Today’s Sad and Desperate Argument From a Facebook Friend Who Once Was Too Smart To Post Something This Stupid…

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Unbelievable.

That idiocy was posted by a lawyer, former law dean and law professor. How is this possible?

It is like saying that if you believe the French Revolution was a human and political disaster, you should have to explain why you object to each section of “Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité.” It is like saying that it’s a cop-out to claim that “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be Free” is a hateful call for the eradication of Israel, unless you explain: “What’s so bad about starting at the river? What’s so wrong about going to the seashore? What do you find so objectionable about freedom?”

Whoever thinks this meme is a devastating rebuttal of opposition to DEI as a social, employment, and organizational policy doesn’t comprehend a foundational principle of language, which is that words in particular contexts and combinations often mean something entirely different from what the words mean individually and in a vacuum.

Sure, diversity can be nice, but not as an enforced value, and not in every context. I don’t see anyone advocating more racially diverse NBA teams, for example. Most of the time diversity isn’t even an ethical value, just a feature that may or may not have benefits to a group. Equity, the only concept of the three that I see on my wall as one of the ethical values, means fairness. But fairness is extremely subjective, making it one of the more tricky ethical values, and when it is used as it is used in the context of the DEI Division of The Great Stupid, what it means is “equal outcomes for all.” That is Marxist Cloud Cuckoo Land garbage. Life doesn’t, shouldn’t and can’t work like that. There are winners and losers; enterprise, talent, diligence, intelligence and skill matters, as well as luck. Trying to fight that fact of existence is a fool’s errand, or, more often a con artist’s scam.

“Inclusion” is the weird one: what it means in context of the DEI movement is that all exclusion is malign and sinister, the result of deliberate discrimination on the basis of invidious factors. False.

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Ethics Dunce: Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC.)

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

During a House Oversight Committee meeting, Rep. Nancy Mace used the derogatory term “tranny” in discussing legislation aimed at various aspects of the contentions transgender issue. Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.), the ranking Democrat on the committee, objected. “The gentlelady has used a phrase that is considered a slur in the LGBTQ community and the transgender community,” he said.

That is correct. Moreover, this is not a new development: “tranny” is an old slur, and unlike some terms that have been declared slurs after once being considered acceptable (I forget: is “queer” a slur now, or isn’t it?) that term for a transexual has always been used as an insult.

Nevertheless Mace, emulating the outburst that ended Dr. Laura’s radio career (Except that she said, “Nigger, nigger, nigger!”), spat back, “Tranny, tranny, tranny! I don’t really care. You want penises in women’s bathrooms, and I’m not gonna have it. No, thank you.”

For this illogical and needlessly uncivil response, Mace has been cheered by some conservative pundits. Now that’s transphobia and bigotry. “Tranny” is in the same ugly category as nigger, spic, gook, retard, fag, dyke, cunt, and other indisputably denigrating terms that have no redeeming feature. Their purpose is to demonstrate hatred and contempt for the group or individual being described. Such a purpose is per se unethical: disrespectful, unfair, cruel and uncivil.

Connolly replied, logically enough, “To me, a slur is a slur, and here in the committee, a level of decorum requires us to try consciously to avoid slurs.” He was right.

Connelly continued, “You just heard the gentlelady actually actively, robustly repeat it; and I would just ask the chairman that she be counseled that we ought not to be engaged — we can have debate and policy discussion without offending human beings who are fellow citizens. And so, I would ask as a parliamentary inquiry whether the use of that phrase is not, in fact, a violation of the decorum rules.”

Mace, putting in her entry for Asshole of the Year, refused to submit. “Mr. Chairman, I’m not going to be counseled by a man over men and women’s spaces or men who have mental health issues dressing as women.”

