George Floyd Ethics Train Wreck

How Can We “Trust The Science” When It’s Distorted By Activist Scientists? Audubon’s Bird Scam

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

How? We can’t. Next?

The National Audubon Society, the famous non-profit dedicated to the conservation of birds and their habitats, wants to make the U.S. “bird safe” by shaming homeowners into “turn[ing] off unnecessary lights at night” and “clos[ing] blinds, [and] curtains,” along with other precautionary measures. Businesses should install bird-safe glass, for example, which has patterns that make it more visible to birds. This, the Audubon’s ornithologists claim, will save the lives of “up to a billion birds a year.” The group told WBAL-TV viewers in Baltimore that “lighting and reflectivity, specifically during migration for birds, is a really dangerous problem and kills up to one billion birds in North America per year.”

Sure. Advocacy groups love fake statistics, and this one screeches “Made-up!” like a bald eagle in heat. That “up to one billion” number is partially based on a 2014 abstract estimating that between “365 and 988 million birds” are killed annually by “building collisions” in the United States. Of course, since the objective isn’t to fairly communicate facts but to support the extreme positions of single-issue activists, the Society chose the highest estimate, already probably polluted by confirmation bias, and rounded up. The society used estimated bird collisions with walls to assess the deadliness of windows alone. In addition, the fake number mixed in ball park estimates that North America has lost 3 billion birds since 1970, and oh, let’s say a third of those died in “building collisions.” Yes, let’s.

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Ethics Dunce: Target (Again)

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

Morons.

Yesterday Target sent out a mass internal email (above) continuing the woke pandering that has already cost the company billions in stock losses. The posturing and now the doubling down makes no sense from a business perspective or an ethical perspective. The chain had to close over a hundred outlets last year: this is just management incompetence that endangers the jobs and livelihood of the same people the email is “thanking.”

Here’s the text, in case you have as bad reading vision as I do:

“Yesterday was a very hard day for Target, and as CEO Brian Cornell said, thank you for the care you’ve shown each other, our frontline teams, and the LGBTQIA+ community. Today brings more reflection, pain and the need for continued care as our team, hometown and world remember the murder of George Floyd. As you make space to take care of yourself and each other, know that you can always tap into these tools from Team Member LIfe Resources, and as Mental Health Awareness Month continues, turn to Take Five to Take Care hub for more wellbeing support.”

I wouldn’t personally boycott Target because it is promoting gonad-tucking bathing suits for mentally-ill men, but I might stop frequenting a store that wants to celebrate the George Floyd disaster as if it were the Alamo or The Maine. There was literally nothing good that came out of the Summer of Floyd. People died, communities set themselves up for more crime and violence by rejecting the police; rioting spread across the nation, the justice system was compromised by a jury allowed to deliberate despite prejudicial influences during the trial, and then apparently ignored the “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard to convict Derek Chauvin.

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And While We’re On The Subject Of Historical Airbrushing, THIS…

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

Minnesota, which has a lot of explaining to do after inflicting the George Floyd Freakout and The Great Stupid on the nation that have collectively killed thousands, devastated major cities, exacerbated racial tensions and divided public opinion almost to the breaking point, is apparently now trying to recast the whole mess as an act of God, or something.

Of course, if this is the plan, the news media will lead the way. In the above tweet, KARE , the Minneapolis NBC affiliate serving the Twin Cities area refers to the 2020 George Floyd riots that destroyed businesses and devastated large sections of Minneapolis as “the 2020 fires.”

David Strom had a trenchant observation regarding such “journalism” yesterday, noting that,

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Central Connecticut State University May Not Be Stanford, But Its Anti-Speech Mobs Are Exactly The Same

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Candace Owens’ documentary exposé on Black Lives Matter was released last Fall. “The Greatest Lie Ever Sold” also challenges the mainstream media narratives surrounding the death of George Floyd, so you will not be shocked–shocked!—to learn that it has received minimal attention from the news media. Discussing, never mind showing, the utter corruption of the cynical, racist movement that corporations, whole industries and major cities bowed down before in abject submission is a perfect excuse in for Woke World—-and that includes most journalists and editors—to metaphorically kill the messenger. I’m abashed to admit that I had never heard of the film before this week.

