I mention this briefly, to illustrate my point that Donald Trump will keep testing the limits of human tolerance, even that of stupid, crude, bigoted, hateful and ignorant humans, until he exceeds it. This is a certainty.
Someone had thrown a tomato at Trump at a previous event, so at his Monday rally in Cedar Rapids, Trump told the crowd,
“So if you see somebody getting ready to throw a tomato, knock the crap out of them. I will pay for the legal fees. I promise.”
So we have now escalated from Trump kicking out protesters while directing that his thugs keep their coats, so they freeze, and thowing out reporters he doesn’t like, to directing the crowd to beat people up. This last would be enough for most decent, fair, civilized people, none of whom attend Trump rallies. What will make these people say, “Oh-oh! I don’t want to be associated with this guy!,” I wonder?
When he has the protester brought up the podium, says, “Stand him up!’ and breaks his jaw, like Captain McCluskey does to Michael Corleone? No? Not bad enough?
How about setting a protester on fire? How’s that?
It is certain, certain, that eventually Trump will go too far, because he has no ethics alarms.
In the middle of a 20 minute errand that became a 90 minute ordeal today, I found myself sitting in an unexpected long line at the gas station I usually patronize. Maybe it was because people wanted to top off tanks before the blizzard hits tomorrow, but I was really almost out of gas, and the second I moved into the “tank on the right” line, I was socked in. Finally I had only one car ahead of me, and an absurdly long line of automobiles behind.
The lady in the car ahead, however, was unbelievable. She wasn’t elderly, but she was obese, had something wrong with one leg, and apparently had never filled a gas tank before in her life. She dithered, she paused, she disappeared and returned. She punched in so many characters at the pump that her Debit card password must have been a chapter of “Martin Chuzzlewit.”
Finally she replaced the pump, after pausing and contemplating it like it was Yorick’s skull, walked around to the driver-side door, then decided to walk back—S-L-O-W-L-Y— and make sure she had replaced the gas tank cap, then again s-l-o-w-l-y limped and waddled back to the door. She opened the it, stared, then decided to unzip her coat, started to take it off, changed her mind, paused again. The line of cars behind me now reached to Falls Church.
I was just a smidgen of impulse control away from getting out of my car, which was turned off, and walking up to her, whereupon I would have said, not especially nicely: Continue reading →
Congratulations, Petula! Now you’re a word—I mean, in addition to “Idiot”…
Washington Post Metro columnist Petula Dvorak just modeled hypocrisy, stupidity and willful complicity with irresponsible public policy and exploitation. Her sole justification is “everybody’s doing it.” She apparently thinks this is funny. It’s not. It’s typical human conduct, but there’s nothing funny about it. It’s tragic.
In a column yesterday titled, “I despise lotteries, but I bought four Powerball tickets anyway,” Dvorak, who has been justly scorned on Ethics Alarms for ethics idiocy before, goes to great length to describe what is wrong with state lotteries–they are corrupt, they prey on the poor, they are regressive taxes that substitute for real taxes that would require political courage, they promote gambling addictions—even going so far as to call them “evil.” Then she cheerily tells us that she couldn’t help participating in the current lottery craze, because just think of all the things she could buy if she won a gizzillion dollars!
Dvorak apparently believes that by acting irrationally and irresponsibly and thus supporting what she claims to revile, she can make a more powerful point about how seductive lotteries can be. Or she’s an idiot. Wait–the two are not mutually exclusive.
It’s not complicated, Petula, not at all. When you identify a system, an enterprise or a movement that is harmful and corrupt, don’t support it, participate in it or strengthen it. That’s all. Every ethical system dictates that result. If you think, indeed, as your column proves, you know, that state lotteries are corrupting, cowardly scams, don’t play them. If you know that pro football makes billions by inducing healthy young men to destroy their brains, don’t watch pro football. If you know that illegal drugs ravage the poor, destroy livesm businesses and families don’t use illegal drugs. If you know that American politics are corrupt, stop supporting corrupt politicians.
