Ethics Train Wrecks

About That Most Dishonest, Cynical Presidential Campaign Ever…

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

One might be tempted to add “incompetent,” but we shall see.

That ridiculous photo above of Harris supposedly on the FEMA briefing is signature significance. Witness the serious, troubled look on her face, the pen, the pad of paper, as she listens intently while flying over the hurricane destruction.

Except she isn’t listening, because the earbud dangling from her ear isn’t attached to the phone. Well, but maybe she has the phone on speaker….but what kind of inept staff allows a staged photo like this to be so messed up? And what kind of qualified national leader isn’t alert enough to know it’s going to make her look like a dufus?

“I was just briefed by @FEMA_Deanne Criswell on the latest developments about the ongoing impacts of Hurricane Helene, Harris captioned this photo. “We also discussed our Administration’s continued actions to support emergency response and recovery.   I also spoke with @NC_Governor Cooper about the ongoing rescue and recovery efforts in North Carolina.   Our Administration will continue to stay in constant contact with state and local officials to ensure communities have the support and resources they need.” Oh, I don’t doubt she had those conversations. But that’s not a photo of her doing so, and she’s telling the public that it is while the evidence that it isn’t is there for anyone alert to see.

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From the Res Ipsa Loquitur Files: Journalism!

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Nice. Matt Yglesias is allegedly a journalist who has had many left-wing publications give him a platform. He also co-founded the relentlessly left-biased propaganda site Vox. Here’s a signature significance moment from Yglesias that I flagged in 2016, in which he said that lying to advance a policy or position is “the right thing to do.” Yes, he really did. Yglesias has had periodic attacks of integrity since, however. Occasionally.

In that tweet above, he asserts, from the position as a prominent journalist, a pure opinion as fact. Many readers inclined to be gulled by their own confirmation bias will immediately take it as fact. It is not fact.

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My Trip To Walgreen’s: A Nation of Assholes, 2024

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

One of the posts I have most frequently referred to was this, in which I predicted that if Donald Trump was elected President, the entire culture would coarsen, become more uncivil, and, in essence, “rot from the head down.” And I was right, though I did not predict that that the Left’s anger at Hillary’s shock defeat and its eight year determination to destroy Trump “by any means necessary” would play such a large role in the process. After all, it was a Democratic member of the House (and a woman!) who said, “Let’s impeach the motherfucker!” It was another one who urged “the resistance” to make themselves obnoxious by confronting members of Trump’s administration on the street. Robert DeNiro, an anti-Trump fanatic, has been the most publicly vulgar celebrity by far and far more MAGA cap wearers have been the victims of assaults and confrontations than purveyors of it: people like Jussie Smollett have had to manufacture pro-Trump attacks.

Then again, the Right is responsible for a popular coded chant that means, “Fuck Joe Biden.”

Whatever the reason, The Coarsening, as it would be called if this were a horror movie, has come. I just did an ethics program for a federal agency that asked me to concentrate on civility, because it was deteriorating there.

All of which brings me to my trip to Walgreen’s today.

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Scientists Who Make Recommendations Like This Forfeit the Privilege of Being Taken Seriously

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

And yet how many climate change hysterics, including some regulators and elected officials, will quote them as authority anyway? Geena has an answer…

Researchers at the University of Cambridge announced their solution to the contribution of air travel to world-ending carbon emissions: force airplanes to fly more slowly. Reducing flight speeds about 15% would add an average of 50 minutes to flights. The measure would slash fuel burn by 5 to 7%, reducing the 4% industry contribution to overall climate change. These findings will be presented to the science-savvy delegates at the United Nations.

The scientists argue that longer flights could be offset by more efficiently organized airports with fewer holdups. Apparently these people haven’t flown recently. Can distinguished scientists also be deluded morons? It’s a rhetorical question.

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Ethics Quiz: The Offensive… Wristband?

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

Apparently a biological male who “identifies as female” plays on the Plymouth Regional High School girls’ soccer team in New Hampshire. When the team played its regional rival Bow High School, some Bow parents, protesting the presence of the player whom they regarded as a danger to the born-female players on the Bow team, wore wristbands like the ones above as a silent protest. The Bow High athletic director had told concerned parents before the contest that “in the wake of a federal judge’s ruling that the term ‘girl’ includes males who identify as female,” he felt he was powerless. (He’s a weenie. If he agreed with the parents, he could simply have his team refuse to play the Plymouth team, accept the consequences, and raise the issue.)

