Government & Politics

Unethical (And Ignorant) Quote of the Month: NYC Mayor-Elect Zohran Mamdani

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

“I believe this is a city of international law.”

—Zohran Mamdani, on ABC News, saying that he would do everything in his power to enforce warrants from the International Criminal Court….which have no authority in the United States, just like the Court itself. He added,  “and being a city of international law means looking to uphold international law.”

Gee, do you think this guy is a globalist? The problem is, as usual, Mamdani doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Everything within his power is nothing. An international warrant has as much legal force in the U.S. as Confederate money or a Bazooka Joe comic.

New York City is not a city of international law, and the Communist mayor saying that he “thinks” it is means about as much as him saying, “I am the Lizard King!” or “I believe in the Tooth Fairy.” Cities cannot individually decide to enforce ICC warrants or international law; these are national policy decisions, and New York City as well as the states are bound by U.S. policy.

Oh yeah, this is going to work out real well.

Some Answers To Gail Collins’ Question: “Where, oh Where, Will the First Female President Come From?”

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

Gail Collins is one of the New York Times’ chatty and less extreme progressive columnists, which is not to say that her bias doesn’t leap from the page at regular intervals. Her latest effort is “Where, oh Where, Will the First Female President Come From?” (gift link). The sudden interest in this on-its-face sexist query comes from two likely sources: Michelle Obama’s offensive accusation (but she just doesn’t like the United States very much and has been saying so in various ways since she was in college) that the public isn’t “ready” for a female President, and the moronic DNC cant that the only reason Kamala Harris lost (after the worst Presidential campaign ever!) was that she was sort-of black and/or female, take your pick.

The United States doesn’t need a female President, or a male President, or a black President, or a white President, or a gay President, or a short President. The United States needs a competent, ethical courageous and effective President, and what EEOC category or categories that leader fits into should be irrelevant. Now, I have spent decades studying where Presidents come from, and it is true that a lot of the features and backgrounds that seem to create the weird types that tend to become POTUS do not help the chances of aspiring female Presidents, and it will take a remarkable, unusual woman to overcome the template. (But Presidents should be remarkable, shouldn’t they?)

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Observations on the Epstein Drama. Summary: I Don’t Understand This At All.

/ Jack Marshall / 52 Comments

Right now, a sniffling groups of women including past victims of the Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking operations are standing in front of the Capitol before Congress’s vote on releasing “the Epstein files,” whatever that means at this point. One speaker—they are all saying not just kind-of the same thing, but exactly the same thing but in different words (sometimes) said that their lament isn’t about politics. It’s obviously about politics. Both CNN and MSNBC, the most aggressive Democratic propaganda agents broadcasting, are showing the demonstration live, as if it’s important news. Fox News is barely mentioning it.

The issue is political and partisan. The proof is irrefutable. Why didn’t the victims, or whoever organized them, or the mainstream media, insist that the Biden Administration release the files when the power to do so was entirely within its grasp? Nobody thought of it? The Democrats were fabricating ways to “Get Trump” and had been since 2015; everyone knew he had once been pals with Epstein; and the scandal was 20 years old. The Epstein revival only became a thing when the Axis of Unethical Conduct became desperate in its efforts to slow down Trump 2.0 as his administration began dismantling the Obama-Biden nascent totalitarian state. Naturally, Axis media was all in. Naturally, publicity hound Marjorie Taylor Greene, who comprehends neither law nor logic, decided to use it to get cheap clicks. Maybe she really thinks a rehash of the evil deeds of a man who has been dead for six years is a good use of her time; who knows? She’s an idiot.

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President Trump Morphs into George McGovern! Didn’t See THAT Coming!

/ Jack Marshall / 31 Comments

In 1972, on the way to an epic trouncing by Richard Nixon in that year’s Presidential race, nice, clueless, ultra-liberal Sen. George McGovern’s flower child-fueled campaign was roundly mocked for a proposal to give a thousand dollars to every man, woman and child. This was called the ultimate nanny state hand-out plan, among the more polite criticisms of it. Now President Donald Trump, hardly one for tie-dyed shirts, says he wants to give most Americans a $2,000 handout funded from tariffs.

