The headline above, courtesy of BuzzFeed, one of the minor members of the Democrat/”resistance”/ media collective currently dedicated to spreading misinformation to undermine the President’s leadership during a major crisis, alerts us to just how low these people—I say “these people” because they are not like me and hopefully not like you—will stoop for their political agenda.
That deceptive description is not a fair or accurate description of what happened. This is…. Continue reading
Incredibly, reporters asked President Trump multiple times yesterday to account for a rumor that one of his aides had referred to the Wuhan virus, aka “Century 21”, or something like that, as the “Kung Fu Flu.” (Heh. )
A. It isn’t “racist” if someone, or many people, did use the quip, and B. Why is that even worthy of discussion? I may be wrong, but as the news media’s efforts to use Big Lies to impugn the President are based on slimmer and more trivial excuses, I expect the majority of the public to eventually figure out what’s going on.
Axios just released a time line, based in part on a new study of how the virus took hold in China. It introduces its work this way:
Axios has compiled a timeline of the earliest weeks of the coronavirus outbreak in China, highlighting when the cover-up started and ended — and showing how, during that time, the virus already started spreading around the world, including to the United States.
Why it matters: A study published in March indicated that if Chinese authorities had acted three weeks earlier than they did, the number of coronavirus cases could have been reduced by 95% and its geographic spread limited.
This timeline, compiled from information reported by the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the South China Morning Post and other sources, shows that China’s cover-up and the delay in serious measures to contain the virus lasted about three weeks.
The study, by Southhampton University, is here.
The information indicates clearly that China is accountable. China is responsible for the severity of the pandemic. China deserves to have that responsibility recognized, and those trying to use race-baiting and linguistic stunts to assist in the cover-up are assisting a brutal totalitarian regime. Those who are doing this out of animus for the President are beneath contempt.
No, China should not be asked to pay reparations for its unfortunate role in the crisis, though a recent poll asserts that 42 percent of Americans “feel that China should pay at least some of the world’s coronavirus bills.” This kind of disaster could happen to any nation, though, as you can see in the chart above, it keeps happening to China. It is more likely to happen in a nation like China, that obstructs the free flow of information. It still didn’t intend to infect the world.
I assume.
However, China should accept responsibility, as well as the shame of having a pandemic named after a Chinese starting point.
The anti-abortion film “Unplanned” was honored with three nominations for the 28th Annual MovieGuide awards that aired on February 24 on the Hallmark Drama cable channel. “Unplanned,” written and directed by Chuck Kozelman and Carey Solomon, tells the true story of Abby Johnson’s transformation from director of a Planned Parenthood abortion facility to a full-time pro-life advocate.The film’s star Ashley Bratcher was nominated for the Grace Award for Most Inspiring performance; “Unplanned” was up for the Faith & Freedom Award, and had a nomination in the “Best Movies for Mature Audiences” category. Nevertheless, every mention of the movie was cut from the pre-recorded televised show. The nominees from “Unplanned” were the only nominees eliminated from the broadcast.
Dr. Ted Baehr, the founder and publisher of MovieGuide, which hosted the awards, admitted that it was his organization that edited the movie out of the nominees listing, not Hallmark, which, he said, only broadcast the show. His asinine excuse was that “some” in his organization felt “Unplanned” should not have been nominated for awards. Does that make any sense at all? If the Oscars left an entire film and its nominees out of the awards broadcast, would anyone accept the excuse that it was done because “some people” didn’t agree with the nominations? Continue reading
Time for Gordon MacRae again. It’s been a while…
1. The mark of a poor loser. No doubt about it, the Democratic Party losers are terrible at that accountability thing. Now it’s Bernie Sanders. Before him, Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris and Amy Klobuchar blamed sexism for their own inadequacies; Harris and Cory Booker blamed racism. Sanders has all sorts of villains, anything to avoid admitting that he and his campaign have been talking irresponsible, undemocratic nonsense for months, indeed years…
Maybe this is Presidential conduct now. Obama blamed everything he could on President Bush, and his followers blamed every critique on racism. President Trump is hardly any better at accepting accountability. The all-time winner, or rather all-time loser who beats them all at blaming others for losing is Hillary Clinton.
