Once Again, Harris Reminds Us of How Narrowly the US Avoided Disaster in 2024

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

The disaster we narrowly avoided was having such an incompetent elected President of the United States. The Atlantic posted a new excerpt from former Vice President Kamala Harris’s book, “107 Days,” and like so many other emissions from what Kamala calls “her mind,” the selection prompts the thought, “Wow, what an idiot!”

Kamala Harris writes that her “first choice” to be her running mate was her close friend Pete Buttigieg, but she decided that it would be “too big of a risk” for a black woman to run with a gay man. Buttigieg “would have been an ideal partner—if I were a straight white man,” Harris writes. “But we were already asking a lot of America: to accept a woman, a Black woman, a Black woman married to a Jewish man. Part of me wanted to say, “Screw it, let’s just do it.”But knowing what was at stake, it was too big of a risk.” She adds that Buttigieg originally topped her list because “he is a sincere public servant with the rare talent of being able to frame liberal arguments in a way that makes it possible for conservatives to hear them…I love Pete. I love working with Pete. He and his husband, Chasten, are friends.”

Well.

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On That Fake “Ron Howard” Facebook Post….

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

“Appeal to Authority” is one of the hoariest logical fallacies of all as well as one of the most common; it is a favorite of those who cannot make their own cases for their fervently held beliefs. So it is not surprising that a supposed post by nice guy—he was Opie, after all!—and mostly apolitical Hollywood director Ron Howard has resurfaced on social media as desperate progressives try to avoid the consequences of the Charley Kirk murder that was the inevitable result of the fearmongering and demonizing their party flooded the culture with for years.

The Ron Howard manifesto of what liberals believe and why was circulating earlier this year and even Snopes, a reliable Axis ally, pronounced it fake. Never mind, though. What a brilliant ideology the Left has that its adherents can’t even be honest about who is making arguments in its support!

If you read “Ron’s” screed, you will conclude as I have that the director needs to track down the forger and sue him for defamation, or perhaps force the miscreant to watch Howard’s “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” and Jim Carey’s unrestrained mugging for days on end. The recitation of beliefs is so full of “Imagine”-esque fantasy and logical inconsistencies that a relatively alert 8th grader should be able to poke the thing with enough holes to fill Prince Albert’s Hall.

Here’s a challenge to Ethics Alarms readers: debunk this virtue-signaling orgy my Facebook friends are so fond of, and I’ll publish your vivisections in one grand post to express my gratitude for saving me the trouble. I’ll get you started: Only idiots make statements that they conclude with “PERIOD.”

Heeeeeeeeeeeeeere’s “Ron”…

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Charlie Kirk Assassination Ethics Train Wreck Update…

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

The newly Christened “Charie Kirk Assassination Ethics Train Wreck” is barrelling along at breakneck pace. I need this post just to catch up:

  • Attorney General Pam Bondi idiotically stated that “hate speech” was not protected by the First Amendment. Ethics Alarms negligently didn’t flag this immediately as Ethics Duncery, and I am abashed. I just am not surprised when Bondi shows us what she is: a legal hack, an unqualified and incompetent AG, and in the running for the worst Trump Cabinet appointment. Should she be fired for directly undermining the Trump/MAGA/conservative position on freedom of speech? Of course; she should never have been appointed in the first place. I don’t think it’s too much to ask that the U.S. Attorney General understand the Bill of Rights and all the SCOTUS cases establishing that “hate speech” is just speech, and completely covered by the First Amendment. What a disgrace Bondi is. Ugh.
  • Then there is Sen. Chuck Schumer, Democratic Party leader in the Senate, lawyer (once upon a time) and utter hypocrite. Jimmy Kimmel’s suspension is unfair and cowardly, but there is nothing preventing an employer from firing or suspending an employee who makes a statement in public that the organization decides is detrimental to business, But Schumer wrote on “X”:

“America is meant to be a bastion of free speech. Everybody across the political spectrum should be speaking out to stop what’s happening to Jimmy Kimmel. This is about protecting democracy. This must go to court.”

