I confess, I don’t know what to call this post, how to define NY Gov. Kathy Hochul at this point, or how to explain American citizens who would put up with her.
She’s had quite an exciting December. On the same day and just two hours after a psychopathic illegal immigrant set a sleeping woman on fire in a New York City subway train, Hochel sent out this…
Ugh.
Elon, Elon, Elon….
Elon Musk apparently became annoyed at some Republican critics for criticizing him over his endorsement of H-1B visas, a work program that allows U.S companies to hire highly skilled non-Americans. So he stripped them of their “blue check” verification on their Twitter/”X” profiles
Laura Loomer, New York Young Republican Club president Gavin Wax, InfoWars host Owen Shroyer, and other far-right figures found that their verification badges had vanished on December 27 after they knocked Musk (and his DOGE co-captain Vivek Ramaswamy) for supporting the hiring of foreign-born engineers over their U.S. counterparts.
Former GOP Congressman and NeverTrumper Adam Kinzinger wrote in part, “So @elonmusk stripped the blue check because someone hurt his feelings?…If you love him great, but don’t pretend he’s for free speech.”
There are still a lot of Harris-Walz lawn signs up in my neighborhood. I find the one above, the “obviously” sign, especially obnoxious, and I know the nice people who have been displaying that thing now for almost four months. I am trying mightily not to think, “What jerks these people are,” even though they brought me some leftover taco fixings right after my wife died.
I remember a lot of bitter-enders keeping their Gore-Lieberman lawn signs and bumper stickers displayed in 2000 after the Great Hanging Chad Recount and Gore’s appropriate (if short-lived) concession. That was also obnoxious, though at least somewhat understandable given the false narrative being hammered at by the biased left wing news media that Gore had really won the popular vote in Florida and that a partisan Supreme Court had unethically handed the Republicans the Presidency. But today’s out-of-date signs, apparently aiming at virtue-signaling to like-minded deluded progressives, have no plausible justification whatsoever. And what virtues do they think a sign like that signals?
When I saw the one above this morning walking Spuds around my mostly “blue” Alexandria, Virginia neighborhood, my mind immediately flashed to an entry yesterday on The New Neo’s blog, “What was Kamala thinking?” The post began by quoting this story:
Teamsters President Sean O’Brien….discussed his union’s historic decision not to endorse a presidential candidate for the first time in nearly 30 years. O’Brien said Harris finally agreed to sit with the Teasmsters for a roundtable after President Biden dropped out of the race, just to only answer a quarter of their 16 questions. Other candidates, including Trump, answered them all. “On the fourth question, one of her operatives or one of her staff slips a note in front of me — ‘This will be the last question.’ And it was 20 minutes earlier than the time it was going to end,” O’Brien told [Tucker] Carlson. “And her declaration on the way out was, ‘I’m going to win with you or without you,’’ he recalled.”
This is my last chance to air Arthur Fielder’s terrific Christmas medley, culminating in a counterpoint arrangement of my choice for the greatest of al the Christmas Carols with the most ubiquitous secular seasonal song of them all. Grace and I would put this on and blast it on Christmas morning.
There’s a lot in the ethics world to discuss that I have failed to get to. It’s up to you to remedy my inadequacies.
Adam Grant, an organizational psychologist who teaches at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, has authored a guest column for the New York Times that opens up, for the umpteenth time, an ethics topic that makes me uncomfortable. His subject is the cultural delusion shared by many in American society that rewarding effort is just as important as rewarding success, and perhaps moreso. He writes in part:
“….we’ve taken the practice of celebrating industriousness too far. We’ve gone from commending effort to treating it as an end in itself. We’ve taught a generation of kids that their worth is defined primarily by their work ethic. We’ve failed to remind them that working hard doesn’t guarantee doing a good job (let alone being a good person)…..[W]hat worries me most about valuing perseverance above all else: It can motivate people to stick with bad strategies instead of developing better ones…What counts is not sheer effort but the progress and performance that result. Motivation is only one of multiple variables in the achievement equation. Ability, opportunity and luck count, too. Yes, you can get better at anything, but you can’t be great at everything.”
