“Ridiculous…“We would never even discuss something like that. How many 30-year-olds could travel to Poland, get on the train? Go nine more hours, go to Ukraine, meet with President Zelensky? So, look at the man. Look what he’s doing. Look what he continues to do each and every day.”
—First Lady Jill Biden, after being asked during a CNN interview about Nikki Haley’s proposal that politicians over the age of 75 undergo mental competency testing.
In related news, Lance Armstrong declared that testing competitive cyclists for doping is “ridiculous,” and O.J. Simpson opined that DNA technology was “ridiculous.”
Fortunately, all we need to do to determine the competency of First Ladies is to analyze a cretinous answer like that one to a flamingly easy question. We are looking, Jill. And it’s not pretty. The words the First Lady was searching for were not “ridiculous,” but responsible, necessary, and “a matter of common sens
The United States has already courted disaster with Presidents continuing in office after their mental faculties have been damaged or declined. President Pierce was impaired by grief, crippling depression and alcoholism during his single term in office, which occurred at a crucial point in the deadly run-up to the Civil War. Woodrow Wilson infamously remained President after being crippled by a major stroke. There is evidence that President Reagan’s cognitive stability was declining during his presidency.
As for Jill’s human meal-ticket, no modern President has shown so many signs of mental decline and confusion, and this frightening development has come after a career in public office unmarked by intellectual acuity at its zenith. Every responsible Presidential candidate should be required to pledge to take such competency tests on a regular basis and agree to resign from office once a thorough, non-partisan diagnosis confirmed by multiple physicians concludes that there is significant cognitive decline.
I regard the siege of the Alamo one of the signature ethics events in U.S. history, both for what it was and what it came to represent. There have been many posts on the subject as well as many references to the Alamo in other posts, all of which are accessible here.
Today, March 6, marks the fall of the converted mission. Ethics Alarms has two pieces from its archives to present:
I.Last year, Texan and Ethics Alarms stalwart Michael West’s provided Ethics Alarms readers with a day by day account of the Alamo’s the final days, March 5 and March 6. Here it is:
March 5, 1836
After the previous day’s war council (on March 4), Santa Anna was content that his glorious assault would occur. But evidently, according to several reliable Mexican sources, a civilian woman from the town, who had retreated to the Alamo with the Texans, made it out of the Alamo during the night and gave dire information to the Mexicans. Evidently the Texan garrison was increasingly despondent. According to the lady who escaped, Travis and the garrison had discussed their options and one of the more forceful arguments made was that they should consider surrender.
Santa Anna wanted none of this, and accelerated his assault time-table (which he hadn’t necessarily meant for the 6th of March but for the 7th or even the 8th).
The Mexican soldiers would have received their orders in the morning and spent the rest of the day making preparations. There was little physically they had to do other than check the locks of their muskets, ensure they had the requisite number of extra flints (which would occasionally break in battle – testing the coolness of even the most experienced soldier), or assist in the production of several ladders Santa Anna had commanded each battalion to have prepared.
No, most of the preparation would have been mental. A deeply Catholic people, the Mexican soldiers would have spent their energies on prayer and confession. New soldiers would have been nervous about how they would perform under fire, simultaneously trying to hide their nerves from the experienced soldiers, who would have recognized the unique challenge before them. Almost none had been asked to climb tall walls after traversing several hundred yards under fire against an enemy who had, in the previous 12 days, proven that their rifled muskets out-ranged the standard Mexican issue musket by nearly 300%Some of Santa Anna’s soldiers were eager to get into the fight – to uphold the honor of the Mexican nation against, not only rebels, but rebels seemingly motivated by pro-American attitudes. Some of Santa Anna’s soldiers had been farmers pressed into service only months before, who would have had a partially begrudging attitude and were mostly leaning towards “let’s get this over with so I can get home.” Some of the dictator’s soldiers were convicts for whom the upcoming bloodshed was just one more act of brutality to endure in an already brutal and brutalized life. For a large number of the soldiers, for whom soldiering was life, this would be a terror that they knew would be expected of them. Regardless of their motivations, there would be no getting out of the upcoming ordeal and every single one of them would be in the same peril when a Texan cannon roared out at their formation.
Set to wake up at midnight to begin movements to their attack positions, the few soldiers could fall asleep would have tried to do so by twilight.
