Month: November 2016

The Democrats’ Petition To Overturn The Election

/ Jack Marshall / 134 Comments

petition-electors

There is a petition on Change.org calling for Trump’s electors to violate their pledges and vote for Clinton when the Electoral College convenes on December 19. The originator is a Democratic cheating advocate, liar and Ethics Dunce named Elijah Berg. 3.5 million fellow cheaters, ignoramuses and sore losers have now signed the silly thing, on the way to the goal of 4,500,000, which will obligate the White House to respond to it. The proper response would be a Bronx cheer.

The petition makes me feel even better about not voting with these people, who now, fully corrupt, believe that it is just and right to achieve power by any means necessary, and ethics be damned. These are 3.5 million people I wouldn’t dare play cards with, or trust to mail my water bill.

Let’s focus on some of Elijah’s points, shall we?

On December 19, the Electors of the Electoral College will cast their ballots. If they all vote the way their states voted, Donald Trump will win. However, they can vote for Hillary Clinton if they choose.

Yes, and they can defecate on the floor, too, but their duty is to vote according to how their state’s citizens directed them to vote, and their assumption that the electors would perform that duty. Continue reading →

Four Unethical Dispatches From The 2016 Post Election Ethics Train Wreck: #1

/ Jack Marshall / 27 Comments

harry-reid

Ethics Alarms must now designate the collective freakout following Donald Trump’s victory and the massive national rejection of the Democratic party as an Ethics Train Wreck, distinct from the two candidates’ individual train wrecks that engulfed their campaigns. So far, most of the passengers leaping onto the metaphorical rambling wreckage hail from the progressive and Democratic ranks, not helping their crumbling national stature at all.

Coming up in four posts are four recent screeds and missives that demonstrate various degrees and kinds of ethics rot. The rot is wide and deep, and helps explain why so many young American think that pointless chanting, shouting and violence is a rational response to a disappointing election result.

I. Nevada Senator Harry Reid

Senate minority leader Harry Reid released this statement about the election of Donald Trump:

I have personally been on the ballot in Nevada for 26 elections and I have never seen anything like the reaction to the election completed last Tuesday. The election of Donald Trump has emboldened the forces of hate and bigotry in America.

“White nationalists, Vladimir Putin and ISIS are celebrating Donald Trump’s victory, while innocent, law-abiding Americans are wracked with fear – especially African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Muslim Americans, LGBT Americans and Asian Americans. Watching white nationalists celebrate while innocent Americans cry tears of fear does not feel like America.

“I have heard more stories in the past 48 hours of Americans living in fear of their own government and their fellow Americans than I can remember hearing in five decades in politics. Hispanic Americans who fear their families will be torn apart, African Americans being heckled on the street, Muslim Americans afraid to wear a headscarf, gay and lesbian couples having slurs hurled at them and feeling afraid to walk down the street holding hands. American children waking up in the middle of the night crying, terrified that Trump will take their parents away. Young girls unable to understand why a man who brags about sexually assaulting women has been elected president.

“I have a large family. I have one daughter and twelve granddaughters. The texts, emails and phone calls I have received from them have been filled with fear – fear for themselves, fear for their Hispanic and African American friends, for their Muslim and Jewish friends, for their LBGT friends, for their Asian friends. I’ve felt their tears and I’ve felt their fear.

“We as a nation must find a way to move forward without consigning those who Trump has threatened to the shadows. Their fear is entirely rational, because Donald Trump has talked openly about doing terrible things to them. Every news piece that breathlessly obsesses over inauguration preparations compounds their fear by normalizing a man who has threatened to tear families apart, who has bragged about sexually assaulting women and who has directed crowds of thousands to intimidate reporters and assault African Americans. Their fear is legitimate and we must refuse to let it fall through the cracks between the fluff pieces.

“If this is going to be a time of healing, we must first put the responsibility for healing where it belongs: at the feet of Donald Trump, a sexual predator who lost the popular vote and fueled his campaign with bigotry and hate. Winning the electoral college does not absolve Trump of the grave sins he committed against millions of Americans. Donald Trump may not possess the capacity to assuage those fears, but he owes it to this nation to try.

“If Trump wants to roll back the tide of hate he unleashed, he has a tremendous amount of work to do and he must begin immediately.”

