Incompetent Elected Officials

Incompetent Elected Official Of The Month (And Unethical Quote Of The Month Too!): Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.)

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Really…what an idiot. There is no excuse for a political party allowing someone this obnoxious and stupid to run under its banner for Congress. After all, stupid people have a strong majority in many districts, and parties have an obligation to mitigate this democracy-mocking problem by at least trying not to nominate candidates like Matt Gaetz. Ethics Alarms didn’t need his latest embarrassment to make this observation about Gaetz: he already earned it several times over. Just peruse his EA dossier. Gaetz’s most recent mention here for being like he is was in April, and a year earlier I expounded on his creepiness at length, concluding in part,

I have seen enough to conclude that Rep. Gaetz is a creep. I don’t like creeps, and as a general proposition I don’t think creeps should be in positions of influence and power, because you can’t trust creeps. They are ethically “bent”….I know that Gaetz is a creep because he screams creepiness, like his stunt of wearing a gas mask on the floor of the House of Representatives during debate over the first pandemic aid bill, and joining a group of Republicans who forced their way into a closed congressional witness deposition during the run-up to Trump’s first impeachment in 2019. ...Then there’s his revelation last year that he has been living with a 19-year-old non-biological male, un-adopted “son”, Cuban immigrant Nestor Galban, whom he met when Galban was 12 and Gaetz was dating his older sister.

Or just listen to the guy.

As in so many other cases, the fact that someone like him could be elected speaks horribly about the voters in his district, the party that nominated him, and the state of democracy generally. His various statements show him to have a scarlet “C” on his forehead.

All of which is a prelude to his most recent episode: saying this to a crowd of Turning Point conservatives yesterday:

“Why is it that the women with the least likelihood of getting pregnant are the ones most worried about having abortions? Nobody wants to impregnate you if you look like a thumb.”

But that’s Matt!

Observations:

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Wow! Extreme Ideology And Resistance To Stubborn Reality Leads To Astoundingly Unethical And Irresponsible Policies…

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

I don’t understand this at all. I don’t understand how intelligent officials—and by “intelligent” here I only mean “smart enough to put their socks on before their shoes”—-can possibly convince themselves that ignoring common sense and the collected wisdom of centuries as well as the acquired knowledge of recent decades will have anything but disastrous results. But here we stand:

  • In June, the California Highway Patrol arrested two men after a search of their vehicle revealed a stash of cocaine and 150,000 fentanyl pills. Based on the amount of drugs involved, they were booked into jail with an initial bail amount of $1 million each. (Fentanyl kills people.) But a pre-trial risk assessment of the suspects resulted in the men being classified  “low risk,” so they were released on their own recognizance without either the local D.A. or law enforcement officials being consulted. The two men, 25-year-old Jose Zendejas and 19-year-old Benito Madrigal, faced up to 14 years in state prison. They were expected to show up back in court on July 21. Shockingly, they did not. Nobody knows where they are.Their release is part of the social justice movement to eliminate bail because it discriminates against poor people. It also helps with the over-incarceration problem, because it allows criminals to get away with their crimes and harm society again, while broadcasting the message to other would be criminals that they are in a low-risk, high rewards profession as long as they stay where fantasy-blinded progressives run things….like California.

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Gallup Finds “Media Confidence Ratings at Record Lows”…Well, Good!

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Why “good”? It’s obviously not good that the trustworthiness of journalism has declined so precipitously. What is good, since the news media has proven itself to be so biased, irresponsible, dishonest and untrustworthy, is that the public is waking up and no longer trusts it. That minimizes the damage. It does not solve, however, the existential danger to our democracy of having a propaganda system instead of objective and reliable reporting.

Sure, this is a poll, and polls themselves are biased and unreliable. Gallup and Pew, however, are the most reliable of the pollsters, and this one at least seems right. 11% trust in TV news is essentially no trust at all: that number represents the moron component that shows up in every poll. (The 16% trust level in newspapers is irrationally high.) Continue reading →

Unethical Quote Of The Week: GOP Senate Candidate Herschel Walker [Expanded]

/ Jack Marshall / 27 Comments

“Since we don’t control the air, our good air decided to float over to China’s bad air. So when China gets our good air, their bad air got to move. So it moves over to our good air space. Then — now we got we to clean that back up.”

