2024 Election Ethics Train Wreck

First Friday Open Forum of September!

/ Jack Marshall / 46 Comments

Last week, because of my training schedule, the Friday Forum was on a Thursday, so theoretically there ought to be more pent up ethics issues that Ethics Alarms has missed than usual. I bet there are more than usual for other reasons: as I predicted would happen as the Election to Save Democracy gets closer, EA has been set upon by single-purpose commenters whose objective is to discredit me and the site, usually by sealioning a single rebuttal to an essay critical of Harris, telling the truth about the rotting ethics of the Democratic Party, or defending Donald Trump against Axis smear attempts.

Typical was the exchange with a commenter on this post, who was determined to prove that Trump or his campaign using some video that was taken at an Arlington National Cemetery ceremony that he was invited to attend violated an “Army Rule.” When I told him that he needed to move on to another topic, as genuine and good faith commenters here do, he vanished, after wasting not just my time, but that of many commenters here as well.

No, I don’t believe that these are paid operatives; Ethics Alarms doesn’t have enough distribution or influence to be worth paying someone to do what the Trump-Deranged and knee-jerk progressives will do anyway for free.

I almost feel like I should apologize for the blog taking an obvious turn to substantially more political commentary this year, even more than in 2016 and 2020. Almost. I regard this as an unusually important ethics tipping point for the culture and the election. Trump is almost irrelevant (my opinion of the man, his character and his trustworthiness have only slightly improved since 2015): if the Axis strategy since Trump’s election in 2016 doesn’t finally result in the crushing rejection it deserves, all of those dire predictions about the fate of the U.S.A. will not be so hyperbolic after all.

But see if you can discuss something else….

From the Res Ipsa Loquitur Files, Scary But Funny Section: Nah, There’s No Big Tech Pro-Democrat Bias!

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Brief reactions:

  • Why did it take so long for someone to try this?
  • Of course, only a moron would seriously ask Alexa who to vote for, but then morons are the pivotal voting bloc in any Presidential election.
  • One would think Amazon would be a bit more careful not to show its hand like this. One would be wrong.
  • This is how you fix an election and then deny later that the election was “stolen”: Millions of little slants, nudges, lies, smears and bits of propaganda, none them by themselves significant enough to point to as corrupting, but collectively very powerful.
  • Watch Amazon say that this was just an inadvertent “mistake.” Sure it was. What are you, a conspiracy theorist? Big Tech would never be so openly biased and manipulative before an election! This was a glitch, that’s all.  AI still has glitches! Be patient!
  • Hilariously, the best Alexa can come up with as a Harris “accomplishment” despite stating that there are so, so many is her DEI status. Perfect.

Ethics Villain: CNN

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

The announcement that the shamelessly biased and wildly incompetent “media expert” Brian Stelter is returning to CNN and that the network is resurrecting “Reliable Sources,” the once legitimate media watchdog show that Howard Kurtz ably and fairly hosted until it was corrupted by Stelter, proves one thing. CNN, after a brief (and only partial) attack of conscience, is fully committed to being a metaphorical whore for the Left again. After all, it has to help save democracy! Here’s Stelter’s announcement:

This revolting development means that Stelter, Chris Cuomo and Don Lemon, CNN’s most flaming propagandists and untrustworthy talking heads who were fired for disgracing even what is now laughingly called broadcast journalism, have found gainful employment, not at Hardee’s where they belong, but again in the field that they sullied by their presence. Continue reading →

More Election Ad Deceit in NH

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Former Senator Kelly Ayotte is the GOP candidate for Governor of New Hampshire. She is also one of the long-time Roe v. Wade opponents who is being targeted by pro-abortion groups in attack ads. If you listen closely, some of the ads reveal the dark and ominous heart of the ‘We Love Abortion!’ movement.

I have had to watch one such ad repeatedly while following the Boston Red Sox as they are just-barely contending for a wild card berth. A sad-eyed mother reveals that when she was pregnant, a doctor who checked out the embryo (that was well past the usual legal abortion period in many states including New Hampshire) told the mother that “my baby would not survive.” She goes on to say that Ayotte is so cruel that she would make a mother like me “carry” a baby for months knowing that “it would not survive.” Ayotte supports the current 24 week limit on abortions.

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Once Again, Ethics Alarms Must Ask, “How Many Insults To Their Intelligence From Biden and Harris Will Voters Tolerate?”

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

It was the fatuous and insulting “Biden” message above about the American hostage found murdered in Gaza that mandated this post, but I was already thinking about the ongoing insults after seeing a Harris TV ad last night that made my head explode.

I couldn’t find it on YouTube this morning, but Kamala was smirking as she again wafted vague about the “opportunity economy” while giving the political equivalent of singing “Imagine.” She said that “everyone should be able to get a car loan.” How would that work, exactly? It was Ted Kennedy and Barney Frank’s delusion that everyone should be able to get a home mortgage that set up the 2008 economic collapse. She says that she will lower prices and lower taxes, yet Harris cast the deciding vote on trillion-dollar government pork buffets that exploded inflation and made more taxes crucial if the U.S. is going to avoid a National Debt Armageddon. She says she refuses to return to the “politics of the past,” whatever that means—when governments didn’t try to lock up their political opponents, maybe?

There is literally not a single substantive policy statement in the whole ad, not one. Isn’t everyone insulted by ads like that? What kind of dolt would see and hear such deliberately non-substantive boilerplate recycled from “Hope and Change” and say, “Wow! I’m going to vote for her!” Why would anyone vote for a candidate who is so obviously using platitudes to avoid letting them know what she is really planning to do?

