Leadership

Fair, Accurate, And Devastating: A Hillary Super-Pac’s Anti-Trump Ad

/ Jack Marshall / 32 Comments

Donald Trump has said and done so many outrageous things since his November, 2015 mockery of a disabled journalist that many have probably forgotten how ugly, cruel and undignified it was. Trump also, you may recall, denied that he even knew the journalist was disabled—one of his many Jumbos (“Elephant? What elephant?”) since that accursed day that he entered the presidential race. Now a super-PAC supporting Hillary Clinton has taken that moment and employed it to make a vivid point, easily summarized as, “This guy wants to be President?”

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Gut Check For Obama: The Responsible Thing Is To Pull Out Of The 2016 Olympics

/ Jack Marshall / 28 Comments

Rio2016-Logo-2

UPDATE: 6/18/13 Now this.

The responsible thing, in fact, would have been to pull out before now.

The Olympics, which were supposed to represent the ideal of pure, individual amateur (For love, not money) athletic achievement, metastasized into a bloated, hyper-nationalist insult to those ideals long ago. In addition…

…The Olympic organization is corrupt, accepting bribes to determine which nations host the games.

…The competitions are corrupt, with banned performance enhancing substances being used widely and with the assistance and knowledge of participating nations, in some cases. At the end of last year, the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA)  issued a report calling for Russia to be banned from international athletics at all levels for flagrant doping violations and a “deeply rooted culture of cheating at all levels” within Russian athletics.

Have the Olympics banned Russia? Of course not.

Meanwhile, an IOC investigation revealed that 23 athletes have tested positive in a massive doping scandal that could ban a total of 31 yet-unnamed athletes “from 12 countries and six sports” from participating in the 2016 Olympics.

…The games now have the shadow of terrorism hanging over them.

…Expenditures by hosting nations always divert resources into inefficient and unnecessary projects, as greater national and social priorities suffer in the pursuit of pride and prestige. Following a pattern that we have seen in other countries, some poor Brazilians  have  lost their homes as part of preparations for the games. Continue reading →

The Flat Learning Curve Again: Obama Signals His Desires In A Law Enforcement Matter Of Some Considerable Consequence

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

curve-flat…and not just any law enforcement matter, but an investigation of a former Secretary of State and presumptive Presidential nominee.

Nice. You see, Barack Obama just doesn’t care. That’s the only possible explanation for this pattern which goes way back to 2009, when he opined on whether his old friend from Harvard, Henry Louis Gates, was the party at fault in an altercation with a Cambridge, Mass, police officer. That was his first year as President, so maybe it’s plausible that this “Constitutional scholar” and allegedly brilliant man didn’t know that the President of the United States warps the justice system and law enforcement when he declares how he thinks they should handle a particular matter, since he is at the tippity top of our rule of law. Obama has done this again and again, however—with Trayvon Martin… in the Big Branch Mine disaster…as Obamacare approached a key challenge in the Supreme Court…in the military sex abuse scandal…regarding Arizona’s illegal immigration laws, and regarding other matters. He has to know by now that it biases the process, but his supporters cheer, the news media makes excuses, only Republicans, the “conservative media”  and Ethics Alarms complain, so he keeps doing it anyway. He can get away with it, so he just doesn’t care.

Nice.

This, however, was special. The same day that the White House admitted that the FBI’s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s intentional mishandling of official e-mails for her own personal needs–she didn’t want citizens to be able to see her business and political machinations using the Freedom of Information Act—was a criminal investigation, he endorsed Clinton for President in glowing terms.

Fox News’ Chief Washington Correspondent James Rosen asked White House Paid Liar Josh Earnest about the appropriateness of this—heaven forfend that any non-conservative-biased news outlet would ask such an obvious and necessary  question, queried “You have other employees of the executive branch, career prosecutors, FBI agents, working this case who have now just heard how the president wants to see this case resolved, in essence. Isn’t there some conflict there?”
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Ethical Quote Of The Day—D-Day, That Is : Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Allied Commander

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

dday_landing

“Our landings have failed and I have withdrawn the troops. My decision to attack at this time and place was based on the best information available. The troops, the air and the Navy did all that bravery could do. If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt it is mine alone.”

—–Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, as found on a piece of paper he wrote on just before the D-Day invasion began, and just after he ordered it to commence, on June 6, 1944.

Eisenhower wrote these words to be his own apology and acceptance of responsibility had the massive invasion at Normandy been a defeat rather than the history-altering victory it was.

It almost was a defeat, and as the note, which Ike’s naval aide, Captain Harry C. Butcher, found crumpled in his shirt pocket weeks later and saved for posterity, shows, Ike realized all too well that it might be. The secret dry run for the invasion had been a deadly fiasco, the weather was atrocious, and no military operation on this scale had ever been attempted before in the history of man. It took a combination of German mistakes, high command confusion, individual heroics and the usual twists and turns of chaotic fate that decide most battles to allow the Allies to prevail. Continue reading →

Madeleine Albright Scores A Perfect #22!

