Character

Ethics Dunces: The Congressional Black Caucus (As Usual)

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

I checked to see if Ethics Alarms has ever had a post about the Congressional Black Caucus, and there have been many, that didn’t indicate an an unethical culture embedded in the group like a tic.

No.

So I suppose the recent example shows that at very least, the CBC is consistent.

For over six years now, the NCAA and other collegiate sports organizations have been asking for Congress to reform college sports, which has been confused and chaotic since schools were told that they had to treat college athletes like mercenaries rather than students. The SCORE ACT is sorta kinda such legislation, and was was supposed to come up for a vote in the House of Representatives this week but was pulled from the floor at the last minute.

A few hours before the vote was again postponed indefinitely, the bill slammed into a roadblock when the Congressional Black Caucus and its 54 voting members in the House announced unanimous opposition to the SCORE Act, not because of anything the bill contained or ignored. The CBC announced that it would oppose the law until the SEC, ACC, and NCAA started protesting state gerrymandering and redistricting that didn’t benefit black Democrats. In other words, the CDC is practicing extortion. It is telling sports organizations that they must endorse the “good discrimination” against whites that the Supreme Court just declared illegal and unconstitutional (because, you know, it is), and if they don’t, well, the CBC will just refuse to vote for laws that have nothing to do with race, redistricting, sports or college. Neener neener!

Pages: 1 2

The Low Chair Trick

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Kudos to Ann Althouse: she flagged the use of the old chair dominance trick by Xi to make sure he appeared higher in his chair than President Trump.

Ann’s sketchy popular culture literacy was also exposed again: most normally-acculturated Americans would immediately think of the famous scene in “It’s a Wonderful Life,” where George Bailey (James Stewart) bargains with town bully Mr. Potter in a chair that reduces him to the stature of a child. Ann’s mind went instead to the scene in “The Great Dictator,” a far less well-known Chaplin film, where satirical versions of Mussolini and Hitler (Chaplin) keep raising their chairs’ heights during a meeting. Ann’s choice makes the point better, but she often posts about not having watched a lot of old movies, and it shows. (I have watched too many old movies, and it also shows.)

But kudos to Ann again for tracking down a December 2, 1987 David Letterman show when a young Donald Trump called out Letterman for having his guest chairs lower than the host’s, complaining, “How come this seat is at such a low level? You know, I’m looking at him. He’s got this stage rigged, folks…. That seat is a good six inches higher than my seat.”

Notes:

  • In law school I took a negotiation course from Adrian Fisher, then the Dean of Georgetown Law Center and known as a key U.S. negotiator in both SALT Treaties. Fisher had an exhaustive knowledge of negotiation mind games, and mentioned the chair trick as such a well-known and devious tactic that attempting it would be regarded as an insult by professional diplomats.
  • Trump had the good sense not to mention his annoyance with the chair trick in China. This indicates to me that he is capable of self-restraint when he chooses to exercise it, which is, obviously, not nearly enough.
  • Read (at Ann’s link above) the exchange between Letterman and Trump from 40 years ago. I detect no difference in Trump’s discourse from what we are used to today. One of the more irritating Big Lies the Axis (including my Trump Deranged Facebook friends) keeps pushing is that Trump’s rhetoric indicates cognitive decline (so he should be removed via the 25th Amendment.) He’s always talked this way.
  • Letterman has also always been an asshole. And a liar. When Trump points out that Letterman’s chair is “a good six inches” higher than Trump’s chair, Letterman says “And so am I” suggesting that it’s an illusion because he’s taller than Trump. Letterman is (or was) 6’2″ and Trump is (or was) an inch taller.
  • I blame Letterman for late night TV turning into the all-partisan-propaganda-all-the-time blight on society epitomized by Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert. He’s an Ethics Villain.
  • Trump proved in that exchange that he, like Fisher, knew the negotiation game well.
  • Note also in the transcript how a Trump was talking about the same international trade grievances in 1987 that he has tried to address in his second term.
  • Letterman meanwhile, like any good class-obsessed left-winger, keeps trying to bring the discussion around to Trump’s wealth because, after all, as AOC tells us, billionaires are the cause of most of America’s problems.

Letterman’s wealth is estimated to be only 400 million.

__________

Pointer: Ann Althouse

Comment of the Day: “What Exactly Are California’s ‘Values’? Can Anybody Explain?