Observations: Continue reading →

President Trump’s Massive, Unfixable, Unwaivable Conflict Of Interest…And Why Weren’t We Worrying About This BEFORE The Election?

/ Jack Marshall / 36 Comments

trump-tower

Donald Trump, as President of the United States, will have an unprecedented conflict of interest—many, actually—that realistically cannot be fixed and never could. He will be President, and he will own a global set of businesses worth billions of dollars that his policies and decisions will unavoidably affect for better or worse, usually to his long term benefit or disadvantage.

Almost nobody, including me, and it’s my business to do so, focused substantially on the problem during the campaign. Trump, as  usually, airily dismissed the issue when it came up as if it was nothing, saying, “If I become president, I couldn’t care less about my company. It’s peanuts,” during one debate. “Run the company, kids. Have a good time.” Typical, stupid, and neither Clinton nor the moderator had the wit or information to follow up with the required, “Wait a minute, that doesn’t deal with the problem. Will you also not care about your kids, Mr. Trump? Your companies’ stockholders? Business partners? Employees?”

At least we know why Hillary was reluctant to pursue this issue, don’t we?

The Trump Organization’s executive vice president, Alan Garten, similarly brushed the problem away, saying in September, “His focus is going to be solely on improving the country. The business is not going to be a factor or an interest at that point.” That’s an incredible statement, naive at best, dishonest at worse. Of course it will be an interest. How could it not be? The question is whether it will be a factor. Human nature, and Trump’s nature, strongly suggest that it will be.

Who can tell with Trump? Maybe he really believes there’s no problem. After all, as I have written repeatedly and all evidence proves, the man doesn’t know ethics from ambergris. Whether he knows it or not, however, this is a massive  and potentially crippling problem for him and his administration, not to mention his children and his businesses. It is especially a problem because the same journalists who dismissed Hillary’s family foundation’s influence peddling while she was Secretary of State and after as another overblown conservative attack (after all, why should venality and hidden conflicts of interest interfere with electing the First Woman President?) have the long knives out to eviscerate Trump on any hint of impropriety, real or not, they can find.  This is real. Continue reading →

Ethics Observations On The Post-Election Freak-Out, or “A Nation of Assholes” Reconsidered

/ Jack Marshall / 73 Comments

2016 Election California Protests

I have to adapt, with acknowledgement, a long-running gag wielded by Prof. Glenn Reynolds on his iconic conservative website Instapundit thus:

“I wrote if Donald Trump was elected President, we’d have a nation of assholes, and I was RIGHT!”

The problem is that the joke isn’t funny in this case. It’s tragic. What I am seeing in the news, watching on social media and reading on the web and in editorial pages shows me that the last eight years have done even more damage to American unity and ethics than I had realized.

First, a brief defense of the word “asshole.” It is a vulgar term, and I fully expect President Trump to use it in a press conference or rant some day. I first employed it here in 2010 to describe Julian Assange. I trust nobody will take issue with that decision. ( “Assange’s real priority is Assange, and everything and everyone else is secondary. Luckily, there is a word for such people, a useful label that will help us assess his actions and motives. Asshole.”)

Next was Rev. Terry Jones in 2011. Remember him? He was the self-righteous pastor who announced that he was going to publicly burn the Koran, knowing that the act would incite anti-American riots abroad, and probably get people killed. I wrote,

“What do you call someone who pours gasoline on a brush fire to get attention? Jerk is too mild. What do you call someone who intentionally makes a difficult problem of international perception even more difficult—intentionally? Fool is too kind.  Unethical, my staple, is too abstract. There just is no civil term for someone like Jones. He is an asshole. There are others running loose right now—Julian Assange, Michael Moore, Charlie Sheen—but none come close to Jones.”

Frankly, I don’t know how Donald Trump escaped that last sentence.

Last year, as part of my plea to get the Republican Party and its primary voters to be civicly responsible Americans and prevent the nomination of Donald Trump—in my most fevered nightmares, like the ones where my son’s head has turned into an eggbeater and he is dating Miley Cyrus, I never conceived that Trump would actually be elected—I explained that having a President, always the nation’s most influential role model, who spoke and acted like Trump did would transform the culture of the U.S. and give us a whole generation of boorish, mean-spirited, impulsive and self-righteous young citizens, of which misogyny would only be the tip of the metaphorical iceberg. I still fear that this will be the effect of the Trump years, even if he proves to be a popular and successful president. Especially, if he is a popular and successful president.

