Government & Politics

Gee, What A Surprise: The Left Thinks American Education Is Just Fine

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

The results of the above poll, commissioned by Yahoo News, shouldn’t surprise anyone, though apparently it surprised Yahoo. The poll, it says, reveals  “a deeper and more distressing divide. According to the Yahoo News/YouGov poll, faith in the American Dream — the ideal, embodied by education, that each successive generation will be better off than the one that came before it — is becoming increasingly polarized as well.In other words, Republicans are not only much more likely than Democrats to believe American education is getting worse. They’re also much more likely to believe that American life is getting worse.”

Here are some other “other words”: A frightening number of Democrats believe that American education is good because it indoctrinates the young into leftist belief systems, cant and ideology. They feel life in the U.S. is  getting better because more censorship, racial preferences, nanny-state programs, and restrictions on individual rights will be the inevitable result of the Left’s takeover of the entire educational establishment. Continue reading →

Representative-Elect Santos Update: George Just Overtook The Field For The 2022 “Most Incompetent Elected Official Of The Year.” Wow.

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

Rep. George Santos (R-NY) really accomplished something here. At virtually the last moment, he came from nowhere tho snatch the coveted Ethics Alarms Award for 2022’s Most Incompetent Elected Official from an amazingly credentialed group of hacks, liars and fools. There are Joe and Kamala, of course, each with multiple nominations here. All the big city mayors who have fiddled while wokism allowed crime to fester and spread. EA nominees for the honor: Brevard County (Florida) Sheriff Wayne Ivey, Oregon Governor Kate Brown, GOP Reps. Scott Perry and Mario Diaz-Belart, Rep. Swalwell, of course, Senator Dick Durbin (as usual), Virginia Delegate Elizabeth Guzman, Rep. Louise Frankel, the ridiculous Rep. Matt Gaetz, twirking Rhode Island. State Senator Tiara Mack, Rep. Mary Miller, Mass. State Rep. Lindsay Sabadosa (who was horrified that the courts would stop unconstitutional uses of federal power), Senate Majority Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer, and Virginia House Of Delegates Member Wren Williams.

But emulating the “Immaculate Reception” that made Franco Harris an NFL legend, the 1968 Harcad -Yale game 29-29 tie (when Harvard scored two touchdowns with less than a minute left) and Bobby Thompson’s home run (“The Giants win the pennant! The Giants win the pennant!), Santos did the imposiible and made every one of his competitors look like Teddy Roosevelt. I posted last week about the emerging (and inexcusably late) discovery that many of the claims he made while running for office this year appeared to be false, concluding that he should resign his freshly won seat in Congress. Then Santos’ statements confirming the scandal, made after three days of thought, or the best he could do to approach thought, proved beyond challenge that he is even more of an ethics-free disgrace and menace to the public welfare than I initially thought.

“I am not a criminal,” Santos said during his interview with the New York Post, thus embracing Marion Barry’s infamous, “It it isn’t illegal, it’s not unethical” rationalization. “My sins here are embellishing my resumé,” he added, in a masterpiece of understatement. Since voters elect representatives based on their qualifications, “embellish” gives Santos too much credit. He HAD no credentials to embellish. He never graduated from college. He didn’t work at the prestigious Wall Street firms he claimed he had.

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Thoughts While Reading Classmate Entries In My Alma Mater’s Anniversary Report, #1

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

As I have noted, I deliberately missed my class’s big reunion intentionally, disgusted with what the school has become and the unethical values it now imposes on its students, alumni, applicants and other sho rely upon it to be a force for enlightenment in the nation. Interestingly, several classmates (none of whom I ever met) sent me their approval of my protest and the stated reasons for it in my class report, but none emailed. All arrived in handwritten letters. Either they think my views are so out-of-date that I communicate in quill and parchment only, or they do.

Anyway, I am slowly working my way through the hardbound tome, which is over a thousand pages long and in small print. Its statements by members of the class provide a fascinating and useful set of clues about the current state of mind the more pampered, “privileged” Boomers are in—for one thing, those who did write (a lot of them didn’t) are even more verbose than I am. Also notable is how many of the survivors of the original campus protests are just as vulnerable to facile conventional wisdom among their peer groups now as they were when they were praising Ho Chi Minh, promiscuous sex and the habit of being stoned much of the day.

I have always thought that maturity is a myth.

