I have been to more memorial events in the past year than in the previous ten. Today, on the day before the 365 day anniversary of my wife’s sudden death, I began with another, a “celebration of life” in a Baptist church for a woman I never met. But she was the mother of a friend, not a close friend, I guess— can someone you have only talked to twice in 30 years be called a close friend?—but a wonderful, kind, caring man whom I am proud to have as a friend at all.

I knew only three people at the service besides my friend, which surprised me. I spoke with two of them, and waved to another. Sitting alone in a long pew, my mind wandered all over the place on many topics—this is my curse. Is it unethical to be thinking about a different deceased person at a memorial for another one? No, thinking isn’t ethical unethical, but anyway, I couldn’t help replaying the events of the past year beginning with February 29, 2024 in my mind.

The service, though mercifully short, reminded me of Grace’s disillusionment with organized religion after growing up as Methodist minister’s daughter. The sermon was delivered by a friend of the family; itwas so generic as to be impersonal and meaningless, even though it was presented as particularly applicable to the deceased. The pastor basically repeated that “love is the way” over and over again for fifteen minutes.

Meanwhile, he soloist at the service seemed to think of herself as channeling Aretha Franklin, but had neither the voice nor, crucially, the pitch to approach that standard. She also was belting high, screachy notes into a harsh and overly-loud sound system that really and truly hurt my ears, but I felt it would have been bad form to cover them with my hands.

Furthermore:

Continue reading →

For some reason, the Axis media and social media pundits have been resorting to interviewing retired, apparently unemployed, old Clinton political consultant James Carville as he slowly transforms into Gollum and says “fuck” a lot. Virtually all political consultants are soulless, ethics-free Machiavellians who would sell out their own mothers out for a rich contract; the successful ones aren’t stupid (unlike the consultants Kamala Harris apparently paid millions to), but they usually have nothing to teach us about ethics except from the “Don’t be like them!” perspective. Remember how Dick Morris, another Clinton consultant, suggested that Bill commission a poll on whether he should tell the truth about Monica Lewinsky?

[Digression: In a recent interview on the same “Call Her Daddy” podcast that Kamala chose to submit to instead of Joe Rogan’s, poor (not being sarcastic: I feel sorry for her and always have) Monica Lewinsky said that the “right way” for President Clinton to have handled the revelation of their liaisons would have been either “to resign” or find a way not to make her a national pariah. “I think that the right way to handle a situation like that would have been to probably say it was nobody’s business and to resign,” Lewinsky said, “or to find a way of staying in office that was not lying and not throwing a young person who was just starting out in the world under the bus.”

Comment for Monica: “Welcome to the party, pal!” Yet you sat back and let Hillary Clinton campaign as a feminist Presidential candidate while the Democrats cynically cheered themselves as “the party of women.” My sympathy for you stretches only so far…]

Seldom, however, do these unethical mutations of humanity who call themselves consultants come right out and express exactly how warped they are, as Carville does in this video on Rumble. He says, speaking about the issue of biological women participating in women’s sports,

“If you feel like that you have to protect these girls from, I’m not sure what — I don’t really fucking understand it or give a shit, but it’s a big goddamn issue to you, so, you got to be sure that you’re out there and ready to go. And, you know, whenever this topic comes up, I say, ‘Look, I’m sorry. I just don’t think a lot about track meets. I think a lot about people having affordable health care. I think a lot about how we can grow America. I think a lot about that they’re not going to be able to pass a debt limit, not even close, much less reconciliation, anything else.”

Nice. Women and girls losing to biological men in their athletic competitions, risking injuries, losing championships, scholarships and the experience of fairly run sports just isn’t as significant in the vast scheme of human events as the other concerns Carville mentions, so its not worth talking about or fixing.

That’s the essence of evil Rationalization #22, the worst on the list, which allows any conduct, no matter how harmful or wrong, to be brushed aside and rationalized away because “there are worse things.” From the description of #22. The Comparative Virtue Excuse: “There are worse things” at the list,

“If ‘Everybody does it’ is the Golden Rationalization, this is the bottom of the barrel. Yet amazingly, the excuse is popular in high places. During the Iraq deabale in the Bush II administration, we heard the “Abu Ghraib was bad, but our soldiers would never cut off Nick Berg’s head!” argument. It is true that for most unethical misconduct, there are indeed “worse things.” Lying to your boss in order to goof off at the golf course isn’t as bad as stealing a ham, and stealing a ham is nothing compared selling military secrets to North Korea.”

You can try to excuse anything this way, and Carville’s favorite party is wearing out #22 of late. A particularly ridiculous extension of the rationalization was a recent Providence Journal story headlined,  “Numbers show RI undocumented immigrants a small slice of those getting benefits. What we know.”

Reporter Katherine Gregg determined that Medicaid payments to those without Social Security numbers totaled $55.4 million last year, including the $16,106,050 paid to illegal immigrants. Then she shrugged off the wasted funds as just a tiny percentage of the Medicaid budget. This is apparently the Axis-ordered rebuttal for all of the Trump Administration spending cut efforts: why should we care about a few million or even a few billion here and there, while so much more is being wasted elsewhere?