What I did not fully comprehend is how the divisive actions and rhetoric emanating from the White House, prominent progressives and  the complicit popular culture and news media have already turned a substantial segment of the public into assholes. There have now been four days of violent tantrums across the U.S. as “disappointed” progressives, Democrats and illegal aliens “protest” the results of the election.  MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, an old-school Democrat and unabashed lover of the political process, was gobsmacked, despite his network’s official derogation of Donald Trump.

“What kind of a statement is it really there to make?” Matthews asked. “They lost!”

Of course, there is no statement, just self-indictments, like “We think we know what is best, and will scream and set fires until we get it,” “We have no respect for anyone who disagrees with us,” and “We only believe in the institutions of the nation we live in when they do what we want.” Most obvious of all: “If you don’t fall into lockstep with the policies and rhetoric of the last eight years, you’re a racist.”

Or perhaps “We’re assholes” is  clear enough.  They are assholes nourished and encouraged by the Obama/ Democratic party culture of arrogant and intolerant progressivism, the demonization of sincere dissent, and the ends justify the means.

OBSERVATIONS: Continue reading →

When Ethics Alarms Don’t Ring Dept: Planet Fitness

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

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There’s nothing substantively wrong with the fitness chain Planet Fitness’s new philanthropic program to combat bullying. However, one has to question the ethics alarms and basic English comprehension of a company that sees nothing wrong with naming a campaign “The Judgement Free Generation.” I just saw a TV ad that was a teaser for the program. The announcer ended by saying “Now Planet Fitness is creating a Judgement Free Generation.”

Judgement is not a bad thing. Judgement is a good thing. So is making judgements. Society without constant judgements of all kinds cannot possibly have or maintain standards. Without standards, there can be no ethical guidelines and boundaries.Nobody with any concept of what ethics are and why they are essential to civilization would every want to eliminate judgement. Judgement and bullying are not synonymous, not even close.

What some copywriter at Planet Fitness has done is to launch a national campaign that frames “judgement” as something to be avoided. Nobody in the hierarchy there perceived anything wrong with that. This isn’t being “judgement free,” this is just bad judgement, as in incompetent.. To the extent that it advances the culture’s increasing tendency to discourage negative judgements against any conduct, even objectively destructive conduct, leading to purely subjective ethics (that is, no ethics at all), the campaign’s message is irresponsible.

Besides, based on what I’ve seen of late on college campuses, Bernie rallies and anti-Trump freakouts, we may already have a judgement-free generation.

At least one.

From Facebook, Two Comments Of The Day: The Election

/ Jack Marshall / 32 Comments

Police form a line to contain protesters outside a campaign rally for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump on Thursday, June 2, 2016, in San Jose, Calif. A group of protesters attacked Trump supporters who were leaving the presidential candidate's rally in San Jose on Thursday night. A dozen or more people were punched, at least one person was pelted with an egg and Trump hats grabbed from supporters were set on fire on the ground. (AP Photo/Noah Berger)

Two regular commenters,  johnburger2013 and Alexander Cheezem, cross-posted their Facebook essays about the election on Ethics Alarms. Both are worthy Comment of the Day.

First, from johnburger2013:

A  Facebook friend told me to let this go. However, I can’t, especially after reading countless postings about the end to the US as we know it. This post is most particularly directed at the person accusing me of white-male-entitled-complacency, who has never had to worry about storm troopers kicking in my front door.

Trump won. Clinton lost. This has been a long, painful, contentious election cycle, extraordinarily dividing the nation into bitter, blinded hemispheres with unbelievable and unnecessary bloodletting.

Yet, take heart. The US republic will survive. Will Trump be a good president? Who knows? Nobody. Got that? Nobody. Time will tell.

Give some credit to the citizenry. The US, for all of its past and present errors, has tried to live up to its mission to form a ‘more perfect’ union. It has constantly tried to right the ship and steer it away from the rocks. Hopefully, the thousand cuts inflicted by this election will heal and the nation will find itself stronger. I have read that a broken bone is stronger when it heals. Hope springs eternal.

