According to Bob Woodward’s latest “rumors and gossip as history” soon-to-be best seller, Donald Trump, as President in in 2020, sent Wuhan Virus testing equipment to Vladimir Putin for his personal use. In Kamala Harris’s predictably revolting interview with past-his-pull-date sleaze merchant Howard Stern yesterday, we had this exchange:
Ever since Bob Woodward became an icon of investigative journalism with “All the President’s Men” ( and was able to have himself portrayed by Robert Redford in the movie), he has periodically issued another “inside information” hit job on other administrations and institutions, including the U.S. Supreme Court. Now, for the first time close enough to a tight election to be legitimately be called election interference, the ancient ex-Washington Post reporter has produced “War,” and D.C. is “buzzing.” Woodward’s book was advanced to The New York Times and other news outlets on yesterday, though the book won’t be released until next week. Sayeth the Times, it “adds additional, inside-the-room details to… previous accounts,” previously unreported conversations and more involving President Biden, Donald Trump, Kamala Harris and other officials.
Why did it take four years for someone’s head to explode over this? Well, as they say, if it’s new to you, it’s news, and this is new to me.
Campus Reform reveals an earlier report by The Chicago Thinker showed that student-run debate organizations at Northeastern University and Boston College co-hosted the American Parliamentary Debate Association’s “inaugural BIPOC tournament” and explicitly prohibited white students from competing. Huh. Why would this make sense? Whites are too articulate? Too quick on their feet and skilled in rhetorical flair, are they? This is the equivalent of prohibiting black basketball players from competing in an all-white tournament; after all, as the movie says, “White Guys Can’t Jump.” The existence of such a discriminatory tournament is an insult to non-whites.
Robert Saleh has been fired as head coach of the New York Jets after Sunday’s loss to the Minnesota Vikings. With high hopes for a winning season in 2024-25 because star quarterback Aaron Rodgers is finally healthy, the Jets have looked weak while managing only a 2-3 record. The King’s Pass might have worked for Saleh if he had led the Jets to a better record, but many suspect that the impetus for his dismissal was his controversial choice to sport a Lebanon flag below the Nike logo on the sleeve of his hoodie during the Vikings game. This was his tasteful choice while Israel was fighting for its life against the terrorist, Iran-funded organization Hezbollah, which uses Lebanon as its headquarters.
Some day I’ll have to count up all of Trump’s honors here as an ethics dunce, “asshole of the year,” unethical quote of the week/month, etc. I know the total is impressive, and that’s even with the Julie Principle limiting his exposure. In a post yesterday I mused that a legitimate question could be posed regarding why Trump wasn’t far ahead in the polls, given the abysmal quality of his opposition and the multilateral botch the Biden Administration represents. This latest episode answers the question.
In an interview yesterday with conservative (though not always Trump-friendly] commentator Hugh Hewitt, Trump again was railing against the open border immigration policies of the Biden/Harris administration and the unvetted “migrants” who had, have or will commit serious crimes here. “Many of them murdered far more than one person, and they’re now happily living in the United States. You know, now a murderer…I believe this, it’s in their genes. And we got a lot of bad genes in our country right now.”
Translation: “Here, everybody, take this huge stick with nails in it and beat me bloody!”
One would think this is obvious, but since the most unprofessional and incompetent White House spokesperson of all time—yes, even worse than Sean Spicer!—still has her job despite the stunt she pulled yesterday, it clearly isn’t obvious enough.
Yesterday? Oh, that. Yesterday President Biden’s DEI paid liar couldn’t deal with Peter Doocy’s questions about FEMA gaslighting regarding its strange shortage of funds to handle hurricane relief while the Biden-Harris administration was sending nearly $157 million to assist displaced people and refugees in Lebanon. Jean-Pierre—who can be seen on “X” and elsewhere denying to reporters that FEMA spends money relocating illegal immigrants and in earlier video clips saying that it does—called Doocy’s daring to question the administration’s excuses “misinformation.”
In case this fact has eluded you somehow, Democrats now use “misinformation” to mean “facts, interpretations and opinions that interfere with a narrative that advances our interests.” When Doocy refused to accept Jean-Pierre’s evasive and contradictory answers, such as stating that FEMA had plenty of fund for hurricane relief despite both President Biden and Secretary Mayorkas stating otherwise, Historic Paid Liar resorted to “slamming her notebook shut and storming out of the briefing room.”
Here’s the title of Nate Cohn’s essay in the New York Times: “How One Polling Decision Is Leading to Two Distinct Stories of the Election: A methodological choice has created divergent paths of polling results. Is this election more like 2020 or 2022?”(That’s a gift link.)
