Author: Jack Marshall

And the Desperation Freakout Continues! Unethical Quote of the Month From Kamala Harris

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

“You know what he says he’ll do? Terminate the Constitution United States. Let me remind folks: You know what’s in the Constitution of United States? The Fourth Amendment, which protects you against unreasonable searches and seizures, the Fifth Amendment, the Sixth Amendment, the Fourteenth Amendment. And he’s going to terminate the Constitution of the United States? Which in most of those amendments, one thing or another, was about a movement spurred by black people to ensure that we would be equally protected under the law. Come on.”

—Kamala Harris, lying her metaphorical head off, fearmongering and generally demonstrating why those voting for this unprincipled demagogue should wear bags over their heads forever more.

If I have to explain all that is wrong with that idiotic statement, you’re not smart enough to be coming here. Try this instead.

Althouse retrieved the Trump riff that spawned this Big Lie, #3,761 by my count, Trump’s use of “termination” and “Constitution” in the context of dealing with a “false and fraudulent election”while ranting on Truth Social:

“A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution. Our great ‘Founders’ did not want, and would not condone, False & Fraudulent Elections!”

[Did you ever think you would see the headline “Five takeaways from Kamala Harris’s interview with Charlamagne Tha God“in the New York Times during a Presidential campaign?]

Ethics Alarms Awards a “Nelson” to the Guy Who Inadvertently Threw Away $527 Million

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

I guess this seems a bit harsh, but then, I never let my late wife forget that she threw out our Paul McCartney concert tickets, and that was only $500 down the metaphorical drain.

$527 million! And it’s really worse than that, believe it or not.

James Howells, 39, accidentally threw out a hard drive containing his bitcoin stash in 2013. It was worth around $1 million then but now has an estimated worth of about $527 million.

Since that epic “Oopsie!” Howells has requested, demanded and implored the Newport, Great Britain, Council, which oversees the landfill where his hard drive ended up, to retrieve it for him. The body has refused; after all, the necessary excavation will take between 18 and 36 months followed by a year of area restorative work, and the council says that all of this would be environmentally irresponsible. Now Howells is suing the council for $646 million in damages because it won’t remedy his mistake. Hoping that the lawsuit will leverage the council into being “reasonable,” Howells has assembled a team to carry out the $13 million excavation. On the team is the council’s former head of landfill, who claims to know the exact area where the hard drive is. He’s also dangling the prospect of a 10% commission to the Council when the hard drive is found.

The Ethics Verdict here: Howells’ dumb mistake is not the Council’s responsibility. Their duty is to the community, not him. The appropriate and ethical response to Howell’s threats is “Bite me!” He and the former landfill head can get shovels and dig for the thing themselves. Who knows? They might get lucky.

How Desperate, Despicable and Dishonest Is the Harris Campaign? THIS Desperate, Despicable and Dishonest…

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

My otherwise intelligent and perceptive family member who has been in Stage Five Trump derangement for months has been arguing lately that Trump is senile, is on the same trajectory to dementia as Biden was when he was elected, and is mentally unstable, even more so than while he was President when one of the Axis “Get Trump!” coup schemes was to invoke the 25th Amendment regarding Presidential disability. This seemed so obviously contrived and desperate for someone like her (intelligent, ethical, independent B.T., as in “Before Trump”) that I wondered where it was coming from.

Last weekend, reading various propaganda outlets and listening for five minutes at a time to CNN and MSNBC, I realized that the Harris campaign’s “OMIGOD OUR PHONY CANDIDATE STRATEGY ISN’T WORKING!!! ARRGHHH!!” freakout had entered a new phase. Suddenly there were essays, articles and pundit rants about how Trump was mentally unstable and his “condition” had taken a turn for the worse. This was, like so many other simultaneous eruptions of almost identical rhetoric and arguments from Axis High Command in the past, pretty obviously a coordinated strategy decision. It was also a yet another example of Democrats employing blatant projection: this is the party that deliberately foisted a senile Presidential candidate on the nation, engaged in an almost four year cover-up using a complicit news media, and was finally exposed when Biden’s episodes of “Ready for the Home” became too frequent and alarming to deny.

That was before this episode.

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How Much More Dishonest Can A Campaign Ad Be Than This Abortion of a Pro-Abortion Ad “Approved” By Democrat Tim Kaine in Virginia?

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments

Oh, I know there are some just as bad; indeed, the pro-abortion ads being run in Maryland against Republican Larry Hogan in the U.S. Senate race are at this despicable level. The Kaine spot, however, reminds me of Mary McCarthy epic take-down playwright Lillian Hellman: “Every word she writes is a lie, including ‘and’ and ‘the’.”

