Note the 3.6 thousand “likes.’
From the Res Ipsa Loquitur Files:
Note the 3.6 thousand “likes.’
Flashback: “Ethics Reflections On The Trump Assassination Attempt Prelude and Aftermath” and Observations on the Latest Attempt
Fact: The Axis of Unethical Conduct is 100% responsible for the third serious attempt on President Trump’s life in less than two years. 100%. Denying this is spin.
I’m not tolerating it or allowing the Mad Left to duck responsibility. It has been pushing hate for years, mostly focusing on Trump but also on Republicans, conservatives, the United States of America, capitalism and our founding values. Many on the Left (including Senator Elizabeth Warren) cheered on or rationalized the murderous act of the man who murdered a health care insurance executive by shooting him in the back—you know, evil corporations, evil capitalism. Many on the Left cheered the assassination of Charlie Kirk. The “resistance,” Democrats and their propaganda engines, aka. “the news media,” have been calling Trump a dictator, a fascist, Hitler, a sexual predator, a convicted felon, a racist, a monster, an existential threat to democracy, a practitioner of genocide, constantly and repeatedly. A lot of people really believe these labels are justified; a lot more people are cynically and irresponsibly spreading those accusation because they will help the Democrats achieve their ultimate goal of single party rule.
I believe that a very large percentage of American progressives want Trump dead, one way or another. A Rutgers study, you may recall, found more than half of the progressive respondents to a survey said it would be at least somewhat justified to murder Donald Trump. I believe that this conclusion is inescapable.
It’s too bad for these corrupt and despicable Americans that Trump is really good at reacting to assassination attempt. Then again, he’s had more practice than anybody in U.S. history. In his comments to the media last night, the President said in part,
“This was an event dedicated to freedom of speech that was supposed to bring together members of both parties with members of the press. And in a certain way it did…I saw a room that was totally unified. It was in one way very beautiful — a very beautiful thing to see…In light of this evening’s events, I ask that all Americans recommit with their hearts to resolving our differences peacefully. We have to resolve our differences. You had Republicans, Democrats, independents, conservatives, liberals, and progressives in that room — a big crowd, record-setting crowd. There was a tremendous amount of love and coming together.
“We looked at all of the conditions that took place tonight. It’s not a particularly secure building. I didn’t want to say this, but this is why we have to have all of the attributes of what we’re planning at the White House. It’s actually a larger room and it’s much more secure. It’s got drone-proof and bulletproof glass. We need the ballroom.
“This is not the first time in the past couple of years that our republic has been attacked by a would-be assassin. In Butler, Pennsylvania, less than two years ago — you all know that story. And in Palm Beach, Florida, a few months after that, we came close again. We had some great work done by law enforcement.
…I’ve studied assassinations. The most impactful people, the people that do the most, are the ones they go after. Abraham Lincoln, the big names. I hate to say I’m honored by that, but we’ve done a lot. We’ve changed this country. There are a lot of people that are not happy about that.”
Trump’s assassination history is flawed, but in his case, it has some legitimacy. Abe Lincoln, of course, fits his narrative, but the other assassinated Presidents do not: McKinley, Garfield, and Kennedy. The President Trump just surpassed to become the failed assassination record-holder with three is Gerald Ford, not exactly one of the “big names.” Nevertheless, the resistance, Democrats and the Axis media have been vilifying this President because he has “done a lot.” and has foiled them again and again. Yes, Trump’s trolling, gloating, deliberately inflammatory rhetoric and defiant style make the target they have placed on his back a bit more vivid, but make no mistake: the Trump Deranged and the totalitarian-tilting Left put it there.
Before I get to the EA post I authored right after the 2024 assassination attempt, I want to quote from the later post on the same topic:
Unethical People Making Unethical Arguments Being Treated By An Incompetent Journalist As If They Could Possibly Be Something Other Than Unethical
Wow. Great job, New York Times!
That’s a gift link to this head-exploding piece: “‘The Rich Don’t Play by the Rules. So Why Should I?’ ” That states pretty clearly an example of Rationalizations #1, #2, and #2a on the Ethics Alarms Rationalizations List: 1. The Golden Rationalization, or “Everybody does it,” 2Whataboutism, or “They’re Just as Bad“and 2 A. Sicilian Ethics, or “They had it coming.” These rationalizations aren’t so high on the list by random chance. They are near the top because they are ancient, popular, invalid and obvious rationalizations that have been rotting society for thousands of years. Yet the New York Times thinks its worth pondering whether such anti-ethical reasoning is justified.
