U.S. Society

Early Open Forum (Sorry)…and a Census Note

/ Jack Marshall / 28 Comments

I’m sorry to have to default to this format now; I’m really and truly feeling better, but getting posts up has been more laborious than I imagined. Up here in my office I can’t elevate my wounded leg, and I still haven’t mastered my new laptop sufficiently to where posting there isn’t frustrating. Everything, it seems, takes five times longer than it should right now.

Meanwhile, the ethics topics I should be writing about, like the sudden battles over gerrymandering with the Democrats being shocked—shocked!—that Republicans would consider such treachery, require the kind of nuance and detail I can’t muster for a while.

I will make an ethics observation about today’s Trump Deranged freakout over the President’s decision that we need a new census. Of course, like everything he has done or will ever do, this proves the President is an autocrat and violates the Constitution.

I very much doubt that the ultimate decision will be that the U.S. can’t have a census for good cause more frequently than every ten years. The Constitution’s requirement of one every ten years can be (and should be) read as a minimum. If I decide to have a physical six months after my last one, should my doctor forbid that, saying that the best practices limit me to only one a year?

Trump’s larger problem is the inclusion of illegal immigrants in the census. This is an anomaly ( there were no such things as illegal immigrants when the Constitution was written), but the courts have upheld the counting of illegals; it would take a Constitutional amendment to fix this, or maybe a law declaring that illegals do not “reside” in the U.S.

It is wrong that states and cities defying federal law by their “sanctuary” status should benefit from it, but that’s what the current system permits. If Trump thinks we can deport sufficient numbers of illegal immigrants to make a difference in the apportionment of House seats, ICE has got to get a lot bigger, and fast.

I swear, I’ll get back to the traditional 3-4 posts a day soon…

Two Quotes That No Member of Congress Should Utter, Ever.

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Quote #1: “I’m a proud Guatemalan before I’m an American.” Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-IL). She added to this declaration of disloyalty her assessment that the U.S. has been characterized by “imperialism, militarization, conquest, control, competition in its attempt at domination.”

Quote #2: “Listen, Donald Trump is a piece of shit, OK? We know that! Yes, he is! He is! He is!” You can guess this one, right? Yes, it’s Dunning-Kruger victim Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Tx), once again descending into vulgarity as a lazy substitute for reasoned discourse, of which she is incapable.

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Observations on the Cincinnati Beatdown

/ Jack Marshall / 35 Comments

While languishing in the hospital, this was the story that I felt most frustrated about not being able to post. Not that I could get a single, clear, spin-free account of what happened. In the aftermath of some Cincinnati event or festival or something, a black man and a white one got into a verbal altercation. The white guy seems to have uttered a racial slur, precipitating a brawl that was quickly joined by a mob of black youths who beat up the white guy and then turned their anger on a white woman who tried to intervene, knocking her unconscious and kicking her as she lay helpless on the ground. An estimated hundred bystanders, most or all of them black, stood by taking videos, laughing, and cheering the mob violence on. There was only one call to 911.

1. Almost all of the national coverage of this incident has been on Fox News. The New York Times, interestingly, hasn’t reported the story at all. The natural question has been raised: If a black man and woman had been attacked and beaten by a mob of young whites as 100 white bystanders cheered them on, there would be protests in the streets and calls for “justice.” Why the double standard?

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Well, This Is Awkward

/ Jack Marshall / 53 Comments

I’m back from five days in the hospital trying to beat back a whole leg infection stemming from, I swear, a single bump on my shin two weeks ago. I didn’t have a laptop and my phone isn’t set up to post (or even get email), so I was cut off from Ethics Alarms as well as other essentials. I talked my way out of the place when they made it sound like I would be stuck there for another few days. Now I’m trying to master a new laptop with my still unwell foot elevated and my brain addled from painkillers, antibiotics, and a lack of sleep. (It is impossible to sleep in this hospital.) I’m sorry; a real post is beyond me right now. But here are some scattered thoughts, since all of my thoughts are scattered.

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Bill Maher Is Smarter Than Colbert But No More Ethical..And About That Cory Booker Outburst

/ Jack Marshall / 50 Comments

HBO’s smug clown nose on/clown nose off star Bill Maher has been getting plaudits from conservatives—yes, even Fox News!—for supposedly being one of the few knee-jerk Trump critics to have the integrity to admit, “Gee, I guess Trump was right about something.” Lately Bill has said that he “loved” the bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities and that he, like everyone else on the Left, was wrong about Trump’s tariff policies crashing the economy. (Today we learned that the GNP took a leap to 3%.)

There will be no salutes for Maher here.

This is the same guy who said, during Trump’s first term, that making the economy crash would be worth it to get rid of Trump. (And that’s exactly what Democrats and their allies, the Deep State CDC, the NEA, and the New York Times did with the Wuhan virus freakout.) Bill the Truth-Teller had his barking-seals studio audience rolling in the aisles throughout 2024 as he mocked news accounts, the Hur Report, and any other evidence that President Biden was half-there (at best) usually pairing his commentary with shots at Trump’s cognitive abilities. Now, however, that it is obvious to him that Democrats are the Titanic, this particular rat senses that he best interests lie in tacking a bit to sanity: most of his audience may be Trump Deranged, but Maher will do what necessary to keep his ratings up.

Comedians who deliberately alienate half the country are not in a secure position when that half starts growing; Maher is many unpleasant things—a hypocrite, a misogynist, an arrogant creep, but he’s not stupid. Admitting the obvious even when it ticks off some of his fans doesn’t require integrity, it requires common sense.

