Ethics Quiz: Fairness to AOC

Ethics Alarms only covers a fraction of the statements by prominent people that prompt the response, “What, if anything, were they thinking?” For example, I was torn today whether to mention Kamala Harris saying in a recent interview (with Axis journalist Kara Swisher, whom I have been calling out for her hackery for 30 years) on her book tour (What were they thinking to send Kamala out on a book tour?), that “some have said” that she was “the most qualified candidate ever to run for President.” Because Swisher is such a hack, she didn’t have the integrity to burst out laughing and tell Harris, “Oh, Kamala, you are so funny!” Yeah, and some have said, “I am the Lizard King!” and “Of course dogs can talk, they just don’t have anything to say!” Maybe, MAYBE, and I am giving her the benefit of the doubt here, Harris was only the second least qualified Presidential candidate of a major party in U.S. history. But I digress.

In last night’s predictably horrifying town hall meeting on CNN featuring American communist Bernie Sanders and Dunning-Kruger victim Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), AOC went for the Gold and may have said the stupidest thing that not only she has ever said in public but perhaps the stupidest thing any elected official has said in public, though Rep. Hank Johnson expressing a fear that so much U.S. military personnel and equipment on the island of Guam might cause it to “tip over” creates a daunting challenge.

Ranting in her usual pop-eyed hysterical style about how evil corporations were polluting the nation and that “rivers were on fire” because they were “pouring chemicals” into waterways and killing people, AOC was quick to name the first corporate villain to pop into what she audaciously calls her “mind.” Was it Monsanto, mayhap? Dow Chemical? Dupont? LyondellBasell Industries, the largest U.S. chemical company? Oh no. The Congresswoman, regarded by many pundits as the rising leader of the Democratic Party, has bigger game in her sights, and she immediately, without hesitation, named the vile polluter.

“Deloitte.”

Yes, the accounting firm. I’ve been trying to think of a company that she could have named that would be less guilty of pollution. The Boston Red Sox? I dunno, the team flies a lot. Hey, but anyone can make a mistake. Right? It was just a “speako.” It isn’t really evidence that Ocasio-Cortez doesn’t know what the hell she is talking about half the time, is it?

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day:

Is it unfair to hold such an obvious brain fart against AOC?

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Now THIS Is an Unethical Nurse!

Yikes. Fortunately she is also a fired nurse, and, I presume, a permanent ex-nurse.

Crystal Tadlock (that’s not her above; it’s the late Louise Fletcher as nightmare nurse Rached in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”), who worked in the intensive care unit at Memorial Hermann Greater Heights Hospital in Houston, had a Mel Gibson moment abusing the police who arrested her for DWI last week on October 11.

“I’m a fucking nurse!” Crystal began, in a drunken rant that was duly recorded. “When you come through my hospital, don’t worry, I’ll let you die,” she went on. “All your family members, and this is all on recording. Greater Heights, bitch. Don’t go there.”

Oh, don’t worry, Crystal, I’m sure they won’t. I don’t know who in their right mind would, after listening to that threat. So the hospital hires medical professionals who are drunks and who are capable of killing patients as revenge, eh? Good to know.

It may be time to become a Christian Scientist.

Does anyone want to bet against my conviction that Crystal, like Mel, Michael Richards and others who have sunk their careers and reputations with similarly outrageous outbursts, will resort to the Pazuzu Excuse in her inevitable groveling apology? That she will swear that what she said doesn’t represent who she really is or express her true feelings, that those frightening threats just tumbled out of her mouth from who knows where, that “something came over her”?

Worst Supreme Court Justice Ever?

During the oral argument at the Supreme Court regarding the constitutional challenge to Section 2 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, President Biden’s sole appointment to the Court, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, proved that the suspicions raised by some of her dissents that she is a knee-jerk progressive incompetent were well grounded. Are you ready? Heed Sam’s warning!

The case, Louisiana v. Callais, involves the question of whether Louisiana’s congressional map violates the 15th Amendment and the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment because it clearly includes two districts with boundaries based on race. The objective was to create two majority black districts. In other words, use race as the reason for determining Congressional districts.

Justice Jackson’s head-exploding argument? Giving blacks special advantages in the matter of representation was like making special accommodations for the handicapped under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Black Americans, you see, are permanently handicapped because of the crippling effects of slavery (which ended 160 years ago) and Jim Crow (which ended 100 years later, about 60 years ago.)