Let’s see…

  • The Supreme Court didn’t “rob” any women of anything. It sent the issue of abortion regulation to the states, where it always belonged.
  • The issue isn’t a “right to choose.” The issue is how far anyone’s right to kill another human being can or should be acknowledged. There is no right to “choose” to kill those who inconvenience us. Using deceptive phrases that deliberately disguise the rights, parties and stakeholders in a political dispute is deceit, a lie.
  • Abortion is legal in every Southern state. That it is not is an outright, indefensible lie.
  • More deceit: “If Republicans take control in Washington and pass a national abortion ban” is like saying, “If Republicans take control in Washington and legalize slavery.” A national abortion ban is not going to happen, can’t happen, and would almost certainly be ruled unconstitutional if by some miracle it did. Legal scholar and ethicist William Hodes made that case powerfully in his article published on the Federalist Society website, pointing out that any such federal legislation would be unconstitutional, as it would exceed the scope of congressional power.
  • Of course women would have “options.” Finding solutions to the result of their own actions, or the actions of others, that doesn’t involve killing nascent lives is an excellent, ethical option.
  • “The Republicans won’t stop there” because they’re evil! EVIL! This is shameless demonizing and fear-mongering. They’ll legalize cannibalism! They’ll make everyone wear their underwear on the outside! How can the women in that video look at themselves in the mirror?
  • Contraception is protected under the Constitution. IVF involves complex biological and ethical issues, but there is no indication that there would be sufficient support in the Republican Party to ban the procedure. Yet this ad states as fact that the GOP would do it.

That’s pretty impressive hysteria and dishonesty for a 30 second ad. And this was the guy Hillary Clinton picked to be her Vice-President.

I don’t see how anyone who has any standards for honesty in our elected officials can vote for some who puts out deliberate falsehood like these and “approves” them. I know, I know, it’s “the ends justifies the means,” the unethical fallacy that has swallowed the whole Democratic Party.

Anything to be able to kill unborn human beings at will.

Yes, It’s Another Installment of “It’s Hell Being An Ethicist”

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

This weekend was Grace’s memorial event, and yes, it came off very well despite my long-standing dread. I have wonderful, talented and loving friends, as did Grace. My long-time musical collaborator on my pop music parodies ethics programs, Mike Messer, brought down the house and made Grace smile, I hope, with a rousing performance of her favorite John Lennon solo, “Twist and Shout,” backed up by the unusually musical crowd.

But I digress. The next day, when a friend who helped organize and mange the event (since I was useless), brought me the receipts. I expected the bill for the platters of food I had ordered from Safeway, for he had picked them up. “No,” he said,”they told me you had paid for them when you made the order.”

But I had not. I tried to pay, but the dead-eyed, barely conversant clerk refused to process my credit card, and insisted that payment would be due when the platters were ready. The price is almost $400.

Well, I’m an ethicist, so I have to pay it, though I may take my sweet time about it and wait until my cash flow is a bit more robust. I know what my mother’s reaction would have been—“What luck! The food was free!”—just as surely that I know that my father would have headed over to Safeway by now and paid the bill.

Now, my sister had a dandy rationalization, though she didn’t commit to it. “These stores are incompetent,” she said. “I’ve had similar experiences, though not $400 worth. The only way they’re ever going to get better as if sloppy work like this costs them money.”

“I’d be tempted not to pay,” she said.

Oh, I’m tempted all right. And I’m drowning in debt dating back to when the pandemic crashed my business and ruined my credit. Nevertheless, I got the food, I owe Safeway the money, and I’m an ethicist, dammit.

Phooey.

Smellodrama?

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Yet another revival of Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town” has opened on Broadway. It’s a genuine classic: my late, lamented theater company devoted to classic American plays never produced it in 20 years because we were restricted to “forgotten and under-performed” shows, and though it has been 86 years since its debut, “Our Town” remains a standard part of the American repertory in colleges, community theaters and professional theaters.

Although the play is about life , love and death in a turn of the century New England town, the new production is multi-racial, indeed contriving a bi-racial romance, which was about as likely in 1901 New England as the arrival of a herd of centaurs. There are other aggressive updates to make the play “relevant” as well: anachronistic costumes, the suggestion of an interfaith wedding (more likely in the real setting of the play than centaurs, but not by much) with Freya Ridings 2017 hit “Lost Without You” being sung during that wedding. Regular readers here know my standard for assessing such directorial intrusions: if it works, it’s fine. However, I also recall an old theater mentor whose mantra was, “When presenting a classic, make sure that it will be appropriate for an audience member seeing it for the first time, and one who will see it for the last time.” These riffs by director Kenny Leon sound like the inspiration of someone who has seen “Our Town” too many times, but then, to be fair, I haven’t seen this production. The Times reviewer certainly liked it, [That’s a gift link!] but whether this was because of its wokeness or its genuine value as live theater only he could say.