I hate to repeat myself, but this exemplifies how today’s Left thinks.
Left-wing “influencer” Hasan Piker and New Yorker writer Jia Tolentino did a video interview with culture editor Nadja Spiegelman on “the ethics of theft.”
[Pssst! There is no “ethics of theft.” Theft is both unethical and immoral, as well as illegal (you know, that Ten Commandments thingy).] This is a podcast that should have lasted,oh, ten seconds or less. Nadja begins with this fatuous intro: “I’m proposing a new term: Microlooting. People are taking small things from big corporations and they’re feeling justified. But is it a slippery slope? What’s going on with our moral code?”
Of course it’s a slippery slope, and if you even have to ask that question, you’re too clueless to moderate the topic!
Then we get quotes like these:
“Insider Prediction Market Betting”
Ah, new and different ways to cheat! Is this a great country, or what?
Kalshi is an online prediction gambling operation where users can bet on everything from how long the government shutdown will last to Oscar winners to what show will top Netflix’s streaming numbers in a given week. Naturally political bets are particularly popular.
And, also naturally, some users will try to cheat by betting on matters they have some control over or insider information about. Last week Kalshi slapped down and fined three political candidates who tried to bet on their own races: Mark Moran, an independent running for U.S. Senate in Virginia, Ezekiel Enriquez, a former Republican congressional candidate in Texas, and Matt Klein, a Democratic Minnesota state senator who is running for Congress.
Kalshi’s head of enforcement and legal counsel said that the sanctions are part of Kalshi’s “proactive engineering solutions” to “identify illicit trading activity.” Kalshi’s rules were recently updated to ban politicians from betting on their own candidacies. I see no difference between a candidate doing this and a baseball player (like the late Pete Rose) betting for or against his own teams. The New York Times fatuously writes, “It’s unclear if they were trading in a manner that was relying on inside information.” What? By definition the bets were based on inside information: every candidate is an insider regarding his or her own race! What if the candidate knows a personal scandal is ready to break? What if he or she knows money is running out, or the campaign’s polls look dire?
And Another Metaphorical Canary Dies In The Mine Of Democracy…
This can’t happen in a healthy democracy, or a healthy culture for that matter.
Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick is so clearly corrupt and a crook that even her corrupt party wouldn’t defend her. That’s quite an achievement. Democrats wouldn’t even go through their usual spin and denial routine, like the Axis did to pretend Joe Biden, the brain-damaged President Democrats inflicted on the nation, wasn’t an empty shell unfit to be in the White House. This is the party that insists to this day (at least publicly) that Kamala Harris ran a flawless campaign and was only defeated because too many Americans won’t vote for a sort-of black woman to be President. Cherfilus-McCormick resigned from Congress because she knew that the House ethics investigation was about to expose her and that she faced a bi-partisan expulsion.
The panel had previously found her guilty of 25 ethics violations, among them stealing $5 million dollars in federal disaster-aid funds to support her 2021 campaign. The two-year investigation included interviews of 28 witnesses and examination of more than 33,000 documents. Never mind, though: Cherfilus-McCormick filed on April 17 to run again for her seat in South Florida, where apparently dupes, fools and ignoramuses run like salmon at mating time. A political operative told reporters, “While we would have to check with the lawyers to see if Cherfilus-McCormick can run using Cell Block C as her residence, it isn’t clear that there is anyone in that district who can beat her if she runs again.” The district, he explained, is “heavily reliant on name recognition,” and the expensive media markets from West Palm Beach to Fort Lauderdale will make it difficult for another Democrat to attract enough support to win.
Oh, that’s wonderful, isn’t it? In other words, enough voters in her district either won’t pay enough attention to realize their Congresswoman is a thief, or they don’t care that the woman is devoid of most ethical instincts necessary to justify the public’s trust.
Ethics Quote of the Week: “Spicy Bits” on “X”
“The SPLC orchestrating the Charlottesville event and then pivoting to “endorse” the narrative that Trump coddles white supremacists is the definition of a classic Democrat false-flag operation. They manufacture the crisis, weaponize the media to lie about the “fine people” quote, and use it as a political cudgel to demonize heritage Americans. It’s not just hypocrisy; it’s the standard operating procedure for the Democrat junta regime that relies on fabricated morality and lies to maintain power.“
Honestly, I don’t see how any fair, honest, informed American can disagree with that statement. I’ll even employ the “No True Scotsman” approach: any American who does disagree with that statement is, by definition, not fair, honest, or informed, and perhaps all three.
