1. The “Elon Musk wasn’t elected” might be the stupidest rallying cry any party in U.S. political history has ever anchored itself to. I just heard Rep. Maxine Waters, whose corruption and dishonesty know no bounds, shouting about that. Do these people really not understand how their own government works? Are the Democrats trying to win the title of “The Stupid Party” from the GOP? One conservative pundit said he had a three letter rebuttal to the “Elon wasn’t elected” complaint: “EPA.” Or USAID. Or FBI. Is this really the best the Axis has right now? Wow. Also “Good.” Also..
2. Over on Facebook, somebody actually posted this and dozens of once- functioning human beings “liked” it: “Dismantling the government is the first step to fascism and totalitarianism.” There’s a two word rebuttal for this too: “Thomas Jefferson.”
—The slogan of the hysterical protest outside the Treasury building today, an unusually stupid demonstration even by stupid demonstration standards. Every speaker there—Chuck Schumer, Elizabeth Warren, the outrageous Jasmine Crockett and others—gets “credit” for the slogan whether they actually said those exact words or not.
The experiment Democrats seem to be engaged in is apparently designed to determine just how ignorant, gullible and stupid the American public is. If they are not as stupid as the Democrats hope, they just might see this demonstration and the mass freakout over President Trump really doing what he promised to do and doing it faster than anybody expected as the ultimate proof of his opposition’s weakness and desperation.
No, Musk wasn’t elected. Neither were powerful Presidential aides, advisors, envoys, assistants, “czars,” First Ladies and other delegates, representatives and agents of Presidents of the United States going all the way back to George Washington. Listing them would be a silly and time consuming exercise, but such a list would include Abigail Adams, Eleanor Roosevelt, Hillary Clinton, Nancy Reagan, Sherman Adams, Colonel House, John Hay, FDR’s “Brain Trust,” Ed Meese, Ted Sorenson, Roger Ailes, Rahm Emanuel and many others. None of them were elected, of course; neither are the Justices on the Supreme Court. We’ve had two Presidents who weren’t elected, George Washington and Gerald Ford. Since the Vice-President has only two Constitutional duties, to preside over the Senate and to be ready to take over when a President is disabled or dies, delegating policy areas to a VP is giving him jobs he or she wasn’t elected to do. It is pretty clear by now that Joe Biden was being manipulated by unelected persons unknown for four years.
In a post dripping with contempt and sarcasm, eminent and (of topics other than Donald Trump) astute defense lawyer-blogger Scott Greenfield writes, “It’s Trump’s White House now. But rather than fix what’s “broken” (nothing is broken), just say “screw it” and ask Elon for a list of the wayward youth doing his bidding. Who are they? Who knows? Who cares? Elon says they’re his people and Elon’s rich, so he can’t be wrong.” In a nice coincidence, another mainstream media hit job on Musk in the New York Times, a report aimed at discrediting Musk, DOGE, and of course Trump, we learn that the “federal deficit for 2024 was $1.8 trillion. The Government Accountability Office estimated in a report that the government made $236 billion in improper payments — three-quarters of which were overpayments — across 71 federal programs during the 2023 fiscal year.”
That astounding statistic is employed, 43 paragraphs into the article, to argue that DOGE concentrating on waste, fraud and abuse is silly, because $236 billion is just a drop in the bucket. (“A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money,” said legendary GOP Senator Everett Dirkson.) A better illustration of why DOGE is necessary could hardly be imagined. The system is completely broken when the government wastes money like that and it is shrugged off by statist allies like the Times. . In such situations a scythe, not a scalpel, is the tool to use. The controversy over USAID is in the same category. The agency has been unaccountable, profligate and idiotic. It spent $15 million to distribute ‘contraceptives and condoms’ in Afghanistan. USAID food support went to syrian Al-Qaeda. Heck, USAID sent me to Mongolia for a week to assist the judiciary in drawing up legal ethics rules, and when I got there, I found out that they “weren’t ready.” It’s an Executive Branch agency that serves as a spigot for funds to go overseas with little or no oversight.
