[Note:I apologize for the funky formatting here, but it’s not my fault: WordPress again messed with its (terrible) “block system” with no warning and I’m trying to figure it out.]
I’m posting the graphic above again because it is res ipsa loquitur, rebutting on its face what so many of the hysterical Democrats, elected officials, pundits and partisan reporters are screaming as they survey the results of their own corruption and hypocrisy.
As Ethics Alarms has been asserting (and proving) for a decade now, the Left cheats. Its “they go low, we go high” mantra has always been cynical gaslighting, but the somnolent Right allowed them to escape accountability (and their just desserts) far too long. Donald Trump, whatever his ethical flaws may be, has always understood the concept of fighting back. This time it really paid off, and all Americans should be grateful. Yes: we should fervently seek fair districting in every state. Maybe the current chaos will eventually lead to that. However, letting one party rig the system unanswered while the other party just sits and shrugs is worse than the chaos.
Scott Greenfield, defense lawyer, blogger, Jack-hater and progressive legal pundit, deserves praise for a nearly completely ethical and unbiased analysis of the Virginia Supreme Court decision striking down the dastardly gerrymandering trick Virginia’s “moderate” governor and its corrupt Democrats tried to inflict on half the state’s voters. He writes in part,
“The confluence of a few unfortunate circumstances resulted in the Virginia Supreme Court holding that the state constitutional amendment to allow the redistricting plan as a counterbalance to other states’ legislative redistricting plans to eliminate congressional districts deemed “safely” Democratic was unconstitutional. Wags and cynics will imagine this ruling to be the product of radical rightist activists. It was not…Neither the majority nor dissent took unprincipled positions, both having some merit to their position, but the point of a ruling is to reach a determination. The Virginia Supreme Court did so, in a principled fashion, and it ruled the redistricting amendment unconstitutional under the state Constitution. It was a crushing defeat for Democrats, but that doesn’t make it partisan or radical. Sometimes, you lose. While the combination of the Supreme Court’s Callais decision and this Virginia ruling has set in motion a partisan war that serves to make congressional elections a by-product of widespread cynical gerrymandering rather than a reflection of the will of the voters, perhaps one of the most noxiously anti-democratic efforts to rig an election possible, don’t blame the Virginia Supreme Court for “losing” safe districts for Democrats. The court did its job and its ruling, no matter what outcome you would have preferred, was grounded in a principled reading of the state Constitution.”
Good for Scott. He is still, however, a Trump Deranged, biased progressive (like most trial lawyers), so he also wrote…
“If you want to find blame, it’s in the legislatures that decided to sell out their citizens, their voters, at the open and notorious behest of Trump. For all his baseless bluster about rigged elections, we’re finally going to have one and Trump demanded the rigging.”
Bad Scott. Bad. Look at the damn chart above. Democrats had already rigged Congressional elections. Did you wonder why the predicted “red wave” in 2022 never materialized? Wonder no more. Nine Democrat-dominated state legislatures made it virtually impossible for Republicans to get elected. President Trump, that kingly fascist, had the sense and combative instincts to get his party to try to even the odds. The “red” states that did that through redistricting (gerrymandering) followed their constitutions. Virginia did not. Naturally, the losers blame Trump.
Former DNC chairwoman and current ABC contributor Donna Brazile naturally took the same dishonest path. Remember, Brazile was the Democrat who first tipped me off to her party’s cheating ways: as a paid CNN “contributor” in 2016, she used her insider status to tip-off Democratic Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton regarding the questions she would be asked at a CNN “town meeting.” This was so unethical even CNN couldn’t tolerate it, and she was fired. Yesterday Brazile joined GOP Rep. Dan Crenshaw and HBO’s “Real Time”host Bill Maher to give a masterclass on double standards and leftist gaslighting. Republican redistricting efforts are, she said, “immoral,” while Democratic efforts are what “voters decided.”
