Kaboom!

Jumbo, Ethics Dunce, Kaboom And Unethical Quote Of The Month: Hillary’s Jaw-Dropping Lie To Chris Wallace

/ Jack Marshall / 41 Comments

hillary and Wallace

“Director Comey said my answers were truthful, and what I’ve said is consistent with what I have told the American people, that there were decisions discussed and made to classify retroactively certain of the emails.”

—-Hillary Clinton to Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday, asserting that what was demonstrably false was true, regarding a public statement by Comey that can be Googled and watched on YouTube instantly.

My reaction when I saw that: KABOOM! The top of my head blew right off, bounced off the ceiling and knocked over the lamp. Wallace asked Clinton directly about what she had been saying to the public about her e-mails since May of 2015: that she did nothing wrong, that her private, secret e-mail server was approved by the State Department, that she never received or sent a classified e-mail…okay, that didn’t work, that she never knowingly sent a classified e-mail…wait, wait, that she never sent or received an  e-mail that was marked classified. Comey, in his televised, live statement announcing his decision not to recommend prosecution for Clinton, directly contradicted her.

In his careful statement Comey said,

“Although we did not find clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified information, there is evidence that they were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information.,,,seven e-mail chains concern matters that were classified at the Top Secret/Special Access Program level when they were sent and received. These chains involved Secretary Clinton both sending e-mails about those matters and receiving e-mails from others about the same matters. …There is evidence to support a conclusion that any reasonable person in Secretary Clinton’s position, or in the position of those government employees with whom she was corresponding about these matters, should have known that an unclassified system was no place for that conversation…even if information is not marked ‘classified’ in an e-mail, participants who know or should know that the subject matter is classified are still obligated to protect it.”

There is no way that an individual of normal facility with the English language can listen to or read that statement and conclude that Comey was saying that Hillary’s answers to questions about the e-mails to the American public and the news media–for over a year!––were truthful, as in “full of truth.” A technical argument can be made, if one wishes, that  Comey didn’t say that Clinton lied, because maybe she is an idiot and incompetent, and didn’t know or understand what “any reasonable person in Secretary Clinton’s position” should have known and understood, leading to her factually false (and constantly evolving as more facts where uncovered) explanations over months and months. Continue reading →

UPDATE: The DNC “Apology” Is Even Worse Than I Thought! NOW You Get The Kaboom. KABOOM!

/ Jack Marshall / 37 Comments

Kaboom Red

 Well, she got me!

The utter dishonesty of the Hillary Clinton-dominated Democratic National Committee finally made my head explode, earning the Ethics Alarms KABOOM designation, and also gratitude from the makers of Scott Paper Towels.

I posted  on the deceitful DNC non-apology apology reported last night as the party’s  response to the Wikileaks revelation that the Debbie Wasserman Schultz-led, Hillary Clinton-supporting staff of the Democratic National Committee was actively assisting Clinton’s campaign and colluding to undermine that of her sole challenger for the nomination, Bernie Sanders. My conclusion was that by apologizing for “the e-mails” and “remarks” instead of acknowledging and apologizing for what those e-mails and remarks signified, the DNC was cynically pretending to be sorry while actually deflecting attention away from its real betrayal.

It was worse than that.

When I wrote this, I was not aware of the recent discovery of anti-gay and homophobic comments in the DNC e-mails, though the DNC surely was. For example, there were exchanges like this (from The Daily Caller): Continue reading →

KABOOM! An Unethical Quote Of The Week So Outrageous That It Made My Head Explode…By Ben Carson

/ Jack Marshall / 50 Comments

headexplode

“If Melania’s speech is similar to Michelle Obama’s speech, that should make us all very happy because we should be saying, whether we’re Democrats or Republicans, we share the same values. If we happen to share values, we should celebrate that, not try to make it into a controversy.”

—Dr. Ben Carson, making an absurd but original argument to justify Melania Trump’s plagiarism.

What?

WHAT???

Observations while I clean up bits of my skull and brain and get the superglue: Continue reading →

Ethics Alarm: In Memphis, Facts Are Now Racist

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments
Infamy. I hope.

Infamy. I hope.

This truly upsetting story is in part about headlines, and I had a hard time deciding on one for the post. It makes my head explode—I am trying out a new Swiffer now—but it really shouldn’t have exploded, considering recent developments. I could name Commercial Appeal’s editor Louis Graham (left) an Ethics Dunce, which he certainly is (in addition to being a fool, a coward, and a disgrace to journalism), but that doesn’t do him justice. I thought about making his editorial apologizing for stating facts in a headline as an Unethical Quote of the Month, but this was worse than a bad quote. This was surrender.

