rationalizations

Biden Stabs Israel in the Back to Keep His Anti-Semitic Vote and Gets Justly Hammered For His Betrayal? Mainstream Media To The Rescue!

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

“Nah, there’s no mainstream media bias!” To be fair, it’s past time to rephrase the oft-used Ethics Alarm catch phase as, “Nah, the mainstream media doesn’t just take marching orders from the Democratic National Committee to cover for Biden’s indefensible leadership!”

Too long, I know. OK, it needs some work.

Suddenly, all through the news media over the weekend, the tale of how President Ronald Reagan intervened with a threat to withhold arms that had already been approved for delivery to Israel to force the nation to change its military strategy was being thrown in the faces of Biden critics and Israel supporters. Huh. Where did that come from?

Surprise! It came from the New York Times, the flagship of the corrupt, partisan media, just in time to fuel the “advocacy journalists'” efforts over the weekend to help block Israel’s right to defend its existence and its citizens from terrorism.

Interviewing GOP Senator Lindsey Graham, and by “interviewing” I mean debating as she took the side of Democrats, the Biden Administration, the anti-Semitic students roiling campuses and Hamas, NBC News anchor Kristen Welker said, “As you know, former President Ronald Reagan, on multiple occasions, withheld weapons to impact Israel’s military actions,” Welker said. “Did President Reagan show that using U.S. military aid, as leverage, can actually be an effective way to rein in and impact Israel’s policy?”

What a perfect factoid to weaponize for an appeal to authority and Rationalization #32. The Unethical Role Model: “He/She would have done the same thing”! The timely Times revelation: in August of 1982, Israel was shelling Palestinian terrorist strongholds in Lebanon, then a failing state in the throes of a civil war, with Palestinian forces controlling territory on its southern border. President Reagan saw films of a Lebanese child horribly wounded in the attack, and called up then Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin to threaten a withdrawal of U.S. aid if the shelling didn’t stop. Begin gave in. The Times also informed its readers that President Eisenhower threatened economic sanctions and to cut off aid to force Israel to withdraw from the Sinai Peninsula after it invaded Egypt in 1956. So, the Times concluded, “If it was reasonable for the Republican presidential icon to limit arms to impose his will on Israel…it should be acceptable for the current Democratic president to do the same.” Well, the Times wrote “they argued,” meaning defenders of all-things Democrat, but we know, or should, that by “they” in such situations, the mainstream media means “we.”

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The Nathan Wade Interview: Apparently Fulton County Lawyers Don’t Get That “Legal Ethics” Thingy…or Ethics Generally

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

I find the transcript of the interview of deposed Fani Willis prosecutor and loverboy Nathan Wade many things: damning, outrageous, disgusting, shocking. Mostly I find it to be more evidence that I have wasted the last 25 years trying to make the legal profession more ethical. This guy, a “prominent and respected Atlanta lawyer,” not only doesn’t know what ethics is, he’s infuriatingly smug about his ignorance.

These are the people Democrats have placed in charge of “saving democracy” by using the criminal laws to keep Donald Trump from delivering condign justice to the Biden presidency, as in crushing, unequivocal defeat.

On Sunday’s “World News Tonight” and Monday’s “Good Morning America” ABC revealed two segments (here and here) from an “exclusive” interview with former Fulton County, Georgia special prosecutor Nathan Wade. He was, you’ll recall, forced to withdraw from the lucrative gig gifted to him by his girlfriend Fani Willis by the judge in the case, Willis’s prosecution of Donald Trump for “election interference.”

If there are more segments, I think I’ll pass: cleaning up the serial head explosions caused by what I’ve seen already is more than enough for me. Nothing in them could change my mind about Wade (or Willis) at this point. He’s not just an unethical lawyer.He’s a fick. And an asshole.

I’ll just repeat some of the more glaring statements so you get the idea:

  • Asked how he could endanger a high profile prosecution by letting an illicit romance pollute the prosecution: “You don’t plan to develop feelings. You don’t plan to fall in love. You don’t plan to  have some relationship in the workplace that we  you don’t set out to do that and those things develop organically. They develop over  over time. And the  the minute we had that sobering moment, we discontinued it.”

I see: he’s 13 years old, then….just so darned romantic or horny that he couldn’t help himself, even though this was exactly the opposite of professional behavior. Continue reading →

Say Hello to Rationalization #38D, Yoda’s Annoyance or “I Was Trying My Best!”

