Government & Politics

On Trump, Tucker, The GOP Debate And The News Media On A Depressing Wednesday Night, Part 1

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

What an awful display of what Americans will have to choose from if it wants to avoid the Democratic Party’s determined march to censorship, world governance, environmental fascism, abortion at will, open borders, racial preferences and more.

The unethical, frankly nauseating Tucker Carlson suck-up session with Donald Trump was the bottom of last’s night’s barrel, as the former President continued his rejection of the opportunity for voters to see him next to his competitors for the GOP nomination—it’s called “having respect for democracy and the American public, you ass—and allied himself with twin narcissist Carlson’s “Take THAT, Fox News!” campaign. Carlson again showed that he is no journalist, just a self-aggrandizing hack, by never asking Trump a single critical question or anything Donald might take umbrage at, like, say, “Where in the Constitution is your mirage that the Vice-President can refuse to certify the election?” or “How can Americans trust you to be President when you have advocated suspending the Constitution? ” Nah, Tucker was more interested in pressing Trump on whether Democrats would try to have him killed. I suppose, if Trump had not already disqualified himself for any major elected office with his despicable, irresponsible—but not illegal or impeachable—conduct after the 2020 election in one’s eyes, this might have helped:

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Oh-Oh, I May Have To Apologize To Michael Savage…

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

Michael Savage (real name: Michael Weiner) is in his eighties now, and his exposure is limited to out-of-print books (he wrote 40 of them) and podcast that can be easily avoided. I used to stumble across his syndicated rant show on the car radio in D.C. now and then, and I was repeatedly horrified, not just that enough Americans would listen to his mad white nationalism to provide him with a living wage, but that there were people who thought like him at all. Savage is a misogynist, mocks autism, wants to eliminate all immigration to keep the U.S. as white as possible, and generally represents the worst pathologies of conservatism, allowing the news media to use him a template to smear anyone to the right of Barack Obama. In the early 2000s his theme was that liberalism was a mental illness; he even published a book about that theory. Like so much of Savage’s bile, that position seemed especially ominous to me, an echo of both fascism and the Soviet treatment of dissidents. I alluded to this obsession of Savage’s in a 2009 essay on the old Ethics Scoreboard, writing,

Zealots on both the Left and the Right, rather than make an honest effort to challenge the views and assumptions of those on the other side, increasingly opt to smear their character with broad and crude generalizations. Democrats and liberals hate America, and want to destroy everything that is good and decent. Republicans and conservatives are fascists and hypocrites. Liberals are evil: they encourage the killing of babies and the destruction of the family. Conservatives are evil: they secretly lead lives of sexual excess and mad fetishes. This mode of public debate could be laughed off as self-evidently ridiculous, except that individuals held in high regard by millions engage in it routinely. Listen to conservatives Michael Savage (whose writings claims liberalism is a mental illness) or Marc Levin on your radio. Or read one of newly-seated Democratic Senator Al Franken’s books, before he realized that accusing all Republicans of being fat, venal and stupid was a serviceable road to power.

That was a correct assessment then and is correct now; the problem is (and calling it just a “problem” is, as Jonathan Turley would say, “problematic”) that the two polar extremes have largely now taken over national discourse. Their excesses are just as repulsive (or should be), but it is increasingly difficult to find anyone with influence who can act as a counterweight.

But I digress…the original inspiration for this post is that Michael Savage’s assertion that “liberalism is a mental disease” appears to be coming true. Witness Ryan Polly, whom , a hospital system of over 20,000 employees, MaineHealth, has chosen to place in a position of power in its organization. Polly is a vice president of DEI there” the fact that any organization actually spends money to create a bureaucracy around the latest leftest fad is itself evidence of a metastasizing cultural malady, but Polly is special. According to a Fox News report, he hosted an antiracist prayer service in which white attendees were made to apologize for their internalized racism, because, Polly teaches, all whites (like him) are racists.

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The Unethical Mainstream New Media Isn’t Even Trying Any More…

/ Jack Marshall / 31 Comments

Witness the Washington Post’s announcement that they have hired Alexi McCammond to be an opinion editor. The Washington Post has been hemorrhaging credibility, integrity and subscribers for years, and one might think that it would be seeking some objective, serious, ethically competent old hands to right the metaphorical ship. One might, and one would be wrong. Heeeeeeere’s Alexi!

McCammond began her political reportage career covering Democrats for Axios. While following Biden’s presidential campaign, where she eventually began an intimate affair with Biden’s then campaign press secretary T.J. Ducklo. This is what is called in the days when journalists cared about things, a disqualifying conflict of interest but neither told their employers about their relationship until after the 2020 election. McCammond’s ability to be considered an objective commentator on the Biden campaign was, of course, corrupted, but never mind: Axios, hack outfit that it is, didn’t care, saying, “We stand behind her and her coverage”,” and because she was “a valued member of the Axios team.” Then, probably with the assistance of the White House, the love birds got their own feature in People magazine. Ducklo was quoted as saying, “We’re both really happy, and we wanted to do it the right way.” This the rough equivalent of Clarence Thomas saying the same thing about his relationship with billionaire Harlan Crow. There is no “right way” for a reporter to be in a romantic relationship with a key staffer of the politician she’s covering.

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“What’s Going On Here?” Glad You Asked, Miles….

/ Jack Marshall / 69 Comments

The full tweet:

“What happened to Lahaina is a tragedy. Thousands still missing, including children. Everything that could’ve gone wrong went wrong. Sirens didn’t go off, water that could’ve been used to put out the flames was restricted, and power lines kept operating despite the danger posed by hurricane winds. The governor of Hawaii can’t even maintain proper eye contact with the camera as he talks about the systemic failures that led to this avoidable catastrophe. Will anyone be held accountable? Given the relative media blackout, it looks like they’re trying to sweep the situation under the carpet like so much ash. When Hurricane Katrina happened, it’s all the media would talk about. What’s going on here?”

