“bias makes you stupid”

Observations on an Anti-Trump Meme That Will Be Posted By One Of My Trump-Deranged Facebook Friends Any Second Now…[Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Typical, desperate, ignorant and stupid.

Right now I’m placing bets on which of my Stage 5 Trump-Deranged friends or relatives will bite first. Let’s see..

1. This logic is like that of the man who kills his parents and wants sympathy from the judge because he’s a orphan. Trump was impeached twice by Democrats in the House, in both cases without thorough hearings and with contrived accusations and dubious evidence. He was also acquitted in the Senate, and correctly so.

2. The “34 felony convictions” have been effectively vacated. Though the convictions have not been overturned yet, no conviction is final until appeals have been exhausted. The fraud case in question was always pure lawfare, designed by New York Democrats and a partisan AG to “get Trump,” as that Attorney General campaigned on: she promised to “get Trump.” After all, he was threatening to win the White House. Those convictions were also for a single act that all authorities agree harmed no one, was standard business practice, and would never have prompted legal action had not Donald Trump been involved.

3. My favorite fallacy here, however, is that academic credentials have any relevance to leadership ability or successful Presidencies at all. For that matter, presumed intellectual ability hasn’t correlated with Presidential success either. To take the obvious example, Abraham Lincoln had no academic credentials. Harry Truman, an average intellect at best, proved to be a far better President than many with advanced degrees (or Harvard educations), such as John Adams, William Howard Taft, Jimmy Carter, and Barack Obama.

4. Best of all comparisons with Trump is this one, authored by social media wit David Burge in response to that meme above:

He’s referring, of course, to the Second Worst President Ever, Woodrow Wilson.

Ethics Dunce: New Frenchman George Clooney

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

How ironic. The same week we learn that George, his un-American wife and their two children have fled the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave for the Land of the Snail and the Home of the Censored, “Variety” publishes a puff piece on the part-time actor presenting him as more than he is, which is a bubble-dwelling Hollywood progressive laboring under the delusion that he has something useful to contribute to the public discourse. He hasn’t. Neither does “Variety”.

We are told that when George was preparing to make his Broadway debut in the stage adaptation of his film about TV news icon Edward R. Murrow in “Good Night, and Good Luck,” he invited “60 Minutes” to witness that cast’s their first read-through. Clooney ‘s angle was that there is a parallel between McCarthyism in the 1950s and the “political pressure that news organizations face in the second Trump administration.” There’s a parallel all right, but it is the Democratic Party’s adoption of McCarthy’s tactics (like guilt by association) to try to dominate American policy and politics through fear and hate. President Biden’s “Republicans are fascists” speech was pure McCarthyism. The progressive pattern of cancelling any truth-teller who informs the public of what the 21st Century Left is attempting to do to the government and the culture is McCarthyism.

“When the other three estates fail — when the judiciary and the executive and the legislative branches fail us — the fourth estate has to succeed,” Clooney tells “Variety.” I’m sure he really believes that, because George, while intellectually ambitious, just isn’t very bright: bias has made him stupid. If he was alert and capable of objective analysis, he would realize that journalism has already failed, unless one calls abandoning journalism for partisan propaganda is “success.”

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The Left’s Catch-22! [Expanded]

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

I have already mentioned here once today the public’s growing discomfort with the Trump Administration’s determined crack-down on illegal immigration, extending to mass deportations. That is one example of the very effective Catch-22 tactic the political Left regularly uses to ratchet policies, society and culture in an extreme direction with the assumption that undoing the damage will be practically impossible, making a very dubious development a fait accompli.

Another example of this phenomenon–it’s certainly clever and effective, just destructive and unethical—has been the Democrat’s deliberate expansion the federal government, the federal workforce and unaccountable bureaucracies. When the incoming Trump administration, via DOGE, began dismantling large swathes of the bloat, the standard scream was that the process was going too fast, cutting too much, and not following established process. The critics knew, of course, based on history, experience, political reality and human nature, that anything but rapid, meat-axe cuts across the board would result in no meaningful reductions at all. Expansion of the Federal government is a leftist strategy that diminishes personal liberty and government accountability—and it is also usually a fait accompli. Again, to his credit, President Trump has refused to play along with the game.

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Thoughts About The Axis News Media Burying The Minnesota Fraud Scandals…

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

This is the season of holiday wishes, reflections and aspirations. Do you know what my Ethics Alarms wish is? I wish that at least one reader, ideally one of our five commenters, would finally write in saying something like,

“I have to confess, I’ve been denying your regular, almost annoyingly repetitious assertions that the mainstream media is biased, that it is a member of what you call the Axis of Unethical Conduct, that the major legacy media sources now practice progressive, Democratic Party propaganda to the exclusion of balanced and fair (that is, ethical) journalism, that this results in a profound warping of the Democratic process, that the news media is in fact dedicated to promoting the power of the Democratic Party and its anti-American policy agenda, and that Donald Trump was correct when he pronounced the news media the ‘enemy of the people.’ But I can’t in good conscience deny this any more. You are right, and have been right all along.”

