Government & Politics

July 4th Open Forum!

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Light whatever ethics fuses you choose here today. As usual, traffic is minor on a long weekend. I have only one matter to pass on: Sen. Bernie Sanders’ dishonest and aburd criticism of the Paramount/CBS/”60 minutes” settlement, which would be an “Unethical Quote of the Week” if so many Axis hacks and liars hadn’t been saying the same thing. Quoth Bernie,

“Paramount’s decision will only embolden Trump to continue attacking, suing and intimidating the media which he has labeled ‘the enemy of the people.’ It is a dark day for independent journalism and freedom of the press — an essential part of our democracy. It is a victory for a president who is attempting to stifle dissent and undermine American democracy.”

Asshole.

In order:

1. Trump should be “emboldened.” The media has been indulging in fake news, manipulated reports, partisan bias and anti-democratic fact-hiding for far, far too long, and a reckoning is overdue as well as necessary.

2. The press should be intimidated to make it stop abusing the freedom of the press and deliberately misleading the public.

3. The news media is the enemy of the people. The “60 minutes” scandal showed why.

4. The dark day for independent journalism arrived the first time a major news source like CBS set out to elect one candidate over another instead of reporting objectively and fairly on both. Making it clear that journalists face some adverse consequences when they betray their public trust this brightens the day.

5. The essential part of democracy is the public being reliably informed about the world, the nation and its elected officials objectively, responsibly and fairly. so they can competently participate in their own government. When the free press decides to misuse its power and special privileges to mislead the public, that’s an attack on democracy.

6. How can anyone describe what CBS did with the Harris interview (or NBC, with “Saturday Night Live,” giving Harris an illegal free campaign commercial three days before the election) as “dissent”? Answer: They can if they are dishonest, unscrupulous, shameless Machiavellian leftists like Bernie. This is the guy who said outright that Harris was pretending to be more moderate in her views to get elected, and that was fine with him. “By any means necessary,” after all!

Did I mention that Sanders is an asshole?

7. Bernie and anyone else who stood by and allowed a demented Democratic President be manipulated by unelected back-room aides is estopped from ever using the term, “undermine American democracy”again. Channeling Albert Brooks in “Lost in America,” I’d say that they can’t even use the components of that phrase, “undermine,” “American,” and “democracy.”

8. And can we please stop tolerating the “Paramount settled because it wants the merger to be approved” lie, the agreed-upon narrative the news media has pushed to shift the blame from “60 minutes” to Trunp? Paramount and CBS settled because they did not dare go through discovery, which would reveal high level emails in which various executives openly discussed how to make sure Harris won and Trump lost. Those would create a professional scandal from which CBS might never recover.

Popcorn Popped! Can’t Wait to Watch Zohran Mamdani Try To Spin His Way Out of THIS…

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

When I first saw the headline, I assumed that it had to be from Brietbart or one of the other untrustworthy conservative news sources that I will no longer peruse. But it was the New York Times that yesterday evening ran a story headline,“Mamdani Identified as Asian and African American on College Application.” The piece tells us, as a high school senior in 2009, Mamdani, the presumptive Democratic candidate for NYC mayor, applied to Columbia University after claiming that he was “Asian” and “Black or African American” on his admission form. The story adds the obvious:

“Columbia, like many elite universities, used a race-conscious affirmative action admissions program at the time. Reporting that his race was Black or African American in addition to Asian could have given an advantage to Mr. Mamdani, who was born in Uganda and spent his earliest years there.”

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Paramount/CBS Pays For Its Unethical Election Interference: Good!

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

It looks like the settlement will amount to around 16 million dollars when all is tallied up, more than what ABC paid for George Stephanopoulos repeatedly (but not maliciously, oh no, never that!) calling Donald Trump a “rapist” on national TV. Several cynics were telling me today that this was “a drop in the bucket” for Paramount—it doesn’t matter. The settlement is an admission of wrongdoing, and what CBS and “60 Minutes” did by stealth editing a Kamala Harris interview late in the Presidential campaign to make her sound like less of an idiot was wrong, another “enemy of the people” act, and a blatant attempt to mislead voters and support the Democratic Party under the guise of journalism.

