2016 Presidential campaign

Hey! GOOD Answer, Hillary! Wait…Oh, Right. Never Mind.

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

guilty-until-proven-innocent1

Twice, Hillary Clinton has publicly made the astounding statement—especially for the supportive and enabling spouse of Bill Clinton, an accused rapist himself—that “every survivor of sexual assault” has “the the right to be believed.” Ethics Alarms noted this both times, here and here, and opined the last time, in November:

Is she that deluded? That convinced of her corrupted supporters’ willingness to believe anything she says, or to excuse every cynical, shameless maneuver?  Has she finally reached the point where she has issued so many, many lies that she can no longer keep them all straight, and now blunders into obvious contradictions? Or is she trying to sabotage her own campaign, taking her copious skeletons out of the closet and hanging them from the roof for all to see?

Words have consequences (though following Hillary’s rise, you wouldn’t know it), and as might have been predicted, a questioner at a campaign event in New Hampshire yesterday asked Hillary if believing all “survivors” meant believing Bill’s accusers as well, including Juanita Broaddrick, Kathleen Willey and Paula Jones. I have to hand it to Hillary; she was ready. She had thought about an answer, maybe even had a meeting with her advisors to craft the perfect response. Here is what she said:

“I would say that everybody should be believed at first until they are disbelieved based on evidence.”

What is a lawyer and a candidate for the Presidency doing advocating the un-American principle of “guilty until proven innocent”?  OK, we know what: pandering to the Pro-Vagina vote. Nevertheless, Clinton knows this is not how the law works, so she is apparently advocating a significant and frightening change. Continue reading →

Dishonest Headline and Story Of The Month: Breitbart And Reporter John Nolte

/ Jack Marshall / 65 Comments
"Trump Telling The Truth" is about as believable...

“Trump Telling The Truth” is about as believable…

When Andrew Breibart died, the conservative punditry world befouled it self with weepy odes to his bravery and dedication to right’s mission, whatever it is. In fact, he was a sloppy and unethical ideologically biased pseudo journalist, who made Fox News really look fair and balanced and MSNBC seem like the epitome of professionalism. Journalism with an agenda isn’t journalism, and Breitbart’s website never let nuances like facts get in the way of a good smear or a dubious accusation.

Earlier this week I read for the first time—since I avoid Breitbart like I avoid centipedes—that there were rumors that The Donald was sending favors the way of the website, and in return, it had grabbed the niche of pro-Trump media mouthpiece, thus setting itself up to run the Ministry of Truth when he gains power and begins rounding up the Unsuitables. THere’s no proof of this, but it could explain articles like this one today, titled Trump 100% Vindicated: CBS Reports ‘Swarm’ On Rooftops Celebrating 9/11.

To cut to the chase, nothing in the article vindicates  or supports Trump in any way, and certainly not “100%.” That’s pure linkbait, though the disgraceful story holds on to the like like grim death, tossing excuses, equivocations, deceits and logical fallacies at it as if this junk can turn lead into gold. Continue reading →

Trump’s New Jersey Muslims 9-11 Celebration Lie Justifies A Nazi Label

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments

trump-salute

The current controversy—except there’s no disagreement on the facts, so it isn’t really a controversy—over Donald Trump’s unretracted statement that he saw “thousands” of New Jersey Muslims celebrating the Twin Towers’ destruction on 9-11 is materially different from the other items on the list of his various outrageous insults, vulgarities and misrepresentations. It’s a Big Lie, the device perfected and employed by Hitler and Goebbels, a weapon of totalitarianism. Other American politicians and leaders have dabbled in the technique, of course. I flagged the false accusation that the Republicans “stole” the 2000 Presidential election as a Big Lie; so is the Democratic cant that Bush “lied” about weapons of mass destruction. The “War on Women” is a Big Lie. Birthers are engaging in Big Lie politics—so is Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla), who insists that Ted Cruz isn’t a “natural born” American. The Truthers are Big Liars. Black Lives Matter was built on the Big Lies that Trayvon Martin and Mike Brown were murdered. The current claim, being treated with disgusting respect by journalists, that white America is engaged in systematic black genocide is a Big Lie.

Most of these, however, are really Little Big Lies. They are dangerous and destructive, but not in Goebbel’s league. Trump, however, is using a Big Lie to impugn the patriotism and trustworthiness of a group of citizens based on their religion and cultural heritage, and attempting to stir up purely group-based hate. To hell with Hanlon: this is Nazi Propaganda 101, and deserves to be identified as such directly to Donald Trump’s face.

