Government & Politics

Back Off, Progressives: Dwight David Eisenhower Was An Excellent President In His Time.

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Which is, after all, the only time that matters.…at the time.

I just wrote a long rebuttal to a recently Trump Deranged friend of impressive mind and credentials, who decided to go after, of all people, President Dwight Eisenhower for a speech in which he extolled moral values because, my friend’s Facebook post declared, “in real life the years of Eisenhower’s administration—essentially all of the 1950s—did not even come close to measuring up to the tenets of social, racial, ethnic and sexual justice and economic equity that most of us today believe are the standards of a just society.”

“That is an important reminder for all of us us that times do change,” he continued, “and that as right-thinking as Eisenhower’s words seem on the surface, they were spoken by the leader of a society that was very repressive in many ways—economically, socially, racially, sexually and otherwise.” This, to use the vernacular, pissed me off greatly. Ike has gone higher in my estimation of him as President the more I read about him and especially the more I watch other President struggle with the job he seemed to do effortlessly. (Of course, Ike may be the only one of our Presidents for whom the office could be considered a step down in difficulty and responsibility, after overseeing the Allied effort to save the world in World War II.)

Here, with minor edits to protect the guilty, is what I posted in response to that slap at Ike:

***

But this is the purest form of Presentism, and a grossly unfair assessment of Ike, one of our most under-rated and effective Presidents. It is always easy to go back and condemn figures of the past who did not have the benefit of many decades of accumulated experience and wisdom; easy and wrong. It is by this standard that we saw efforts in demented regions like San Francisco (and our own) to strip historical honors from, among others, the Founders, because they were not sufficiently psychic to reject their society’s and culture’s mistaken beliefs, such as the inherent inferiority of other races to theirs.

 I’ve studied Eisenhower’s own writings and those about him. His vision of the Presidency was that his job was to protect and preserve the culture, not change it; that the culture would evolve and change in its own time, when society was ready for it. As a result, Eisenhower led a United States that honored and trusted its institutions at a level that seems astonishing today. He had a great part in that.

Nobody accused him of being a “king,” but in Boston, even then a bulwark of the Democratic Party, kids listened to “Hail to the Chief” on the most popular children’s show (creepily titled “Big Brother”!) as a photo of Ike appeared (the one above, in fact) on the screen and we “toasted” the President of the United States with a glass of milk. The Horror.

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NYT Subscriptions Surge, Meaning That Journalism’s One-Way Bias and Ethics Rot Is Not Going Away Soon

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

In a post yesterday, I wrote, in the final note on the ethical implications of this week’s election results,

“None of this would have unfolded in quite the same way, I am certain, without a corrupt journalism sector that has totally abdicated the duty of its profession in favor of partisan propaganda. I am more convinced than ever that the Republic will not function efficiently or engender responsible citizenship until there is news media commitment to fair, objective, responsible, unbiased and honest communication to the public of what it needs to know to make intelligent decisions about their governance. There has been some progress toward that end this year, but not nearly enough.”

Well, evoking William Barrett Travis when Santa Anna demanded the surrender of the Alamo, the New York Times “answered with a cannon shot.”

“The Times’s Profit Jumps With 460,000 More Subscribers” the headline today reads. “The Times now has 12.33 million total subscribers to all of its products. It has said it is aiming for 15 million by the end of 2027.” The article (gift link!), which you can read yourself if you have the stomach for it, has lots of other good news for the Times bottom line,

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Ethics Alarms Threads of the Year: Reparations and Guaranteed Minimum Income

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

Well, I’m defeated! Two rich and lively threads this week have produced more Comment of the Day-worthy commentary and more essays worthy of guest columns than I can possibly do justice to without them swallowing the blog.

I’m sorry. For the first time ever, I am reduced to linking to the post that sprung these exchanges, and sending interested readers to them rather than my reposting them all.

The first: Friday Open Forum, Halloween Edition. Last week’s open forum was especially lively with many topics covered, but the epic thread, started by Extradimenensional Cephalopod, began with “Premise: The United States institutes a universal basic income of $1000 per person per month, except for people who opt to remain in existing welfare programs.” Many engaged, including Sarah B, AM Golden, Old Bill, CEES VAN BARNEVELDT and Michael Ejercito.

The second: Unethical Quote of the Month: Un-Named California Lawyer. The most prolix combatants in the discussion of slavery reparations are jdkazoo123 and Chris Marschner, but there is enlightening commentary by many others as well.

