“bias makes you stupid”

Stop Making Me Defend Cracker Barrel!

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

Wow. Just when I thought the Left’s outrage machine had reached new levels of absurdity over an attractive white woman advertising bluejeans by using a very old play on words (Jeff Goldblum uses the same one in “Jurassic Park”),the Right’s outrage machine says “Hold my beer!”

Cracker Barrel stripped its old logo of both its barrel and its “cracker,” and all of a sudden it was Bud Light all over again. The company’s stock even crashed. How the decision could possibly be seen as some kind of kowtow to wokeness is beyond me, and should be beyond everyone who isn’t Woke Deranged.

The old logo was archaic, messy and unattractive. Okay, so the old guy sitting by the barrel looked white, but he was yellow, for heaven’s sake. This isn’t like removing Uncle Ben or Aunt Jemima, or that naughty Native American lass whose Land O’ Lakes box could be rigged to make a wallet peep show. I’d compare the Cracker Barrel change to Kentucky Fried Chicken becoming KFC, and no one freaked out over that, though, admittedly, it transpired before both conservatives and progressives had gone nuts in their distrust of each other.

The one aspect of this nothingcracker that supports the fevered conspiracy theory on the Right is the Cracker Barrel management’s deplorable past record as a pandering, cowardly, principle-free bunch of weenies.

Here is the Ethics Alarms post (from 2020) about the last time this company entered the culture wars. I still haven’t forgiven it.

Continue reading →

Psst! Progressives! It’s What You Mean That’s The Problem, Not How You Say It…

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

This is pretty funny, as Ethics Duncery goes. Third Way calls itself “a national think tank and advocacy organization that champions moderate policy and political ideas,” acting as “a critical bulwark against political extremism.” Right. It’s latest project is an attempt to train their fellow travelers not to “use an awful lot of words and phrases no ordinary person would ever dream of saying.” The feature “Was it Something I Said” continues, “The intent of this language is to include, broaden, empathize, accept, and embrace. The effect of this language is to sound like the extreme, divisive, elitist, and obfuscatory, enforcers of wokeness. To please the few, we have alienated the many—especially on culture issues, where our language sounds superior, haughty and arrogant.”

Smoking guns abound in this thing, beginning with the use of “we” in that sentence above. “Was it Something I Said” begins, “To: All Who Wish to Stop Donald Trump and MAGA.” Not stop a particular policy or project, mind you, just the elected President of the United States and all those who support him, “The Third Way” is in fact the same old way: the Axis has a dearth of rational policy ideas and principles, so hating Trump, treating Republicans as plotting Nazis, and adopting “It Isn’t What It Is” as their primary operating principle (also known as “Sure. we can fool all the people all the time” remains the plan.

The objective here is to employ more soothing, vague and seductive language to accomplish it. Amazing: every time the Left encounters the perils of imposing reality, its reflex solution is to hide the problem by cooking the rhetoric. The public doesn’t like racial and gender discrimination? Hey, let’s call it “diversity, equity and inclusion!” Normal people think amputating the penises of boys who have been confused about their gender by pro-trans indoctrination? No problem! Call it “gender-affirming care”! Most citizens find the idea of open borders repugnant, not to mention stupid? Ah, but if we all call illegal immigrants immigrants or migrants, then we can confuse them completely! I assume you can continue this theme without my assistance.

“In reality, most Democrats do not run or govern on wildly out-of-touch social positions,” claims Third Way. “But voters would be excused to believe we do because of the words that come out of our mouths—words which sound like we are hiding behind unfamiliar phrases to mask extreme intent.”

Yes, this moderate, centrist, Democrat “think tank” doesn’t think promoting illegal immigration, using radical surgery and hormone blockers on children and institutionalizing anti-male, anti-white discrimination qualify as “wildly out of touch.” “[I]f we don’t think more carefully about our language, many in America will be banking on help from Donald Trump and Republicans, because Democratic levers of power will be few and far between,” the introduction to the NewSpeak guide says. Oh, no! Americans might end up trusting a President who has clearly opposed the Axis’s ridiculous, divisive damaging obsessions, which is, after all, why he was elected over the Democrats’ DEI candidate. Translation: “Let’s be smart about this, and hide what we really mean and what we really want to do. You know, like saying Joe Biden was “sharp as a tack,” and calling videos of him wandering vacantly like a zombie “deep fakes.”

You may want to wade into the whole thing, but here are some examples of what you’re facing:

Continue reading →

Hopeless, Legitimate or Right-Wing Propaganda? The White House’s Smithsonian Exhibit Hit List

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

The New York Times reports,

The White House published a list of Smithsonian exhibits, programming and artwork it considered objectionable on Thursday, one week after announcing that eight of the institution’s museums must submit their current wall text and future exhibition plans for a comprehensive review.

The list borrows heavily from a recent article in The Federalist that objected to portrayals at several museums. It argued that the National Museum of American History promoted homosexuality by hanging a pride flag; overemphasized Benjamin Franklin’s relationship to slavery in its programming; and supported open borders by depicting migrants watching fireworks “through an opening in the U.S.-Mexico border wall.”

