Unethical Quote of the Week: Ethics Villain Hillary Clinton [Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 25 Comments

[I]f the platforms, whether it’s Facebook or Twitter/X or Instagram or TikTok, whatever they are, if they don’t moderate and monitor the content, we lose total control. And it’s not just the social and psychological affects, it’s real life.”

—Hillary Clinton, joining the chorus of Democrats, progressives and national ticket nominees past and present  advocating restricting free speech for the greater good.

Here is what a Pollyanna sap I am: I read the “we lose total control” section in several right-wing media posts, and assumed Hillary was unfairly taken out of context. After all, she’s not, or didn’t used to be, stupid. She ruthless and bitter and the U.S. ducked a metaphorical bullet by not electing her President, but surely, surely, Clinton wouldn’t be so careless and foolish as to say that out loud; surely she was a victim of selective editing. Then I checked the clip and the transcript. Nope, Clinton really said it and meant it. Ooh, Gina wants a word!

Thank-you, Gina!

Back to Hillary on CNN: Michael Smerconish, who is often cited as the most objective CNN host, didn’t faint and fall over on his face, then pop up to say, “What? What the hell is the matter with you?” It’s been the matter with Clinton for a while: Last month, Clinton suggested during an appearance on MSNBC (of course) that Americans accused of interfering in U.S. elections by spreading “propaganda” promoting former President Trump should be civilly or criminally charged. Democrats’ definition of propaganda in recent years often includes “the truth.”

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I Don’t Have A Clue What The Real Story Is Regarding The FEMA Response To The Hurricane, But I Do Know This…

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

…the fact that I don’t know and couldn’t possibly find out because there are no news sources I can trust shows just how incompetent, biased and pernicious American journalism has become.

It is unethical, I resent it, I’m disgusted with it, and I condemn it, none of which does any good.

Republicans in general and President Trump in particular have been harshly criticizing the FEMA response to Hurricane Helene, Trump in his usual meat-axe fashion. Naturally, CNN rushed to the Biden Administration’s rescue with this “factcheck” replete with a denial that Harris “stole” FEMA funds as if anyone seriously believed Trump meant “stole” literally, or that Harris was literally a thief. The Axis mainstream media would rather do this deflection than report the far more consequential issue that FEMA is claiming it has run out of money for American disaster relief while the Biden Administration is spending like the proverbial drunken sailor on Ukraine, “humanitarian assistance” to Gaza, and dealing with the consequences of it disastrous border policies.

DEI incompetent Dept. of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, while touring the carnage in North Carolina, told the press that the Federal Emergency Management Agency was going to run out of money because the budget is currently working under a “continuing resolution” until after the election, a situation he does not regard as “stable.” I get it: it’s the Republicans’ fault:

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Sunday Afternoon Ethics Round-Up, 10/6/24: The Election Cometh

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

With a month to go, I am cautiously optimistic that the American public will reject the cynical, dishonest, undemocratic candidacy of Kamala Harris and the inexcusable Tim Walz. I am pessimistic about the nation avoiding another Electoral College-elected President who trailed in the popular vote.

Right now, it sure looks like this is where he are headed, and such an unfortunate result will almost certainly spark violence, again give Democrats an excuse to deny Trump’s legitimacy as President, lead to further assaults on the Constitution (which Democrats increasingly want eliminate or marginalize), and guarantee another four years of escalating unethical, divisive, dangerous partisan warfare. Trump, of course, will not help matters as he will not be able to resist gloating and trolling, as is his pattern. Great. I can’t wait.

The popular vote/ Electoral vote conflict is almost entirely California’s fault. Harris votes will overwhelm Trump votes by nearly 2-1 in our most populous state, and that is because California has become more of a cult than anything else. Its voters are bat-crazy over climate change hysteria, increasingly don’t like enforcing laws, sympathize with shop-lifters, extol illegal immigrants, and enable censorship. Significantly, California is the only state seriously contemplating the very unserious, irresponsible and racist policy of reparations, even though slavery was never legal in the state. On my cognitive dissonance scale, winning the popular vote in California is an indictment, not an accomplishment.

In other matters…

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“Nah, There’s No Mainstream Media Bias” Watch: The NYT Isn’t Even Pretending Any More

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

I’m kind of ticked off: Ann Althouse mocked many of the same unethical items in the Sunday Times front page this morning that I noticed immediately, but Ann gets up earlier on Sundays than I do.

The Times has this:

If you bother to read the article, a “60 Minutes” interview apparently is the one that the Times thinks isn’t “friendly.” Anyone who believes that didn’t watch the Vice-Presidential debate. CBS is a card-carrying member of the Axis; not only that, but interviews on that show are edited before they air. Does the Times really expect us to believe that one of Harris’s attacks of Authentic Frontier gibberish won’t end up on the cutting room floor? As for the others: “The View”? “The View?”The  biased, race-baiting progressive ignoramuses on the dumbest new show on television (Remember: Sonny Hostin, the one lawyer on the show, implied that the eclipse was proof of climate change  doesn’t interview Democrats, they fawn over them. The ladies recenly let Biden lie almost non-stop in his “historic” appearance, and when he boasted about the “Violence Against Women Act,” nobody asked him about the rape accusation against him by a former Senate staffer—that would have been “unfriendly.” Colbert uses political guests, all Democrats, to set up Trump-bashing, his obsession.

