Month: August 2023

“Curmie’s Conjectures”: Donald Trump Has No Convictions, But He Has No Convictions

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

by Curmie

[Notes from your host: 1) Curmie and I did not coordinate our posts, and 2) as usual, his erudition puts me to shame.]

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I’m currently in the process of moving into a new office which is far too small to accommodate my collection of books, even after I gave away over 1000 of them.  One of the volumes I still haven’t figured out what to do with is my Penguin paperback copy of Thucydides’ “History of the Peloponnesian War,” purchased over 40 years ago for a course I took in grad school.

Coming across that volume triggered a memory of struggling with one of that book’s most famous sections, the Stasis in Corcyra.  It wasn’t that the passages in question were too confusing.  Rather, it was that word “stasis”; no one would describe the civil war on the island of Corcyra in 427 BCE as static. 

A little digging (well, actually more than a little, as these were the days before the internet) revealed that virtually all English translations of those passages of Thucydides had simply adopted a cognate of the Greek word στάσις (stásis), meaning roughly “that which is stood up.”  So something firmly placed and unchanging would be static, or in a state of stasis.  But the word also carried the meaning of “standing up against,” in the sense of resisting authority.  So the insurrection on Corcyra was, in fact, an act of stasis.

These linguistic constructions, known as contranyms, auto-antonyms, or “Janus words” (among other locutions) are not uncommon.  We all understand that a peer might be a member of the English nobility or an equal, or that “it’s all downhill from there” might mean that the system is in decline or that the hard part is over and we can coast to the finish line.

I’m not sure if there’s a word for the variation on the theme that forms the title of this essay: the two meanings of the term are not in direct contradiction, but they lead to pretty close to opposite conclusions.  What I find interesting is that both definitions can apply simultaneously. 

That is, “having no convictions” can mean lacking a system of guiding principles, especially one involving a moral compass or an ethical center. It can also mean that the subject has never been convicted of a crime.  I’d argue that Donald Trump fits both descriptions rather well. 

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Snap Out Of It! Trump’s Latest Disqualifying Statement Is Signature Significance—Stop Pretending He Is A Rational Option To Elect President

/ Jack Marshall / 31 Comments

Asked by Glenn Beck in an interview “[I]f you’re president again, will you lock people up?”, Donald Trump, the supposed champion of democracy and heroic foe of the Democratic totalitarians, answered, “The answer is you have no choice because they’re doing it to us.” 

Dingdingdingdingding! This is signature significance, just like his earlier musings about suspending the Constitution. As I wrote earlier this year, “As divided as Americans are, it doesn’t appear that enough of them care about preserving democracy to do anything to preserve it. They only differ on the means by which they are willing to let it collapse.” Electing Donald Trump as President, with his sick “tit for tat,” “Do unto others as they do to you,” “vengeance is mine” approach to ethics magnified by his “the ends justify the means” orientation can’t possible “save” democracy. The most it can do is maximize the chances that the totalitarians we end up with aren’t socialists, anti-white bigots and addicted to toxic woke fantasies. That shouldn’t be good enough. It isn’t good enough, not for this nation. That so many still think it is depresses and frightens me greatly.

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No, “Over 1,600 Scientists” Have NOT Signed A “No Climate Change Emergency” Declaration

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

Climate change hysteria, hype, propaganda and disinformation have become overwhelming lately, and with hurricane season upon us, it can be expected to get even worse. So is evidence that the spectacularly woke and incompetent Biden administration is so dedicated to the enviro-fascism this cult engenders that its priorities have become unhinged. For example, when the Pentagon needed to be devoting it full attention to minimizing the carnage from Biden’s disastrous snap withdrawal from Afghanistan in the two weeks between the fall of Kabul to the Taliban on August 15, 2021, and the final U.S. military flight out of Afghanistan on August 30, newly revealed emails show that top Pentagon officials were working to finalize the Department of Defense Climate Adaptation Plan, which declares climate change a major national security risk. After all, what’s a few dead servicemen and abandoned foreign allies along with the collapse of U.S. foreign policy credibility when the END OF THE WORLD looms?

