Government & Politics

Wait, WHAT? The White House Is Caught Rigging Biden’s Press Conference To Make Him Appear More Competent Than He Is, And The Washington Post’s Analysis is “Everybody Does It” And “Republicans Pounce”?

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

Nah, there’s no mainstream media bias!

How do these people look at themselves in the mirror without retching?

Paul Farhi was the veteran Democratic operative (aka a MSM reporter) the Post assigned to spin this scandal. “President Biden was photographed holding a notecard Wednesday, revealing the stage managing behind many political media events,” he began. Oh, the euphemism is “stagemanaging,” is it? What the “notecard” was is called a cheat sheet, and what it signifies is cheating, and lying to the public.

The card in Biden’s hand—he’s so diminished mentally that he can’t even cheat competently–read “Question # 1,” and directed the President to call on Los Angeles Times reporter, Courtney Subramanian. The card included Subramanian’s name, a pronunciation guide, her affiliation and a headshot. The card also included Subramanian’s question: under the heading “Foreign Policy/Semiconductor Manufacturing,” the card read, “How are YOU squaring YOUR domestic priorities — like reshoring semiconductors manufacturing — with alliance-based foreign policy?”

Biden called on her for the first question, she asked what she was supposed to, and Biden offered an uncharacteristically detailed and coherent response. Farhi’s spin: “White House press office employees have routinely polled reporters about their priorities and interests in advance of news meetings to anticipate what their boss might be asked while on the podium. The practice is also common in news conferences with Cabinet secretaries, such as the secretary of defense and secretary of state.” Fine, that’s their job. And it is an ethical reporter’s job to say, “Sorry, you’re just going to have to find out when I’m called on.” Sure Presidential aides want to brief POTUS on what the likely topics are. Rigging the questions in advance, however, is something completely different. It’s called cheating. This is particularly true in this case, when much of the pubic is concerned about the President’s cognitive abilities. Presenting him as able to whip off a detailed answer to a reporter’s question when in fact he was tipped off and the reporter was in cahoots with the White House is pure deception.

Continue reading →

Gun Control Advocates Would Be More Persuasive If They Didn’t Rely On Big Lies And Fake Statistics: The Latest From Kamala Harris

/ Jack Marshall / 71 Comments

The only example of a similarly polluted public policy debate I can think of right now is the hoary “women are payed 76 cents for every dollar a man is paid for the same job” myth. Wait: there are the inflated and misleading Wuhan virus fatality stats. And come to think of it…never mind, we’re talking about the Bill of Rights here. The fake statistic in Harris’s tweet—and to be fair, her claim didn’t originate with her—representing a toxic hybrid between the “Do something!” gun hysteria and the “Think of the children!” rationalization—is popping up everywhere lately. Frankly, I believed it when I first saw it last week. After all, as Harry Reid would say, it works. But it’s a Big Lie.

Continue reading →

What A Surprise: Trump’s Scorched Earth Premptive Attack On Ron DiSantis Is Hypocritical, Dishonest And Divisive

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

Ronald Reagan’s “First Commandment” was “Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican.” Donald Trump is no Ronald Reagan, and he’s only a Republican of convenience; nevertheless, his strategy of using negative campaigning to kneecap his presumed competition for the Republican Presidential nomination before Florida’s Governor Ron DiSantis has even announced his candidacy is particularly odious. Launching these attacks would be revolting if they were fair and accurate, but they are not.

That is who and what Donald Trump is, however. He’s not going to broaden his base this way, or make it more likely that the GOP can defeat the Democrats in 2024. Right now, he doesn’t care about that: all that matters is winning the nomination, and, like Scarlett O’Hara, he’ll think about the consequences tomorrow after playing as dirty as he has to.

I know I’m repeating myself, but what an asshole this guy is. It is a searing testament to just how unfit to govern the Democrats and Joe Biden are that I had to vote for him in 2020, and it really wasn’t that difficult a decision.

This week Trump and his campaign vomitted up a document claiming that “the real DeSantis record is one of misery and despair,” and arguing that Florida was a terrible place to live. This assertion has an immediate ring of hypocrisy surrounding it, since Donald Trump chooses to live there.