Voters in Virginia “decided” on the gerrymandered map based on the referendum’s false statement, indeed exactly the opposite of reality, that the new map would “restore fairness.” Remember?
“Restore fairness” by making sure that a 50-50 party split would be represented by a 10-1 Democrat district map. Sure.
Then Brazile played the race card, as Democrats inevitably do when the facts aren’t in their favor. “I come from one of those states that all of a sudden, the Supreme Court said, ‘Well, we don’t like partisan gerrymandering. No, we don’t like racial gerrymandering.’ So, one out of three voters in Louisiana is a black voter. One out of three. And they are now thinking of eradicating. So, that says people from some parts of Louisiana can represent New Orleans better than the folks who are representing—or Baton Rouge. It is wrong, it is immoral, and it is unjustified.”
Well-said, mush-mouth. “They” are thinking of “eradicating” black voters? I think Donna was trying to say that the Jim Crow laws that were still in effect de facto if not de jure in Southern states in the early Sixties justifies “good racial discrimination” in 2026, 60 years later. You can read her logic- and law-free rant here.This is, however, apparently the fake narrative the Axis has decided to run with, proving with its attempted cover-up just how desperate and unprincipled it is.
On yesterday’s MSNOW propaganda-fest “The Weekend,” Rep. Joe Morelle (D-NY) compared the 1857 Dred Scott ruling to the SCOTUS decision that the 1965 Voting Rights Act could no longer justify anti-white discrimination in the Southern states, and declared the Roberts Court “one of the most racist courts in American history.”Got it. If the Court doesn’t allow the Democrats to rig its Congressional maps to pack the House with as many blacks as possible, it’s racist. Morelle also parroted the “will of the voters” lie in attacking the Virginia Supreme Court’s rejection of redistricting referendum. Did the MSNOW host point out for its viewers that Morelle was misrepresenting both decisions? Is a bear Catholic? Does the Pope shit in the woods?
This how House minority leader Hakeem Jeffreys reacted to his party being foiled in its unconstitutional, dishonest power-grab in Virginia:
Pay attention, now. WordPress, for some reason, “improved” its page-break method. Now, instead of a link that says “continue,” there are links to page 1 and page 2 after the page 1 text. If you finish page 1, click on page 2.
The system was fluctuating back and forth for a while, driving me nuts, so a few posts initially went up with no breaks at all. I finally “spoke” with WordPress, which informed me how to use the new “improved” system.
I’m sorry for the confusion and inconvenience, but I an powerless in situations like this.
Breaking: I have heard from WordPress regarding the site malfunction yesterday that made commenting either a chore or impossible. This morning Happiness Engineer Gary P. wrote in an email,
“Hi Jack, thank you for your patience. I really appreciate you reporting this issue. It’s been very helpful! As my colleague mentioned, our team has identified this as a bug and is actively working on a permanent fix. The latest update from our developers is that the comment box should now be working again. I took a look at your site and can see that the text box appears to be functioning normally. I’ve also recorded a short video showing that typing is now possible: https://cloudup.com/c1W5oqw88Qm.
Whenever you have a moment, could you check from your end and let me know if everything is working as expected? Do note that while the text box is working, our developer is still actively looking for a cause for the issue itself, and what’s working now might not be perfect.
Let me know how it goes and if you have any other questions. I’d be happy to help.
Well, Gary had better be happy to help…he’s a Happiness Engineer!
I’m so sorry this happened yesterday. It obviously frustrated a lot of you and wasted your valuable time, as it did mine. If its any consolation, I deal with WordPress bugs constantly. I can no longer comment directly as a host on my own posts for example: I have to log in as a commenter. When I’m in the favored “Paragraph” block, I can’t post pictures or quotes. When I’m in the “classic “mode links don’t work. Recently, whole sentences just disappear while I’m finishing them. But that’s my problem. You shouldn’t have to deal with any posting issues. Again, I am sorry.
Special thanks are due to Diego Garcia and Alicia who blew the whistle on this right away via email.
