And Speaking Of Mainstream Media Bias, Spinning For Democrats And Misleading The Public, This NYT Report Is A Classic

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

When I read this astoundingly mendacious story in the Times, the first thing that I was reminded of was the memorable moment in “Plain Trains and Automobiles” when John Candy confidently tells a dubious state trooper that his burned out, roofless wreck of a car is “safe to drive.” (This goes right into the Ethics Alarms Clip archive.)

President Biden has repeatedly insisted that he has no knowledge of his son Hunter’s various sleazy business schemes, and that Joe never discussed Hunter’s money-making activities with him. Yet yesterday, in his nearly five hours of closed-door testimony to the House Oversight Committee, a former business partner of Hunter’s, Devon Archer, revealed that President Biden met with and spoke to his son Hunter’s international business associates on about 20 occasions as Hunter sought consulting deals (translation: lucrative influence and access peddling arrangements).

Hilariously, Archer claimed that the Joe Biden was not party to any of his son’s business deals. You see, Hunter Biden was just trying to sell the idea that he could provide access to his powerful father—by providing access to his powerful father. He was claiming that he could influence his father by showing that he could persuade him to pick up the phone, drop by and shake hands. Yet, reports the Times, Democrats on the panel insisted that it wasn’t what it was, by definition.

Continue reading →

Nate Silver Tells The Truth About Media Bias: Ethics Hero

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

The only surprising aspect of Nate Silver’s latest substack essay is that he actually wrote it and had the courage to put it on the web. He is honest about mainstream media bias, and until he got kicked off his own creation, the 538 blog, Silver was a willing accomplice in this rot in the foundation of our democracy, making a lot of money in the process. Now—finally—he’s using his substantial critical thinking and research skills to expose the bad guys (his former pals before they rejected him : yes, I suspect there’s a measure of vengeance in this)who continue to successfully warp public knowledge and the process of an informed democracy by convincing sufficient number of ovine citizens that the concept of progressive media bias is a right-wing conspiracy theory. The focus of his traitorous analysis is how Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter has helped address the effects of the media’s partisan bias.

In “Twitter, Elon and the Indigo Blob,” Silver becomes one of the very few progressives of note to admit what has been going on under their cultural assault. Some others include Glenn Greenwald, Matt Taibbi, and Bari Weiss, but Silver is more scientific and detached than any of them, and as a result, his analysis is more persuasive and, I hope, more disruptive to the blue wall of silence the progressive Borg has erected around a throbbing, obvious, disgusting truth.

Continue reading →

On The Ethically Depressing GOP Presidential Field

/ Jack Marshall / 113 Comments

The New York Times gave us the chart above, in an article about how the “he could shoot someone at high noon in central park and we wouldn’t care” Trump “base” will make a Republican effort to nominate a responsible, respectable, competent candidate for President difficult if not impossible. Look at that array! And my sister, a Democrat, complains that her party’s options are terrible, which they are.

How can a nation this large and diverse have no leaders who seem capable of doing the top job ethically and well? This is a societal, cultural, systemic failure.

That a character like Donald Trump, former POTUS or not, can have that kind of overwhelming support in the midst of indictments, the long, long trail of ridiculous and offensive statements, and his disqualifying conduct of refusing to accept his electoral defeat yet tells us that something is deeply rotten in the state of America. And whatever that state of rotteness is, returning either Joe Biden or Trump to the White House would be an invitation to too many disasters to contemplate.

But let’s start from the bottom of the list, where hope blooms. Nobody wants Chris Christie to run. Good. He was an ethics villain in 2016, knocking off Trump’s adversaries in the debates when he had the rhetorical tools and ammunition to take out Trump the way he reduced poor Marco Rubio to a laughing stock. Then Christie endorsed Trump, whom he knew was unfit, in a corrupt quid pro quo deal, probably to be Vice-President, which Trump reneged on. Then Christie was out to get Trump again, but it was too late. The one-time rising GOP star’s star was already permanently tarnished by his George Washington Bridge fiasco anyway. He’s running to get headlines and speaking fees, I guess. That he has almost no support speaks almost as well for the Republican voters as their support for Trump is damning.

Vivek Ramaswamy is the GOP equivalent of tech entrepreneur Andrew Yang in the last cycle for the Democrats. He’s not a serious candidate, and anyone who thinks he is doesn’t understand the American Presidency. Like Christie, he’s just static in the race, and a distraction. In a very important election like the one approaching, causing static and distractions is unethical.