The Wall Street Journal was moved to fact-check Trump’s ruthless indictment, and it’s a legitimate fact-check, not the kind one gets from, say, the Washington Post. WSJ points out…

1. The Trump release relies on links to progressive-biased studies and anti-DiSantis news reports claiming that Florida is unaffordable and unsafe, and includes, “ESPN wrote that Florida is the Worst State in The Nation To Die.”

ESPN?

2. Many of the statistics cited in the Trump hit piece come from groups with progressive agendas, those that Trump would typically dismiss as “fake.” It cites a 2022 Oxfam report that says Florida is the 29th best state for workers, but down-rates states that have “so-called ‘right-to-work’ laws” and those that, like Florida, don’t allow “localities to implement their own minimum wage laws.” Trump has never been a fan of unions or the minimum wage. It also cites the Florida Policy Institute, which wants illegal immigrants to be able to obtain obtain driver’s licenses. “Wasn’t immigration Mr. Trump’s signature issue in 2016?” asks WSJ. “They say politics makes strange bedfellows, but Mr. Trump’s one-night stand with this outfit is bizarre.”

Indeed.

3. Trump’s vicious hit job relies heavily on the website WalletHub, which ranks Florida 26th on its “best states for working moms” ranking using a witches brew of “17 relevant metrics” that were given different weights, a classic device in pseudo-science. Many WalletHub rankings not mentioned by Trump’s campaign rank Florida highly: the site says Florida is the second best state in which to retire, second best for starting a business, second best for for fewest Wuhan virus restrictions, the second “most fun” state, fourth best for teachers, sixth for low taxes, and the seventh best state to live in. This is the epitome of cherry-picking, a dishonest and unethical advocacy trick.

4. WSJ also points out that hundreds of thousands of Americans are moving to Florida, which strongly suggests that the public doesn’t agree that the state teems with “misery and despair.” The Census Bureau says Florida gained a net 318,855 under DiSantis from July 2021 to July 2022, and leads all states, by far, in attracting new residents.

One conservative blogger writes in reaction to the attack,

[W]hat makes Trump any different than Biden, who constantly lies about the GOP with absurd claims such as the ones being made by Trump? What makes Trump any different than those Democrats and media outfits who smeared him for years during his presidency? What makes him any different than those trying to smear him now?

Are there really still people who expect consistency, integrity, fairness or The Golden Rule from Donald Trump? He believes that the ends justify the means. He fights to win. Collateral damage doesn’t trouble him one bit, and ethics are for suckers. By attacking DiSantis and in his manner of doing so, he is showing once again that whatever his faults, pretending to be someone he’s not isn’t among them.

Comment Of The Day: “I THOUGHT This Issue Would Eventually End Up At The Supreme Court, And Here It Is!”

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Now that the question of whether Donald Trump was violating the First Amendment when he blocked nasty commenters on his tweets (like every other Twitter-user could do) has some distance from the reflex “That asshole! Serves him right that the courts stopped him” response from the Trump Deranged, the issue has sparked some varied and interesting commentary. Yesterday’s EA post sure did; I even managed to trigger a violent argument between two long-time esteemed commenters here.

I remain very ambivalent on the issue. Here is Rich in CT’s Comment of the Day raising a parallel that is one of the reasons.

***

I serve on a local board, and in Connecticut at least, there is no inherit right for the public to speak in any particular forum (during the conduct of official business). If comments are allowed, it is up to the discretion of the board (pursuant to applicable bylaws), and they can be limited to a specific topic to help the board make a lawful and effective public policy decision. Disruptive comments can be barred. My board has never had to remove a disruptive individual, but we have that right if needed as they speak as our guests.

We’ve had heated exchanges, and have had to frequently warn the public that comments must remain on topic and civil. Allowing uncivil comments, in fact, can create a “hostile forum” that can potentially bias the commission again a particular applicant. Courts can vacate decisions made during such conditions, and made adjudicate the application itself, taking the decision completely out of the commission’s control.

