Democrats and the Media Escalate Their Totalitarian Response To Biden’s Decline

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.“

—George Orwell, “1984”

The increasing tendency of the Axis of Unethical Conduct—you know, the “resistance,” Democrats, and the mainstream media—to adopt totalitarian tactics to try to deal with the failure of the Biden Presidency and its alleged author’s obvious mental and physical deterioration is now nearing Code Red status. I wonder what more it will take to alarm partisan progressives sufficiently to have them slap their foreheads and exclaim, “What the hell am I doing? THESE people are the ones who threaten democracy!” If the latest bombardment of astounding “it isn’t what it is” denials doesn’t provoke that response, one has to despair that nothing will. Facts don’t matter.”Res ipsa loquitur” is dead to these zombies.

Insisting that what should be obvious to anyone isn’t real is unethical. Why should I even have to write that?

In three recent incidents caught on video, President Biden appeared confused, dazed, or just hopelessly doddering at public events. One took place at the G7 in Italy, as Biden appeared to wander off during a parachuting exhibition until he was tapped on the shoulder and lead back to the group by Italian Prime Minister Georgia Meloni. The other two are shown above: in one, Biden is led shuffling off stage by Barack Obama who appears to be leading and steadying the President. In the other, Biden stands oddly motionless with a frozen smile on his face as those around him bop to the music at a White House Juneteenth event.

All three episodes are subject to interpretation and confirmation bias. However, Biden has appeared doddering, unsteady, confused and dazed many, many times going back to before the 2020 election. He also mutters, slurs his words, and sometimes descends into gibberish. Even though one could, if one were desperate enough, insist that there is no reason at all to doubt the President’s mental fitness and health (another relevant context: he refuses to take a mental acuity exam) the Axis’s strategy for deflecting perceptions of reality sufficiently to get Biden re-elected has now shifted into an alarming new stage.

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The Great Neighbors’ Newspaper Dilemma, or “It’s No Fun Being an Ethicist”

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Before I became obsessed with ethics, I wouldn’t have given two seconds of thought to this situation.

My wonderful next door neighbors always flee the D.C. area this time of year until Labor Day. In the past they left their home vacant with Grace and I having the responsibility of keeping a watch on the property, an eye out for packages, that sort of thing. This time, however, their recently-engaged college age granddaughter is staying in the house with her fiance.

I haven’t seen any evidence of them, however, since they moved some stuff in over the weekend. Walking Spuds by the house yesterday mid-morning, I noticed a Washington Post on the lawn. I noticed it because my neighbors always get the paper very early: I never see a Post there that late. One of my jobs in the past was to pick up the paper if they had neglected to cancel delivery, which they occasionally did.

Boy, I really miss having a real paper around, even the Washington Post, but I dropped that paper long ago because—you know—and replaced it with the Times. Then I decided paying almost a hundred bucks a month for that propaganda rag was idiotic, and went to all digital.

I was sorely temped to take the paper, but reasoned that it wasn’t my responsibility this time, and also that the paper properly belonged to their granddaughter and her beau, the house-sitters. I walked on, after Spuds had peed on their lawn.

Today I walked him by the house even later, around noon. Two papers were on the lawn. Now what? I considered taking the day-old paper home to read, since I guessed that the couple wasn’t keen on newspaper-reading or they would have picked it up the day before. I considered taking both papers, because now the papers were piling up, sending a “Rob me!” message to miscreants. But maybe the two love-birds were just sleeping in. Should I stick the papers through the mail slot? What am I, the Paper Monkey?

Reluctantly, I left the two Posts on the lawn, and now wonder what I should do if there are three there tomorrow.

A Popeye: I Can’t Let This Idiotic AOC Tweet Pass…

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

As Popeye so memorably said on more than one occasion, “It’s all I can stands, ‘cuz I can’t stands no more!” (Then he would swallow a can of spinach and beat the crap out of someone or something.)

