And Still More Post Debate Ethics: The “It Isn’t What It Is” Orgy

The meme collection inspired by a week of post-Biden meltdown spin and recriminations now available at Power Line is unusually funny: that one above, using a memorable and poignant moment from the early episodes of “The Walking Dead” (Series hero Rick says, “I’m so sorry this happened to you” before shooting the poor re-animated woman in the head), made me laugh out loud.

I suppose I don’t need to state the obvious, but let’s make it official: “The Biden Debate Disaster Ethics Train Wreck” has entered the Ethics Alarms pantheon. It still isn’t funny, as Col. Jessup would say, it’s tragic. Our President of the United States is humiliating himself before the whole world (which he doesn’t run, despite his claim to the contrary last night). We now know for certain that this party that claims to be so concerned about democracy has been engaged in a Sixties Communist-style cover-up, deceiving the public into thinking a figurehead is leading the government while unelected and unknown figures are really calling the shots. We also know that the corrupt news media has either enabled this plot or engaged in contrived ignorance to avoid revealing it. (Check out Christian Toto’s piece about how Hollywood participated in the Biden dementia cover-up.)

In a column titled You Gonna Investigate That? for the National Review, Charles Cooke makes a cogent argument regarding what the news media’s supposed shock and surprise that Biden is sliding into shadow consciousness, as many (like me) have insisted for years, logically means:

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And Now For Something Completely Stupid: In South Carolina, An Epic Life Competence Fail

The headline says it all:

South Carolina Man Killed By Exploding Firework Mounted On His Head

Accounts say he was “showing off” to entertain his neighbors. Yeah, I know my neighbors would get a kick out of seeing me blow up my head.

Allen Ray McGrew, a 41-year-old father, died instantly when the ignited fireworks he placed on top of his Uncle Sam hat during a neighborhood Fourth of July block party went off. “He was holding this firework over his top hat,” the wife said. “I thought he was just showboating before he set it on the ground. I didn’t realize he had already lit it.” Alcohol was reportedly involved and “may have impaired his judgment,” the New York Post sagely hypothesized.

Further observations:

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Observations on the First Biden ABC Interview Clip [Updated and Expanded]

It’s less than three minutes, but it’s plenty.

This has been called a “make or break” moment by some of the dimmer members of the media. It could be break, but there’s no way it could possibly be “make.” As my Trump-Deranged sister said, Biden doing one interview, taped, only a half-hour long, mid-day with a presumably friendly interviewer without crashing proves nothing. She wondered why anyone, including Biden’s campaign, would think it would. All the interview could do, she said, was hurt Biden. But ah, replied her sage older brother: This is for the idiots and the Biden-defending reporters and pundits (but I repeat myself). If the interview goes smoothly, they will hold it up as definitive evidence that Joe is ready to riff on everything from nuclear fission to the politics of Tierra Del Fuego.

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And Yet Even MORE Post Debate Ethics: That Other Shoe Drops, As You Knew It Would…Now What?

The New York Magazine, hardly a bastion of conservative or Republican punditry, has broken Axis ranks with a story headlined “The Conspiracy of Silence to Protect Joe Biden.” Longtime Biden family friends and associates admitted to the magazine that Biden’s deterioration has been known for a very long time, and that “they did not want to blow a whistle. They wished that they could whistle past what they knew and emerge in November victorious and relieved, having helped avoid another four years of Trump.”

“When they discussed what they knew, what they had seen, what they had heard, they literally whispered,” the magazine reports. “They were scared and horrified. But they were also burdened. They needed to talk about it (though not on the record). They needed to know that they were not alone and not crazy. Things were bad, and they knew things were bad, and they knew others must also know things were bad, and yet they would need to pretend, outwardly, that things were fine. The president was fine. The election would be fine. They would be fine. To admit otherwise would mean jeopardizing the future of the country and, well, nobody wanted to be responsible personally or socially for that.”

Unethical, indefensible conspiracies often have well-meaning rationalizations behind them. (The horrible imprisoning of law-abiding Japanese-American citizens during WWII is one example.)This is how the Democratic Party has let itself slip into quasi-totalitarianism. It was inevitable that someone in the captive media would reveal this disgusting cover-up. Now it’s out. The absurd enablers, liars and spinners have no traction now. Every one of them should be—must be— mocked, exposed, and permanently relegated to Distrust Purgatory—including the President himself.

“He needs to get more sleep.” Really? That’s the best he can do?

For the record, I wrote and said that Biden was slipping into senility before he was nominated in 2020. It didn’t take any special perception on my part, just eyes and ears, and a belief that the public in a democracy should know who and what they are voting for. The Democrats owe the public a massive, groveling, unequivocal apology. Of course, they won’t give one, because the whole party has allowed itself to rot to its core. maybe beyond repair.

There have to be consequences for such an unprecedented betrayal of trust.