Maybe I’ll be able to get some paying work done today, after I finish shoveling snow…
Well, to be completely accurate, we’re all “[1]” right now for some reason. The whole blog, back to the beginning, now shows that as the screen name of every commenter, and my name is either missing entirely as author or, in some cases, “[1]” as well. I was first alerted around 5 am by Diego Garcia, and quickly contacted WordPress via an email to their “Happiness Engineers” (yes, they really call themselves that. I got a quick response from WP’s AI creature, who told me that I obviously had my settings wrong and gave me a dizzying sequence of things to click on buried several lawyers deep in the system.
“Oh no you don’t!” I replied. Okay, what I actually wrote back was “Bullshit. I haven’t changed any settings, and you’re not going to lay this off on me. You caused the problem, the problem is yours, and you need to fix it. I am not a software engineer, and I don’t work for WordPress or robots. This is WordPress’s responsibility, and I expect WordPress to do it.”
Then I went back to bed. I was welcomed, upon awakening, to this from the modestly named “Deity,” my Happiness Engineer, who swears he is a Real Boy:
“I appreciate your patience and apologize for the inconvenience you’ve been experiencing. Based on your description, it indeed seems like this issue is related to a known bug that’s currently affecting WordPress blogs. I just wanted to reassure you that our top-notch technical team is actively working on resolving this issue as swiftly as possible. However, I can understand the importance of having this issue mitigated in the interim period. In the meantime, as a workaround, you can use the following CSS code to overcome the problem: /* Make comment authors display properly*/.comment-meta .comment-author .fn { text-indent:0; }.comment-meta .comment-author .fn:after { display:none; }“
“Please be advised that this is a temporary solution until we implement a more permanent fix. Again, thank you very much for your understanding on the matter and I’m extremely grateful for your patience. We value your trust in WordPress and promise to keep you informed with updates as they happen.”
So the AI was spitting out bullshit, as usual, just as I surmised! Good to know.
Let’s not allow this to spoil the open forum. Please begin your entries today with your Ethics Alarms name.
I was going to post a poll asking how many readers had watched the “Concussion Bowl.” Last night, right after the game commenced, I went to the local Harris Teeter was one of three customers in the whole store. I’m pretty sure everyone else wasn’t reading Ethics Alarms. I’m curious how many have the requisite integrity and cultural responsibility to reject the showcase of the NFL and its corporate enablers in light of pro football’s continuing profit from inducing brain damage and its nauseating pandering to Black Lives Matter.
But I couldn’t post the poll. Once again, WordPress had changed the ground rules. Now I was informed that I had exceeded my quota of “signals” in the previous polls posted here, and would have to pay a monthly fee to add any more. I had to explain to a nice WordPress agent I “chatted” with online what a “bait and switch” was. “Polls” used to be right on my “dashboard” like every other WordPress feature. No limits were mentioned, until today, when I was told, in essence, “Glad you like our polls, now you have to pay to keep using them.”
It’s not a lot of money, but the nickels and dimes add up. I wrote WordPress explaining that their conduct was unethical, and got an admission that “we should have been clearer.” That’s what all con artists and swindlers say.
1. If starting your day off with a head explosion is your thing, read this LA Times Op-Ed. I won’t comment on it because once I start, I might never stop. Just discussing the Orwellian use of the term “responsible” might take 5000 words. This is why I barely interact with anyone on Facebook now. When someone speaks like this deranged fool, and many do, revealing a distorted view of reality the equivalent of doing LSD in Oz and a comprehension of the Constitution on par with AOC’s, arguing with them is like debating Caligula or a toddler. Sure, it’s a breeze winning on points, but where does it get you?
I don’t understand this development at all. Perhaps I should say that I hope I don’t understand it. The move feels like another canary dying in the Free Speech mine.