That response, like her previous one, made no sense, but still, some conservative pundits applauded. Matt Margolis, for example, argued that “tranny” isn’t really a slur. Bologna. I knew the word was a slur decades ago. He lionizes Mace for refusing to submit to a Democrats because, he claims, “everything” is a slur to progressives now. That might be a justifiable exaggeration in some cases, but not when a real, undeniable slur like “tranny” is involved. Connolly is 100% correct: there is no excuse for members of Congress to deliberately use terms that only exist to offend and marginalize minorities. To do so gives a license to citizens to behave hatefully, because our elected representatives are supposed to be role models and to exemplify the best conduct in public, not the worst.

I say this with full recognition that my ethics, decorum and civility standards for members of Congress is so alien to so many current members today that it is almost futile to keep insisting on it. Just watch the ridiculous spectacle House members and Senators made of themselves protesting against Elon Musk yesterday.

A civil, responsible elected official should be able to make her points without stooping to gutter slurs.

UPDATE to “Can Anyone Think of an Innocent, Ethical Explanation For USAID’s Giving $8.1 Million to Politico? Because I Can’t”: It’s Even Worse Than That…

/ Jack Marshall / 41 Comments

At this point, my head is metaphorically spinning as new revelations about the money-laundering, journalism-bribery and astounding abuse of U.S. taxpayer funds just under a single bloated, unaccountable, Democratic ideologue-infested agency are coming out left and right, from credible sources and marginal ones, as the crumbling Axis denies, obfuscates, screams, threatens, and throws up dust. I confess: I don’t have the time or the skills to gather all of the information, vet it, and explain it. That’s not my job, either. I resent the fact—actually “resent” is not a strong enough word—that our most prominent journalists who should be informing the public regarding the USAID/Politico scandal are doing anything but.

Thus the thread on the post yesterday introducing the topic includes among the most recent of its 60 comments (as of this moment), a sincere reader offering this: “I just spent some time today since this hit the news on the USASPENDING site and confirmed Politico only received two awards, one for 20 thousand, the other for 24 thousand dollars from the USAID. So it does appear your post is wrong.”  No, what’s wrong is that the actual expenditures have been disguised, hidden, mis-labled, and been examined through so many disparate sources that it is impossible for even well-intentioned readers to answer the question, “What’s going on here?” The Axis propaganda media news site Mediate made the same claim as the commenter, quoting Politico’s management that the “subscription” support was as pure as the driven snow. As with the other “usual suspects” like CNN’s hack media ethics watchdog Brain Stelter, the current strategy is to pretend this is much ado about nothing. Stelter’s defense: Why isn’t DOGE going after waste in misspent funds in the Defense Department?

Who can you trust? Apparently nobody. And that’s dangerous and frightening. AND I have no idea what to do about it.

I would have once expected the Columbia Journalism Review to be a source that might give definitive intelligence on this matter. Here, after hundreds of words attacking Trump, Musk, and DOGE, it tells us,

$268 million [of the now frozen USAID funds] was earmarked to fund “independent media and the free flow of information” this year. In the recent past, USAID had boasted of supporting more than six thousand journalists, around seven hundred independent newsrooms, and nearly three hundred media-focused civil society groups in thirty or so countries…

Including ours? “Independent” journalism being funded by a U.S. agency with a political agenda is an oxymoron anywhere. What would U.S. pundits say if it learned that, say, Russia, Ukraine or Israel was sending funds to the New York Post or some of its reporters to encourage them to be “independent”?

Most of the revelations about the USAID-Politico connection have come from social media, requiring a click obsession to track the sources down, with the main reporting on the developments coming from sources like this New Jersey publication, which wrote yesterday in part,

Documents revealed that from 2024, under the Biden administration, Politico received approximately $9.6 million in funding over just over a year. This funding was distributed across various branches of the organization, though the exact purposes of these funds have not been publicly detailed by Politico or the government agencies involved….Political analysts and media watchdogs have been quick to comment on the implications of such funding. “The revelation of government funding to media outlets like Politico raises serious questions about editorial independence and the potential for conflicts of interest,” said media critic David Smith.  “[I]t’s a stark reminder of how governmental financial support can influence, or at least be perceived to influence, journalism.”