From a 2021 report: “Democratic Senators in battleground states are raking in donations from out-of-state donors, amassing a hefty cash advantage over potential GOP challengers who haven’t launched Senate bids yet.  Four of the most competitive 2022 Senate races are in states held by Democrats: Arizona, Georgia, New Hampshire and Nevada. Each of the incumbents in those states received more than three-quarters of their campaign cash from out-of-state donors in the first three months of 2021.” 

Classic. A practice is “disgusting and abnormal” when it is aimed against Democratic Party incumbents, but just democracy at work when it benefits incumbents. And how is contributing to a political campiagn in a primary “corrupt”? AOC should stick with the old stand-by, since Jamaal Bowman is the incumbent in question. It’s racist not to support him.

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Ethics Quiz: Maryland’s Mass Pot Pardon

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

This is an ethics quiz because I recognize that I am irretrievably biased on the question of marijuana (no, I really don’t care that I’m supposed to call it “cannabis” now: bite me), which I believe should continue to be illegal, though I am under no illusions that this metaphorical horse has left the barn for good.

Maryland’s governor Wes Moore signed an executive order yesterday that pardons more than 175,000 convicted drug-abusers whose crimes were related to marijuana use. Moore said he did this “with deep pride and soberness.”

Yes, he’s proud to announce that Maryland doesn’t think violating laws is anything anyone should be ashamed of.

“Today is about equity; it is about racial justice,” Anthony Brown, Maryland’s attorney general, said. “While the order applies to all who meet its criteria, the impact is a triumphant victory for African Americans and other Marylanders of color who were disproportionately arrested, convicted and sentenced for actions yesterday that are lawful today.” This is because a disproportionate number of blacks broke the pot laws. This in turn acculturated many of them into breaking other laws with impunity as well. The progressive rule is that if laws are violated by larger numbers of a minority group than their demographic presence in the population would predict, it is discriminatory to enforce those laws.

I wonder who thought up that dodge? Whoever he or she is, it’s brilliant.

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is…

Is the Maryland pardon fair and responsible?

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Ethics Quote of the Month: Banned EA Commenter “David”

/ Jack Marshall / 35 Comments

“Fuck you, you Trump -supporting fascist!”

––Ethics Alarms troll “David” signing off after being banned

Why is this just an “ethics quote” instead of an “unethical quote”? I chose that designation because the line is invaluable information, revealing the crippling delusions at the heart of the implacable Trump-deranged that swarm around us.

“David” entered the fray here demonstrating some rhetorical ability and intelligence. It became clear, however, that he was here only as a hostile adversary and an advocate, not to explore ethics issues but to confront those whose analysis didn’t mesh with his pre-determined ideological and partisan biases, which proved unshakable. They also manifested themselves in trolling and sealioning tactics to relentlessly push a single narrative, the one that the news media, the resistance, Democrats and, to significant extent, Trump himself has fostered by his own incurable trolling habit.

The sequence that produced that quote goes like this. Trump is a bad person, and thus anything he is accused of, anything harmful that is predicted about his future conduct, any malign motives or intent that is attributed to him. must be true regardless of the sources and irrespective of facts. The confluence of these presumed vile acts, confident predictions and bad motives and intent points to racism, lust for power, instability, a thirst for revenge, and determination to topple the democracy. This, in turn, “proves ” that Trump is a super-villain out of Marvel Comics, and driven by fascist aspirations.

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“Nah, There’s No Mainstream Media Bias!” Here’s an Example Of a Story Biden’s Captive Journalists Won’t Report

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

I waited to see if this discouraging tale ever broke into the national news. It did not.

More than 2,000 musicians from he U.S. and Australia, most of them school-aged children, traveled to Normandy’s Brittany American Cemetery to perform on June 7. Families paid their own way to Europe to watch their children parade and play in an exciting, moving, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. The bands had planned this trip a year in advance, and the Brittany event was a prominent feature of the schedule.