The Memphis, Tennessee newspaper the Commercial Appeal, a Gannett publication, headlined its front page story about the attack on police in Dallas “Gunman targeted whites.” Here it is:

memphiscom headline

Indeed, African-American gunman Micah Xavier Johnson specifically said that his objective was to  kill white police officers. Nonetheless, protestors attacking the paper for publishing a “racist’ headline gathered outside the paper’s office in downtown Memphis last week. Black Lives Matter signs were in evidence.

Commercial Appeal editor Louis Graham met with protesters, and apologized with a front page editorial titled “We got it wrong.” He wrote in part… Continue reading →

Loretta Lynch-Bill Clinton Meeting Aftermath: Hillary Drops An Unethical Hint, And My Head Explodes

/ Jack Marshall / 25 Comments

pulling strings

According to the New York Times, “Democrats close to Mrs. Clinton say she may decide to retain Ms. Lynch, the nation’s first black woman to be attorney general.”

Wait, what?

WHAT????

WHAT???

kaboom

The woman’s department is currently involved in a criminal investigation of Clinton. Lynch has refused to recuse herself from the investigation despite the taint of the meeting with Bill Clinton, which was apparently engineered by one or both Clintons. Though she has said that she will accept the recommendation coming out of the FBI investigation, she is not obligated to do so. Thus she is still a participant in the process and a decision-maker who has significant power and influence, as of this moment, over Hillary Clinton’s political future.

And yet Clinton allows her camp to send the message to Lynch—through the New York Times— that there may be a job waiting for her in the Clinton Administration….as long as, well, you know. This goes beyond the mere appearance of impropriety that Bill’s trick created for Lynch.

The dangling of a potential high-profile job creates an actual conflict of interest. After all, Lynch can’t continue as Attorney General is Hillary isn’t elected, and Hillary’s election prospects are likely to be significantly diminished if she’s in the Big House.

What is this? A flat learning curve? Complete arrogance and open corruption? Stupidity? Are all of Clinton’s advisors and staff as ethically obtuse as she is, just as Trump’s advisors and staff appear to be as inept as he is? How could Clinton let this happen?

If Lynch wants to guarantee that the public does not assume that this is yet more proof that the Clinton’s are rigging the investigation, she needs to declare, right now, that under no circumstances will she consider or accept any post in a Clinton administration. Failing that. she needs to resign.

Writes Ann Althouse:

Sometimes the prosecutor offers the accused a deal and, on rare occasions, the accused offers the prosecutor a deal. But offering it right out in the open like that? It’s as ballsy as a former President strutting across a tarmac in 107° heat, fueled by a raging desire to talk about his grandchildren.

I don’t know if this was really “ballsy.” Having just written at length about Hanlon’s Razor, I’m more inclined to think that Clinton and her camp are just stupid and incompetent, which, if true, calls into question one of the few clear advantages she supposedly has over Donald Trump.

 

Rueful Observations On Obama’s Speechwriters Laughing About Writing Lies To Pass Obamacare

/ Jack Marshall / 27 Comments

roselaughing

In the wake of Obama foreign policy aide Ben Rhodes boasting about how he managed to hoodwink the news media and the public regarding the negotiations with Iran, this disgusting display is not so much surprising and it is clarifying.

Monday’s edition of  the Charlie Rose show on PBS featured Charlie chatting with former Obama speechwriters David Litt, Jon Favreau, and  Jon Lovett  to discuss their collaboration with the President to assist  his (over-praised) communication skills. Much of the discussion centered on Obama’s stand-up comedy chops—Ah, what might have been! I’d gladly take my chances in that alternate universe—until the discussion turned to this:

CHARLIE ROSE: My point is do you have equal impact on serious speeches? Because it’s about style, use of language, etcetera?

JON LOVETT, FORMER OBAMA SPEECH WRITER: I really like, I was very — the joke speeches is the most fun part of this. But the things I’m the most proud of were the most serious speeches, I think. Health care, economic speeches.

JON FAVREAU, FORMER OBAMA SPEECH WRITER: Lovett wrote the line about “If you like your insurance, you can keep it.”

LOVETT: How dare you!

ALL: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

LOVETT: And you know what? It’s still true! No.

No.

Observations, somewhat diminished because this made MY HEAD EXPLODE: Continue reading →

DOUBLE KABOOM!! Ignorant, Abusive And Incompetent: How Much More Evidence Do We Need That Our Educators And Schools Are Untrustworthy?

/ Jack Marshall / 47 Comments

double KABOOM

I’m sorry to endanger the integrity of your head—mine may never be reassembled, by the looks of things—but here are two recent high school horror stories, one in Texas and one in Arizona, and they do not even involve sexual predators or kids being suspended for pretending to shoot someone with a finger gun.