Central to this international brainwashing and bullying effort—the U.N. recently ruled that children can sue nations that haven’t adequately wasted resources on anti-climate change measures that are likely to have no effect whatsoever on the climate—is the misleading claim that there is “scientific consensus” on the topic, when in fact there is not, and when even if this were true, “consensus” on scientific matters has been wrong, sometimes disastrously wrong, throughout history. The conclusions of this so-called consensus are being parroted by activists, politicians and journalists who couldn’t pass a 7th grade science quiz.

Meanwhile, President Biden is being urged to declare a constitutionally dubious “climate emergency” because of all this “certainty” regarding climate change doom, despite the fact that none of the models have panned out and predictions of deadlines to “save the planet” have been as accurate as the those of latter day prophets who have announced the exacts dates when Armageddon was arriving.

Despite all of this (and more), today’s lie being plastered as a headline on multiple conservative and anti-climate change news and a commentary sources is still a lie, still unethical, and still unforgivable. “1,600 Scientists Humiliate the Climate Ghouls Once and for All,” claims PJ Media, the conservative punditry giant. “Coalition of Scientists: ‘There is No Climate Emergency,” shouts CatholicVote. “Over 1,600 Scientists Sign ‘No Climate Emergency’ Declaration” is the most common phrasing, as used by the Epoch Times.

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Ethics Hero (And Most Ethical Use Of “Asshole” of 2023): Gold Star Father Mark Schmitz

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Mark Schmitz, a Gold Star father, testified before the House Foreign Affairs Committee yesterday regarding the deadly suicide bombing in August 2021 that left 13 U.S. servicemembers dead, including Mr. Schmitz’s son, Marine Corps Lance Cpl. Jared Schmitz. The cruel, irresponsible and incompetent American withdrawal from Afghanistan and its aftermath ordered by President Biden has been largely forgotten by most American voters, since they have the attention span of ADD kittens. Perhaps Schmitz’s no-hold-barred attack on Biden’s conduct in this episode will remind them.

What am I talking about? The mainstream news media will make sure as few of the kittens see his testimony as possible, and there’s still more than a year for them to forget again.

His full statement:

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“Gotcha!” Of “Gotcha’s!” The Washington Post Admits That It “Stands By” False Reporting!

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Good to know. Thanks, WaPo!

In one of the Jonathan Turley essays discussed here, the increasingly red pilled GW law prof appropriately scored the Washington Post’s partisan hack of hacks, Philip Bump, whose consistently unethical reporting jaunts would be a blight on responsible journalism if responsible journalism was around any more to be blighted. A burst of exorbitant loyalty that the Post will rue moved the paper to rise to Bump’s defense with the ill-advised message to Turley you see above.

I bet Turley was laughing out loud as he loosened his fingers to type a follow-up article for his blog. The Post had handed him one of the great “gotcha‘s!” in “Nah, there’s no mainstream media bias!” history. By saying that it “stood behind” the reporting of their partisan stooge, the Post had endorsed now indisputable examples of biased, partisan, incompetent, irresponsible and dishonest reporting. Turley could now use the full range of his legal talents to prepare a crushing brief to show, not only the depth of Bump’s corruption, but that of the Post’s as well!

And use it them he did.

Washington Post Stands by Philip Bump’s Claims on Lafayette Park, the Hunter Biden Laptop, and Other Controversial Claims is Turley’s gleeful headline. It deserved an exclamation point. The professor reviews Bump’s despicable work on the Lafayette Park kerfuffle, The Hunter Biden Laptop cover-up, the FBI’s Spying on the Trump Campaign, and the Russian Collusion hoax.

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Ethics Quiz: A Hanlon’s Razor Challenge! [Missing Information Restored!]

/ Jack Marshall / 31 Comments

In response to the above point, an obvious one, made by GOP Presiential hopeful Nikki Haley, Jemele Hill actually wrote this…

“So part of the reason racism is such a terrible sickness in this country is because politicians like this know they can rally a certain base with the fear of OH MY GOD A BLACK WOMAN MIGHT BE PRESIDENT IF YOU DON’T VOTE FOR ME. Then we want to act all surprised when the most hateful part of the base decides they need to act out on their feelings of hatred.”