Continue reading →

Unethical Quote Of The Day: Wesley Lowery In “The Columbia Journalism Review”

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

“We pull no punches: when the weight of the objective evidence is clear, we must not conceal the truth through euphemism; rather, we should employ direct language. Our aim is not to be perceived as impartial by the people we imagine are our readers, but to accurately inform them about the world they live in.” 

—-Reporter Wesley Lowery, Journalist in Residence at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY, in his essay, “A Test of the News”

When I encountered the essay titled “A Test of the News” in the Columbia Journalism Review, I foolishly anticipated a careful diagnostic analysis of why American journalism was so ethically wretched, and a perceptive prescription for fixing the problem. Boy, do I have a flat learning curve. Why would I ever think that, knowing what I, what you, what anyone who has been paying attention knows from observing the carnage unethical, incompetent, biased journalism has inflicted on American democracy over the past decade? My delusion was especially unforgivable since 1) Lowery is a journalist, 2) he’s a Pulitzer Prize -winning journalist, and you know what kind of journalists the Pulitzers like, and 3) he’s also an college instructor. Education is running neck and neck with journalism as our most thoroughly unethical profession, though journalism is clearly the one most likely beyond repair.

The first three paragraphs of Lowery’s screed were bad enough, but I didn’t reach the point where I normally would have stopped reading until paragraph #4:

“To this day, news organizations across the country often rely on euphemisms instead of clarity in clear cases of racism (“racially charged,” “racially tinged”) and acts of government violence (“officer-involved shooting”). Such decisions, I wrote, are journalistic failings, but also moral ones: when the weight of the evidence is clear, it is wrong to conceal the truth. Justified as “objectivity,” they are in fact its distortion.”

When a police officer shoots an arrested suspect who tries to take his gun from him and then charges him with his 300 pound bulk, that is “government violence, “and the “weight of evidence is clear”—you know, as in “Hands up, don’t shoot!” That recycled Black Lives Matters mythology pretty much reveals all I need to know about Wesley Lowery, and he confirms my conclusion with the egomaniacal quote at the beginning of this post. He believes, as do so many editors and reporters echoing the same arrogant delusion, that journalists, narrow as their education and experience is, are capable of explaining to the public the true nature of the world they live in. This means the world view journalists want them to live in. Yet reporters do not know when the “weight of objective evidence is clear”; they don’t have the depth, wisdom or intellect to know what the “truth” is (don’t make me list examples again), and what ideological propagandists like Lowery call “accurate” includes shading, spin, soaked with bias, and the strategic omission of facts that undermine their narratives. The delusion is that having an outsized bullhorn automatically confers the ability to use it responsibly.

Continue reading →

No Primary Debates? The Democratic Party Looks More Soviet By The Hour…[Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 38 Comments

Nicely anticipating what he would be up against—perhaps because it’s so obvious from the recent Presidential election cycles—Robert Kennedy, Jr talked about totalitarianism in a recent interview. “It’s been the dream ambition of every totalitarian regime in the history of mankind to exert total control over every aspect of human behavior,” he said, noting that technology makes this ambition easier than ever to achieve. Junior RFK is the most interesting and potentially the most disruptive of the Democrats planning to challenge Joe Biden for the 2024 Presidential election, but at the time he may not have anticipated his party’s plan to eliminate him and anyone else as serious competition. The Washington Post reported last week that “the national Democratic Party has said it will support Biden’s reelection, and it has no plans to sponsor primary debates.”

Continue reading →

A “Bias Makes You Stupid” Classic: Duke’s Economically Ignorant Economics Prof.

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

Duke University professor of economics William Darity wants $14 trillion in reparations to be paid to African Americans. That would roughly break down to $350,000 per recipient. True, he was blathering on the “Dr. Phil” show, and perhaps thought nobody with more than a GED would be watching. Nonetheless he said, for public consumption, that trillions in financial reparations should be handed out to “reduce the wealth gap” between white and black Americans. Where will all that money come from, the phony TV doctor asked? Oh, from the Federal government, which will apparently make it magically appear, replied the evidently phony economist. Will a $350,000 windfall be enough to do any lasting good for the vast majority of blacks who would receive it? Oh, probably not, but it will feel good.

Or something. California’s task force on imaginary reparations things they should be at least $5 million per eligible resident. Sure, why not? Why not $10 million?