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The commentariate on EA always surprises and delights me, and the response I got to an off the wall post inspired by an AP story about “biblically correct” angels was a perfect example. The resulting thread was a veritable primer on anglelology, with Ryan Harkins weighing in with three substantive posts and several others contributing valuable insight as well.
I don’t deserve you.
One more Christmas tradition that I left fallow this year—like almost all of them—in the absence of my wife was our Christmas Eve reading aloud of the children’s book “The Littlest Angel,” by Charles Tazwell. Grace loved the story so. She would always cry at the place where the Littlest Angel gives his most cherished possession, a simple wooden box where he kept his earthly treasures when he was a child on Earth, as his gift to the soon-to-be-born son of God:
“The Littlest Angel trembled as the box was opened, and there, before the Eyes of God and all His Heavenly Host, was what he offered to the Christ Child. And what was his gift to the Blessed Infant?
“Well, there was a butterfly with golden wings, captured one bright summer day on the high hills above Jerusalem, and a sky blue egg from a bird’s nest in the olive tree that stood to shade his mother’s kitchen door. Yes, and two white stones, found on a muddy river bank, where he and his friends had played like small brown beavers. And, at the bottom of the box, a limp, tooth-marked leather strap, once worn as a collar by his mongrel dog, who had died as he had lived, in absolute love and infinite devotion.”
Somehow, it doesn’t work quite as well if one is thinking of the Cherubim as having eyeballs all over his wings or three heads. But that’s just me…
Here are two of the many remarkable comments first from Ryan Harkins, and then from Sara B. on the post, “Wait…So Everyone’s Been Lying To Me All These Years About What Angels Look Like?” :
***
(First, Ryan…)
That’s nice.
After taking to Truth Social on Christmas Day to be sarcastic about China and Panama ( “Merry Christmas to all, including to the wonderful soldiers of China, who are lovingly, but illegally, operating the Panama Canal (where we lost 38,000 people in its building 110 years ago), always making certain that the United States puts in Billions of Dollars in ‘repair’ money, but will have absolutely nothing to say about ‘anything,'”), troll Canada (“…Also, to Governor Justin Trudeau of Canada, whose Citizens’ Taxes are far too high, but if Canada was to become our 51st State, their Taxes would be cut by more than 60%, their businesses would immediately double in size, and they would be militarily protected like no other Country anywhere in the World. Likewise, to the people of Greenland, which is needed by the United States for National Security purposes and, who want the U.S. to be there, and we will!”), the President-Elect concluded with this:
That’s nice too.
Naturally, the Axis media contrasted Trump’s bluster with the official Christmas message from, supposedly, Joe and Jill. President Biden narrated a video tour of the White House that was posted on YouTube late on Christmas Eve. He urged Americans to set aside “all the noise and everything that divides us.” “We’re here on this Earth to care for one another, to love one another,” Biden says in a voiceover while the camera pans past the White House. Christmas decorations. “Too often we see each other as enemies, not as neighbors, not as fellow Americans,” he said. He urged Americans to find a moment of “quiet reflection” to remind themselves to treat each other with dignity and respect, to “live in the light” and remember there was more to unite than divide Americans. “We’re truly blessed to live in this nation,” he said.
Observations:
1. President Biden has some gall spouting a hypocritical message like that after calling Trump supporters “garbage” and heading the most intentionally divisive Presidential term in history culminating in the darkest Presidential campaign in history, in which one party called the other’s candidate the equivalent of Hitler and warned that he would end democracy. Too often “we” see each other as enemies? Wait, who was this guy?
Biden’s message is standard, insincere politician BS, and stinks of it. A chatbot could have written that stuff. Maybe a chatbot did. No one could hear such cliched pablum and think anything but “Yada yada, ramalama-ding-dong.”
2. It is Presidential, however. Dishonest, insulting, fatuous, infuriating, but still Presidential.
3. Trump’s message is not Presidential. It is gratuitously nasty, self-indulgent and inappropriate for a national leader’s message at Christmas. Does it have to be said that “Go to Hell” does not belong in a Christmas message not authored by the Babylon Bee or Ebenezer Scrooge?