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Half-Ethics Hero: Kamala Harris

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

Kamala Harris is going into the metaphorical lion’s den and will be interviewed on Fox News by news anchor Bret Baier. Earlier in the campaign, she rejected a Fox News debate with Donald Trump, to which he had already agreed. Good for her.

The official Democratic Party position has long been to denigrate Fox because it does not follow the pro-Democrat/progressive propaganda mission of the other major networks. Barack Obama said, more than once, that it didn’t qualify as a legitimate news source. The Party has long shown hostility toward Fox News; it formally barred the network from hosting a primary debate in 2020. Hillary Clinton, as the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee, had one Fox News interview and that was the last one by a POTUS candidate from her party in the last eight years. President Biden refused to appear on Fox.

Harris gets only a half-Ethics Hero not because hers is an act dictated by crisis. If one has any doubt that internal polls, external polls, and basic vibes show Harris’s cynical, gossamer campaign on a losing flight path, her decision to have an interview with a journalist who might not be planning on voting for her should dispel it.

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Small Ethical Silver Lining To An Ugly Cloud: At Least This Awful Woman’s Lawyer Talked Her Into Pleading Guilty

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Tiffanie Lucas, 33, had been preparing to try an insanity defense in her upcoming December murder trial stemming from her Novenber 8, 2023, shooting of her sons Maurice “Peanut” Baker Jr. and Jayden Howard, 6 and 9. Now she says she will plead guilty and rely on the judge to decide her fate.

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Ethics Observations on the Kamala Harris Plagiarism Story (Or “Stop Making Me Defend Kamala Harris!”)

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

The basic story is here. Christopher Rufo, the same conservative writer and gadfly who exposed ex-Harvard President Claudine Gay’s serial plagiarism leading to her resignation, determined that “several passages” in Vice President Kamala Harris’ first book (2009’s “Smart on Crime: A Career Prosecutor’s Plan to Make Us Safer” with co-author Joan O’C Hamilton) were taken from Wikipedia and other sources without proper attribution.

Ethics Observations:

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Unethical (And Stupid) Columbus Day Quote of the Decade: Kamala Harris

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

“European explorers ushered in a wave of devastation, violence, stealing land, and widespread disease.”

—Kamala Harris in 2021, pandering to the “America is a blight on the Earth and the world would have been better without it” bloc in the Democratic Party  in a Columbus Day address.

Boy, what an idiot.

But to be fair to Kamala, I’m sure she would now say that she loves Columbus, and grew up in a middle class neighborhood.

What the European explorers ushered in was discovery, freedom from religious oppression, innovation, progress, and let’s just to cut to the chase, civilization. Had there been no United States, Harris and her relatives would probably be grease spots or serving as Nazi slaves today. But never mind, why should a basic comprehension of history, science and anthropology get it the way of a candidate for President of the United States vilifying the nation she aspires to lead? When does her campaign start handing out the “Make America Primitive Again” caps?

Glenn Reynolds wrote today in part,

“I recommend Samuel Eliot Morison’s Admiral of the Ocean Sea: A Life of Christopher Columbus which takes a somewhat different position. Here’s an excerpt:

“At the end of 1492 most men in Western Europe felt exceedingly gloomy about the future. Christian civilization appeared to be shrinking in area and dividing into hostile units as its sphere contracted. For over a century there had been no important advance in natural science and registration in the universities dwindled as the instruction they offered became increasingly jejune and lifeless. Institutions were decaying, well-meaning people were growing cynical or desperate, and many intelligent men, for want of something better to do, were endeavoring to escape the present through studying the pagan past. . . .Yet, even as the chroniclers of Nuremberg were correcting their proofs from Koberger’s press, a Spanish caravel named Nina scudded before a winter gale into Lisbon with news of a discovery that was to give old Europe another chance. In a few years we find the mental picture completely changed. Strong monarchs are stamping out privy conspiracy and rebellion; the Church, purged and chastened by the Protestant Reformation, puts her house in order; new ideas flare up throughout Italy, France, Germany and the northern nations; faith in God revives and the human spirit is renewed. The change is complete and startling: A new envisagement of the world has begun, and men are no longer sighing after the imaginary golden age that lay in the distant past, but speculating as to the golden age that might possibly lie in the oncoming future.

“Christopher Columbus belonged to an age that was past, yet he became the sign and symbol of this new age of hope, glory and accomplishment. His medieval faith impelled him to a modern solution: Expansion.”

Morison’s book is superb, and I recommend it highly as an antidote to the simplistic anti-occidental prejudice of today…”

Kamala Harris is an embarrassment.