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To Nobody’s Surprise But the Brainwashed, Trump-Deranged and Axis Useful Idiots, the “60 Minutes” Unedited Transcript Proves CBS Was Unethically Helping Harris

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

That unedited “60 Minutes” transcript that took so long for CBS to release is a smoking gun. We finally got to see it today:

BILL WHITAKER: “We supply Israel with billions of dollars in military aid, and yet, Prime Minister Netanyahu seems to be charting his own course. The Biden administration The Biden Harris administration has pressed him to agree to a ceasefire. He’s resisted. You urged him not to go into Lebanon. He went in anyway. He has promised to make Iran pay for the missile attack, and that has the potential of expanding the war. Does the US have no sway over Prime Minister Netanyahu?”

KAMALA HARRIS [the response shown on Face the Nation]: “Well, let’s start with this, um, on this subject. The aid that we have given Israel allowed Israel to defend itself against 200 ballistic missiles…that were just meant to attack the Israelis and the people of Israel. And I think that is the most recent example of why what we do to assist in their defense around military aid is important. And when we think about the threat that Hamas, Hezbollah presents, Iran, um, I think that it is without any question our imperative to do what we can to allow Israel to defend itself against those kinds of attacks. Now the work that we do diplomatically with the leadership of Israel is an ongoing pursuit around making clear our principles which include the need for humanitarian aid, the need for this war to end, the need for a deal to be done which would release the hostages and and create a ceasefire and we’re not gonna stop in terms of putting that pressure on Israel and and in the region including with other leaders in the region including Arab leaders.”

Now Harris’s supposed answer to the same question shown on “60 Minutes: “[T]he work that we do diplomatically with the leadership of Israel is an ongoing pursuit around making clear our principles…”

Note that this is not only in the middle of her actual answer, it’s the middle of a sentence that wasn’t broadcast in its entirety.

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Can Anyone Think of an Innocent, Ethical Explanation For USAID’s Giving $8.1 Million to Politico? Because I Can’t…..

/ Jack Marshall / 69 Comments

The howls of indignation over Trump and Marco Rubio pausing USAID grants rather than “gradually” examining all of the agency’s expenditures over time are particularly disingenuous. Such a stall will only mean that more taxpayer money will go out the metaphorical door for wasteful, ideological projects like what red-pilled former Rolling Stone pundit Matt Taibbi calls its “colossal library of crazy-ass contracts.” He cites the $39 million for “Gender Equality in Water, Power, and Transportation,” “Recognizing the Third Gender in Bangladesh,” “Ukrainian Resilience Through Fashion,” a “TransFormation Salon” and a pre-Taliban plan to help “Afghan Women Enter the Financial Sector,” but there are others that Elon Musk opening the ledgers on “the Matterhorn of suck that is USAID” (Taibbi again) have revealed.

Above we see the screen shot revealing that USAID gave over $8 million in grants during fiscal year 2024 to Politico, the online Axis news and punditry site. Politico is almost always critical of Trump, conservatives and Republicans and just as consistently a vocal ally of the “resistance,” Democrats and progressive policies and advocates.

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Ethics Dunce: Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.)

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Rep. Moulton must have read wrong. See, Teddy Roosevelt said, “Speak softly and carry a big stick.” Somehow the Massachusetts Democrat thought the sage words were, “Speak loudly and be a big weenie.”

After the election last year, Moulton criticized his party for avoiding controversial issues like biological men competing in women’s sports. “Democrats spend way too much time trying not to offend anyone rather than being brutally honest…I have two little girls. I don’t want them getting run over on a playing field by a male or formerly male athlete, but as a Democrat, I’m supposed to be afraid to say that.” The reaction by his constituents confirmed why: His comment on the topic were widely criticized and there were resignation from his staff. 

