Incompetent Elected Officials

The President Going To Israel Isn’t A “Remarkable Gamble”—It’s Stupid, Desperate, Irresponsible And Unethical

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

According to the front page of the New York Times, President Biden is taking the trip this week “to show unwavering support for Israel — after what officials say was the deadliest day in its history — and to speak with the country’s leaders about several urgent issues, including hostages held by Hamas and humanitarian aid to Palestinians in Gaza.” The Times calls it “a remarkable gamble,” but one should gamble, if at all, only when the potential reward is somewhere close to the anticipated risks, and sufficiently beneficial. There is no rational calculation that makes this absurdly risky journey a justifiable gamble by that definition. The President of the United States is risking the stability and welfare of the nation he was elected to lead to “show support”? Joe Biden can show sufficient support for Israel from the safety of a padded room at the White House.

The trip can only be explained as a Barn Door Fallacy operation, like the reported temporary retraction of the unfrozen Iranian funds that may well have given Iran the encouragement it needed to back the deadly Hamas attack. The President is grandstanding to avoid Democratic Party accountability after that botch before the attack, and for the disgusting, “let’s look at the context,” pro-terrorism and anti-Semitic response of so many Democratic supporters after it, notably on college campuses. It is a purely political move, and not even a smart one even from that cynical perspective.

Making the visit as futile as it is reckless is the undeniable fact that the Israeli government is not going to back away from its pledge to crush Hamas, with all the carnage in Gaza that objective implies. So Joe is putting himself in harm’s way, risking the horror of a Kamala Harris Presidency, to be able to tell Donald Trump that “at least he tried” in the debates? Oh, good plan.

Moron.

President Bush’s surprise 2003 Thanksgiving appearance in Iraq was also irresponsible grandstanding, but at least he was showing symbolic support for the U.S. troops he sent into harm’s way. Biden has no such justification for taking this risk. All I can conclude is that the internal polling at the White House regarding Joe’s popularity is so bad that Biden aides decided to appeal to his macho fantasies and convince our addled POTUS that the trip makes sense. And at least Bush didn’t announce the trip in advance, as Biden has. Brilliant.

The Israeli visit shows warped values, priorities and logic at the very top of our government. I would say that at least it’s useful information, but we already knew that about Joe and his party.

“Now THIS Is Gaslighting…Or Outright Lying…Or Senility…” Follow-Up: Biden Was So Dishonest, CNN Felt Compelled To Practice Real Journalism

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

In yesterday’s post titled “Now THIS Is Gaslighting…Or Outright Lying…Or Senility…,” Ethics Alarms discussed the now common phenomenon of Democrats, especially Joe Biden, dealing with the unpleasant reality of what their incompetence and corruption has wrought by simply asserting that the opposite of that reality is true. That post was focused only on Biden’s outrageous claims that Americans were better off financially after nearly three years of “Bidenomics,” and, even more absurdly, that the “knew it.”

But I did not read the whole speech. With few exceptions, like this one…

…I don’t waste time listening or reading what President Biden says unless another source points me to a particular selection: after all, I have a sock drawer to maintain. Moreover, I have known for decades that Biden lies, plagiarizes, says whatever his pea-brain thinks is useful at the time, and since he started leaking brain cells and IQ points, I also know at any moment he is liable to announce that he is Marie of Rumania. As it turns out, Biden’s claims about the financial fortunes of Americans was just the tip of a rather large metaphorical ice berg, and CNN, now trying to regain its squandered credibility and reputation after dumping the worst of its biased hacks (Brian Stelter, Chris Cuomo and Don Lemon), though far from all of them, could not resist a genuine “factcheck.”

It was like shooting fish in a barrel. Biden said, “I was able to cut the federal debt by $1.7 trillion over the first two years.” That’s pure fiction. CNN pointed out, correctly, that the national debt has increased by more than $5.7 trillion during Biden’s presidency so far. Now, it is theoretically possible that this addled fool doesn’t know the difference between the deficit and the debt, but that’s material misrepresentation, because reducing the debt means that the U.S. actually owes less money, while reducing the deficit only means that the debt has increased less than it has recently because the government is spending more than it is taking in. CNN wasn’t through debunking this piece of fiction:

It’s worth noting, as we have before, that Biden’s Friday comments would be missing key context even if he had not inaccurately replaced the word “deficit” with “debt.” It’s highly questionable how much credit Biden himself deserves for the decline in the deficit in 2021 and 2022. Independent analysts say it occurred largely because emergency Covid-19 relief spending from fiscal 2020 expired as scheduled – and that Biden’s own new laws and executive actions have significantly added to current and projected future deficits. In addition, the 2023 deficit is widely expected to be higher than the 2022 deficit.

