Government & Politics

Unethical Quote of the Week, In So, So Many Ways: Becky Pringle, National Education Association President

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

“We know what this administration is doing, so we are saying to Donald Trump and all of his allies, we will not, we will not scapegoat immigrants, we will not—the people who have built this country—we will not stand by and allow you to do that.”

—-Becky Pringle, President of the NEA, declaring her union’s support for open borders and illegal immigration while demonstrating dubious critical thinking skills.

Pringle just got up at a microphone and screamed all of that, and more. There’s a video here that I can’t embed; I have to say that I am suspicious that YouTube does not yet have a video of the hysterical display and that Pringle’s rant has not been more prominently shown on broadcast media. For it is tey another clip that will make a wonderful campaign ad for Republicans. Here is more of her craziness: I could have picked almost any sentence as an “unethical quote”:

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What Is the Ethical Significance of ABC Firing Terry Moran?

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

ABC News today essentially fired senior correspondent Terry Moran after he wrote derisive comments on social media, as Ethics Alarms discussed here. Moran had already been suspended for making gratuitous personal comments about the character of Stephen Miller, the deputy White House chief of staff, and President Trump, using the term “world-class hater” to describe each.

Moran had worked at ABC News for 28 years, and his contract was up for renewal.

“We are at the end of our agreement with Terry Moran, and based on his recent post — which was a clear violation of ABC News policies — we have made the decision to not renew,” the network said in a statement. “At ABC News, we hold all of our reporters to the highest standards of objectivity, fairness and professionalism, and we remain committed to delivering straightforward, trusted journalism.”

Riiiight.

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What Is “The Achingly Simple Lesson That Democrats Seem Determined Not to Learn?” It’s Not This….

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Wow. It’s fascinating, isn’t it? Here’s a guy I have never heard of (and don’t particularly want to know more about) claiming that silly Democrats (his pals and ideological colleagues, obviously) need to learn to talk to dumb, ignorant Americans—you know, like the ones they thought they could fool for four years with a fake President and could convince that Donald Trump was really a new Hitler—by communicating with them like and through other morons.

That’s what the New York Times deems worthy of an op-ed.

Here’s a gift link to the essay, though trust me, it isn’t worth your time to read all of it: I read it so you wouldn’t have to. Michael Hirschorn, a Hollywood progressive, really and truly thinks that it isn’t the Left’s batshit crazy extreme and unethical policies that alienate so much of the public, but their way of explaining them. But that isn’t a new (stupid) theory at all: throughout the “Biden” administration, Democrats kept telling anyone who would listen that things were really, really great, and the problem was “messaging.” Which meant “We need more believable liars.” Which meant “These idiots will believe anything as long as we know how to fool them.”

No. The problem was and is that the whole party and the progressive radicals who occupy it suck. But Hirschorn obviously doesn’t know that, because he’s one of them. It isn’t that the Democrats are wrong to try to “reach young men,” whom they have vilified, insulted (“Believe any woman who claims to have been sexually insulted, because the man she accuses probably did it!”) and discriminated against for decades, it’s that they are going about it all wrong. Hirschorn might as well be the Ringo Kid with Democrats in the role of Sheriff Bart…

Here are some tells from the piece:

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No, “Reason,” the White House Complaining to ABC About Terry Moran’s Open Bias Isn’t “Censorship.”

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

Ugh. Libertarians—can’t live with ’em, can’t live without ’em (but it’s sure worth trying). Reason, the often helpful and provocative libertarian mag and website, has aligned itself with the Trump Deranged and Axis for predictable reasons: Joe Biden is its ideal as a POTUS, a vegetable that makes Calvin Coolidge look like FDR. Libertarians don’t like strong Presidents, because they don’t like Presidential power, which means they don’t like the Constitution when you get right down to it. Reason likes open borders, for example, which pretty much disqualifies its writers and pundits for anything but giggles. Abortion. Addictive drugs.

Include me out, as Sam Goldwyn used to say.

Now Robby Soave is complaining about what I touched on in this post yesterday…

Robby complains, in “Terry Moran Insulted Stephen Miller? That’s None of the Government’s Business,” that this is the government putting unconstitutional pressure on “the press” to censor its reporting.

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Update on “The LA Pro-Open Borders Riots Ethics Train Wreck”

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

This morning, CNN pinged me with an alert that read, “CNN analysis: Trump’s deployment of the National Guard is a warning to other cities opposing his migrant policies.” You know, just like arresting and locking up serial killers is a warning to others who want to murder people, and giving tickets to speeders is a warning to irresponsible drivers who like to speed. Of course, CNN uses the deceitful cover-word “migrant” to avoid reminding dim-wit readers that these are law-breakers.

