Leadership

Comment of the Day: “From the Res Ipsa Loquitur Files: Gee, What a Christian, Presidential, Sincere and Uniting Easter Message!”

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

It has long been the position of this website that only a cynical and contrary God could have contrived to put the United States of American in a position where a volatile, unpredictable and ethically flawed figure like Donald Trump is its only avenue of rescue from the anti-American and totalitarian aspirations of the modern Democratic Party. This means that for the next four years I, and anyone who is similarly perceptive, must exist in a state of continual dread. Will this President engage in a disastrous unforced error or definitive breach of leadership conduct that will result in such public revulsion that the Machiavellian Left can again get its metaphorical clutches around America’s throat? This keeps me up at night, and, to be blunt, anyone who doesn’t see this as a constant threat from which there is no relief until the 2028 election is living in a dream world.

Thus I was pleased and relieved to read Ryan Harkins’ Comment of the Day on my post expressing personal revulsion at President Trump’s self-indulgent and completely gratuitous Easter message, rotten Easter egg if there ever was one. Here’s Ryan…

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From the Res Ipsa Loquitur Files: Gee, What a Christian, Presidential, Sincere and Uniting Easter Message!

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

I know, I know…The Julie Principle.

Even so, as I said in brief summary of Rep. Mace’s uncivil and disrespecful treatment of a constituent who dared to imply criticism of her representational, “This doesn’t help.”

Once upon a time, Presidents chose their words carefully for their public pronouncements. I defy anyone to explain how the Truth Social rant above can accomplish anything positive. I place it in the same category as the Trump Hate outbursts by the likes of Maxine Waters, Adam Schiff or Jasmine Crockett, all of which are designed to inflame rather than to unite, except that a President should be held to higher standards than members of Congress.

The only question in my mind is whether exploiting the holiest of Christian holidays to barf out insults and declarations of personal pique is less revolting, more revolting, or about as revolting than President Biden’s use of the day last year to issue a pandering, celebratory proclamation about “Transgender Day of Visibility.” I score Trump’s message as worse, as in “more unethical,” because its language is, though typical of this President, still inappropriate for any resident of the White House. (Trump issued a similar message last Easter, but he wasn’t President them. That’s a material distinction, or should be.)

It is also, like Biden’s message, stupid and incompetent. Trump has a challenging agenda and a tough road ahead; his personal popularity is crucial to achieving that agenda, and there is no way these kinds of self-indulgent outbursts can do anything but alienate potential supporters.

Can This “Democratic Norm” Be Saved?

/ Jack Marshall / 29 Comments

One of the most hackneyed attacks on President Trump is that he violates “traditional democratic norms.” Of course, this is another Democratic Party double standards play: most assertive Presidents ignore some “traditional norms” while forging new ones, and the last Democrati in the White House crushed some surprising traditional norms I thought were secure, like the norm of enforcing immigration laws, and the norm of selecting Cabinet members on the basis of their abilities rather than their EEOC categories, the norm of holding press conferences, the norm of having the elected President actually be the President, and the norm of not dropping out of a re-election campaign once it has begun so the party can install a more promising replacement without the formality of primaries and a democratic nominating process.

A democratic norm that is definitely on death’s door in the Trump Administration is the traditional respect the President has extended to reporters and journalists. Yesterday, President Trump was openly hostile and insulting to CNN anchor Kaitlan Collins when she questioned him in the Oval Office on the deportation of El Salvadoran national Kilmar Abrego Garcia. He called her a “low-rated anchor” while insulting her employer, CNN. Passing a question off to Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, the President sniped, “Can you just also respond to that question because you know it’s asked by CNN and they always ask it with a slant because they’re totally slanted because they don’t know what’s happening. That’s why nobody’s watching them.” Ouchie! Later in the session, Trump responded to another question about Garcia from Collins by saying, “How long do we have to answer this question? Why don’t you just say, ‘Isn’t it wonderful that we’re keeping criminals out of our country’? Why can’t you just say that? Why do you go over and over …and that’s why nobody watches you anymore! You have no credibility.”

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Ethics Verdict: The President’s Executive Orders On Chris Krebs and Miles Taylor

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

This is easy: irresponsible, petty and stupid.

President Trump signed a pair of executive orders directing that there be federal investigations and other sanctions against high-profile administration critics from his first term. The first is former homeland security official Miles Taylor. He’s the jerk who wrote the anonymous New York Times op-ed in 2018 boasting about how he and others were working behind the scenes to sabotage the first Trump term. describing an internal resistance to Trump in his first term. The other is Christopher Krebs, the former head of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), who worked to oppose Trump’s claims that the 2020 election was “fixed” and “stolen,” and was was subsequently fired.