In a New York Post report that defends Musk’s mission while revealing more revolting uses of taxpayer money abroad, the DOGE head is quoted as saying about USAID, “It became apparent that it’s not an apple with a worm. What we have is just a ball of worms. You’ve got to basically get rid of the whole thing. It’s beyond repair.”
Nothing is broken? Right. USAID is broken, the U.S. government bureaucracy, and the journalism that is supposed to let citizens know when their government is corrupt and wasting their money is broken. And the once perceptive experts, pundits and analysts who have allowed Trump Derangement to break their perspective, objectivity and critical thinking skills are now just part of the problem.
Here’s now sinister this ad is: I must have watched it six or seven times before I thought, “Hey…wait a minute!”
The male “bad date” in the ad is so disgusting a viewer is half-hoping the woman pulls out a .44 and shoots him right between the eyes. This is masterful manipulation at work…he begins with an insult framed as blame causing him disappointment: “You’re too short.” Asshole. Then he reveals his narcicissm and boastfulness, showing the selfie “by the dumbbells.” Giant asshole! Next the air-drumming comment…UNBELIEVABLE asshole! When he gets to the bit about forgetting his wallet and “Sugarmamma,” the viewer is seeing red, and feeling that the victim of this toxic creep is being noble by just sneaking out rather than setting him on fire.
But she isn’t. She’s being an asshole too, just a slightly better one. Leaving the table on false pretenses to escape is cowardly and indefensible. Moreover, someone who misbehaves as outrageously as the “bad date” needs to be told just clearly how unacceptable his conduct is and why, since he obviously doesn’t know. His next victim will at least partially be the runaway date’s fault.
The commercial also showed an anti-female bias by making the bad date a male and his victim female. A genders switched version would inspire at least a substantial reaction from viewers of “What a weenie! The jerk doesn’t have the guts to confront that jerk!” But teh woman in the ad is also a weenie—it’s just that the Hyundai marketers are calculating that running away from confrontations and unpleasant situations is a girl thing, and socially acceptable.
No, it really isn’t. This is not only a stereotype, it’s a damaging one. Why haven’t we elected a female President yet? Accumulated cultural poison like this commercial is one of the reasons.
Incidentally, I hope that actor who plays the asshole was well paid for his performance, because he may end up dying single and alone as a result.
I was pondering whether to post about another entry at “The Ethicist” which may have been prompted by the weirdest question Prof Appiah has chosen to answer yet. I would have been tempted to answer it, “Yikes! This isn’t a question for an ethicist, it’s a question for a psychiatrist!” but in light of the lively discussion about marriage as an institution flagged by the previous post, maybe the commentariate will have a more constructive response. “The Ethicist’s” typically prolix answer is here.
The question from Name Withheld, a horny post-menopausal wife, headlined, “I’m Happily Married. I Just Want to Sleep With Another Man Before I Die”:
The discussion about the institution of marriage on last Friday’s Open Forum was so excellent—EA at its best—that it seems unfair to highlight a single entry in it above the rest. It began with Bad Bob’s observations about his daughter asserting that marriage was outdated and unnecessary in our wise and modern age. (I mostly avoided this debate, hard as it was for me when the sudden loss of a marriage dominated my life in 2024 and so far this year as well).
What followed was a fascinating discourse among BB, Michael West, Ryan Harkins (this topic is in his wheelhouse), Humble Talent, Old Bill and Demeter, but it was Chris Marschner’s contribution, in response to Humble Talent’s comment, that I have chosen to represent the thread. (Bad Bob nominated it for COTD in an email to me, and as the initiator of the discussion, his pointer carried weight.)
The Humble Talent comment that was predicate to the Comment of the Day (he begins with a quote from Bad Bob’s initial comment regarding his daughter’s argument):
BAD BOB: “I think that’s wrong on it’s face, but if society were to embrace that sort of thing, wouldn’t we have to do away with a few ethical concepts? Loyalty comes to mind, the Golden rule, and I’m sure quite a few others would need definitions changed?”