“So going back to this discriminatory intent point, I guess I’m thinking of it, of the fact that remedial action absent discriminatory intent is really not a new idea in the civil rights laws. And my kind of paradigmatic example of this is something like the ADA,” Jackson said.

“Congress passed the Americans with Disabilities Act against the backdrop of a world that was generally not accessible to people with disabilities,” the DEI Justice explained. “And so it was discriminatory in effect because these folks were not able to access these buildings. And it didn’t matter whether the person who built the building or the person who owned the building intended for them to be exclusionary; that’s irrelevant. Congress said, the facilities have to be made equally open to people with disabilities if readily possible. I guess I don’t understand why that’s not what’s happening here. The idea in Section 2 is that we are responding to current-day manifestations of past and present decisions that disadvantage minorities and make it so that they don’t have equal access to the voting system. Right? They’re disabled. In fact ,we use the word ‘disabled’ in [Milliken v. Bradley]. We say that’s a way in which these processes are not equally open. So I don’t understand why it matters whether the state intended to do that. What Congress is saying is if it is happening … you gotta fix it.”

Got it! American blacks are permanently disabled. This is the rote justification for affirmative action forever, DEI (which Jackson understandably has an affection for), and reparations for slavery. It is a jaw-droppingly demeaning characterization of black Americans, and pure stereotyping.

Her “logic” also misses an obvious and crucial point: when the 1964 Voting Rights Act was passed, the U.S. was just barely leaving the Jim Crow era. Brown v. Bd of Education was only ten years old. Inter-racial marriage was still illegal in many states. Progressives and race-hucksters like Jackson refuse to acknowledge that there has been massive progress in race relations since 1964, and they deny that progress because it means giving up their own benefits from the phenomenon of presumed racism. “Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.” Jackson’s statement marks her as a racketeer.

That quote from Jackson is damning (and it bolsters the EA case that Joe Biden was the worst POTUS ever, since he appointed this partisan hack) and should be headline news, but it’s not. Gee, I wonder why… Over at SCOTUS blog, the new proprietor, Amy Howe, provides what she represents as a thorough analysis of the oral argument in Louisiana v. Callais without mentioning Jackson’s outrageous theory at all. So far, I have only seen it mentioned on conservative blogs and news sites. In fact, I was driven to Breitbart, a site I banned for being biased and untrustworthy, to find the full quote.

Is Jackson the worst SCOTUS Justice ever? I think she’s worse than Sotomayor, which is pretty amazing, but no, I’m sure there have been worse ones in the Courts dim past. But she is pretty assuredly the worst Justice in my lifetime, and that would include the execrable Harry Blackmun, who inflicted Roe v. Wade on the nation as well as the indefensible majority opinion declaring that baseball, alone among professional sports and billion dollar private businesses, should be immune from the antitrust laws. Harry was an mediocre judge in over his head thanks to a Peter Principle Nixon appointment, but he was at least smart enough not to claim that being black was the equivalent of being disabled.

So Apparently Republicans Do Have a Nazi Problem…Or a Moron Problem

I don’t understand this at all.

What’s going on here? Democrats just went through one of the worst public relations weeks (Imagine: this was one of the least of their embarrassments!) for their party imaginable. President Trump shined on the world stage. GOP candidates for governor in both Virginia and New Jersey were surging. So Republicans decide to say “Hold my beer!” and let their inner Nazis and racists frolic? What the hell?

The first incident is the most confounding. An image captured by Zoom in the background of a virtual meeting in the Congressional office of Rep. Dave Taylor (R-Ohio) showed the cubical wall below…

with an altered American flag with a Nazi swastika in the stripes. Alongside the flag are pinned images of a pocket Constitution and a congressional calendar. Taylor, seemingly caught Heil-handed, naturally condemned the symbol as “vile” and said his office was investigating with the U.S. Capitol Police. “I am aware of an image that appears to depict a vile and deeply inappropriate symbol near an employee in my office,” he said in a statement. “The content of that image does not reflect the values or standards of this office, my staff or myself, and I condemn it in the strongest terms.”

Taylor called the flag “vandalism.” I call him an untrustworthy idiot if he isn’t a Nazi, and he needs to resign and then be stuffed into a barrel with fat Lithuanian midgets*, never to see the light of day again. This couldn’t happen if he didn’t have the management ability of the average dairy cow. Who has he hired to be on his staff? Were candidates screened so that anyone with an IQ over 70 was automatically disqualified? A. Someone puts that Nazi thing up. B. Nobody does anything about it. C. It’s visible to a third party during a Zoom call! This is res ipsa loquitur in throbbing neon lights. Taylor is responsible, there is no excuse for it, and however it happened, he should be jettisoned and back to Ohio, because it’s illegal to shoot him and too messy to have him tarred and feathered.