Continue reading →

The Bizarro World Ethics Of “Disparate Impact”

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

This makes sense only in a distorted reality where people deliberately ignore the obvious and insist that facts don’t matter. You know, like Superman Comics’ Bizarro World, where the stupid populace eats the plates and throws away the food.

A complaint filed with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) last week by the group HOPE Fair Housing Center argues that landlords who refuse to rent to applicants with a history of not paying rent and getting evicted are illegally discriminating based on the basis of race and sex. It’s the old disparate impact canard: “A housing provider that enforces a policy that denies the opportunity to rent to anyone who has an eviction filing or judgment is disproportionately denying housing to Black households and Black women in particular,” wrote HOPE Deputy Director Josefina Navar. Now, everyone knows why landlords don’t want to rent to people who have failed to pay rent in the past and gotten themselves evicted or forced the property’s owner to threaten eviction: landlords want to be paid what they’re owed, on time, without legal hassles and expense. That’s all.

Continue reading →

When Ethics Alarms Don’t Ring: The Congresswoman’s Prayer Breakfast Joke

/ Jack Marshall / 27 Comments

Outspoken freshman Congresswoman Nancy Mace, (R-SC), decided to throw away her prepared remarks and riff at the beginning of her speech at fellow South Carolinian Sen. Tim Scott’s prayer breakfast last week. That was her first mistake.

“When I woke up this morning at 7, I was getting picked up at 7:45, Patrick, my fiance, tried to pull me by my waist over this morning in bed. And I was like, ‘No, baby, we don’t got time for that this morning,'” Mace began. “I gotta get to the prayer breakfast, and I gotta be on time.”

Yes, there’s nothing better to warm up the crowd at a prayer breakfast like a pre-marital sex joke!

Seriously, how hard is it to avoid making comments about sex at a prayer breakfast? She probably embarrassed Sen. Scott thoroughly, who was metaphorically batting second behind the nookie narrative in her remarks as she praised him profusely. Scott is running for President, however futilely, and doesn’t need any silly but completely avoidable controversies. Mace also probably made Seacoast Church Pastor Greg Surratt a little uncomfortable, who had honored both her and Scott as a part of his congregation.

Continue reading →

Ethics Quote Of The Month: Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky)

/ Jack Marshall / 90 Comments

I was literally going to start this post with nearly the exact same statement, except I was going to ask how many progressives and die-hard Biden defenders would have the integrity to condemn the revelation that Facebook and Instagram censored posts and changed their content moderation policies after unconstitutional pressure from the Biden White House.

Not that this should have surprised anyone; it certainly didn’t surprise me, Censorship, deception and suppression of news, facts and reality is how the current mutation of the Democratic Party rolls, and Big Tech and social media have joined the mainstream media as their enablers and accomplices.

Continue reading →

I’m Sick Of Hearing These Arguments That College Admissions Favor The Wealthy And Privileged Because The Problem Is Easy To Fix. So Fix It.

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

Nicholas Kristoff, a another New York Times progressive pundit but one who occasionally makes sense, has an intermittently valid op-ed in today’s paper titled, “The Real College Admissions Scandal,” which is, he argues, “affirmative action for the rich and privileged.”

Kristoff immediately knee-caps his own credibility by writing, perhaps to please his Dark Woke Masters, “I wish the Supreme Court had ruled differently on affirmative action for race, but unfortunately it blocked that path for diversity.” It’s a stupid statement. The Constitution blocked that path, and so did the 1964 Civil Rights Act. What his statement literally means is that he applauds “good racial discrimination and prejudice”, but deplores it when it adversely affects groups he cares about.

He also comes close to setting off the hypocrisy alarm, but at least is transparent. While including “legacy admissions” in his list of “affirmative action for the rich and privileged,” Kristoff says, “I was a member of the Harvard Board of Overseers, and my wife, Sheryl WuDunn, is currently a member and previously served on the Princeton and Cornell boards; our three children also attended Harvard.” Hmmm. So, having benefited from the policies he condemns while doing nothing to reform them, the pundit now want to stop others from benefiting from them! Cool. He also is silent about how much money he has given to his alma mater over the years. Donors also get an edge for their kids when they apply to prestige colleges.