Yes, Georgia Senate candidate Herschel Walker really said those words, in that order. The gibberish is on a recently released video of an appearance he made last week at a local GOP picnic in Hall County, northeast of Atlanta, when Walker spoke, if you can call it that, about climate change. The Republican Party, desperate to take control of the Senate, actually nominated a candidate to defeat Democratic incumbent Ralph Warnock whose grasp of science, logic and language is that infantile.

Walker’s sole qualifications, if you can call them that, for the Senate are that he is a local and national sports celebrity, and black. He has no other qualifications. In addition to his obvious lack of education and erudition, he has also lied repeatedly for years, presenting himself as someone he is not. He is a neon-bright hypocrite, lecturing about the responsibilities of fatherhood while hiding the existence of his own children conceived without the security of a secure relationship with their mothers. Continue reading →

Incompetent Elected Official Of The Month: R.I. State Senator Tiara Mack

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments

I’m late to the party on this one, but it deserves a special post.

That’s Rhode Island state senator Tiara Mack’s Fourth of July video, showing her (as you can see) twerking upside-down in a bikini. Mack says to the camera, “Vote Senator Mack.” Classy!

The mind boggles. Elected officials are obligated to represent high standards of decorum and respect for their office. Does it really have to be explained why this conduct is irresponsible and disrespectful, as well as civically incompetent? If twerking half-naked on one’s head is acceptable public behavior by a legislator, what isn’t? This is, in the words of the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan, “defining deviancy down.” Continue reading →

Unethical Quote Of The Month: Rep. Mary Miller (R-Ill.)

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

“President Trump, on behalf of all the MAGA patriots in America, I want to thank you for the historic victory for white life in the Supreme Court yesterday.”

Rep. Miller at a Trump rally in Mendon, Ill.

What an unbelievable idiot.  Miller’s clean-up team issued a predictable explanation, telling the Associated Press that the first-term Illinois Republican misread her prepared speech and meant to declare the Dobbs decision a victory for the “right to life.” “You can clearly see in the video … she’s looking at her papers and looking at her speech,” her spokesman said.

Ah! The Elmer Fudd excuse—meant to say “right” but could only say “wight”! It could happen to anyone. Wiiiight...I mean, “right.” Continue reading →

Can Of Waning Work Week Ethics Worms: Race-Based Justice And Other Revolting Creatures [Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

1. I hate to take pleasure in anyone’s career setbacks, but...the word that CNN’s unethical media watchdog, Brian Stelter, is about to get dumped is good news for everyone but him. It also means that CNN will have rid itself of its two most flagrantly partisan and dishonest talking heads, the other being Chris Cuomo. Stelter took over “Reliable Sources” from the flawed but qualified Howard Kurtz, who had covered media conduct for the Washington Post, and at least tried to be objective (and still does at Fox.) Stelter immediately transformed the Sunday show into a CNN-fawning, Fox News-bashing epitome of what a news ethics show must not be. The last hack standing among CNN’s worst is now Don Lemon, who because he is black, gay and cute apparently is immune from his just desserts. As Meat Loaf memorably observed, however, two out of three ain’t bad.

2. Wait, what? Tim Allen isn’t the voice of Buzz Lightyear in the new Pixar film? The Buzz origin film, which has Chris Evans as the new voice of the popular character from “Toy Story” 1-4 is already creating controversy because it features a lesbian kiss. You know: that’s Disney’s way now. The movie’s director Angus MacLane “explained” that the recasting was necessary because the new animated film called for a more serious Buzz. Does anyone believe that? Allen was replaced because he’s an outspoken conservative, and Disney/Pixar wanted a star who would vigorously defend lesbian smooches in a kids movie, because that is apparently it’s priority these days. If the director wanted Buzz to sound more serious, he could direct the voice actor to voice him that way.

