Ethics at Half-Mast

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Former President Jimmy Carter died on December 29, so according to traditional protocol, U.S. flags are to fly at half-mast until sunset on Tuesday, January 28, 2025, in his honor. This means that the flags will be signifying national sorrow on January 20, when Donald Trump will be sworn in as the 47th President of the United States when the nation, also according to tradition, is supposed to embrace our peaceful transfer of power, our unique system of government, the glorious history of the United States of America, and the hope that should accompany each new Chief Executive into the office where Washington, Lincoln and the rest served our nation.

I’m sure the Axis news media will engage in an orgy of smug satisfaction at the symbolism of the flags signifying mourning upon the return to power of Donald J. Trump. I am similarly certain the the Trump Deranged will similarly puff up their little chests with pride at the condign justice the circumstances have imposed on the MAGA celebrants. Meanwhile, Trump is ticked-off and, being Trump, unable to restrain himself from saying so. On Truth Social, his now superfluous social media platform created when the censors at Twitter silenced his account, the President-Elect whined,

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NewsGuard, WaPo, and the Unethical Mobius Strip

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

The Global Engagement Center, the State Department’s foreign disinformation center and a sinister censorship invention of the Obama Administration, lost its funding after the re-written continuing resolution in Congress to resolve the budget stand-off was approved. The original version, killed in part by the opposition of President-Elect Trump, included funding for the agency of around $61 million, supporting 120 people on staff.

Good riddance. Elon Musk had, correctly, called the GEC the “worst offender in U.S. government censorship & media manipulation.” Along with the Biden Department of Homeland Security, it provided taxpayer funds to NewsGuard, the laughably biased “non-partisan” news disinformation “watchdog” that the Axis media uses to deny that it is what it is. “This company rates news sites’ credibility. The right wants it stopped,” a Washington Post disinformation piece was headlined on Chritsmas Eve. Here is literally the only thing you need to know about both the movitations of the Post and the neutrality and objectivity of NewsGuard. Are you ready?

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Ethics Dunce: ESPN (Disney)

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

The College Football Playoff quarterfinal at the Allstate Sugar Bowl between the University of Georgia Bulldogs and Notre Dame, postponed from New Year’s Day to yesterday afternoon because of the deadly terrorist attack on Bourbon Street began with a solemn rendition of the National Anthem, a moment of silence, and a defiant crowd chant of “USA! None of this was deemed worthy of broadcasting by the main platform for the event on cable, ESPN. After all, they had ads to sell.

ESPN cut to a commercial break as the moment of silence began, and deliberately—don’t buy the narrative that it was inadvertent—chose not to let the national audience see the emotional prelude to the game including the “U.S.A!” eruption from the crowd. Disney and ESPN are so blinded by their institutional wokeness that they couldn’t recognize that the pre-game ceremonies had cultural and societal significance.

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Happy First Open Forum of 2025!

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

Terrorism? A zombie in the White House? More chaos from Republicans in Congress? A Presidential honor for…Liz Cheney? Stupid headlines like “Harris Heads To D.C. To Swear in Senators Who Won’t Evven Say Her Name Right” and “Why Murdering a CEO Won’t Fix Healthcare Costs…“?

And why is someone pissing on 2025 already? There are a lot of events and issues you can debate here so I can write about other things…

Social Media Doesn’t Make College Kids Act Like Morons—Being Morons Make College Kids Act Like Morons

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

(I’m always happy when I can justify posting a Charles Addams cartoon.)

I’m sure this discouraging episode will somehow make it into the dispute over whether TikTok, which apparently gathers data from millions of Americans to put in the clutches of China’s Dark Masters, should be banned or not. The incident isn’t about TikTok, however.

Apparently there is now a viral TikTok-promoted fad in which people lure suspected sexual predators to some location, lie in wait for them, and either call the police or, for even more fun, beat them up. The “game” is modeled after an unethical vigilante TV reality show on ABC that lasted three seasons; I wrote several posts about it on Ethics Alarms’ now unavailable predecessor, The Ethics Scoreboard. Starring “Dateline” reporter Chris Hanson, the show that aired from 2004-2007 would use the internet and phone calls to lure someone seeking underage sexual companionship to a hidden camera ambush. The entertainment came from watching Hanson walk out from behind a bush and make the sick bastard huminahumina his way into coast-to-coast humiliation. The pre-crime predators who were thus “caught” almost never were convicted of anything.

