Ethics Alarms reader and frequent commenter Michael J. Ejercito reports that he tried to post this morning’s warm-up on the U.S. politics Reddit and got the above response.
Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is…
Rep. Louie Gohmert
Morning Ethics Warm-Up, 6/25/2020: Dumb And Dumber
Good morning, I guess.
It is clear, if it wasn’t already, that everything hinges on whether the American public is as stupid and inattentive as those seeking to manipulate it think it is.
1. Mobs? What mobs? I just listed to CNN’s health expert, Dr. Gupta, list the reasons there has been a surge in Wuhan virus cases. Notably absent from his list were the mass, no social distancing demonstrations/protests/riots that began two weeks ago as a prominent part of the George Floyd Ethics Train Wreck. These, as you may recall, were largely supported by the health experts (though I don’t have a record of Gupta being among them) as they apparently decided that Black Lives Matter matters more than all the black lives that would be put in danger by ignoring the safety measures we shut down the country to install.
I also have yet to read a single news story about the new cases of the virus that highlights the completely predictable effect of the mobs, which are still roaming, as a factor in the so-called “surge,” though I can’t check everything.
Is the news media really certain that if they don’t report this connection, it will never occur to most of the public? I’m already reading accusations that opening up the states is “racist” because of the evidence that African-Americans have contracted the virus and died from it at a higher rate than the rest of the public. By that logic, encouraging the mobs of George Floyd protesters was also racist.
To re-phrase Wilford Brimley from his great scene in “Absence of Malice”: “American Public, are you that dumb?” So far, it seems so. Continue reading
Ethics Dunce: Actress Busy Philipps
Actress Busy Philipps, an abortion advocate ( of course). testified before the House Judiciary Committee on the topic this week.
I must drop in here that I am offended by celebrity witnesses participating Congressional hearings. They seldom are the most expert or prepared authorities, and have no special credentials except that they look nice and usually can speak clearly. They get the opportunity to attract publicity to the hearings, and accept it to burnish their images.
In this case, the actress’s primary qualification to talk about abortion is that she had one (at 15). Philipps’ more recent argument for abortion is that a lot of women have had one, which is 100% irrelevant to the ethical and legal issues at hand. Beyond that, she essentially mouths standard talking points. In her opening statement to the House Judiciary Committee, she said,
“I am a human being that deserves autonomy in this country that calls itself free, and choices that a human being makes about their own bodies should not be legislated by strangers who can’t possibly know or understand each individual’s circumstances or beliefs.”
I’ve been unsuccessfully looking for what Busy’s major was at Loyola Marymount, assuming she graduated (all the sources says “she attended” the school), but based on that mess, we can assume it wasn’t English Literature, pre-law or Philosophy. Laws do not typically include variances according to a citizen’s beliefs or circumstances. Robbery is illegal, even if you really need the money or don’t “believe” in property rights.
Then Texas Congressman Louie Gomert asked a pertinent question. Melissa Ohden, the founder of the Abortion Survivors Network who survived a failed saline infusion abortion in 1977, had testified earlier. “Would you agree that somebody who has survived an abortion, like Melissa Ohden, has a right, once she’s born, to life, to have control over her body where someone else doesn’t take her life?” he asked.
“Although I played a doctor on television, sir, I am actually not a physician,” she replied. Continue reading
To Be Fair To Incompetent Elected Official Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX), His Nemesis, Rep. Corrine Brown (D-Fla) Is Incompetent Too.
Incompetence and idiocy in Congress is a bi-partisan ethics problem.
Rep. Louie Gohmert and Rep. Corrine Brown reportedly almost came to blows during last month’s cynical Democratic “sit-in” demanding that Sen. Susan Collins’ anti-Due Process, anti-Fifth Amendment, pre-crime “We have to DO something!” gun bill get a vote in the House despite being, you know, unconstitutional and totalitarian. Gohmert and Brown were screaming at each other and had to be separated.
Gohmert has proven himself to be an idiot, and idiots do not make competent members of Congress. To be fair, however, Brown is as least as big an idiot, and may be a crook as well.
Brown was charged with 24 counts of fraud late last week based on an investigation that found her and her Congressional staff using a college scholarship fund as “a personal slush fund.” Federal prosecutors allege that the Congresswomen and her chief of staff, Elias “Ronnie” Simmons, used her position and office to solicit hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations to the fake charity.
Brown’s jaw-dropping response? This:
“These are the same agents that was not able to do a thorough investigation of [shooter Omar Mateen], and we ended up with 50 people dead,” Brown said. Having made that ridiculous rationalization-soaked diversion official (they aren’t the same agents, by the way), she moved on to playing the race card, the default defense of all unethical African-American officials.
But first I should mention that the rationalizations behind Brown’s diversionary non-explanation are…
22. The Comparative Virtue Excuse or “There are worse things.”
26. “The Favorite Child” Excuse (“Why are you punishing her when there are people more deserving of punishment?“)
54. The Scooby Doo Deflection, or “I should have gotten away with it!”
On her blog, Brown attributed the indictment to racism and had the gall to compare her fate to those of the two men recently killed in police shootings as well as the assassinated Dallas police officers, writing in her blog,
“Two black men were needlessly gunned down by police; five Dallas police officers were slain by a demented man, and on Friday I had to appear in federal court. I’m not the first black elected official to be persecuted and, sad to say, I won’t be the last.”
OK, I’m ready to call it! She’s even worse the Louie. Nevertheless, a battle between the two would have been the Godzilla vs. Mothra of incompetent elected officials. Two bad they didn’t just let these twin embarrassments to the Congress go at it.
Incompetent Elected Official Of The Month: U.S. Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX)
I know this is like shooting fish in a barrel—dead fish, in fact— but I need some levity about now. Of course it’s no joke, and indeed tragic, that a certifiable fanatic like Gohmert can reach a position of influence in our government, and a greater tragedy that there are so many equally unfit officials, from both parties. Few, however, are willing or able to expose their cognitive deficiencies as deftly as Congressman Gohmert.
When a gay, progressive friend posted the story about this, I assumed that he had been caught (again) in a web hoax. Surely Gohmert isn’t THAT stupid. Nobody is that stupid in Congress, surely. Yet he is, and the story was correct and true.
This happened a while back, during the “general speeches” portion of House proceedings on May 26, 2016. It was little noted, because if it had been, I would hope that GOP leaders would have placed him in a padded room and denied him the opportunity to ever speak for the party again.
Here, in part, was Gohmert’s anti-gay, science fiction rant (the video of his whole speech is above): Continue reading
John Avlon’s “Ten Congressmen Who Should Be Fired”: Too Short, By Far
John Avlon, a senior political correspondent at The Daily Beast and author of the book Wingnuts: How the Lunatic Fringe is Hijacking America, has posted his list of “Ten Congressmen Who Should Be Fired.” Though Avlon’s definition of “wingnut” is too often “conservative,” and picking the ten most embarrassing members of Congress is like choosing the ten most offensive reality TV stars, it’s a reasonably good list, if far too short and only the beginning. The members on it seem to split into four main categories: outrageously uncivil, clearly incompetent, corrupt, and too outspokenly conservative for Avlon, who regards all Tea Party sympathizers, for example, as dangerous “wingnuts.”
Here’s the list, with highlights of Avlon’s reasons: Continue reading
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