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Another Week, Another Dumb Question To “The Ethicist”

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

There was a time when I thought I would have enjoyed the job of being the New York Times advice columnist, “The Ethicist.” In the last year or so, however, the questions the current column-holder has answered have tended to indicate basic ethics problem-solving skills among the public have fallen to an abysmal level. And these are supposed to be the best questions received by Kwame Anthony Appiah, a philosophy professor at NYU. Heavens to Betsy, what are the other questions like?

This week’s top question was this:

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The Fake James Earl Jones Problem

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

Oh yeah, I can see where this is going…

Vanity Fair reports that in 2022, Lucasfilm and Skywalker Sound hired a Ukrainian startup called Respeech to recreate Darth Vader’s voice for its upcoming mini-series “Obi-Wan Kenobi.” The recently departed James Earl Jones was then alive but 91 and his voice was waeker and not as resonant as in his “THIS is CNN!” days. Using AI, Respeech used archived “Star Wars” sound tracks footage to recreate Jones’ iconic Darth Vader’s tones from the original 1980s trilogy. Jones was satsified with the fake version of him, and signed off on using his archival voice recordings for future (lousy) “Star Wars” spin-offs. When “Obi-Wan Kenobi” premiered, nobody guessed that Darth Vader’s voice was AI generated.

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An Ethics Estoppel, Double Standard Classic From The Axis After Walz’s Meltdown

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

I actually laughed out loud reading Politico’s “Walz says he ‘speaks like everybody else.’ And it’s not working for the campaign.” representative excerpts:

  • “’Any time you are forced to go off message is never welcome,” said Mike Mikus, a Democratic strategist in Pennsylvania. ‘But in the end, voters are looking for somebody who is more concerned about what these candidates are going to do to improve their lives than, ‘Did he get every single fact correct?’”

That was the one that got me  laughing. It is exactly the argument Trump defenders have been making for years, to the sneers of the Left.  How dare any Democrat resort to it?

  • “Yeah, look, I have my dates wrong,” Walz told reporters in Harrisburg. “I was in Hong Kong in China in 1989. … I speak like everybody else speaks. I need to be clearer.”

Another Trump defender line: “He speaks like normal people.” Continue reading →

Ethics Alarms Exclusive: PBS Is Using Public Funds and Its “Educational Programming” to Promote Kamala Harris

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

I hate to append that corny clickbait “Exclusive” to this post’s headline, but I want to be clear: nobody else has noticed the Corporation for Public Broadcasting’s latest, and in my view, most unethical and blatant effort to influence the election in order to elect Kamala Harris.

I just searched online: I appear to be the only one who has noticed so far, or at least who has written about it. Not Fox News, the devoted mob of conservative pundits at PJ Media, the Washington Free Beacon, Joe Concha—of course not the Times, WaPo, CNN et al., which are are pretending PBS is beyond reproach and as unbiased as…they are.

On October 1, the Public Broadcasting System premiered an episode of “The American Experience” titled, “The American Vice President: Rethinking a political afterthought.” Like the other installments in the long-running educational series, it was a mini-documentary about an aspect of American history, using historical footage and interviews to tell an enlightening story. I began watching it from my point of view as a student of American history, government history and the Presidency in particular. Halfway through—-it shouldn’t have taken that long, but it was 5 am. this morning—I realized what the real message was: “Kamala Harris is qualified to be President of the United States.”

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I Could Defend This Principal, But I Won’t…

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

The Bellevue School District in Washington, like so many others as well as our college campuses, has experienced a plague of anti-Semitism since the October 7, 2023 terrorist attack by Hamas against Israel. The phenomenon has been particularly ugly there, with students taunting Jewish classmates in one episode by chanting “Gas the Jews!” Phantom Lake Elementary in the district discovered a swastika drawn on one of its walls on campus. , someone tagged the west wall on campus with a swastika. Principal Heather Snookal sent a reassuring email to parents about the incident, but then felt compelled to send a woke DEI disclaimer so no swastika-lover from another culture would be offended. She really did this. No, I’m not making it up.

“While the symbol is often associated with hate and intolerance due to its use during World War II, it is important to acknowledge that the swastika has deep historical and cultural significance in other parts of the world,” Snookal wrote. “I apologize that I didn’t acknowledge this in my previous communication.”

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Incompetent Elected Official of the Month, Res Ipsa Loquitur Division: Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga)

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

Does there need to be much more evidence than that absurd tweet from yesterday? Greene preceded this with a conspiracy theory-esque map showing that it was mostly GOP-tilting regions that got hit hardest by Hurricane Helene.

Presumably no rebuttal is necessary, but I have some reactions…

  • What is she talking about?
  • What the hell is she talking about?
  • What the bloody hell is she talking about?
  • Who is “they”?
  • Who voted this idiot into Congress?
  • How can Republicans with IQ’s in double digits avoid being associated with a House member who constantly embarrasses her party, the Congress, and the human species with outbursts like this?
  • I’m racking my brains to think of a dumber and more irresponsible assertion from a House member of either party in the history of the institution. Compared to Greene, fellow Georgia rep Hank Johnson (D-Ga), who memorably expressed concern that Guam might tip over because the U.S. had so many troops there, is Galileo.

What a great time, with House control hanging in the balance, for Greene to make her party look too brain-damanged to put its shoes on the right feet.