Some follow-up items before we get to the real stuff:

• I have two more parking lots to report on as I seek evidence on why parking head-first is the most ethical procedure. In my Harris Teeter’s underground garage, notorious for its narrow spaces, the count yesterday was 73 straight in and just 8 back first. Yet the only space available for me involved getting into a tight spaces with a “Backie” on my left and a “Frontie” on my right. For some reason, debaters on this post didn’t seem to see why this is a problem. My answer: try it. If you get close enough to the properly parking car on the right to have room to get out on the left it is impossible to allow the obnoxious “Backie” driver on the left to have a shot at getting into his car if he weighs 280 pounds while not beating MY door full of dings—and I have to squeeze through a barely opened door to get out myself without dinging his car. In my wife’s doctor’s medical building parking lot this morning, it was much closer 22 back-ins to 42 straight ins. But 1) the lot was only half full and 2) it has much wider spaces.
• I swear I’ll finish the count-down to determining Joe Biden’s competition for Worst President Ever. The last segment was issued in August. I think I can do it a single post; I’m sorry this has dragged out. Yesterday I heard an old stand-up routine by David Cross (who can be clever, but he’s a dick) arguing that George W. Bush was the worst President, and he began by saying that GII was even worse than “Millard Fillmore and James K. Polk.” That statement is a tell: he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Millard wasn’t bad at all, especially for  Vice-President who had to take over, and Polk was arguably a great President, and the best one term POTUS ever. If you think Polk was bad, I don’t really care what your Presidential ranking is. You’re ignorant, and so is anyone who laughs at your critiques. I bet 90% of his crowd couldn’t pick Polk out of a line-up.
• My Trump-Deranged, Wuhanphobic but otherwise reasonable Democrat sister, expressing disgust with the Biden classified document scandal, said that she hoped somehow both Trump and Biden could be convicted of crimes sufficiently serious to make them ineligible to run in 2024. I told her that there is no such crime, but that I would gladly take that trade, and so would a lot of people in both parties.

1. I’m sure it’s just a coincidence. The interim superintendent of Loudoun County schools announced that at least three high schools, Potomac Falls, Freedom, and Loudoun County, did not tell students they had received the National Merit Scholarship awards.That is now a total of six Virginia high schools that prevented deserving students from notifying colleges of their honors in early-admission applications. The official line is that it was a one-time mistake….that just happened to occur in six Northern Virginia high schools at the same time, all overseen by an “equity consultant” whose stated objective is “equal outcomes” for all students regardless of performance. Glenn Reynolds’ rueful comment ends with a quote from “War Games:

You want to live in an area with the “best” public schools, but nowadays those schools are so woke that they sabotage your kids’ college chances in the name of “equity.” And then, even if those schools get your kid into a prestigious college, employers won’t want to know about it, also in the name of equity? And diversity consultants say to hire people without degrees anyway to promote diversity. What a strange game. The only way to win is not to play.

2. Speaker McCarthy fails an integrity check. (Of course he does.) There are calls for Rep. George Santos–you know, the fake Congressman— to resign coming from the New York delegation of Republican members of Congress and state party officials. But at a news conference yesterday, McCarthy said that he had no intention of barring Santos from congressional committees or penalizing him for winning election under false pretenses. “The voters of his district have elected him,” Mr. McCarthy said. “He is seated. He is part of the Republican conference.”

That’s unethical and disgusting.

Continue reading →

Dilemma: the warm-ups and their equivalents take more time to prepare and post than regular, single topic posts, and usually generate less traffic. Yet without them, EA would fall hopelessly short of covering as many interesting and relevant ethics topics as they arise. The suggestions from readers (that’s jamproethics@verizon.net, folks!) help a lot. Dribs and drabs to get ME warmed up…

• Once again, a kamakazi jogger charged silently out of the darkness right at Spuds and me, requiring me to yank my dog back with all my weight to protect the fool from a lunge by a 70-pound pit bull mix. I initially said, “Sorry, didn’t see you,” thought better of it, and called after him, “LIGHTS, asshole!” It’s amazing how frank one can be with a large dog at the ready…
• Speaking of pit bulls, Sadie Davila, 7, died after she was attacked by a neighbor’s pit bull in Baton Rouge last week. The articles have been, as usual, filled with the false stats about the “breed” (actually at least four distinct breeds) spread by the despicable and destructive Dogsbite.com. This time, at least, the dog really was an American Pit Bull Terrier based on the photo: I check these things, and often the alleged “pit bull” is something else, accounting for the inflated statistics. The owner is under arrest, because he let the dog roam free. I’m just guessing what kind of treatment, care and training this dog got from an owner that irresponsible: this is another factor in the large number of pit bull attacks. It’s the dog of choice for irresponsible people who should never be trusted with a Yorkie, never mind a larger breed,
• Neil Dorr was kind enough to pass along this funny piece in the Hill. Now Biden and Co. are swearing that nobody ever, ever considered banning gas stoves. This is because to outpouring of anger from more than one side of the political spectrum was so vociferous after CPSC commissioner Richard Trumka Jr.  said that a forthcoming information request from the committee might be “the first step in what could be a long journey toward regulating gas stoves,” as The Hill reported at the time and that said that an outright ban was “a real possibility.” An honest, trustworthy government would just say after the public reaction to this (lead) trial balloon, “Well, the public has spoken, so we will cease any efforts to limit the use of gas ovens.” But no. Instead, this administration acts as if the news media made the whole thing up.

1. See the Washington Post spin. Spin spin, Post! Ace of Spades has a rueful and deft take-down of the Washington Post’s Dervish-like coverage of a new study that concludes that  “Russian influence operations on Twitter in the 2016 presidential election reached relatively few users, most of whom were highly partisan Republicans, and the Russian accounts had no measurable impact in changing minds or influencing voter behavior.”  “But the study doesn’t go so far as to say that Russia had no influence on people who voted for President Donald Trump” writes the Post. Ace: “Oh, it doesn’t say there was zero influence, so let’s assume we’re still Basically Right.” The Post, as we all know, was one of the leaders of the “Trump had Russia steal the election from Hillary” narrative. The Post: “It doesn’t examine other social media, like the much-larger Facebook….” Ace: “Where Russian-affiliated companies spent a staggering One Hundred and Fifty Thousand Dollars on ads.” The Post: “Nor does it address Russian hack-and-leak operations….” Ace: “Like the Hunter Biden laptop…The article keeps bringing up “hack-and-leak operations.” Let’s be clear about what happened there: Hillary Clinton and the DNC rigged the primary against Bernie Sanders, and leakers exposed this fact. That wasn’t a lie. That wasn’t “Russian Disinformation.” That really happened. The leakers just revealed the truth which Hillary Clinton, the DNC, and her Media Mafia wished to conceal.” Continue reading →