There is no debate over whether Trump could have “seen” thousands of Muslims whooping it up on TV (like blacks celebrating O.J.’s acquittal for gutting his wife), because no such video was taken, broadcast, or archived. If there were such celebrations, Trump didn’t see them, unless he somehow obtained George Burns’ magic TV from the old Burns and Allen sitcom, on which George was able to see what his wife, friends and neighbors were doing while he chatted with the TV audience. If Trump did see such a non-existent broadcast, he couldn’t have seen “thousands,” unless there was a ’round the state relay, like they do on New Years Eve at midnight, going around the country to show simultaneous celebrations.

Trump didn’t see it. He couldn’t have. There is no controversy.

Yet he still claims he did, and has a team of paid liars telling media interviewers he did. He could have said he was mistaken; he could have said that he confused televised scenes of Muslims abroad celebrating (though not “thousands”) with accounts of some Muslims celebrating in New Jersey, and apologized. He didn’t though. He stuck to a false story after he had to know it was wrong, and that makes it a lie. The fact that the lie tacitly suggests that American citizens of the Muslim faith lack loyalty to their nation and love of their fellow citizens whom they cheered to see murdered  makes it a Big Lie. Continue reading →

No, Washington Post, The Republican Party Has No Obligation To Condemn Donald Trump, But Nice Try Anyway.

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments
"Hey Republicans! Step HERE! It's your DUTY!"

“Hey Republicans! Step HERE! It’s your DUTY!”

I’m sure the paper’s editors will get a holiday gift basket from the Democratic National Committee for their nakedly partisan trap.

Erupting with indignation over Trump’s recent “let’s make fun of the disabled reporter” performer and his subsequent lie that he wasn’t doing what video shows he did, the Washington Post editors concluded with a demand that Republicans condemn Trump, or else:

[I]t is time for Republican Party leaders to make clear that they do not approve of Mr. Trump’s politics of denigration. If they do not, their party will be seen as complicit in his hatefulness, and deservedly so.

There are two reasons this is partisan and hypocritical.

  • First, an official or coordinated Republican Party attack on Trump would violate the terms of Trump’s deal with the party that if he was treated fairly, Trump wouldn’t run as a third party candidate should he fail to get the GOP nomination. Since I have never heard of either party ever specifically reprimanding one of its own candidates for the nomination—I don’t think it’s happened—doing so would surely be regarded as “unfair” by Trump, and I’d agree with him. Of course, an independent Trump candidacy would guarantee the election of a Democrat. Fiendishly clever, Post!

The party could have and, I wrote here, should have scratched Trump from the nomination hunt and the debates early on, before it had given him a platform and he had become, for the nonce, a front-runner in the polls. His third party threat would have been more bluster than reality then, and without a national TV audience, Trump would have probably been content to file a lawsuit and throw a few tantrums. But it’s not called “the stupid party” for nothing. The GOP missed its window of escape. Turning on Trump now would undermine the party’s primary mission, not that the Post cares, and that is electing a Republican President. Continue reading →

Wow! Trump Tries a JUMBO!

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

Elephants from the Ringling Bro. and Barnum and Bailey Circus perform a nine-trunk salute.

Donald Trump is apparently testing yet another piece of political conventional wisdom. Having already conquered such long standings assumptions as “A Presidential candidate shouldn’t talk and act like a sixth grader” and  “A candidate shouldn’t embarrass his party every time he opens his mouth,” Trump is now setting his sights on the classic, “It’s not the crime, it’s the cover-up,” but with an impressive extra challenge.

He is now trying to cover up the fact that he grotesquely mocked the disability of a New York Times reporter in a public appearance that was videotaped.

Trump actually is denying that he did what he was obviously doing. Very bold, very intrepid. It will be fascinating to see if he can pull it off.

Here’s Trump, after the Times excoriated him for ridiculing reporter Serge Kovaleski, who has arthrogryposis, a malady that  limits flexibility in his arms:

“Serge Kovaleski must think a lot of himself if he thinks I remember him from decades ago – if I ever met him at all, which I doubt I did. He should stop using his disability to grandstand and get back to reporting for a paper that is rapidly going down the tubes.”

Odd that Trump didn’t remember him, since before doing his “man with weird arm movements” bit he said quite clearly, “Now, the poor guy — you’ve got to see this guy…” One doesn’t normally call a reporter “a poor guy” for no reason, nor does one say, “You’ve got to see this guy” if you aren’t going to show the crowd what it is they have to see.”