To those lamenting and wailing that your candidate lost: Stop it. Please. For the sake of the nation. Just stop it. Trump’s presidency does not, and will not, lead to mass incarceration, deportation, or the building of ovens. The US is nowhere near where the Weimar Republic was in the 1920s. Nor is it anywhere close to pre-Mussolini Italy, pre-Franco Spain, pre-Chavez Venezuela, or pre-Morales Bolivia. And no, Trump’s presidency will not, under any circumstances, be a catalyst for religious reactionaries calling for pregnant women to be chained to the stove.

More particularly, stop hurling Nazi memes around. Nazi Germany led to unspeakable evil, targeting Jews for extermination. Do not, under any circumstances, diminish what Jews suffered under Nazi genocide by claiming that Trump and his supporters are one clothing store away from brown shirts. Do not tell me that my ‘white-privilege complacency’ blinds me to the realities of Kristallnacht. It is insulting and cruel. I am from the Cleveland, Ohio, area, which had a large survivor community. I saw the fear. I heard the stories survivors endured. Worst of all, I saw the despair in the eyes of ordinary people targeted because of their religion. I don’t need to experience first-hand what happened at Treblinka or Auschwitz to know that that is pure, unbridled evil.

Furthermore, I saw that Kristallnacht has been trending on Facebook, and, ironically, began on November 9, 1938. Believe, me, I do not support Donald Trump – I think he will be a terrible president (I hope I am wrong). However, I am disheartened and saddened that fellow citizens cannot put aside partisan differences. Reading Facebook postings comparing Trump to Hitler, and his supporters to the Schutzstaffel, is morally offensive, especially having known people who suffered through Nazi genocide, people forever scarred by the horror they lived and having to relive it every single moment they look at numbers brutally carved into their skin

Trump’s victory absolutely does not mean that minorities will be hauled back to plantations in chains, or marriages recently upheld will be obliterated.

As for Trump and his supporters: Drop the “Clinton-is-a-criminal” stuff. Your candidate won. Stop gloating. It is immature and unbecoming of the republic. Your candidate will take the highest executive office in the land. Demand that your candidate govern with the dignity, respect, and vision that office requires. Demand that he stop saying stupid things. Demand that he develop a filter and impulse control expected of the office.

Disagree over policy. Disagree over ideas. Disagree all you want about Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush or Obama, but they behaved in the manner called for by the Office of the President of the United States of America.

The US is a great place to live because of the liberties enshrined and guaranteed and protected by the Constitution. If we, as citizens, hold to true to those values, the nation will be a better place.

Now Alexander Cheezem’s Comment of the Day, on the theme of accountability, an Ethics Alarms favorite. I’ll have a brief comment at the end: Continue reading →

Three Ethically Perceptive Takes On The Election

/ Jack Marshall / 38 Comments

Amidst all the hysterical “the fascists, racists, homophobes, xenophobes and misogynists have taken over! Run! Hide!” commentary—which, incidentally, is inciting violence far more directly than anything Donald Trump has ever said—a couple of non-right wing commentators have tried to bring some perspective and rationality to the question of what happened Tuesday. Naturally, they focus on ethics.

First, however, in contrast, I give you the vile pronouncements of Slate’s professional race-baiter and anti-white demagogue, Jamelle Bouie. His piece for Slate—I will not trust the site as long as they give a bigot like Bouie a forum—was called “White Won.”  Here’s a typical passage:

“After eight years of a black president—after eight years in which cosmopolitan America asserted its power and its influence, eight years in which women leaned in and blacks declared that their lives mattered—millions of white Americans said enough. They had their fill of this world and wanted the old one back. And although it’s tempting to treat this as a function of some colorblind anti-elitism, that cannot explain the unity of white voters in this election. Trump didn’t just win working-class whites—he won the college-educated and the affluent. He even won young whites. Seventeen months after he announced his candidacy, millions of white Americans flocked to the ballot box to put Trump into the White House. And they did so as a white herrenvolk, racialized and radicalized by Trump.”

