It Sure Looks Like Kamala Harris Never Worked At McDonald’s. Does It Matter?

Today RealClearPolitics reporter Paul Sperry tweeted that the Harris-Walz campaign is no longer referencing her alleged job at McDonald’s when she was in college, and has not responded to media questions about the location of the McDonald’s store (obviously somewhere in California, if anywhere) or the exact dates of her employment.

“So what?” you well might say. And under normal circumstances, I well might concur. The Harris campaign is anything but normal, however. This a candidate for President who is trying to get elected as a generic Democrat, which she most assuredly is not even in an era of extreme, anti-democratic Democrats. Her party has decided that its best, indeed its only chance to win in the wake of the catastrophic Biden administration’s record is to create a thumbs up or thumbs down vote on Donald Trump, an election in which the identity, record, beliefs and policy agenda of his opponent are irrelevant as long as his opponent isn’t demonstrably senile. This relegates almost all of the campaign discussion to trivia and boiler plate puffery, and mostly to how Harris and her managers choose to package her, because to most American, those who haven’t been paying attention to an inert Vice-President, packaging is literally all there is.

Harris’s work at McDonald’s, which allegedly took place at a franchise in the California Bay Area in the summer after her freshman year in college, is a relatively recent addition to her official life story. It first surfaced in 2019, when Harris ran for President and tried to wrest the nomination from Joe Biden, a politician whose trademark has been his working stiff roots. Since taking over the top of the 2024 ticket from poor Joe, Harris has again been evoking the fast food job to portray what the Washington Post called “her humble background.” (Harris, the daughter of an eminent cancer researcher and a tenured Stanford economist, does not come from a humble background.)

Continue reading

More Thoughts About “The Box”….

This is very strange. I wrote about the ethics horror movie “The Box” just this year, yet had no memory of writing the post or seeing the whole movie, despite stating in the post that I had. Then I noticed that the post was dated February 28, the day before I found my wife’s body in our living room. Apparently the shock erased some files.

Moreover, it is creepy that I posted on a movie about a couple that pushes a button on a mysterious box after being told that doing so will kill a stranger but also result in their receiving a million tax-free dollars from an anonymous authority, and shortly thereafter discovered that my own wife had died of unknown causes.

Did somebody push that button?

Continue reading

I Witnessed Trump Derangement Syndrome In Person Last Night

It was scary.

I was engaged to moderate a “talk back” on ethics and the issues raised in the British drama “A Number” last night. I may write about the play here later: it is an ethics story involving a failed father who sends his disturbed son away and replaces him with a clone, thus providing the father with a “do-over.” One of the main issues we discussed was whether the father evoked any sympathy as he tried to cope with the serial disasters his conduct had triggered, including the original son murdering his clone.

After the discussion, I was chatting with audience members as they filed out of the the theater. An elderly woman, her face flushed and contorted in anger, came up to me and said, “I completely agree with you that the father is a sociopath. He reminded me of Trump! I wanted to go up on stage and strangle him!” By the end of her statement, she was almost shouting.

“Thanks for coming!” I told her.

The character of the father has absolutely no resemblance to Donald Trump in any respect, not attitudes, actions, manner, appearance…nothing.

Promoting Your Institution By Emphasizing the Most Negative Perspective On Its History: Good Plan, U.Va!

I’m not certain what to call this, and solicit your suggestions. Incompetence? Woke virtue signaling? Self-hate? Betrayal? Insanity?

The Jefferson Council, an organization of conservative University of Virginia alumni, has criticized the recent tone of the school’s student-run campus tours that are supposed to convince prospective applicants and their families that U.Va is the place for the graduating high school students to continue their education. The tour organization, the University Guide Service, has been alienating prospective students, the Council says, by immersing the hopeful, bright-eyed young idealists with a “woke version of U.Va history.”