A week after the 2020 Presidential election, The Conservative Treehouse received this from WordPress, which, as you know, hosts Ethics Alarms:
…”given the incompatibility between your site’s content and our terms, you need to find a new hosting provider and must migrate the site by Wednesday, December 2nd.
It means CTH is being kicked-off the WordPress website hosting platform because the content of our research and discussion does not align with the ideology of those who define what is acceptable speech and what is not.
What was our violation? After ten years of brutally honest discussion, opinion, deep research and crowdsourcing work -with undeniable citations on the events we outline- there is no cited violation of any term of service because CTH has never violated one.
The WordPress company is not explaining the reason for deplatforming because there is no justifiable reason for it. At the same time, they are bold in their position. Perhaps this is the most alarming part; and everyone should pay attention. They don’t care.
Truthful assembly is now the risk. CTH is now too big; with a site reach of 500,000 to a million unique readers each day; and with well over 200,000 subscribers; our assembly is too large, too influential, and presents a risk… we guard the flickering flame.
The Conservative Treehouse is a professionally operated blog. I don’t visit it often; the tone is too ideologically rigid for me, and the lionizing of the late Andrew Breitbart, who proudly engaged in unethical journalism, signals to me that ethics is not high on the blog’s priority of values.
However, unless there is something more behind this event, it is ominous.
I just had another run-in with WordPress over its “improved” system that makes me want to get hair plugs so I can tear my hair out, so this Comment of The Day by first time commenter Null Pointer is timely. This time, I was asking why I could no longer embed a CrowdSignal poll with a few clicks, and was forced to use the default WordPress poll feature which prevents a voter from checking the polling results without voting repeatedly. “Oh, it’s easy!” I was told by the cheery customer service agent. First, I have to register on the CrowdSignal site, and set up an account, and..and ..and…
I cut off the chat after writing that apparently WordPress doesn’t comprehend that my time is valuable, and that adding multiple steps, not to mention the need for constant assistance deciphering inadequate instructions and explanations, to accomplish what was once quick and straightforward is neither an improvement nor appreciated.
Usually first-time comments who score Comments of the Day are single issue participants, and are never heard from again. I hope Null Pointer is an exception.
I know I’ve mentioned this before, but the American mania for complicating processes and systems that are just fine as they are is a cultural sickness. It is also obviously unethical under the category of irresponsibility, with a dash of arrogance. It is an American mania.
Herman Kahn used to tell the story about how American jet fighters were equipped with multi-million dollar systems to prevent the aircraft from stalling, triggering alarms and lights and other automated reactions. “The Soviet equivalent was a little dial that had an arrow that went into a red zone,” he said,”and the whole system costs about five bucks. It works just as well as ours.”
Right now, I am struggling to write blog posts because the WordPress “upgrade” has become mandatory, and the thing is infuriatingly complicated and clumsy. Naturally, the company’s “explanation” of how to use it is also incompetent, using terms without defining them, telling me how easy and versatile the new system is while ensuring that it is neither by inflicting instructions that will take me hours and hours to absorb and master, if I ever can.
In one of many recent online chats with WordPress customer service agents, I was asking how I could stop having to repeatedly select the same “block” (this jargon means, I finally figured out, one of I-don’t-know-how-many shiny new packages of composition and format features a section of text could be managed with) I wanted to use, and just have a permanent, familiar formatting system for all posts, all the time—you know, like I used to have before WordPress gave me all these floating options I don’t want or need.
The answer? No! The new way was better, see, because I could shift into a new package mid post! But I don’t want or need to shift anything mid-post, and this “improvement” is costing me time and causing frustration. Frankly, it’s making me want to chuck the whole blog.
WordPress.com prepares an 2012 annual report for blogs using the service, and since it is obvious from the traffic today that New Years has officially begun, I thought I might as well make its report on what occurred at Ethics Alarms public this year. I like WordPress, and this is also a good opportunity to thank them. Thanks.
Now please add an editing function for comments!