When the parents’ “XX” bands appeared at the game, school officials stopped the soccer match, ordered the parents to remove the wristbands, and even “issued [a] police-enforced ‘No Trespassing order’” against two parents who refused.

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Unethical Quote of the Week: President Joe Biden

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

“Some things are more important than staying in power.”

—-President Biden at the U.N., stumbling through his speech on world affairs even with the assistance of his teleprompter.

Even though our President is demented, deluded, habitually dishonest and without shame, I am still astounded that he would have the gall to say that at the United Nations. I guess he thinks the delegates are as stupid and gullible as his party evidently thinks the U.S. public is.

No, the context of that head-exploding statement doesn’t make it less nauseating:

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I’m Sorely Tempted To Offer Ivanka’s Question As An Ethics Quiz…

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

But I won’t.

Ivanka Trump, Donald’s eldest daughter, asks on Twitter/X: “What comes to mind when you see this team?”

You’ll be sorry you asked, IT, at least that you asked me.

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Unethical Quote of the Week: Hillary Clinton

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

“I think it’s important to indict the Russians, just as Muller indicted a lot of Russians who were engaged in direct election interference and boosting Trump back in 2016. But I also think there are Americans who are engaged in this kind of propaganda. And whether they should be civilly or even in some cases criminally charged is something that would be a better deterrence, because the Russians are unlikely, except in a very few cases, to ever stand trial in the United States.”

—-Ethics Villain Hillary Clinton, on MSNBC (of course) this week, as Rachel Maddow nodded in agreement.

The irony and hypocrisy in Hillary’s statement are striking. After all, it it was her campaign that funded the infamous Steele dossier and spread false stories of Russian collusion during her failed 2016 Presidential run, culminating in the investigation Democrats used to cripple and delegitimize the Trump Presidency. Meanwhile, Hillary remains an icon to the same party that claims Donald Trump is a threat to American liberty, and much of the insane hate the Axis has been focusing on Trump since 2016 was inspired by his “crime” of stopping Clinton from becoming President.

__________

Pointer: Jonathan Turley

Kamala Harris, the “Integrity? What’s Integrity?” Candidate

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

As an ethicist, I don’t have to agree with a Presidential candaidtes policies to find him or her ethical, unless a policy are per se unethical (like validating terrorism by forcing a ceasefire on Israel before it has destroyed Hamas), involves not enforcing laws (like at the Southern border) or violates the Constitution (as with Gov. Walz’s declarion that “hate speech” should be illegal). However, as an ethicist, it is explicitly my business when a Presidential candidate demonstrates a cynical contempt for integrity as an ethical value, for integrity is one of the most important of ethical values. An individual without integrity cannot be trusted.

Harris’s whole campaign is an effort to pretend integrity is a myth. Bernie Sanders issued a damning verdict on Harris (and himself) when he told NBC’s “Meet the Press “ that despite her efforts to moderate her positions since taking over from Joe Biden on the top of the ticket, such as purporting to support fracking and opposing “Medicare for All,” Harris was just being “pragmatic” and “doing what she thinks is right in order to win the election.”

In other words, lying.

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‘You Are Entering The Edith Wilson Zone…’

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

I can almost hear Rod’s voice: “You are about to enter another dimension. A dimension not only of cover-ups and lies, but of fake Presidencies. A journey into a wondrous land of manipulation and abuse of power. Next stop, the Edith Wilson Zone!“

Let’s begin with this: Did you know that President <cough> Biden hasn’t had a Cabinet meeting in almost a year? I didn’t. Isn’t this newsworthy? Nothing has happened in the last 11 months that warranted the President gathering his top deputies? Seriously? When was the last time an administration went this long without a Cabinet meeting? (I can find no record of that, but a competent journalism establishment would have told us.) We have a fake Presidency being covered up, still, by the party running the Executive Branch and its corrupt, complicit allies in the news media, while its conspirators claim to be saving democracy. The highest ranking officer responsible for the cover-up is running for President, and her role in this defiance of basic constitutional norms and the public trust has barely been mentioned.

Good question, Dana. Glad you’re engaged enough to ask: most Americans apparently don’t know and don’t care.

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