In the case of Taylor, the President implied in his remarks that he engaged in “treason,” which is a stretch, to put it lightly. Krebs was fired: that should have been punishment enough. In either case, Trump has bigger fish to fry, as the saying goes, and these orders do nothing to advance his agenda.

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The National Parks’ Dumb Response To Trump’s “No DEI” EO Explains So, So Many Things…

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

The National Park Service website has an Underground Railroad page. It used to feature a large photograph of the remarkable female “conductor,” Harriet Tubman (left above). The page began, “The Underground Railroad — the resistance to enslavement through escape and flight, through the end of the Civil War — refers to the efforts of enslaved African Americans to gain their freedom by escaping bondage.” But some boob or combination of boobs thought that the Trump EOs and other measures aimed at purging divisive, partisan and often discriminatory “diversity, equity and inclusion” programs from the government, education and other private institutions mandated eliminating straightforward and historically accurate information. It wasn’t just the National Parks Service, of course. The Defense Department also eliminated many pages that celebrated important minority veterans, such as civil rights champion and icon, Jackie Robinson.

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The Naked Mayor Principle ( or “What an Idiot!”)

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Tom Ross, the “non-partisan” mayor of Minot, North Dakota, has resigned. Guess why. He accidentally sent an explicit nude video of himself to City Attorney Stefanie Stalheim. For some reason, this moron waited for a city investigation to be completed before doing what he should have done the moment it happened, which was back in January. The investigation found that the mayor and Stalheim had concluded a town business related phone call about a Minot police officer who had committed suicide and the mayor sent her the “Ew!” video shortly thereafter.

Ross insisted he sent the video to the wrong address and had intended to send it to his girlfriend. So what? The Naked Mayor Principle, though never explicitly stated here because no previous mayor has been this stupid (or stupid in this particular way), is a natural corollary to the Naked Teacher Principle, which states that a secondary school teacher or administrator who allows pictures of himself or herself showing the teacher naked or engaging in sexually provocative poses to be seem online cannot complain when he or she is dismissed by the school as a result. A high elected official who sends such a photo or video to an employee is in an ethically similar position. Bye!

The frisky mayor handed over his resignation letter prior to a Minot City Council special meeting called to deal with the scandal. The city investigator found that due “to Ross’s position as one of increased visibility, responsibility, and trust, and due to his decision to use a personal cell phone to conduct city business, that the fact that he would use that device to record and send videos of this nature is in and of itself reckless enough that he knew the risk he was taking by engaging in such behavior.” Yah think? The investigator also concluded that the incident met the city’s standard for workplace harassment, whether or not it was accidental. I don’t know about that, but it doesn’t matter. The town’s mayor takes naked photos of himself and sends it to people. Ick. Pooie. Elected officials shouldn’t be behaving like teenagers, even competently. He’s an idiot. Idiots shouldn’t be mayors.

Case closed.

Ethics Dunce: President Trump

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

He still just doesn’t get that “President of the United States” thingy.

So the President had dinner with Bill Maher, Professional Asshole. 1) So what? and 2) Why in the world would Trump elevate Maher to this level?

See—duh!—a President elevates Maher’s status by deeming him worthy of a meeting, which he is not. This is Cognitive Dissonance Scale 101. Maher is nothing. Every bit of status and credibility he gains makes him more powerful and the public dumber. This weasel has been tacking to the Right lately because he senses his Leftist-young-ignorant-kneejerk-socialist audience is shrinking, and he gets cheap publicity by criticizing Democrats now and then. But he is neither smart enough nor astute enough to be an enlightening pundit. For Trump to treat him otherwise is foolish. It’s irresponsible, and inept leadership.

Oh, I know Trump has done this with other useless public “influencers,” like Kim Kardashian. It diminishes him and the office. Trump doesn’t seem to understand that he’s no longer part of the weird world of dubious celebrities. The President is above all that, far above, unless he cuts himself down to size. He just doesn’t get it. Presumably he never will. Next he’ll be having dinner with Joy Reid…

President Trump’s Third Term Fantasy

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

We’re back in Julie Principle territory again, unfortunately: “Fish gotta swim, bird’s gotta fly, Trump’s gong to keep saying crazy stuff to make progressives cry…” This is a particularly annoying example. Just as the position of Ethics Alarms is that trusted professionals do not have the luxury of pulling April Fool’s Day hoaxes on the public, it is also unethical for Presidents of the United States to deliberately raise phony issues for public consumption.