Inside the Alamo, evening would draw a miserable day to a close. Earlier that day, according to Enrique Esparza, aged 8 (who’s father, Gregorio, was fighting with the Texans), the faeful courier entered the Alamo with news that despite all the hopeful reports, no immediate help was on its way. Travis would have discussed with the men their options – a break-out attempt in case of a successful assault would be their best recourse. A break out during the day would be impossible and one at night would be extremely risky. Whatever was said, it appears all but perhaps one of the men decided to stay
For the Texans, sleep would come quickly that evening. For the first time in 12 days, Santa Anna’s cannons didn’t create chaos inside the compound. It was silent. There could be no doubt that the defenders knew what this meant, but they were exhausted. They would have kept watch and pure anxiety might have boosted their necessary alertness. Nonetheless, they began succumbing to sleep deprivation and may have been deep in dreams of life after the war – or perhaps of life before the war.
Before collapsing in whatever position suited rest, most would have reviewed their plans in their minds of how to get out once they’d done what they could to slow or halt the Mexican advance. No shame in that: when a battle is clearly lost and standing your position doesn’t buy anyone else on the battlefield any opportunity to turn the tide, there’s no principle of warfare that requires that a soldier die on principle.
Most would have recognized that with San Antonio immediately to the west, and several Mexican artillery batteries to the north and south, the east would be the best direction to break out for should the situation so demand. That was also where the gathering Texan army could be found, eventually.
Right after dusk, Travis dispatched the final courier on yet another appeal for assistance. Then, as in each night during the siege , Travis assigned several men outpost duty beyond the walls of the Alamo to provide an early warning before turning the watch over to another officer.
I don’t understand this episode at all, and it also makes me angry. As it should you. Or anybody.
In Newton, Massachusetts, once considered a gem of the Bay State’s public education crown, the race-obsessed, woke and irresponsible fools (I’m not going to be diplomatic or restrained in this post) in charge of the school and school district allowed the school’s Theater Ink program to put on a student show titled “Lost and Found: Our Stories as People of Color.” According to the show’s audition packet, the production was designed to be “a reserved safe space for this exploration and for people of color to be vulnerable and support one another.” Not only is that wokey gibberish (schools should not be encouraging students to speak gibberish), it is also illegal, as in “unconstitutional.”
When time for auditions came around, and all the young theater geeks, aspiring singers and hopeful chorus line members licked their collective chops for the annual event, the show’s Asian-American student director posted a video to the show’s website declaring that “All BIPOC [Black, indigenous and people of color] students at North are invited to audition,” clearly meaning “No whites, Irish or dogs allowed.”
Ah, yes…”good discrimination.” Assholes. Bigots. Virtue-signaling bigots. All green-lighted by adults with degrees in education.
Yet they pretty much got away with it. The show went up as scheduled in January; the somnolent parents of Newton (my Arlington High School chess team used to play Newton North; we usually beat its team too; they weren’t as good as Newton South) apparently just stood by with their fingers in their noses and let this insulting, racist fiasco occur, their children excluded from a school activity because of their color. The first complaint came in when the director’s discriminatory video went live, but the matter was allowed to crawl through the Department of Education’s investigation process—it is still crawling—and you just know that Joe’s gang sees no reason why public schools shouldn’t favor “BIPOC” theater-loving kids over those racist white snots who are part of the evil race that brought slavery to our shores and voted for Donald Trump.
Naturally, the school’s first line of defense was “it isn’t what it is,” the favored rationalization (#64 on the list) of progressives, Democrats and anti-white racists for quite some time now.
School district flacks told the media that Newton North..
“is committed to encouraging all of its students to participate in the theatre program, particularly students of color, who have been vastly underrepresented in our programs….While centered in the stories of the lives of our students of color, no one is turned away or excluded from participating or having a role in the ‘Lost and Found’ production of Theatre Ink, Newton North’s teaching and working theater program. The Newton Public Schools do not exclude students based upon color, race, ethnicity, or religious background.”
Then these weasels turned around in their fur and mouthed their support for the exclusionary exercise, saying,
“We are proud of our students for the hard work they do to not only assemble a diverse group of performers, but also to challenge each other to have difficult conversations around societal issuesTheatre Ink has consistently provided opportunities for students to tell and celebrate the narratives and stories of those who have been historically underrepresented. Amplifying the stories, experiences, and history of students of color is just one component of our diverse fine and performing arts programs,’ the statement continued, additionally offering that it fully supports ‘the premise and educational value of this performance.”
Right on cue, after we were discussing why some elite universities were eschewing standardized test scores (that elite minorities inexplicably don’t tend to perform as well on as whites and Asian-Americans, though nobody can say why, at least out loud) and wondering what criteria schools might resort to instead to let them discriminate on the basis of race (you know, “affirmative action”) without appearing to do so, here comes the New York Times with an article about the growing popularity of so-called “personality tests.”