The news is that both California Governor Newsom and LA’s incompetent mayor showed that they were supportive of the rioting just as they have been supportive of illegal immigrants, and since the violence is aimed at blocking ICE from doing its job, the situation demanded Presidential action. In short, the riots are not about Trump, but the direct result of the refusal of the previous administration (whoever was in charge of it) to enforce the law (unless it was enforced against perceived political foes).

Meanwhile, in the hopes that I can make “A Friend” [see comments to this post]choke on his shredded wheat, here is how the New York Times is rolling out the Axis propaganda:

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ABC to Terry Moran: It’s OK For You To Be Biased Like the Rest of Us, But For God’s Sake Don’t Be So Obvious About It!

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

ABC News suspended senior national correspondent Terry Moran for, shall we say, a revealing but undiplomatic post on Twitter/X that gratuitously attacked both President Trump and top aide Stephen Millers as “world-class hater[s].” Nice!

Nah, there’s no mainstream media bias!

“Miller is a man who is richly endowed with the capacity for hatred. He’s a world-class hater,” Moran wrote. “You can see this just by looking at him because you can see that his hatreds are his spiritual nourishment. He eats his hate.” Moran continued, “Trump is a world-class hater. But his hatred only a means to an end, and that end [is] his own glorification. That’s his spiritual nourishment.”

If you say so Terry. Amazingly, Moran apparently saw nothing unprofessional about his outburst, which he subsequently deleted. Talk about living in a bubble!

An ABC News spokesperson said in a statement shortly thereafter that Moran had been suspended, pointing to the post as the impetus for the disciplinary action.

“ABC News stands for objectivity and impartiality in its news coverage”—Excuse me, but HAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA–<breath>HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!—“and does not condone subjective personal attacks on others,” ABC said in a statement. “The post does not reflect the views of ABC News and violated our standards — as a result, Terry Moran has been suspended pending further evaluation.”

Silent Pondering Our Shared Tomorrows As The Road Stripes Streak By

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Guest post by Steve Witherspoon

From your host: The rioting in LA and other cities going on right now make this unusually emotional post by Steve especially timely. I have been pondering it for several days now. The essay is clearly a head explosion in process, an eruption of anger and frustration with the metaphorical fuse lit by the issues he mentions and others. [I hope Steve forgives me for more extensive editing than usual, prompted by his passion interfering with his characteristic precision]

I sympathize. This is an ethics blog, and part of my job is to keep the discussion focused on ethics, rational analysis, and open-mindedness. There has been so much in the past year particularly that reminded me of a legendary meltdown by a good friend, a lawyer, who suddenly snapped in the back seat of my car years ago and started screaming, “This is FUCK! It’s all FUCK! Everything is FUCK!” True, alcohol was involved. However, the outburst was therapeutic. We all knew what he was ranting about, he was essentially right, and after my friend had relieved himself of his frustrations, he was able to help us solve the problem at hand.

And we did.

Take it, Steve.…and don’t despair.

***


I know exactly what my laser-focused conscious mind is doing in this situation, but what does your subconscious mind ponder when you’re on the road for many hours over 4,800 miles, while you crisscross a big chunk of the middle of the United States of America on vacation?

For hours at a time, when the road seems to vanish into a fine point on the horizon and the visible land meets the sky, the subconscious mind kicks into gear and is actively working behind the scenes… at least mine is. In past years that subconscious would be working on something creative. Maybe a few guitar riffs that I could put into practice at a later date, writing some music, designing a new addition on the house, or putting the final engineering touches on a new product for work, etc. The creative juices get flowing when the subconscious is given the opportunity to ponder for long periods of time as long as it’s relatively uninterrupted. Then when you’re no longer spending all those laser-focused hours on the road and settling back to your regular life, the stored thoughts that your subconscious mind had been working on are suddenly released into the brain. It can cause a bit of an information overload. This has happened to me more times than I can count.

I’ve learned that, at least for me, if you give the subconscious mind a chance to do what it does best, think deeply for long periods of time, it can feed your intellect.

For the last three weeks of May 2025, my wife and I were on an annual vacation. This time we focused on some National and State Parks in the western and southwestern United States that we wanted to see thoroughly. I briefly wrote about it and shared a few select photos in a blog post titled “There’s A Great Big World Out There To See.”