This isn’t part the Ethics Alarms Most Unethical and Most Ethical of 2012 posts; they will be along soon. Meanwhile, Ethics Alarms and its proprietor want to thank all those who kept the site growing, busy, lively, current, less typo-ridden (thanks, Jeff! ) and usually filled with intelligent, enlightening and civil, if occasionally too tough for some gentler tastes, discussion. Together we weathered web hoaxes, a national election, a plagiarizing lawyer, a couple of threatened law suits, a bitter American Idol contestant, an Instalanche, Penn State, George Zimmerman, ethics train wrecks galore, and nasty attacks from drug-legalization fans, bitter law grads, and mercifully few trolls, and still managed to keep the group ideologically diverse.
The site ends the year averaging about a thousand more visitors a day than it did 12 months ago, and for a blog on a topic most people think is as exciting as watching paint dry, I think that’s an accomplishement. I know this is difficult to believe, given my preference for stating my positions in the most assertive and uncompromising way possible, but one of the chief reasons I produce this blog is to explore new areas and ideas, to have my mind opened, my ideas challenged, and to learn. You have all done a wonderful job fulfilling those funtions, more than you know, and am obligated to all of you for it.
Thank you Chase Martinez, tgt, Ampersand, Bill, Tom Fuller, Lorraine, Steven Mark Pilling, Michael Ejercito, Curmudgeon, Arthur in Maine, Tim LeVier, Jeff, Elizabeth, Crella, Walrus, Jan Chapman, Yardley, Windypundit, ethicssage, fattymoon, blameblakeart, Rick, Ethics Bob, Peter, Scherie, Jeff, Dave Gent, Interested Blogger, The Nance, gregory, Charles Green, Christine, Lianne Best, This Guy, Brian, Roger, Karla Marie Robinett, texagg04, Dwayne N. Zechman,49erDweet, Diego Garcia, Jolie, Jenna,Debbie Swartz, zoebrain, oldgraymary, Joshua, Jeremy Wiggins, Inquiring Mind, Sharon, Michael, Modern Knight, Fred Davison, Joe Fowler, Libby Torgerson, Mike Martin, celestialsquare, Proam, Karl, Martin Brooks Smith, Fred, Eeyoure, garlicfriesandbaseball, Rick, Michael R, Eric, and any of the cherished regulars here I have missed, for all the substantive content you contributed in 2012. Some of you have been AWOL for a while; I hope it wasn’t anything I wrote, and I hope to see you back in the fray in 2013. I know I was sometimes cranky, occasionally unfair, and uncivil at times. I can be careless, stubborn, mistaken, and outright wrong. And there are days when my brain takes a holiday. I’ll try to improve in 2013.
I’ll depend on you to make sure I do.
From here on, everything is WordPress.
About 55,000 tourists visit Liechtenstein every year. This blog was viewed about 830,000 times in 2012. If it were Liechtenstein, it would take about 15 years for that many people to see it. Your blog had more visits than a small country in Europe!
Defending free speech doesn't mean you have to put dangerous speech where it will do the most damage...like 100 feet tall in Times Square.
As the New Year dawns, we see two companies in the communications business, and two situations raising the question, is it ethical or unethical to allow someone to use your product or service to broadcast harmful speech?
They took different paths, and both are being criticized. One company is ethical, the other is not.
The ethical company is WordPress.
A few days ago it took down one of its sites, Bare Naked Islam, after The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) complained that the site promoted violence against Muslims, which it surely did. When Muslims placed comments on the site, Bare Naked Islam published the IP and e-mail addresses of the commenters and suggested reprisals. Nonetheless, because it was CAIR’s complaint that triggered the removal, WordPress was criticized mightily in the conservative blogosphere for doing a Comedy Central—censoring legitimate free speech out of fear of Muslim violence. There is a very large distinction, however, between abandoning free speech in response to threats, as Comedy Central did in the infamous “South Park” incident, and responding responsibly to a legitimate complaint. Continue reading →
Ethics Alarms 