Duh. The election isn’t “like” 2022 or 2020, and obviously so. If anything, the election is more like 2016, except that Trump has already been President for four mostly successful years, at least theoretically proving that he can do the job, and Hillary Clinton, as certifiably awful as she is, still was more qualified and substantive that the ridiculous Kamala Harris.
Apparently pollsters are relying heavily on so-called “recall vote” weighing, in which how a voter cast a ballot in the last election gives valid data about how he or she will vote in 2024. First, 2022 was a mid-term election, and the dynamics were completely different from a Presidential race. Indeed, everything is completely different from this Presidential election.
Using the last Presidential election as some kind of guide to figuring out this one using Trump 2020 as a comparison to Trump 2024 is also invalid. The election during the pandemic lockdown was sui generis. Trump was the incumbent stuck with miserable conditions thanks to events outside his control, but still: voters tend to blame incumbents. Trump is in 2020 Biden’s position now as the one offering a change from a rotten situation, and Harris, well, who knows what she is, or will be regarded as once enough voters get their heads out of anatomically impossible places and pay attention? That is, if they ever do.
Cohn writes at the end, “A near repeat of the last presidential election is certainly a plausible outcome. In today’s polarized era, who could possibly be surprised by a repeat in Mr. Trump’s third presidential run? If it’s a near repeat, the polls weighted by recall vote won’t just have an excellent night themselves, but they might also spare the entire industry another four years of misery.”
Wait, a repeat of what? A Trump loss to Biden? No, that can’t be it. Trump doing better than the polls? If that happens, Trump wins, and if Trump wins, how could 2024 be a repeat of an election that Trump lost? The election being close? Do we need polls to guess that?
Yecchh.
If I were still teaching legal ethics at American’s law school, I would resign in protest over this.
“Remember Pearl Harbor and the members of the Japanese and German communities that suffered tragic losses in the weeks that followed that tragic day.”
“Remember 9/11, and the many who died that day, including the brave terrorists who sacrificed their lives for what they believed, and those American soldiers, Iraqi combatants and brave Taliban warriors who died in the months and years that followed.”
What needs to be remembered is that on October 7, not for the first time, Palestinian terrorists murdered innocent Jewish civilians in Israel as part of the long-standing mission of wiping that nation from the map. We need to remember the victims, the perpetrators of this crime against humanity, the motives behind this horrific act, and the anti-Israel and anti-Semitic forces in the U.S. and abroad that are enabling the terrorists by condemning and attempting to block Israel’s necessary military response.
Often in life, one has to pick a side in a conflict after careful consideration of the issues and values involved. If you don’t have the courage and integrity to do that and accept the consequences of your choice, then shut up and stay on the sidelines with the other weenies.
American University is teaching its students exactly the wrong ethical lesson.
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Added: And here is the fatuous, intellectually bankrupt “Imagine”-level twaddle from Barack Obama, insulting the intelligence of everyone who reads it:
“One year ago, Hamas launched a horrific attack against Israel, killing over 1,400 Israeli citizens – including defenseless women, children, and the elderly – and kidnapping hundreds more. Today, the prospects of peace seem more distant than ever. But we continue to hope for a return of all the hostages, an end to the violence, a rejection of hate, and a future in which both Israelis and Palestinians can enjoy the security and stability that most of them yearn for.”
The overall lesson: “You can’t win, you can’t break even, so you might as well stop trying to pander to the woke at all and let the metaphorical chips fall where they may.”
Believe it or not, that innocuous ad has triggered controversy from the racial offense and grievance mob. Apparently it promotes negative black stereotypes! That’s strange: the problem in the U.S. black community is that most children are born without their parents being married at all: this happy photo rejects that reality. It also looks like a rather affluent family wedding: isn’t the negative stereotype that black families are poor? (Although, come to think of it, what up-scale wedding reception would serve spaghetti with Heinz tomato sauce from a jar?) And aren’t whites supposedly to be racists? How is an inter-racial marriage perpetuating that negative stereotype? Wait, is the stereotype that the older balck woman is wearing a hat?
No, the complaint seems to be that the ad shows the groom’s white parents and an older black woman who represents the bride’s mother. See, the ad “erased” black fathers: it implies that the bride’s black dad is off whoring, or something, and that Mom is a single mother. Who would see the ad that way, except those who embrace the negative stereotype with their own confirmation bias?
—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.”
Ethics Alarms 