Three observations: 1) This is the mentality that Barack Obama and the Democrats have encouraged and nourished, in order to derive maximum political benefit from dividing the nation, 2) what epic gall to call Trump’s 58% of the white vote proof of racism, when Obama’s 93% black vote in 2012, after a disastrous first term (though the second term made it look good by comparison), was happily regarded as “loyalty,” 3) The fact that Trump’s opponent was corrupt and insulted half of all voters had nothing to do with how anyone voted.

Oh: Bouie’s screed was sub-headed, “We are still the country that produced George Wallace. We are still the country that killed Emmett Till.”

I didn’t vote for Trump, but on behalf of my country, I am offended and insulted.

That’s enough of that toxic jerk. Here are three open-minded commentators who are trying to blunt the left’s calculated strategy of turning half the nation against the other.

1. Robby Soave: Trump Won Because Leftist Political Correctness Inspired a Terrifying Backlash

I’ll begin by saying that Trump’s win is attributable to anger over political correctness goes too far, but the Left’s increasing hostility to free speech, and non-conforming opinion was definitely a prime source of legitimate suspicion and distrust toward Democrats. It was certainly among the factors that finally convinced me not to vote for Hillary.  Soave also is patting himself on the back for playing Cassandra. There is a lot of this “I told you so” going around, as usually happens when the conventional wisdom is spectacularly wrong. It’s all moral luck, of course. The pundits and experts seeking recognition as geniuses are trying to capitalize on being at least as lucky as wise. Still, Soave was right, and many others saw what he did. The Reason journalist writes in part…

I have tried to call attention to this issue for years. I have warned that political correctness actually is a problem on college campuses, where the far-left has gained institutional power and used it to punish people for saying or thinking the wrong thing….I have warned that a lot of people, both on campus and off it, were furious about political-correctness-run-amok—so furious that they would give power to any man who stood in opposition to it.

…The left sorted everyone into identity groups and then told the people in the poorly-educated-white-male identity group that that’s the only bad one. It mocked the members of this group mercilessly….It called them racists….

There is a cost to depriving people of the freedom (in both the legal and social senses) to speak their mind. The presidency just went to the guy whose main qualification, according to his supporters, is that he isn’t afraid to speak his.

2.  Will Rahn:  Commentary: The unbearable smugness of the press

This is Ethics Hero territory: a CBS reporter pointing an accusing finger at his employer and the rest of the profession. Journalists finally pushed their arrogance, incompetent and bias to the breaking point, and serious wounded—I hope killed—the public’s trust. They slimed Sarah Palin and got away with it; they distorted Mitt Romney to re-elect Obama. But handed a candidate so awful that all they had to do was tell the truth, the news media still decided that it needed to make sure its candidate won. Americans like fairness. When Trump said the the election was “rigged” because the news media was supporting Hillary, it was so obvious that he was right.

Rahn:

Had Hillary Clinton won, there’d be a winking “we did it” feeling in the press, a sense that we were brave and called Trump a liar and saved the republic. So much for that. …Trump knew what he was doing when he invited his crowds to jeer and hiss the reporters covering him. They hate us, and have for some time.And can you blame them? Journalists love mocking Trump supporters. We insult their appearances. We dismiss them as racists and sexists. We emote on Twitter about how this or that comment or policy makes us feel one way or the other, and yet we reject their feelings as invalid.…We diagnose them as racists in the way Dark Age clerics confused medical problems with demonic possession. Journalists, at our worst, see ourselves as a priestly caste. We believe we not only have access to the indisputable facts, but also a greater truth, a system of beliefs divined from an advanced understanding of justice…This is all a “whitelash,” you see. Trump voters are racist and sexist, so there must be more racists and sexists than we realized. Tuesday night’s outcome was not a logic-driven rejection of a deeply flawed candidate named Clinton; no, it was a primal scream against fairness, equality, and progress. Let the new tantrums commence! 

3. Mike Rowe, on Facebook

The “Dirty Jobs” reality TV star is perceptive, objective and articulate, and when asked his reactions to the election—he was not a Trump supporter—replied in part:

I know people are freaked out…I get it. I’m worried too. But not because of who we elected. We’ve survived 44 Presidents, and we’ll survive this one too. I’m worried because millions of people now seem to believe that Trump supporters are racist, xenophobic, and uneducated misogynists. I’m worried because despising our candidates publicly is very different than despising the people who vote for them…

I don’t think Donald Trump won by tapping into America’s “racist underbelly,” and I don’t think Hillary lost because she’s a woman. I think a majority of people who voted in this election did so in spite of their many misgivings about the character of both candidates. That’s why it’s very dangerous to argue that Clinton supporters condone lying under oath and obstructing justice. Just as it’s equally dangerous to suggest a Trump supporter condones gross generalizations about foreigners and women.