In Worcester, Massachusetts (that’s pronounced “Wuster,” you Bay State ignoramuses!) students at Assumption University came to the wrong assumption that the “To Catch a Predator” game was a good use of their time. Easton Randall, Kevin Carroll, Isabella Trudeau, Kelsy Brainard, and Joaqin Smith, all 18, decided that a “creepy guy” was a sexual predator, so a female student used dating site Tinder to lure him to where he would think was a meeting place for a hook-up with a 17-year old girl. They had enlisted about 30 other students to lie in wait with them, and the mob chased and assaulted him as the stunt was recorded. Oh, the views it would attract! Randall told police that the idea was to emulate “the Chris Hansen videos where you catch a predator and either call police or kick their ass,” but the incident “got out of hand and went bad.”

Ya think?

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Ethics Quiz: Trump-Proofing

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

In the last couple of weeks there have been multiple news reports regarding President Biden “Trump-proofing” the government in advance of the newly elected President taking over as the voters have willed. The decision to veto the bi-partisan act that would create more federal judgeships was such a measure: though the new judges are desperately needed to address the backlog in the courts, apparently whoever is pulling Biden’s strings has decided that no new judges at all are better than Trump appointed judges.

Today there was another example. Bloomberg reported that President Biden is will issue an unusually resilient executive order permanently banning new offshore oil and gas development in some US coastal waters.The executive order will bar the sale of new drilling rights in portions of the country’s outer continental shelf, potentially foiling Trump’s promise to ramp up domestic energy production. The plan will exploit a 72-year-old law that gives the White House wide discretion to permanently protect US waters from oil and gas leasing. The same law does not without explicitly empower Presidents to revoke the designation. (It sounds legally dubious to me, but I haven’t read the law.)

Trump is expected to order a reversal of these attempted permanent protections, but whether he will be able to do so is unknown.

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is this…

Do you think it is ethical for an outgoing President to take measures to impede the agenda of the incoming President?

I’m Shocked! There Were More Campus Speakers Censored In 2024 Than In Any Previous Year on Record

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Now guess what kind of speakers were the ones primarily shut down. Hey, take a shot: you’ve got at least a 50-50 chance of being right! \Wow! You guessed it! In fact, the variety of censored speakers and their censors were more ideologically diverse than I expected.

FIRE maintains a “campus de-platforming database.” The free speech advocacy group explains,

“A deplatforming attempt is a form of intolerance motivated by more than just mere disagreement with, or even protest of, some form of expression. It is an attempt to prevent some form of expression from occurring. Deplatforming attempts include efforts to disinvite speakers from campus speeches or commencement ceremonies, to cancel performances of concerts, plays, or the screenings of movies, or to have controversial artwork removed from public display. An attempt to disrupt a speech or performance that is in progress is also considered a deplatforming attempt, whether it succeeds or fails.”

In 2024, its records indicate, there were 164 attempts at this kind of censorship on American campuses; FIRE has the receipts here. It was a record.

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Ethics Dunce and Human Smoking Gun: The Ridiculous Stacey Abrams

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

Oh, just shut up, Stacey.

Is she still around? I would have thought that Abrams had so beclowned herself that even MSNBC wouldn’t…no, never mind, that’s impossible. I was about to write that even MSNBC wouldn’t be so silly as to give her a forum, but at this point MSNBC is so desperate to keep woke (and Trump Derangement) alive that it will give any progressive hack air time.

In an interview with Chris Hayes (talk about “Oh shut up!”) the always self-promoting Georgia “voting rights activist” wanted everyone to understand that Donald Trump won the 2024 election “but it wasn’t a landslide. It was an evenly divided nation. He got more people, but this was not the seismic shift where 57, 58 percent of America said no. It was less than 50 percent of the electorate who said this is what we want.”

