Because, as EA keeps explaining, Democrats cheat.

The Democratic Party of Wisconsin this week sent a letter to state elections commissioners begging them to immediately rescind the rule that bars absentee voters from requesting a new ballot if their preferred candidate drops out. Awww. Did Democrats get hoisted by their own petard again? Wonderful! I love it.

Three weeks ago, Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley dropped out of the Democratic primary for Wisconsin Governor and endorsed Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez. She dropped out last week after her campaign imploded. So Wisconsin Democrats begged Crowley to get back into the race because he may be their only hope to derail Democratic Socialist Francesca Hong, who is leading in the polls because there are a lot of dumb people in Wisconsin. Not enough, however, for Hong to win in the general election.

But there is a problem, you see. By law, early voting in Wisconsin cannot begin more than 14 days prior to the election, which means early voting begins on Tuesday, July 28, for the August 11 primary. But thousands of voters have already requested and returned absentee ballots, and many presumably included votes for Sara Rodriguez or David Crowley before they dropped out of the race. Once again, as they did with Graham Platner and before that with Joe Biden, Democrats are engaged in an effort to replace a candidate their voters had supported in the usual nominating process when the party becomes convinced that candidate will lose.

Democrats and progressive love early voting. More mail-in ballots, more chain of custody problems, more opportunities to harvest votes and engage in untraceable voter fraud. They also prefer early voting because it favors knee-jerk, low-information voters who vote along party lines down the ballot without knowing anything else about who they are voting for.If late developing news, debate disasters and scandals engulf Democratic candidates, the votes are already in. Universal early voting is bad for democracy, civic responsibility and election integrity, which is why the practice should only be permitted under special circumstances, but never mind: the Left argues that it increases voter access when it really increases opportunities to cheat.

Hong, in 2020, said she supported “defunding the police as a first step towards abolishing the police.” After a police-involved shooting this week when a perp with a knife resisted arrest and was shot (black perp, naturally, because there are protests), Hong reiterated that bonkers position.

Palm Beach has re-named its airport the President Donald J. Trump International Airport. I don’t know why this was felt to be necessary or desirable, but I don’t care what airports are named, and those who do, I believe, have deep emotional problems as well as strange priorities.

But in a gobsmacking bit of virtue-signaling to the Trump Deranged, United Airlines has announced a new policy offering passengers free flight changes if landing at an airport named for the current President of the United States is too traumatic. Anti-Trump wackos can now reroute to Fort Lauderdale or Miami at no extra charge so the Palm Beach airport’s name won’t cause such fliers permanent psychic damage.

A United memo to reservation agents reads,

“If a customer does not want to fly to the airport, use your empowerment to offer acceptable alternatives such as Fort Lauderdale Airport (FLL) or Miami International Airport (MIA), [telling the customer] ‘I understand that you’d rather not fly to this airport anymore. We can look at nearby airports like Fort Lauderdale or Miami instead. Is that an acceptable alternative?'”

To be fair to United, which is hard for me because I detest that airline, there were a ridiculous number of crazed reactions made the airport’s online contact form after the airport was renamed last week. Such as,

• “How do we continue to get on our knees for such a narcissistic criminal so-called president?”
• “I am writing to assure you that as long as you are calling this airport anything closely related to ‘TRUMP’ I will NEVER FLY INTO THERE. NEVER! You have 100% lost all my family’s business. Despicable move!”
• “Hopefully you’ll have plenty of airbags to catch the barfs from people as they drive up.”

Yes, this is clinical. Maybe United is basing its pandering on the American with Disabilities Act.

Now it’s your turn…you pick the ethics topic, I sit back and enjoy.

Ken White, once a brilliant, analytical libertarian blogger and an Ethics Alarms Blogger of the Year, has been so corroded by Trump Derangement that he managed to get himself banned from Bluesky for the unhinged post above.

The fact that Ken would stoop to being on Bluesky at all, since it is the most censorious of social media platforms, was already shocking, but that junk above is worthy of people like Bette Midler and Sunny Hostin, whose combined IQs wouldn’t equal what Ken White’s used to be.

How could this happen? I am put in mind of the Eugene Ionesco play “Rhinoceros,” in which people in a small French town start inexplicably turning into the dumb, snorting, horned beasts. It happened to Ken and Curmie…who’s next?

Taylor Swift’s extravagant-to-the-point-of madness wedding to Travis Kelce on July 3 was estimated to cost somewhere between $30 and $40 million dollars. The grotesque orgy of self-promotion and conspicuous consumption was a days-long celebration at Madison Square Garden with over 1,000 guests (the couple’s closest friends, of course), most of them also millionaires, and featured performances by the kinds of top musicians who refused to celebrate our 250th Anniversary because Trump Bad. The thing required $160,000 just for New York City street closures, permits and police.

Renting Madison Square Garden and transforming the arena for the ceremony and reception cost an estimated $5 million to $10 million. Another $5 million went to flowers and decorations. Catering was about $3 million.

Oh, and we must not forget about the lottery! The wedding featured an hour-long luxury raffle with prizes including Chanel handbags, Cartier watches and a vintage 1970 Chevrolet Chevelle. The mostly celebrity guests earned raffle tickets by playing skee-ball, mini golf, and football-themed carnival games.

