2016 Republican National Convention

As Close To An Ethics Hero As He’s Ever Likely To Get: Senator Ted Cruz

/ Jack Marshall / 37 Comments

I never thought I would have occasion to place the term “Ethics Hero” anywhere near Ted Cruz’s name. Ted understands ethics (unlike Donald Trump), he just discards them at will, when an end he lusts for requires an unethical means. Last night, however, Cruz brushed up against ethics heroism. He took the podium at the Republican National Convention in prime time, and directed principled conservatives and Republicans not to vote for Donald Trump, though not in so many words. It took character, it took courage, and his message was the right one.

The Texas Senator and last Trump challenger standing congratulated Trump for winning the Republican nomination,  but never endorsed him. Then he closed by telling convention-goers and TV viewers to “vote your conscience” in November. The convention throng of Trump supporters erupted in jeers, as Cruz had to know they would, and Trump felt he had to appear on the floor to pull focus from his intransigent foe. Today on Fox News, the Fox Blondes and their harassers were slamming Cruz as a traitor and a fool.

Yeah, that was how the collaborators talked about De Gaulle in France during the occupation, too. Continue reading →

This Is My Shocked Face: Now It Looks Like Melania Trump Lied About Graduating From College, Too

/ Jack Marshall / 31 Comments

shocked face

This is about two posts too many about Donald Trump’s trophy wife for a month, never mind a day, but it’s got to be relayed.

The Huffington Post reveals that Melania’s claim that she was awarded “a degree in design” appears to be a lie.

Despite Melania Trump’s professional biography  that includes this…

Melania degree

The Huffington Post did some digging after the plagiarized speech last night. You see, this is the danger in betraying trust: once people know you are faking something, they wonder if you are faking everything. (I would say that being married to Donald Trump is evidence, all by itself,  enough to prompt suspicion.) They found that Slovenian journalists Bojan Pozar and Igor Omerza wrote in their published biography of the former fashion model—yes, she has a book written about her, and its called “Melania Trump ― The Inside Story: From a Slovenian Communist Village to the White House”— that she “became and remained a college dropout” after leaving the University of Ljubljana’s architecture school following her freshman year.

They write… Continue reading →

Ethics Observations On The Melania Trump Plagiarism Fiasco

/ Jack Marshall / 30 Comments

melania-trump-michelle-obama

1. Republican and Trump supporters who are making excuses for the embarrassing incident sound exactly like the Hillary Corrupted denying that there was anything wrong with using a private e-mail server for official communications. No, the plagiarism isn’t trivial. No, it is not mitigated by referencing how horrible Hillary Clinton is. No, you can’t argue that the similarity was a coincidence because the sentiments in both are generic and common.

2. The incident is especially significant because it shows how spectacularly incompetent the Trump campaign, and the Republican Party under Trump, are. And these are the people who are going to fix “everything,” though they can’t avoid a self-inflicted gaffe like this on the very first night of the convention?

3. This is the first test of whether Trump will enforce accountability, as he claims he will. The speechwriter or writers who permitted this should be canned, as should whoever assigned them to Trump’s wife and oversaw the program. Would that be the campaign manager, Paul Manafort? If nobody is fired (as the current rumor has it), that will be one more indication of Trump’s phoniness.

4. There is talk that this was intentional internal sabotage, designed to make Trump look bad through his wife. I doubt it, but if that was the case, what a miserable, cruel, cowardly thing to do. Continue reading →

Pay Heed Or Else: The Ethics Fiasco That Was The GOP-Trump Convention’s First Day

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

GOP convention

Just think: this was what having Donald Trump at the center and calling the shots did to a convention and a political party in a single day.

Imagine what can happen to  the country in four years..

Here are examples of what Trump’s leadership, values and “best people” bring, as illustrated by Day #1 at the 2106 Republican National Convention:

  • Before the evening program commenced, a rebellion of anti-Trump delegates (they wanted to pass a rule unbinding the delegates so they could, you know, vote to nominate someone qualified, at least comparatively) was suppressed with y strong-arm tactics by the Trump-controlled leadership, which blocked an attempt to require a roll call. At one point the podium was abandoned to stallthe uprising, leaving the session without a moderator. Conservative pundit and Weekly Standard publisher Bill Kristol said the proceedings resembled the strong-arm tactics of Russian President Vladimir Putin. The clash resulted in the entire delegations from Utah and Colorado walking out, and reportedly they are both gone for good. The episode might not have descended into totalitarian territory had not Speaker Paul Ryan, who normally would have had the gavel, chosen to organize his sock drawer rather than attend the convention and fight for the integrity and honor of the party he is supposed to lead.

Brave, Mr. Speaker.

  • In the aftermath of this mess, Gary Emineth, a top GOP fundraiser who had joined the Trump campaign resigned in protest,  texting his resignation to RNC chair Reince Priebus.  “I was on the Trump finance committee and I just resigned because that bully tactic is absurd,” Emineth told reporters. “Why can’t the people be heard? …You don’t do this in America. You do this in other countries.”
  • It was discovered that washed-up and aging former teen heart-throb Scott Baio (“Happy Days,” “Charles in Charge,” and my personal favorite, the desperate, pathetic, self-flagellating reality show, ” Scott Baio Is 45…and Single” ) who inexplicably was one of the speakers last night (David Cassidy was apparently unavailable), had posted this on twitter:

Baio tweet

Stay classy, Chachi!  (See: “A Nation of Assholes,” 9/10/15)

A nation that regards the political views of Scott Baio as worthy of a national forum is too crude and trivial to survive, I fear. Continue reading →