The cheerful tale of the storied university’s origins, the alumni complain, begins by describing how the university’s land was stolen from the Monacan Indian tribe, then goes on to describe how the Rotunda (above) designed by Thomas Jefferson as the center of campus, was constructed by slave labor. They believe that a tour for prospective students should emphasize Jefferson’s positive contributions to the nation, like, oh, authoring the mission statement for this great democratic experiment, his indispensable contribution to securing American independence, his achievements as the third President of the United States, his brilliance and an architect and inventor, those little details. There was nothing unusual about using slave labor when the University of Virginia was established in 1819. Why would an institution emphasize that in a promotional tour?

Continue reading

What IS It About Democrats And “Stolen Valor”?

It’s not enough that Kamala Harris deliberately placed on the ballot to be elected one heartbeat from the Presidency a Democratic governor , Tim Walz, who has been lying about his military combat record for more than 20 years. (Well, that was just “bad grammar”…). Nor that Richard Blumenthal, the senior United States Senator from Connecticut, also a Democrat, was cheerfully elected by Connecticut voters in 2010 (and re-elected in 2016 and 2022) despite repeatedly lying about being a Vietnam war veteran. For “Wait, there’s more!”Wes Moore to be precise, the Democratic governor of Maryland.

Moore, shown above as he gave a highlighted speech for the Harris-Walz ticket at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago (he did not have a piece of the application for a prestigious White House fellowship in which he lied about receiving a Bronze Star hovering over his head, though) has been dispatched by the Harris campaign as a surrogate to defend Walz on cable television! What a good choice! After all, who better to try to rationalize lying about military service than someone who has done it himself!

Continue reading

Speaking of Kamala’s “Values”…

Ugh. I meant to include this in the previous post.

In September of 2019, Kamala Harris, then a Senator, wrote to Twitter on official Senate stationery that it should censor then-President Trump. CNN’s Jake Tapper challenged her on the suggestion. (She also tweeted that position.) “You wrote to Twitter and the CEO Jack Dorsey and asked him to take away the president’s Twitter handle. How is that not a violation of free speech? The President has the same rights that you have, that I have, how would that not be a slippery slope where they have to ban half of the people on Twitter?”

Harris’s totalitarian reply: “A corporation has obligations. Their Terms of Use dictate who receives the privilege of speaking on that platform, and who does not. And Donald Trump has clearly violated the Terms of Use, and there should be a consequence for that. Revoke someone’s privilege, because they have not lived up to the advantages of the privilege.”

There’s a Harris “value” for you, and the Biden Administration’s “value” as well. When the government applies pressure on a corporation to ban a political figure’s speech, indeed a sitting President’s speech as he seeks re-election, the “privilege” of communicating with the public on social media becomes a right being infringed by the government. Does Harris believe freedom of speech is a right or a privilege? That’s a “values” question Dana Bash should have asked Harris.

Nah. Too hard. She might have flubbed it.

Unethical Quote of the Month: Kamala Harris (and Other Notes From the CNN Interview)

“My values have not changed.”

—-Kamala Harris last night, repeating an obviously memorized response to anticipated questions by CNN’s Dana Bash about the many policy flip-flops she has executed since becoming the Democratic Party nominee.

This mantra was repeated three times in various forms, once prefaced by “let’s be clear.” To me the statement makes it clear that Harris’s “values” don’t include integrity or honesty. (I know: we already knew that.) Like her spectacular pretzelism of simultaneously running on “change” while maintaining that the Biden Administration she is part of has been all aces, this weasel-phrase is another transparently devious device to have it both ways.

Read her exchange with Bash about her sudden embrace of fracking. It makes no sense, especially in light of her later response that “her values have not changed” regarding the environment and that she still supports the Green New Deal, which mandates banning fracking.

A public official with consistent, sincerely held values does not and can not reverse herself on major issues unless significant new information and evidence has changed the problem. The significant new information that has caused Harris to flip-flop like the Flying Wallendas is polling that tell her that her previous positions on those issues will cost her votes. The values that have not changed are Harris’s ambition and her willingness to say and do anything to be elected. Those are not ethical values.

[I want to mention here that I took a break to have a cup of coffee and heard on the DirecTV NewsMix Channel that Trump and Vance are “pouncing” on Harris’s values line. This is why people accuse me of following Fox News talking points. Hey, if others come to the same conclusion I do, that just speaks well for them; it doesn’t mean I needed their help to figure it out.]

