Ethics Dunces

Ugh. Could Someone PLEASE Explain the First Amendment to Donald Trump? Quickly?

/ Jack Marshall / 31 Comments

This morning, I was simultaneously listening in on CNN (hyping Harris absurdly), MSNBC (well, you know) and Fox News, where the morning trio of hyper-partisan clowns were hosting Trump in a 30 minute phone monologue. First, I got a laugh when a CNN reporter commented on Harris having to navigate the complexities of Israel’s war with Gaza (Hamas). He actually said, first, “This is a major issue for Harris” and five seconds later that “Republicans are trying to make an issue out of this.” Yes, Harris was one of the first Democrats to call for a cease fire in Gaza, essentially making sure Hamas’s adverse consequences for slaughtering and raping Israel civilians on October 7 were minimal, but because she was only a VP at the time, and, after all, Kamala Harris, Idiot, nobody paid much attention to how irresponsible that position was. It is an issue, of course, but CNN will try “Republicans pounce!” even when everyone should pounce.

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Ethics Hero/Dunce: Charlotte Dujardin

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

I haven’t had many of these, as you might imagine. In fact, I’m not even sure that this is one.

British Olympic dressage medalist Charlotte Dujardin holds six Olympic medals, three of them gold, in equestrian events. She just dropped out of the Paris Olympics, however, after a video was uncovered that reportedly shows her repeatedly whipping a horse on its legs.

“A video has emerged from four years ago which shows me making an error of judgement during a coaching session,” she said in her statement withdrawing from the Games. “Understandably, the International Federation for Equestrian Sports (FEI) is investigating, and I have made the decision to withdraw from all competition — including the Paris Olympics — while this process takes place,” she said. The statement continues, “I am sincerely sorry for my actions and devastated that I have let everyone down, including Team GB, fans and sponsors.”

Some have described this as Ethics Hero-level contrition. She did wrong, she has admitted it without qualifications, and has administered her own sanctions. OK, I’m buying that, sort of. Maybe. With major misgivings.

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A Sociopath Asks “The Ethicist” For Advice

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

This was weird; I wonder if The Ethicist (his friends call him Kwame Anthony Appiah, or just “Professor”) just felt like slapping down someone despicable. When I read the creepy question posed, I immediately thought, “Who needs an ethicist to answer this?”

“Name Withheld” (that guy writes an awful lot of questions to The Ethicist) wrote in part,

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Ethics Dunce: Chaya Raichik

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

Chaya Raichik, the industrious conservative gadfly who infuriates the Left by posting the most ridiculous and self-indicting TikTok videos by unhinged progressives, definitely has a nasty side. Exposing public figures, celebrities, local officials, scholars, professors, teachers, corporate execs, prominent athletes, “influencers,” Hollywood stars and would-be activists is an admirable (and useful) pursuit—after all, they post the stuff that makes them look ridiculous or sinister and know that what they say gets noticed. Such statements also often demonstrate why they should not continue in their chosen professions. Siccing the social media mob on a typical working American who posts something dumb on Facebook is very different. It is cruel.

Recently Raichik’s Libs of TikTok account has expanded its target range to private Facebook posts that included ugly comments on the near assassination of Donald Trump. (I could point her to some by my Trump-Deranged friends.) “To bad they weren’t a better shooter!!!!!” was the witty if ungrammatical retort Darcy Waldron Pinckney posted on Facebook to her modest number of FB friends. She worked at Home Depot, but not after the influential anti-woke warrior launched her (also misspelled) “quip” into cyberspace hyperdrive. A week ago, Raichik posted a screenshot of Pinckney’s comment with her photo (above) and wrote, “Hi @HomeDepot! Are you aware that you employ people who call for political violence and the ass*ss*nat*on of Presidents? Any comment?”

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Sorry Joe: You Knew She Was a Scorpion All Along

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Here I am still fighting off multiple crises personal, professional and financial arising from my wife’s sudden death, and trying to actually earn money, no easy task in the field of ethics unless one is unethical, which so many of my more successful colleagues are. Unfortunately, I have no discipline. I am behind on several deadlines that will keep me working into the wee hours this weekend, and yet emanations from the twin ethics train wrecks that are Biden’s debate melt-down and Trump’s near-miss assassination attempt keep dragging me back to Ethics Alarms.

Like this one: sources are reporting that the President is “seething” at Nancy Pelosi, who is widely believed to be behind the wave of House Democrats calling for Biden to step down as the presumptive nominee. California Rep. Zoe Lofgren, a close ally of Pelosi—figures—released a letter calling for Biden to step aside. House Democrats close to Pelosi, attributed today’s new defections, especially Lofgren’s letter to Biden,to the former speaker. Biden regarded Pelosi as an ally. He trusted her.

