The Quest For The Perfect IIPTDXTTNMIAFB Continues, And Joe May Have Given Us A Winner!

/ Jack Marshall / 76 Comments

The issue is mainstream news media double standards, which are unethical in general and especially revolting in the news media’s protective stance toward President Biden no matter how badly he screws up in contrast to its coverage of Donald Trump, who could literally do no right in their jaundiced eyes. Yesterday Biden handed the news media a flaming IIPTDXTTNMIAFB, the convenient Ethics Alarms initials for “Imagine if President Trump did X that the news media is accepting from Biden.”

One of the most damaging and despicable Big Lies pushed relentlessly by the “resistance”/Democratic Party/ MSM alliance from the moment Trump was elected in 2016 was that he was a racist. If you asked an adherent of this slander to name any evidence, the “best” they could come up with was inevitably that Trump had vocally embraced the Birther smear about Barack Obama. But this only stands as proof that Trump is an asshole and a troll, about which there has never been any doubt. He made similar claims about Ted Cruz in order to derail his efforts to beat Trump for the 2016 GOP nomination. Trump plays dirty against all rivals. He’s an equal opportunity jerk, but he’s not a racist (or a white supremacist, a related Big Lie).

But the idea of planting these idea was “priming”: make sure “Trump is a racist” is sitting around rotting in the brains of gullible Americans, and let confirmation bias do the rest. So imagine if Trump had ever looked out over a Fort Worth, Texas, crowd at a VA clinic, and, referring to three Texas members of Congress who looked like Rep. Colin Allred (D), Rep. Marc Veasey (D), and Rep. Jake Ellzey (R) (above) who were in attendance, said,

“The three congressman you have here, two of them look like they really could and did play ball, and the other one looks like he can bomb you.”

Continue reading →

Signature Significance: If You Say What GOP Michigan House Candidate Robert Regan Said Even Once, You Are Not Fit To Hold Elected Office

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

What did Regan say while engaging in a discussion via live stream regarding Donald Trump’s claims that the 2020 election was “stolen?”

Get this:

“I tell my daughters, ‘Well, if rape is inevitable, you should just lie back and enjoy it.’ ”

Moron. Sexist moron. Sexist moron who hasn’t been paying attention for his entire life. Saying this was enough to get any male candidate defeated thirty years ago!

Not surprisingly, Regan, who is, or was favored to win the Michigan’s District 74 seat in the state legislature, said other incredibly stupid things during the same program; they just weren’t as offensive. In the discussion hosted by the Rescue Michigan Coalition, a pro-Trump group, he also suggested that the 202o election could be “decertified” and that Trump would regain the Presidency. “We do want to decertify this election and we do want it returned to the rightful owner, just like if someone stole your car or stole your jewelry,” Regan said. “It goes back to the rightful owner. You decertify and you give it to the rightful owner, and that’s Donald Trump, and that’s what I’m pushing for and we’re going full-bore on that.”

Continue reading →

A Jumbo For The United Nations!

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

“War? What war?”

The United Nations’ Department of Global Communications sent an email instructing its staff  not to the war currently raging in Ukraine as the result of Putin’s illegal and murderous armed invasion as either a war or an invasion.

Instead, they were told to use the descriptions “big misunderstanding” or “rod trip gone horribly wrong.” Okay, that’s not true. But the first part is.

Like Jimmy Durante in the Broadway musical “Jumbo,” whose answer to a sheriff confronting him trying to sneak out of a circus with biggest elephant in the world on the end of his rope with the question, “Where do you think you’re going with that elephant?” and replied, “Elephant? What elephant?,” the United Nations has scaled the heights of audacious dishonesty. Jimmy’s line, however, was a joke. The U.N.’s version is a self-indictment. Continue reading →

Serious Question: What Kind Of Person Would Want Someone To Be U.S. President Who Would Consider Something Like This…

/ Jack Marshall / 172 Comments

…never mind say it out loud?

During a speech to donors in New Orleans, Louisiana a few days ago, Donald Trump actually, really, honest-to-goodness said that maybe the U.S. could trick Moscow and Beijing into fighting each other by disguising its F-22 fighter jets with Chinese flags “and bomb the shit out” out of Russia! “And then we say, China did it, we didn’t do, China did it, and then they start fighting with each other and we sit back and watch.”

Oooh, good plan!

Continue reading →

And If Ethics Were Factored Into The University Rankings, Columbia Would REALLY Be In Trouble!

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

Let’s dispense with an obvious myth right at the outset: rankings of American universities, colleges, law schools and the rest  are garbage, and always have been. The criteria is subjective, the weighting is subjective, the scores and numbers are a witch’s brew, and who know what kinds of lobbying and other means of persuasion go into the determinations of the likes of U.S. News Report? Nevertheless, schools use these bogus things to entice applications and alumni donations, and they work….because people believe what they want to believe.