But Moulton continued to channel “Profiles in Courage.” “I stand firmly in my belief for the need for competitive women’s sports to put limits on the participation of those with the unfair physical advantages that come with being born male,” he said. “I probably will be primaried,” he told CNN. “And that’s great. That just proves my point: you can’t speak a sentence that’s out of line and not get backlash from the left. But that’s OK. This is a democracy.”

Impressive. Then, last month, Moulton quietly voted against the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act, which bans biological males from competing in girls’ school sports. Only two Democrats voted for the bill. He had been the most vocal Democrat in supporting its purpose, but when the time came to vote consistently with his fervent devotion to the safety of his daughters in their future athletic pursuits, he decided that he didn’t want to be primaried after all.

Coward. Liar. Hypocrite. Weasel. Hack.

The NYT Tries To Create Sympathy For An Unsympathetic Jerk And Paints a Fresh Target On His Back

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Is this New York Times piece deliberately making the situation it is reporting on worse, or is the writer (Brendan Kuty) just as clueless as his subject?

Baseball’s Spring Training is rapidly approaching, and so are media stories reminding us that it’s on the way. Today The Athletic, the sports publication that the New York Times owns and operates instead of its own sport page, ran a follow-up to the memorable (in a bad way) incident above that I wrote about here right after it occurred, during the World Series Two asshole Yankee fans (but I repeat myself—see? I’m getting ready for the season too!) nearly ripped Dodger outfielder Mookie Betts’ hand off trying to pry a foul pop out of his glove.

Interference was called, the Yankee batter (Gleyber Torres) was called out, and the two idiots were ejected from the game. For some reason it took Major League Baseball months to decide to ban the two from all ballparks for life, but that was ultimately the decision.

But The Athletic decided that it was time to try to make us feel sorry for Austin Capobianco, the jerk on the left in that photo whose name I had mercifully forgotten. We are told that he received a lot of mean phone calls, hate mail and mean messages on social media. Well, that’s what happens when you behave outrageously on national television and nearly hurt someone. An anonymous hater sent a box of poop to his home. Ew! and unethical, but there are a lot of crazy people out there (just look at yesterday’s protest against Elon Musk).

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Hilarious Unethical Quote Of the Month And Maybe 2025 (It’s Too Soon To Tell…)

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

“Nobody Elected Elon!”

—The slogan of the hysterical protest outside the Treasury building today, an unusually stupid demonstration even by stupid demonstration standards. Every speaker there—Chuck Schumer, Elizabeth Warren, the outrageous Jasmine Crockett and others—gets “credit” for the slogan whether they actually said those exact words or not.

The experiment Democrats seem to be engaged in is apparently designed to determine just how ignorant, gullible and stupid the American public is. If they are not as stupid as the Democrats hope, they just might see this demonstration and the mass freakout over President Trump really doing what he promised to do and doing it faster than anybody expected as the ultimate proof of his opposition’s weakness and desperation.

No, Musk wasn’t elected. Neither were powerful Presidential aides, advisors, envoys, assistants, “czars,” First Ladies and other delegates, representatives and agents of Presidents of the United States going all the way back to George Washington. Listing them would be a silly and time consuming exercise, but such a list would include Abigail Adams, Eleanor Roosevelt, Hillary Clinton, Nancy Reagan, Sherman Adams, Colonel House, John Hay, FDR’s “Brain Trust,” Ed Meese, Ted Sorenson, Roger Ailes, Rahm Emanuel and many others. None of them were elected, of course; neither are the Justices on the Supreme Court. We’ve had two Presidents who weren’t elected, George Washington and Gerald Ford. Since the Vice-President has only two Constitutional duties, to preside over the Senate and to be ready to take over when a President is disabled or dies, delegating policy areas to a VP is giving him jobs he or she wasn’t elected to do. It is pretty clear by now that Joe Biden was being manipulated by unelected persons unknown for four years.