Perhaps the single most persuasive reason to leave up all those Robert E. Lee statues and memorials is to remind current leaders and future generations of the general who, as his battered, bleeding and defeated troops returned from the field of battle after Pickett’s Charge, one of the worst debacles in U.S. military history, met them saying, “It was all my fault.”
I could respect a leader like that. Are there any?
The “corporate media” bit also is annoying. A Facebook friend, mainstream media bias-denier used Bernie’s lament yesterday to mount a false dichotomy, saying that conservatives blame left-wing media bias while the Left blames the “corporate media.” Sanders indeed received negative coverage, but not because “the corporate media” fears his brand of social justice. The progressive mainstream media is desperate to defeat Trump, and to preserve the Democratic Party, and any idiot can see that running a pro-Castro, Soviet Union rationalizing Marxist would be toxic to both objectives. Even running a deteriorating dementia victim is a better bet, though not an especially good one. Fox News loved the idea of Bernie running against President Trump.
2. The mark of a coward. Sanders declined to address his disheartened supporters last night after Joe Biden pretty much ended his hopes of prevailing at the Democratic National Convention by winning decisive primary victories. Before the results were called for the Western states of North Dakota, Idaho, and Washington, the Sanders campaign announced that Bernie would not be addressing his supporters that evening. Continue reading
This is “extreme free-birthing“…doing it all alone. Not recommended.
I love it when a new commenter makes an entrance with a Comment of the Day, and that’s what Megan did in response to last week’s post about the credulous mother-to-be who placed inordinate trust in the opinions of amateurs and well-meaning activists with tragic results.
Here’s the way the poll on that story has turned out; polling closes in a week, so if you haven’t voted, time is running out:
Frequently first time visitors with especially impressive debut comments are only interested in a single issue, and go recede into the mists of anonymity from which they came, never to be heard from again. I hope that isn’t the case with Megan.
Here is her Comment of the Day on the post, “Who Killed Judith’s Baby?”
Enigmatic commenter Extradimensional Cephalopod (that’s not him in the picture, just a relative) returned to Ethics Alarms after an unexplained absence (though who knows how time passes in his dimension) to provide one of several excellent observations on the post and poll about “Judith,” the expectant mother whose faith in a “freebirthing” cult cost her unborn child his life. The comments of Tim LeVier, Humble Talent, JutGory, and Mrs. Q, among others, were all Comment of the Day worthy, but for now, I’m going to award EC the prize.
Here is the current state of the poll…
…and here is Extradimensional Cephalopod’s Comment of the Day on “Who Killed Judith’s Baby?”
First off, I’m grateful for all the nuanced and well-considered opinions here. I can always count on getting reasonably well-balanced information about human society from people’s experiences here, and the encouragement that reasonable people are not alone–just not yet organized.
The poll didn’t let me vote multiple times, but I’m tempted to select “all of the above,” in the sense that “responsible” can mean “contributing to the problem and needing to change.” For “primarily responsible,” I’m obligated to go with “Judith,” since she is presumed to have ultimate decision-making authority in this case.
That survey question by the National Partnership for Women & Families spins so hypnotically, I’d like to take it off its axle.
“Giving birth is a natural process that should not be interfered with unless absolutely medically necessary.” Who wouldn’t agree to that?
1. Yes, giving birth is objectively and literally a natural process, in that humans didn’t deliberately design it. (Although I wouldn’t put it past them to have done so under a tight budget of time and money. I’ve supported software rollouts that were just as awkward and painful.)
However, stating something to be “a natural process” in so many words implies on an emotional level that it is by default perfectly healthy and should remain purely natural, which is an appeal to nature fallacy. “Cancer is a natural process.” “Epidemics are a natural process.” “Hurricanes are a natural process.” There are plenty of natural things that I am very grateful civilization has altered or wants to alter using technology. Continue reading
This is a terrible and tragic story, but I don’t want to focus on that. I want to focus on accountability.
NBC tells the true story (I assume it is true, exactly why, I don’t know, since this is NBC. It’s not related to politics, I guess.) of “Judith” who worked at a flower shop. On her long daily drive to work and back, she listened to podcasts, and when she got pregnant, she listened to “The Birth Hour” and “Indie Birth,” podcasts about childbirth stories, which ranged from hospital to home births.The “Free Birth Podcast” excited her particularly.