These two candidates were the choices we gave ourselves, and each came with a heaping helping of vulgarity and impropriety. Yeah, it was dirty job for sure, but the winner was NOT decided by a racist and craven nation – it was decided by millions of disgusted Americans desperate for real change. The people did not want a politician. The people wanted to be seen. Donald Trump convinced those people that he could see them. Hillary Clinton did not.

Finally, a bonus analysis to provide perspective: mine.

Last night, as often happens, a comment from a reader (and old friend) prompted a “Eureka!” moment. I realized how very American this election was, and gained some respect and a great deal of understanding for what happened. The commenter wrote about how terrified people were, and how a friend had told her that she was seriously considering suicide. She also said she was beginning to lose her confidence that “it can’t happen here.” I was watching video of protests and riots as I read this. I wrote (I edited this slightly):

And this is what the scaremongering does to the ignorant and weakminded, to be brutally blunt, and why the scaremongers need to cut it out.

Anyone who seriously sees parallels between Trump and Hitler understands neither, nor the corresponding historical context, nor the two nations and their very different cultures. Hitler rose because the Germans, who always had wanted a strongman, were desperate, and their self-esteem had been destroyed. Americans got tired of being pushed around, lectured, and being told that traditional cultural values made them racists and xenophobes. They decided to say “Screw that!” by electing a protest candidate whose sole function was to be a human thumb in the eye, because he was so disgusting to the people who had pretended to be their betters. Don’t you understand? It’s idiotic, but the message isn’t. It’s “Animal House”! and “Animal House” is as American as Doolittle’s Raid:

Otter: Bluto’s right. Psychotic… but absolutely right. We gotta take these bastards. Now we could do it with conventional weapons, but that could take years and cost millions of lives. No, I think we have to go all out. I think that this situation absolutely requires a really futile and stupid gesture be done on somebody’s part!

Bluto: We’re just the guys to do it.

In Germany, The Big Cheese says jump and the Germans say “How high?” In the US, the response is “Fuck you!” Obama never understood that. He and the Democrats are finally getting the “fuck you!” they have been asking for. I love that about America. And much as I hate the idea of an idiot being President, I do love the message and who it was sent to. America still has spunk.

I love spunk.

 

Comment of the Day: “Ethics Quiz: The Harvard Soccer Team’s “Locker Room Talk””

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

bridge cards

This Comment of the Day is a week late, for which I apologize. The topic is still as vivid as ever however, especially since the episode in question, Harvard’s  premature ending of its men’s soccer team’s season because of real, bona fide, sexist locker room talk misogyny that escaped into the world at large, got filed in the “This will help elect Donald Trump” category. 

In the discussion threads, the themes expanded into race and “white privilege.” Chris Bentley, an African-American commenter here, reiterated a theme of some other posts here, that the players were punished under a double standard that allows women engage in direct sexually harassing conduct without disapproval. To this, another commenter protested….

Oh please. This is just right-wing PC nonsense, trying to deny that there is any difference between men and women. Earth to Bentley: there is a difference. Ditto between black and white. And a lot of it has to do with power. Hint: if you wanted power, and had the choice to be born as a) black or b) white, which would you choose? How about a) male or b) female? Get real – everyone knows there are power imbalances except in your fevered mind where “if the behavior were reversed” it would be unacceptable. The behavior ISN’T reversed, and can’t be, because the world is not wired that way.

Here was Chris Bentley’s brave and provocative response, the Comment of the Day, under the post, “Ethics Quiz: The Harvard Soccer Team’s “Locker Room Talk.” I’ll be back at the end for some additional comments….and a poem.

You are, very directly, telling me that regardless of what I think, or the experiences Ive had in my life, when it comes to having “power”, I will always fall short. And I’m the one spouting nonsense. Great pep talk, you should coach little leaguers.