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AOC Is Here To Tell Us That…

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

Well, something. Yes, hold on to your butts: Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) is imparting what she regards as wisdom. I was going to make this an Unethical Quote of the Week, then I decided that I didn’t know what it was, except disturbing. Here is what she ranted last night in a live stream; I’ll have some rueful comments at the end…

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Ethics Dunce: MSNBC (In Related News, Night Is Dark!)

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

MSNBC, the fake news champ, expanded its unethical practices to deceptive broadcast settings for the Republican National convention this week. MSNBC’s prime-time coverage of the Republican National Convention looked familiar to the other networks and what veteran viewers are used to from past convention coverage: anchors at a desk positioned above the convention floor. Rachel Maddow, Nicolle Wallace, Jen Psaki, Joy Reid and the rest of the MSNBC anchors were not inside the convention hall as it was designed to appear, however. They were in a Manhattan studio. That backdrop of the convention floor was being projected on a screen behind them.

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More Weird Tales of The Great Stupid: Post-Debate/Post-Assassination Edition

/ Jack Marshall / 42 Comments

It is astounding what obvious garbage one can hear and read officials, journalists, pundits, activists and academics state in public for popular consumption these days…

1. In an interview shortly after her Secret Service failed its mission and disgraced itself, Kimberly Cheatle actually said that one of her top priorities was to attract more diverse applicants to the agency.

Ethics Note: The interviewer, a standard issue hack, naturally didn’t ask the obvious follow-up question: “Why is diversity a priority at all in an agency with the assignment of the Secret Service? Who cares what gender, ethnicity or color the agent is who saves the life of a President? Why does it matter? If every agent was a 6’4″ black man who can run a 4 minute mile, dead-lift 400 pounds, score 160 on an IQ test and shoot a wing off a fruit fly at 300 yards, why would the director feel that isn’t an ideal force for the job her agency is committed to do?”

Her only priority should be ensuring that the Secret Service has competent and well-trained agents, and she’s failed at that.

2. Kamala Harris said that J.D. Vance was picked to be a “rubber stamp” for Trump’s “extreme agenda” and that “he will be loyal only to Trump, not to our country. If elected, he will help implement the extreme Project 2025 plan for a second Trump term.”

Ethics Note: One would think that Harris, having been Vice-President, might be aware that the VP has no power to “rubber stamp” or even help implement anything. Every Vice-President is completely loyal to the man who chose them as #2: I can find no example in history of a Vice-President not working, for whatever good it does, to accomplish the President’s polices. (I don’t count Pence refusing to try to stall the 2020 election certification, which was the equivalent of Trump asking him to fly to Jupiter by flapping his arms.) Meanwhile, Harris, as a VP who actively deceived the public—you know, our country?— regarding Biden’s fitness to serve is ethically estopped from complaining that anyone else might put loyalty to the President over duty to country, especially a Marine like Vance.

“Joe Biden is extraordinarily strong,” Harris told CNN’s Anderson Cooper after Biden’s disastrous debate performance, a Jumbo for the ages.

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Accountability? What’s Accountability? Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle Still Has Her Job, and Only the Prominence of a Confederacy of Ethics Dunces Can Explain That [Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 46 Comments

I could go into an analysis of what was so stunningly dangerous and incompetent about the Secret Service FUBAR that almost got Donald Trump murdered, at this point just about the only way the Democrats would be able to keep the White House. I’m happy to wait for the results of Congressional hearings and the investigation, but as I heard many experts say on multiple networks, you don’t have to be an expert to figure from the time-line and what we do know that the Secret Service was spectacularly incompetent, and that Cheatle’s pathetic explanations (I particularly like “the sloped roof was too dangerous for our agents so we let a gunman use it to shoot Trump”) haven’t passed the giggle test. Her ridiculous statements and the fact that the agents knew an unknown person with a gun was within killing distance of Donald Trump and waited for him to take a shot before doing anything (like, say, keeping Trump off the stage: don’t those little earpieces work?) are res ipsa loquitur, so damning that conspiracy theories are unavoidable.

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There Is Hope! Another Incompetent “Squad” Member Is Headed For Defeat

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Above is one of “Cori Bush’s Greatest Hits,” the time in 2021 that she “explained” why she had taxpayers fund a security detail for her so she could advocate de-funding the police. This won her the Ethics Alarms title of “Incompetent Elected Official Of The Month, Year, Decade, Century, And Eon” at the time. Bush, a Democratic House member from the Missouri district occupied entirely by the brain-damaged, isn’t just an “idiot” in the sense that Ethics Alarms usually uses the word. No, the college drop-out and former nurse is a genuine, clinical idiot and an ignoramus to boot. Naturally, she is a member-in-good-standing of The Squad, where being the dumbest in the batch—dumber even than the recently defeated Jamaal Bowman—is quite an achievement.

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