Leon Panetta, Poster Boy For “My Mind’s Made Up, Don’t Confuse Me With Facts”

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

I had a couple of rapid thoughts when I saw this revolting story. The first was remembering how that line in the title above was one of my father’s favorite mordantly humorous slogans, along with “He was right, dead right, as he sped along, but he’s just as dead as if he were wrong!” and the tale about feeling sad and hopeless, hearing a little voice saying, “Cheer up, things could be worse!” and then, sure enough, things got worse. The second was realizing that I occasionally, very rarely but still occasionally, miss important information by refusing to watch Fox News. A third was deciding that I had mistakenly judged Leon Panetta to be an honorable and trustworthy public servant.

In an interview with Bret Baier on Fox News, Panetta, who was Bill Clinton’s Swiss Army knife aide and Cabinet member notably as head of the CIA, was asked by Baier if he had any regrets about signing the infamous open letter from 51 former intelligence officials using their influence and presumed expertise to advance the cover-up scheme declaring the Hunter Biden laptop as Russian disinformation.

In a head-exploding display of chutzpah, Panetta announced that he had no regrets at all, and that he has seen no evidence that would make him change his mind. Gobsmacked, Baier said, “You don’t think it was real?” Panetta responded “I think disinformation is involved here.”

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Abortion Confusion Ethics: What Should We Call This?

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

“According to a report by 8 News Now, Las Vegas resident Timika Thomas in 2019 wanted to add one more to her family of four….In her 30s, Thomas said she struggled getting pregnant…. Even though [she and her husband] were not insured for the costs they would endure, they decided to pay for invitro fertilization (IVF). …doctors sedated Thomas, inserted two eggs inside her body and sent her home with prescriptions, one of which would trick her body into producing enough hormones to kickstart her pregnancy. “You have to make yourself think it’s pregnant,” Thomas told the 8 News Now Investigators.Thomas went to her CVS branch pharmacy… took two of her required doses and knew something was wrong. “I started cramping really bad,” Thomas said. … “It was extreme. It was painful.” Thomas checked the prescription bottle and looked up the name of the drug. “The first thing I read is it’s used for abortions,” Thomas said…

[T]wo technicians and two pharmacists made a series of errors that led to Thomas being given the wrong medication, which essentially terminated her budding pregnancy on the spot. “They just killed my baby,” she said to herself at the time. “Both my babies, because I transferred two embryos.”

[The] technician – incorrectly believing she knew the generic name for the brand prescribed by the doctor – entered the wrong name into the prescription. One pharmacist did not catch the error, and another pharmacist failed to counsel Thomas when she came to pick up her medication…”

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That’s the CVS near my house in Alexandria. The CVS culprit in this ugly story was in Las Vegas, but it shows the same level of competence and care I’ve experienced.

Here’s the account from Fox Business:

“According to a report by 8 News Now, Las Vegas resident Timika Thomas in 2019 wanted to add one more to her family of four….In her 30s, Thomas said she struggled getting pregnant…. Even though [she and her husband] were not insured for the costs they would endure, they decided to pay for invitro fertilization (IVF). …doctors sedated Thomas, inserted two eggs inside her body and sent her home with prescriptions, one of which would trick her body into producing enough hormones to kickstart her pregnancy. “You have to make yourself think it’s pregnant,” Thomas told the 8 News Now Investigators.Thomas went to her CVS branch pharmacy… took two of her required doses and knew something was wrong. “I started cramping really bad,” Thomas said. … “It was extreme. It was painful.” Thomas checked the prescription bottle and looked up the name of the drug. “The first thing I read is it’s used for abortions,” Thomas said…

[T]wo technicians and two pharmacists made a series of errors that led to Thomas being given the wrong medication, which essentially terminated her budding pregnancy on the spot. “They just killed my baby,” she said to herself at the time. “Both my babies, because I transferred two embryos.”

[The] technician – incorrectly believing she knew the generic name for the brand prescribed by the doctor – entered the wrong name into the prescription. One pharmacist did not catch the error, and another pharmacist failed to counsel Thomas when she came to pick up her medication…”

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More On The Harvard President’s Self-Serving Spin On The Hamas-Israel Conflict.

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

The editor of Campus Reform, Zachary Marschall, a PhD and an adjunct professor at the University of Kentucky, is far less diplomatic about Claudine Gay’s video statement (here) than I was yesterday (at the same link), but I substantially concur with his points in “ANALYSIS: Harvard president Claudine Gay is a hypocritical fraud.”