There are so many societal evils that could be eradicated or significantly weakened if those who understand what is wrong about them just had the integrity, personal responsibility, courage and determination to reject them unequivocally, and show others with less certitude and resolve that it is possible and right. Continue reading →
A dolphin died in New Jersey’s South River last year, so a blogger sought to discover what killed it. She duly filed a public record request to the NJ Department of Agriculture for the results of the dolphin’s autopsy.The Department turned down her request, on the grounds that it violated the amended Public Records Act, which includes an exception for HIPAA information, including diagnosis and autopsies:
That’s right: New Jersey wants to protect the dolphin’s privacy. No, there is no dolphin autopsy exception to New Jersey’s law, and no cetacean privacy inclusion in HIPAA. On the off-chance that it isn’t obvious, Louis Bruni is an idiot.
This should be funny, I guess, but my patience with fools and dolts making life more difficult, expensive, inefficient and frustrating has about run out. My rapidly developing theory on crazy people starting to shoot other, thus-far less crazy people is that constant contact with the Louis Brunis of the world drive them to it, when combined with hopelessly bewildering technology and outrageously complicated rules, laws, regulations and procedures and the brazen dishonesty and corruption of so many of the “public servants” who are pledged to care about our welfare.
One day a delicate soul, their sanity on the ragged edge, makes a simple request, not even in an important matter, and are foiled by someone who thinks Dead Flipper has privacy rights, and who nonetheless has his salary paid by taxpayers. Out of the millions and millions of Americans who cope with this crap every day, day after day, an infinitesimal percentage of the public can’t handle that one extra insult to logic and common sense. and snaps like a dry twig in the wind. Like Sweeney Todd, their now damaged mind concludes that there are two groups of human beings, those who make everyone else miserable because they are evil, stupid, or both, and those who are the first group’s helpless victims. “Kill them all!” the now deranged victims of our Brunis conclude: killing the miscreants is just, and killing their suffering victims is merciful.
And off they go.
Now imagine layer and layer of Brunis, up and down all levels of government, sometimes reaching executive levels with access to real power. You know, like Joe Biden. John Kerry. Michele Bachmann. No, don’t. We have enough crazy people all ready.
Here…this will calm you:
UPDATE: Here we discover that Mr. Bruni previously was fined for lying about attending….required ethics classes! [Pointer: Phil Alperson]
I have previously opined, confidently, that Donald Trump supporters, every single one of them, are stupid. This I have pointed out, is the only possible explanation for supporting an obvious narcissist who utters no substantive or serious policy ideas, believes rationalizations are legitimate arguments, is vulgar and insulting without shame or hesitation, and has the essential character of a pimp.
People who stage elaborate public ambush proposals of marriage in sports stadiums, using airplanes and other instrumentalities are inherently unethical, as well as narcissistic jerks who warrant embarrassing rejections but never get them. This figures, since the women have been dating these tools and are usually jerks themselves. Few such stunts are quite as audacious in their jerkishness as that planned and executed by Vidal Valladares, 24, who shut down the Gulf Freeway, one of the busiest thoroughfares in Houston, to propose to Michelle Wycoff, 23, in the middle of the highway. The Houston Chronicle, local TV station KTRK and other media outlets treated the stunt with a sympathetic “Awww!”—Ain’t love grand? Who could criticize these love birds, who, but for the vagueries of moral luck, could have caused one or more accidents and death and destruction, hopefully just to them and not innocent commuters, but you never know.
Reportedly traffic was stopped for less than a minute as Valladares got down on bended knee to propose (to his ex-wife whom he divorced in June) while the automobiles waited. “I never really thought about causing an accident,” Valladares told a local paper. “I thought about my girlfriend.”
Awww!
How romantic!
You’re an idiot.