Jemele Hill is a professional and shameless race-baiter, but one might think that even she might see just a hint of another reason, other than race, why a rational voter would not want to see Kamala Harris in the White House. Harris is an unqualified, babbling, incompetent fool. (Her Ethics Alarms dossier is here.) Unlike other fools in Washington D.C., she isn’t even good at hiding it. This is why she polls as the most unpopular Vice-President in U.S. history. Haley’s point has bite because the “certain base” she is trying to rally is the portion of the population that thinks Presidents should actually be able to do the job, and that mere x chromosomes and skin shade alone—the reasons Harris was selected to be Joe’s shaddow—aren’t enough. Her message is not how Hill characterized it, but rather, “OH MY GOD A BABBLING MORONIC PHONY MIGHT BE PRESIDENT IF YOU DON’T VOTE FOR ME.”

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A 12-year-old Boy And His Mother Refuse To Be Bullied By Woke School Administrators And Win

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

Notice the racist symbolism in that symbol above? No? That’s because there isn’t any, but never mind: Jayden Rodriguez, a 12-year-old middle-schooler in Colorado Springs, was kicked out of class at The Vanguard School, a local charter school, because he had a Gadsden flag patch on his backpack. Jayden was told he had to remove the patch before he would be admitted to the class again.

In an email, a school administrator claimed that the patch was “disruptive to the school environment.” Boy, do I ever remember getting upset over the patches fellow classmates had on their backpacks! This was, of course, an example of woke fascism by a teacher and a school, nothing more or less. Further emails from the school told the student’s mother that “some may now see the Gadsden flag as a symbol of intolerance and hate—or even racism.” Oh, well if “some” erroneously associate a historical symbol that had nothing whatsoever to do with slavery or racism as offensive, by all means punish the kid who knows what it really symbolizes. “Some” see the American flag as a symbol of white supremacy, imperialism, and systemic racism. They are welcome to their foolish opinion, but that doesn’t mean they should have the power to stop any sane American from displaying Old Glory.

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Look What Trump Derangement Super-Spreader Rachel Maddow Told Her Credulous Audience…

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Remember, as you read this offal, that Maddow is arguably the least villainous of the assorted Marxists, racists and liars employed by MSNBC, and is certainly the smartest.

A New York Times story by reporter Alan Feuer claimed “Trump has made no secret in private conversations with his aides of his desire to solve his jumble of legal problems by winning the election. If either of the two federal trials he is confronting is delayed until after the race and Mr. Trump prevails, he could seek to pardon himself after taking office or have his attorney general simply dismiss the matters altogether.” Maddow, being a corrupt journalist herself, naturally assumes anonymous sources’ hearsay statements as interpreted by a New York Times propagandist is Gospel truth, even though its impossible to tell if the last part of the section (which Maddow read) is what Trump said, what the sources claims he said, or what Feuer thinks he meant (that would be double hearsay). Never mind: it was good enough for Maddow’s fearmongering purposes, so this was her follow-up analysis…

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Factcheck Watch: Biden’s Latest Fantasy

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

President Biden was speaking before Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law [ the group calls the January 6 riot a white supremacy insurrection, so you know what its biases are] as another chapter in his ongoing division and hate tour, making the case that Republicans and conservatives are racists and that systemic racism runs rampant over the land. At one point in this now familiar slander, he said, “I was able to, literally, not figuratively, talk Strom Thurmond into voting for the, the Civil Rights Act before he died. And I thought, ‘Well, maybe there’s real progress.’ But hate never dies, it just hides. It hides under the rocks.”

Fascinating. The Civil Rights Act was passed in the Senate by a 73 to 27 vote on June 19, 1964. Biden wasn’t elected to the Senate until January 3, 1973. Senator Strom Thurmond of Dixiecrat fame was one of the 27 “nay” votes on the iconic bill. Other than that, what Biden told the group was “literally” true. Well, that bit about ” before he died” is shaky: Thurmond died in 2002.

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The Answer To This Controversy Is Legally And Ethically Obvious And We Shouldn’t Trust Anyone Who Doesn’t Think So

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

“Americans are losing faith in their schoolteachers,” the Washington Post proclaimed a year ago. Gee, I wonder why…

California’s woke attorney general, Rob Bonta, has filed a lawsuit against Chino Valley Unified School District in San Bernardino County to halt the county’s requirement that parents be notified when their child changes pronouns or gender identity, or seeks to use a bathroom assigned to a gender opposite to his or hers. In other words, the legal representative of the California state government wants the state to have the authority to withhold information about a family’s minor children from the parents of those children at the discretion of its agents. This attitude is now rampant in schools around the country, primarily because the education community has been thoroughly politicized and is no longer trustworthy.

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