Among the details I only generally alluded to or failed to mention that he highlights:

  • In 2022, Harvard ranked  as having the most anti-Semitic incidents of any campus in the country. 
  • Though Gay claimed that Harvard “embraces a commitment to free expression,” in 2018, Harvard investigated a professor after students complained that he was making “verbal or non-verbal” microaggressions in class. Says Marschall, “A cohort of leftist university administrators that believe both speech and silence can be violence devoted more interceding in a nothing-burger incident than Gay has expended in response to student activists clamoring for more dead Jews.”
  • “In 2020, then Harvard University President Lawrence Barcow issued a statement supporting the Marxist political movemnet Black Lives Matter, which just this week is celebrating the Hamas terror attacks.” Gay’s words suggested that Harvard would never do such a thing.   Marschall writes,

The anti-Semitic idea that Jews are benefactors of white supremacy informs Gay’s inability to take a consistent and morally sound stance on her students’ safety. Whatever capacity academics had for compassion and respect for people’s differences died in 2016 when Donald Trump’s candidacy drove the left into a radical combative hysteria. “The 6 justices who overturned Roe should never know peace again. It is our civic duty to accost them every time they are in public,” Harvard Law clinical instructor Alejandra Caraballo stated after the overturn of Roe v. Wade. Harvard scholars only know peace and empathy for their side, and Gay has made it clear that she considers Jews not on their side. 

Do read the whole thing.

Ethics Dunce: The National Book Foundation

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Add the National Book Foundation to the growing list of alleged non-political non-profits that can’t stay in their lanes.

Yesterday Levar Burton, whose claim to celebrity rests solely on two iconic roles, in “Roots” and “Star Trek” but who now describes himself as an “actor, podcaster, and reading advocate” (that is, has-been) said in a statement, “It’s an honor to return as host of the biggest night for books, especially in a moment when the freedom to read is at risk.” Burton also hosted the ceremony in 2019, presumably because he hosted the PBS children’s show “Reading Rainbow” for its entire two decade run.

The “freedom to read” is NOT at risk in any way, but Burton is dutifully mouthing ideological deceit from those who believe minors should be “free to read” books with sexual content and that advocate sex-related conduct in the collections of public school libraries. That’s not a reading issue but a parental rights issue. But I digress.

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Perplexed Ethics Thoughts On This Video…

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

1 To be absolutely fair, we cannot fully judge the context of this without knowing what the “preacher” was doing and saying. Was he stopping people in the street? Was he telling the members of the “gayborhood” that they were sinners, and needed to repent? Was he engaging in “fighting words” or threatening to spark violence? Was he loud and disrupting the enjoyment of those who lived there? These kinds of videos are often traps and designed to make an adversary look irrational or intolerant.

2. Assuming that none of the above is true—and again, that’s impossible to know—what the woman was essentially telling the man was that “we don’t want your kind here.” That’s bigotry. That’s un-American.

3. If the woman would say she supports “diversity, equity and inclusion,” then she’s hypocrite and a liar.

4. The screaming is unethical. It isn’t fair, respectful or civil. If she doesn’t want to hear what the guys has to say, then she should just walk away.

5. Is this woman an archetype of current progressives or at least a substantial proportion of them? She is not interested in hearing any views that she disagrees with. If she has a logical, substantive reason why the man should leave, she never expresses it, at least on the video.

6. What is the ethical method of dealing with someone who behaves like this? Is there an ethical way?

Oh NOW Biden Thinks That Giving Iran Access To Billions Will Spark Terrorism: A Barn Door Fallacy Classic!

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Under the Federal Rules of Evidence, subsequent remedial actions taken by an alleged tortfeasor cannot be introduced at trial to prove a party’s negligence, wrongdoing or culpable conduct. It is considered unfairly prejudicial. But the Court of Public Opinion isn’t bound by the Federal Rules, and neither is Ethics Alarms. Now that Biden has said “Never mind!” to the earlier cash for hostages deal with Iran, I look forward to Sec. Blinken and paid liar Karine Jean-Pierre babbling their arguments for why the 6 billion dollars given back to Iran for “humanitarian” purposes couldn’t possibly be connected to the sneak terrorist attack and its aftermath by Hamas. The reversal of the utterly reckless and irresponsible deal is more eloquent that they can ever be, and thoroughly rebuts their spin.

This is the Barn Door Fallacy: a negligent party taking now pointless measures to prevent what its previous incompetence already caused. It is cynical grandstanding,but in this case, it is also an admission, Federal Rules of Evidence or not. Donald Trump was right, conservatives were right, multiple Middle East experts were right, and anyone familiar with why it was once supposed to be insane to exchange money for hostages were right, while Biden, Barack Obama and the entire Democratic Party along with its mainstream media propaganda mouthpieces were wrong.

Would Hamas have attacked if Trump had been President? I don’t know, and it doesn’t matter. What matters is that the consequences widely predicted after Biden agreed to unfreezing billions in Iranian assets occurred, and he and his administration is accountable….which means they must be held accountable. They have blood on their hands.