In the past, the professor has estimated that reparations would cost between $10 and $12 trillion. Of course, those figures are also impossible and ridiculous, so we need not make too big a thing out of his latest demand.

The National Debt, even the most woke and irresponsible economists will admit if you back them against a wall, is getting, indeed is, dangerously large already at about $32 trillion. Increasing it by 40% in a short period of time is a recipe for economic disaster that would adversely affect all races and creeds.

One doesn’t even need to get into the absurd practical, social, political and legal impediments to such a mass transfer of wealth, which would be enough to make such Darity’s reparations plan madness even if it were affordable, which it is not now and never will be. The ethics question is: How can Duke responsibly employ a professor who advocates such reckless economic policy? What can students learn from this man, who places his race and political biases ahead of his scholarship?

Continue reading →

Oh For God’s Sake…A 6th Grader Should Know This Law Is Unconstitutional, And The Texas Senate Doesn’t? [Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

Texas Senate Bill 1515, introduced by Sen. Phil King (R-Weatherford), an ethics dunce, is on the way to the Texas House for consideration. Given the degree of right-wing derangement in Texas, a fair match for Woke Derangement in California, New York and other states, it’s a better than an even bet that public schools in Texas will be required to prominently display the Ten Commandments in every classroom starting next school year. Next up, I suppose, will be a Texas law requiring citizens to say the Lord’s Prayer every morning and to pass a yearly Bible literacy test or be forced to wear sack cloth and ashes. There is no chance, zip, nada, uh-uh, zippo, that the Ten Commandments law survives a legal challenge. None. That is not, as Mona Lisa Vito states under oath in “My Cousin Vinny,” an opinion. It’s a fact.

Continue reading →

Why We Can’t Have Nice Things (Like A Functioning Democracy): The Letter From 51 Intelligence Officers Declaring The Hunter Biden Laptop To Be Fake

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

I’ve been holding on to this post since Thursday evening, waiting for an answer to the key threshold ethics analysis question “What’s going on here?” Why, I’ve been wondering, have all of the conservative news media outlets been reporting that, as Fox News’ headline puts it, “Biden campaign, Blinken orchestrated intel letter to discredit Hunter Biden laptop story, ex-CIA official says” when none of the left-biased mainstream media sources—that is, the overwhelming majority—have reported on the story at all, with the sole exception of CBS? On memeorandum, a generally reliable news aggregator, the story didn’t appear at all until this morning (so at last I know where that site’s biases lie).

Well, now it’s Saturday, when visitors to Ethics Alarms are like tumbleweeds rolling through a Western ghost town, but I finally have enough information to discuss this mess, a continuation of the Hunter Biden laptop story suppression that is one of many reasons Donald Trump thinks the 2020 election was “stolen.” The other end of the media is finally weighing in, spinning the episode as hard as it can. As a result, it is impossible to tell what really happened, the pubic will be divided and confused, and we are left in the dark. Again.

Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: The United Nations

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

In a March report, three United Nations entities, the International Committee of Jurists (ICJ), UNAIDS and the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, stated,

“Sexual conduct involving persons below the domestically prescribed minimum age of consent to sex may be consensual in fact, if not in law. The enforcement of criminal law should reflect the rights and capacity of persons under 18 years of age to make decisions about engaging in consensual sexual conduct and their right to be heard in matters concerning them. Pursuant to their evolving capacities and progressive autonomy, persons under 18 years of age should participate in decisions affecting them, with due regard to their age, maturity, and best interests, and with specific attention to non-discrimination guarantees.”

The United Nations is deliberately endorsing the rationalizations used by every teacher that seduces a student, every sexual predator who rapes a boy, every religious cultist who takes a child bride, and every father who has incestuous relations with his teenage daughter. As with workplace sexual harassment,the only ethical system that works to prevent child sexual abuse is absolutism. That means no exceptions. An adult’s superior power and presumed authority must be presumed to render consent from a child under the age of 18 invalid. The “Love is Love” platitudes are simply slippery slopes to rampant molestation. This isn’t an issue that can be decided on a case by case basis.

Continue reading →