Never mind, Trump is going for it: the full “Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?”, or as Jimmy Durante put it, in the show that gave the Ethics Alarms category it’s name, “Elephant? What elephant?” Continue reading →

And Speaking Of Turkeys, Here Are Random Observations On Donald Trump’s Handicapped Times Reporter Impression

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

1. Stay classy, Donald.

2. Yes, I agree, it is refreshing to have a politician on the scene who does not hide his true self, does not calibrate his words and opinions to what people want to hear or what journalists and pundits will approve, does not suddenly speak in a Southern accent in front of crowds south of the Mason-Dixon line or pose as a lifetime Yankee fan in the Big Apple. Okay, it’s a novelty to have an asshole who has the integrity to openly behave like the asshole he is.

BUT HE’S STILL AN ASSHOLE.

How are people missing this?

3. One theory is that Trump has chosen this week to go all out to see if there is anything he can say or do so beneath the dignity of the office he is seeking and so repugnant to core American values that the idiots supporting him will finally wake up and say, “What was I thinking?”

If so, his experiment is working well.

And yes, it is fair to identify anyone who supports Donald Trump at this point as an idiot.

4. Please ask the Donald Trump fans at  your Thanksgiving dinner whether this is really how they want to see their President behaving in public. If #2 above is correct, I assume that he’ll eventually don a Hillary mask, glue a herring to his forehead, and recite dirty limericks while riding on the Spinning Teacups ride in Disneyland nude.  Hell, why not?

5. Imagine:Democrats decided that they didn’t want Howard Dean to be President based on this…

Donald Trump makes Howard Dean look like Henry Higgins. Continue reading →

Hypocrisy? Audacity? Dishonesty? Insanity? What Could This Hillary Clinton Tweet Mean?

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

I swear, I didn’t set out to have this be “Inexcusable Presidential Candidate Monday” on Ethics Alarms, but the worst of the worst have been busy as bees trying to make my head explode. Hillary’s tweet may be the worst of the batch.

What would possess her to walk into the social media buzz saw that would be (and was) sparked  by such a pious assertion issuing from William Jefferson Clinton’s  top enabler? How many victims of sexual assault did she undermine to advance her husband’s ambitions and her own?

Is she that deluded? That convinced of her corrupted supporters’ willingness to believe anything she says, or to excuse every cynical, shameless maneuver?  Has she finally reached the point where she has issued so many, many lies that she can no longer keep them all straight, and now blunders into obvious contradictions? Or is she trying to sabotage her own campaign, taking her copious skeletons out of the closet and hanging them from the roof for all to see?

I don’t know, but I do know this: if there is any woman on earth whose past conduct should constitute estoppel from making the statement that “Every survivor of sexual assault deserves to be heard, believed, and supported,” it’s Hillary Clinton.

 

Hoping That Future Presidential Candidates Won’t Be Asked About Whether They Would Kill Baby Trump

/ Jack Marshall / 37 Comments

back-to-the-future-delorean

I refused to weigh in on the brief and silly ethics question being asked of various Presidential candidates regarding whether they would kill Baby Hitler given the chance via DeLorean or Star Trek gateway or something similar. I am beginning to wonder, though, if candidates to lead whatever is left of the U.S. 50 years from now will be asked a similar question about killing Baby Trump.

I have written…

Donald Trump’s revolting candidacy…cannot fairly be called the most unethical presidential candidacy, but it is early yet. It may well prove to be one of the most harmful. As the United States faces some of the most difficult challenges in its history, Trump has chosen to use the nation’s process of deciding on its leader for his own ego gratification and self-promotion, without  preparation for the job, deference to fair campaign rhetoric, or acknowledgment of his own fatal flaws as a candidate. Exploiting his status as a media celebrity in a celebrity-besotted culture, as well as the news media’s lack of discipline or principle, he is opportunistically advancing his candidacy on the lack of credible GOP contenders, using tabloid headline tactics….Donald Trump is perfectly happy to make a mockery of the presidential nomination and election processes while distorting them too. If he manages to convince enough fools to vote for him, hell, sure…he’d have a blast running for President. If his run peters out, it’s still worth lots of publicity, and increases the value of the Trump “brand.” Even the most unethical of the previous candidacies were based on a sincere, if misguided belief that the country’s welfare would be served by it. Does Trump have that belief? I wonder. No, his can’t be called the most unethical candidacy. But it is reckless, and it is intentionally appealing to the worst in 21st Century American character: fear, celebrity worship, ignorance, and materialism. Meanwhile, every second of attention his candidacy distracts from serious consideration of our nation’s leadership reduces the chances of the public doing its hardest and most important job carefully and competently.