Other grievances were previously enumerated in an executive order that President Trump authorized in March, which criticized the National Museum of African American History and Culture for a 2020 worksheet that describes aspects of “whiteness” as “hard work,” “individualism” and “the nuclear family.” The worksheet was part of an online educational portal called Talking About Race; once it drew criticism, Lonnie G. Bunch III, the secretary of the Smithsonian, had it removed.

The White House list also featured complaints that were not part of the Federalist article or the president’s executive order. Those include a stop-motion animation at the National Portrait Gallery about Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, a government leader during the coronavirus pandemic, and a series at the African American museum that it says “featured content from hardcore woke activist Ibram X. Kendi.”

Continue reading →

Today’s Trump Deranged Facebook Post…

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

“I’ve have been a professional waiter in DC for the last 30 years. Today is the first time I was cut from my shift (of two waiters) during the popular restaurant week. People here are terrorized becauseof that POS in the White House Trump shits on EVERYTHING. He is a disaster for working Americans.”

Does anybody have a theory why Trump is being blamed for restaurant business declining in D.C.? There is no question that the extra presence of the National Guard makes the city safer for tourists, diners, visitors, residents. Is the drop in eatery reservations because those in the Greater D.C. area are watching, listening to and reading fear-mongering hysterics who are characterizing the cleaning up of the nation’s Capital, which has been a dangerous, crime-infested mess for decades, as some kind of apocalyptic institution of a police state?

Is it because restaurant patrons in D.C. are overwhelmingly white, and mostly don’t live in the District? How does an otherwise intelligent person (I know the Facebook poster) make the connection that President Trump is responsible for a restaurant laying him off? The likely culprits are the Axis media and the fools who won’t eat in D.C. because they are less likely to be robbed or murdered.

The downturn in D.C. restaurant business was a 2024 development, with rising costs being the major cause. Also, D.C. eliminated the tip credit that allowed restaurants to use tip income to reach the minimum wage requirements. Yet now it’s President Trump’s fault.

What’s going on here?

Ethics Dunces: Rolling Stone, and Everyone Else Who Thinks Assaulting Law Enforcement Is OK As Long As the Missile Is Funny

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

The Justice Department has fired employee Sean Charles Dunn after video showed him throwing a submarine sandwich at the chest of an law enforcement officer as a gesture of defiance against President Trump’s entirely legal executive take-over of crime control in the District of Columbia. He hurled the sandwich at the officer’s chest and tried to run away. When Dunn was apprehended, he told police: “I did it. I threw a sandwich.”

FBI Director Kash Patel announced that Dunn had indeed been “charged with felony assault on a federal officer.” Attorney General Pam Bondi noted on social media that “if you touch any law enforcement officer, we will come after you.” And he was fired.

The arrest, the charge and the employment action were all appropriate, but the Axis news media decided to weigh in as a fan of interfering with law enforcement and subjecting officers to thrown items, although doing so, whatever the missile, is pure assault and also battery (if the thrown item connects with its target).

Continue reading →

Open Forum!

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Three weeks after I inflicted a giant hematoma on (in?) my leg, I’m still having trouble getting past the two-post-a-day barrier, in great part because I’m hopeless on a laptop, and sitting at my desk in the office is still painful. I’m sorry: I’m missing a lot; the EA runway looks like a Reagan National flight stop due to high winds and thunderstorms.

A needed observation on the Trump Presidency so far: wow. That wow isn’t about what Trump and his team are doing, but the fact that they are doing it. I’ve compared Trump II to Andrew Jackson, but I now believe he is channeling my favorite President of all (again, in terms of Oval Office conduct, not policy), Teddy Roosevelt. Teddy, like Trump, was a Presidential activist and believed in using the power he had to do things, fix things, and project American power abroad. He also believed fervently in American exceptionalism, as all Presidents (and citizens) should. Like TR, Trump is trying to stop international conflicts that don’t directly involve the United States: Roosevelt was the first U.S. President to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, and Trump has already exceeded his accomplishments in that sphere.

You would think he could get some praise from the Axis for this. Nah. The news media is still relentlessly attacking him and everything he does, and there are enough Stage 5 Trump Derangement victims and gullible, manipulated fools among the public to keep Trump’s polling numbers under water.

To his great credit, President Trump doesn’t seem to care. Among the many ways his second term is breaking with conventional wisdom, he has turned his lame duck status into a weapon. Fascinating. There is so much to see and learn from going on. Those who refused to pay attention are missing a great show and a transformational Presidency, as Trump joins the lofty company of Washington, Andy, Honest Abe, Teddy, FDR and the Gipper.

Over to you…

Serious Question: Has US News Media Ever Treated Another President or Vice-President This Way Before?

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

And why is it acceptable now?