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Comment Of The Day: “In Maui, DEI Insanity Kills”

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

The key question is: “Will any mainstream media pundit have the courage to make the points esteemed Ethics Alarms commenter Sarah B makes below, in her Comment of the Day to the post, “In Maui, DEI Insanity Kills”?

***

So I’m going to say something that , at first glance, may sound pretty unethical here, but let me defend it first, before telling me that I’m going all in on Rationalizations. That being said, my TL,DR is “play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

I do think that it is fair to argue that, for the most part, the people of Lahaina had it coming. This fire was the rather predictable consequence of years of bad judgement and voting practices. First, the sugar cane farming dissolution into non-native dry grassland came because “we couldn’t possibly grow sugar cane there, it was too insensitive to the natives”. Then they didn’t make any reasonable plans to replace the farms with native plants that could handle both the wetter times and the drier times, but instead just let the farms grow over, which led to imported grass and other vegetation taking root off of spreading seeds. This worked out for a bit when things were wet, but these grasses are unable to handle the drier times. That led to a high fire hazard with a high burn interval.

Then they decided that they would go all in on the green energy to the degree that there was a huge governmental push (which often starts with the residents) for green production over safe electric lines, AFTER there was already substantial documentation that the power lines were likely to cause significant fires. Of course, the electric company is nowhere near blameless, but neither are the voters.

The idea that we now have DIE standing in the way of appropriate water being used to put out a fire, because we find that DIE is more important than lives and property (after all, we are founded on the notion of diversity, equity, and inclusion right, not that old fashioned life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness), well, that is a conscious choice by the Hawaii electorate too.

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Future Incompetent Elected Official Of The Month: Pennsylvania Congressional Candidate Salem Snow

/ Jack Marshall / 26 Comments

Salem Snow is a social worker running for Congress in Philadelphia as a Democrat. He’s a Black Lives Matter fan, and describes himself as a “Leftist” and “aggressively pro-worker.” Of course he includes his pronouns in his Twitter profile. That’s all dumb enough, but he also tweeted this:

You watch: he’ll probably get elected. Is this a great country, or what?

Incidentally, it’s unethical to look that smug in a photo when you write something as stupid as that tweet.

How Can We “Trust The Science” When It’s Distorted By Activist Scientists? Audubon’s Bird Scam

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

How? We can’t. Next?

The National Audubon Society, the famous non-profit dedicated to the conservation of birds and their habitats, wants to make the U.S. “bird safe” by shaming homeowners into “turn[ing] off unnecessary lights at night” and “clos[ing] blinds, [and] curtains,” along with other precautionary measures. Businesses should install bird-safe glass, for example, which has patterns that make it more visible to birds. This, the Audubon’s ornithologists claim, will save the lives of “up to a billion birds a year.” The group told WBAL-TV viewers in Baltimore that “lighting and reflectivity, specifically during migration for birds, is a really dangerous problem and kills up to one billion birds in North America per year.”

Sure. Advocacy groups love fake statistics, and this one screeches “Made-up!” like a bald eagle in heat. That “up to one billion” number is partially based on a 2014 abstract estimating that between “365 and 988 million birds” are killed annually by “building collisions” in the United States. Of course, since the objective isn’t to fairly communicate facts but to support the extreme positions of single-issue activists, the Society chose the highest estimate, already probably polluted by confirmation bias, and rounded up. The society used estimated bird collisions with walls to assess the deadliness of windows alone. In addition, the fake number mixed in ball park estimates that North America has lost 3 billion birds since 1970, and oh, let’s say a third of those died in “building collisions.” Yes, let’s.

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Ethics Observations On A Rare Outburst Of Anti-Biden Candor On CNN…

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Well. Let’s see…

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“Nah, There’s No Mainstream Media Bias!” The Times’ Dishonest And Biased “Fact Check” On “Trump’s Election Lies”

/ Jack Marshall / 31 Comments

If I never had occasion to write another ethics post about Donald Trump again, I would be thrilled. Unfortunately, he won’t shut up or disappear, and the Axis of Unethical Conduct (the “resistance,” the Democratic Party and the increasingly outrageous news media), recently joined by the justice system, won’t stop their misconduct.

Today the New York Times again disgraced themselves and their now shattered reputation for accuracy and fairness beyond what even I have come to expect. Signaling that Trump cannot expect anything approaching objective coverage and analysis of his various trials, the Times today offers a “fact check” headlined, “Fact-Checking the Breadth of Trump’s Election Lies: The former president faces multiple charges related to his lies about the 2020 election. Here’s a look at some of his most repeated falsehoods.”

I decided to factcheck the fact check, suspecting what I would find but in the end stunned by how openly the Times failed to deliver on what it promised. It’s astoundingly deceitful, and aimed at readers who just want to see Trump punished because they hate his guts. I won’t fisk the whole thing, but here’s more than enough to show you what the Times has become:

  • “…In public, he made more than 800 inaccurate claims about the election from the time the polls began closing on Nov. 3, 2020, to the end of his presidency, according to a database compiled by The Washington Post.”

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Al Sharpton Provides A Niggardly Principle Classic (And By The Way, Stop Making Me Defend Donald Trump!)

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

This could easily be a Babylon Bee satire, but unfortunately it isn’t.

Professional race-baiter and ethics villain Al Sharpton responded to the routinely bombastic and semi-grammatical Truth Social post by Donald Trump by going on MSNBC and saying, “Donald Trump, himself…using the word “riggers” – Is this the kind of party the Republicans want to show the country that they are?”

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