I suppose this is as good a place as anywhere to discuss Sen. Cory “Spartacus” Booker’s hysterical anti-Trump rant yesterday in the Senate. The fun part begins around the 2:30 second mark.

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It Is Clearly Time To Declare Polls and Pollsters Useless, Corrupted, Tools of Partisan Warfare, and Move On

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Incredibly and against all odds, the polling community has shown itself to be even more untrustworthy than journalism and political punditry. The pollsters are dishonest, their methodology stinks, and everyone who cites them as authority engages in deceptive cherry-picking.

To Hell with them all.

When I check in on MSNBC, which isn’t embarrassed about being virtually all-Epstein all-the-time for weeks now, they are flashing poll numbers showing that President Trump is wildly unpopular regarding, oh, everything. Of course, I can easily find the opposite analysis in the conservative media, and President Trump will, as is his wont, cite exaggerated or completely made up poll numbers whenever it suits his mood.

Two recent examples of this nonsense come to mind. Extreme left-biased, Trump Deranged sports pundit Jamele Hill blathered on CNN regarding the Epstein “client list” distraction, “What’s always interesting to me is, like, what it takes people to get off the Trump train. It’s not the xenophobia, it’s not the racism, it’s not the bigotry. It is this.” “This” meant that polls showed diminishing support for the President because of contrived hysteria over his association with Epstein that has been well-known for decades.

What always is interesting to me is, like, why is such a persistently wrong, dishonest, race-obsessed hack given a platform for her hate and stupidity at all? At least DEI provides an explanation, but if it isn’t that, then it’s a mystery on the level of the Mary Celeste.

So CNN’s Harry Enten, whose weird niche is using untrustworthy polls to debunk Axis narratives using different untrustworthy polls, “factchecked” Hill.

“When it comes to his approval rating with Republicans, it’s basically as solid as it ever was,” the biggest dork on broadcast news declared. “If you look at the average of polls, his approval rating with Republicans [is] still at about 90%.”

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Today’s “The Unabomber Was Right” Note…

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

I don’t find any of these funny.

I ended up in the emergency room of my local hospital thanks to a massive leg hematoma that has produced the most disgusting symptom you could imaging in your worst nightmares. (Think the first feature of Tarantino’s “Grindhouse,” “Planet Terror.”). I was quickly checked out and sent home (diagnosis: painful, ugly, incredibly swollen, blistered and bruised, but healing slowly but surely), but checking out was like a nit from an old Woody Allen movie—you know, back when he was funny.

I had to get a text, then click on the link, then jump through a half-dozen other hoops, read serial messages sent to me, sign three documents with m with my finger, all also I could be pestered by more texts, a survey, another disclaimer and more when I got home. I also witnessed two elderly patients (I’m afraid they were both younger than me) get upset and profess complete helplessness regarding the process because they didn’t know how to use their smart phones.

This is not “progress.” It is not caring service. It is neither reasonable nor necessary.

Post Script: I have no idea how much I will get posted today. I have a Zoom legal ethics seminar to teach, I had almost no sleep last night because my leg was hurting so much, and sitting at my desk isn’t a good idea (but still necessary) because I’m supposed to keep this misshapen red, yellow and purple-mottled thing elevated. I’m sorry: there is a lot I need and want to write about. We will see how it goes.

Friday Open Forum!

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

Just one question before I surrender the con to you…

Can anyone think of a more ridiculous, desperate, annoying Axis “Get Trump!” engine than the current obsession with the “lists/files/whatever” of dead sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein? Because I can’t. The “Breaking!” headlines are like smoking gun evidence that the nation’s median IQ has dropped into double figures….low double figures. Trump wrote a naughty birthday card to Epstein! That does it: I am no longer responding to email requests for birthday messages and videos from relatives of distant friends and acquaintances until I have done a background check on what they have been up to lately. Trump went to Epstein’s wedding!

As I stated before (when I thought this nonsense would at worst be a week-long distraction), there is some condign justice in Trump being bedeviled by this since he allowed his campaign to crow about Epstein conspiracy theories. Nevertheless, any non-Trump Deranged citizen who expends any energy getting upset about this guilt-by-association assault needs a priority inventory.

Morons.

Geewhatasurprise: Hospitals Harvest Organs From Living Patients

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Waaay back in 1978, the film version of physician/novelist Robin Cook’s science fiction novel “Coma” (above) gave audiences the heebie-jeebies about being operated on. An “ends-justifies the means” chief of surgery had devised a diabolical way to have fresh organs ready to become life-saving transplants: one specially rigged operating room turned healthy-ish patients into brain dead victims (A young Tom Selleck was one of them!), and they ended up in a storage facility where their bodies were kept fresh and breathing until hearts, lings, livers or kidneys were needed.

Haven’t you always assumed that hospitals sometimes took essential organs from organ donors who were still alive, if barely? I have friends who aren’t organ donors specifically for that reason, and, yes, most of them remember “Coma.”

From an HHS press release this week:

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On Stephen Colbert and His Fans

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

You see, there could certainly be a valid commercial argument for a major news network to try a regular entertainment show that was dedicated to attacking and undermining the President of the United States five nights a week, every week. If enough people watched it, and the show was popular, it would have a Machiavellian defense for its existence. Now I, as an ethicist, am confident that my position is superior, which is that corporations should not actively try to cause division, distrust and hate in their own country, which are all destructive to democracy and a civil, functioning society.

I particularly object to entertainment shows that are not merely political and partisan propaganda, but that overwhelmingly express only one point of view to the extreme extent that Americans holding the adverse points of view are treated as “the Other.” Beginning in 2016, TV’s late night and public issues comedy shows became all hate for the American President, all the time. Hate is not too strong a word. Hate is also not particularly funny.

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