Ethics Quotes

Unethical Quote Of The Week: Gloria Allred

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments

crying-george-2

“If Hillary signed off on a private investigator, let’s call it a minus. It wouldn’t change my support for her because there are so many pluses for her, like her stance on abortion.”

–—Feminist attorney Gloria Allred, responding to a New York Times report regarding Hillary Clinton’s efforts to intimidate and discredit her husband’s various female accusers.

This is the language of corruption and ethics cowardice, and it is very close to a majority mindset among Americans., who increasingly rationalize away what should be taken as unquestionable proof that a leader or potential leader is untrustworthy and therefor unqualified to lead. In respect to the Clintons, this is a flashback: feminists like Gloria Steinem betrayed their central principles to make rationalizations for Bill Clinton during the Monica scandal (which was a about workplace harassment and a President lying under oath, not about illicit sex), again because he supported abortion.

Here, on Ethics Alarms, the never-ending debate concerns  whether leaders should be chosen based on their positions, or their character. That the two parties are officially all-in betting that character is both irrelevant  to governing and to the voting public is proven by the disgusting Clinton-Trump choice. The message is that character doesn’t matter at all, which makes it more than  strange that the news media and the Clinton campaign’s primary focus is on attacking Trump’s character. If character mattered as it once did and should, Trump wouldn’t be nominated, and neither would Hillary. If sufficient numbers of voters cared that the standard bearers of their pet policy positions were dishonest, ruthless, cruel, cynical, incompetent and manipulative human beings with little genuine regard for fairness, honesty, responsibility, integrity, respect or citizenship, this election would be literally impossible, except in some hideous alternate universe. Continue reading →

This Might Force ME To Vote For Donald Trump: Clinton Campaign Manager Robbie Mook’s Unethical Quote Of The Month

/ Jack Marshall / 76 Comments

hillary-clinton-donald-trump-debate

“All that we’re asking is that if Donald Trump lies, that it’s pointed out. It’s unfair to ask that Hillary Clinton both play traffic cop with Trump, make sure that his lies are corrected, and also to present her vision for what she wants to do for the American people…I think Donald Trump’s special. We haven’t seen anything like this. We normally go into a debate with two candidates who have a depth of experience, who have rolled out clear, concrete plans, and who don’t lie, frankly, as frequently as Donald Trump does.So we’re saying this is a special circumstance, a special debate, and Hillary should be given some time to actually talk about what she wants to do to make a difference in people’s lives. She shouldn’t have to spend the whole debate correcting the record.”

—-Hillary Clinton campaign manager Robbie Mook, explaining to George Stephanopoulis on ABC’s “This Week”why the Clinton campaign insists that debate moderators should run interference for her and intervene to contradict and rebut Trump’s assertions, unlike every other Presidential debate and every legitimate and fair debate of any kind, where that responsibility rests with the debaters.

Well, that’s almost it for me. I am officially a hair’s breadth from deciding that as repulsive as the thought of Donald Trump achieving the Presidency is, the prospect of the United States abandoning democracy, process and fair elections to defeat him is infinitely more repulsive.

What Mook is proposing is no less than the rigging of the election process, with one candidate given “special” privileges, while another is subjected to “special” handicaps and the “special” opposition of the news media. I had previously resolved, and on Ethics Alarms so stated, that in a binary choice between the most unqualified, unstable, vile, ignorant and boorish candidate ever nominated by a major party to be President and the corrupt, inept and dishonest Hillary Clinton, responsible Americans are duty-bound to cross their fingers, hold their noses, toss a horseshoe over their shoulders and vote for the certifiably awful Mrs. Clinton, in her own right the most corrupt and untrustworthy figure ever to come this close to the Presidency. (We can debate about Aaron Burr some other time.)

I no longer can say with certainty that I believe that now. Continue reading →

Unethical Quote Of The Week: President Obama…Again

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments
Too strong to be President?

Too strong to be President?