Ethics Alarms thanks and salutes everyone involved in both of these discussions. They are exactly what I hoped to inspire when I started Ethics Alarms.

President Donald Trump Can’t Even Be An Ethics Hero Properly…

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Yesterday, at the last possible minute, President Trump endorsed Andrew Cuomo in a typically antic Truth Social post. From that perspective, it’s an act of ethical heroism. He’s doing something that is not in his best interests or those of his party. Trump clearly loves New York City even though it doesn’t love him. He is choosing the future welfare of the city’s mostly Democratic residents over what will benefit his party, the Republican Party, by throwing the weight and prestige of his office behind a Democrat (running as an Independent, but never mind) rather than the GOP spoiler, Curtis Sliwa.

Kudos for the President. Making sure as few people as possible vote for Sliwa, who is on the way to becoming New York City’s Harold Staasen, is contrary to principles of party loyalty but the right thing to do. Trump’s endorsement:

“If Communist Candidate Zohran Mamdani wins the Election for Mayor of New York City, it is highly unlikely that I will be contributing Federal Funds, other than the very minimum as required, to my beloved first home, because of the fact that, as a Communist, this once great City has ZERO chance of success, or even survival! It can only get worse with a Communist at the helm, and I don’t want to send, as President, good money after bad. It is my obligation to run the Nation, and it is my strong conviction that New York City will be a Complete and Total Economic and Social Disaster should Mamdani win. A vote for Curtis Sliwa (who looks much better without the beret!) is a vote for Mamdani. Whether you personally like Andrew Cuomo or not, you really have no choice. You must vote for him, and hope he does a fantastic job. He is capable of it, Mamdani is not!”

Trump being Trump and reflexively perverse, he just had to do the right thing in the worst possible way, threatening the city and its residents in the process. Thus did he cross over the line from endorsing a candidate (normal, ethical) to threatening the city if it doesn’t do what he wants. That’s election interference, because he is applying coercion, or what feels like it.

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Unethical Quote of the Month: Un-Named California Lawyer

/ Jack Marshall / 54 Comments

Gail Herriot is Professor of Law at the University of San Diego School of Law and a member of the United States Commission on Civil Rights since 2007. She is a conservative, so much of the civil rights racket (“Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.” Eric Hoffer) objects to her existence.

Herriot recently posted the following jaw-dropping letter that she received from a member of the California Bar:

Dear Ms. Heriot,
 
This letter serves as a formal cease and desist demand regarding your ongoing, public, and targeted efforts to undermine and harass the Black community and its advocates for equity, in direct violation of state and federal civil rights laws and your ethical obligations as a member of the bar.
 
Your activities—including those publicly associated with the California Foundation for Equal Rights (CFER) (among others) and campaigns explicitly opposing Black-focused equity —constitute racial targeting and harassment under the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. § 1981, and applicable state hate crime and anti-discrimination statutes. Such conduct is not protected expression when it rises to the level of coordinated intimidation or bias-based obstruction of legally protected programs. It is particularly egregious that your public campaigns have focused solely on efforts benefiting the Black community, while remaining silent on or even supportive of state and federal allocations to other racial or ethnic groups. 
 
For example: In 2021 and 2022, the State of California directed substantial funding—over $165 million—to AAPI anti-hate initiatives, a commendable effort to address rising hate incidents against Asian Americans.
 
In 2024, the California Legislature authorized over $300 million in support for Holocaust survivors and members of the Jewish community, recognizing their suffering and need for continued support.
 
Despite these allocations, your campaigns have not targeted or criticized these initiatives—only those aimed at repairing centuries of harm done to Black Americans, who remain the most frequent victims of race-based hate crimes nationwide according to federal data. Your selective and racially targeted opposition to Black equity initiatives, combined with your public standing as an attorney, member of a federal civil rights commission and educator, magnifies the discriminatory impact and constitutes a pattern of bias-based harassment under both state and federal law.
 
Accordingly, you are hereby ordered to immediately cease and desist from any further direct or indirect harassment, public misinformation, or racially targeted advocacy directed toward the Black community or programs designed to support it. Continued actions of this nature may result in:
 
Formal referral to state bar disciplinary authorities for violations of the Rules of Professional Conduct concerning bias, harassment, and discrimination; and
 
Referral to appropriate civil rights enforcement agencies for investigation under state and federal hate crime and civil rights statutes.
 
Please provide written confirmation within ten (10) business days that you have received this notice and that you will comply fully with its terms.
 
