Government & Politics

Ethics Verdict: This Is Unforgivable, and Accountability Is Mandatory

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

“Holy Crap!” indeed.

I have to come to the harsh but unavoidable ethics verdict that anyone who votes for the same political party responsible for us having a President in this condition is stupid, irreversibly ignorant, completely uninformed, or a mindless partisan robot eager to love Big Brother.

As I recently reminded readers by quoting from this post in early 2020, the fact that Joe Biden was losing his already tenuous grip on competence was evident before the Democrats nominated him. I wasn’t unusually perceptive; the Democratic Party’s Dark Leaders had to know that the assorted demagogues, anti-US socialists and empty suits competing with him for the Presidential nomination that year had little chance of defeating the Evil Donald Trump, and also that Biden was literally unfit to hold office. Then the pandemic struck, and the party, which aspires to be called The Party henceforth, realized that they could hide Joe in the basement, pretend he wasn’t losing marbles daily, and use pandemic terror spread by its media allies to justify useful changes in election security. Voilà! Victory “by any means necessary.” [Harry Reid chimes in from the Lake of Fire where he now resides, “Romney lost, didn’t he?”]

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So…The Second Gentleman Running For First Gentleman Impregnated His Nanny During His First Marriage and Slapped a Date In the Face: Is That a Problem?

/ Jack Marshall / 34 Comments

By the established standards of the news media and the rest of the Axis of Unethical Conduct, it should be, don’t you think? But apparently not.

Huh.

A throbbing example of wildly varying standards in the media depending on whether they are covering Donald Trump or Kamala Harris just raised its warty head. Did you see that Doug Emhoff, Kamala Harris’s husband who was largely invisible until she pushed President Biden off the Democratic ticket, admitted he had an adulterous affair with his nanny and got her pregnant, leading to his divorce? That happened in August, after the slimy Daily Mail broke the scandal and Emhoff came clean to CNN. I missed it entirely, which means that, for example, the New York Times either ignored it or soft-peddled it because, well, you know. But the story burst on the social media scene this week after ex-Obama paid liar Jen Psaki, now a full-time Axis propagandist at MSNBC, interviewed Emhoff and gushed that he had “reshaped the perception of masculinity.” “Has that been an evolution for you and do you think that’s part of the role you might play as first gentleman?” Psaki continued. Yecchh. That was nauseating enough (no Vice-President’s spouse has the power, visibility or status to “reshape” anything), but Emhoff’s answer exploded heads from coast to coast.

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Harris Is Losing the Meme Wars, So Naturally Democrats Want To Censor Memes

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Who would have expected the AI metaphorical tidal wave to have an influence on the Presidential election? Memes are a breeze to make using artificial intelligence, and while I got heartily sick of my Facebook friends bombarding me with political ones, I have to admit that the technology has the silver lining of taking blunt and biased punditry out of the political cartoonist monopoly and letting some very witty people make satirical political statements.

So far, at least, it appears that conservatives have mastered meming before the Left has, and in this race for President, that is having impact, though how much and how significant is impossible to tell. However, it is clear that the Kamala-Harris-as-a-Communist memes are getting under the skin of some Democrats—one of my Trump-Deranged relatives was complaining about those just yesterday—and so now there are calls for “something to be done” about anti-Harris memes. On MSNBC’s “The Sunday Show,” NPR’s Maria Hinojosa was very upset about AI images of Harris presented in Maoist uniforms:

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Pre-V.P. Debate “Nah, There’s No Mainstream Media Bias!” Note…

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

From Politico, prognosticating about how tonight’s debate might go: “Both men struggle at times to hide their tempers, and with plenty of bad blood between the two of them — stemming in large part from Vance’s attacks on Walz’s military record and Walz’s crusade to label Vance as “weird” — don’t be surprised if things turn personal.”

That’s clever—biased, insidious, but clever.

Walz has been dishonest about his military record. That is a matter of record, and pointing it out to a public that knows nothing about Walz’s past and character isn’t “personal.” Calling an opponent “weird,” however, is pure ad hominem, and a personal attack by definition. (Interesting that the self-labelled “public school teacher” wields schoolyard-style insults. I thought teachers were supposed to explain why such jibes are wrong.)

So we have Politico, a Democratic propaganda news site, engaging in false equivalence to validate Walz’s cheap tactic (admittedly, one favored by Donald Trump) while minimizing Walz’s very real misrepresentation of his military record.

The news media deserves to be rejected, foiled, mocked and crushed by this election. Their efforts to rig it are so transparent. It is an ongoing assault on democracy and a betrayal of the public.

“Submitted For Your Approval…”

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

While searching for Pete Rose posts in preparation for this one, I ran across an ethics multi-issue post from February 11, 2020, shortly before the Wuhan virus messed with our economy, our democracy, our laws, our health, our social interactions, our culture, our health and our sanity (but it was racist to blame it on China. Don’t get me started….). I don’t remember writing it at all, so I was fascinated to read this:

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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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Ethics Dunces: U.S. Judicial Conference Committee on Financial Disclosure

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Problem: Judges getting adverse public scrutiny for not reporting potential conflicts of interest and avoiding the appearance of impropriety.

Solution: Lower the standards for conflicts of interest and the appearance of impropriety.

Problem solved!

Yecchh.

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Unethical Quote of the Month: Democratic Party VP Nominee Tim Walz

/ Jack Marshall / 34 Comments

“Look, he’s Yale Law guy. I’m a public school teacher.”

—Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, expressing his anxiety about this week’s debate with Trump’s running mate, J.D. Vance.

I can’t bring myself to believe that this debate will have any impact on the election at all, and I have made up my mind pretty securely about both Vance and Walz, neither of whom were responsible choices to be “a heartbeat from the Presidency. ” At least Walz, unlike Vance, has some executive governing experience, and at least Vance isn’t a parody of a woke idiot. But Walz’s comment pings so many ethics alarms that attention must be paid.

Let’s see…

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Believe It or Not! The Left’s Reaction To Trump Winning This Time Promises To Be Even More Hysterical Than In 2016, and That Tore The Country Apart…

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Scary. Newsbusters walked down a dark memory lane with this collection of the vitriol aimed at Trump and the prospect of Trump victory eight years ago:

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Ethics Quiz: Musk Bans a “Journalist”

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

I quit Twitter with all my accumulated thousands of followers after it became clear to me that the platform was a progressive propaganda organ that censored users and tweets it didn’t like, notably President Trump. I returned (here) as a show of support for Elon Musk, who bought the platform and (largely) eliminated its tendency to content-based censorship. This Ethics Quiz has special interest for me.

X, as Twitter is now called ( I miss the little birdie logo) suspended left- “journalist” Ken Klippenstein when he linked to an article of his that contained a hacked document with negative, private and otherwise provocative information about Vice Presidential candidate J.D. Vance. Klippenstein used to write for the crypto-Communist The Nation, and was a senior investigative reporter for the far-Left online news program “The Young Turks.” Needless to say, he has an agenda.

The 271-page dossier on Vance has been traced to a hack by Iran. Most media outlets refused to publish it, but Klippenstein, who has a substack to sell, grabbed the opportunity. Musk took to his own platform to decry the document as “one of the most egregious, evil doxxing actions we’ve ever seen.” He went on, “Presidential candidates are not speculatively in danger – there have already been two attempts on @realDonaldTrump’s life. Moreover, the doxxing included detailed information on the addresses of their children.” X explained that Klippenstein violated its policy against posting “unredacted private personal information,” including Vance’s physical addresses and part of his social security number.

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