If I had a choice to be born white or black, I would choose to still be born black. Not because it runs contrarian to what you believe, but because, as Ive told you on numerous occasions, I have never (that I am aware of) been the victim of racial discrimination, and, just so happen to be proud of being black, so there’s no reason for me to wish to be of a different race. Now you have previously pointed out that my life story is anecdotal, but this question is directly about what I would choose, and seeing the changing winds, about how its now en vogue to demean whites with impunity, especially white males, I’ll gladly continue being black, thank you very much.

Continue reading →

Justice Ginsberg Has Reached Her “What The Hell” Stage, But That Doesn’t Mean It Can Extend To Ethics

/ Jack Marshall / 63 Comments

ginsberg-jabot

Justice Ginsberg has been speaking out lately in intemperate fashion, first about Donald Trump, then about Colin Kaepernick. In both cases she received immediate criticism and issued apologies. It’s clear, however, that the liberal feminist icon, now 84 and in ill health, has reached the point in life where she feels she doesn’t need to be especially vigilant about what she says, a bit like Estelle Getty’s character Sophia on “The Golden Girls.” After all, what can anyone do to her?

Now that would normally be the time where ethics are paramount: ethics are what you do when you know you can get away with it (among other handy definitions). Ginsberg is a member of the one court that has no official Code of Judicial Ethics,  but since it is the highest court in the land, its judges are obligated to be exemplars, not rebels.

But what the hell. Justice Ginsberg affects ornate jabots when she is on the bench: they spruce up the unisex black judicial robes. In 2014, she revealed that some of them have special significance. She wears one Jabot, for example, when she is part of a majority which is about to deliver its opinion. She wears another when she is dissenting from the majority opinion. (That’s it above.)

Wednesday morning, following the election of Donald Trump, an event that she had earlier told an interviewer would cause her to move to New Zealand, Ginsburg sported the “dissent jabot” on the bench, though no opinions were being read. Reporters quickly picked up on the code, and took the choice as an expression of opposition to Trump’s election, which it almost certainly was. She has not disabused anyone of the assumption.
Cute, clever, unprovable, and unethical. It would have been a clear breach of decorum, independence and judicial dignity for Ginsberg to wear a Hillary button on her robes, or to sport any political statement. Judges typically oppose lawyers, clients and witnesses from bringing politics into court. For a judge to do it is asking for an official reprimand. For a Supreme Court Justice to do it, it doesn’t matter what the message is, shows a lack of respect for her own profession, as well as a lack of self-control.

The gesture is also unprofessional and a breach of the duty of all high government officials to publicly show respect and support for each other. For Ginsberg to “shout out” her dissent to a Presidential election (it doesn’t matter if it is code or not) in such a prominent public forum intentionally endorses divisiveness, at a time when divisiveness is a real threat to national stability.Naturally, her feminist, progressive and Democratic fans cheer this defiance, because they don’t know judicial ethics from corn flakes. Heck, after defending Hillary Clinton for so long, they don’t know any ethics from corn flakes. Justice Ginsberg knows, however. She just doesn’t care any more.

Ah, what the hell?

Continue reading →

Partisan Hypocrisy And Dishonesty: A Facebook Case Study In Clinton Corruption

/ Jack Marshall / 31 Comments

dont-despair

The unethical individual in this case is an old and cherished friend. She isn’t a fool. She is, in most matters, compassionate, fair, informed, thoughtful and rational.  I cannot begin to describe how disappointed I am in the lack of integrity and self-awareness in her conduct.

Before the election, she posed the meme above.  That’s the friend I know, or thought I knew before the toxic values of Hillary Clinton corrupted her.

After the election, she has posted this, a typically vile, sneering anti-conservative screed by Paul Krugman. A quote:

We thought that the great majority of Americans valued democratic norms and the rule of law.It turns out that we were wrong. There turn out to be a huge number of people — white people, living mainly in rural areas — who don’t share at all our idea of what America is about. For them, it is about blood and soil, about traditional patriarchy and racial hierarchy. And there were many other people who might not share those anti-democratic values, but who nonetheless were willing to vote for anyone bearing the Republican label.

I don’t know how we go forward from here. Is America a failed state and society? It looks truly possible.

 

No despair there!

