Tag Archives: ethics

A Candidate’s Stockholm Syndrome?

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Stockholm Syndrome is an emotional condition in which a person develops a psychological bond with/dependency on his captor.

Republican Presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy has spent his campaign engaged in two primary behaviors. One of them is his sycophancy regarding former President Donald Trump (R).

Donald Trump was the greatest President of the 21st century….

And

I’m worried for Trump. I’m worried for our country. I’ve stood up against the persecutions against Trump, and I’ve defended him at every step[.]

So when Trump engaged in one of his ad hominem attacks, this time aimed at Ramaswamy, Ramaswamy had this to say:

It’s an unfortunate move by his campaign advisors, I don’t think friendly fire is helpful[.]

He went on to say that he would not respond to Trump’s attack.

Ramaswamy’s other campaign behavior is precisely that friendly fire. For instance, regarding the second leading Presidential candidate:

Now, the same billionaires funding the lawsuits against Trump are the ones trying to prop up Nikki Haley. … They want to narrow this to a two-horse race between Trump & Haley, eliminate Trump (one way or other), & [sic] trot their puppet into the White House.

He’s also called all the Republican candidates other than Trump and himself “bought and paid for” and “super PAC puppets.”

That’s entirely consistent, though, with his syndrome: he’s aping Trump’s ad hominem tactics with his own “friendly” fire against fellow Republican candidates.

Timid President Fails Again

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On the heels of the just-concluded Republic of China election, in which the DPP Presidential candidate won a plurality and so won the Presidency (giving the DPP, which opposes “reunification” with the People’s Republic of China, a third consecutive term in that office), but lost its legislative majority, our own Progressive-Democratic President Joe Biden…messed up again.

We do not support independence [for the RoC]

That’s a clear signal of meekness to the PRC, and it magnifies the danger to the RoC.

As I noted in a comment in another venue*,

We betrayed the RoC 50 years ago, and that policy remains shamefully wrong today. It’s never a reasonable thing to support a wrong policy; its age confers no legitimacy.

It’s long past time we extended formal diplomatic recognition, again, to the RoC, and long past time we got off the dime on selling them/lend-leasing them the arms they need to mount an effective defense—and offense: there’s no defense like having the offensive initiative, which would allow the RoC to control the pace and depth of the fight. Waiting defensively to block or slip the enemy’s blows only allows too many of the enemy’s blows to land.

We also need to be far more active in air and naval patrolling of the Taiwan Strait and the waters close by the PRC-occupied islands of the South China Sea, along with low altitude overflights of those islands, and we should do so, but not exclusively so, in joint exercises with Australia, Japan, and the nations rimming that Sea.

*Claire Berlinski’s The Cosmopolitan Globalist is well worth the subscription.

Only Because They Got Caught

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The Biden administration’s National Park Service had intended to remove from Philadelphia, PA’s, Welcome Park a statue of Pennsylvania founder William Penn. Because…well because he offended Leftist snowflakes, being an old, dead, white guy and all. Oh, and he was an atypical 17th century slaveholder; he had his emancipated upon his death.

After the hooraw over the plan, the NPS now is saying in their bad Emily Litella impression, “Never mind.”

It was only a preliminary draft, a carefully unsigned NPS statement claims.

The preliminary draft proposal, which was released prematurely and had not been subject to a complete internal agency review, is being retracted.

Sure it was. It became preliminary and a draft after they got caught. The internal review was incomplete because that they hadn’t yet installed a means of keeping the statue’s removal quiet.

There’s this red flag in the statement, too:

The National Park Service (NPS) remains committed to rehabilitating Welcome Park….

The park itself is named for the ship that brought Penn to the colonies in 1682. The Biden administration, the NPS, will have to rehabilitate the name of the park—that hateful ship—before tearing down that statue. Maybe also tear down the Slate Roof House, or rehabilitate it into an abortion center.

An Extortion Lawsuit

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Lawyer Anthony Russo of the Florida-based Russo Firm, says his client Cynthia Kelly and “not less than 100” and perhaps even “thousands” of others have suffered horrific emotional damage.

It seems that seasonal versions of Hershey’s Reese’s chocolate-covered peanut butter candies variously depicted pumpkin shapes with the candy’s peanut butter filling showing through eyes and a mouth carved into the chocolate or football shapes with laces similarly carved. On unpeeling the wrapper, though, shocker of shockers, the chocolate coverings were intact. The bodice-ripping. The emotional rending, the fall-to-the-floor sobbing paroxisms (I exaggerate, but not by much). Lawyer Russo is suing Hershey over the riptide of emotion the nefarious company has so callously caused.

However.

Omitted in this editorial is that the Reese’s packaging also depicts a bite already taken out of the candy, exposing the peanut butter filling inside the chocolate coating—and that that depiction has been there for years.

Did the “plaintiffs” not expect to unwrap this candy and see a bite actually already taken?

Not only should the plaintiffs be sharply sanctioned for this frivolous suit, the lawyer bringing it and the firm employing him (yes, it’s his firm, but still, the firm) should be especially sharply sanctioned for being a party to this frivolous suit. Lawyers, especially, should know better.

Hershey should refuse to settle and instead crushingly defeat the lawyer and plaintiffs in open court, taking no prisoners. Let it not be over quickly, the plaintiffs and lawyer will not enjoy it, and Hershey is not their patsy. $5 million or more that the plaintiffs want and of which Russo wants his cut? Sounds about right to me. That’s what the plaintiffs, the lawyer, and the law firm should be required to pay Hershey.

Pick One

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Progressive-Democratic Party politicians insist that illegal aliens should be allowed to go anywhere they want as they wait—months to years—for their court dates.

But they want travel documents on those Americans who are transporting them by bus.

New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy is demanding that nearly two dozen charter bus companies sending New York City-bound migrants to “transit” stops in the Garden State provide advance notice.

And this:

For each migrant bus, Murphy is asking the companies to disclose the number of single adults traveling alone; the number of passengers traveling as part of a family, including the number of families with children under 18; the number of children under 18; and the number of chaperones (other than family members) for otherwise unaccompanied minors.

Notice that. Murphy doesn’t care who these illegal aliens are so they can be tracked until the show up for their court date—or dishonestly don’t show up—he just wants to know how many they are. While demanding to know what bus companies are transporting them.

This is the Progressive-Democratic Party demonstrating its utter contempt for us ordinary Americans.