But wait…there’s more! The day before, Politico revealed these…

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State Rep. Had an Outrageous Conflict of Interest Regarding Sexual Materials in Schools Vote! He Should Have Recused Himself…

Cecil Brockman, 41, representing Guilford County (N.C.) in the state legislature, was arrested today on two charges of statutory rape and two charges of taking indecent liberties with a child. He was first elected in 2014; in Brockman’s most recent reelection bid, he secured about 63% of the vote.

Good choice. The North Carolina Democratic Party is calling for Brockman to resign. But here’s the fun part: Brockman had voted against the North Carolina parental rights bill to keep sexually provocative materials out of school libraries. The bill also required teachers and school administrators to inform parents when their children wanted to change their gender.

I could not determine whether the bill also required teachers to tell parents if a student wanted to have sex with a state legislator.

Brockman also had a Youth Academic Center named in his honor by the Housing Authority, presumably because he was so intimate with the Center’s membership.

Democrats are having one heck of a month, aren’t they?

Yes, the country’s in the very best of hands….

(The latest entry into the Ethics Alarms Hollywood Clip Archive...)

The Confederacy Rises Again: LA Country Thinks Federal Law Enforcement Creates “An Emergency”

The progressive/Axis/ Democratic Party/bleeding heart support for illegal immigrants is, I must confess, a mystery to me. The sentiment makes no sense from a basic principles of civilization perspective, nor a legal perspective, a rule of law perspective, a historical perspective, and definitely not an ethical perspective. It is all emotional, as in “How can you punish these poor people for just wanting a better life?,” which reminds me of Woody Allen’s crazy father in “Annie Hall,” who berates his wife for firing their cleaning woman. “She’s colored! She’s been oppressed! She has a right to steal!,” he shouts in a flashback. In 1977, everyone, literally everyone, knew that exchange was a joke. Today, thank to almost 50 years of woke brainwashing, a substantial segment of the population thinks it makes sense. “They have a right to get the benefits of citizenship! They’ve had a tough life! ” or, just as bad, “Ok, but since they came here illegally, they’ve been good! ” Right. How dare we take away from them what they took illegally in the first place, since we didn’t catch them sooner.

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The Latest Orwellian “Newspeak” From The Mad Left: “Loyalty Oath”

I am ever watchful for Trump Administration ethical and legal overreach. We know this man by now (though he is still full of surprises, some good, some frightening) , and if any leader has ever been prone to get cocky when flushed with success, leading him to breach rules, laws, ethics and common sense, Donald Trump is. So when I read in some Axis news source that university professors are “up in arms” over Trump pressing colleges and universities into signing a “loyalty oath,” my ethics alarms imitated Big Ben. Oh-oh. Loyalty oaths are anathema to democracy and the United States of America, but it sounds like something Trump might find appealing.

But upon research that took me about 15 minutes but that the members of the public this lie is aimed at deceiving won’t do, there is no “loyalty oath.” The unethical academics and activists trying to ensure that American universities remain leftist indoctrination camps came up with that label because they knew it was inflammatory and would make the Trump Deranged, their tending-toward-Trump Derangement family, friends and co-workers, and the intellectually lazy and gullible certain that a fascist takeover is approaching.

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A Democratic Government Should Not Be Afraid of Words: The Charlie Kirk Assassination Ethics Train Wreck Rolls On

Ugh. Yesterday, President Trump posthumously awarded Charlie Kirk the Medal of Freedom. That was an appropriate way to express admiration and appreciation for the martyred conservative activist. (MSNBC, alone among the networks, didn’t feel the ceremony was newsworthy. Now, a newsworthy ceremony for the network was President Biden giving the Presidential Citizen’s Medal to Liz Cheney for running a Star Chamber against American citizens tand her own party o make sure the public understands the difference between bad rioting—the half-day Capitol embarrassment by conservative morons—and good rioting—the nation-wide, May through December 2020 Black Lives Matter “mostly peaceful protests” by Democrats—at least according to”MS.” Nah, there’s no mainstream media bias…).

An inappropriate, cheesy, grandstanding pro-Kirk gesture absurdly hostile to freedom of speech was the Trump State Department revoking the visas of six foreigners who made derisive comments about Kirk or who joked about his assassination. Oh no, not THAT! Foreigners making jokes!