The Southern Poverty Law Center, which we now know helped plan, organize, and pay for the Charlottesville demonstration, endorsed Kamala Harris, who a month later accused Donald Trump of enabling white supremacists during their debate.
The public now has sufficient information, even with the desperate attempts by the news media to submerge it all, to understand what a dangerous, Machiavellian, deliberately divisive and unscrupulous party the Democrats have allowed their organization to become. Regardless of one’s ideological preferences, it is unethical not to emphatically reject them.
Incompetent Elected Official of the Month and Stupidest Quote of the Year (So Far): Virginia State Senator Lamont Bagby (D)
Wow. What an idiot.
Democratic Virginia state Sen. Lamont Bagby, during a floor debate on the Democratic Party’s dishonest gerrymandering scheme, was trying to refute Republicans who argued that Democrats don’t understand the needs of that rural Virginians they are trying to disenfranchise.
So he said this. He really did. No, I wouldn’t make this up, I’m an ethicist!
“I grew up watching ‘The Waltons.’ I grew up with Opie. I even watched ‘The Dukes of Hazzard.’ I think I know a little bit about rural America “I’m not just here for Theo. I’m not just here for Arnold or Willis. I’m here for Opie, John Boy. Blossom, Topanga.”
Bagby was saying that he understands 21st Century rural communities in Virginia because he watched a TV show about a Virginia mountain family during the Depression, an idealized Sixties sitcom about a small town sheriff in North Carolina, and a notorious good ol’ boy TV farce about bootleggers in Georgia that lowered one’s IQ by several points every time one watched it. This is on the same plane as arguing that you are qualified to work for NASA because you were a fan of William Shatner’s “Star Trek.”
As for his other TV references, they make even less sense. “Blossom” lived in Los Angeles. “Boy Meets World,” which is his “Topanga” reference, was set in the Philadelphia suburbs. “Different Strokes” (Arnold and Willis) was set in penthouse at 900 Park Avenue on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, New York City.
This moron couldn’t even get his own ridiculous argument straight. I’ll tolerate political cretinism, but when these fools start misrepresenting old TV show, I really get angry.
Be proud, Virginia Democrats. This is the quality of the people you chose to govern your state.
Today’s “Nah, There’s No Mainstream Media Bias!” Note of the Day, Starring, Naturally, The New York Times…
“How the Southern Poverty Law Center Drew the Ire of Conservatives”
That was the Gray Lady’s headline yesterday regarding the Southern Poverty Law Center’s scheme that had it supporting violent hate groups “under the table” so the SPLC could raise money from dupes and saps to defeat them.
What do you think, the most flagrant “Republicans pounce!” example ever?
I am moving ever closer to a policy that will require a ban from the EA comment section for anyone who dares to insist that the mainstream news media isn’t consistently and despicably biased in its reporting. That position has shifted from the realm of spin, stupidity and partisan gaslighting into straight-up lying and signature significance.
Friday Open Forum!
Condign justice!
But I digress. Please enter your most trenchant thoughts on the state of ethics below. As usual, there is a lot going on…
Judy Holliday, “Bells Are Ringing,” and The Duty To Remember
In “That’s Entertainment,” the MGM movie musicals retrospective, Liza Minnelli, one of the all-star narration team, says following the film’s homage to her mother Judy Garland, “Thank God for film! It can capture a performance and hold it right there forever. And if anyone says to you, ‘Who was he?’ or, ‘Who was she?’ or, ‘What made them so good?’ I think a piece of film answers that question better than any words I know of.”
I thought about that quote of Liza’s as I re-watched “Bells Are Ringing,” the 1960 movie musical adapted from the hit Broadway show. I had seen it twice before, once when I was a child (and I loved it then without knowing why), again about 20 years ago, and then last night. It made me cry. Not because it’s a sad movie; indeed, like all the old-fashioned movie musicals before Sondheim turned the genre dark, it is a romantic comedy with a happy ending. It made me cry because I fully realized upon this viewing what a luminous, brilliant, unique performer Judy Holliday was. “Bells Are Ringing” was her final screen performance: less than five years later she was dead of breast cancer at 43. Most people don’t know her name or what she looked like. Yet there have been few female performers who were her equal. Today nobody comes close.
Ethics Alarms 