Actually there is one kamikaze commenter who should write this but who is banned and I still won’t let his comment stay up even if he does. With that single obnoxious exception, however, yes, that admission would make my year…not that the conclusion shouldn’t have been screamingly obvious to everyone for years.

I was thinking about this as I observed the current unethical news media self-indicting efforts to pretend that the unfolding Minnesota fraud scandal in the Somali community and elsewhere is a footnote to the “real” news. The Times did a relatively thorough report a full month ago; it has been fairly silent since, however, as the full expanse of the fraud scandal has unfolded. Network news has largely ignored the story too. Incredibly, the Minnesota Star-Tribune did not include the scandal in its 2025 list of top news stories. Today in CNN’s list of “Five things” readers should know about, developments in the Minnesota story is nowhere to be seen.

According to Axios, the Somali 9 billion dollar scamming wasn’t one of the top search topics, unlike Bad Bunny and Stephen Colbert (See, you have to know about a topic in order to search for it…well played, “journalists”!) The Hill gives us another classic example today of the oft-mentioned phenomenon that when Democrats have been caught in scandals or misconduct, it is the Republican/MAGA reaction that is the news: “MAGA World zeroes in on Minnesota over fraud scandal.” Other examples this month: The Guardian: “The right wing has seized on fraud cases in the state” and ABC News: “Trump has seized on the ballooning controversy in recent days …”

Other diversionary framing include the panic in the Somali community as ICE cracks down on Minnesota’s large unassimilated community consisting of people whose native culture regards cheating the government as a good thing. “ICE pounces!” is that theme. This is CNN: Anxiety grips Minneapolis’s Somali community as immigration agents zero in on the Twin Cities.

It isn’t only the Somalis: Minnesota, under the watchful eye of knuckleheaded Governor Tim Walz, has a fraud problem throughout its social welfare system. Why is an amateur Youtuber, Nick Shirley, making headlines with his Boy Scout merit badge-level investigative reporting? Where are the pros? Why wasn’t “60 Minutes” on this story like bees on a honeypot? CBS news reported the Somali scandal on December 11, but it’s been crickets since. But Shirley uncovered another Minnesota fraud, a hilarious one, last week: a Somali-owned daycare center with no children and a sign reading “Quality Learing Center.” The Quality Learing Center received $4,000,000 from Minnesota taxpayers.

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The Rest of the Story: Remember That UCLA Prof. Punished For Not Agreeing To Give Special Consideration to Black Students? [Repaired]

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

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Here is what I wrote in part about this upsetting tale when it occurred four years ago…

“UCLA accounting professor Gordon Klein was investigated, suspended and publicly rebuked after he refused to exempt black students from his final exam by sending a tart response to an email requesting special leniency for black students in the wake of the George Floyd episode. Following Floyd’s demise, Klein received a student email, reading,

“The unjust murders of Amhaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd, the life-threatening actions of Amy Cooper, and the violent conduct of the UCPD in our own neighborhood have led to fear and anxiety which is further compounded by the disproportionate effect of COVID-19 on the Black community. As we approach finals week, we recognize that these conditions will place Black students at an unfair academic disadvantage due to traumatic circumstances out of their control. We implore you to mandate that our final exam is structured as no harm, where they will only benefit students’ grades if taken. In addition, we urgently request shortened exams and extended deadlines for final assignments and projects. This is not a joint effort to get finals canceled for non-Black students, but rather an ask that you exercise compassion and leniency with Black students in our major.”

 

[Added: The student also asked Klein to give high grades to black students, because… they were black. DEI, you know.]

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Unethical Quote of the Day: LA Mayor Karen Bass

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

“Well, in a way, I think it’s sad….”

—-Astoundingly incompetent LA Mayor Karen Bass, on CNN’s  “The Situation Room” with Wolf Blitzer

She was responding to a CNN report about Hispanic-Americans joining I.C.E. in record numbers. Knowing Bass (see this infuriating idiot’s EA dossier here) and the pro-illegal immigration party she belongs to, can you guess why LA’s woke Mayor thinks the development is “sad”?

Why, they’re betraying their own kind, you see! You know, like when inner city blacks tell police about murderers, muggers and rapists in their neighborhood who are the same color they are. Imagine doing that to your “own kind”!

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Weekend Ethics Challenge!

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

Ugh. I just made the mistake of landing on a channel showing “The Big Chill.” I lasted for about 15 minutes, but I’ve seen the film several times since 1983, when it was a “thing.”

Lacking for guest posts lately, I hereby challenge Ethics Alarms readers to watch this paean to Sixties sensibilities and activism, as a once close-knit group of sell-outs bemoan their lost idealism, or something. Then write an analysis of what the film tells us about the people whose self-righteousness metastasized into today lock-step progressive cant….or something else: that’s just my personal reaction to it now.