As usual, my subconscious mind was doing what it does best; however, this time the output was different. My mind wasn’t working on creative things like music, product designs or engineering; it appears that it was critically thinking about politically related things. This was particularly surprising because I generally cut myself off from all things political when on vacation and simply enjoy stopping to smell the roses with my wife. In the great scheme of things, life can be short, and I think it’s really important to do things with your spouse, especially after you retire, and not end up with piles of regrets that outweigh finding real peace after the end of life catches up with a spouse.

Again, my subconscious mind seemed to be thinking about politics and more specifically the political division we have. It doesn’t matter one bit how much critical thinking and facts you throw at the absurd things that are coming out of the political Left, the divide keeps getting deeper. It doesn’t seem to matter that life-long Democrats are leaving the party and openly stating that the Democratic Party has fallen over the edge of reality and left them.  It doesn’t seem to matter one bit that politicians like the baldfaced liar Adam Schiff get nailed in one lie after another and that he’s spewing the lies to intentionally mislead the voting public.

I’ve been writing about some of the absurdities coming from the political Left for a few years. What they are trying to force upon the American people is delusional, and undermines the core foundation of values that our country has been built upon.   

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More Thoughts and Observations on the LA Pro-Illegal Immigration Riots

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

1. This morning, while CNN and MSNBC were raging about the riots, Fox News had an extended feature about how to make faux cocktails using coffee. Gee, it would be nice to have a responsible, trustworthy broadcast news network that was both unbiased and that didn’t assume that is viewers dropped out of junior high school.

2. I am surprised that so few readers have commented on this morning’s introductory post. Was everyone at church? “Is anybody there? Does anybody care?”

3. Here’s the comment on Facebook by an old friend, a retired journalist, and, of course, a Trump Derangement sufferer:

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Who Says The Supreme Court Is Partisan On Every Issue?

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments


The Supreme Court yesterday sided 8-0 with a straight (okay, “cis”) woman in Ohio who filed a “reverse discrimination” lawsuit against her employer after her boss declined to promote her, preferring to promote “rainbow” staffers. In a unanimous ruling written by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the Justices agreed that a federal appeals court in Cincinnati erred by imposing a tougher standard for the case brought by Marlean Ames to move forward than if Ames had been a member of a minority group. 

The appellant, a straight, white woman, had filed a lawsuit in federal court alleging that she had been the victim of employment discrimination based on her not being gay. The department had hired a lesbian for the position that she had sought, she contended, as well as a gay man to replace her after she was demoted.  The United States Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit threw out Ames’s sexual orientation claim, arguing that her claim could not go forward unless she could show “background circumstances” to support her allegations of reverse discrimination, such as a “pattern” of reverse discrimination. 

SCOTUS reversed, sending the case back to the lower court. Federal employment discrimination law, Jackson explained, prohibits intentional discrimination based on “race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.” Period. Minorities have no more intrinsic grounds to claim discrimination than majority groups.

Thank you!

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Greta Thunberg Is Danny Bonaduce

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

Now hear me out.

The National Review has a scalding—but more or less fair—-evisceration of Greta Thunberg, the past-her-pull-date former teen climate change activist. An excerpt:

You remember young Greta, right? The vinegar-rictused, Swedish ecological activist whom the media turned into a global celebrity back in 2018…Who can forget the climax of it all, the legendary comedy of Thunberg’s 2019 United Nations address? Visibly reading from a script and adopting actorly mannerisms — shrieking “HOW DARE YOU?” and bawling about “stolen dreams” and “stolen childhood” — Thunberg condemned the capitalist West for desecrating the hopes of neurotics like herself. “We’ll be watching you,” she warned icily…A neurodivergent teenage girl was granted supreme moral authority over mankind by adults desperate to weaponize her “vulnerability” to club the world into bending to the eco-socialist agenda pushed by her handlers. We were asked to take it all extremely seriously…Hungering for continued relevance, Thunberg responded by escalating her tactics, seeking arrest at anti-mining and anti-oil protests across Europe to garner headlines. But the media reaction was tepid, and the thrill was gone. It surprised me not the slightest bit when she instantly transitioned from environmental activism (old and busted) to pro-Palestinian activism (new and sexy with the kids these days) in the wake of the October 7 massacre. A year later, she was performatively arresting herself on podcast appearances to signal her solidarity with Hamas.

The bombardment ends with this: “As for myself, I couldn’t care less about Thunberg’s fate. If the Israeli Navy wants to hole her boat below the waterline as the French did to sink the Rainbow Warrior, then it’s no problem of mine. I don’t ever want to write about her again, and unless she escalates to suicide bombing, I intend not to. For as much as her astringent mien and unearned pretense make her a figure of comedy, I find her morally repulsive.”

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