I’m not making this up. I wish I were.

Now, me, I couldn’t care less how rich people choose to throw away their money. An exercise in “See, everybody, we’re RICH! RICH I SAY!“

AHAHAHAHAHAHA!

…is repulsive and doesn’t reflect well on the perps, but as an exercise in egotism, narcissism and waste, it’s relatively harmless.

What does bother me is that the same people who will crowd into Taylor Swift concerts and buy her records will then frequent No Kings rallies when no one has emulated the excesses of 18th Century royalty like Swift and her NFL star hubby, then cheer on Bernie and his fellow travelers as they attack Elon Musk, who never in his life as a billionaire or trillionaire or whatever he is has ever spent his money as stupidly and selfishly as the Swifts. Musk actually builds, invests, and creates jobs with his money.

Hypocrisy doesn’t begin to describe how perverse this double standard is.

Several friends accuse me of going down rabbit holes too often, hence my scattered, random, unfocused life.

One of the films I was considering for the post “Twenty-Five Indispensable Movies For Understanding American Culture” is “Bad Day at Black Rock,” a strange, almost surreal 1955 drama directed by John Sturgis, who loved ensemble casts (“The Magnificent Seven” and “The Great Escape” were two of his best.) I had watched the film a few times, first as a teenager, and found it vaguely disturbing each time. When the movie didn’t make the cut, I decided to watch it again. It still is disturbing.

The movie is often called a “neo-Western.” I never thought of it as a Western (and you know me and Westerns) but finally I see the point. It takes place in the West, the town looks like one of the ramshackle collections of run-down buildings I associate with Sergio Leone spaghetti westerns, and the plot could have easily been transferred to the 1880s with Randolph Scott as the protagonist. A stranger comes to a California desert town on a train that almost never stops there, and everyone starts acting paranoid. Obviously the residents have a dark secret. What is it?

Instead of Randolph Scott we have Spencer Tracy playing the stranger, a World War II veteran with a disabled arm. It’s late 1945, and he has come on a mission of kindness and respect: the father of a young soldier who saved his life and died in the process lives nearby (or at least that’s what he thought) and the stranger, named John Macreedy, wants to give the father the soldier’s medal of valor in person. Tracy never was in a Western, but he was used to playing idealists with a mission of principle. “Bad Day at Black Rock” pits him against an all-star team of sinister villains (Lee Marvin, Robert Ryan, Ernest Borgnine) and conflicted “I don’t want to get involved” weenies with guilty consciences (Walter Brennan, the town doctor, and Dean Jagger, the weak and alcoholic sheriff). The movie gives off a weird, unrealistic vibe similar to “High Noon,” though in this movie the good guy comes to town on the train, he is outnumbered by the villains, and is a bit more successful, in the end, in convincing some residents with consciences to help him.

I don’t want to give you more plot details; one of the reasons the film works is that the audience is so slowly let in on the conspiracy afoot. There are these ethics and cultural lessons on display, however:

1. “Bad Day” was the first film to confront the issue of the American mistreatment of Japanese Americans in response to Pearl Harbor, though it is done in a deliberately indirect way.

2. A harsh lesson of the film is that hate, frustration and patriotism can turn good people into monsters.

3. The ravages of conscience are prominently on display. This is how secrets get exposed and conspiracies fall apart.

4. It’s a lesson taught in so many movies but still an important one: a single bold soul willing to do the right thing at personal risk can change anything, because he or she can stiffen the resolve of the less intrepid who witness the act. Or, in the alternative, the bold one gets crushed.

5. Alcohol has fueled so many tragedies and tales of destruction in America, it is amazing to me that anyone paying attention calls Prohibition anything but a noble effort to fix a problem gone horribly wrong.

6. American anger and resentment against the Japanese after Pearl Harbor, and the excesses it spawned, should be taught in schools, and if that is too much to ask (you know, like teaching students to read), then at least show them “Bad Day at Black Rock.”

“Fuck Ice. Free Palestine. Up the Hearts.”

—-Graham Platner, asshole.

That withdrawal statement is the water mark of a babbling moron. A vote for this guy was a vote for dignity? When has Platner ever demonstrated a shred of dignity, including in this withdrawal letter? He’s also borderline illiterate: “Jobs they can raise families on“? “This broken system to be righted“? “This American experiment to be furthered“? Well, at least we know Platner writes his own stuff.

Also: What “movement“? The “new politics” the Mainers voted for when they voted for Platner is old politics: fantasy wishes promised by demagogues. There is no “Palestine” to free. Europe is learning the hard way what open borders means (which is the civil translation of “Fuck ICE.”)

I am being told that “Up the Heart” is the rallying cry for the Portland Hearts of Pine, Maine’s first professional soccer club. Oh. That sure makes a lot of sense…it’s as if LBJ’s announcement that he would not run for re-election in 1968 ended,

“With America’s sons in the fields far away, with America’s future under challenge right here at home, with our hopes and the world’s hopes for peace in the balance every day, I do not believe that I should devote an hour or a day of my time to any personal partisan causes or to any duties other than the awesome duties of this office–the Presidency of your country. Accordingly, I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your President. Tippecanoe and Tyler too!“