More important than the symbolism of the money perhaps is CBS’s promise to install a mandatory new rule requiring the network to promptly release full, unedited transcripts of future Presidential candidate interviews. It is the “Trump Rule.” That a television news division had to be forced into institutionalizing such transparency tells us all we need to know about the dismal state of broadcast journalism.

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UPenn Capitulates in the Trans Swimming Scandal, If In a Weaselly Way…

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

Well, it’s still progress. Conservative, Trump cheer-leading outlets are pushing the “So much winning!” line, but anyone progressive, conservative or otherwise who couldn’t see that UPenn’s “transitioning” swimmer Lia Thomas (above: guess right or left) was a cheat had his or her brain eaten by the Woke Virus.

UPenn announced yesterday that it would no longer allow transgender women to compete on its women’s sports teams and erased Thomas’ records from UPenn’s list of all-time school records in women’s swimming. “Competing under eligibility rules in effect at the time, Lia Thomas set program records in the 100, 200 and 500 freestyle during the 2021-22 season,” the UPenn weasels injected as a footnote. That’s part of UPenn’s spin. A cheating swimming coach (who should be fired) let Thomas, a mediocre male swimmer who saw a loophole to exploit, be the star of the women’s team to enhance his coaching record. But UPEnn could get away with it then, so it was all right.

The change in policy was part of an agreement reached with the Education Department yesterday about two months after the department found that Penn had violated Title IX, the federal statute prohibiting sex discrimination in schools, when it allowed transgender athletes to compete on women’s sports teams. The Trump administration had frozen millions of dollars in federal funding for the school over its transgender athlete policies. AUTOCRACY! No, this is called “using legitimate government power for justice and the public good.” As part of the deal, UPenn says it will “apologize” to the women placed at a competitive disadvantage by its allowing a penised swimmer with male-puberty musculature to slaughter competing female swimmers in one pool after another last year.

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Ethics Villain CNN Pushes the First Amendment Envelope

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments

What this despicable “enemy of the people” is doing by deliberately publicizing an anti-ICE app may be legal, but it is undeniably unethical. The Trump administration should prosecute anyway.

Joshua Aaron (above: he looks exactly like I assumed he looks!) is a musician and software developer who, because he’s an anti-American, pro-lawbreaking asshole, created an app called ICEBlock. It’s a descriptive name: it allows advocates of open borders and opponents of law enforcement to post sightings of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers across the country. Then the law-breakers they are seeking can more effectively avoid capture, and those who want to attack, harm, kill, or impede ICE agents have a metaphorical “leg up.” That’s nice.

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Ethics Quote of the Week: Prof. Glenn Reynolds

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

“Most of the economic benefit of colleges and universities, and especially of elite ones, is distributional in nature — that is, wealth flows toward people who have the credentials they offer, but the credentials don’t actually promote wealth, they just get you past the gatekeepers.”

—-Conservative law professor and pundit Glenn Reynolds on his substack essay, “What is College Good For?”

Essentially Reynolds, who is the Beauchamp Brogan Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of Tennessee College of Law can be fairly called a representative of our system of higher education himself, so his searing critique deserves some attention an thought. I appreciate the essay because I have long held the conviction that college itself is a fraud on the American people, distorts our power and economic structure away from merit and talent and toward wealth, elitism and purchased credentials that don’t mean what they pretend to mean, and a lifetime of experience as a student, graduate, employer and organization creator and leader supports and continues to confirm that conclusion.

Reynold is right. His analysis would have been right 40 years ago, when I stood up at a D.C. conference of “educators” and asked why all the discussion had focused on secondary school and college diplomas being essential to get “well-paying jobs”and none of it—literally none—about making our rising generations curious, competent, diligent, literate, analytical, creative, erudite, better thinkers and better citizens. The whole conference room booed me! It’s one of my most cherished memories. It also was signature significance regarding the fraudulent nature of the American education system.

Prof. Reynold gets it, and, not to diminish his essay, but it shouldn’t be so hard to get. The scam continues to thrive because the people who haven’t been to college don’t realize what a waste of time, resources and money it is in so many ways, and those who use the degrees as golden ticket credentials don’t have the integrity to admit the truth.