A completely made-up “scandal” began when The Guardian reported  on “Canoe-Gate.” “JD Vance’s team had water level of the river raised for family’s boating trip,” the outlet claimed. Though the same article said that “one source with knowledge of the matter who communicated with the Guardian anonymously alleged that the outflow request for the Caesar Creek Lake was not just to support the vice-president’s Secret Service detail, but also to create ‘ideal kayaking conditions” and that “The Guardian could not independently confirm this specific claim,” the story was reported anyway. Got that? An unnamed source claimed that Vance had ordered that a river’s water level be raised to create better kayak conditions, the news organization couldn’t substantiate the claim, yet they printed it as fact.

Then the usual suspects jumped into the fray. The New Republic’s  headline was “JD Vance Abused Power to Raise River Levels for Family Kayaking Trip.” Huffington Post declared: “JD Vance Had A River’s Water Level Raised For His Family Vacation.” The Daily Beast: “JD Vance Ordered a River’s Water Level Raised for His Family Boat Trip.” Stephen Colbert called the story an “insane spoiled baby emperor move.” (What an asshole he is. But I digress.)

There was no truth to the story whatsoever. Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi explained that the they conducted a routine trip to the Ohio area ahead of the Veep’s planned trip and one of their vessels actually ran aground. The Secret Service the increase: “It’s very normal, it’s very routine.” He said that the decision was made without input or involvement from the Vice President’s office.

Never mind, though. Vance is Donald Trump’s #2, so whatever damning stories and rumors people make up about him must be true, and must be broadcast to the world as fact. None of the news outlets noted above have retracted or taken down the false story. Of course they haven’t.

I’ll answer my own question: no, there have never been a President and Vice President who have been slandered, libeled, slimed and unfairly denigrated like Trump and Vance. By any objective measure, the first seven months of the second Trump administration has been spectacularly productive on an impressive number of fronts, yet the President’s popularity is still in negative numbers. The barrage of deliberately misleading negative propaganda is why. It hurts the government, it hurts society, it scars democracy. “Enemy of the people.” Trump coined that phrase in relation to the news media, and he was never more accurate. Journalists screamed, “How dare he!,” but Trump nailed their corrupt profession as deftly as Ronald Reagan did when he called the Soviet Union the “Evil Empire.” That’s what we have as our “journalism” now: a malign, unethical, dastardly institution determined to mislead rather than inform.

______________

Pointer: Res Ipsa Loquitur

It’s Time To Concede That The NYT Is Just A Partisan Propaganda Organ and Little Else

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Above is a Times front page in which the paper piled on to the international criticism of Israel in the Left’s “Think of the Children!” effort to blame Jews for the consequences of the war Hamas started and refuses to end.

“Mohammed Zakaria al-Mutawaq, about 18 months, with his mother, Hedaya al-Mutawaq, who said he was born healthy but was recently diagnosed with severe malnutrition,” the original caption to the photo said. Evil Israel is starving innocent children to death! Then, five days after the story was published, on July 29, the Times issued an editor’s note (buried at the bottom of the article) as well as a brief statement on its communications social media page that corrected its story, writing that it “had learned” that the child had underlying medical issues that affected his muscle development. Otherwise it did not retract any part of the feature, “Gazans Are Dying of Starvation,” including its now especially dubious claim that the child was suffering from malnutrition due to food shortages.

Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz: Teaching Constitutional Law

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

This is a bit different from the usual Ethics Alarms quiz.

Over at Dorf on Law, a site I had forgotten about, Eric Segal poses twenty questions about how Constitutional Law should be taught from this point going forward. They are:

Continue reading →

Why Do So Many Democrats and Progressives Think Punishing Americans For Their Opinions and Beliefs Is Ethical Conduct?

/ Jack Marshall / 31 Comments

On Martha’s Vineyard, food store proprietor named Krem Miskevich has told lawyer and Harvard Law prof Alan Dershowitz that he can’t buy his delicious pierogis because the liberal Democrat has periodically defended Donald Trump in various columns and bad people (like Jeffrey Epstein) in criminal cases. Dershowitz has previously complained bitterly about how his progressive neighbors on the picturesque Massachusetts island community have excluded him from the social life there because he is regarded as a traitor to the cause of knee-jerk wokism.

In addition to being an illiberal bully and an American devoid of core American values like pluralism and respect for free expression, Miskevich is an ignorant idiot who doesn’t comprehend the role of lawyers in a democracy. Lawyers do not endorse the conduct or values of the clients they represent. Let me repeat that for any Miskeviches who might be drooling out there: Lawyers do not endorse the conduct or values of the clients they represent. Lawyers do not endorse the conduct or values of the clients they represent. Clarence Darrow didn’t approve of the character and conduct of child-killers Leopold and Loeb. John Adams did not endorse the conduct of the British soldiers who did the shooting in the Boston Massacre. This is enshrined in the lawyers’ Rules of Professional Conduct. It makes it possible for the 6th Amendment rights to a fair trial and legal representation to exist. Alan Dershowitz understands this. The pierogi-maker, a self-righteous fool, does not.

Continue reading →