“A dividend of at least $2000 a person (not including high income people!) will be paid to everyone,” the President wrote last week in a Truth Social post. U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told Fox News that the rebates would likely be given to families making “less than, say, $100,000.”  They might get a puppy and candy too.

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And Now…Here Comes A.I. Derangement Syndrome!

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

“Coca-Cola’s AI ad just ruined Christmas… again” rages tech blog CB (Creative Bloq) Wow. A Coca-Cola by-the-numbers holiday ad lasting a bit more than 60 seconds ruined Christmas just like the Grinch or Mr. Potter. How is that possible?

It isn’t, but apparently the new tool of artificial intelligence which can create things like the Coke ad faster and cheaper than CGI has some folks losing their jingle bells. What’s going on here?

This: the Marxists and progressives on social media and elsewhere are upset because AI puts actors out of work, or soon will. Of course, except for Santa, there are no humans in the ad to be put out of work, but the critics on X and elsewhere aren’t fooled. Coke used cute animals, see, so people would be fooled into thinking that AI wasn’t taking away human jobs. “Firstly, can you really put aside the issues of AI generated creative displacing artists simply by using animals instead of humans?,” Fergus McCallum, CEO at TBWA\MCR wonders. “Even if you can, there’s no getting away from the lack of joy and authenticity. As audiences start to turn away from the AI slop being served to them on a daily basis, Coca-Cola are in danger of becoming inauthentic too. Whatever happened to ‘I’d like to teach the world to sing’?!”

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Once Again, An AI Bot Doesn’t Know What It’s Talking About, This Time Regarding U.S. Presidents

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

I wish Ann Althouse would stop publishing her conversations with Grok, Elon Musk’s chatbot. Is she on Elon’s payroll? Yesterday, the quirky retired progressive law prof turned blogger was writing about the Netflix series “Death by Lightning” based on the excellent  “Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President,” which EA discussed several years ago. (The books main character, James Garfield, is one of my favorite Presidents, as is the man who succeeded him after he was assassinated, his VP Chester A. Arthur.)

Noting that Garfield was a reluctant Presidential nominee, Ann decided to once again ask Grok’s opinion, as she has been doing almost daily for months now. “I’m interested in the Presidents who have not wanted to be President, who have felt bad about winning. I asked Grok to list them in the order of how much they did not want to have to do it.” Well, I wouldn’t have had to ask that, and Althouse, by publishing Grok’s ill-informed and sloppily reasoned answer, has made her readers less informed than they already are. Here was Grok’s terrible answer:

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The U.S. “Isn’t Ready” For a Woman President? Oh Shut Up, Michelle!

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

Michelle Obama‘s latest nonsense was too stupid for an “unethical quote” award and she’s never been elected to anything, so the “Incompetent Elected Official” designation is also beyond her grasp. If “Most Over-rated, Arrogant, Narcissistic First Lady in U.S. History” title was the prize, Michelle would lap the competition.

Here’s her whole, nauseating quote in response to actress Tracee Ellis Ross (Diana’s daughter) on whether there has been enough “room” created for a woman President, whatever the hell that means:

“As we saw in this past election, sadly, we ain’t ready. That’s why I’m like, don’t even look at me about running ‘cause you all are lying. You’re not ready for a woman. We got a lot of growing up to do and there’s still … a lot of men who do not feel like they can be led by a woman and we saw it.”

What? Who admires this woman, and how do they justify it? To begin with, Hillary Clinton, a woman last I checked, won the popular vote in the 2016 election, meaning that our bigoted, juvenile population still voted for a female President despite her running one of the most inept and offensive campaigns in U.S. Presidential history…until the next woman ran. You can see that one with full babbling cretinism flying in the video above, where Kamala gloats about her “three dimensional chess” brilliant strategy that lost.

It isn’t that the U.S. isn’t ready for a female President: it isn’t ready for a phony, blithering, incompetent female President. Kamala lost by less than 2 percentage points despite being unable to put together a coherent argument, getting an unearned nomination, picking a complete boob as her running mate, and praising the record of the even bigger boob who picked her as VP, and who was the Worst President Ever.