And CNN wasn’t done.

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Do Progressive Voters Comprehend The Significance Of Their Elected Officials’ Hypocrisy And Flip-Flops?

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Rhetorical question. Based on the evidence, the clear answer is “No.”

Exhibit A for today is that part of the 16th St. “street mural” that Black Lives Matter protesters painted next to the official “Black Lives Matter” lettering ordered up by Democratic Mayor Murial Bowser in 2020, when she pandered disgracefully to the Marxist, racist, scamster movement by re-naming the area running directly to the White House “Black Lives Matter Plaza.” At the time this stunt was intended by Bowser and teh D.C. City Council as a rebuke to then-President trump, but its syill there, even though Bowser has, weasel-like insisted that the “Defund the Police” message isn’t part of the official D.C. mural. Typical Bowser: the protesters are correct; that’s an equal sign to the left, making the full message “Black Lives Matter = Defund the Police.” BLM does stand for defunding the police, among other things (riots, unpunished crime, thugs resisting arrest…). Three years ago, Bowser dodged the a question on ABC’s “This Week” as to whether she would remove the unauthorized message. “It’s not a part of the mural,” mewled, adding that she hadn’t “had the opportunity to review it.” It’s still there, of course.

Nonetheless, just a few days before the embarrassing episode where a Democratic Congressman had his car hijacked at gunpoint, Bowser, whose city is in a crime wave like so many other Democrat-run cities in the thrall of the George Floyd Freakout and The Great Stupid, announced that her city needed more police. “We don’t have the officers that we need, and sadly we’ve lost three to four hundred officers in the last four years,” she said. “We haven’t had officers in our schools, and we have policies that make it difficult to recruit new officers.”

The obvious rejoinder should be, “And whose fault is that, you dummy?” But it isn’t. Joe Biden’s intellect-challenged mouthpiece blamed Rep. Cuellar’s hijacking on Republicans, though the party virtually doesn’t exist in the nation’s Capitol. Moreover, who voted for Bowser, not to mention that long trail of incompetent and/or corrupt Democratic mayors before her stretch back to convicted felon and crack-head Marion Barry (who has a statue honoring him downtown)?

When elected officials act like Bowser, it is convincing evidence that they can’t be trusted. Changing one’s position in the wake of facts that show you were wrong is simply competent leadership, but arguing two positions that are mutually exclusive is the mark of a politician who lack integrity, accountability, and sufficient brain cells to rub together to make small fire. We are seeing this self-indicting conduct coast to coast, from New York—where New York City’s major and the state’s governor still insist that they govern “sancuaries” for illegal immigrants but who are complaining that they don’t have the space or funds to actually be what they say they are—to California, where Gavin Newsom, hoping to fool an entire country into giving him power when he has presided over the ethics and societal rot that is now California, is brazenly taking contradictory positions on a slew of issues. President Biden, much to Donald Trump’s amusement, is now trying to build Trump’s “wonderful wall.”

Hypocrisy and a flagrant flip-flopping apparently means nothing to voters, perhaps because they have been raised to lack integrity themselves.

Meanwhile, back in D.C., the CVS in the Columbia Heights neighborhood of D.C. regularly looks like this:

You see, black lives matter, and black teens, gang members and thieves regularly loot the store, leaving almost all the shelves empty. “A big group of kids, like 45 or more, walk in before school, after school and late at night to steal chips and drinks,” local station Fox 5 reported this week. “They even throw the food and beverages on the ground and stomp on them, leaving behind a big mess. Staff at CVS have been alerted that thieves are aware of when new shipments come in and that’s when they target the store.” Street vendors are allegedly paying people to go in and steal the merchandise so they can resell it.

The neighborhood is almost exclusively black, so the majority of law abiding citizens in the area are the ones being most harmed by the collapse of the rule of law in the District (Black Lives Matter = Collapse of the Rule of Law), but you watch: they’ll still vote for Bowser next time around, or if not, someone as bad or worse. This was the result in Chicago, when voters got rid of one incompetent, lying, leftist mayor only to replace him with someone more radical and inept than even she was.

As Pete Seeger, himself a reality-challenged Marxist, sang in his best composition, “When will they ever learn?” It’s beginning to look like the answer may be “Never!”

Incompetent Elected Official Of The Week: Ector County (Texas) Commissioner Michael Gardner (R) [Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

Alternate headline: “Wow! What an idiot!