The podcaster is Emilee Saldaya, a Los Angeles freebirth advocate and founder of the Free Birth Society that has 46,000 followers on Instagram. The podcast promotes the experiences of women who give birh without assistance, in bathtubs, fields, or in their own beds, surrounded by their partners loved ones. Doctors were not welcome.
Judith listened to around 70 episodes, some multiple times. A particular favorite was an interview with a woman who had given birth by candlelight in a yurt in the California mountains with only her husband and her dog she called her a “midwolf.”
I’m having a flashback to 1967.
The podcasts began with advertisements for the Free Birth Society’s online courses and private consultations; this is often the tell-tale sign of a cult. Judith dutifully paid $299 for the group’s 10-module video guide on how to freebirth babies at home. None of the “experts” and “consultants” the group sponsored have medical credentials or experience; that’s the point. Judith didn’t like doctors, so she was a vulnerable target for the group’s message, which emphasized that hospitals were scary places, and hospital births were full of trauma for mother and child.
NBC reports that distrust of the medical profession regarding childbirth is on the rise. A survey conducted by the National Partnership for Women & Families claims that while in 2002, 45 percent of mothers surveyed agreed that “giving birth is a natural process that should not be interfered with unless absolutely medically necessary, the number had increased to 74% by 2018.
Could this possibly be accurate? When did giving birth by squatting and biting on a stick become cool again?
When she got past to her due date and Judith’s pregnancy approached its tenth month, she relied on the Free Birth Society course’s episode on “long pregnancies” for guidance. That podcast warned against inducing a pregnancy, a process it referred to as “eviction from the womb.” It insisted that the idea that “babies must be born before 42 weeks is nonsense.”
Judith had her amniotic fluid checked at a local hospital, and though there were no causes for alarm, a doctor thee urged her to schedule an induction. She made the appointment, but canceled it the next day. She sought, NBC says, a second opinion on Facebook. “43+1 today, politely declining hospital induction. They think I’m crazy,” Judith posted on Ten Month Mamas in January 2019. “I really feel like this baby wants a home birth too but we are definitely being tested. What would you mamas do?” Hundreds of comments supported her desire for a home-based freebirth.
No one told her she should do what the doctor had advised, and there was a reason for that. Several of the groups had rules forbidding members from suggesting that another member resort to a doctor or a midwife. “Unassisted Pregnancy & Childbirth,” for example, instructed its 4,600 members,
“This means we don’t want to hear about the tests your midwife wants you to take, or how your OB thinks baby is breech or ‘too big’ or whatever other shit they say. Just don’t. This is not the place. No induction discussion. We do not advocate for induction of any kind, as no induction is natural.”
Egged on by Facebook extremists, Judith told NBC that she became determined resolved to freebirth alone, “no matter what.”
When the day she had decided to freebirth arrived, Judith “walked and danced for hours through contractions and floated in a pool that her husband filled with water.” She listened to music as a friend massaged her back. She took short naps between contractions…everything she had learned from the podcasts. But the pain increased and the breaks between contractions shortened. After 10 hours of labor, Judith started vomiting. The contractions were coming too fast and violently for her to monitor the baby’s heart rate with the fetal stethoscope she had bought. Her water broke, and there was dark brown in it, fecal matter that would kill the baby if it was inhaled. Her husband drove her to the hospital, doubled up in pain. Once there, Judith got the medical assistance she had vowed to avoid, but too late. Her baby was dead.
Stipulated: This should not have happened.
Who’s primarily responsible? For this poll, I’m going to allow multiple voting, because I don’t think there is a single answer.
This is a new 38B, requiring the old one, Joe Biden’s Inoculation or “I don’t deny that I do this!”, to be relabeled 38C. I was tempted to call it “The Lost Rationalization,” because while Ethics Alarms has frequently rejected the argument that he, she or they have “suffered enough,” and even called it a rationalization, it never made its way onto the Rationalizations List.