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

I almost called this “Kaine’s Delusion,” because it was the junior Virginia Senator, former governor and failed Hillary Clinton running mate whose fatuous remarks made me realize that this rationalization, a frequently used one, had some how been left off the list.

Yoda’s Annoyance fits neatly among the sub-rationalizations under #38. The Miscreant’s Mulligan or “Give him/her/them/me a break!” the versatile rationalization that aims to duck the consequences of wrongful conduct by making others feel guilty about placing responsibility squarely where it belongs, by arguing that the miscreant isn’t so bad, isn’t different from anyone else, that he or she meant well, or that the critic is just being an old meanie. The closely relate #38 A.“Mercy For Miscreants, ” embodies the theory that there should be cap on criticism handed out to groups and individuals no matter how much wrongful conduct has been authored by them.

38 B: Excessive Accountability, or “He’s (She’s) Suffered Enough,” previously most often heard when a parent has negligently allowed an infant or small child to perish in a locked car, has recently been repurposed to defend parents who allow their kids to get a hold of their negligently stored firearms, killing others or themselves as a result. Finally authorities are prosecuting such parents. (Good!) Next we have #38C. Biden’s Inoculation or “I don’t deny that I do this!,” which is based on the slippery theory that bad conduct is mitigated by one’s open admission and acknowledgment that it’s a bad habit. This one is a close cousin of a two others on the list, like #19A. Donald’s Dodge, or “I never said I was perfect!” and #41 A. Popeye’s Excuse, or “I am what I am.”

38 D would have been 38 A if I had added it earlier when I should have, and not waited for Tim Kaine to make an ass of himself by saying yesterday at a “block party” at a local park in Dumfries, Virginia…

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So It Looks Like Harvard Students Aren’t Learning Logic, Ethics or History, But Damn If Those Kids Don’t Know How to Play the Race Card!

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Harvard student pundit Maya Bodnick authored an indignant column in the Harvard Crimson arguing that “A Witch Hunt Is Targeting Black Harvard Faculty.” Bodnick, the niece of high-powered tech exec Sheryl Sandberg (not to suggest that her connection to a wealthy former CEO of Meta had any bearing on her admission, mind you), gives us this argument: because conservatives (like Christopher Rufo) have uncovered genuine plagiarism on the part of prominent black members of Harvard’s administration and faculty, including deposed Harvard president Claudine Gay, it is clear that the objective is to target black academics and scholars, and thus is racist.

To begin with, it would be nice if someone being educated at Harvard understood what “witch hunt” means. After all, it’s a historical reference, in fact, it’s a historical reference to an infamous event that occurred not all that far from Harvard. You see, there were never any witches, because they don’t exist. Various members of the Salem community in colonial days exploited the fear of witches to get innocent people tried, ruined, and executed. “Witch hunt” means a contrived and organized effort to falsely accuse and harm an innocent person for other, sinister motives. However, plagiarism, unlike witchcraft, is real, and the Harvard plagiarists the investigations have uncovered deserved the consequences of their dishonest scholarship. This last part is apparently beyond the ability of Bodnick to comprehend.

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Houston, We Have an Idiot…

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

The post on Sheila Jackson Lee most recent outburst of ignorance demands this follow-up post. I wouldn’t pick on this silly woman over the same incident if she had just put a paper bag over her head and laid low as a normal person would do, but then why would I expect her to do anything appropriate, ever?

First, in the original post I didn’t focus on her audience, which was raided in the comments. I didn’t because what she said about the moon (it is mostly gas and emits “unique light and energy”) and the rest of her gibberish was equally damning in any context: it would have been inexcusable if she were talking to herself. Or a lamp post. However, giving some more though to this debacle, I realize that spouting false astronomical facts to students (of Booker T. Washington High School in Houston, named after a renowned black educator who must have been spinning in his grave) was infinitely worse than if she had been talking to adults, the majority of whom, I hope, would have known she was talking nonsense. She was there to educate young minds, and instead she handicapped them. Despicable.

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Race-Baiting! Is There Anything It Can’t Do??

