Month: February 2016

Observations On The CNN-Telemundo GOP Candidates Debate

/ Jack Marshall / 25 Comments

1.  I heard that National Anthem rendition on my car radio, and thought, “That can’t possibly be as off-key as it sounds, can it?” Then my various singer friends started howling on Facebook. I don’t know why debates are now treated like ball games, but there are thousands upon thousands of singers, male, female, and juvenile, who can sing the anthem well, and a lot better than Dina Carter did last night. There’s no excuse for getting someone who can’t stay on pitch.

2. Ben Carson prompted me to throw a magazine at the TV with his fatuous “we won’t solve America’s problems by trying to destroy each other.” It’s a competition, you fool. Someone should have shown you how ridiculous your wasteful candidacy was months ago, and you wouldn’t be clogging up the process now. If Donald Trump, a viper in the nursery, wasn’t ahead, Reagan’s admonition not to attack fellow Republicans might be a wise and ethical practice. Now, it is the equivalent of pacifism during World War II.

3. That was weak, incompetent moderating by Wolf Blitzer and Dana Bash, allowing Trump to speak over Rubio and Cruz who were doing a good job pointing up his hypocrisy and corruption. As usual, Trump’s rebuttals weren’t rebuttals at all but distracting attacks, pitched to the gullible.

  • Rubio said, correctly, that Trump criticized Mitt Romney for talking about “self-deportation” in 2012, while Trump is talking about self-deportation now.  Trump said: “I criticized Mitt Romney for losing the election. . . . He ran one terrible campaign!”  No, actually Trump criticized Romney’s self-deportation policy specifically.
  • Rubio said Trump is the only person on the stage who’s hired people from other countries for “jobs that Americans could have filled.” Trump replied, “I’m the only one on the stage who’s hired people! . . . You haven’t hired one person in your life!” It’s completely irrelevant to the issue, just another deflection.
  • Cruz pointed out that Trump contributed to the three Democratic Senators and two of the  Republican Senators he now accuses of pushing “amnesty.” Trump retorted that “I get along with everybody; you get along with nobody,” an ad hominem attack that ducks a legitimate criticism.

4.  Trump had one brilliant, perfect, Presidential and appropriately tough response to ex-Mexican President Vicente Fox who swore Mexico would never pay for Trump’s “fucking wall.” (We have heard increasing vulgarity from media figures like Chris Matthews, President Obama and others, and now the breakdown in official civility has crossed our borders. Yes, I blame Donald Trump, and as he grandstanded about the “disgusting” word used, someone should have had the wit to note that he has personally lowered the standards of leadership discourse more than any figure since the Nixon tapes were released.) Trump’s response: “The wall just got 10 feet taller!”

Excellent. Continue reading →

Ethics Villain: New Jersey Governor Chris Christie

/ Jack Marshall / 69 Comments

christie-endorses-trump

I am watching Donald Trump accepting Chris Christie’s endorsement for President.

How utterly unethical and despicable of Christie, who is about twice as smart as Trump and has to realize how unfit the man is to serve.

Yesterday, I read an article wondering why Christie never took down Trump during the debates, as he was the one candidate with the proprietorial tools and personality to do so. Instead, Christie ripped up Marco Rubio, then emerging as the most viable cahllenger to Trump. Now we know why. Christie had a deal. Trump bought him off.

Christie now establishes himself as one of the true villains of American political history, willing to place his nation in the hands of an unstable, unmanned, babbling autocrat without principles, wisdom or integrity for personal gain. It is nothing less than a betrayal of the country and its citizens.

To paraphrase Sir Thomas More in “A Man for All Seasons”:

“It profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world … but for Donald Trump, Chris?”

Just sickening.