Warmest Regards,

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The President’s “60 Minutes” Interview

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

President Trump sat down for a full interview with “60 Minutes” yesterday, and was grilled by CBS correspondent Norah O’Donnell (as I was once, though not on that show). The transcript and the video are here. Under the new regime of CBS News Czar (“Editor-in-Chief”) Bari Weiss, there were no deceptively edited sections as in the infamous and unethical (and, I believe, illegal) Kamala Harris interview a year ago when the network switched around her responses to try to deceive voters into believing that the Democrat isn’t, you know, a babbling idiot.

This post’s purpose isn’t to critique O’Donnell’s questions. She was appropriately respectful, aggressive and professional except that her facial expressions conveyed her hostility, which is unprofessional but now common practice among Axis broadcast journalists. The shot above was typical: she looked at the President of the United States as if he were a six-foot talking cockroach. Nor am I going to praise or criticize the substance of Trump’s responses, though I note that he showed an excellent knowledge of American Presidential history when he pronounced Joe Biden as our Worst President Ever.

It is simply to point out that the Trump Derangement narrative that this President is mentally failing and as cognitively disabled as Joe Biden (“Just in a different way” as one sufferer told me on Halloween) is either delusional or deliberately dishonest. The interview was slam-dunk proof of that, and yet this slander/libel is Axis cant now. I regard the claim as evidence of a genuine disruption of thinking ability. Bias makes you stupid, and in this case, bias is making these poor people ridiculous.

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End of the Baseball Season Ethics Recap, 11/2/25, Part 2

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

For those readers who ignore the EA baseball posts: this isn’t one, except for this brief note on baseball competence. Isiah Kiner-Falefa of the Toronto Blue Jays pulled a (as it turned out) game-losing brick in the 9th inning when he was out by a mini-micron trying to score the winning run from third base. He was out in a force play, with the catcher barely scraping home plate before the base-runner’s shoe hit it. At the time, I thought, “Why is he sliding?” then forgot about it in the excitement of the play and all that followed the rest of that incredible game. But it is being pointed out in some post-game articles this morning that if Kiner-Falefa had just run straight to the plate, he would have been safe….and there was no reason for him to slide. It isn’t hindsight. The bases were loaded. It was going to be a force play at home if the ball was hit on the ground, and it was. A slide always gets a runner to a base a bit slower than running through. The catcher, Will Smith, didn’t need to tag him, and a slide is only necessary to avoid a tag. The Jays infielder’s mental mistake lost the Series as surely as “Snodgrass’s muff” or Bill Buckner’s error (more than that one, actually), but I bet nobody remembers it in the wild collage of everything else that happened. Poor Jays catcher Kirk will feel like the goat for hitting into a DP with the tying and winning runs on base with only one out to lose the game in the 10th. . But the #1 culprit was Kiner-Falefa. An MLB player should know the rules.

Now on to more mundane matters…

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Ethics Villain Revealed: Barack Obama [Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

For once, the New York Times is reporting one of those over-heard conversations from an anonymous source who is violating trust to reveal it that harms the reputation and image of a progressive hero, though maybe the Times staff is so far gone that it doesn’t realize the import of the leak.

Former President Barack Obama, the Times revealed, phoned New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani today, November 1. The architect of the foundering progressive take-over of American government and culture spoke with the front-runner for “roughly 30-minutes.” According to the leakers, who spoke “on condition of anonymity” to describe the private conversation, Obama said that he “was invested in Mr. Mamdani’s success” beyond the upcoming election. The two (Muslims?) “talked about the challenges of staffing a new administration and building an apparatus capable of delivering on Mr. Mamdani’s agenda of affordability in the city.”

On the call, Obama reportedly spoke admiringly about Mamdani’s campaign. “Your campaign has been impressive to watch,” he told the charismatic communist, according to the sources.

During the campaign (and before it) Mamdani has made it Waterford crystal clear that he supports Hamas and does not believe that Israel has a right to exist. As a watermark of the anti-Semite, he has repeatedly described Israel’s legitimate armed response to the Gazan terror attack of October 7, 2023, as “genocide.” Those not in favor of obliterating Israel might well have regarded these themes in Mamdami campaign for mayor serious missteps. Obama, if the account is to be believed, seems to think being anti-Israel is just hunky-dory, but as we’ve seen, that’s where his party and its most fervent members have been tending for years.

Obama offered to be a “sounding board”—as in coach, mentor, advisor— when Mamdani wins the election, with the two agreeing to meet in person at some point in Washington, D.C.. Mamdani reportedly thanked the former president for the encouragement and told him that he had drawn inspiration for his own recent speech on Islamophobia from Mr. Obama’s speech on race during his first presidential run.