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

Branding all critics and opponents racists has been a standard progressive and Democratic Party ploy for a long time, though it shifted into high gear when that was the primary argument used to deflect legitimate observations that Barack Obama was poor POTUS with a great PR machine. Then it shifted into higher gear as the “Get Trump!” effort became an ongoing crusade. Trump didn’t oppose letting illegals cross the border with impunity because it was, you know, insane policy for any nation; his opposition was based in racism. The tactic is dishonest, unfair, divisive, despicable and indefensible, but as the late Harry Reid—forwarding address: Hell—explained cheerily as he defended the Big Lie he circulated about Mitt Romney in the 2012 campaign, it works.

I am now noticing that the Race Card has been designated as the Axis’s official counter to the looming GOP recycling of Ronald Reagan’s effective question during the 1980 campaign: “Are you better off today than you were four years ago?” By almost every objective measure, as with Jimmy Carter’s failed Presidency, the unavoidable answer today is “Are you kidding? NO!” It’s a powerful weapon. So the Axis has declared it to be racist.

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Ethics Observations on “the Rest of the Story” Regarding “At Princeton, Students Feel ‘Unsafe’ in the Company of a Conservative Professor

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Commenter Dr. Emilio Lizardo revealed this morning in the comments to “At Princeton, Students Feel “Unsafe” in the Company of a Conservative Professor” that the policy at issue had already been reversed by the time I wrote about it:

“By April 2, the policy was reversed after an intervention from the club’s Graduate Board. In the seven days in between, debate over the policy rose from the club’s private GroupMe to the headlines of national right-wing publications. Club leadership maintains that the reversal was not due to national media scrutiny.”

So Ethics Alarms can’t claim even a smidgen of credit for the reversal. Nonetheless, the lesson here, as we have already seen elsewhere, is that when organizations and institutions install discriminatory and self-evidently unethical procedures and policies in the name of wokeness, political correctness, aspiring fascism of the far left, DEI or other perversions of core American principles and are quickly exposed, assailed and embarrassed, they usually back down. (Usually.)

A further lesson is that the organizations and institutions know that what they are doing is indefensible except from the “by any means necessary” perspective driving the Left in its crusade to re-make America. They know it, but they try anyway, hoping that any single instance will fly under the metaphorical radar long enough to become institutionalized. When they get caught, their reaction is, “OK, too soon. We’ll hold off on this one for now.”

Their assumption, and it is, frighteningly, probably correct, that the current DEI, Black Lives Matter, open borders, climate change hysteria, anti-free speech…freedom of association…equal treatment under the law and due process wack-a-mole contest it has forced our society into playing will inevitably result in a slow, steady ratcheting-up of anti-democratic practices that become accepted as norms. This is how the public education system became an indoctrination process. It is how the initially admirable goals of affirmative action became the racist practice of “diversity, equity and inclusion.” It is how journalism in the US. became partisan propaganda.

The fact that only conservative publications and news sources treated the Princeton story as “fit to print” and necessary illumination to stop democracy from “dying in darkness” is also significant. This doesn’t mean that the story wasn’t important or objectively worth reporting on. The conduct of the mainstream media in ignoring it proves that its purpose is not to keep the public informed, but to assist the Far Left in laying waste to America’s traditional interpretation of democracy. The Princeton story is important, and the fact that only conservative sources publicized it (only Fox News among the news networks picked it up) doesn’t prove their bias. It proves the sinister, deliberate complicity of the mainstream media as it attempts to keep Americans from realizing what is going on right under their noses until it is too late.

The Princetonian wrote that a debate over the policy arose only after “headlines of national right-wing publications” exposed it. If the story sparked a debate, it means it was a story worth reporting. The MSM didn’t report on the story because the Far Left doesn’t want any debate. In an honest debate they lose, just as they lose on abortion, illegal immigration, and so many other issues. If they felt they could win on the merits, then they would want debate. Instead, their media tries to bury the facts. This isn’t a conservative “conspiracy theory.” It is reality.

Finally, the club’s claim that “the reversal was not due to national media scrutiny” is another damning piece of evidence. Gaslighting, denial, “Jumbo”-ism and “It isn’t what it is” (Yoo’s Rationalization,” #64) mania have become such reflex tools of the Left that comparisons with “1984” are unavoidable. The border is secure. Bidenomics is a success. Inflation isn’t a problem. The President didn’t extol the “Transgender Day of Visibility” on Easter. He’s as sharp as a tack. The Trump prosecutions aren’t political. January 6 was an insurrection. Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia.