With this post, I’m launching what might be a continuing series, but who knows what horrors lie in those 1000 pages? I have already been horrified by the number of my classmates who feel that the Earth is endangered by global warming, which they view as the Most Important Thing Ever, though none of the people writing that appear to be in the scientific community.

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Stop Making Me Defend President Biden!

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

In his Christmas speech on December 23, President Biden said, referring to Christmas’s religious significance,

“How silently, how silently, the wondrous Gift is given. There is a certain stillness at the center of the Christmas story. A silent night when all the world goes quiet and all the glamour, all the noise, everything that divides us, everything that pits us against one another, everything — everything that seems so important but really isn’t, this all fades away in stillness of the winter’s evening. And we look to the sky, to a lone star, shining brighter than all the rest, guiding us to the birth of a child—a child Christians believe to be the son of God; miraculously now, here among us on Earth, bringing hope, love and peace and joy to the world.”

Many conservative blogs, pundits and celebrities “pounced,” attacking the President for not mentioning Jesus by name.

The headline at The Daily Wire was “Biden Delivers Christmas Address Without Mentioning Jesus By Name: ‘A Child Christians Believe To Be The Son Of God’” Father Gerald Murray of the Archdiocese of New York told Newsmax that it made “no sense” for Biden to omit the name of Jesus from his annual Christmas address to the country. “President Biden is always talking about his Catholicism and how it inspired him,” Murray said. “If you’re going to honor the birth of Jesus, you should mention his name. I was very sad to see that. That’s not anything that should be imitated in the future.” Doug Collins, a Georgia Republican and former member of the House,said, “Not saying the name of Jesus—look, there are other holidays to celebrate, but Christmas is the birth of Christ. When we celebrate the birth of Christ who came and gave us the gift of life. That’s what we celebrate and to take that out is just sad.” The Heritage Foundation’s Kara Frederick, complained, “America’s lost its sense of God, it’s Judeo-Christian values, and I think this is just a manifestation. This speech not mentioning Christ, talking about how divided this nation’s been for so long, it’s all part and parcel of the secularization of America and we need to return to our faith.”

The United States is not supposed to have a stated “sense of God,” and for the President of the United States to officially espouse the beliefs of any particular religion is, according the the line of judicial interpretations of the Establishment Clause and the First Amendment, a violation of the Constitution.

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Catching Up On The Twitter Files, Part 8: So Twitter Basically Has Acted As An Agent Of The U.S. Government!

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

From now on, I’m going to use that clip from “The Naked Gun” for all of the Twitter Files reports.

The fact that the mainstream media still is determined to bury this story that has serious implications for health of our democracy, public trust in the government, the apparent independent agendas of government departments and agencies, the threats posed by the “Deep State” and social media’s efforts to control whose opinions  and what information the public is able to receive and assess is itself a major revelation, making the “Twitter Files” one of the most urgent and important news stories of the year.

And it is being ladled out on Twitter in short tweets, which is why the mainstream media thinks its efforts to suffocate the story may work.

The messenger this time is Intercept reporter Lee Fang. This is Part 8; Part 9 came out on Christmas Eve, and I’ll get that posted later today.

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Comment Of The Day: “Still More Twitter Ethics: Musk’s Cynical Poll And Another Twitter Files Summary”

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

I’m a bit behind in posts covering the Twitter Files; I’m also behind in posting Comments of the Day. Ethics Alarms veteran Glenn Logan authored one more than a week ago, and had it not been for a recent comment that rang my “Glenn Logan” alarm, this one might have been lost.

Here is Glenn’s Comment of the Day on the post, “Still More Twitter Ethics: Musk’s Cynical Poll And Another”Twitter Files” Summary”…

***

Jack wrote:

“Musk can’t run Twitter by poll, though, if he is truly devoted to promoting free and open public discourse.“

No, you’re right about that. It needs to stop. The optics are very poor to anyone not invested in Twitter at the expense of rational thought.

“The past seven years (or more) make the conclusion unavoidable that the FBI is untrustworthy, partisan, corrupt,dangerous, and a threat to undermine the Republic. That is not a news that easy to process or accept, but it can’t be ignored or shrugged off any more…”

The FBI has always been a problematic venture. It was corrupt nearly from birth, and we are surprised that it somehow has changed its spots over the decades? Sure, there have been a few stretches where it was less corrupt than at others, but at its core, it is a functioning federal bureaucracy with a law enforcement component, largely governed by political partisans.