Michael Gardner, an elected commissioner in Ector County, Texas, was officiating at his nephew’s wedding in Nebraska and had the cool idea of calling the throng of 200 guests gathered at the outdoor ceremony to order by shooting a pistol into the air. Gardner cocked back the hammer of the weapon but it slipped—he had never fired the Pietta 1860 revolver before—and the gun went off prematurely. Worse yet, the blank he thought he was shooting off was home-made (for a borrowed gun he was unfamiliar with, remember) and wasn’t nearly blank enough. As a result, his misfire shot his 12-year-old grandson in the shoulder.

Other than that, the wedding went off without a hitch.

In an interview with The Washington Post, Gardner said he regretted using a homemade blank, since he had never made one before, and also using a gun that didn’t belong to him and that he had never used . Then there was that shooting his grandson thing. He regrets that too. Luckily, the boy is okay.

Gardner was charged with felony child abuse committed negligently and resulting in serious bodily injury. He turned himself in to authorities the day after the wedding and was released on a $10,000 bond. Gardner could face up to three years in prison, a $10,000 fine or both. He says that the shooting has put his political future in jeopardy.

Ya think?

He also said, incredibly, “Accidents happen.” Well, that accident never happens unless some idiot has the brilliant idea of firing a gun to start a wedding.

Stories like this are why the rest of the world thinks Americans are nuts.

How Hard Is It To Make A Competent And Responsible Interim Appointment To Fill A U.S. Senate Seat? Too Hard, Apparently, For Gov. Gavin Newsom…

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

In California, the governor has the power to appoint a senator to serve until the next regularly scheduled statewide general election. Current California Governor Gavin Newsom had the opportunity to exercise this power because, in a previous example of unethical conduct by a California elected official, Senator Diane Feinstein had died in office after irresponsibly running for re-election when she was already 85 and declining in health and mental acuity. (California voters, who would vote for a pet rock if it had a (D) next to it, dutifully sent her back to the Senate anyway).

Newsom is running a shadow campaign to be the Democratic Party’s nominee for President in 2024 in case President Biden does a Feinstein, and has recently shown his utter lack of integrity (but we knew that) by vetoing three progressive bills that his rhetoric had previously supported, one that would have given striking union workers in California the opportunity to apply for unemployment benefits, another requiring judges to consider children’s gender identities in custody disputes, and a third that would have barred California’s prison system from sharing information about incarcerated immigrants with federal officials, in keeping with California’s “sanctuary state” position. You can almost hear the wheels turning: Newsom knows that progressives will vote for him over Donald Trump no matter what he does, so he’s trying to look like a moderate to those millions of apathetic and ignorant voters who haven’t been paying attention to what’s happening in California under his watch. Good plan! Unethical, weasel-like, but smart.

In a similarly cynical calculation, Newsom promised in 2021 to appoint a black woman should Feinstein’s seat become open. Not only was this an announcement that Newsom placed pandering to poweful Democratic constituency groups over seeking the most qualified person to fill a crucial legislative position, it also was a betrayal of his duty to the population of Claifornia, all of whose interests must be served by a U.S. Senator, but also to the citizens of the United States as a whole, who require the best representation in their republic available. Gender and skin color are not qualifications for high elected office.

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Yet ANOTHER Rep. Jamaal Bowman False Alarm Update: This Guy Is Beyond Belief!

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

The main unbelievable aspect of this ongoing Ethics Dunce saga, sufficient to qualify it as an Ethics Alarms “Ripley,” is that someone this foolish, unethical and absurd can be elected to Congress in this country.

This is not a parody. This is not a Babylon Bee piece. I am not making what follows up.

When we last left the male “Squad” member and Democratic Representative from New York, he was lying what he risibly calls “his head” off after being caught on video deliberately setting off a fire alarm in the Cannon Office Building in order to delay the House vote on the desperate government funding fill, which was signed over the weekend. This, as many have pointed out, was a crime , so because crimes require intent, and this one is the same crime the January 6 rioters are being sent to prison for excessive periods for (among others), Bowman claimed, hilariously, that he didn’t know that what he pulled was a fire alarm, even though everyone knows what a fire alarm looks like, and that he set off the alarm “by mistake,” thinking that it would open a door that had signs on it explaining how the door opened. Everybody knows that nobody over the age of three could pull down a fire alarm lever “mistakenly.’

Now, since the King’s Pass Bowman expected didn’t materialize (“The Black Democrat’s Pass” is a sub-rationalization of the King’s Pass), Bowman has issued suggested talking points about the scandal, and I present them below, again emphasizing that these are real. Hold on to your skulls:

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Incompetent Elected Official Of The Month (And A Disgrace To Congress Too): Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) [Updated]

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

This amazing story—one more step down into the muck by Congress—dawned earlier today. I was going to wait until the morning to post about it, but I didn’t sleep well last might, and I can’t take another might of ethics nightmares.