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Sarah B, not to be confused with the other eminent commenter here with a similar handle, put together a two-part comment that provides an overview of the growing problem of sexual predator teachers. Ethics Alarms has done a lot on this topic, but not lately, perhaps because there are so many other things wrong with our education system. This may have been the most recent; I should have had a tag for “predator teachers.”

I should shut up now: it’s a long piece, and worth reading, Here is Sarah B’s Comment of the Day on the post, “What Exactly Are California’s “Values”? Can Anybody Explain?”

***

As much as I hate to defend California, this is hardly unique.  Wyoming has similar policies and we are about as red as they come.  A previous principal in my town harassed/seduced teachers and students who reached the age of 18.  Because all of his predations were of adults (even if only technically), he remained at his job for nearly a dozen years before enough complaints and the loss of too many teachers forced the school board to finally let him go.  Just this last couple of years, a special education teacher was arrested after sexually abusing lots of kids just a few towns over from us.  He had been skirting the edges of the law for years, but finally crossed enough lines that he could be arrested and fired, after abusing at least a handful of kids.

The other stories I know of are teachers who abuse students in other ways, not sexually, but I personally do not see much of a difference between a teacher who sexually harasses students and a teacher who beats students up, since children should be safe and unharmed in the school system if it were any good.  Therefore, I’m picking on a favorite story of mine involving my cousin, since I know many of the particulars that I might otherwise not know in detail.  He worked in one town and was fired for wrestling his students and put a few too many in headlocks.  After being fired for this, he was transferred to another town, where he rug-burnt a few handfuls of his students.  He got fired again, and was hired as the youth pastor at the local Baptist church.  He wrestled a few more kids harshly and is currently not allowed to be the only adult present when the youth group meets. 

Frankly, if one looks at the data, 38% of all students in 7th-12th grade receive sexual harassment/abuse in the public school system from adults, according to some studies in 2017.  I caution that these studies have broad definitions of sexual abuse/harassment, including things ranging from rape to cat-calling to inappropriate jokes and sexual comments.  Of course, the more minor offenses of inappropriate comments and commentary are far more common than the more serious ones.  Grooming behavior is reported separately, but is very common.  The adults also range from teachers to coaches, bus drivers to lunch ladies to janitors, and everything in between.  However, 63% of the behavior nationwide comes from teachers.

Pages: 1 2

Ethics Dunces: The San Francisco Giants

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Unbelievable.

But then, it is San Francisco, after all.

For some reason, the San Francisco Giants first year manager, Tony Vitello, couldn’t figure out that his outfielders’ post-victory celebratory ritual was inappropriate in a public venue, on TV, while playing America’s Pastime in front of family audiences.

The Commissioner’s office finally told them to cut it out. Why it took until May, I have no idea.

I would have fined the manager, the players and the team. A lot.

Morons.

Yes, Ted Turner Is An Ethics Hero For This…

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Verdict: True.

Turner’s contribution to cultural literacy and cross-generational communication as a result cannot be denied or understated. Ted Turner used his power and wealth to create what might never have existed without him.

He lived a worthwhile life indeed.

Fairness Test: “What’s Going On Here?”

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

The short video clip above shows Minnesota Representative Ilhan Omar referring to World War II as “World War Eleven.” The clip has been reposted by numerous social media accounts and has collectively drawn millions of views. Some versions leave out the Congresswoman quickly correcting herself and smiling at her own gaffe.

Omar’s “speako” has also spawned many memes, like…

All in good fun…except that if Donald Trump made a gaffe like that my Trump Deranged Facebook friends would be screaming that it was time to invoke the 25th Amendment. I am willing to accept the protests of Democrats that Omar’s incident was a forgivable momentary botch with no greater significance and not proof that she misunderstands Roman numerals or lacks a basic knowledge of history…if they stop using Trump’s occassional verbal stumbles as evidence that he is demented.

And you know they won’t.

On the other hand…what the hell? How can someone who has read anything about World War II and seen the numbering as often as educated Americans do—what, hundreds of times? Thousands?—make that mistake? Several years ago, a local news hostess was fired after making the same error; the assumption was that she must be an idiot. Maybe because my sister and I were immersed in World War II history, lore and memorabilia from the time we could speak, this particular gaffe seems particularly weird to me. If Omar pronounced “USA” as “ussa,” would it be reasonable for us to shrug it off as a mistake any member of Congress could make? This is an elected official, after all, whose American bona fides are tad shaky.

Now, now, Jack. You have exonerated Obama for saying there were more than 50 states, and yourself for mixing up this guy…

….with this guy…

so let’s not jump to conclusions about Rep. Omar just because she has said her first duty is to Somalians.