A sure sign of an ethics train wreck candidacy (we have two of them, you know) is that even campaigning for the candidates prompts unethical behavior. This malady has bitten the President hard, for on Sunday, at a Hillary Clinton fundraiser, he made his second unethical campaign pitch in a week (here was his first), arguing that Hillary Clinton  was the victim of sexism. Here was the section to revile:

“There’s a reason why we haven’t had a woman president.We as a society still grapple with what it means to see powerful women and it still troubles us in a lot of ways, unfairly…This should not be a close election but it will be, and the reason it will be is not because of Hillary’s flaws.”

First, let us all take a moment and have a good laugh over the President’s glaringly dishonest claim that if the election is close, it won’t be because of Hillary’s “flaws.” Does anyone, including Obama, believe that? If Hillary Clinton wasn’t a chilly campaigner, an abrasive speaker, a venal master of crony politics, a compulsive liar, didn’t risk national security to avoid public scrutiny and lie about it, hadn’t been a mediocre Secretary of State involved in a failed foreign policy, didn’t aid, abet, deny and excuse her sexual predator husband, and wasn’t going to turn 69 before the election and do so in dubious health—these are all flaws, by the way—is there any question that she would be heading for a landslide victory, instead of facing very possible defeat? PBS pundit Mark Shields told a Georgetown University audience last week that Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, who is less qualified for the Presidency than Clinton by far, who supports many of Bernie Sanders’ nuttier positions and who has some political baggage of her own, would have beaten Trump in a landslide, and he’s right.

Yet, oddly, Warren seems to be a woman too…. Continue reading →

Unethical Quote Of The Week: President Barack Obama

/ Jack Marshall / 85 Comments

“If I hear anybody saying their vote does not matter, that it doesn’t matter who we elect — read up on your history. It matters. We’ve got to get people to vote,” Obama said. “I will consider it a personal insult — an insult to my legacy — if this community lets down its guard and fails to activate itself in this election. You want to give me a good sendoff? Go vote.”

President Obama's argument for electing Hillary Clinton...

President Obama’s argument for electing Hillary Clinton…

—-President Barack Obama, addressing the Congressional Black Caucus gala in a speech excoriating Donald Trump and praising Hillary Clinton as the candidate of black America. Obama warned that while his name would not be on the ballot in November, all of the progress that the country has made over the last eight years was on the line. 

Observations: 

1. What progress? This is the Big Lie that has been repeated from the beginning? The greatest progress made in the last eight years has been the stock market, which is not, I assume, the progress the Congressional Black Caucus cares about. Divisions in American society have been exacerbated, and grossly so. Racial trust is at its lowest level in decades. The schools? Higher education? The debt? The nation’s leadership abroad? The Affordable Care Act, which has helped health insurance become less affordable for anyone not receiving government subsidies? Gross incompetence, malfeasance and lack of accountability in one federal department and agency after another: is that progress?  Has there been progress in dealing with the threat of terrorism? Murder rates are up after years of decline. There have been more mass shootings in this administration than in the last three combined. More Americans are on public assistance: is that progress to Obama? A majority of the public thinks the country is off the tracks; public trust in government is at its lowest point in history, far lower than after Watergate. First Amendment, Second Amendment, and Fourth Amendment rights are under assault as never before. Progress?

The question isn’t political, it’s ethical: if there isn’t progress, then Obama’s statement is a lie. By his own benchmarks when he ran for office, the major one being governing as neither white or black, liberal or conservative, but for the welfare of the entire nation, he has failed disastrously, and the signs are everywhere. No, his spinners don’t get to argue that there would have been progress if the evil Republicans in Congress hadn’t foiled Obama (in part because he hasn’t the political skills to negotiate or the political courage to compromise), because Obama said there IS progress. Continue reading →

Unethical Quote Of A Quote Of The Month: CBS News

/ Jack Marshall / 57 Comments
CBS should have run this photo with Bill's cleaned up interview. Doesn't she look nice and healthy?