Columbia, generally regarded as a second-tier Ivy League university, has risen from 18th place in 1988, to a stunning 2nd place  this year, with only Princeton and, Harvard and MIT ahead of it. THAT should swell the endowment! However, an ethical (and luckily for him, tenured) professor of mathematics, Michael Thaddeus exposed his own university’s skulduggery in rigging its ranking. Continue reading →

Morning Ethics Warm-Up, 3/8/2022: Rights, Loot, Fraud, “Boom,” Lynching and Wuhan-Madness

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

1. The U.S. Supreme Court refused to review the decision overturning Bill Cosby’s rape conviction in Pennsylvania. Good. The appeal was on the verge of being frivolous. Cosby was and is guilty as sin and a monster, but even monsters have constitutional rights, and prosecutors violated his. The public has been badly informed regarding this case and the due process rights involved, and the prosecutors who appealed the results of their own botch don’t help with statements like this one from Montgomery County district attorney, Kevin R. Steele, who said in a statement regarding the case, “All crime victims deserve to be heard, treated with respect and be supported through their day in court.”

That’s deliberate obfuscation and #MeToo pandering. Cosby’s argument for being released had nothing to do with his victims at all.

2. There is hope! One ethical trend that has reversed centuries of Western apathy and arrogance over looted treasures from less affluent countries is the grudging acknowledgement that these artifacts were stolen, and that there is an ethical imperative to return them. The latest example of late justice is the 55 antiquities returned to Greece by the Manhattan district attorney’s office last month. The Elgin Marbles still are trapped in the British Museum, but there is real progress. Greece may get them back yet. Continue reading →

Michael West’s Alamo Diary Concludes…

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

On this date in 1836, the Battle of the Alamo and the courageous 12 day stand that preceded it began its journey into memory. The day before, March 6, near dawn, saw the fortress fall in a bloody but hopeless battle in which the Texans were overwhelmed in less than an hour.

Here is Texan and Ethics Alarms stalwart Michael West’s account of the final days, March 5 and March 6:

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% Continue reading →

Ethics Quote Of The Week: Actor Tim Considine (1940-2022)

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

“Thank God there’s no justice in this world.”

Disney and “My Three Sons” actor Tim Considine, who died last week at age 82, in an interview quoted in his New York Times obituary.

Considine was referring to his success and rich experiences in life, which he felt were relatively undeserved. He did not regard himself as especially talented or ambitious.

The more I ponder his statement, the more profound I think it is. Understanding that there is no justice in the world is a necessary predicate for committing to an ethical life for the right reasons. Society needs as many people as possible striving to be good, having their lives exert a net benefit on others, and being exemplars of ethical values as often as they can. These habits and objectives must be committed to while fully understanding that they only collectively and on balance result in desirable results, and sometimes not even that. Continue reading →

Looking Back: The Ethics Alarms Monday Retrospective

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

I’ve been considering this feature for a long time, and it seems like as good a time as any to try it out..

There are nearly 30 Ethics Alarms posts in an average week, and when one throws in the four or five issues covered in the warm-ups and their equivalents, that adds another 30 or so topics to the mix. I even get complaints from readers that there is too much content here, particularly if a reader, having a life, skips a day or two. In this feature, I will make my selections of what I consider to be the five most valuable posts of the previous seven days, with the comment threads taken into consideration.

Here are my top five picks from last week:

Continue reading →

Has “The Great Stupid” Reached Its Zenith With Anti-Putin French Fries With Cheese Curds And Gravy Sanctions?

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments

I really thought punishing Russian cats to show solidarity with Ukraine was as ridiculous as anti-Putin virtue-signaling mania could get. I was wrong. I stupidly forgot Heinlein’s Law: “Never underestimate the power of human stupidity.”

It is time to officially declare “The Great Stupid” a world-wide pandemic. Woodrow Wilson set the Spanish Flu against the world by sending infected doughboys out to fight in a pointless European war, and now social media combined with Americans’ narcissism and addiction to serial pandering “in these difficult times” has done it again.

Poutine, a strange gloppy dish popular among some in France and Canada, is being pulled from some restaurants in those countries to protest Russia’s invasion. In French, the word for the french fries, cheese curd and gravy recipe, from the French-Canadian pronunciation of the English word “pudding,” is pronounced like the Russian dictator’s name. That’s close enough to justify, in the “minds” of some protesters, punishing the food and its fans.

Removing poutine from menus, it is safe to say, will have as much effect on Putin’s conduct as President Biden slashing U.S. oil production will have on the course of climate change. It’s that stupid.

The move did at least spawn a good formulaic joke on Twitter, as one wag wrote, “Please stop confusing Putin and poutine. One is a dangerous and unwholesome mix of greasy, lumpy and congealed ingredients, the other is a delicious food.”*

_________________________

Pointer: Curmie

  • [I’ve eaten poutine. There’s a reason it hasn’t caught on in the United States.]