President Biden was also in Normandy, however, and Biden’s handlers decided on the fly that the President, who had endured a gaffe-filled D-Day anniversary already, needed one more, final, last-minute photo op that hadn’t been scheduled and couldn’t be screwed up. POTUS’s unscheduled and unnecessary events in election year take precedence over long-scheduled events that a lot of students were looking forward to.

It’s good to be king.

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Ethics Dunce and Legal Ethics Dunce: The Connecticut Bar Association

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

This is concerning, but, frighteningly enough, not surprising. As Ethics Alarms has noted many times, the legal profession has been among the critical institutions most thoroughly corrupted, indeed lobotomized, by partisan bias and Trump Derangement. As if that wasn’t bad enough, I am also getting reports from various quarters about the deep corruption in many state bar associations. This is especially problematic for me, as bar associations are a significant market for my ethics training services (if they ares sufficiently corrupt, such organizations tend to say “We don’t need no stinkin’ ethics training!”). Well, the Connecticut Bar is in the minority of bar associations that have never sought my wisdom, so I am unencumbered by conflicts of interest.

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Ethics Dunce: PGA Star Rory McIlroy

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

This one is what the old Ethics Scoreboard (now down again, I think for the count) used to categorize an “Easy Call.”

At Inhurst, North Carolina’s Pinehurst golf course yesterday, Bryson DeChambeau became the PGA U.S. Open champion again after Irish pro Rory McIlroy, to be blunt, choked.

McIlroy blew two short par putts within three holes, the last on the 18th, as DeChambeau nailed a tricky shot to finish 6 under par and a single shot better than McIlroy, who had seemed poised to win his first major tournament in ten years with just three holes to go.

McIlroy disillusioned his fans with his reaction to what ABC Sports used to call “the agony of defeat.” He watched DeChambeau’s winning putt on TV in the scorer’s room, then quickly packed up and sped out the players’ parking lot in a courtesy SUV. He didn’t talk to reporters, who were frantic to hear how he managed to lose. He didn’t even stick around to congratulate DeChambeau on his stunning victory.

Bad.

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This Headline Tells You Everything You Need To Know About the Progressive Wing Of The Democratic Party…

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

Jamaal Bowman. This Jamaal Bowman. The lying idiot who pulled a fire alarm to stall a floor vote in the House of Representatives and flagrantly lied about it, claiming he thought the “Pull” handle on the wall was there to open the door. After security footage showed him taking down the signs that contradicted his absurd story. And this Jamaal Bowman. He’s a star in the firmament of progressive Democrats. What must the rest of the metaphorical sky look like?

Yet the story quotes Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) saying, “I cannot think of a single race that better exemplifies the battle, frankly for our democracy, between everyday people choosing their representation and big money coming in and choosing it for them.” Yes, there we have the strange progressive definition of “democracy”: a member of Congress who stoops to sabotaging a legislative vote that his forces will lose, who lies about it, and who is given The King’s Pass by colleagues like AOC when he should have been prosecuted and censured. It’s not big money making the voters’ choice easy between Bowman and his Democratic primary foe, who is trouncing him in the polls. It is the inescapable fact that Bowman is incompetent, dishonest, unprofessional, not very bright, and a Hamas ally.

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Stupidity Tag On Fox News

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

I had the TV on Fox News to keep my dog company, and was downstairs from my office briefly to get a drink when I heard a clip of Joe Biden saying, “The Supreme Court has never been more out of step.”

“Out of step?” What’s that supposed to mean? A President being stupid is bad, but a President who makes the public stupider is far worse. It isn’t the Supreme Court’s function to be “in step” with the times, polls, public opinion, fads or zeitgeist. It’s job is to interpret the law and the Constitution. Because the public’s understanding of the law is about at the same level as my dog’s understanding of “Two Gentlemen of Verona,” their opinion regarding what the Supreme Court should do is literally useless and of no value whatsoever.

The issue at hand was the SCOTUS decision on the bump stock ban discussed here. That opinion was only nominally about bump stocks: what it involved really was statutory construction and the limits of agencies trying to do end-arounds when laws don’t allow them to do what they would like to do.

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