CBS should have run this photo with Bill’s cleaned up interview. Doesn’t she look nice and healthy?

It must be reassuring, I’d think, to know that the news media will do everything in its power to cover for you, slant news to bolster you, ignore gaffes, and whenever possible, use clever edits to clean-up annoying little hints that you might not be all you’re cracked up to be.

Here is what Bill Clinton said in an interview with Charley Rose this week, when Rose asked if there was any chance her problems over the weekend could be a sign of a serious health issue. Clinton, saying that he didn’t believe that, added,

“Well if it is, it’s a mystery to me and all of her doctors because frequently—well not frequently, rarely—but on more than one occasion, over the last many, many years, the same sort of thing happened to her when she got severely dehydrated.”

Interesting slip by Bill, don’t you think? Suggesting that Hillary frequently suffers fainting spells would add to the speculation about her health and the fact that she has not been her usual, honest, transparent self on that issue. Bill catches himself and says, in effect, “Did I say frequently? When I say frequently, I mean almost never.” Could mean nothing, could mean something, but he said it.

Can’t have Bill causing more trouble for his wife, though, so when CBS broadcasts the interview again that  night, it magically comes out like this: Continue reading →

Unethical Quote Of The Week: Matthew Dowd, ABC Political Analyst On “This Week”

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

Ginger Rogers + Swing Time

“[Hillary] is judged — she is judged a little bit, I have to say, all of the controversy surrounding her and they’re both — Donald Trump and her, she’s judged a little bit on a Ginger Rogers standard, which is, is that the bar is so low for him. I mean, Ginger Rogers, the famous like she did everything Fred Astaire did but backwards and in heels.”

–—Matthew Dowd, ABC News political analyst, during today’s “roundtable” discussion on ABC’s “This Week” regarding the various scandals and controversies keeping Hillary Clinton’s poll numbers within striking distance of Donald Trump.

1. See, what did I tell you? It’s starting already. As with Obama, the news media, taking the lead from Democrats and feminists, will shamelessly use accusations of bias to argue away any and all legitimate criticism of Hillary Clinton as a manifestation of sexism. Boy, am I sick of that; everyone should be. It is a cheap, destructive tactic, designed to suppress opposition. And to have the gall to do this in the wake of the FBI notes showing a Presidential candidate either lying her head off or confessing utter incompetence, ignorance and stupidity…how insulting to viewers. Continue reading →

Ethics Quote Of The Month: Patrick Smith, Father Of Sylville Smith

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

“What are we gonna do now? Everyone playing their part in this city, blaming the white guy or whatever, and we know what they’re doing. Like, already I feel like they should have never OK’d guns in Wisconsin. They already know what our black youth was doing anyway. These young kids gotta realize this is all a game with them. Like they’re playing Monopoly. You young kids falling into their world, what they want you to do. Everything you do is programmed. I had to blame myself for a lot of things too because your hero is your dad and I played a very big part in my family’s role model for them. Being on the street, doing things of the street life: Entertaining, drug dealing and pimping and they’re looking at their dad like ‘he’s doing all these things.’ I got out of jail two months ago, but I’ve been going back and forth in jail and they see those things so I’d like to apologize to my kids because this is the role model they look up to. When they see the wrong role model, this is what you get. They got us killing each other and when they even OK’d them pistols and they OK’d a reason to kill us too. Now somebody got killed reaching for his wallet, but now they can say he got a gun on him and they reached for it. And that’s justifiable. When we allowed them to say guns is good and it’s legal, we can bear arms. This is not the wild, wild west y’all. But when you go down to 25th and center, you see guys with guns hanging out this long, that’s ridiculous, and they’re allowing them to do this and the police know half of them don’t have a license to carry a gun. I don’t know when we’re gonna start moving. I’ve gotta start with my kids and we gotta change our ways, to be better role models. And we gotta change ourselves. We’ve gotta talk to them, put some sense into them. They targeting us, but we know about it so there’s no reason to keep saying it’s their fault. You play a part in it. If you know there’s a reason, don’t give in to the hand, don’t be going around with big guns, don’t be going around shooting each other and letting them shoot y’all cause that’s just what they’re doing and they’re out to destroy us and we’re falling for it.”

