The short answer is that I don’t feel like cleaning up all the brains, blood and bone after multiple head-explosions. The long answer follows.
The fact that a Presidential election (Is it “the most important Presidential election” ever? This has been claimed about almost every election I can remember, and I remember all of them since I was 10 years old. The Chicken Little Principle applies. Maybe it is, but the whole concept has been abused) is really and truly going forward with these two epically bad candidates as the public’s only serious alternatives represents a catastrophic failure of our system on many levels. This is not a good sign. We could not reach such a dire point if both parties, the public, our institutions, culture and values had not fallen apart in chunks. For me, watching the debate would feel like watching a bloody car crash involving close friends and relatives, except in their car seats instead, without seat belts, will be the United States of America.
As I just banned another misbehaving commenter who stopped off here just to show he was smarter than me and to defend Snopes (“…But for Snopes?”), it seems a propitious time to post this Comment of the Day, the second (the first is here) to be inspired by my post about another banned commenter calling me a “Trump supporting fascist.” And he was much smarter than the jerk I just banned.
When I was about 11 years old, my grandparents’ church showed a movie called “The Hiding Place” about a Dutch family that hid Jews from the Nazis. I was fascinated by the idea that there could exist a country so very unlike America where people could be punished for helping others. Since I was already very interested in history, I began what is now a 40-plus-year study of the Third Reich and Hitler, in particular.
I do not consider myself an expert; however, I am certainly more knowledgeable than the average layperson. I have read hundreds of books over the years concerning Nazi Germany and not just the military build-up and harassment of Jews. I’ve read a lot about the culture, the education and the day-to-day life of Germans.
And, of course, I’ve read multiple biographies of Hitler himself. Not every biography is created equal, though (Don’t get me started on movies about Hitler. The last one I tried to watch was a TV movie called “Hitler: The Rise of Evil” starring an otherwise fine actor named Robert Carlyle. I turned it off after 10 minutes due to the blatant misrepresentations and outright fabrications of Hitler’s early life. Apparently, the expert consultant had his name taken off of it for the same reason). Some biographies are pretty bad and postulate things that are not likely to be true. A good example of this are the ones that try to push the idea that Hitler was a homosexual.
Waking up this Father’s Day [Thanks, Dad,for 1) being such a terrific, selfless father 2) for continuing to be an inspiration, a role model and a guide during my highs and lows (like now), and everything in-between 3) for loving my wonderful mom and showing it so brilliantly to everyone, especially her, without interruption for almost sixty years; 4) for somehow saving so much money on a modest salary to hand over to my sister, me, and the three grandchildren through sacrifice and smart investing, because without it I would be living in a cardboard box right now, and 5) for surviving the Battle of the Bulge] to the near certainty that my son (who informed me last week that he would like me to refer to him/her/they as my daughter, Samantha. OK! ), is almost certain to ignore this rather contrived holiday (which is fine with me), a mystery in my yard in which someone or something keeps pulling the 15-foot-long heavy plastic, 7″ diameter tubing, installed to send runoff from the gutters into the garden rather than into my home’s foundation, off the down spout and dragging it into my neighbor’s yard, and another fight with a customer service rep, who, I swear, spoke exactly like Andy Kaufmann’s character on “Taxi” but faster than an auctioneer—yes, this IS a long sentence!—I sat down with Spuds to talk myself out of seppuku, drink a cup of coffee, and check what nonsense the various news networks were spouting.
From the moment ABC made Bill Clinton’s media propaganda guy its supposedly objective host for the network’s Sunday public affairs, talking heads show, the jig was up, or should have been. George Stephanopoulos is and was a Democratic Party operative; that he was allowed to keep this job, which allowed him to, for example, interview his former de facto boss, Hillary Clinton, on more than one occasion, should have put to bed permanently the claims of the ethically blind that mainstream media news reporting was not disgracefully biased.
Now George is apparently more secure than ever that his displaying open partisanship will meet with no resistance from his management at Disney/ABC. Asked by CNN host Abby Phillip this week what the “most important question” for both candidates should be in the June 27 debate moderated by the CNN, Stephanopoulos recommended that CNN’s moderators should confront former President Trump with “Who won the last election?”
That’s a great way to try to duck the actual issues in the election. Then, I suppose, CNN’s moderators should start grilling Trump on the substance of his various prosecutions.
“When the going gets tough, the tough get unethical.”—Me. Also, in election year 2024, Machiavellian and disgusting.