The Princeton student club episode is an important one for American to understand. They can only understand it if they know about it.

Boy I wish I knew how to get the readership here back on the rising curve it seemed to be on in 2016...

No Wonder We Can’t Trust Political Journalists If They Do THIS…

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Why am I not surprised?

White House correspondents are constantly stealing things from Air Force One. In February, the president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, Kelly O’Donnell , felt compelled to send what was described as a “terse email” to her colleagues reminding them taking items like embroidered pillowcases, wine glasses, whiskey tumblers, blankets and gold-rimmed dinner plates “reflects poorly” on the press corps as a whole.

Really? I did not know that! Who would have guessed? Thanks, Kelly!

Actually, O’Donnell’s warning received no responses at all, reportedly, though one member of the press corps apparently returned a pillowcase he had pilfered.

Politico reports that this has been going on for a long time, with reporters stealing taxpayer purchased items with the Air Force One insignia on it being treated as a “rite of passage.” “On my first flight, the person next to me was like, ‘You should take that glass,’” one current White House reporter told Politico. And then the corrupting correspondent “was like”—OK, guess the rationalization.

Come on, guess! I’ll give you 30 seconds….

Time’s up! Politico quotes thusly: “They were like: ‘Everyone does it.’” Ah yes, the #1 Rationalization of them all, and the watermark of the ethically unlettered, “Everybody Does It.” Politico: “Several colleagues of one former White House correspondent for a major newspaper described them hosting a dinner party where all the food was served on gold-rimmed Air Force One plates, evidently taken bit by bit over the course of some time” and ” Reporters recalled coming down the back stairs after returning to Joint Base Andrews in the evening with the sounds of clinking glassware or porcelain plates in their backpacks.”

Politico apparently thinks this is all hilarious, ending its story with a facetious, “Are you IN POSSESSION OF AIR FORCE ONE DINNERWARE? We want to hear from you. And we’ll keep you anonymous! Email us at westwingtips@politico.com.“

We receive our information about the work of our President and his staff through the filter of people without even rudimentary ethics alarms: arrogant, unprofessional, untrustworthy and self-indulging assholes.

Stop Making Me Defend James Carville!

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

I really hate this. Conservative bloggers and pundit declare the treatment of Donald Trump or another Republican by the mainstream media, unfair, dishonest and biased, then complain when the news media doesn’t treat someone else in the same unfair, dishonest and biased manner. This is always certifiably moronic, but this most recent case is especially so.

Nobody could listen to what James Carville said on CNN and honestly think the old Clinton political consultant was threatening to assassinate Donald Trump or advocating that someone else do it. Carville, who despite his Mayberry accent is a lot more articulate and clear about his meaning than the previous President, was making the case that Joe Biden shouldn’t be the one attacking Trump and that eh should leave that gutter-level task to surrogates “like me,” that is, Carville. He is simply stating his support for what used to be established, conventional political wisdom, and was a wise practice that kept the President from appearing nasty, partisan and petty, like Barack Obama, Donald Trump and Joe Biden. Carville said that “he called” such attacks “wet work,” meaning, again obviously, the dirty work of Presidential politics. It was a metaphor, and a good one, unless a listener was either a complete paranoid dolt or determined to misrepresent Carville as revenge for the Axis deciding to try to make Trump’s use of the word “bloodbath” to describe what faces the auto industry if he is defeated a threat to encourage actual violence in the streets.

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It’s Time To Play That Exciting Game Show, “Cute, Silly,or Wrong?”!

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Hello everybody! I’m your host, Wink Smarmy, and welcome to “Cute, Silly,or Stupid?,” the popular ethics game show where our panelists try to decide whether an individual or organization is doing or saying something that strikes a positive emotional chord with the public sincerely, or whether they are cynically grandstanding or virtue signaling to achieve popularity, influence, money, or power. Welcome panel! And here’s today’s challenge…

A video posted to Facebook by the Richmond Wildlife Center shows Executive Director Melissa Stanley dressed as a giant mother fox to feed a red fox kit (that means a baby fox, not a kit you use to assemble foxes) rescued by the center earlier this month.

“It’s important to make sure that the orphans that are raised in captivity do not become imprinted upon or habituated to humans,” the post said. “To prevent that, we minimize human sounds, create visual barriers, reduce handling, reduce multiple transfers amongst different facilities, and wear masks for the species.”

Here’s the video:

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