More on the interview:

Continue reading

Comment of the Day: Curmie, On “On ‘the Truthful, Brief, 21-Point Biography of Kamala Harris’: Ten Ethics Observations”

This submission by Ethics Alarms intermittent guest columnist Curmie created a categorization problem. Is it another installment of “Curmie’s Conjectures” (They are all here) ? Should I call it On “the Truthful, Brief, 21-Point Biography of Kamala Harris”: Ten Ethics Observations, Part 2? Oh, I don’t know: I wrote and posted Part I before 5 am this morning when I woke up after a nightmare and such minutia is beyond me until I get at least two more cups of coffee in me.

Curmie’s analysis (he only stooped to “But Trump!” once) is enhanced in my eyes at least by Curmie’s mention of Christine Vole, the treacherous witness of the prosecution in the classic Billy Wilder film version of “Witness for the Prosecution.” Now, heeeeeeeeeeere’s Curmie!

***

Yesterday, in my first day of teaching (except as an invited guest) in over two years, I closed both my classes by urging skepticism, including of what I tell them. As an example of what I hope to get them to do, I used some of my current research: trying to determine who directed the production of a particular play. The play was staged before it was common practice to include the director’s name was on the program, in publicity materials, or in newspaper reviews.

Conventional wisdom, presented with only a single piece of evidence, suggests that the playwright directed his own play. Several prominent theatre historians all say so, most of them without citing any evidence at all. A couple of other scholars suggest, without explicitly arguing against the playwright as director, that the leading actress took over the function while the normal director for the company was ill and away from the city. They don’t provide much evidence, either.

Based on a number of factors, I think it’s about 98% certain that conventional wisdom is wrong, but 1). 98% is different from 100%, and 2). I’m not convinced of the counter-arguments, either. Maybe when I hear back from the company’s archivist my impressions will change. Maybe there isn’t enough primary source material to make a difference; maybe I’ll be able to prove (“beyond reasonable doubt”) that the playwright didn’t direct the play. Maybe I’ll be left with a speculative piece that claims “the preponderance of the evidence” is that he didn’t. Maybe I’ll end up agreeing with conventional wisdom. But I’m going to do everything I can to get all the evidence before finalizing my opinion, and I’m not going to say something is true if I only suspect that it might be.

CP, on the other hand, immediately loses all (and yes, I mean all) credibility by the claim that “you cannot deny the factual accuracy of what I am about to say.” Actually, yes, I can. Next.

Continue reading

On “the Truthful, Brief, 21-Point Biography of Kamala Harris”: Ten Ethics Observations

I don’t know who “Cynical Publius” is: does it matter? (Grok is the irritating Twitter/”X” AI bot, and I couldn’t stop it from photo-bombing my screen shot.)

Points:

Continue reading

Ethics Observations On Nate Silver’s Latest Election Odds

Nate Silver announced today that his famous election projection model shows Trump leading again, representing a nearly ten-point swing in Trump’s favor within two weeks. Remember, those aren’t poll percentages. They are the odds of each candidate winning the Presidency based on Nate’s mysterious weighting of polls and pollsters.

What is significant is that Silver detects movement in Trump’s direction now even after the mainstream media’s all-in efforts to promote Harris and assist her in the historically unethical “She isn’t what she is” campaign, the worst attempt at voter deception since 1840, when the Whigs sold Virginia squire William Henry Harrison as a back-woods rustic. Even after..

  • …a Democratic National Convention that was virtually all Trump-bashing throughout while painting Harris as the candidate of “joy.” Even after…
  • …Pundits and talking heads unconscionably morphed into Harris campaign surrogates, defending Tim Walz combat lies and twisting themselves into metaphorical pretzels to deny that Harris was handed the responsibility of dealing with the border crisis. Even after…
  • …Harris successfully avoided having to answer questions about her policy positions even once since Joe Biden was ousted from the presumed ticket.

Continue reading