Roseanne Barr tweeted back derisive laughter, as well she might. She was fired from her hit sitcom for an offensive, arguably racist tweet, though what she said was, again, protected speech. I don’t care enough about Schumer to check and see if he expressed outrage at Roseanne’s tweet, but he certainly didn’t say that she had a case in court, which she definitely did not, just like Kimmel. Continue reading →

Now THIS Lying MSNBC “Journalist” Really Needs To Be Fired…

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Wikipedia tells us that Brandy Zadrozny “is an American investigative journalist and reporter with NBC News and MSNBC who specializes in radicalization, extremism and disinformation on the Internet.” Interesting! But apparently since she works for “MS,” she uses that supposed expertise to lie directly to the public in order to advance the Axis media’s propaganda. Zadrozny also, as evidenced by that head-exploding clip above, feels free to abuse her credentials and authority to literally deny reality that she, her fellow travelers, her employers and her whole profession find inconvenient.

Western Lensman (whoever he, she or it is) could not be more accurate, however. The lying by the Left, here and generally, knows no bounds. President Biden was sharp as a tack! If MSNBC doesn’t fire and permanently blackball this lying hack from ever practicing “journalism” again—and you know it won’t—we have a tacit admission regarding what their real purpose is: deception, confusion and distortion of reality for political gain. And it isn’t only MSNBC.

Heavens to Betsy: this woman’s specialty is the internet, and she doesn’t know about Bluesky, the Twitter/X alternative where cowardly progressives go to revel in their fantasies? Wait—she has an account on it: https://web-cdn.bsky.app/profile/brandyzadrozny.bsky.social! And still Brandy hasn’t noticed everyone around her cheering for Kirk’s death?

This is worse than mere lying. This is gaslighting, abuse of credentials (Brandy is a Pratt Institute grad), abuse of trust, abuse of journalism ethics, ack! ack! araghhyhayyrewqaunngemg!!!!!

(I just hurled myself to the floor like John Belushi used to do on Saturday Night Live.)

And poor Jimmy Kimmel sits at home, wondering what he said that was so bad….

Stop Making Me Defend (Ugh) Jimmy Kimmel!

/ Jack Marshall / 30 Comments

Believe it or not, this isn’t the first time I have used that headline. I also used it in 2017 in a post I began thusly: “I detest Jimmy Kimmel. I loathe him. He is the most revolting of all the Left-Licking late night and cable progressive comics, worse than Colbert, Maher, Samantha Bee, all of them. All of them combined. He is an ongoing blight on the ethics of American society, and yet he is self-righteous in the process.” My opinion of Kimmel has, if anything, deteriorated since I wrote that.

Nonetheless, fair is fair and ethics are ethics, and Kimmel’s suspension by ABC for a comment that was so much less objectionable than his biased, unfunny, obnoxious blather nightly is cowardly and indefensible.

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Ethics Quiz: Congress’s D.C. “Bananas” Law

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

In Woody Allen’s “Bananas,” one of those comedies that struck me as hilarious when it came out and now seems obvious and juvenile (though the courtroom scene is still inspired), the new dictator of the banana republic of “San Marcos” decrees that all citizens under the age of 16 are 16. I thought of that moment when I read that the GOP House voted Tuesday to allow 14-year-olds to be tried as adults for serious crimes in the District of Columbia.

This is one of several bills to follow-up on President Donald Trump’s (overdue) crime crackdown in D.C., in which he declared an emergency and asserted control over D.C. police while sending in armed National Guard troops to make the message beyond ignoring.

Th emergency expired last week as House Republicans advanced the 14 bills, since Congress can pass or overturn D.C. laws because it has constitutional authority over the city. The bill treating 14-year-old as adults resonates because D.C. teens have accounted for more than half of robberies and carjackings so far in 2025.

The legislation passed by the House yesterday would allow 14-year-olds to be charged as adults for murder and armed robbery without a judicial hearing. Currently that authority only applies for offenders for ages 16 and up.

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day:

Is prosecuting young teens as adults ethical?

In other words, is it fair? Does it address the real problems involved, or is it just a “Do something!” measure? Given the wide variation in maturity levels among teens, does the bill even make sense? There are 14-year-olds who are shaving and are bigger than their fathers, and other who appear to be 10. Does one size fit all?

Comment of the Day: “An Ethics Alarms Hat Trick!Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga) Earns Ethics Dunce, Unethical Quote of the Month, and Incompetent Elected Official of the Month!”

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

This Comment of the Day on the recent EA post about the unethical, irredeemable embarrassment Rep. Greene is—there have been several of them—by CEES VAN BARNEVELDT is sufficiently long and self explanatory that I won’t delay your appreciation of it. Here you go…

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Marjorie Taylor Greene is not a great student of history either. President Lincoln did not agree to a national divorce; he secured the unity of the United States at the great cost of 650,000 human lives.