I should have seen itcoming. At least the report injects some skepticism into the analysis (“Critics are quick to point out that some of the tests, such as the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, which churns out four-letter distillations of personality, are about as reliable at predicting success in a professional endeavor as sorting candidates by astrological signs or Magic 8 Balls”), but what the report doesn’t do is state a simple fact: there is no reliable way whatsoever to measure the accuracy or value of such tests.
An outgrowth of psychology, which might be the most disappointing, unreliable and underachieving pseudo-scientific discipline of them all (if not an outright fraud), these tests purport to reduce the infinite complexity and variety of human behavior to something that can be quantified and measured by a test lasting a couple hours. Bollocks, as our British readers might say.
There were many enlightening responses to the ethics quiz involving Ford’s patent application for devices that would allow a deadbeat car purchaser’s automobile to progressively punish its owner and eventually repossess itself.
To my eyes, this extends far beyond normal penalties for a non-payment or breach of contract, especially since they get increasingly punitive and paternalistic. In most cases, if you stop making payments on a car they send you increasingly-nasty letters before finally hauling it away in the middle of the night. None of it includes the “tsk tsk” finger-wagging demonstrated here. Limiting you to “emergency use only” (whose emergency?) “Geofencing”? That’s what we do to dogs and cattle by way electronic collars (which often prove ineffective). “Annoying sounds”? Like the ones they play outside of convenience stores here to discourage vagrancy? Then, a final “lockout” where your allowed the privilege of looking at your car, shading some driveway, and providing them free storage (at least until they call it home) without use. Talk about cruel and unusual.
Phil Washington, President Biden’s nominee to head the Federal Aviation Administration, apparently knows absolutely nothing about aviation. He is black, however, and the Biden Administration has made it quite clear that that feature, virtually all by itself, can make an individual fully qualified for difficult and important government positions without any other indicia of special competence. [See: Karine Jean-Pierre, Kamala Harris et al.] In his testimony before Congress last week, Washington did not exactly dazzle with his answers to questions related to America’s civil aviation system. Senator Ted Budd (R-NC) received these responses to seven questions about basic aviation (in baseball terms, Washington was 0 for 7):
Budd: “What airspace requires an ADS-B transponder?”
Washington: “Not sure I can answer that question right now.”
…
Budd: “What are the six types of special use airspace that…appear on FAA charts?”
Washington: “Sorry, senator, I cannot answer that question.”
…
Budd: “What are the operational limitations of a pilot flying under BasicMed?”
Washington: “Senator, I’m…not a pilot.”
Budd: “But, obviously you’d oversee the Federal Aviation Administration, so any idea what those restrictions are under BasicMed?”
Washington: “Well, some of the restrictions I think would be high blood pressure some of them would be…”
Budd: “It’s more like how many passengers per airplane, how many pounds, and different categories, and what altitude you can fly under, and amount of knots — it’s under 250 knots — so, it’s not having anything to do with blood pressure.”
…
Budd: “Can you tell me what causes an aircraft to spin or to stall?”
Washington: “Again, senator, I’m not a pilot.”
…
Budd: “What are the three aircraft certifications the FAA requires as part of the manufacturing process?”
Washington: “Again, what I would say to that is that one of my first priorities would be to fully implement that Certification Act and report…”
Budd: “You know the three types?”
Washington: “No.”
Budd: “That’s type certificate, production certificate, and airworthiness certificate. Let’s just keep going and see if we can get lucky here. Can you tell me what the minimum separation distance is for landing and departing airliners during the daytime?”
Washington: “I don’t want to guess on that, senator.”
…
Budd: “Are you familiar with the difference between Part 107 and Part 44809 when it comes to unmanned aerial standards?”
I have to remember to post this clip from Saturday Night Live every year at this time: the first Saturday in March. Every time I see it, I laugh…then I get sad, and finally I am furious.
Don’t tell me that drug abuse is a “victimless crime.”
Belushi was a once in a generation comic talent. As a director and writer (and occasional performer) of comedy, I immediately recognized his presence, technique, timing and physicality: he had a gift, and it should have been a gift to the world. He wasn’t political, or partisan, or mean. He was just brilliantly, creatively funny, with the rare opportunity to make millions laugh for decades, and to keep the world a happier place. John Belushi sqaundered that gift with his stupid, selfish, irresponsible love for drugs, encouraged and nourished by the smug pro-drug culture of the time, epitomized by Saturday Night Live, its Sixties-rooted sensibilities and its smug, elitist writers and performers.