Why Yes, I’d Say Marking “The Meeting House” As An Unethical, Untrustworthy Church That Deserves To Be Shuttered If Not Sent Straight To Hell Is A Fair Conclusion…

This story would be funny if it wasn’t so damning of organized religion generally.

The Meeting House is a Canadian megachurch, of the largest and most influential churches in Ontario. It promoted itself as “a church for people who aren’t into church” (Good motto! Like “Winston tastes good like a cigarette should!”), and the campaign worked. The church grew, as they used to say, “like Topsy.” Pastor Bruxy Cavey, who took over the leadership of The Meeting House in 1997, became Ontario’s “most influential pastor.” But in 2021, as described in detail here, Cavey resigned after being accused of sexual assault in his holy activities. He was then charged, with law enforcement adding that there were probably more than one victim.

The church announced in 2022 that “two more claims of sexual abuse and another case of sexual misconduct” against Cavey at been substantiated, with one of the alleged victims being a juvenile.

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Seeing Someone You Respect Descend Into a Mindless Defense of Joe Biden Is Like Seeing Someone You Care About Exhibiting Signs of Dementia…

A brilliant friend from college just posted on Facebook, “Mitch McConnell froze twice and nobody suggested that he should step down.” And got dozens of “likes” and “loves.” It’s a moronic, silly argument. He’s far too smart to think it’s valid, unless bias has literally made him stupid. Or he’s deliberately trying yo confuse people dumber than he is, which is despicable. I just commented, “(Come on.)”

To state the obvious:

  • Many did suggest that McConnell step down.
  • Mitch is too old too, and should have retired years ago. The fact that Mitch, a jerk, has hung around way past his pull date is not an argument for why other elected officials should do the same.
  • Being a Senator, however, isn’t like being President. At all.
  • How does the Senate leader displaying an alarming cognitive episode have anything to do with the copious evidence of Biden’s progressive dementia? The McConnell episode doesn’t make Biden’s performance less serious, and the response to it, adequate or not, doesn’t  justify pretending Joe’s meltdown was just a “bad night.”
  • There is literally no critical thinking path or logical process that makes my friend’s  infantile “whataboutism” response defensible or persuasive, except to fools clutching at straws.

It’s very depressing.

And Yet Even More Post Debate Ethics…

I hate it when I have to post repeatedly on a single ethics issue. Yesterday I heard an angry Greg Gutfield proclaim the revelation that the Axis has been actively deceiving the public about Biden’s true condition a bigger scandal than Watergate. It might be. On that basis, the extra posts are justified.

1. I heard the pathetically incompetent Karine Jean-Pierre at the White House Press briefing repeatedly explain Biden’s cognitive crash as a “bad night.” Yeah, Abe Lincoln had a bad night on April 14, 1865. She used all the other agreed-upon talking points too: it was late, he had a cold, and the President knows he isn’t as young as he used to be and isn’t as “smooth a talker” as he once was. This is simultaneously a “Just how stupid do the Democrats think the public is?” test and a “Just how stupid IS the public?” test.

2. Part of Joe’s “I am not a vegetable” tour is apparently going to include a press conference and an interview with George Stephanopoulos. Would it be too much to ask for the interviewer not to be a former Democratic Party operative? I guess so…

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Attack of the Zombie Morons!

Again, not unexpected, just wildly depressing.

I really don’t have time this morning to do the analysis of yesterday’s latest SCOTUS decision that it deserves, or even to complete the deserved excoriation of the liars, hysterics and morons have made utter asses of themselves while making ignorant and gullible members of the public more ignorant still. I was grateful to see Prof. Turley’s essay this morning, which is exactly what I expected it to be.

But all anyone had to do was to read the damn opinion, which you can and should do here. It is a moderate opinion. It is a careful opinion, and it was an unavoidable one. It is also an opinion that would never have been necessary if the totalitarian Democrats hadn’t decided to weaponize the criminal justice system in a last ditch effort to stop Donald Trump from defeating their demented, puppet President.

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Rueful Ethics Observations On This Biden Campaign Email…

Per conservative blogger Jim Treacher, the Biden Campaign sent this out to supporters today…

Wow.

Observations:

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Answering Prof. Volokh’s Questions…

On his blog, The Volokh Conspiracy (which I have loyally followed from its independent days, to the Washington Post, and now at Reason), Prof. Eugene Volokh offers a series of rhetorical questions in his post, “Sad Thoughts About American Politics.” Volokh, whom I have corresponded with occasionally over the years, is the Thomas M. Siebel Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford, and the Gary T. Schwartz Distinguished Professor of Law at UCLA School of Law. More importantly, he’s a rational, fair analyst with keen ethics alarms. The point of rhetorical questions is to elicit a response inherent in the question’s phrasing and context. Nonetheless, I thought I’d warm up my faculties first thing this morning by answering the questioned he poses. These are just the question, now. In the post, he had considerable context and commentary. But I assume you know the context, and you can read the commentary at the link. Here are the questions…

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