That Mamdani speech was the one in which he implied that voting against him was a sign of bigotry. Yeah, there’s no reason in the world for New Yorkers to be wary of Islam. What did Muslims ever…oh. Right.

A spokeswoman for Obama refused to verify the report, but a spokeswoman for Mamdani said, “Zohran Mamdani appreciated President Obama’s words of support and their conversation on the importance of bringing a new kind of politics to our city.”

You know. Communist politics.

My guess is that Obama is quite ticked off, because this leak almost certainly came from the Mamdani camp, which has seen its candidate’s support dwindle in recent days, though probably not enough.

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The Sec. of Transportation Tells Kim Kardashian That She’s an Irresponsible Ignorance-Spreading Fool. Good!

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

In an episode of the reality show “The Kardashians” (My god, is that still on?) Uber Kardashian Kim, the only one of the breed who earned her celebrity (with a sex tape and a huge derriere), told actress Sarah Paulson that she had watched interviews with Buzz Aldrin, who was on the Apollo 11 mission with Neil Armstrong and the second person to walk on the moon, and they convinced her that the moon landing was a government hoax.

“I don’t think we did. I think it was fake,” the Kimster announced. “I’ve seen a few videos on Buzz Aldrin talking about how it didn’t happen. He says it all the time now, in interviews.” Does anyone know what the hell she’s babbling about? The last time I heard about Aldrin in relation to the moonwalk conspiracy theory, he punched a guy in the face for claiming it was true.

Then Kardashian repeated a trope of the ancient conspiracy theory: “There’s no gravity on the moon. Why is the flag blowing?” I view that statement all by itself as signature significance: anyone who says it once is too gullible to be let outside without a keeper, and anyone who says it publicly is an idiot. The “mystery” can be answered by viewing the archived videos or by 3 seconds of googling. Who goes on TV and asserts a non-fact that anyone, including her, can prove false in a trice?

This time, however, big guns were trained on the specific idiot. Sean Duffy, the US Transportation Secretary and acting administrator of NASA, rebutted the whatever-she-is on X. He wrote: “Yes, Kim Kardashian, we’ve been to the moon before … Six times! And even better, NASA Artemis is going back under the leadership of [President Trump]. We won the last space race and we will win this one too.”

Madison, Wis, bloggress Ann Althouse, in one of her “it’s not the topic, it’s the tangents” posts, asks,

“Why is a government official calling out a private citizen who expresses interest in a conspiracy theory? We’re Americans. We have our conspiracy theories. Keep your government nose out of our business. You’re only giving more ammunition to the conspiracy theorists. Why stick your neck out to deny what isn’t true? You’re making it more fun to believe the theory!”

Ann is evoking the “Streisand Effect” with her “You’re only giving more ammunition to the conspiracy theorists.” She’s wrong, maybe even at an Ethics Dunce level. This conspiracy is hardly unknown: there was even a movie about it, and I have encountered moonwalk skeptics periodically ever since the event. “Why is a government official calling out a private citizen who expresses interest in a conspiracy theory?” Because, Ann, celebrities are not “private citizens.” They are public citizens; they make their millions by being famous and by appearing, speaking and misbehaving in public. More Americans by far know who Kim Kardashian is than who know who Sean Duffy is. A disturbing number of Americans, maybe even a majority, believe that being a celebrity (and appearing on TV) indicates virtue, wisdom and intelligence. Celebrity culture helped get Donald Trump elected President. Doesn’t Ann Althouse understand that? Hasn’t she ever heard the rejoinder, “If you’re so smart, why aren’t you rich?”

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Ethics Hero For The Ages: Elon Musk

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

I have long planned on writing a thorough post about how much the United States, its culture, its future as a viable democracy and its avoidance (so far) of a close call with progressive neo-totalitarianism owes to Elon Musk. This isn’t it. However, once again he has used his boundless wealth and creativity to strike down an engine of cultural indoctrination and Orwellian twisting of knowledge and history. Buying Twitter and ending its flagrant partisan bias was a landmark in American freedom of speech, one that may well have made the election of Donald Trump possible. His latest adventure may be even more important.

He has launched Grokipedia, the desperately needed alternative to Wikipedia. It is still a work in progress, as Musk admits, but by being AI-driven (the bot in charge is Elon’s Grok), the online living encyclopedia avoids the progressive bias and vulnerability to partisan manipulation that had caused me to only resort to Wikipedia when the topic was immune from political bias.

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