None of the above. I had the benefit, at 18, of being put in charge of a staff that included a 60 year old grandmother. Gina was weird; proudly Christian, and professionally raided in Guild Wars…. Which isn’t per se a contradiction in terms, but was kind of unique. I loved our conversations.
One of which I remember talking to her about how people, even back then, had sex before marriage, and how she didn’t understand how any relationship could have trust unless two virgins found themselves for the first time.
The answer, to me, was obvious: Why wouldn’t you trust them? Where’s the lie? Now… She was thoughtful enough to lean back and have a think on that, because that’s who she was, and didn’t necessarily like it, or agree with it, but she accepted the truth of it: There’s no betrayal if there’s no lie.
There are cultural differences in play here, and realities that people your age grew up with are fundamentally different now, and it’s hard to wrap your head around them.
Religious beliefs, at least pre-Lutheran, tended to evolve over time to fit the realities of life: At the times the food prohibitions were active, those foods were almost as likely to make you ill as to nourish you, and by the time Jesus told the masses they could suck back pork and shellfish without sin, sanitation improvements had made those foods relatively safe.
We aren’t living in times where humanity or the faith teeters on the brink of extinction from external existential threats. It’s not important, and in fact, it’s probably not great, for the average family to have ten kids anymore. Sex doesn’t carry the risk of pregnancy that it used to. Sexual disease is significantly less common and much more preventable and treatable. I honestly wonder if, had condoms and penicillin been discovered before the printing press, whether the teachings of Jesus wouldn’t have broadly laxed the sex laws.
Shortly after the news that gun-obsessed ideologue David Hogg had been elected one of the Vice-Chairs of the Democratic National Committee (Item #7 in this post), a Hogg tweet from 2022 was rediscovered:
What is he, 14? This is the kind of mature, nation-building, rational leadership Democrats are turning to in their dark night of the soul. To call those sentiments infantile, self-centered, irresponsible and incompetent would be an understatement. What does one call a political party that looks at that and concludes, “Hey! This guy is just what we need!”?
What we are witnessing with the Trump tsunami of executive orders and direct assaults on the Deep State is the creation of a new norm, one that, now that I think about it, should have manifested itself long ago. Note that I didn’t refer to the current wave of orders and directives coming out of the White House as a “blitzkrieg.” That would just feed into the hysterical narrative from the Axis that an elected U.S. President using his Constitutional powers to manage the Executive Branch is “fascist.” Apparently the Left is going to keep using the “Trump is Hitler” nonsense because it’s worked out so well for them.
A new President from the opposing party obviously has a huge tactical advantage if he moves this quickly and forcefully. The only arriving administration that came close to what Trump has done was Roosevelt’s first term, and he couldn’t move nearly this fast. The phenomenon makes me wonder if there is a previously unrealized advantage to a President taking four years off between terms and calculating what went wrong and how to do better the next time.
Trump is obviously not one to conclude, “This time, I need to think things through before I tweet or open my big yap,” but he clearly figured out that he was sabotaged his entire four years because he naively trusted entrenched government employees to be patriots loyal to their President rather than working behind the scenes to undermine him. Far from being an attack on democracy, Trump’ forceful and essential course correction is a defense of it, and entirely ethical: responsible, fair, and the fulfillment of Trump’s promises.
CBS, only a month before a Presidential election that was believed to be a toss-up, deliberately used its flagship news magazine show, “60 Minutes,” to throw a lifeline to Kamala Harris. The network was caught red-handed at this, as this admittedly critical coverage clearly shows…
In response to CBS’s cheat, Trump sued the network last year for $10 billion, “alleging” that “the network”60 Minutes” deceptively edited the featured interview with Harris to help her candidacy, or perhaps not to hurt her candidacy is more accurate, since it hid a typical Harris outbreak of gibberish in response to a straightforward question. The lawsuit alleges this because “60 Minutes” did deceptively edit the interview. There is no non-risible argument that it did not. Ethics Alarms issued two posts about this nauseating example of unethical partisan broadcast journalism, here and here. CBS could have backed up its “It isn’t what it is” defense of the incident by releasing the raw transcript of the Harris interview, but it would not, more smoking gun evidence of its attempted election interference by withholding that smoking gun.