Reynold begins,

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Here Is How Arrogant and Delusional Harvard Is: It Really Thinks It Can Prevail In Public Opinion Over The President of the United States…

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

The Harvard Alumni Magazine arrived yesterday. Above is the cover and the illustration for its feature section about the University’s “resistance” to President Trump’s completely reasonable, responsible and justifiable demands that the most visible, influential, prestigious and wealthy university in the United States stop dedicating itself to undermining American values, indoctrinating students in anti-American biases, provide intellectual diversity on its faculty, cease discriminating against whites, males and Asians, and stop enabling flagrant Jew hatred on campus.

To Harvard’s credit, the alumni magazine makes a pass at even-handedness, even highlighting an alumnus who writes that “no private institution has a right to demand that taxpayers fund discrimination, exclusion and intolerance.” But most of the issue is devoted to familiar anti-Trump victim-mongering, including an essay extolling the work of a non-binary (or something) professor “whose data shows how—and when—authoritarians fall.”

“Authoritarianism” has joined “sexism,” “racism,” “violence,” “insurrection” and other rhetorical weapons of the Left as infinitely flexible accusations steeped in double standards. A President who uses his constitutional powers to pursue policies the Left opposes is an “authoritarian.” A President who weaponizes the legal system to imprison and persecute his political opposition is not—as long as he is a Democrat.

I mean, just to pull a fantastic hypothetical out of the air…

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More Observations on Zohran Mamdani…

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

To his credit, for it is both smart and responsible, the shock winner of the Democratic primary and the presumptive mayor-of-NYC-to-be, Zohran Mamdani has been having interviews with everyone who will sit down with him….well, except for Fox News and its ilk, at least so far. As the fawning interview with MSNBC’s Jen Pasaki shows, the guy is smart, articulate, engaging, charismatic, and, I would say, a skilled demagogue.

Oh-oh.

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Signature Significance: The Democrats’ Year-Old Debate Tweet

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

It was a year ago yesterday that Joe Biden revealed for all to see that America had a senile President. This was established beyond all doubt when he responded to an early question in his debate with Donald Trump by muttering and slurring Authentic Frontier Gibberish, ending with the immortal declaration, “We beat…Medicare.”

Even though anyone with two neurons to rub together knew that moment was curtains for hopes of a Biden re-election, the Democrats tweeted out the flaming lie above.

Yesterday social media wags were taunting and mocking Democrats for a tweet that “hasn’t aged well,” but it’s not funny. It’s terrifying. That tweet demonstrated then and demonstrates now just how Orwellian, Machiavellian, dishonest, ruthless and untrustworthy the Democratic Party has become. It has no regard for transparency, no respect for the public, and no shame.

Even as it was engaging in “it isn’t what it is” disinformation, the Democrats were hustling behind the scenes to dump Biden from their ticket. They issued that tweet knowing full well that Biden didn’t win the debate, he disgraced himself in it. But like the committed totalitarians they are, his party directed its faithful to believe what they told them to believe. Biden won the debate as Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.

A trustworthy, democracy-supporting, patriotic political party doesn’t issue a message like that. A dangerous political party does.

A Perfect Example of a “Trump Lie”

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

On both MSNBC and CNN today, a big deal was made over the fact that President Trump said that “no other country” confers automatic citizenship on those born within its borders. They were both sneering so hard that I bet they needed a lip massage afterwards, “Of course, 33 nations have birthright citizenship,” said one, with the other making a similar statement.

No question about it, they are right and Trump was wrong. What he meant, however, was “No nations anywhere but the Americas have birthright citizenship, and we are the only major power in the world that does.” Or, “Almost no nations that know what the fuck they are doing have birthright citizenship.” Presidents shouldn’t be that careless, but Trump is, he refuses to change, he’s not going to, and nobody should pretend that they are shocked when he does.

Here’s the list, as represented in the chart above: Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina, Barbados, Belize, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Gambia, Grenada, Guatemala, Guyana, Honduras, Jamaica, Lesotho, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Trinidad and Tobago, Tuvalu, United States, Uruguay, and Venezuela.

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