Jeez, where’s Ben Franklin when you need him?

Carville’s #22 is even uglier because he frames it in human terms. Even though the invasion of trans men into women’s sports does measurable harm to identifiable children and adult athletes, puts girls and women at risk of injury, and savages a group that Carville’s party once pretended to care deeply about, it’s just not worth paying attention to because….health care is too expensive. His attitude can’t be justified as utilitarianism, because the integrity of women’s and girls’ sports isn’t part of a trade-off or a necessary sacrifice to achieve a greater good. It’s just not important enough, says Carville, to care about.

Yecchh.

Once again, I want to call on the commentariate and others to consider submitting guest columns to EA.

Today, as an example, I could have spent every hour writing posts on important ethics issues, but I can’t (I devoted too much time as it is) because I have difficult, time-consuming and perilous personal and business tasks swinging over me sword of Damocles-like, I have no staff or assistance now, and I’m feeling unusually pressured and anxious.

The Trump Derangement theme of the day which I would ideally be examining in more detail is the freakout over Elon Musk attending a Cabinet meeting today as if this is another assault on democracy by Donald J. Hitler. Established in Article II, Section 2, of the Constitution, the President’s Cabinet consists of advisors who oversee particular areas within the executive branch with the President’s consent and Congressional approval.

There is not a word in our founding document about how they should meet, if they should meet (pseudo-President Biden had almost no Cabinet meetings) or who else can attend if and when they met. The Cabinet could meet around a poker table. It could meet as a costume party. The President could tell one Cabinet member that he or she isn’t invited if he’s sick of looking at his or her face. Children have attended Cabinet meetings. Dogs have been invited.

As I noted at the time, Jill Biden attended a Cabinet meeting, and the same news outlets screaming about Musk being “unelected” and a “co-President” never uttered a peep of complaint.

These Trump Deranged obsessions are obnoxious, misleading, cheap, ignorant and apparently getting dumber by the day.

Spring Training has begun, and that means the the baseball season in involved in its metaphorical overture. As usual, the game is already spawning ethical controversies, and they strike principles that apply to more spheres of human experience than just baseball.

Automated Ball-and-Strike System (ABS)

Finally! After a couple of years of being tested in independent and minor leagues, a system allowing computer-assisted ball and strike calling is being tested in Spring Training with an eye toward introducing it in MLB games in 2026. The way it current works: home plate umpires still call the pitches, but a batter, pitcher or catcher (not managers) can challenge a bad call. Once a challenge is made (right now the signal is the player tapping his helmet), the scoreboard shows where the disputed pitch was, and if it nicks the strike zone when the umpire said otherwise (or missed it and the ump called a strike anyway), the call is reversed. Each team has a set number of challenges: if one fails, it is lost.

The system injects new strategy and statistical analysis into the game. The challenged pitches shouldn’t all be on ball four or strike three calls, or even necessarily in game-determining situations. The statistical difference between the batting average of a batter having a one ball, one strike count and a batter with an 0-2 count is massive, so mid-count, early innings challenges can have major effects on a game’s outcome. Batters do not have as clear a view of the strike zone as pitchers and catchers, so the system favors the defense: presumably batters will be instructed not to challenge an umpire’s call unless a mistake is egregious. Running out of challenges by the late innings of a close game will be a significance handicap.

Interestingly, Terry Francona, now managing the Cincinnati Reds, has told his veteran players not to participate in the challenge system. He reasons that since ABS won’t be used during the 2025 season, it is a distraction from the purpose of Spring Training, which is to prepare for the games ahead. (He’s right.)

Goodbye Tradition, Hello Beards

Continue reading →

Somebody with an acid pen and a facility with statistics please go crazy fisking that thing. I’m tired.

Here’s a short version, though…

• It’s no “secret,” because literally no one without an internal head injury has ever blamed Social Security and Medicare for the National Debt.
• The top 1% of taxpayers pay about 40% of all income taxes. Whether that’s “fair” is entirely a matter of values, opinion, and priorities. The lower half of the population in income barely pays any taxes at all, yet they derive the benefit of government services anyway. Why is that “fair”?
• You can’t bring down inflation by increasing the costs of goods and services by taxing the companies that produce them.
• “End of story” is what people say when they don’t have the facts, wit or ammunition to win an argument, so they declare the debate over before it starts. Similar sign-offs: “Period, the end!” “So there!” and “My mind’s made up, don’t confuse me with facts!”

ADDED: No sooner had I posted the above than an equally moronic (and spectacularly dishonest)meme was posted by a lawyer friend. The same question applies:

(Calvin should sue.)

ADDED: This one, posted by a very good friend who should be ashamed of himself, was “liked” or “loved” by almost 20 people so far. First reply: “It’s true.”

I had to physically wrestle my fingers to the floor to stop them from typing, “You all are despicable morons. Every one of you.”