Abrams is a laughing stock, or if you aren’t laughing at her, then you are part of the American Left’s problem. She managed to run twice for Georgia governor without any serious qualifications, losing both times. While the Axis was condemning Donald Trump for insisting that the 2020 election had been stolen and refusing to concede, Abrams was refusing to concede that her first loss to Republican Brian Kemp for the Georgia statehouse wasn’t legitimate while her party and its press embraced a damning, “Well, in her case, it’s OK!” double standard because she’s black, female, and “gooble gobble one of us!”

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Is This the Silliest Question “The Ethicist” Has Ever Bothered To Answer?

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

Here’s the headline: “My Neighbor Won’t Stop Praying for Me. What Should I Do?”

Not being an idiot, “The Ethicist” answers as any rational person might: “Nothing!” Who cares what anyone else does in their discourse, or not, with a Supreme Being? The complaint makes as much sense as “My neighbor insists on wearing his lucky hat when his favorite team is playing; what should I do?”

Apparently what bugs this ungrateful wretch is that the old lady who lives next door not only prays for her but keeps talking about it. The inquirer says that she has told the old woman that she doesn’t believe in religion. Why would she think that would make neighbor less likely to pray for her? Obviously she needs saving: as a godless heathen, the object of the prayers is putting her immortal soul at risk. I don’t understand why she isn’t grateful; after all, when the stakes are so high, it only makes sense to hedge your bets.

“I’m trying to ignore this but it’s really bothering me that she can’t respect my wishes,” Name Withheld writes. Yet the religious neighbor has no reason to respect someone else’s wishes regarding her own personal conduct. The only legitimate objection I can see to this prayer ritual is that the neighbor being prayed for takes it as an insult. If that’s her beef, then she should say to the old woman, “That’s nice that you care about me, but please, if you insist on praying for me, keep it to yourself.”

That’s what The Ethicist suggests too, but adds, “Still, instead of requiring that your octogenarian neighbor change her ways, I wonder whether you might change yours — and learn to accept this woman for who she is, hearing her prayers as a sincere expression of her loving feelings toward you.”

Or a sincere expression of moral superiority?

Ponder, Now: The Guy Who Issued This Rant Was the Top News Anchor For a Supposedly Legitimate News Organization And Made About 8 Million a Year

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Here was now “independent journalist” Don Lemon last night on Lemon LIVE at 5. …

“Now, let me just say this. I said something in reference to– I was responding to the MAGA folks who were being racist in relation in regards to the gentleman that Donald Trump nominated to be the head of AI. They were on the Internet. Look it up yourself, being very racist and very vitriolic about Donald Trump appointing this person. And Vivek Ramaswamy got involved and then he insulted, according to them, the MAGA people. Okay. So, as always, everybody gets all butthurt! I’m not referring to all Trump supporters. I’m talking to the MAGA-brained people who will say and do anything to make excuses for any behavior that Donald Trump does, any bad behavior that the MAGA movement does. So yes, I stand by my words! And if you don’t like what I said, then too F-ing bad, I don’t care! And let me just let me point the hypocrisy out to you, because you guys always say “We are not electing. We are not voting for what? A pastor in chief. I. Sometimes I have an issue with some of the things that he says. It’s true. I don’t like how he says it, but it’s true.”. So you have to have the same standards for other people that you have for your guy, some of you, the cult leader. You guys have a higher– this is this is how messed up you are. You have a higher expectation of me. An independent journalist, a former cable news host, than you do for the person who sits in the Oval Office. Because he. His mouth is worse than mine. He calls everybody dumb. He calls black women dumb. He’s called me dumb. He calls people stupid. He’s called Kamala Harris stupid. He’s called her names. And he’s used profanity against athletes. He called them sons of bitches. He calls people out of their names all the time. And you love it. But when someone says the truth about you, you get all butthurt! And you get all in your feelings! So what’s good for the goose is good for the gander. What’s good for the Donald is good for the Don.”

Well said, Cicero! One bit of clarification: when Donald Trump, or anyone, calls you dumb, it isn’t because you are black, it’s because you are dumb, and that attack of high school drop-out-caliber logorrhea that you apparently think is worth broadcasting in public proves it.

As for the fact that a news organization would pay millions to a news reporter whose level of thought and analysis results in emotional belches like that—Is this a great country or what?