 

Fairness To Clinton: #WhichHillary Is Fair, Black Lives Matter Isn’t

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Racial Justice Sign

Protesters who interrupt speeches are not engaging in free speech, they are defiling it. We can expect protesters of all sizes, shapes and colors to be interfering with campaign appearances this year, forcing candidates into a lose-lose-lose proposition of either giving the activists a platform they don’t deserve, rewarding rude and disrespectful behavior and looking weak (as Bernie Sanders did last year, allowing a Black Lives Matter group to hijack a campaign appearance), trying to ignore the disruption and thus being unfair to those who came to hear a speech without static, or being  confrontational with the protesters and alienating voters who may sympathize with their cause.

This is one area in which Donald Trump has a clear advantage: since neither he nor his addled supporters care about ethical values, he can safely be abusive to protesters, and he is. At the rate his abuse is escalating, I expect him to egg on one of his mobs to burning or eating one by the spring.

Thus I must sympathize with Hillary Clinton, who just had an ironic ethics encounter. Continue reading →

At Least This Made Me Laugh, And That’s Not Easy These Days: Life Imitates “Blazing Saddles” On The Campaign Trail

/ Jack Marshall / 53 Comments

KKK-hoax-Trump-2

The false flag operations by progressives to make Republican candidates (and the Tea Party, of course) appear racist got old a long time ago, but at least now it is obvious, stupid and amusing.

Above are two operatives posing as KKK members at a Trump rally earlier this week. I suppose they might not be Democrats. Ted Cruz might have sent them.

False flag operations are dirty politics, dishonest, unfair, and thus unethical. Funny, though, when done this incompetently, as the highlighting in the photo above shows. I guess its possible that these are real black KKK members, but somehow I doubt it.

Of course, we’ve seen this before:

 

The Failure Of Any GOP Candidate To Answer This Question Directly Should Disqualify Them All

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

illegals_crossing_border

[I will probably do an overview of the entire debate, but this has been straining my skull for hours now, and I have to get it down or die.]

Telmundo open-borders advocate and activist-journalist Maria Celeste Arraras asked this offensive question to tonight’s Republican contenders—well, four contenders and Ben Carson, who has the relevance of a streaker at a baseball game:

After the last presidential election the Republican party realized that in order to win the presidency it needed the support of Latinos. Guidelines as to how to accomplish that were spelled out in an autopsy  report that concluded, and I’m going to quote it, “if Hispanic Americans hear that the GOP doesn’t want them in the United States they won’t pay attention to our next sentence.”

So, do you think that your fellow Republican candidates get it?

The question is misleading, assumes an answer, is based on an unethical premise, and is the worst sort of “when did you stop beating your wife?”hackery. It required a rebuke, and a firm rebuttal. Everyone ducked it. Where was Ted Cruz’s quick and precise rhetoric to call the moderator on an outrageous assumption? Where was Donald Trump, who supposedly owns this issue? Where was Rubio, who desperately needed a chance to clarify his muddy position? Continue reading →

More Photography Ethics: A Federal Court Rules That There Is No Right To Photograph Police

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

photographing_police

U.S. District Judge Mark Kearney has ruled that citizens don’t have a First Amendment right to take cellphone videos and photos of police unless they are challenging or criticizing the police conduct.

This opinion makes no sense, and is dead wrong.

Richard Fields, a Temple University student, took a cellphone photo of about 20 police officers standing outside a house party because, he testified, he thought it would be an interesting picture. Amanda Geraci, who says she is “a trained legal observer,” whatever that is, tried to video an arrest during a an anti-fracking  protest.

Fields had his cellphone seized and was cuffed, as an officer searched his cellphone before returning it and cited him for obstructing the highway and public passages while taking the photo.  Geraci said an officer physically restrained her to prevent her from recording the arrest. The two both sued for alleged First and Fourth Amendment violations, and their cases were consolidated before the court, as the same Constitutional issues were involved.

Judge Kearney argued that Fields and Geraci would have to show their behavior was “expressive conduct” to support a First Amendment claim. Neither plaintiff met that burden, because neither told the police why they wanted to capture the images, Kearney wrote. “The conduct must be direct and expressive; we cannot be left guessing as to the ‘expression’ intended by the conduct.”