The President began raising the possibility of a third term almost from the moment he was elected to his second. It is, of course, impossible. The Constitution forbids it quite unambiguously thanks to the 22nd Amendment, the eventual Congressional reaction to Franklin Roosevelt shattering the unwritten rule, set by our first President, that two elected terms is enough. Over the weekend, Trump said he was “not joking” about there being “methods” to circumvent the two-term limit. No, there really aren’t and never mind that: Trump is 78 years old, not exactly in peak physical condition, and would be 86 at the end of a third term. The real question is whether he can complete this one.

Trump was even sparking speculation about a fantasy race between him and Barack Obama in 2028 for an unconstitutional third term, and a depressing number of morons on social media are taking it seriously. Yes, Dana, that’s your cue…

Here’s what’s happening. I was pondering Trump’s nonsense, and concluded that there are three things going on here, only one of which is substantive:

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Gee, I Wonder Why Americans Are Losing Trust In Their Nation’s Institutions? It’s a Mystery!

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Science, Academia, Journalism, Government.

On June 3, 2022, the young protestor above tied her neck to the net during a tennis match at the French Open, with her shirt reading “We Have 1028 Days Left” sending the critical message to the world that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change had decreed that if massive de-carbonization was not implemented before that (literal!) deadline, it would be too late to save the planet from a climate change apocalypse.

The 1,028th day was last week, Thursday March 27, 2025. Does that young woman feel ridiculous? She should. Now, she probably is one of those fanatics who won’t procreate because children are bad for the environment, but if she does, her kids will have a ball with that photo. I know I would have, just as if there was a photo of my mother as a teen dressed as a banana, or my father with dicks on his face after having them drawn on while he was asleep.

The Totalitarian Left in the U.S. has been citing “science” to justify irresponsible policies for years, indeed decades, and accountability is at hand. If the science of climate change is so “settled,” why are all the predictions and deadlines proven ridiculously false? Even our currently under-educated, critical thinking deprived rising generations are smart enough to figure out a con when they see, well, when they see the same con over and over again. Here’s an article about how the Great Barrier Reef that we were told was being destroyed by global warming (Science!) has more than doubled in a decade and its size and health is the highest ever recorded.

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It’s Official: “A Nation of Assholes” Has Come to Pass, and Its Herald is Jasmine Crockett

/ Jack Marshall / 27 Comments

The U.S. now has a member of Congress who is regarded as a rising leader of a major political party who talks like this…

“Y’all know we got Governor Hot Wheels down there. Come on now! And the only thing hot about him is that he is a hot-ass mess, honey!”

That was Rep. Crockett speaking at a human rights event over the weekend. The intentionally vulgar, street-talking Texas representative (she was raised in a wealthy family and attended private schools, so her Samuel L. Jacskon imitation is pure cynical artifice) was already being justly criticized for telling Democrats to “take out” Elon Musk, at a time when her party’s loonies are looking for an excuse to move from domestic terrorism against Tesla owners to more direct forms of violence. Now this member of what styles itself as the sensitive, caring party is mocking a man, Texas Governor Abbott, who has been in a wheelchair for decades by calling him “Hot Wheels.” Be proud, Democrats, Texans, women, homo sapiens.

Crockett’s excuse after her cruel ad hominem attack was properly condemned tells us even more about the character of the latest “rising star” of the Left:

“I wasn’t thinking about the governor’s condition—I was thinking about the planes, trains, and automobiles he used to transfer migrants into communities led by Black mayors, deliberately stoking tension and fear among the most vulnerable. Literally, the next line I said was that he was a “Hot Ass Mess,” referencing his terrible policies. At no point did I mention or allude to his condition. So, I’m even more appalled that the very people who unequivocally support Trump—a man known for racially insensitive nicknames and mocking those with disabilities—are now outraged.”

She’s beneath contempt, but Crockett’s “Whataboutism” (#2 on the Rationalization List) argument following her self-evident lie is not without validity. How far is calling a governor in a wheelchair “Hot Wheels” from calling a President obviously suffering from progressive dementia “Slow Joe”?

I’ll accept the utilitarian conclusion that electing Trump President twice was, on balance, important for the nation; I might even agree with it. However, I don’t think it is possible to credibly argue that the destructive decline in civility and decorum in society, and especially in political discourse, should not be laid at Donald Trump’s feet. It is a major cultural wound with implications for democracy as well as social relations in our society generally.

I warned about this on September 10, 2015.