“bias makes you stupid”

Surveying The Left’s Three Desperate Reactions To The Biden Presidency Implosion

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

1. President Biden? Who’s that?

In order to go on covering other issues and stories in which aspects of the Biden mess would normally require a reference, the mainstream media instead just pretends there’s nothing there. Thus it can continue to run attacks on Donald Trump for “defying democratic norms,” being a threat to “lock up” his opposition if elected, and “lying” even when the current president, their client, continues to engage in all three.

Today the New York Times sent me a lament from columnist Amanda Taub headlined, “The Litany of #MeToo News Continues. Is Anything Really Changing? It can appear as though society is no closer to a future in which women can go about their ordinary lives without being harassed, assaulted and coerced into silence.” She begins with Russell Brand, but goes on to discuss how “each time a powerful man is held accountable for sexual misconduct, it seems like progress. And yet, when the allegations reveal a similar pattern of institutional actions that allowed the abuse to go on for years, and they provoke the same reactions of denial and victim-blaming, it can appear as though society is no closer to a future in which women can go about their ordinary lives without being harassed, assaulted and coerced into silence.”

Huh! I wonder why that’s happening? Could it be that the “fish rots from the head down”? Could it be that #MeToo has beclowned itself because by making it obvious that only conservatives and Republicans were in any peril of #MeToo consequences, and that powerful male Democrats could continue their harassing ways with either impunity or minor consequences? How can a serious analysts write about patterns “of institutional actions that allowed the abuse to go on for years,” and not mention any of this…

???? The President of the United States has been a serial and unapologetic groper, sniffer and cop-a-feel specialist for decades. Leaders set the standard for their organizations; Presidents set the standards for U.S. society. Biden was also accused of sexual assault by a former Senate staffer. If you want an explanation for why #MeToo has deteriorated, look no further than this White House.

But Biden’s enablers and agents want us to look away from there.

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Reactions To Being Confronted With A Racist T-Shirt [Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

This ticked me off.

I was leaving a rehab clinic office after dropping off my wife and got onto the elevator with an African-American mother and her son, who appeared to be 12 or 13. He was wearing the t-shirt pictured above.

That’s a racist message. If I were to wear a shirt or a cap saying “White is my happy color,” it would be viewed by any non-whites I encountered as a veiled insult, and correctly so. This is no different. Thanks to Barack Obama and George Floyd, anti-white racism is considered sufficiently justifiable, indeed deserved, that blacks can wear this shirt with impunity. Google even covers for them: “What does black is my happy color mean?” it asks. “This is the color you are most comfortable and most confident in and the one that reflects your character. I wear black a lot and experts say that wearing black means that you are confident, powerful and success driven. I’ll take that. Black is also perceived as the most attractive color,” Google says in answering it’s own question (bolding theirs).” Riiiiight. The kid was making a fashion statement.

To state the obvious, if I had worn a “White is my happy color” shirt, it would be regarded as a white supremacy boast, and properly so. (Notice of Correction: I had written “There are no ‘White is my happy color’ shirts for sale.” Commenter Steve-O helpfully informs me that there are indeed. I dare him to wear one in my neighborhood…) I came within a filament of saying something to the mother. This is how you raise a racist. This is how you guarantee racial divisions and tensions forever. This is how American blacks lose potential political and social allies who are not going to be sympathetic to complaints about “microagressions” from the same people who make me read racial insults on their shirts.

Sure, it’s another “black lives matter” rhetorical trick: “Hey, saying black (skin) makes me happy doesn’t mean that I have anything against white people!”

Now you’re insulting my intelligence too.

An Ethics And Integrity Dilemma: When Is A Personal Boycott Of A Company Ethical?

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

Some lines need to be established, and the sooner the better, but boy, I am having trouble drawing them.

Ethics Alarms has consistently taken the position that it is wrong to discriminate against people for their beliefs and opinions. The idea that business establishments would refuse service to customer based on their political affiliations (or because they wear a MAGA hat) is repugnant to the the value of pluralism and individual liberty, both central to the founding principles of the United States. Similarly, EA has taken the position that corporations should be judged solely on the basis of how well they deliver the services they render and the quality of the products they introduce. How those companies or their owners use their profits, as long as what they do is legal, should not be the consumer’s concern. Investors have a different perspective: investing in a company makes the investor a participant in that company’s activities beyond producing products and services.

Starting with these basic principles, Ethics Alarms opposed the efforts in several cities to punish Chic-Fil-A because its owner was a prominent supporter of groups that opposed gay marriage. I regard this as economic extortion to bend an individual (or his/her company) to the majority’s will, and dangerous to democracy.

The key distinction is whether the company itself, in delivering good and services, connects its business to political and social advocacy. Nothing in the Chic-Fil-A restaurants hinted at any position regarding gays or same-sex marriage, and the company’s owners (or its foundation) should be allowed to support whatever groups and political positions they choose, just like anyone else. But what if a company starts using its products and services, marketing and public visibility to promote political positions, public division, and questionable social engineering?