“He’s suffered enough” is a very close relative of #38 A.“Mercy For Miscreants”:
The theory behind this sub-rationalization is that it is only fair to assign a criticism quota to groups and individuals: at a certain point, no more criticism is allowed, because nobody should have to be criticized that much. It is so darn mean to keep heaping abuse on someone, even if they deserve it.
But while 38 A focuses on criticism, 38 B is about limiting punishment. The “he’s suffered enough” rationalization has arisen most notably in the tragic cases where a parent has negligently allowed an infant or small child to perish in a locked car. Local prosecution of such individuals is strikingly inconsistent, and when no legal consequences follow, the justification is usually Rationalization 38 B.
What I wrote the first time I analyzed these cases, in the 2010 post Ethics, Punishment and the Dead Child in the Back Seat thatI also quoted extensively here, encompassed a thorough description of the rationalization. (I also re-posted yet another essay on this topic from 2014 just last July).
Upon checking, I discovered that in yet another post from 2012, I referred to “he’s suffered enough” as a common rationalization without putting it in the list. Reviewing that post and the earlier one, I have arrived at this description of the latest rationalization. Continue reading
Once again, the accountability concept is eluding Democrats.
Joe Biden is many things, few of them admirable, though he has been bolstered by either gullible or complicit journalism for decades, He is not, however, responsible for the gruesome state of the current Democratic Presidential field, nor is it Joe’s fault that Democrats are facing the prospect another defeat at the hands of Donald Trump, this one worse than the first.
In the wake of the impending collapse of Biden’s campaign, accelerated by his embarrassing showing in New Hampshire, the memo has already gone out, it seems, recruiting pundits and others to blame Joe for the current mess.
Jonathan Chait has always been one of the less impressive progressive mouthpieces in the news media, with “think pieces” that seldom show much quality thought and advocacy skills that would fail a First Year law student moot court competition. Chait was in typical form, which is to say “poor,” with this essay titled “Biden’s Campaign Was a Disaster For Liberalism and the Democratic Party,” which concludes,
Right. It’s Joe’s fault. The fact that the Democrats tossed away all the traditions of minimal cross- party comity and attempted a never-ending coup for President Trump’s entire term: that’s on Joe. The fact that three anti-Jewish, anti-American, far, far Left women prone to saying vulgar, stupid and bigoted things, handicapped by varied ethical problems have become prominent symbols of the Democratic Party: Biden’s fault. That the Dracula-like romance between disaffected members of the Left coalition and government dominance over the economy and personal liberties has once again risen from the dead…it’s that damn Biden again! The contrived impeachment was botched so badly that it made the President more popular rather then less? That’s Joe’s doing too. Continue reading
Way, way too much ethics-related politics this past week. I keep getting complaints about all the political content, and it annoys me too, but I don’t know what kind of alternatives I have. Back in the sane days, the idea of a House Speaker planning on tearing up the official copy of the State of the Union speech would have been the stuff of Saturday Night Live…when SNL would make fun of Democrats, anyway. I’m trying to keep the politics to a minimum. I swear.
1. The Astros cheating scandal, cont. Would you wonder about this answer? A.J. Hinch, the ex-Houston Astros manager who was fired and suspended by Major League Baseball for allowing an illegal sign-stealing scheme to be used by his players for the entire 2017 World Champion Astros season, finally sat down for an interview. When he was asked whether Houston players had utilized buzzers in their uniforms to receive signsduring the 2019 season as some have claimed based on inconclusive evidence and rumors, Hinch only would answer, “The Commissioner’s Office did as thorough of an investigation as anyone could imagine was possible.”
Why not “No”? That was what reporters term a “non-denial denial.”
2. If they advised her to run her sick child through the washing machine and he drowned, would that be their fault too? The death of a four-year-old boy named Najee is being blamed on an anti-vaxx Facebook group.
The boy had been diagnosed with the flu and the doctor had prescribed Tamiflu. His mother sought advice from the Facebook group “Stop Mandatory Vaccination” on how to treat her son’s’ illness. The members told her to give the boy vitamins, botanicals, zinc, fruits and vegetables, and to skip the medicine.
“Ok perfect I’ll try that,” she responded. Later that night, Najee had a seizure and died. Continue reading
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