Personally I am quite uncomfortable about the unity talk I am hearing from politicians. Unity is not an abstraction. Unity does not exist on its own; it has a focus, center, and purpose. Proper unity can only be based on a foundation of truth.

During the Civil War slavery was abolished, and after the Civil War the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendment secured rights for the former slaves. The unity that Lincoln restored could only be based on the foundational truth that slavery is evil and has no place in the USA, and that the rights mentioned in founding documents of the USA also apply to the former slaves.

That means that if we need to preserve the unity of the United States we cannot skip the issue of truth, and after the funeral of Charlie Kirk simply go over to the order of the day. The assassination may have a similar political importance as the caning of Senator Charles Sumner by Representative Preston Brooks in 1856. The subtitle of the book “The Caning” by Stephen Pulio” is “The Assault That Drove America To Civil War”.

I do not intend to be apocalyptic with all the Civil War references, because I do not believe that we are there yet. And to stay within the marriage metaphor used by MTG in her unintelligent ramblings, I do not believe that the GOP is required to act like the battered wife who meekly returns to her abusive husband. So no kumbaya solution that leaves everything unresolved.

Here is the take from John Daniel Davidson from the Federalist today:

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My Facebook Feed Is Like A Petri Dish For Leftist Charlie Kirk Deflection Desperation…

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

Yes, they are spinning this hard…

I was going to try to start off with another topic but ran across the above at 5 am this morning. My friend and Facebook friend who posted it (and who received nothing but “likes” and supporting comments) is as nice and amiable man as you could ever know. I spent some delightful time with him over the weekend. But he is a lawyer-actor, living in two knee-jerk progressive bubbles, so he is turning off all his analytical abilities to try to focus attention on the Evil Right and somehow stop his “side” from being exposed by the Kirk assassination and its horrifying response to his death.

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Comment of the Day: “Ethics Dunce And Unethical Quote of the Week: Emmy Winner Hannah Einbinder, Plus Another ‘Nah, There’s No Mainstream Media Bias’ Moment by the Times…”

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

I used to follow up every Oscar telecast by chiding the Academy of Motion Picture Sciences for their omissions in the annual “In Memoriam” segment, which were often egregious. (How do you snub the likes of Harry Morgan and Stella Stevens?) I never did the same with the Emmys because I never watch the Emmys, but it has occurred to me that increasingly that awards show is more indicative of the state of American culture than the Oscars. Movies are going the way of live theater (Gee, thanks Wuhan virus!), and given the incompetence and political arrogance of Hollywood, it’s not the tragedy I once would have thought it was.

I found a special treat in the comment by AM Golden about this weekend’s Emmy Awards broadcast, as I saw an Emmys version of my annual Oscar posts! Here’s that Comment of the Day on the post “Comment of the Day: Ethics Dunce And Unethical Quote of the Week: Emmy Winner Hannah Einbinder, Plus Another ‘Nah, There’s No Mainstream Media Bias’ Moment by the Times…”. I’ll have a few comments at the end…

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Does anyone care about these awards anymore? Does anyone know any of the actors nominated?

As is my tradition, I skipped the ceremony and watched the In Memoriam this morning. I do this to grumpily catalog how many deaths were overlooked.

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An Ethics Alarms Hat Trick!Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga) Earns Ethics Dunce, Unethical Quote of the Month, and Incompetent Elected Official of the Month!

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

In addition to her many, many flaws, Taylor Greene, strong contender for the Worst Member of Congress in the Worst Congressional Class Ever, doesn’t understand the basic political rule expressed first by Napoleon: ‘”Never interfere with an enemy while he’s in the process of destroying himself.”

What an embarrassment. What an idiot! All around her the Axis is showing just how untrustworthy its members are by trying lie its way out of the uncomfortable reality exposed by Charley Kirk’s assassination while a disgusting number Democrats and progressives are cheering his death on social media. And what does she do? She issues a statement just as offensive and irresponsible so they can try to shift the conversation to “intolerance on the Right.”

Brilliant.

Here is what the Georgia Congresswoman (Be proud, Georgia Republicans!) wrote on “X” (in addition to the hat trick, she also won “Unethical Tweet of the Month” in tough competition):

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