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A Poll, More Headline Deceit, And “What’s Going On Here?”

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

It begins with the prototypical “Nah, there’s no mainstream media bias!” decision by ABC News to bury the lede with a deceptive headline in an effort to minimize Joe Biden’s botching of his White House tenure. The latest ABC News/Washington Post poll had resulted in a stunning move away from Biden to Trump, showing the latter with a landslide level 51-42 lead if the 2024 election were held today. ABC’s headline: “Troubles for Biden not just his age in reelection campaign: POLL.”

This is a now common tool of the fake news game for those with the integrity to call it what it is: deceitful headlining to hide news that the media wants as little noticed as possible. The defensive rejoinder is always, “Oh, but that’s just the headline!”, but much of the public only skims the news and thus never sees more than the headlines of most stories. ABC News knows it, and when there have been stories that it (or other MSM propagandists for the Democrats) deems unhelpful to the cause, it uses this trick if not one of the other ones, like not reporting the story at all. Since this was ABC’s own poll, that one wasn’t an option.

Sure, the poll spelled “troubles” for Biden rather than just his age, as if anyone paying attention thought being old was the main problem with President Biden. But that’s not what the poll results indicate: they indicate that the public realizes that Biden has been a disaster as POTUS, and are pulling away from him at an accelerating rate. Bad polls affect party confidence, enthusiasm, morale and donations: that’s why most pollsters, who tend to be biased toward the Left like the media organizations that hire them, tend to skew poll results against Republicans. The honest headline for this poll would have been what was significant about it: “HOLY CRAP, A POLL RUN BY ABA AND THE POST STILL SHOWED TRUMP CLOBBERING BIDEN IN 2024! ARRRGH!!!” except that ABC’s partisan hacks didn’t want that to be the reaction in Trump Derangement Land.

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Saturday Morning Wake-Up (2): A Biden Presidency Ethics Train Wreck Update

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

1. I’ll introduce this by noting that an American Research Group poll found that public approval of President Biden’s handling of his job has fallen to just 39%.

Of the 39% of Americans saying they approve of the way Biden is handling his job, 65% say they expect the national economy will be better a year from now. (They are whistling past the graveyard.) Of the 56% saying they disapprove of the way Biden his handling his job as president, 71% believe the national economy will be worse a year from now. Why wouldn’t it be?

Of Republicans polled, just 3% approve of the way Biden is handling his job. 34% of Independents approve, but 80% of Democrats actually told another human being that they approve like the way Biden is running his Presidency because every thing is going so well. That’s incompetent citizenship. One can still be a Democrats and be able to honestly assess a disaster when a Democrat is at the helm of the Ship of State, can’t you? Talk about cult-like behavior.

2. Here’s a more encouraging poll, sort of: the latest Rasmussen Reports survey found that nearly three-quarters ,72%, of voters believe that “America is becoming a police state” under Biden. Rasmussen defined “police state” as “a tyrannical government that engages in mass surveillance, censorship, ideological indoctrination, and targeting of political opponents.” Targeting of political opponents? Why would anyone think that?

(Yes, I’m going to work that reference to Biden’s ‘anyone who opposes my party and government is a fascist and danger to democracy’ speech every chance I get. Lest we forget.…)

Republicans led the way with 76% expressing fears of totalitarian trends under Biden, but Democrats were not far behind at 67%. Combining the two polls, one can only conclude that a large number of Democrats like the fact that Biden is overseeing a developing police state. And I think that’s a correct impression.

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Unethical Quote, Column And Mind Of The Month: NYT Pundit Michelle Goldberg

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Apparently this is going to be Unethical New York Times Op-ed Columnist Day. First David Brooks proves beyond all question that he’s an asshole, and now Michelle Goldberg pulls ahead in the neck-and-neck race to be the most outrageously left-biased writer in the Times stable (“And as they round the turn, it’s Paul Krugman in front, with Charles Blow coming up fast on the inside…”) by ending her column attacking retiring Fox News creator Rupert Murdoch with this:

“The electorate that Fox helped shape, and the politicians it indulges, have made this country ungovernable. An unbound Trump may well become president again, bringing liberal democracy in America to a grotesque end. If so, it will be in large part Murdoch’s fault….”

Only a committed and ethics-free leftist propaganda agent who is confident that her readers are Marxists or morons could squeeze out such offal. Oh, I’m sure Goldberg believes this, which is scary in itself: the disgusting thing is that a publication that imagines itself as the flagship of American journalism would deem such a “bias makes you stupid” outburst as worthy of publication.

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When Ethics Alarms Don’t Ring, Or Are Busted, Or Something: The Palm Springs AIDS Memorial

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments

Damn Palm Springs, California: I was about to quit for the day, but I had to return to the blog for this ridiculous story.