—–Patrick Smith, father of the late Sylville Smith, the 23-year-old man shot after an arrest by a black police officer, igniting horrific riots in Milwaukee. The body camera video allegedly confirmed that Smith’s son had a gun in his hand when he was killed.

Smith’s last sentence makes no sense, but accurately reflects the false and divisive narrative African Americans have been indoctrinated to believe. Other than that and the Constitution-ignorant suggestion that guns should have been banned in Milwaukee, this is as balanced, sincere, passionate and perceptive a statement regarding police shootings in the black community as any I have read or heard.

Mr. Smith understands the principles of responsibility and accountability, and possesses the courage to accept the hard truths they compel. He deserves our attention, compassion and respect.

I hope his community is listening.

Unethical Quote Of The Week, Olympics Division: Hope Solo

/ Jack Marshall / 43 Comments
"Jim Kaat, meet Hope Solo. Hope...Jim."

“Jim Kaat, meet Hope Solo. Hope…Jim.”

“I thought that we played a courageous game. I thought that we had many opportunities on goal. I think we showed a lot of heart. We came back from a goal down; I’m very proud of this team. I also think we played a bunch of cowards. But, you know, the best team did not win today; I strongly, firmly believe that. I think you saw America’s heart. You saw us give everything that we had today. Unfortunately the better team didn’t win.”

—-U.S. women’s soccer team goalie Hope Solo,after the Swedish team eliminated the United States from the Olympic women’s soccer tournament in a penalty shootout Friday.

Diagnosis: Jerk.

I remember the first time I ever heard a representative of a losing team use the old “the best team didn’t win today” line.

It was 1967, the best summer of my life, when I spent my last carefree teenage school break following the greatest pennant race in baseball history. My team, the Boston Red Sox, were the surprise underdog in an amazing, see-saw four team race that had its outcome in doubt until the bitter end. The Sox, led by MVP and Triple Crown winner Carl Yasrtzemski, entered the final series at home against the first place Minnesota trailing by a single game. It was a two game series. If the Red Sox won both, they would be American League Champions after nearly 20 years of losing.

They did win both. I was at one of the games, among the most hopeful, raucous, joyous baseball crowd I have ever had the honor to be part of. Both games were hard fought, with surprising twists and turns like the whole season. Still, the Sox won. I was so proud of that gutsy young team, which I had rooted for through every nail-biting inning—the team was nicknamed “The Cardiac Kids”—of their 162 games, and never more happy going to bed after enduring a crucial, nerve-wracking contest.

The next day, I read in the sports pages a post-game statement by Twins pitcher Jim Kaat, who had started the game I attended. He said, “We’ve got to give Boston credit,but I think the best team and the best fans will be watching the Series on television.”

I thought it was an astonishingly  graceless and obnoxious quote by a losing athlete, the epitome of bad sportsmanship, and stupid to boot. If the Twins were so damn great, why were they ending the season tied (with the Tigers) for second place? By definition, the team that ends a season with the best record is the best team, and the team that loses the decisive game has proven that it is not the better team.

Solo’s statement was worse. Continue reading →

Jumbo, Ethics Dunce, Kaboom And Unethical Quote Of The Month: Hillary’s Jaw-Dropping Lie To Chris Wallace

/ Jack Marshall / 41 Comments

hillary and Wallace

“Director Comey said my answers were truthful, and what I’ve said is consistent with what I have told the American people, that there were decisions discussed and made to classify retroactively certain of the emails.”

—-Hillary Clinton to Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday, asserting that what was demonstrably false was true, regarding a public statement by Comey that can be Googled and watched on YouTube instantly.