I. The Two Dollar Bill

Two dollar bill

I’m going to just summarize this stunningly stupid story, and you can read the details here. 13-year-old eighth grader Danesiah Neal, a student  at Fort Bend Independent School District’s Christa McAuliffe Middle School, attempted to pay for her lunch one day with a two-dollar bill given to her by her grandmother. The lunch lady had never seen a $2 bill, so she alerted the school administrators, who called the police. THEY had apparently never seen a $2 bill, and told the girl that she was being investigated for counterfeiting, a felony, as the school allowed this idiocy to unfold. They called the grandmother, and told her she was under investigation too.

A campus officer traced the bill to where granny got it, a 7-11, and then cleverly traced the bill to…THE BANK, which informed these officious, incompetent morons that the two is a genuine piece of currency, and has been in circulation since 1862. Continue reading →

KABOOM! ESPN Achieves A New Low In Unethical Journalism: Misinforming The Public Out Of Spite

/ Jack Marshall / 31 Comments
If you told me ESPN COULD make my head explode, I wouldn't have believed you...

If you told me ESPN COULD make my head explode, I wouldn’t have believed you…

ESPN has been foundering in a sea of ethical ignorance for some time now, but this was shocking even for them.

In a petty exercise to express its disdain and and anger at dismissed baseball commentator Curt Schilling, the sports network excised an entire section of its documentary on the legendary 2004 American League Championship play-offs when it was shown last night prior to the scheduled Red Sox-Yankee game. I cannot think of a single example of unethical journalism by a major outlet so blatant and so offensive.

Let’s go back a bit. Schilling is an outspoken religious conservative, active on social media. He was suspended from his baseball game broadcasting duties last season after comparing Islamic radicals to Nazis in a Twitter post—not all that unreasonable, actually, but if ESPN has a policy against its employees making controversial political statements on social media, and apparently it does, Schilling was asking for trouble.

Indeed, Curt has nothing if not integrity when it comes to expressing himself, and he could not resist commenting on the transgender bathroom controversy, re-tweeting a particularly ugly meme on the issue:

transgender bathroom tweet

ESPN fired Curt. He had earlier in the year opined in a radio interview that “If I’m gonna believe, and I don’t have any reason not to believe, that she gave classified information on hundreds if not thousands of emails on a public server after what happened to General Petraeus, she should buried under a jail somewhere.” Allowing for hyperbole, that’s a perfectly legitimate position to take, but again, if ESPN doesn’t want Curt, who it was paying a million bucks or so, to take shots at someone it believed its audience members were fond of,  it can instruct its employees accordingly. It expressed its objections to Schilling, and he tweeted the meme anyway. Continue reading →

A Donald Trump KABOOM! How Can A Creep Like This Be Running For President?

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

calvin_headexplode

A recently uncovered clip from a 1994 episode of “Lifestyle of The Rich And Famous” was shown on Comedy Central and left host Trevor Noah with a bad case of the oogies…as it will you.

I hope.

“Donald, what does Tiffany have of yours and what does she have of Marla’s?” the show’s host, Robin Leach, asked, referring to Trump’s then one-year-old daughter and her mother and Trump’s second wife, Marla Maples.

“I think she’s got a lot of Marla, she’s a beautiful baby. She’s got beautiful legs. We don’t know if she’s got this part yet,” Trump said, as he cupped his hands under his chest to signify breasts, “But time will tell.”

Kaboom. Continue reading →

Three Strong Links: NCAA Cheating, Minimum Wage Delusions, Journalism Standards and Teammate Betrayal

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

three-links

Here are three essays on current ethics issues, all worth reading and pondering.

1. At Slate, the topic is what constitutes legitimate news, and consequentialism: if a news source publishing non-news creates a real news event because of that publication, does this justify the original publication?

No, of course not. The incident in question involves a gossip site that posted a video shoing Los Angeles Laker Nick Young admitting to cheating on his fiancée, pop star Iggy Azalea. The video was surreptitiously recorded by Young’s teammate, D’Angelo Russell, and now the Lakers are shunning Russell, causing a problem for the team on and off the court. Now is the video newsworthy. Yes, but yecchhh.

The story is here.

2. Commentary discusses the strange trend of liberal legislators pushing extreme minimum wage increases on their cities and states despite risks of serious job losses. California is the latest example. Here is the head exploding quote:

“Why shouldn’t we in fact accept job loss?” asks New School economics and urban policy professor David Howell, who’s about to publish a white paper on the subject. “What’s so bad about getting rid of crappy jobs, forcing employers to upgrade, and having a serious program to compensate anyone who is in the slightest way harmed by that?”

Kaboom. Continue reading →