4. Both messages are unethical. Trump’s message is inexcusable.
5. This does not bode well.
From the Daily Beast : “President Joe Biden signed 50 new bills into law in a Christmas Eve signing spree as he wraps his last month in office. Among the new laws includes legislation to fight child abuse at residential treatment facilities, fight hazing on college campuses, and a measure that finally designates the bald eagle as the national bird. Many of the bills signed by the outgoing Democratic president on Tuesday were bipartisan efforts—including the bill finally acknowledging the bald eagle. Although the iconic bird of prey is featured prominently on symbols, including the government’s official seal adopted in 1782, the U.S. did not have an official national bird. The efforts to make the bald eagle official were spearheaded by Preston Cook, the co-chair of the National Eagle Center in Minnesota, who first discovered that the country did not have a national bird, according to a Washington Post profile.”
Gee, thank God for President Biden! This might just be the little extra he needs to avoid being named the Worst President Ever in the upcoming Ethics Alarms resolution of its long inquiry into the question.
“Biden” also engaged in some hyper-partisanship when he vetoed the JUDGES Act, bipartisan legislation to create additional district court judgeships. The Senate passed the bill unanimously in August, and a bipartisan House majority finally did so as well in November. It would have created desperately needed 66 new district court seats over the next decade, based upon the recommendations of the Judicial Conference. The bill was endorsed by the Federal Bar Association and the Federal Judges Association. The White House issued a statement that translated means nothing more rational than “we don’t want new judges appointed by Donald Trump, so there.“
“S. 4199 would create new judgeships in States where Senators have sought to hold open existing judicial vacancies. Those efforts to hold open vacancies suggest that concerns about judicial economy and caseload are not the true motivating force behind passage of this bill now,” the veto message stated in part. So nobody denies that the U.S. needs new judges, but Biden’s dark masters want the new positions to be created for the right motives. This is a slap at the Republican states that tried to slow down Biden’s waves of DEI appointments over the last six months.
But back to the phony national bird issue: if everyone knew the bald eagle was the de facto national bird since it was obviously the national symbol, being on the seal, on money, on flagpoles and ubiquitous for a couple of centuries, why does the species have to be the official national bird via Congress, the President, and brand new law? So many matters of real importance to try to accomplish before the end of the year: one would think that all is well.
Above is pie chart reflecting the Wikipedia Foundation’s own report on how it spent its money over the past year. This arrives while every Wikipedia search is afflicted with drop-down pleas for contributions. In the categories listed above, the only ones that should be active concerns of the online search service are infrastructure and effectiveness. Equity and Inclusion are irrelevant to what people are seeking when they use Wikipedia; I’m not even sure what “safety” refers to. 29% of the budget was devoted to these dubious, discriminatory—but woke!—objectives.
Elon Musk has been issuing critical tweets about these priorities, with good reason. Wikipedia is both essential and inherently flawed and unreliable because of its vulnerability to bias and manipulation. To be a trustworthy source of information for online research, it must be closely monitored to identify agenda-driven entries and misleading statements motivated by partisan and ideological objectives. Quite simply, an organization that devoted to DEI cant cannot be trusted in this regard.
No one interested in improving Wikipedia’s accuracy and competence should give a single dollar in response to its constant pleas for money as long as almost a third of that dollar will be spend on dubious programs that, if anything, are likely to impair the service’s effectiveness rather than enhance it.
Well, several, really, but I feel that I must talk about this one. I was wrestling with whether to post anything but Christmas-related posts today, though I don’t have much else to do than work on Ethics Alarms. This compels me to comment as soon as possible.
During his keynote address at the Turning Point USA gathering three days ago, President-elect Donald Trump said, while assuring his audience that the U.S. was about to enter a new “Golden Age” under his leadership,
“There’s a spirit that we have now that we didn’t have just a short while ago. Sadly, we didn’t have. Who the hell can have spirit watching women get beat up in a boxing ring? I don’t think that’s spirit, right? We’re going to end that one quick! We’re going to end it very quickly. We’re going to end that one very quickly.”
I am resigned to Trump saying ridiculous and irresponsible things like that forever. The outburst is not a good sign. The Christmas miracle I’m hoping for (among others) is that somehow, some way, he will learn that he has to think before he speaks, just a little bit, and that someone will read the Constitution to him, explaining it along the way.
Ethics Alarms 