These are repulsive people. When I saw the Rolling Stone headline, “Justice Alito Caught on Tape Discussing How Battle for America ‘Can’t Be Compromised,'” I thought, “Oh-oh.” Then I read the story. Alito was tricked by a left-wing James O’Keefe imitator (Ethics Alarms’ verdict on O’Keefe’s methods and conduct has been consistent and unequivocal from the beginning: he’s an unethical journalist, dishonest and untrustworthy, whose methods have occasionally uncovered hidden agendas that can’t be ignored) posing as a conservative admirer at an event. Attending the Supreme Court Historical Society’s annual dinner on June 3, Lauren Windsor, a progressive documentary filmmaker, introduced herself to Alito as a religious conservative. Then she proceeded to ask him leading questions and offer her own “opinions.” What she learned was that Alito was nice to strangers, and that with a stranger who seemed to admire him in a social setting, he chose to be agreeable rather than confrontational.
Here is the exchange: Windsor approached Alito at the event and reminded him that they spoke about political polarization at the same function the year before (who knows if they did or not, but if Alito didn’t remember, he wasn’t going to argue about it). In the intervening year, she told Alito, her views had changed. “I don’t know that we can negotiate with the left in the way that needs to happen for the polarization to end,” Windsor said. “I think that it’s a matter of, like, winning.” Alito’s reply: “I think you’re probably right. On one side or the other — one side or the other is going to win. I don’t know. I mean, there can be a way of working — a way of living together peacefully, but it’s difficult, you know, because there are differences on fundamental things that really can’t be compromised. They really can’t be compromised. So it’s not like you are going to split the difference.”
You will see from this that the Rolling Stone headline is misleading and deceitful. Alito’s comment could have been made from either side of the ideological spectrum: it shows agreement with neither side. Moreover, it begins “You’re probably right,” which could easily mean, “You’re full of crap, but you’re welcome to your opinion, and I’ll make you feel like a Supreme Court Justice agrees with you because I’m a nice guy and now you can tell your friends, ‘Justice Alito agreed with me!'”
I have often wondered about this phenomenon, reflecting back on my lucky hour-long conversation with Herman Kahn when he was widely regarded as the smartest man alive. He was an unpretentious, kindly, engaging individual, and throughout our conversation made me feel like I had expressed theories and ideas that he thought were perceptive and valuable. Maybe he left that meeting and told a friend, “Boy, I was just trapped talking to an idiot for an hour!” But he made me feel good, which is an ethical thing to do.
And I wasn’t secretly recording him so I could leak to the Washington Post my comments as his revealed beliefs.
Next Windsor told Alito: “People in this country who believe in God have got to keep fighting for that — to return our country to a place of godliness.”
“I agree with you. I agree with you,” Alito replied. Rolling Stone adds at that point that he “authored the Supreme Court’s 2022 Dobbs decision, which reversed five decades of settled law and ended a constitutional right to abortion.” Oh! I see. Alito voted to end Roe “to return our country to a place of godliness” ! He’s a religious fanatic! He helped end Roe because of his religious beliefs!
Read the words, as Sir Thomas More might say. All Alito says is that he agrees that people need to fight for what they believe. He doesn’t even say that he believes in God. He also just says, “I agree with you. I agree with you,” which under those conditions might mean, “Now, nice talking to you, but stop monopolizing my time and let me meet some other people.” There is no rhetorical smoking gun in this conversation and nothing illuminating or newsworthy, except perhaps that the desperate left is stooping to emulating an unethical conservative fake journalist to discredit the U.S. Supreme Court, and unfairly victimizing Joseph Alito for the third time in two weeks.
These are, I repeat, disgusting people.
The New York Times, I must note, was hardly better than Rolling Stone. It also treated this manipulated, unethically recorded and ambiguous conversation as news worthy, and had a deceitful headline of its own: “In Secret Recordings, Alito Endorses Nation of ‘Godliness,’ Roberts Talks of Pluralism.” That implies that Alito (and Roberts) were aware of the recordings, and worse, Alito did NOT endorse a nation of “godliness.”
Now this is desperation. The upside-down U.S. flag incident that the New York Times treated as a “scoop” three-and-a-half years after it took place started falling apart almost immediately, so then the Times concocted an even more attenuated flag-based theory that Justice Joseph Alito had signaled his approval of the January 6, 2021 rioting at the Capitol. In neither case was there any evidence that Alito flew the flags or was aware of their significance; he explained the incidents, but, see, because he’s a conservative SCOTUS Justice, the Axis just assumes he must be lying.
About that…. serial Ethics Alarms Ethics Dunce Eric Wemple, who is the Washington Post’s “media critic” these days, thus telling you all you need to know about the credibility of the Washington Post, was actually allowed to issue an op-ed yesterday condemning his own paper for its “deference to Justice Alito” handing “a scoop to the New York Times.” In this thing, Wemple really says that the Post ignored a “sizzling tip” in 2021. That there was a nautical distress signal flag flying over the Alito home was a sizzling tip! Sizzling! Yes, he really wrote that.