That partisanship has clearly been allowed to filter down to at least middle management and even the rank-and-file. Throw in the “You’re either with me or against me” politics of the social media age, and how can you not have a corrupt catastrophe?

Disbanding the FBI root and branch would be a huge public service. Continue reading →

More Evidence That The Public Is In Need Of Basic Education Regarding The Constitution And The Bill Of Rights…

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

The online petition can demand until it is blue in the face, if petitions could be blue in the face, or had a face, for that matter.

The comments of the citizen in the video clip are 100% First Amendment protected speech. There is no valid argument to the contrary. Signatories of such a petition have announced that a) they don’t believe in free speech; b) they want the government to censor individual opinions they disagree with and c) they are unfit to participate or benefit from a democratic republic, preferring a totalitarian government provided its agendas aligns with those of the petition-signers.

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A Conservative Whataboutism And Rationalization #22 Spectacular!

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Republican George Santos’s election to a Long Island seat in Congress helped Republicans achieve their  narrow majority in the House of Representatives. He ran as  the “full embodiment of the American dream.”

His campaign biography said he was the son of Brazilian immigrants who raised himself from humble credentials at a New York City public college to become a “seasoned Wall Street financier and investor” with a family-owned real estate portfolio of 13 properties and an animal rescue charity that saved the lives of more than 2,500 dogs and cats. But Citigroup and Goldman Sachs, the  Wall Street firms Santos said he worked for, have no record of  Santis ever working there.  Baruch College, which Rep. Santos  said he graduated from in 2010, has no record of anyone matching his name and date of birth graduating. That  animal rescue group, Friends of Pets United, isn’t, as Santos claimed, a tax-exempt organization: the IRS has no record of a registered charity with that name. The New York Times also alleges that important information on Santos’s personal financial disclosures were withheld. Then there are some criminal charges for check fraud in Brazil that Santos never included in that shining campaign biography. Continue reading →

An Unethical Quote Of The Month By ABC Clinches The 2022 Ethics Alarms “Most Unethical Profession” Award

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

“You talk about open borders, I don’t think I’ve ever heard President Biden say, we have an open border come on over, but people I have heard people say it are you, former President Trump, Ron DeSantis, that message reverberates in Mexico and beyond…”

—-ABC’s Martha Raddatz, desperately spinning for Democrats and the Biden Administration

I always had a soft spot in my heart for Martha Raddatz, because she rminded me of Dick Radatz, the greatest relief pitcher in Boston Red Sox history and my favorite reliever of all time, period. I knew Martha spelled her name with an extra “d,” but always held out hope that they were related. She even looks a bit like “The Monster,” don’t you think?

But I gave up on Martha after her disgracefully biased moderating of the 2012 Vice-Presidential candidates debate between Joe Biden and Paul Ryan. The latest is even more disgusting. Raddatz actually made the argument that Republicans and others describing the current policy of the Biden Administration regarding illegal immigration at the southern border as what it is has caused the flood of illegals into the U.S. Continue reading →

The FBI’s Rationalization For Its Twitter Content Manipulation: “We Do This Kind Of Thing All The Time!”

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

Well alrighty then! All is well!

The Federal Bureau of Investigation  issued a supposedly exonerating statement today following the latest “Twitter Files” dump, which disclosed information detailing the FBI’s correspondence with Twitter in October 2020. Substack’sMatt Taibbi revealed that the agency warned the previous management at Twitter of a “hack-and-leak” by “state actors” surrounding the story of Hunter Biden’s laptop to influence the 2020 presidential election. The “Twitter Files” also revealed that the FBI and Twitter worked closely in the lead up to the election, with documents published this week showing that the FBI paid Twitter nearly $3.5 million between October 2019 and February 2021 for  the expenses entailed by complying with the FBI’s demands/requests. The FBI also flagged certain tweets for Twitter to remove from the platform, the documents show, and FBI agents were  even employed at Twitter during this period.

If I were a publicity experts advising the FBI, my recommendation would be that no comment would be preferable to this statement, which is desperate and damning:

“The correspondence between the FBI and Twitter show nothing more than examples of our traditional, longstanding and ongoing federal government and private sector engagements, which involve numerous detailing companies over multiple sectors and industries. As evidenced in the correspondence, the FBI provides critical information to the private sector in an effort to allow them to protect themselves and their customers. The men and women of the FBI work every day to protect the American public. It is unfortunate that conspiracy theorists and others are feeding the American public misinformation with the sole purpose of attempting to discredit the agency.”

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