“Harris lost because of sexism” is a despicable, dishonest and insulting excuse for her party’s defeat, and the fact that Michelle Obama would stoop to it gives us one more, like, incompetent and untrustworthy, like, female not to vote for as, like, President.

What an asshole.

So What’s With The “Groypers”?

/ Jack Marshall / 38 Comments

I guess because I regard podcasts as a waste of time, the term “Groyper” was happily outside my consciousness until very recently. The main reason I encountered it at all was the latest Tucker Carlton controversy that metastasized into a big PR problem for the Heritage Foundation. Tucker—note please that Ethics Alarms identified him as a principle-free, self-aggrandizing, cynical Ethics Villain years ago, even before his Fox News stardom: See? “I’m smart! I’m not dumb like everybody says!”—has been cozying up to Hitler apologists, Holocuast-deniers, anti-Semites and white supremacists because, as usual, he’s decided that its where the clicks and “likes” lie among the easily fooled and ignorant. After he had a slobbering interview with white supremacist (above) Nick Fuentes (whose followers call themselves “Groypers“), Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, posted a disgaceful video on social media praising and defending the creep (I mean Carlson in this case) while using terms that sounded like anti-Semitic dog-whistles.

I should have posted on it, but I wrongly assumed Roberts would have been forced to resign by now. The board of Heritage should get cracking: one thing conservatives, Republicans and MAGA do not need is for the #1 conservative think tank to be perceived as backing fascists (referring to Fuentes this time) and lying assholes (back to Tucker).

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The Democratic Shutdown Was 100% Unethical: Let’s See If The Axis News Media Succeeds in Blaming It On Trump and Republicans…

/ Jack Marshall / 45 Comments

Then, you see, in Axis of Unethical Conduct Land, the disastroud, doomed to fail shutdown was ethical because “it worked.” The Harry Reid Principle (“Romney lost, didn’t he?”).

“Why did you decide to vote with Republicans to open the government?” Joe Scarborough (on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe”) asked “Independent” Senator Angus King (of Maine), who is a Democrat without the guts to admit it.

“Well, Joe, you have to go back to what the strategy was at the beginning of the shutdown,” King answered. “There were two goals, both of which I support. One was standing up to Donald Trump. The other was getting some resolution on the ACA premium tax credit issue. The problem was, the shutdown wasn’t accomplishing either goal. And there was practically, well, it was zero likelihood that it was going to.”

And there you have it! The Democrats were willing to harm the economy, government employees, the poor, federal workers and more to “stand up” to Trump, meaning that the shutdown had as much validity as the “No Kings” rallies and the Trump Deranged who gathered for a primal scream at the sky. The ACA premium tax credit issue had already been resolved, but the Democrats, who ironically enough, no longer support democracy, didn’t like the way it was resolved by an elected majority.

King caucuses with the Democrats; he knows what they talked about. Like any good totalitarians, which is what they have become, the entire party with a few outliers like Senator Fetterman, is counting on a captive, Pravda-style news media to mislead the public so they blame President Trump and Republicans for the damage they did unilaterally.

I wonder if they’ll get away with it…

Ethics Quiz of the Day: Mencken-Style Ad Hominem

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

At the Washiungton Free Beacon, columnist Andrew Stiles writes,

Jack Schlossberg, the sentient boat shoe and semi-employed TikTok user, is running for Congress in New York. It was bound to happen. The 32-year-old Democrat belongs to the Kennedy dynasty—that inexplicably beloved menagerie of goon-faced Habsburgian freaks, Nantucket douche bros, chronic alcoholics, and bloated sex pests. Schlossberg, a mentally deranged internet addict who cracks jokes about guzzling “Jew blood” and “male jizz,” has sought to inject the storied Kennedy brand with Gen Z flare.

That anti-Kennedy invective made me laugh out loud more than once. But is it fair commentary to mix in so much ad hominem invective in an opinion column if it is genuinely funny, at least to a substantial number of readers (or listeners)?

Famous (or infamous) journalist-pundit H.L. Mencken (1880-1956, above) excelled at this sort of thing; he may have even invented it. Here is part of his “obituary” for three-time (losing) Presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan after he died shortly after he faced off against Clarence Darrow in Dayton, Tennessee in Tennessee v. Scopes aka, “Monkey Trial”:

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