The Harris County District Attorney’s Office is charging the couple with “obstruction of highway, a Class B misdemeanor.
South Carolina lawmaker Rep. Christopher Corley (R- Aiken) decided to take on the daunting challenge of topping Las Vegas Assemblywoman Michele Fiore’s entry in the “Most Tasteless Christmas Card That Proves Its Republican Politician Author Is An Idiot” competition. You saw that one, right? It features Fiore, her husband, her adult daughters, their husbands and one of her grandchildren…
There is a lot wrong with the card, beginning with the fact that, as the Bible says, there is a time for every season, and regardless of one’s faith or lack of it, this season is and has always been about peace and love, not shooting things. Fiore uses children as props for political grandstanding, which is ugly and an abuse of power.
The card also says “I am an idiot,” but that arguably is a good thing, since as many people should know as possible. (Either her constituents are idiots, or they like them for some reason.) Still, the silly card is relatively harmless, except that Fiore embarrasses her party and gives anti-gun hysterics another excuse to portray all those who resist the obvious progressive goal of banning guns entirely as lunatics.
Remember the little deaf child named Gunner whose school wouldn’t let him sign his own name because of —EEEEEK! GUNS!!!!!—? The people at Nutella think like that school’s administrators.
Nutella offers customized jars of the filbert ick , but refused to make a personalized jar for a 5-year-old Australian girl because her name is “Isis.”
The girl’s aunt tried to buy five customized jars for her niece and nephew. The local store accepted her nephew’s name, Odhinn—-Now THAT name is offensive: it’s bad enough naming a poor kid after the head Norse god, but spelling it like that? — yet the manager refused to order jars for little Isis. Continue reading →
Said Bloomberg”s Margaret Carlson, explaining why it’s not such a bad risk even if ISIS terrorists do sneak into the country:
“ You know, those people who have snuck in, that, I don’t know if they’ve snuck in, but maybe they become Americanized, maybe the anger goes away. Maybe what they snuck in to do they’re not going to do, because we do have an acceptance of these people, as Congressman [Keith] Ellison (D-MN) said. They’re more patriotic because they’re here and they work harder.”
These are the people informing the American people about existential issues.
My greatest ethical objection to journalists is that they are overwhelmingly biased. My second greatest ethical objection is that most of them aren’t very bright, which means they are incompetent. No profession that values intelligence would allow someone who would say what Carlson said on television to rise beyond the level of receptionist.
Does Calrlson still work for Bloomberg? Apparently, and if so, it means that her employers don’t even realize that she embarrassed them. Because THEY aren’t very bright, either
Sad, really.
I don’t even want to think about how many of Obama’s advisors share her mindset.
Maybe I’m just in a bad mood, but “Ethics Dunce” doesn’t quite do the conduct of these Halloween 2015 miscreants.
Tell me again why we bother with this holiday that was once supposed to be the one day a year the evil spirits come out to play. Every year it is clearer that Halloween and its related activities is a festival for assholes. For example..
Robert Ledrew of Blackwood, New Jersey
There has never been a confirmed case of a child being injured by poisoned or otherwise tampered with Halloween treats. The one case, a murder, that caused a long-running panic was the father who poisoned his own son’s candy to collect on his life insurance. I guess Robert Ledrew felt that a new generation of kids needed to be convinced that adults are lurking psychopaths, so he posted images of needle-filled candy bars to his Facebook page and reported to the police. Later he explained that he was trying to teach children to be check their candy. I saw the photos as CNN reported the candy as a real attack on children, with no skepticism whatsoever. The tone was, “Oh, no, not this again! How horrible.” I turned to my wife and said, “This is a hoax. It’s always a hoax. Why doesn’t CNN know that?”
A yet unnamed soldier attempted to enter Fort Bragg on Friday night dressed as a suicide bomber, complete with a fake vest of explosives. Understandably, there was”an emergency response.” Continue reading →
Ethics Alarms 