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Oh Yeah, Pro Sports’ Greedy Embrace of Legalized Gambling Is Really Going Well…

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

In 2023, Ethics Alarms tersely predicted, regarding the full and loving embrace with which professional sports is snuggling up to online gambling, “This will not end well.” Ah, but there’s money to be made….so, for example, Major League Baseball allows Red Sox Hall of Famer David Ortiz to shill for one of the big online betting concerns during local game broadcasts. Not surprisingly, given that it is the most unethical of all sports organizations, the NFL had the first betting scandal under the new gluttony: In 2023, “Isaiah Rodgers and Rashod Berry of the Indianapolis Colts and free agent Demetrius Taylor were suspended indefinitely for betting on NFL games. Tennessee Titans offensive tackle Nicholas Petit-Frere was suspended six games for betting on other sports.

Next came the betting scandal involving baseball’s most famous star, pircher-slugger Shohei Ohtani, whose translator was caught illegally using the star’s name to pay off a bookie. But of course, there was, and is, more to come.

Toronto Raptors player Jontay Porter was banned from the NBA after an investigation last year found that Porter tipped off bettors about his health and then claimed illness to exit at least one game, creating wins for anyone who had bet on him to under-perform. Porter also gambled on NBA games in which he didn’t play, and once bet against his own team. Now another NBA player, Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier, is under investigation. He is suspected of manipulating his game performance “as part of an illegal sports betting scheme”when he was a member of the Charlotte Hornets.

Wait: pro athletes today make millions of dollars. The 1919 Black Sox scandal (Second mention today!) happened because the players involved were being exploited by their team’s owner and were barely able to feed their kids. Why would millionaire jocks ever get involved with gamblers?

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“Nothing Is Broken”? Seriously?

/ Jack Marshall / 27 Comments

In a post dripping with contempt and sarcasm, eminent and (of topics other than Donald Trump) astute defense lawyer-blogger Scott Greenfield writes, “It’s Trump’s White House now. But rather than fix what’s “broken” (nothing is broken), just say “screw it” and ask Elon for a list of the wayward youth doing his bidding. Who are they? Who knows? Who cares? Elon says they’re his people and Elon’s rich, so he can’t be wrong.” In a nice coincidence, another mainstream media hit job on Musk in the New York Times, a report aimed at discrediting Musk, DOGE, and of course Trump, we learn that the “federal deficit for 2024 was $1.8 trillion. The Government Accountability Office estimated in a report that the government made $236 billion in improper payments — three-quarters of which were overpayments — across 71 federal programs during the 2023 fiscal year.”

That astounding statistic is employed, 43 paragraphs into the article, to argue that DOGE concentrating on waste, fraud and abuse is silly, because $236 billion is just a drop in the bucket. (“A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money,” said legendary GOP Senator Everett Dirkson.) A better illustration of why DOGE is necessary could hardly be imagined. The system is completely broken when the government wastes money like that and it is shrugged off by statist allies like the Times. . In such situations a scythe, not a scalpel, is the tool to use. The controversy over USAID is in the same category. The agency has been unaccountable, profligate and idiotic. It spent $15 million to distribute ‘contraceptives and condoms’ in Afghanistan. USAID food support went to syrian Al-Qaeda. Heck, USAID sent me to Mongolia for a week to assist the judiciary in drawing up legal ethics rules, and when I got there, I found out that they “weren’t ready.” It’s an Executive Branch agency that serves as a spigot for funds to go overseas with little or no oversight.

In a New York Post report that defends Musk’s mission while revealing more revolting uses of taxpayer money abroad, the DOGE head is quoted as saying about USAID, “It became apparent that it’s not an apple with a worm. What we have is just a ball of worms. You’ve got to basically get rid of the whole thing. It’s beyond repair.”

Nothing is broken? Right. USAID is broken, the U.S. government bureaucracy, and the journalism that is supposed to let citizens know when their government is corrupt and wasting their money is broken. And the once perceptive experts, pundits and analysts who have allowed Trump Derangement to break their perspective, objectivity and critical thinking skills are now just part of the problem.