“I feel like I was the best version of myself when I was with all of you,” Glenn Close says, or words to that effect. Really? Being an ignorant, doctrinaire idealist hating your country and your parents’ values while advocating drug dependence and promiscuous sex was the best you ever were? Fascinating.

Start your engines, please…

Last Head Explosion of 2025 (I Hope)

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Before I post a more substantial essay today I will have to puck the skull pieces and brain bits off of my living room ceiling, carpet, furniture and TV screen after making the mistake of watching CNN’s Abby Phillip show for ten minutes. As usual, her panel of partisan idiots (with the exception of CNN token Republican Scott Jennings) were babbling on with today’s Trump hate. I expected that, but as I routinely switch channels whenever this thing passes my eyes, I did not expect that the level of discourse would be beneath what I would expect late in a cast party when all of the woke actors are half- or totally crocked.

There was no expertise, useful analysis or objective commentary at all, just indignant repetition of Axis talking points as fact: gaslighting, or fake news for the ignorant and gullible. “Trump has used the Executive Orders to get around Congress, and changed the Presidency by doing so!” (Barack Obama openly and specifically established this as a “norm.”) “Trump just defies the Constitution and the Supreme Court lets him get away with it!” (The comment came up regrading SCOTUS taking up the birthright issue, regarding which the Trump administration has made a legal argument, and has not defied the Constitution.) “Yes! It’s just like abortion…” (No, you idiot, it is not “like abortion.” Abortion was never mentioned in the Constitution: an activist Court bent the document out of shape to turn abortion into a right that not a single Founder would have endorsed. Birthright citizenship IS in the Constitution, which is why it is unlikely that the Trump theory will prevail.) “Everything Trump does is to line his own pockets!” (Pure talking point, and one that I read or hear every single day from the Trump Deranged. How does enforcing the immigration laws, purging illegal discrimination against whites and men and trying to dismantle mainstream media and educational political manipulation “line his pockets”? “The economy is in bad shape!” (The third quarter (July-Sept) Gross Domestic Product (GDP) rose by a 4.3% annualized rate, the best in two years, which means that the economy is not in bad shape, but never mind.) And so on. All the women on the panel were wild eyed and angry (this is not professional deportment for television “journalism,” and the men, with the exception of Jennings, sat back and sagely nodded their head,s quickly shutting up if they tried to make a factual correction and were shouted over. Jennings just composed his next articulate rebuttal in his head, and waited for an opening.

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Christmas Eve Ethics Dunce: Jazz Drummer Chuck Redd

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Because he is angry at President Trump and the Kennedy Center board for adding the President’s name to the cultural center, musician Chuck Redd cancelled the Christmas Eve jazz concert at the Kennedy Center that has been a tradition for more than 20 years. “When I saw the name change on the Kennedy Center website and then hours later on the building, I chose to cancel our concert,” Redd told The Associated Press . Redd is a drummer and vibraphone player who has presided over holiday “Jazz Jams” at the Kennedy Center since 2006.

Well, jazz musicians aren’t known for their critical thinking skills or ethics acumen. Let me get this straight, Chuck: you think a fair way to punish Trump and the board for the name change is to disappoint jazz fans in the Washington area who had nothing to do with the decision. Nice.

What an asshole.

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The Progressive Nonsense Gene

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

Madison Wisconsin Ann Althouse, who tries admirably hard to suppress her natural left-leaning biases and I admire her for that, wrote a statement over the weekend that perfectly encapsulates what is so seductive and destructive about the progressive mindset.

I didn’t know what to do with it. I was temped to make it an Unethical Quote of the Month, but it’s not really unethical; it’s just dumb. (Also Trump’s outrageous attack on Rob Reiner locked up that distinction. I’m pretty sure it is also the most unethical quote of 2025.) It is so dumb, however, that I am tempted to say Althouse failed her duty of influence and expertise. Smart people who are expected to provide intellectual and emotional guidance have to take care that they don’t mislead the people who trust them.

Her statement was…“It shouldn’t be possible to become famous through murder, but it very clearly is.”

What a silly, utopian, “Imagine”-esque thing to say, out loud or on a blog (the internet is forever). It is, however, a near perfect example of the how the progressive delusion gene makes people believe in, advocate, and administer terrible policies that can’t possibly do anything but backfire horribly, and can’t possibly work.

It is one thing for someone to think along those lines in a moment of panic or stress. That’s excusable, though my late wife, “E2” in the EA comments, was always annoyed when characters in movies or TV shows would scream, “This can’t be happening!” The political Left is constantly gulled into thinking the realities of life can somehow be banished by a well-meaning program, law or policy. That’ where communism and socialism ooze from: surely there’s a way for everyone in a successful society to be happy, healthy, safe and having the benefit of sufficient food, living space and employment!

Uh, no.

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