Their irresponsible—but effective!—cultural advocacy killed Belushi as surely as the drug overdose that ended his life. He himself is primarily responsible, of course, but the culture that created, encouraged and applauded his obsessions and addictions share much of the blame. It won, of course. On the way, that culture robbed us of the potential joy we might have derived from Belushi, Prince, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Brad Renfro, River Phoenix, Tom Petty, Brittany Murphy, Jim Morrison, Heath Ledger, Janis Joplin, Whitney Houston and so many more.
From the New York Post: “Notified of the botched road sign Sunday, red-faced New York City DOT officials said the gaffe would be fixed “immediately.” That’s the real problem: they had to be “notified” of the problem.
The sign, which hangs at Myrtle Avenue and Forest Park Drive in Queens, speaks eloquently of so much that is wrong in American society…and especially New York…that it should be allowed to remain, as Paul Newman says of the smoldering ruin at the end of “The Towering Inferno,” as “kind of a shrine to all the bullshit in the world.”
Reactions of locals covered most of the bases, as Jackie might say:
Quana Martin, 32, said, “How do you not know how to spell his name? He’s a well-known figure.” Oh, I wouldn’t be so sure of that, Quana. Cultural literacy is on the wane. In fact, all forms of literacy are…
Queens teen JP Ward: “It’s fucking stupid. I wouldn’t say it’s disrespectful, but it’s definitely stupid.” Indeed. Hence the designation of our tiles as “The Great Stupid’!
City Councilman Robert Holden: “You don’t have a few eyes looking at these signs? DOT is a mess.” It is not only the New York Department of Transportation that operates like this, though. How many people saw this sign, shrugged, and decided it wasn’t their problem even if they noticed the spelling mistake? This is the work ethic, or lack of it, suffocating American productivity and lowering the quality of life. How many of those in the chain of custody had “quietly quit”?
“That’s just government,” Queens waitress Aurora Terranova said. “Most of the time shit just goes wrong because of stupidity or oversightedness.” Bingo! Now ask Aurora what party she routinely votes for, and why she thinks government can and should solve her problems.
And all these years, I’ve been embarrassed by the “Wafle House” sign a few blocks from our house…
In her post about how US. World and News Report is accusing law schools opting out of its yearly rankings of de-emphasizing test scores and grades to prepare for an end-around the likely SCOTUS ban on affirmative action, retired law professor and usually Smart Person Ann Althouse writes,
“If law schools can’t directly take race into account, why would they make an adjustment that puts less emphasis on test scores and grades?”
Huh. That’s a real puzzler!
I haven’t read the comments, but I assume they enlighten her about this impenetrable mystery.
I’m seriously thinking about developing a cell phone users code of ethics. If so, I’ll need some help. I have a file on the topic, but I don’t use a smartphone or cell phone myself at all if I’m not traveling, so I’m sure there are many obnoxious practices that haven’t occurred to me.
Yesterday it was raining icy drops in Alexandria, and I had to run a quick—well, it should have been quick–errand. The 7-11 parking lot was packed, and three cars came into the lot right behind me, waiting for someone to leave. A patron of the convenience store came out and got in his SUV almost immediately, his tail lights came on, and…nothing. All of us waited, and waited. He wouldn’t pull out and vacate the space. I knew what he was doing: staring at a little lighted screen. (I confirmed it later when another car finally left the lot and I could park.) Asshole.
1. Only six years too late.Hallelujah! Kellyanne Conway and her mega-jerk husband George are finally getting divorced. A spouse who not only interferes with his partner’s job as George Conway did but also uses his connection to his partner to gain publicity and influence while attacking her employer is contemptible. I still don’t understand why President Trump allowed it, and Kellyanne was irresponsible, disloyal and incompetent for not putting a stop to it.
2. A harbinger of things to come. Austin, Texas has over 300 vacancies looming in the police department, with 77 officers expected to retire before the end of March to go with 264 existing vacancies, according to the Austin Police Association. The reason should be apparent to all: the outright hostility toward police emanating from Austin’s overwhelmingly woke wesidents, sorry, residents. The Austin Police Department is so understaffed, 911 calls are being redirected to the 311 non-emergency number “If you come home and find your home burglarized, calls like that are now going to 311,” said police union president Thomas Villarreal. “You’re not getting a police response to many property crimes if it’s not a violent crime that is currently ongoing.”
Ethics Alarms 