From The EA Archives: The Trump Presidency And “The Caine Mutiny”—A Reminder

/ Jack Marshall / 28 Comments

I watched “The Caine Mutiny” last night with a friend who had never seen it. I realized that I had written during Donald Trump’s first term about how the rebuke Navy lawyer Barney Greenwald (Jose Ferrer) delivers to the acquitted mutineers fit 2019’s “resistance”  like the proverbial glove. It fits today’s  Axis of Unethical Conduct even better. I’ll have some brief comments after the post.

* * *

Turner Movie Classics ran “The Caine Mutiny” again last night. It reminded me of what I wrote two years ago, when I really didn’t think that the “resistance” and the Democrats would continue on the destructive path they have for this long. I even wrote, foolishly, “This is the last time I’m going to try to explain why the fair, patriotic, ethical and rational approach to the impending Presidency of Donald Trump is to be supportive of the office and the individual until his actual performance in the job earns just criticism. Attempting to undermine a Presidency at its outset is a self-destructive act, for nobody benefits if a Presidency fails.” Of course, it was far from the last time I returned to the topic. In my defense, how could I know, at a point where the term “the resistance” hadn’t even surfaced yet, that the unparalleled assault on a President would not only continue, but escalate to the point where a newly minted Congresswoman would announce to a cheering mob, “We’re going to impeach the motherfucker!”?

Watching the movie, however, was striking. I know it well; I can recite many of the lines from memory. Yet the parallel with the Trump Presidency struck me smore powerfully than ever before, and sent me back to that previous post, in which I wrote,

“In The Caine Mutiny, a film version of the stage drama and novel “The Caine Mutiny Court Martial,” Captain Queeg (Humphrey Bogart), a man whose war-shattered nerves and self-esteem problems have rendered him an erratic and an unpopular officer, falters in his command during a storm. His officers, frightened and already convinced that their captain is unfit for command, mutiny. At their military trial, their defense attorney causes Queeg to have a breakdown on the witness stand, winning the case for the accused mutineers. Later, however, at the post trial victory party, the lawyer, Barney Greenwald (Jose Ferrer),  shames his clients. He represented them zealously, but he tells them that they were, in fact, at fault for what occurred on the Caine:

Ensign  Keith: Queeg endangered the lives of the men.

Greenwald: He didn’t endanger any lives.You did. A fine bunch of officers.

Lt. Paynter: You said yourself he cracked.

Greenwald: I’m glad you brought that up, Mr. Paynter, because that’s a very pretty point. I left out one detail in court. It wouldn’t have helped our case. Tell me, Steve, after the yellow-stain business, Queeg came to you for help, and you turned him down, didn’t you.

Lt. Maryk: Yes, we did.

Greenwald: You didn’t approve of his conduct as an officer. He wasn’t worthy of your loyalty. So you turned on him. You ragged on him, you made up songs about him. If you’d given Queeg the loyalty he needed, do you think all this would have come up in the typhoon? You’re an honest man, Steve, I’m asking you. You think it would have been necessary to take over?

 Maryk: It probably wouldn’t have been necessary.

Keith:  If that’s true, we were guilty.

Greenwald: Ahhh, You’re learning, Willie!  You don’t work with the captain because of how he parts his hair…you work with him because  he’s got the job, or you’re no good.

Exactly.

      Or you’re no good.

Donald Trump is in over his head. He knows it, I think. Maybe, just maybe, with a lot of help, a lot of support and more than a lot of luck, he might be able to do a decent job for his country and the public. It’s a long-shot, but what’s the alternative? Making sure that he fails? Making him feel paranoid, and angry, and feeding his worst inclinations so he’s guaranteed to behave irrationally and irresponsibly? How is that in anyone’s best interest? That’s not how to get someone through a challenge, especially someone who you have to depend on.

Continue reading →

Rueful Observations On A Trump Derangement Outburst…

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

1. Nah, Trump Derangement is a myth!

2. If you want to see this orgy of hate and violence without the annoying commentary, here’s a link I couldn’t embed.

2. How does a mush-mouth like Topping have the gall to host a show of any kind? Jeeeez, whatever your first name is, get a coach! Learn to speak clearly. Slow the hell down. Not only are you hard to understand, your speech pattern is excruciating to listen to. This is malpractice.

Why hasn’t anyone told him?