“Applying this standard, we conclude Fields and Geraci cannot meet the burden of demonstrating their taking, or attempting to take, pictures with no further comments or conduct is ‘sufficiently imbued with elements of communication’ to be deemed expressive conduct. Neither Fields nor Geraci direct us to facts showing at the time they took or wanted to take pictures, they asserted anything to anyone. There is also no evidence any of the officers understood them as communicating any idea or message.”

What astounding nonsense! Would Kearney argue that an oil painting was similarly ambiguous as “expressive” without the painter saying, “I am painting the picture so that I have a painting that I can show others”? Continue reading →

An Unethical Match: The Ex-Yelp Whiner Finds The Perfect Potential Employer, Sort of

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments
Fdbak

Fdbak, for those times you are afraid to complain about bad service. I think you need a better example for your website, Bob. Signed, Anonymous.

In writing about Talia Jane, Ethics Alarms concluded that her “open letter” to her boss at Yelp was really an career play designed to get the aspiring writer publicity and sufficient fame to exploit for her advancement. If it constituted unprofessional conduct and betrayal of trust, she really didn’t care. (Subsequent investigations of her social media activity indicate that her representations of abject poverty were less than honest). Whether this was the plan or not, her public screed, like excrement attracts flies, got her a job interview with what seems like a good match for someone with her peculiar sense of ethical conduct.

The marketing director at a Dallas startup company called Fdbak sent an invitation Talia’s way on the company’s Facebook page:

Dear Talia Jane,

I commend you for standing up for yourself, and your coworkers. Communicating directly with your CEO takes a lot of courage, especially when the subject matter is negative. I’m reaching out to you on behalf of Fdbak, Inc., a Dallas, TX based technology firm. Fdbak created a messaging app that lets you send and receive anonymous feedback to and from anyone. More importantly, you can tell your employer what you really think, without fear of retribution.

You have already been put through a tumultuous gauntlet of improper employee-employer relations, but there are many employees out there that are struggling to speak up, fearing a result similar to yours. Our goal is to provide individuals with an anonymous vehicle for workplace communication, protecting them from what happened to you. We’d love to have you on our team, helping us build a professional environment where you can speak freely and safely to anyone.

Robert Cowlishaw
Marketing Director at Fdbak

The message is factually incorrect, and what is known in the marketing field as “bullshit.” Talia didn’t communicate directly with her CEO, or if she did, she hasn’t said so. She communicated indirectly and publicly, using a medium, “Medium,” that it was a fair guess that her boss never used or read. So why is Fdbak extolling her unethical open letter and misrepresenting it? Simple: the company, a start-up, is trying to hitchhike on her 15 minutes of fame before it expires, even though her conduct doesn’t really fit.

‘Uh, Bob? She didn’t get fired for communicating directly with her boss. She got fired for embarrassing the company by attacking it in public.’

‘Close enough!!!!’

I now know this is a sleazy company aborning, and so should you.

Continue reading →

This Just In: President Barack Obama Is Still Incompetent

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead

I know I’ve neglected our current unethical President lately while trying to determine which candidate to be out future unethical President is less likely to leave the nation a smoldering ruin, but rest assured, Barack Obama has not improved.

The most indisputable example of late comes as he prepares to visit Cuba. In December, President Obama told Yahoo! News:

“What I’ve said to the Cuban government is, if . . . we’re seeing some progress in the liberty and freedom and possibilities of ordinary Cubans, I’d love to use a visit as a way of highlighting that progress. If we’re going backwards, then there’s not much reason for me to be there.”

This isn’t a casual, non-committal statement when a President makes it, though I realize that Obama has never quite grasped that essential aspect of the job. Cuba reads it, and so does the rest of the world. If Obama is to be believed—he isn’t, but let’s pretend—it is a commitment, and his office as well as the nation is placed on the line along with his credibility.