The Palm Springs AIDS Memorial Task Force is now backtracking after revealing its preliminary choice for a memorial to the victims of AIDS. The memorial is being funded privately with an expected cost of approximately $500,000. After considerable study, the winning design, planned for erection (Stop it!) in the Downtown Park near the Marilyn Monroe statue is a nine feet tall limestone structure with concentric carved circles, symbolizing, we are told, “the diverse impact of AIDS on the community” and ” intended to evoke feelings of connection, reflection, and hope.”

It also looks a lot like an anus. Not that there’s anything wrong with that….

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Ethics Hero: Blogger Ann Althouse, Anti-Trump Derangement And Media Bias Warrior

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

I doubt that Ann Althouse would ever vote for Donald Trump; I’m pretty sure she hasn’t yet. But the longtime liberal law prof-blogger from Madison has distinguished herself and enhanced her respect in my eyes by consistently debunking anti-Trump bias from the news media while pronouncing her disgust with its hypocrisy and unfairness. Her reward has been to end up with a commentariat that is much more conservative than she is, but Althouse continues to be a Trump Truthteller (try to say that three times fast). She had a particularly impressive day yesterday.

First, Ann threw a flag on Washington Post pundit Aaron Rupar’s “How not to interview Trump/Kristen Welker’s tenure as ‘Meet the Press’ moderator got off to an inauspicious start. I only maintain a Post subscription to read articles others send me too: essentially I’ve boycotted the rag as too biased and obviously partisan to trust. His thesis is emboied in the excerpt Ann selected:

“The first thing to understand about Trump is that he’s not a normal politician. He doesn’t give a rip about policy. What he cares about is saying and doing whatever it takes to fulfill his desires and thirst for power, including destroying democracy if necessary. Treating him as anything other than a depraved authoritarian is not only wrongheaded, but helps his cause by legitimizing him as a reasonable choice for voters. And that’s exactly what Welker did.”

Boy, do I hate that attitude toward anyone. I’ve detested it regarding Trump since he was elected, and I resented other people treated that same way my entire life. It is bigotry and bias plain and unvarnished: someone chooses to decide, without genuine evidence, that an individual is just bad to the bone, with evil motives, and anything he or she does is thereafter interpreted in that context. This is how Trump was judged guilty until proven innocent in the Russian collusion hoax. It is the exact mindset that led people to back his first impeachment for doing exactly what many Presidents had doubtlessly done before him; it was the reasoning behind the second impeachment as well: Yeah, nothing he said indicating he was telling his wacko followers to state a violent “insurrection,” but you know that’s what he wanted them to do, because that’s the kind of person he is.

Althouse strikes back,

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Comment Of The Day: “That Bomb ‘Finger Gun’ Should Have Never Been Made At All: How Did We End Up With ‘Finger Gun 4’??”

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

I’m pretty sure EA has touched on the topic of anti-male student discrimination by teachers in grade school, but not recently and not often enough, because it is a serious cultural and societal problem. The Atlantic wrote about “The War Against Boys” in 2000 before it became a complete propaganda vehicle for radical wokism—I wonder if such an essay would get published today?

2000—let’s see, that was right around the time my wife and I started becoming aware of how normal little boys were being expected to act like good little girls in school, as our authority-resisting, intrepid and energetic son was being routinely abused by boy-hating teachers to such an extent that he was permanently alienated from formal education. The finger gun nonsense is symptomatic of the trend, and crella makes the connection in this, the Comment of the Day on the post, “That Bomb ‘Finger Gun’ Should Have Never Been Made At All: How Did We End Up With ‘Finger Gun 4’??”

Here it is….

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Is It Unethical To Laugh, Mock And Applaud As “Sanctuary Cities” Define The Bard’s Phrase “Hoist With His Own Petard”?

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

No, of course not. In fact, it’s mandatory, necessary, and appropriate. Everyone knew, or should have know, that the progressive, woke, Democratic grandstanders who undermined U.S. sovereignty and the rule of law by announcing that their cities would not cooperate in the enforcement of immigration laws were irresponsible fool, indeed (sorry) destructive assholes all along. (Anyone who voted for such officials are also irresponsible assholes, just to get the accountability aligned,) Now, however, we know that they know they are assholes, and have to behave in a manner that exposes to all what assholes they are. This is great.

The utter hypocrisy of mayors and governors declaring their love for illegal immigrants as long as most of them arrived and stayed in cities along the Southern borders was exposed when governors of states overrun by what the news media calls “migrants” to hide their problematic and illegal features have sent busloads and plane-loads of the them to cities like New York City, Chicago and Washington, D.C. Suddenly, the “sanctuaries,” which were so compassionate and welcoming as long as there were few negative consequences of their facile lip-service were not so understanding.

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