3. Look at the hate on this crazy old bat’s face! What could possibly justify that?

4. There are several places on the web where one can purchase Trump pinatas. Here, for instance.

5. The onlookers cheering her on epitomize the description “angry mob.” The Axis of Unethical Conduct made them this way, hammering away at “Trump is a Nazi” and related slander and libel, day after day, for ten years. And it has caused brain damage. The remedy to speech is, we have decided as a nation, more speech, and “hate speech” is still protected speech. Inciting riots, however, is not protected speech. Nonetheless, inciting riots in slow motion, over long periods of time, by repeating demonizing and violence-triggering propaganda and rhetoric over and over again until it is embedded in weak minds, is legal. It is also unethical.

6. Do you think the crazy woman doing this while wearing a shirt that extols kindness on the front and the Golden Rule on the back recognizes the double standards she is embracing? It it intentional satire? Is she just an idiot?

7. Democrats cheer on this kind of lunacy while insisting that their “8647” rhetoric plays no part in the repeated assassination attempts. The only President I can find whose avatars were subjected to such vicarious and symbolic violence was Abraham Lincoln during protests like the draft riots in New York. (Confederate equivalents don’t count.) True, he wasn’t…

Oh. Right.

8. I react emotionally to people attacking and defiling images of the President of the United States. just as I do to flag burning. It is an attack on my nation, its institutions, its history and its values. The conduct shows civic disrespect that cannot be rationalized away.

______________

Pointer: Steve Witherspoon

In Maine, the Graham Platner Fiasco

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

How did this happen?

Maine’s Democratic governor Janet Mills announced yesterday that she is dropping out of her campaign for the U.S. Senate. Now certifiable wacko Graham Platner is her party’s presumptive nominee for the U.S. Senate.

Mills had been regarded as having a good chance of unseating RINO Senator Susan Collins, a key piece of the Democrats’ quest to flip control of the U.S. Senate in November. Platner, in contrast, either is unelectable or should be. The RNC quickly crowed, “In November Susan Collins, a proven leader with an indisputable record of delivering for Maine, will face a Nazi sympathizing self-proclaimed communist with a record of hate-mongering and dishonesty.”

Well, the part about Platner is true, at least. He has said women who are raped are at fault. He said that blacks don’t tip. He has called called white, rural Maine dwellers stupid. He uses “fag” to describe gays. Platner praised Hamas, rationalized urinating on corpses, and has denigrated police officers. He once referred to Jesus as a “zombie” and the Virgin Mary as a “skank.” He also had a Nazi tattoo on his chest and defended it for years.

On the plus side, Platner approves of political violence, so at least in that sense he’s a mainstream 2026 Democrat.

Conservatives are confident that Platner will be an 800 lb. albatross around the necks of other Democratic candidates, as they will be placed in political zugzwang, with their choices being to condemn fellow Democrat or endorse sexism, misogyny, homophobia, bigotry, violence and blasphemy. Once again, as in 2016 when Donald Trump was running away with the Republican primaries, I don’t understand why a either political party cannot, in an extreme situation, announce that Candidate X does not represent that party’s values and therefore is rejected as a party candidate. Democrats and Republicans have an obligation to the Republic to place only competent, responsible Americans on the ballot. True, neither party is very good at doing that, but it still is an ongoing obligation.

The Democrats, to have any claim to competence and responsibly at all, should tell Platner that the party will not allow him to run as under the party banner. Let him sue, let him run as an independent, let him rant. At least they would demonstrate that the party has some standards, and cares about the public good.

Of course, we now know that today’s Democratic Party has no standards or principles, so this is a useless flight of fancy on my part.

Never mind.

In fact, it is not inconceivable that Platner can win. He was leading Mills in polling 2-1. And Trump Derangement among Democrats and progressives is so rampant that many would literally vote for Satan if they thought it would rid the nation of MAGA madness. After all, Bernie Sanders has endorsed this creep, who is, in addition to all I mentioned above, a Neo-communist like Bernie. As Times columnist Michelle Goldberg wrote last Fall,

“Andy O’Brien, a former Democratic state legislator and newspaper editor, told me that outsiders didn’t fully understand how radicalizing the second Trump presidency has been for ordinary Democrats. Even senior citizens, he said, were becoming “fire-breathing leftists. They’re just pissed off.” These voters understood that Platner had made mistakes, but they saw him as a fighter. “Five years ago, he would have been dead in the water, I think,” said O’Brien, who now works with the labor movement. “But this is such an unprecedented time. I think a lot of people really believe that we need somebody who can effectively fight against fascism.”