The State Department said yesterday that it had determined the six unidentified foreign nationals from Argentina, Brazil, Germany, Mexico, Paraguay and South Africa should lose their visas after reviewing their online social media posts and clips about Kirk. “[We]will defend our borders, our culture, and our citizens by enforcing our immigration laws,” the State Department said. “Aliens who take advantage of America’s hospitality while celebrating the assassination of our citizens will be removed.”

Celebrating.

Next up from this weirdly thin-skinned gang: prosecuting whoever celebrates LA Dodger victories in the baseball play-offs. The move hands a metaphorical spiked club to the Trump-Deranged who claim this President wants to cancel the First Amendment. Dumb. Abuse of power.

Unethical.

Morons.

Could It Be That It Is Finally Dawning What A Lousy President Barack Obama Was?

When I finally completed my laborious examination of the Worst Presidents Ever, an exercise that ended with #46, Joe Biden, winning the booby prize, I “reluctantly” left Barack Obama out of the final nine (Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, Woodrow Wilson, Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Joe Biden.) Of Obama I wrote,

Barack Hussein Obama, #44 (2009-2017) is a perplexing case. Right now he is a wildly over-rated President, and given the overwhelming progressive bias in the academic ranks of historians, that false assessment is likely to be around for a while. It was under Obama, and in part because of him, that journalists almost completely abandoned objectivity and fairness. He joined the Democrats in conning and manipulating the nation into the highly flawed “Affordable Care Act,” and lied outright to get it passed. Obama’s policies slowed what should have been a boom recovery from the 2008 crash; he was feckless and dithering in foreign policy, typified by his ludicrous “red line” threat regarding Syria. His payoff to Iran for a dubious promise to to nuke Israel until Barack and Michelle were deep into retirement was one of the most cynical and ill-conceived bargains in U.S. foreign policy history. 

A President who entered the White House creating hope that he would finally end racial tensions, Barack Obama made them worse. Obama completed the transformation of the Attorney General’s office into a purely political and partisan position; he gave cover to incompetents and Machiavellian leftists. There was the Benghazi attack, the I.R.S. Tea Party group scandal, the ATF gunwalking fiasco, and more: like President Biden, but not to the same extent, President Obama kept loyal incompetents in office, assisted throughout by a lapdog news media. Obama’s racial favoritism, his inattention to illegal immigration, and his inability or refusal to seek compromise with the Republican Senate locked in grid-lock as the status quo. His arrogance and open disdain for white, religious, non-elite Americans launched the political career of Donald Trump and was the catalyst for the chaos that followed…is following.

Barack Obama has a lot to answer for. Nevertheless, he played the role of President as well as anyone since Ronald Reagan. He was an excellent speaker when he stuck to a script. His greatest accomplishment as President was getting elected twice as a black man—that, together with his maintenance and elevation of the image of the President takes him out of the running for Worst President Ever. Barely

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Nah, There’s No Mainstream Media Bias! TIME’s Despicable Cover…


A nice but naive (and Democrat) Facebook Friend posted the cover above, which Time says is slated for November, writing, “This is how you get to be an “enemy of the people” and musing that the motive behind Time publishing such an unflattering image was “puzzling.” Bless his heart! The motive isn’t puzzling at all, and it is why Time and the rest of the Axis propagandists are “enemies of the people.” Even after this President’s unequivocal triumph in getting Israel and Gaza to agree on something at least resembling a peace treaty, TIME had to find a way to slap at Trump in the process of reporting it.

The photo is ugly and makes Trump look ugly. It emphasizes age, and doesn’t even look like him. An equivalent photograph of Hillary Clinton or Michelle Obama, capturing every sag, wattle and wrinkle, would be condemned as sexist. Deliberately using unflattering photos is one of the oldest and most juvenile of media bias techniques. Regular readers here may recall the Ethics Alarms mea culpa for using so many terrible photos of Hillary Clinton, who had a lot of them…

and my pledge to stop doing it, which I did (until just now). The only President who approached Trump in having his worst looks gleefully circulated by the press was Richard Nixon, and even he never was subjected to a cover shot like that.

Naturally, the President, who cannot control himself—not a good quality in a President—and apparently has never heard of the Streisand Effect had to complain about the cover on Truth Social, guaranteeing that the headlines will be about Trump’s vanity, making certain that 10 times more people see the thing, and letting the despicable TIME editors pat themselves on their backs for a cover that will, at least briefly, make the dying magazine relevant again.

The cover is mean-spirited, unfair, disrespectful, and indefensible, except to Trump-Haters who will react by saying that he deserves it.