My plan is to do another Post 2024 Election Freak-Out Update today, but this chapter deserves its own post.
Last night while watching the DirecTV news mix, which allows me to sample CNN, Fox News, MSNBC and BBC America simultaneously, I was puzzled to see Rachel Maddow, snearing and mugging as usual, featuring old Watergate headlines about the “Saturday Night Massacre,” when President Nixon ordered a succession of Attorneys General to fire Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox, who, the assumption went, was getting too close to uncovering Nixon’s involvement in the cover-up.
“What does that have to do with the price of beans?” I asked myself. I clicked on Rachel, which I usually won’t do unless there is a loaded pistol aimed at my head. Of course! Interim D.C. U.S. attorney Edward R. Martin, Jr. had dismissed about 30 federal prosecutors who worked on the January 6, 2021 cases over the past four years. The prosecutors who had worked on Jack Smith’s lawfare prosecutions of Trump for the mishandling of classified material at Mar-A-Largo and his alleged attempt to steal (back) the 2024 election have already been pink-slipped or soon will be. Rachel, repeating the agreed-upon Axis talking point, was saying that this is Trump emulating Nixon, preventing “justice” and hobbling law enforcement. CNN got around to the same narrative a bit later.
Indeed, all looks yellow to the jaundiced eye. President Trump would have been incompetent, foolish and naive not to fire all of these lawyers. Maybe some of them were ethical and capable of independent thought (as their ethics rules require), but there is no way to figure out which. Most of them have been poisoned by the “Deep State “Get Trump!” culture seeded bt Obama, Hillary Clinton, and others. As with the FBI and intelligence personnel who are losing their ability to sabotage this President in his second term as they did in his first, those lawyers heading out the door cannot be trusted. It would make no more sense to allow them to undermine President Trump with leaks and worse than it would have made sense to keep Jack Smith around; luckily, he had the sense to resign.
Ethics Alarms 
BAD BOB: “I think that’s wrong on it’s face, but if society were to embrace that sort of thing, wouldn’t we have to do away with a few ethical concepts? Loyalty comes to mind, the Golden rule, and I’m sure quite a few others would need definitions changed?”
None of the above. I had the benefit, at 18, of being put in charge of a staff that included a 60 year old grandmother. Gina was weird; proudly Christian, and professionally raided in Guild Wars…. Which isn’t per se a contradiction in terms, but was kind of unique. I loved our conversations.
One of which I remember talking to her about how people, even back then, had sex before marriage, and how she didn’t understand how any relationship could have trust unless two virgins found themselves for the first time.
The answer, to me, was obvious: Why wouldn’t you trust them? Where’s the lie? Now… She was thoughtful enough to lean back and have a think on that, because that’s who she was, and didn’t necessarily like it, or agree with it, but she accepted the truth of it: There’s no betrayal if there’s no lie.
There are cultural differences in play here, and realities that people your age grew up with are fundamentally different now, and it’s hard to wrap your head around them.
Religious beliefs, at least pre-Lutheran, tended to evolve over time to fit the realities of life: At the times the food prohibitions were active, those foods were almost as likely to make you ill as to nourish you, and by the time Jesus told the masses they could suck back pork and shellfish without sin, sanitation improvements had made those foods relatively safe.
We aren’t living in times where humanity or the faith teeters on the brink of extinction from external existential threats. It’s not important, and in fact, it’s probably not great, for the average family to have ten kids anymore. Sex doesn’t carry the risk of pregnancy that it used to. Sexual disease is significantly less common and much more preventable and treatable. I honestly wonder if, had condoms and penicillin been discovered before the printing press, whether the teachings of Jesus wouldn’t have broadly laxed the sex laws.