Next up was this hysterical piece, from the New Yorker, called “An American Tragedy.” I can’t let this part go unanswered, because it is becoming the accepted manipulative and deception euphemism of the election. Hillary’s beaten, she’s gone, and unlike Richard Nixon, she’s not going to rise like Dracula and make a comeback. I want to leave her alone just as I never want the slimy Clintons to darken my brainpan again, but first, I want the biased journalists who tried to sell her as Joan of Arc to stop the lies.

The author writes,

“Hillary Clinton was a flawed candidate but a resilient, intelligent, and competent leader, who never overcame her image among millions of voters as untrustworthy and entitled.”

Donald Trump could just as justifiably could be called “flawed,” as well as Pol Pot. What are the “flaws” this cover-word is hiding? Well, she is greedy, venal, willing to use conflicts of interest and influence peddling for personal gain, violates rules and laws when she knows she is shielded by her power and crony connection from accountability, a ruthless foe of the victim of alleged sexual assault when it is advantageous, and an outspoken advocate for them when that is advantageous. When she is caught, she lies. When the lies are exposed, she spins, and her apologies are misleading too. That’s why she “never overcame her image among millions of voters as untrustworthy and entitled“—she IS untrustworthy and entitled, and couldn’t hide it long enough to be elected President over a completely unstable, ignorant ass. Resilient—I’ll give her resilient. Intelligent too, although she sure did and said some incredibly stupid things for an intelligent person. But competent? Competent people learn about cyber-security when they run the State Department. Competent people are not “extremely careless” (rather than “grossly negligent”) in handling classified information.

Then my friend posted this, from Vanity Fair. It’s a letter Hollywood liberal Aaron Sorkin supposedly wrote to his daughter. It is full of scaremongering like this:

“The Klan won last night. White nationalists. Sexists, racists and buffoons. Angry young white men who think rap music and Cinco de Mayo are a threat to their way of life (or are the reason for their way of life) have been given cause to celebrate. Men who have no right to call themselves that and who think that women who aspire to more than looking hot are shrill, ugly, and otherwise worthy of our scorn rather than our admiration struck a blow for misogynistic shitheads everywhere. Hate was given hope….And the world took no time to react. The Dow futures dropped 700 points overnight. Economists are predicting a deep and prolonged recession…”

Yes, “economists” like Paul Krugman, who wrote Tuesday night that the stock market would NEVER recover. The stock market rebounded almost immediately, and stocks are now soaring. Bias makes you stupid.

Not finished yet in her efforts to avoid despair, my friend posted this editorial from the New York Times, which encompassed boiler-plate progressive talking points:

“There is a planet to save. The earth is in peril from a changing climate no matter how many deniers say otherwise. There may be millions of immigrants to shield from a Trump homeland-enforcement regime. State and local governments may need to step in if the federal government retreats from protecting consumers or helping educate children. And there may be sick people to care for, should Mr. Trump dismantle the Affordable Care Act.”

Of course, Mrs. Clinton never articulated a course for “saving the planet” or its price-tag, because she knows that spending massive amounts on speculative “fixes” will make the debt even more frightening than it has become under Obama, and will require either cutting social spending or massive tax hikes. That part is just Bernie-speak. There are no legal immigrants to shield from anything, and the New York Times just declared that the prospect of enforcing our laws is apocalyptic. Under federal funding and guidance, America’s education at all level is disgraceful now. And the Affordable Care Act has mass heath care increasingly affordable for those who didn’t need a government subsidy. Trump might try something else that actually works? The monster.

The specifics are a tangential issue though, I know. The point is that this, and a huge number of other irresponsible editorials, assays, columns creeds and internet posts like them, are seeding despair. So are the Clinton Corrupted who are plastering them all over public media.

On this last one, I lightly pointed out to my friend that the essay was less that fair or accurate, as did another.

She deleted both comments.

Now I understand, unfortunately. That reasonable, measured, rational, responsible appeal to calm and fairness was only supposed to apply to Republicans. Since my friend never dreamed that she might be held to the same standards she preached to those whose opinion she did not agree with or respect, she never considered having to follow her own advice, or the ethical value of doing so.

Like anything else, ethics is just another political tool to the politically corrupted, to manipulate and deceive.