If President Biden had any integrity or guts—he has neither—his position would be that Iran didn’t carry out the attacks, the released assets couldn’t possibly be connected to the carnage in Israel, U.S, policy was and is sound, and the deal stands.

Instead, the administration is saying “Oopsie! Guess we screwed up! Well, we’ll try to make it better. Sorry for all the blood and beheaded babies!”

If the Republican Party can’t clean out this gang of fools, it should disband and reorganize as a competitor for Cirque du Soleil.

Harvard Just Sent Me This Video. What Do You Think? Here’s What I Think…

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

1. Words are cheap. Harvard, as I noted last month, has been singled out by The Fire as the worst university in the nation regarding free expression and free speech. Is Gay, as a newly installed president, just mouthing convenient platitudes, or will she make a genuine effort to reverse the culture at her institution? We shall see.

2. This episode exemplifies what Harvard’s version of open discourse is, or at least was just 8 months ago.

3. Gay’s lament for people trying to protect their families and just trying to survive is code for “those cruel Israelis will be injuring and killing civilians and children as they set out to wipe out Hamas.” The citizens of Gaza elected a terrorist organization to run their territory. They are not innocent in what has transpired. They are fully complicit. If they were so dedicated to their children, they would not have intentionally placed their fates in the hands of violent anti-Semitic extremists.

4. Now Harvard is opposing hate and division, perhaps because, finally, a lot of that hate is being focused on Harvard. As recently as its position in the affirmative action case before the Supreme Court, Harvard has been an enthusiastic force for division—racial, political, and more.

Wait, Is NYT Woke Propagandist Michelle Goldberg Finally Learning?

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

I have given up reading Paul Krugman or Charles Blow in the Times op-ed pages since the Julie Principle applies: they are reliable dishonest left-wing hacks, and it’s silly to waste time criticizing them for doing what they will always do. I have almost reached that point with Michelle Goldberg, last vivisected here, but her column this week was interesting. She actually criticized her fellow travelers for siding with Hamas after the horrific sneak terror attack on Israel. Not only that, Goldberg, a knee-jerk wokester if there ever was one, was moved to question progressives generally, writing in The Massacre in Israel and the Need for a Decent Left,

“…the way keyboard radicals have condoned war crimes against Israelis has left many progressive Jews alienated from political communities they thought were their own.”

“Progressive Jews” like Goldberg. Funny, I just think of her as an integrity-challenged, progressive liar and fool. Anyway, she goes on in part,

Conservatives reading this might take a jaundiced satisfaction in what some surely view as naïve progressives getting their comeuppance. But part of what makes the depravity of the edgelord anti-imperialists so tragic is that a decent and functional left has rarely been more necessary… It is not just disgusting but self-defeating for vocal segments of the left to disavow those universal ideas about human rights, declaring instead that to those who are oppressed, even the most extreme violence is permitted….Perhaps such hideous dogmatism shouldn’t be surprising. The left has always attracted certain people who relish the struggle against oppression primarily for the way it licenses their own cruelty; they are one reason movements on the left so reliably produce embittered apostates. Plenty of leftists have long fetishized revolutionary violence in poor countries, perhaps as a way of coping with their own ineffectuality….

The most sympathetic reading of the online leftists playacting as the Baader-Meinhof Gang is that their nihilism is a function of despair. As Leifer pointed out, even before the killings in Israel, it was a grim time for the American left, as the elation of the Sanders campaign and the revolutionary hopes of the Black Lives Matter movement gave way to backlash and retrenchment. “When the left loses, it enters into a cycle of self-marginalization,” he said….On social media, some scholars and activists are repeating the line “Decolonization is not a metaphor,” suggesting that the homicidal spree we just saw in Israel is not a departure from their ideology but the embodiment of it. I suspect they will come to regret it if people take them at their word.

By valorizing terrorism, these voices on the left are effectively choosing to stop contending for power in a serious way — a slow and grinding process rife with setbacks — and indulge instead in messianic projection.

Well bless her heart. (“The revolutionary hopes of the Black Lives Matter movement”? You mean like discriminating against whites, replacing merit with racial spoils, using violence as a political tool, destroying urban law enforcement and, of course, making lots of money? Those hopes?)

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Friday Open Forum Time!

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

And it’s about time, too. The last OF was unusually spare, and this has been a lively, if ugly seven days since.

Elucidate and illuminate!

[Notes on that clip: 1. The “Howdy Doody Time” theme was sung to the melody of “Ta-ra-ra-Boom-dee-ay,” one of many traditional American songs that kids used to be taught and now never are. I was going to write a musical revue containing songs like that (“There’ll Be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight” and “Hail, Hail, the Gang’s All Here!” among others) for my old theater company, but for various reasons it never happened. They are all infinitely superior to “Imagine.” 2. You’ve heard that voice singing the creepy Rice Crispies march. before. Who is it, and what famous song did he sing?]