writing weekly Trump-hate pieces as he did for four years, nearly without pause. But this week’s column, outrageously coupling a photo of Trayvon Martin with Emmet Till, is special.
Let’s start with the headline: “Trayvon Martin Is Still Making
America Confront Its Original Sin.” That’s a lot of misinformation for a headline. The “original sin,” of course, is slavery, this being the New York Times, where Nicole Hannah-Jones contrived the fake history-based “1619 Project” that claimed the United States was created to protect slavery. Slavery was neither original with the American colonies nor did American history begin with the practice, and Blow’s analogy (which was also endorsed by Barack Obama) with “original sin” is a core part of the anti-American theme of Critical Race Theory. That anti-white, anti-American tool holds that nothing the nation has done or can do will erase or compensate for slavery and its long-lasting side-effects, though perpetual white guilt and a special set of standards making African-Americans permanent beneficiaries of legal and society favoritism is absolutely required.
Ethics Quiz: The All-Black Sports Platform
Yes, this is really an Andscape graphic. What does it mean? I have no idea…
The New York Times (uncritically)reports:
“You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated.” That quote, from Maya Angelou, inspired The Undefeated, an ESPN media platform that, from its start in 2016, has helped shape the national conversation by exploring the intersection of race, sports and culture from a Black point of view. On Monday, ESPN said it would rebrand and expand the operation, which will now go by the name … Andscape…
“It’s time to talk about Black and everything,” Raina Kelley, Andscape’s editor in chief, said in a phone interview. “Far beyond just sports and athletes.” She continued: “How do you be an individual as a Black person in America with your own unique set of interests, some of which are bound together by melanin, but not all of them? And how do you feel whole? We wanted to create a space where Black people could be Black people: Black led, Black P.O.V., absolutely. But also where there were no definitions and no rules about what being Black meant, what you had to talk about.”
Ethics Lunch, 3/1/2022: Ethics Comes In Like A…
I know I’ve run this SNL clip on other March Firsts, but a) it always makes me laugh and I need a laugh today, and 2) it always provokes ethics reflections.
For example, I think about how much healthier the nation’s culture was when its primary weekly source of current events satire was devoted to making all Americans laugh rather than pursuing a one-sided ideological agenda, as it does now. Then there is the brilliant John Belushi, who robbed himself of a career of almost unlimited potential and his nation of the many joys that career would have generated by deliberately violating drug laws that would have kept him alive, if he hadn’t been persuaded by a drug-loving culture that insisted that recreational drugs were cool. Now, of course, our laws send completely muddled messages that ensure that more talented Americans meet Belushi’s sad end than fewer.
In the U.S., ethics came in like a lion, and is going out like a blind shrew rat…
1. Unethical Quote the New Month: President Biden. (I should probably highlight this with a full post, but there is too much political news on the ethics horizon today, so I’m trying to lessen the load.) During a Black History Month event as the White House, the President who promised to heal divisions in society and bridge the partisan divide, said,
“We’re protecting our country’s threshold liberty, the sacred right to vote, which I’ve never seen as under such attack.You know, it’s always made it harder for blacks to vote but this is trying to be able to figure out how to keep the black vote, when it occurs, from even counting.”
Trying to prevent the black vote from counting! No misinformation there! Restricting unlimited mail-in ballots, banning vote harvesting, limiting early voting and drop-boxes, and requiring photo IDs at polls constitutes an “attack” on the sacred right to vote, says the President of the United States.
He’s not only lying, he’s an asshole. Continue reading
Ethics Alarms 