According to human rights organizations,  the Castro regime’s repression has indeed grown worse since the renewal of diplomatic ties with the United States in 2014. Abuse and arrests of dissidents have increased, and there has been a government crackdown on churches and religious groups:

Throughout 2015, there were more than 8,616 documented political arrests in Cuba. In November alone there were more than 1,447 documented political arrests, the highest monthly tally in decades. Those numbers compare to 2,074 arrests in 2010 and 4,123 in 2011. . . . According to the London-based NGO, Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW), last year 2,000 churches were declared illegal and 100 were designated for demolition by the Castro regime. Altogether, CSW documented 2,300 separate violations of religious freedom in 2015 compared to 220 in 2014. . . .  Most of the 53 political prisoners released in the months prior and after Obama’s December 2014 announcement have since been re-arrested on multiple occasions. Five have been handed new long-term prison sentences. Meanwhile, Human Rights Watch noted in its new 2016 report, “Cuba has yet to allow visits to the island by the International Committee of the Red Cross or by U.N. human rights monitors, as stipulated in the December 2014 agreement with the United States.”

Oh, never mind all that depressing stuff, you Gloomy Gusses! Obama announced last week that he’ll go to Cuba anyway, and thus his December pledge was meaningless, just more words. Continue reading →

And Now, A Positive Note About Marco Rubio: Apparently He Actually Reads Bills Before He Votes On Them…

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Republican presidential candidate Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., speaks with the media after touring the World Famous Gold & Silver Pawn shop with owner Rick Harrison Thursday, May 28, 2015, in Las Vegas. The shop is featured in the television show Pawn Stars. (AP Photo/John Locher)

…unlike everyone else.

…at least when he bothers to show up to vote, which isn’t often.

Still, to be fair to Marco, Ethics Alarms notes that Joshua Stanton, a lawyer and North Korea policy expert who has advised the Hill on legislation, writes:

By now, most of you know that the North Korea Sanctions and Policy Enhancement Act, the Senate’s version of H.R. 757, passed the Senate unanimously Wednesday night. The House is expected to pass the Senate’s version this morning and send it to the President’s desk.

In an election year, when floor time is especially precious, it was remarkable and humbling that the Senate spent an entire day debating this bill….Both Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio interrupted their presidential campaigns to fly back to Washington and cast “yea” votes. Both senators have been solid supporters of the bill. Two years ago, Senator Rubio personally read every line of an earlier version. I hope I’m not giving away a trade secret here, but it’s pretty damn rare for representatives and senators to personally read lengthy, legalistic bills themselves; most delegate that to their staffers. Rubio did so with obvious care and understanding, leaving no doubt that he’s extremely bright. I saw his tracked changes and comment bubbles in the draft, and suspect that the mineral export ban the Senate added to section 104 was (at least in part) his idea. That provision could be quite powerful, akin to previous legislation that banned Iran’s oil sales.

This suggests to me that Rubio, while not having the goods to be President, could be an excellent, responsible Senator, if he wanted to be.

Too bad he doesn’t want to be.

[There is still no excuse for every member of Congress not personally reading and understanding ever piece of legislation they vote on. For elected officials to vote into law bills they have not read carefully and fully understand is unethical—lazy, irresponsible, incompetent.]

____________________

Pointer: Fred, who is on a roll…

 

The States’ Inexcusable Incompetence In Rape Cases

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

rape kits

If anyone can think of a good explanation for this outrage, please enlighten me.

Massachusetts has a 15-year statute of limitations on prosecuting sexual assault crimes, but the state only requires that untested rape kits be stored for six months.  No state currently provides the victim of an alleged sexual assault the right to require a jurisdiction to retain a rape kit until the statute of limitations expires, and only six states and Washington, D.C., provide a right for the prompt processing of a rape kit.

How can this be? Why wouldn’t it be obvious that as long as it is possible that rape charges can be brought, the relevant rape kit must be preserved? Continue reading →