The Washington Times reports that the Democratic National Committee today will vote to change party rules so the party can quietly nominate Joe Biden via Zoom before its convention. Not only will this maneuver supposedly enure that an early ballot filing deadline in Ohio won’t keep Biden off the ballot there ( Gov. Mike DeWine has already signed a law to extend the filing deadline to make sure Biden is on the ballot, so the party’s claim that the virtual nomination is necessary for that reason is hooey), it will “eliminate any realistic chance disgruntled party members will try to replace Mr. Biden on the ballot with a more desirable candidate amid alarming poll numbers that show him trailing former President Donald Trump both nationally and in the critical battleground states.”
You know: can’t let that democracy thingy get in the way of The Party’s anointment of its Leader.
“Once President Biden is virtually nominated, then that will be it. He will be the presidential nominee of the Democratic Party and only death or incapacitation will prevent that moving forward,” said Josh Putnam, party rules expert and founder of FHQ Strategies LLC, a non-partisan political consulting venture. “There will be no substitutes.”
Nominating Biden ahead of the convention also has the advantage of minimizing the bad optics of the anticipated convention protests by several groups who believe Biden has betrayed their interests. It also will ensure that the convention, and thus the “mostly peaceful” protests get as little TV airtime as possible. A coalition of organizations under the banner “March on The DNC” announced they plan to “bring our demands” to the Democratic National Convention. They want permits to demonstrate near the convention center “to bring the people’s agenda to within sight and sound of the Democratic Party leadership.” Oh, can’t have that! To re-phrase a memorable line from “Dr. Strangelove”: “You can’t have a political demonstration here! This is the Democratic Party Convention!”
Well this is interesting. And not at all surprising.
Enterprising conservative blogger Matt Margolis dredged up an almost completely ignored report in the New York Post during Barack Obama’s re-election campaign in 2012 that revealed Obama’s efforts in 2008 to “hush” big-mouth anti-white, anti-America (“God bless America? I say God damn America!”) racist minister Jeremiah Wright. Wright, you will recall, was Obama’s supposed “spiritual advisor” whose Sunday sermons qua rants the future President said he attended religiously (snort) for many years. We now know that although Obama solved his Wright problem by denouncing him publicly, Obama’s true views were much closer to those of his mentor than most voters would have been comfortable with in 2012.
I’ve been getting a lot of inquiries about the verdict in the falsely dubbed “hush-money trial” that came down with unseemly speed yesterday. As with other high profile trials where I have not been on the jury or in the courtroom, I don’t have a legitimate basis for much ethical analysis of the trial itself, including the competence of the attorneys or the judge. The Kyle Rittenhouse prosecution was an exception, because of the blatant prosecutorial misconduct in that case that was evident from direct quotes (and the defense’s ethics were dodgy as well).
The position that it was unethical to bring this case to trial as a form of what has been dubbed “lawfare” by critics is already locked in for me, and that is the most important feature of the case. As to the substance of the charges, the absurd number of counts in the indictment were obvious over-charging, an unethical prosecution trick but one that isn’t ever punished. The fact that Michael Cohen was the “star” witness against Trump should have, in my view, made the prosecution’s case insufficient to sustain a conviction on its face. Maybe others in historically significant criminal trials have been convicted “beyond a reasonable doubt” based on the testimony of such a throbbing habitual liar—the Lincoln assassination conspirators and Sir Thomas More come to mind—-but the former was a pro forma military tribunal affair where the defendants’ rights were severely restricted and there was never any chance that they would not be convicted, and the latter took place in England under the direction of a vengeful despot.
The fact that the verdict came down so quickly in what was a very strange and complicated case—with judge’s instructions to the jury that would take me a couple of days to read and understand—strongly suggests a jury that had made up its mind already. I believe that it was wrong not to sequester the jury: I did see a lot of the broadcast media coverage, and it was generally disgusting. The ugly cheerleading for a conviction on all the channels except Fox News, which sounded like an arm of the defense team, couldn’t help but bias the jury.
Oh, this is too good. If the Ethics God is responsible for this, she’s a genius.
You know that supposed “Stop the Steal”-connected flag that the Alito vacation home had flying over it briefly last summer? The flag that “proved” that the conservative Justice was either a serial mad flag-flyer who had engaged in “the appearance of impropriety” by showing his sympathies for the January 6 Capitol rioters twice, previously with an upside-down U.S. flag, or had wrongly “permitted” his wife to express such sentiments via flag twice, the first time almost four years ago? That flag?
That flag, the “Appeal to Heaven” flag, has been displayed along with other historic U.S. flags outside San Francisco’s City Hall for more than half a century. Along with 17 other flags representing different moments in American history, the flag favored by Mrs. Alito (of course the flag conspiracy purveyors are certain that the Supreme Court Justice is lying and that he is the real culprit, just because) appears in the Pavilion of American Flags in Civic Center Plaza.
Ethics Alarms 