Yikes.

Accountability For Ethics Villain Dr. Fauci? It’s Complicated.

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

I’m proud to say that Ethics Alarms began identifying Dr. Anthony Fauci as the despicable liar and irresponsible hack that he was and is in December of 2020, during the societal lockdown that wrecked my business, helped kill my wife, hobbled children’s education, destroyed whole industries…well, but it let American elect a senile Democrat as President, so it wasn’t all bad, I guess.

In my December 2020 post titled “Ethics Dunce, Rogue And Fool To Be Held Up As An Example Forever More: Dr. Anthony Fauci”, I wrote in part,

“[L]ying is not an option for someone who has been held up for almost a year as the epitome of an expert representing “science,” who must be believed and slavishly obeyed by policymakers because, after all, scientists only convey cold hard facts. If that’s the basis for your authority, if that’s the reason the news media and the President-elect lecturing us about the virtues of obeying experts and following what the “science” says, no matter how difficult, painful and counter-intuitive it might be, then a high profile expert cannot, must not, and dare not announce later that he withheld facts for our own good. That’s not the role that we have been told anexpert fills. Not telling the public the truth for the greater good is a pubic servant’s tool, and one that is perilous to use at best. We do not expect politicians to always tell us the truth, and we even accept the troubling reality that sometimes they may be right not to tell us the truth. As Pelt, the character played by the late Richard Jordan in “The Hunt for the Red October” says,

“Listen, I’m a politician, which means I’m a cheat and a liar, and when I’m not kissing babies, I’m stealing their lollipops, but it also means that I keep my options open.“

“But scientists, we have been told, over and over again, regarding climate change and the pandemic just to name two of the most egregious examples, aren’t politicians. They deal in facts only. They have no agendas, they aren’t shading or outright hiding the truth to manipulate us. We are told this by people arrogantly treating us like children and fools. Oh, you poor ignorant dolts who a skeptical of what these learned, good men and women know!

“Right. Anthony Fauci, the current symbol of the integrity and reliability of science, lied to the public (and probably to policymakers: who can be sure?) by his own admission.

“He cannot be trusted. He can never be trusted. And, having been held up as the unimpeachable representative of experts and science generally, they can’t be trusted either.”

Well before that post, Ethics Alarms (and many commenters here) had taken the position that the lockdown of the schools and the economy was a near suicidal act made politically unavoidable by the teachers unions, the news media and the “experts” who were, like Fauci, asserting dire consequences as “science” when they were in fact only guesses or worse, deliberate lies to advance a partisan agenda. The mask nearly fell off when the same “experts” that insisted that white people avoid groups larger than five declared that there was an exception for George Floyd mobs because, see, racism is a public health threat.

It was, or should have been, so obvious what was going on, but Fauci played saintly doctor beautifully, bolstered by Axis propaganda like this…

….to crush anyone who pointed out that shutting down the economy and the schools for a virus that was only more dangerous than the flu to people over 65 is insane.

Now, six years after that headline (I have never trusted The Atlantic since, and never will)—too late for all the millions of victims of the pandemic lies and experts malpractice—the walls may finally be closing in on Fauci.

May.

Anthony Fauci’s former adviser David Morens was indicted this week and charged with one count of conspiracy, two counts of destruction, alteration, or falsification of records in federal investigations and two counts of concealment, removal, or mutilation of records relating to the origins of the Wuhan virus. He faces up to 51 years in prison. If Morens is guilty so is Fauci, who denied under oath that he funded “gain of function” experiments that modified bat coronaviruses in the same city where the pandemic started. The five-year statute of limitations runs out on May 11.

“99% of this country has no idea who Morens is,” said Oversight Project President Mike Howell after the indictment was announced. “It’s Fauci that they will blame for one of the worst government catastrophes in history in America. And so the test is Fauci. The Morens indictment is great, and we applaud it. But there are a lot of people out there that want to see Fauci held to account for the damage he wrought. [Fauci] lied about one of the most damaging events in American history routinely and was behind a massive coverup of the key factors,” Howell said.

Verdict: true. The Ethics Villain may avoid accountability anyway, because on his final full day in office, President Joe Biden or whoever was operating his auto-pen issued a blanket pardon to Fauci for “any offenses” dating to 2014. After all, it was Fauci’s lockdown (and the questionable election security that it spawned) that made Biden President. A Fauci indictment would neatly set up a judicial determination if the pardon (and others “Biden” issued) is valid.

Pages: 1 2