And so it came to pass that when The Daily Wire-produced documentary was screened at Central Connecticut State University (CCSU) earlier this month, the film was shut down by a Stanford Law-style student mob. Conservative Hollywood blogger Christian Toto quotes the account of a CCSU professor who related what happened when the film began to play on the screen:

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When Officials And Institutions Unethically Engage In Ideological Bullying

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

The news  was that former college soccer player Kiersten Hening could proceed in her First Amendment lawsuit against Virginia Tech soccer coach Charles “Chugger” Adair. [Full disclosure: I have a reflexive bias against anyone who sports the nickname “Chugger.”] She alleges that he benched her after subjecting her to a vicious dressing down in front of the team, for her refusal to support the Black Lives Matter-dictated kneeling gesture supported by him and most of her teammates in 2020. Hening and two teammates declined to kneel during the Atlantic Coast Conference’s Unity Statement, which was read on stadium loudspeakers prior to the season opener against the University of Virginia in September 2020. 

The court ruled that the lawsuit’s claims are worthy of being decided by a jury, declining a motion for summary judgment filed by the coach. Continue reading →

Presenting The Head-Exploding Left-Pandering Virtue-Signaling Of The Year!

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

There really needs to be some kind of societal consequences when virtue-signaling gets this sickening.

I suppose Major League Baseball still will win the prize for the most unethical and irresponsible virtue-signaling of the decade with its craven and ignorant abandonment of the 2021 All-Star Game in Atlanta because Stacey Abrams told them to (and later criticized MLB for doing exactly what she had advised). In that case, businesses were hurt, the city lost money and commerce, and there were real and substantial detrimental effects on innocent, normal citizens, and all because a bunch of millionaires want to protest a new voting law that they hadn’t bothered to read. OK, now I’m mad about that fiasco all over again, so no, The Oregonian’s vomit-inducing mea culpa to the world is an unethical virtue-signaling as that of Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred and his minions.

Nevertheless, the paper’s announcement from its Weally Woke editor Theresa Bottomly today is disgusting in a far more visceral way.

In a a special editorial called ‘I unreservedly apologize,’ Bottomly grovels an endless apology on behalf of her paper for…well, everything bad it hasn’t furiously opposed since its founding in 1861, and everything good it hasn’t promoted. Never mind that neither she (I assume, but she could be 150 years old I guess) nor anyone else connected with the paper were in a position to do any of the vast majority of what she’s apologizing for, she wants everyone to know that by not anticipating the natural and unavoidable evolution of cultural and societal values in the United States—an example of necromancy that would have exceeded the abilities of the Amazing Kreskin—the Portland paper was exactly as the Crazy Lady in “The Birds” pronounced Tippi Hedren in “The Birds”.”…

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Derek Chauvin Has Appealed His Conviction, And If The Justice System Has Any Integrity, He Should Win

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

Unfortunately, I doubt that the justice system today has such integrity when it involves racial issues.

The lawyers for Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer convicted of second-degree murder, third-degree murder, and second-degree manslaughter after his white knee appeared to be the proximate cause of black petty hood George Floyd in May 2020, have filed an appeal brief.

Let’s see, what have they got…

  • His lawyers argue that Chauvin never had a chance to receive a fair trial. Ya think? How could anyone claim otherwise?
  • They argued that the nationwide riots poisoned the jury pool. Yes, they did. How could they not?
  • The well-publicized threat that the rioting would resume and escalate Chauvin were found not guilty virtually guaranteed Chauvin’s conviction. Well, I know I assumed it would. Didn’t you? The brief argues that no circumstance could be “more prejudicial … than that of a juror discovering that the City he or she resides in is bracing for a riot … in the event the defendant on whose jury you sit is acquitted.”
  • The brief says that the news media and law enforcement tainted the proceedings by glorifying Floyd and demonizing Chauvin. That’s a fair description.

  • The brief  condemns the state’s expediting the legal process against Chauvin instead of permitting a “cooling period.” “It is not mere speculation to anticipate that allowing a longer, reasonable duration of time would allow the community to feel less of the pressure from fallout from the Floyd riots,” the brief states. That states the obvious. It is also obvious that Black Lives Matter, activists and anti-police groups wanted Chauvin’s head on a pike so they could claim a victory. (No one ever had produced any evidence that Floyd’s death arose from racial bias.)

  • The brief objects to the fact that juror Brandon Mitchell lied on the pre-trial jury questionnaire “regarding his views of the case and the extent of his activism.” Mitchell checked “No” when asked whether he had ever advocated for police reform or demonstrated “about police use of force or police brutality,” but Mitchell actively participated in at least one George Floyd-themed demonstration and was photographed wearing a t-shirt that read, “BLM : Get Your Knee Off Our Necks.” Mitchell says he “forgot.” Right.