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Early Evening Ethics Aggravations, 5/23/2022: Facts Don’t Matter, Words Don’t Matter, Aiming A Loaded Shotgun At A Black Jogger Doesn’t Matter…

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Currently bugging me…

  • Walking Spuds just now before the rains come, I saw no fewer than five fellow Alexandrians, ranging in age from about 60 to 13, walking along on a lovely, cool day without appearing to look up once from their cell phone screens. I said “Hi!” to two of them, but they didn’t hear me because they had earbuds blocking out all auditory stimulation from the outside world. One was walking a dog trailing behind., but I could have replaced it with a rabid wolverine for al she would have noticed.
  • Right after I posted about Stacey Abrams’ ongoing con and the mainstream media’s immediate resort to the “Republicans pounce!” deflection, New York Times reporter Trip Gabriel tweeted, “Why did John Fetterman chase down a Black person with a shotgun?’ asks Barnette. The GOP use of this 2013 incident – which some PA Dems predicted would be used in the general to discourage Black turnout – has begun.” Barnette is recently defeated GOP Pennsylvania Senate hopeful Kathy Barnette, who raised the 2013 incident when Democratic Senate candidate John Fetterman detained an innocent African-American jogger with a loaded shotgun and pointed it at his chest. How rude of her! (That was criminal assault, by the way.) Instapundit asks, “Who Among Us Has Not Chased Down an Unarmed Black Jogger with a Shotgun?” and the National Review muses on how the mainstream media would handle a similar incident if the candidate in question were a conservative rather than an extreme progressive “Bernie Bro.”

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Nancy Pelosi’s Unethical Quote Of Her Career Proves What An Ethics Villain She Is…But We Knew That Already

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments

“Who would ever [have] suspected that a creature like Donald Trump would become president of the United States, waving a list of judges that he would appoint, therefore getting the support of the far right and appointing those anti-freedom justices to the court?”

—Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi on CNN yesterday

Almost exactly four years ago, progressives, Democrats and the news media accused Donald Trump, then President, of racism because he referred to border-jumping MS-13 gang members as “animals.” At that time, Pelosi delivered this pious rebuke:

We believe some of us who are attracted to the political arena and to government and public service that we’re all God’s children. There’s a spark of divinity in every person on Earth and that we all have to recognize that as we respect the dignity and worth of every person. … And so when the president of the United States says about undocumented immigrants, ‘these aren’t people, these are animals,’ you have to wonder, does he not believe in the spark of divinity? The dignity and worth of every person? ‘These are not people, these are animals,’ the president of the United States. … Calling people ‘animals’ is not a good thing.

Of course it was a cheap shot by Pelosi, but she specialized in cheap shots during the Trump years. If one is going to call anyone an animal, the brutal, lawless MS-13 gang members are a good choice. Now, however, Pelosi calls a President of the United States a “creature,” which is even lower than “animal,” evoking slimy insects, reptiles, and this guy…

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The Biden Ministry Of Truth Fiasco: “Disinformation,” “Misinformation,” And De-Information

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

The New York Times this morning had no reports whatsoever on the emerging truth that the head of the Department of Homeland Security’s ominous-sounding “misinformation and disinformation” board, Nina Jankowicz, has not only been a purveyor of “disinformation” (aka. “intentional lies”) herself, and also, in the blunt words of the editorial board of the New York Post, “a partisan hack,” but also a narcissistic whack-job, as the TikTok video above clearly shows.

The fact that the Biden Administration would be so dense as to appoint a woman like this to head an agency that was guaranteed to set heads exploding everywhere but in the anti-free speech community called Wokeville (see “evil” hidden in there? Huh? HUH??)is just one more indication that common sense and basic competence have left the building, the building being the White House. And Ethics Alarms mocked Trump for not hiring “the best people” as he had promised on the campaign trail! I owe Donald an apology. Even Omarosa, Sean Spicer and Steve Bannon weren’t any more untrustworthy than Jankowicz, and they hadn’t been put in charge of a censorship operation.

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