As House Democrat were trying to delay a vote on a stopgap spending bill yesterday despite a looming government shutdown, a fire alarm sounded in the Cannon House Office Building, forcing an evacuation. It was a false alarm, and the reason it sounded was that Representative Jamaal Bowman, Democrat of New York, pulled it. Great idea! Bowman’s chief of staff, Sarah Iddrissu, eventually confirmed in a statement on Twitter/X, that Bowman, who represents the north Bronx and parts of Westchester County, had done the deed; she didn’t have much choice, since he was caught on a security camera..

“Congressman Bowman did not realize he would trigger a building alarm as he was rushing to make an urgent vote,” Ms. Iddrissu wrote. “The Congressman regrets any confusion.” Showing an excess of chutzpa or a deficit in respect for the public, Bowman was claiming, at last report, to have set off the fire alarm by accident. How do you do that? That’s Bowman caught in the act above. I guess a sound track would receal taht he said, “OOPS!” when he pulled down the switch.

Added 1, from Axios: “Bowman later told reporters he “thought the alarm would open the door” because “the door that’s usually open wasn’t open.” My wife’s reaction: “That’s an insult to everyone. He thinks we’re all stupid.”

Added 2: Sources are now telling reporters that Bowman ripped down the signs at the door he now claims he thought would open by pulling the fire alarm. Those signs made it rather clear how to leave through them. They have been put back up: here’s the photo of the exit:

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Is It Unethical To Laugh, Mock And Applaud As “Sanctuary Cities” Define The Bard’s Phrase “Hoist With His Own Petard”?

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

No, of course not. In fact, it’s mandatory, necessary, and appropriate. Everyone knew, or should have know, that the progressive, woke, Democratic grandstanders who undermined U.S. sovereignty and the rule of law by announcing that their cities would not cooperate in the enforcement of immigration laws were irresponsible fool, indeed (sorry) destructive assholes all along. (Anyone who voted for such officials are also irresponsible assholes, just to get the accountability aligned,) Now, however, we know that they know they are assholes, and have to behave in a manner that exposes to all what assholes they are. This is great.

The utter hypocrisy of mayors and governors declaring their love for illegal immigrants as long as most of them arrived and stayed in cities along the Southern borders was exposed when governors of states overrun by what the news media calls “migrants” to hide their problematic and illegal features have sent busloads and plane-loads of the them to cities like New York City, Chicago and Washington, D.C. Suddenly, the “sanctuaries,” which were so compassionate and welcoming as long as there were few negative consequences of their facile lip-service were not so understanding.

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The NYT Provides A Preview Of Its 2024 Campaign Toadying Strategy, Part I: Gaslight! [Expanded]

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

This is nice of them.

Today’s Sunday Times “Review” section, the punditry and analysis collection that once provided diverse political views and included unexpected perspective on modern life (but who cares about diversity and inclusion these days, right?) has two head-explodingly dishonest and diabolically-biased pieces that demonstrate how the paper will do its utmost to boost the Democrats back into the White House for another four years despite their epic incompetence and defiance of Constitutional government during the first three.

The first is epic gaslighting by Times editors and alleged conservative (diversity!) Ross Douthat. Like all conservative columnists that the Times subjects to its Stockholm Syndrome process, Douthat isn’t one anymore, just as the magazine he once edited, The Atlantic, has become a reliable Democratic propaganda mouthpiece (like the Times). He’s religious, believes in the importance of organized religion and opposes abortion, so he makes an effective double agent for the Gray Lady. He has contributed a subversive pro-Biden column with the hilarious headline, “Why is Joe Biden So Unpopular?” It’s a mystery! What could it be?

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Ethics Hero (And Most Ethical Use Of “Asshole” of 2023): Gold Star Father Mark Schmitz

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Mark Schmitz, a Gold Star father, testified before the House Foreign Affairs Committee yesterday regarding the deadly suicide bombing in August 2021 that left 13 U.S. servicemembers dead, including Mr. Schmitz’s son, Marine Corps Lance Cpl. Jared Schmitz. The cruel, irresponsible and incompetent American withdrawal from Afghanistan and its aftermath ordered by President Biden has been largely forgotten by most American voters, since they have the attention span of ADD kittens. Perhaps Schmitz’s no-hold-barred attack on Biden’s conduct in this episode will remind them.

What am I talking about? The mainstream news media will make sure as few of the kittens see his testimony as possible, and there’s still more than a year for them to forget again.

His full statement:

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