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

perfect-10-score

Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright is in some respect the perfect surrogate for Hillary Clinton, another former female Secretary of State. She has not been the deftest of supporters, however. The last time she made the news and Ethics Alarms with the statement that women who didn’t support Hillary Clinton would burn. “There’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help each other!” she said, making a pure and shameless group identification argument for Clinton’s candidacy.

Now, however, she has outdone herself, warming the cockles of Ethics Alarms’ heart by giving us a perfect Number 22 on the Ethics Alarms rationalization list [ The last perfect #22 honored here was this, in 2014]. I had conceded the Rationalization Championship in this campaign to Donald Trump and his supporters, as they avoid ethics entirely most of the time and default to rationalizations as a matter of reflex . Do they know rationalizations are neon markers of unethical reasoning? No, they don’t. The Donald’s favorites appear to be… Continue reading →

Unethical Quote Of The Week: Sam Liccardo (D), Mayor of San Jose, California

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

 

“At some point Donald Trump needs to take responsibility for the irresponsible behavior of his campaign,”

—Mayor Sam Liccardo, of San Jose, California, in response to rioting and violent attacks on Trump rally attendees after a Trump speech.

I am searching for some tangential benefits—silver linings in clouds of gray, so to speak—from the ugly choice of Presidential candidates being foisted on us. One benefit is that the situation is relentlessly exposing the flawed and in many cases deplorable character of various public figures, journalists, and others, including friends who we once thought had admirable integrity, values and principles. Most likely to expose the rot beneath are the hyper-partisans.

The anti-Trump riots in San Jose were shocking and inexcusable, except by the most unethical use of rationalizations and bias. Nonetheless, Liccardo’s immediate public response to them was to blame Donald Trump for, I guess, making Liccardo’s citizens viciously attack Trump supporters. Continue reading →

How Much Have The Clintons Corrupted Democrats And American Society? This Much…

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments
U-u-ncle S-sam? Is Th-that you?

U-u-ncle S-sam? Is Th-that you?

A  Rasmussen poll released this week found that 71 percent of Democratic voters believe Hillary Clinton should still run for President even if she’s indicted.

The President of the United States is charged with preserving, protecting, and defending the Constitution of the United States, which means making certain that the rule of law is respected and executed. Obviously, a Chief Executive who is herself a  felon cannot be trusted to perform these duties, and a candidate facing an indictment degrades the democratic process by forcing voters to even consider the prospect of voting for one.

It isn’t just Democrats.The poll shows that over-all, 50% of voters believe that it is acceptable for an accused felon to be elected President of the United States of America.

The Clintons (plural: Bill should have resigned after obstructing justice and lying under oath, and would have if he respected his office as much as he craved power) are not the only ones responsible for this tragic dive in American standards for leadership. It has been a long, slow, painful erosion, accelerated by criminal values being exhibited or extolled by several Presidents since Eisenhower, as well as Vice-Presidents Gore and Cheney; the news media’s willingness to accept or minimize unquestioned misconduct and skirting of laws when the “right” side engages in it; populist criminal heroes in the black community, like Al Sharpton, Marion Barry, Kwami Kilpatrick and others; the precipitous decline of trust in all institutions, from the Catholic Church to professional and college sports to the military; the accumulated ethics ignorance seeded by an incompetent and corrupt teaching profession; the defining down of deviancy from legal and ethical norms deliberately encouraged by the drug culture; ongoing efforts by the Obama Administration to reduce the stigma of law-breaking; the celebration of criminal anti-heroes in pop culture, and more. Continue reading →

Ethical Quote Of The Day: Columnist Richard Cohen

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

Richard Cohen

“Trump could win. He could become president, commander in chief, ruler of the Justice Department and head of the IRS. In other words, the American people could elect someone who has not the slightest appreciation for the Constitution or American tradition. When Trump insisted that he could compel a military officer to obey an illegal order, I heard the echo of jackboots on cobblestone…. It does no good to argue that Trump is just doing a shtick, that he means little of what he says, that he is all swagger and bluff. Trouble is, his supporters do not see him that way. They take him at his word.

History nags. It admonishes. “American exceptionalism” is a phrase that refers to the past, not necessarily the future. Nothing is guaranteed. I’d like to think that Americans really are exceptional, that we have an exceptional faith in democracy and the rule of law. I now have some doubt. I always knew who Trump was. It’s the American people who have come as a surprise.”

—— Eccentric liberal  political columnist Richard Cohen in his essay, “Trump has taught me to fear my fellow Americans”

Richard Cohen is an odd duck in the world of liberal punditry. He is often emotional rather than rational; he wears his biases on his sleeve, and his ethical quirks are legion: for example, he is an infamous apologist for sexual harassment, and therefore Bill Clinton. He is not unperceptive, however, and I feel obligated to recognize him for one of the few times I have been in total agreement with his analysis.

I may have to start a new category called “Ethical Quotes About Donald Trump.” I promise if I ever encounter an ethical that is positive about The Donald’s divisive and dangerous candidacy, you’ll be among the first to learn about it. My assumption is that never the twain shall meet.