My reaction when I saw that: KABOOM! The top of my head blew right off, bounced off the ceiling and knocked over the lamp. Wallace asked Clinton directly about what she had been saying to the public about her e-mails since May of 2015: that she did nothing wrong, that her private, secret e-mail server was approved by the State Department, that she never received or sent a classified e-mail…okay, that didn’t work, that she never knowingly sent a classified e-mail…wait, wait, that she never sent or received an  e-mail that was marked classified. Comey, in his televised, live statement announcing his decision not to recommend prosecution for Clinton, directly contradicted her.

In his careful statement Comey said,

“Although we did not find clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified information, there is evidence that they were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information.,,,seven e-mail chains concern matters that were classified at the Top Secret/Special Access Program level when they were sent and received. These chains involved Secretary Clinton both sending e-mails about those matters and receiving e-mails from others about the same matters. …There is evidence to support a conclusion that any reasonable person in Secretary Clinton’s position, or in the position of those government employees with whom she was corresponding about these matters, should have known that an unclassified system was no place for that conversation…even if information is not marked ‘classified’ in an e-mail, participants who know or should know that the subject matter is classified are still obligated to protect it.”

There is no way that an individual of normal facility with the English language can listen to or read that statement and conclude that Comey was saying that Hillary’s answers to questions about the e-mails to the American public and the news media–for over a year!––were truthful, as in “full of truth.” A technical argument can be made, if one wishes, that  Comey didn’t say that Clinton lied, because maybe she is an idiot and incompetent, and didn’t know or understand what “any reasonable person in Secretary Clinton’s position” should have known and understood, leading to her factually false (and constantly evolving as more facts where uncovered) explanations over months and months. Continue reading →

Ethics Quote Of The Week: Popehat’s Ken White

/ Jack Marshall / 36 Comments

john-hinckley-jr

“How, people ask, can you shoot four people, one of them a President, and ever see the light of day again? If any act requires permanent confinement, isn’t it this one? The answer should comfort us, not terrify us: the rule of law applies to everyone, even the notorious. (Edited to add: or, at least, it ought to.)..

Is John Hinckley, Jr. dangerous to society? Doctors don’t think so after 35 years, and he’s successfully completed many outside visits and excursions to date. Is it dangerous to have a legal norm that the gravely mentally ill who commit violence may eventually be released? I doubt 35 years of forced treatment and confinement is the sort of leniency that leads anyone to violence. What about exceptions to the rule of law? If we ignore the rules and evidence because a particular person is sufficiently notorious, because of our gut, how dangerous is that?”

—–Popehat lawyer/blogger Ken White, in a post explaining why the outrage of some over the imminent release of John Hinckley, Jr. is one more example of the public and the news media being willing to jettison the basic principles of American justice because it seem right.

(Answer: Very dangerous indeed.)

I admire Ken for his post (as I do for most of his posts) because first, it is extremely timely, with both conservatives and progressives itching to jail various individuals—cops, Hillary Clinton– who they just know deserve to be in prison, and thinking that’s justice. Second, Ken was much nicer in his explanation than I would have been.

I mostly missed this controversy, in part because it doesn’t seem to me that it should be controversial to anyone with the level of comprehension of our criminal justice system that a mature, educated and responsible citizen should have. Where’s the controversy? Hinckley wasn’t found guilty of trying to assassinate President Reagan and wounding  him and three others in the process. He was acquitted, because he was so crazy that under the insanity defense, he was found to lack the necessary mens rea to find him culpable for his own acts. He wasn’t sentenced to spend all this time in a mental hospital as punishment, but as treatment. Now that doctors have found him sane, of course they are letting him out. He committed no crime, in the eyes of the law, and sane people who have not been convicted of crimes get to be free, like you and me.

What’s so hard about that?

Well, it is hard for some people, and Ken is remarkably clear and patient in explaining why, as he says, we should be comforted that a Hinckley is still protected by the rule of law.

I won’t blame Jodie Foster if she isn’t comforted, though. That’s a lot to ask.