I wrote that five years ago. Continue reading →

And The Michele Bachmann Memorial Award For The Most Disqualifying Ignorance Of American History Demonstrated By A Republican Presidential Candidate Goes To….

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments

Michele-Bachmann1

Ben Carson, of course!

WARNING: the next person who tells me that Ben Carson must be intelligent because he separated conjoined twins is going to get a punch in the mouth, unethical or not.

The award is named for Bachmann because she repeatedly mangled American history on the way to becoming the 2012 Republican Presidential hopeful who most embarrassed her party, her gender, her species, bipeds,  and the American educational system. On the way to losing all respect, credibility and the nomination, Bachmann told her cheering, stupid crowds that the “shot heard round the world” was in New Hampshire, and that John Quincy Adams, a little boy in 1776, was a Founding Father. (Bachmann also confused John Wayne with John Wayne Gacy, the serial child killer, and I’m not forgiving that, either.)

Believe it or not, Carson’s award winning statement is worse. Yesterday,on C-SPAN, he said this in his usual inspiring eyes half closed, lips barely moving, droning delivery, when he was asked which of the Founders most impressed him:

“I’m impressed by a lot of them, but particularly impressed with Thomas Jefferson, who seemed to have very deep insight into the way that people would react. And he tried to craft our Constitution in a way that it would control people’s natural tendencies and control the natural growth of the government.”

No, that’s not a slip of the tongue. He specifically mentions Jefferson, and he was not talking about the Declaration but the Constitution, with which Tom had nothing to do—he didn’t write it,he didn’t sign it, and he wasn’t at the Convention.

Dr. Carson’s ignorant, he’s faking it, and he’s an idiot…just like Bachmann, who graduated from law school, remember.

Carson hasn’t bothered to acquire the basic knowledge of his country necessary to become an American citizen, much less to presume to lead  it.

When I interviewed for a job, I made sure that I knew the basics about the company or organization I was attempting to join, because that demonstrated that I was serious and responsible, and at least had a threshold understanding of what my job might require. Carson would flunk a basic job interview, even without being scored down for his terrible presentation—you can’t look an interviewer in the eyes with your eyes closed.

Would it be unfair to require as a prerequisite of running for the leadership of a nation to be able to answer 5th grade-level questions about that nation’s history? You know…who was the first President? Which side won the Civil War? Who delivered the Gettysburg Address?

Which founding document did Thomas Jefferson write????

I don’t think that would be unfair at all.

Here Doctor, you arrogant disgrace, watch this (it’s videoed from a TV screen—tough), since you obviously never read a history book:

 

 

 

John Kasich Flunks A Competence Requirement: If You Can’t Think And Communicate Clearly, You Shouldn’t Be President

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments

“We must be more forceful in the battle of ideas. U.S. Public Diplomacy and International Broadcasting have lost their focus on the case for Western values and ideals and effectively countering our opponents’ propaganda and disinformation. I will consolidate
them into a new agency that has a clear mandate to promote the core Judeo-Christian Western values that we and our friends and allies share: the values of human rights, the values of democracy, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and freedom of association. And it should focus on four critical targets: the Middle East, China, Iran, and Russia.”

Poor John Kasich. The Ohio governor is by experience, practical political views and demonstrated executive skills among the most qualified and able of all the Presidential candidates. Nonetheless, he is a lazy communicator and a clumsy one, and in a job where words and persuasion matter as much as any other tool of leadership, he repeatedly reveals himself to be untrustworthy. The above passage, from Kasich’s foreign policy speech this week, exemplifies this.

A President cannot say that he wants an agency that will promote Judeo-Christian values, because it will be heard, and fairly so, as an effort to promote some religions over others, something the United States government may not do, and may not even appear to want to do. Worse, Kasich chose the exact moment when his words were guaranteed to be interpreted in the worst light possible by Democrats and the news media, as the nation was immersed in an a debate about screening Syrian refugees that was being elevated to dueling hysterias by both the left and the right. Sure enough, I just heard CNN’s Michael Smerconish compare Kasich’s proposal to ISIS-style forced conversion.

Nice job, John. Continue reading →