Faking The Unicorn: The Hoover Institution’s Victor Davis Hanson Explains Why Republican Will Vote For Trump

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

unicorn2

Loyal reader and frequent Commenter “Other Bill” sent me this essay by conservative writer Victor Davis Hanson of the Hoover Intstitution, with the note that it is “Probably as close as you will get to what you’ve been looking for.” I think he’s correct, but since what I’ve been looking for is a single rational reason to vote for Trump, and Hanson’s essay consists of irrational beliefs, rationalizations, terrible logic and skewed values that many Republicans will adopt, it is like sending someone searching for a unicorn this…

horned woman

It’s interesting but disgusting, and not what I’m after.

Hanson’s piece begins…

If Donald Trump manages to curb most of his more outrageous outbursts by November, most Republicans who would have preferred that he did not receive the nomination will probably hold their noses and vote for him.

How could that be when a profane Trump has boasted that he would limit Muslim immigration into the United States, talked cavalierly about torturing terrorist suspects and executing their relatives, promised to deport all eleven-million Mexican nationals who are residing illegally in the U.S., and threatened a trade war with China by slapping steep tariffs on their imports?

A number of reasons come to mind.

Hanson has already invalidated his essay at the outset by material omission. If the items he mentioned were the only reasons to oppose Trump, his subsequent arguments might make sense….well, more sense than they do. But to even try to list the reasons Trump is unfit is to understate the case. In addition to what Hanson mentions,

  • Trump reduces all debates to ad hominem attacks, which would degrade the standard for all debate, culture wide, with devastating effects should he become President.
  • He has advocated the virtues of bribery, while mocking the virtue of integrity.
  • He sees nothing unethical about conflicts of interest.
  • He has endorsed the use of doxxing to retaliate against critics, indicating his disregard for privacy and confidentiality.
  • He endorses vengeance.
  • He is a misogynist, a sexist, and a sexual harasser.
  • He has lied repeatedly, and then lied about lying.
  • He refuses to apologize even when he has been exposed as engaging in reckless wrongdoing.
  • He has refused to engage in serious study of the issues, preferring instead to improvise answers to policy questions, showing laziness and a lack of seriousness.
  • He is a clinical narcissist, meaning that he is unstable and suffering from a crippling personality disorder.
  • All of the individuals he has appointed to represent him in the media have been exposed as incompetent, indicting Trump’s judgment as well as his claim that he’ll “appoint the best people.”
  • He has endorsed the views of white supremacists.
  • He is incapable of giving a dignified, articulate, coherent speech.
  • He does not understand the difference between rationalizations and ethics.
  • He has no military experience.
  • He has no government experience.
  • He would probably be the least intelligent President in U.S. history. (There are a few we could have a legitimate argument about. Those Presidents, however, had other virtues Trump not only doesn’t have, but doesn’t care about.)
  • This.

Is there more? Of course there is more…much more. Pages and pages more. Hanson gives five policy-based reasons to object to Trump, plus the fact that he is “profane.” (This is equivocation: Trump isn’t just profane; he is vulgar, boorish, undignified and crude.) That’s misleading. That’s deceit. That’s how the supporters of Hillary Clinton, if they were Trump supporters, would falsely try to mislead critics.

Here are Hanson’s “reasons” that “come to mind”—I may not be able to resist an occasional bolded remark before I’m through quoting—: Continue reading →

For A Respected Newspaper And Its Journalists, Denial Is Unethical

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments
..and so is deceiving readers by 'burying the lede'...

…and so is deceiving readers by ‘burying the lede’…

Nah, there’s no mainstream media bias!

In a spectacular example of doing everything possible to hide bad news (in its view and those of most readers…and me too), the Washington Post this weekend made it difficult to learn the results of its own poll, which showed the horrible result–in the Post’s eyes—that Donald Trump now leads Hillary Clinton 46% to 44%…not a lot, but considering that the margin was 11% just a little while ago, big news. Apocalyptic news.

The Post headline? I have the print edition before me now: “Voters accentuate the negative in poll,” with the section of the story (by Dan Balz and Scott Clement) visible on the front page describing how more voters dislike Clinton and Trump that like them. How is that news? Didn’t everybody know that months ago? It also teases that the candidates are in a “virtual dead heat,” but it takes (Mediaite’s Joe Concha actually counted: Thanks, Joe!) five paragraphs and 219 words to timidly admit what the public has a right to know: Trump is now leading Hillary in the Post’s poll (with ABC).

This is more than burying the lede; this is denial, and competent, responsible, objective journalists cannot ethically engage in denial. Bad or good, the news belongs up-front and headlined, because most people don’t read entire articles. Why did the Post do this? It’s emotional and juvenile, and that’s all it is. This is anti-Trump, pro-Hillary bias crippling news judgment and competent reporting. Balz and Clement can’t help themselves from spinning the poll story to make it sound like it’s really good news for Hillary, writing: Continue reading →