I have no liking for Derek Chauvin, but he was railroaded and sacrificed to a national race freak-out. It was an outrageously unfair trial, and he deserves a new one. Unfortunately, that one will be unfair too, and if he were to be acquitted, naturally there would be riots.

KABOOM! There Goes My Head! A Convicted Murderer Is Admitted To Law School

/ Jack Marshall / 28 Comments

Just when I think The Great Stupid has reached peak stupid, there is a new high. I don’t see how society can get more stupid than this, but I now know that it will. You know in movies when someone says, “There’s no good way to say this, so I’m just going to say it”?

Here is as much of the announcement by Mitchel Hamline Law School, an institution I was mercifully unaware of until now, that I can re-post without gagging:

Mitchell Hamline School of Law will welcome Maureen Onyelobi into its juris doctor program this fall, making Mitchell Hamline the first ABA-approved law school in the country to educate currently incarcerated individuals.

It’s a moment nearly three years in the making as part of a collective effort by the Prison to Law Pipeline, a program of All Square and its newly formed subsidiary, the Legal Revolution. The effort aims to transform the law through initiatives that center racial equity, wellness, and the expertise of those most impacted by the law…

“Learning the law is a vital vehicle for freedom and lasting change in our community,” said Elizer Darris, chair of the board of the Legal Revolution. “Maureen’s acceptance is social proof that the time for change is now and the energy is here to change it.”

…“Mitchell Hamline has a long history of looking for ways to expand the idea of who gets to go to law school,” said Dean Niedwiecki. “It’s important for people who are incarcerated to better understand the criminal justice system, and this is one important way to do that. Our students will also benefit from having Maureen in class with them.”

…A series of factors made Onyelobi’s acceptance to law school possible. The American Bar Association recently granted a variance to allow her to attend classes entirely online, which she will do from Shakopee. The variance will allow Mitchell Hamline to admit up to two incarcerated students each academic year for five years. Onyelobi’s tuition will be paid through private fundraising and the same scholarship assistance available to all Mitchell Hamline students.

The Prison to Law Pipeline also has the full support of Commissioner Paul Schnell of the Minnesota Department of Corrections…

Guess what the official announcement conveniently leaves out! Oh, only the fact that Onyelobi was convicted as an accomplice to first-degree murder, received a mandatory sentence of life in prison with no chance of parole. Continue reading →

Wait, When Did Georgetown Law Center Take Over The Washington NFL Team?

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

Very puzzling. The Washington “Commanders” (previously the Redskins) are punishing an assistant coach because he dared to express an opinion on social media that his boss and employers don’t agree with, since it is not sufficiently in line with the George Floyd Freakout, The Great Stupid, and the Democratic Party’s show trial strategy to somehow stave off disaster for Joe and Company in the November mid-terms. In this, the NFL franchise is emulating it’s city’s most prominent law school, Georgetown Law Center, which only recently finished driving away a non-conforming law professor who dared to opine that limiting the pool of potential Supreme Court Justices by race and gender was not the wise way to find the best judge available.

To paraphrase Dana above, “What’s going on here?”

Nothing good, that’s for sure. Just another unethical effort by a business entity to strongarm employees into supporting one particular party and ideology, or at least to intimidate them sufficiently that they stifle their dissenting views. There is literally no possible justification for the Redsk…I mean “Commanders” actions. Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce And Unethical Tweet Of The Week: Barack Obama

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

How many ex-Presidents have revealed themselves to be far bigger jerks than anyone suspected in their post-White House years? Until relatively recently, most Presidents died so soon after their terms were up that the situation didn’t arise. John Tyler joined the Confederate cabinet; Teddy Roosevelt torpedoed his own party and his old friend Taft in a fit of ego, but that really wasn’t out of character. Most have stayed relatively quiet and inoffensive. I think Barack Obama wins the booby prize for post-POTUS jerkism.

The tweet is gold medal pandering: the shooting and Floyd’s death have no nexus at all, except that they have both been exploited for their progressive agenda value. More dunder-headed still, these two issues are contradictory. Democrats have been crippling law enforcement in many cities and communities, putting law abiding citizens at risk; that was one of the results of the excessive and cynical frenzy over a single bad policing incident in Minneapolis. Now that police are sufficiently terrified and reluctant to police, Obama wants to make it harder for Americans to protect themselves. But hey, anything to help promote Black Lives Matter! Continue reading →