Continue reading →

Our Woke Education Apocalypse Update: The Failure Of The “I Promise” School, And Other Horrors

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

With great fanfare, NBA immortal LeBron James established the “I Promise charter school in 2018 to educate “at-risk” students. The I Promise School, which teaches children from 1st to 8th grade, promises:

With education as the driving force of change, the LeBron James Family Foundation is not only spreading that impact and improving lives of inner-city students and families, but also shifting the course of an entire community. Focusing on his hometown of Akron, the Foundation’s I PROMISE program provides year-round resources, access to opportunities, supportive skill development, constant encouragement and other wraparound supports to more than 1,300 Akron Public School students who have all been guaranteed college scholarships if they do their part. These efforts have culminated in the groundbreaking new public school – the I Promise School – that is taking an innovative approach to providing a challenging, supportive, and life-changing education, creating a new model for urban public education.

Soaring and inspiring words…it’s too bad that the Akron Beacon Journal reported this week that the 2023 “class of eighth graders at the I Promise School hasn’t had a single student pass the state’s basic math test since the group was in the third grade.” Moreover, “The state has also issued its first concern about the school: two of I Promise’s biggest subgroups of students, black students and those with disabilities, are now testing in the bottom 5% in the state, landing the school on the Ohio Department of Education’s list of those requiring targeted intervention.”

The response from those responsible? “Huminahuminahumina…” Stephanie Davis, the new principal of the school this year who was introduced as “the perfect person to lead the I Promise School and all of our families to the success we know they will achieve,” according to the school district, had no immediate explanation.

Continue reading →

Ethics Verdicts On Rep. Derrick Van Orden’s Outburst

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

The first verdict is “What an asshole!”

Rep. Derrick Van Orden, a freshman GOP Congressman from Wisconsin, walked in on a group of high school-age Senate pages lying on the floor of the Capitol Rotunda to take cellphone photos of the Rotunda dome. According to an alleged transcript of his outburst prepared by one of the pages, Van Orden said, “Wake the fuck up you little shits…Get the fuck out of here. You are defiling the space!” Van Orden also called the teenagers “jackasses” and “lazy shits” according to the pages.

Maddy Pritzl, a former Senate page, took to Twitter to claim this was a tradition that she had observed herself seven years ago. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, engaged in a bipartisan pile-on, condemning Van Orden for his treatment of the pages. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy suggested that the incident may have been a “misunderstanding” and said that he planned on talking to Van Orden, who, for his part, refused to apologize or express regret for his conduct.

Continue reading →

Weekend Ethics Update, 7/29/2023: Navy Joan, “Payback,” Soccer Creeps, News Media Denial, UFOs, Trump’s Relationship With Jesus, And Hillary [Excellent Typo Fixed]

/ Jack Marshall / 66 Comments

Talk about a “day that will live in infamy”: on this date in 1921, Adolf Hitler became the leader of the Nazi Party, aka the Nationalist Socialist German Workers’ Party. You know the rest.

I’ve been remiss in writing Warm-Ups and similar multiple issue posts: on a time/views basis, they are the least efficient use of my own limited blogging time, as they take about twice as long to prepare and attract about half as much attention as the single issue essays—don’t ask me why. But looking at my list, if I don’t give due attention to some of these backed-up stories now I may never get to them at all. Soooooooooo…

1. The Navy Joan saga, cont. As discussed here, President Biden officially made his son’s 5-year-old love-child Navy Joan Roberts, a non-person by refusing to count her among his grandchildren literally, as he told staff that they were to only acknowledge that he had six grandkids, not seven. This, despite his repeated paeans to family and his love of his grandchildren. This is a major indictment of Biden’s integrity, fairness, courage and character, and the majority of commentators, even some in the pro-Biden propaganda corps, were appropriately critical. Enough so, it seems, that Joe’s”s advisors decided that he had seven grandchildren after all.

President Biden publicly acknowledged his 4-year-old granddaughter, Navy Joan Roberts, for the first time yesterday, saying in a statement that he and the first lady, Jill Biden, “only want what is best for all of our grandchildren, including Navy.”

The reversal deserves no applause. His initial cruel handling of yet another situation created by his Black Sheep son was signature significance: decent people don’t act like that, ever. That he changed his position only after it appeared that his already miserable poll numbers might suffer is redolent of the disgusting machinations of Bill Clinton during the Lewinsky scandal, when a Dick Morris poll indicated that the public wouldn’t tolerate him lying about the affair. If you need a poll to tell you what conduct is unethical, then you’re hopeless ethically. Clinton was hopeless, and so is Biden.

Continue reading →