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Ethics Quiz: The Undated Envelope

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

Pennsylvania’s Commonwealth Court ruled 4-1 last week that voters fialing to include an accurate, handwritten date on the envelopes used to submit their mail-in ballots should not have their votes disqualified, though the state’s law requires it. The majority argued that the state constitution’s clause about “free and equal” elections precludes disqualification for such a “technicality.”

The ruling will probably keep several thousand Pennsylvania votes cast by careless morons from being thrown out in the upcoming election, which is expected to be especially close in that state.

“The refusal to count undated or incorrectly dated but timely mail ballots submitted by otherwise eligible voters because of meaningless and inconsequential paperwork errors violates the fundamental right to vote” in the Pennsylvania Constitution, wrote Judge Ellen Ceisler for the majority. The opinion made victors of the left-supporting groups who sued to loosen some more voting requirements.

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It Sure Looks Like Kamala Harris Never Worked At McDonald’s. Does It Matter?

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

Today RealClearPolitics reporter Paul Sperry tweeted that the Harris-Walz campaign is no longer referencing her alleged job at McDonald’s when she was in college, and has not responded to media questions about the location of the McDonald’s store (obviously somewhere in California, if anywhere) or the exact dates of her employment.

“So what?” you well might say. And under normal circumstances, I well might concur. The Harris campaign is anything but normal, however. This a candidate for President who is trying to get elected as a generic Democrat, which she most assuredly is not even in an era of extreme, anti-democratic Democrats. Her party has decided that its best, indeed its only chance to win in the wake of the catastrophic Biden administration’s record is to create a thumbs up or thumbs down vote on Donald Trump, an election in which the identity, record, beliefs and policy agenda of his opponent are irrelevant as long as his opponent isn’t demonstrably senile. This relegates almost all of the campaign discussion to trivia and boiler plate puffery, and mostly to how Harris and her managers choose to package her, because to most American, those who haven’t been paying attention to an inert Vice-President, packaging is literally all there is.

Harris’s work at McDonald’s, which allegedly took place at a franchise in the California Bay Area in the summer after her freshman year in college, is a relatively recent addition to her official life story. It first surfaced in 2019, when Harris ran for President and tried to wrest the nomination from Joe Biden, a politician whose trademark has been his working stiff roots. Since taking over the top of the 2024 ticket from poor Joe, Harris has again been evoking the fast food job to portray what the Washington Post called “her humble background.” (Harris, the daughter of an eminent cancer researcher and a tenured Stanford economist, does not come from a humble background.)

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More Thoughts About “The Box”….

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

This is very strange. I wrote about the ethics horror movie “The Box” just this year, yet had no memory of writing the post or seeing the whole movie, despite stating in the post that I had. Then I noticed that the post was dated February 28, the day before I found my wife’s body in our living room. Apparently the shock erased some files.

Moreover, it is creepy that I posted on a movie about a couple that pushes a button on a mysterious box after being told that doing so will kill a stranger but also result in their receiving a million tax-free dollars from an anonymous authority, and shortly thereafter discovered that my own wife had died of unknown causes.

Did somebody push that button?

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Comment of the Day: Curmie, On “On ‘the Truthful, Brief, 21-Point Biography of Kamala Harris’: Ten Ethics Observations”

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

This submission by Ethics Alarms intermittent guest columnist Curmie created a categorization problem. Is it another installment of “Curmie’s Conjectures” (They are all here) ? Should I call it On “the Truthful, Brief, 21-Point Biography of Kamala Harris”: Ten Ethics Observations, Part 2? Oh, I don’t know: I wrote and posted Part I before 5 am this morning when I woke up after a nightmare and such minutia is beyond me until I get at least two more cups of coffee in me.

Curmie’s analysis (he only stooped to “But Trump!” once) is enhanced in my eyes at least by Curmie’s mention of Christine Vole, the treacherous witness of the prosecution in the classic Billy Wilder film version of “Witness for the Prosecution.” Now, heeeeeeeeeeere’s Curmie!

***

Yesterday, in my first day of teaching (except as an invited guest) in over two years, I closed both my classes by urging skepticism, including of what I tell them. As an example of what I hope to get them to do, I used some of my current research: trying to determine who directed the production of a particular play. The play was staged before it was common practice to include the director’s name was on the program, in publicity materials, or in newspaper reviews.

Conventional wisdom, presented with only a single piece of evidence, suggests that the playwright directed his own play. Several prominent theatre historians all say so, most of them without citing any evidence at all. A couple of other scholars suggest, without explicitly arguing against the playwright as director, that the leading actress took over the function while the normal director for the company was ill and away from the city. They don’t provide much evidence, either.

Based on a number of factors, I think it’s about 98% certain that conventional wisdom is wrong, but 1). 98% is different from 100%, and 2). I’m not convinced of the counter-arguments, either. Maybe when I hear back from the company’s archivist my impressions will change. Maybe there isn’t enough primary source material to make a difference; maybe I’ll be able to prove (“beyond reasonable doubt”) that the playwright didn’t direct the play. Maybe I’ll be left with a speculative piece that claims “the preponderance of the evidence” is that he didn’t. Maybe I’ll end up agreeing with conventional wisdom. But I’m going to do everything I can to get all the evidence before finalizing my opinion, and I’m not going to say something is true if I only suspect that it might be.

CP, on the other hand, immediately loses all (and yes, I mean all) credibility by the claim that “you cannot deny the factual accuracy of what I am about to say.” Actually, yes, I can. Next.

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On “the Truthful, Brief, 21-Point Biography of Kamala Harris”: Ten Ethics Observations

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

I don’t know who “Cynical Publius” is: does it matter? (Grok is the irritating Twitter/”X” AI bot, and I couldn’t stop it from photo-bombing my screen shot.)

Points:

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