2024 election

Ethics Hero: This Kid…

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

I don’t grant the 10-year-old this honor because of his assessment of Harris, but because he had the guts and the integrity to give that answer, without blinking, to a CNN propagandist.

I fervently hope after our indoctrination factory in the public schools get their hooks into him, he maintains the fortitude and independence he declared here. Oh, I’m sure it’s likely that his parents would answer the same way. Nevertheless, it was a bracing moment. There is hope.

I’m surprised CNN didn’t “factcheck” him….

What Does THIS Poll Tell You?

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments

Often astute by quirky ex-law prof/blogger Ann Althouse presented readers with a poll this morning asking who she should vote for and whom they thought she would vote for. Althouse is a denizen of Madison, Wisconsin, and believed to be a moderate liberal who typically votes for Democrats. A long-time blogger whose readers are swelled by the ranks of former students, she has somehow accumulated a group of mostly conservative commenters. They also tend to be knowledgeable, analytical and articulate

The results of the poll are overwhelming enough to suggest some accuracy, at least in regard to the group polled. 79% said that Althouse “should vote for Trump.” Only 4% voted that Ann should vote for Harris. The rest opined that she will vote for no one.

What’s going on here?

Ethics Quiz: Being Fair To Kamala Harris

/ Jack Marshall / 25 Comments

This is a short one, but not am easy one, because bias is so likely to be involved.

Althouse posted the [I almost wrote “horrifying,” but that would be biasing you]clip above that has “surfaced” from a podcast earlier this year. (Isn’t it fascinating that virtually no one was paying attention to Harris most of the time until she was suddenly anointed?).

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day:

Is it fair to conclude that Harris is an idiot from that response?

Or can her supposed endorsement of astrology (which in my view is about like saying you worship the Greek gods) be excused as just typical politician pandering to a substantial voting block? Althouse links to a list of ten leaders who supposedly believed in astrology, a collection which I would take with about about a truckload of salt. The claim that Ronald Reagan “leaned on astrology for guidance” is particularly weak: he met with an astrologer once, and he indulged Nancy’s interest in the nonsense, as most loving spouses would.

One question that occurred to me as I looked at the list: what is the cut-off point before which it is fair to attribute an individual’s belief in astrology to the absence of scientific knowledge generally?

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.

Most Competent Campaigner of the Year: Donald Trump

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Say what you like about Donald Trump, and if it isn’t one of the Big Lies, I may well agree. But this….

…holding another rally in Butler is pure political genius, and gutsy too. Imagine if Booth had missed, and Abe had announced, “I’m going back to Ford’s Theater to see how that play turned out!”

John Wayne would have loved it…BOTH John Waynes, the real life political conservative, and the icon he played in movies. It’s the equivalent of Rooster Cogburn taking the reins in his teeth and charging at Lucky Ned Pepper and his gang. The message is “You don’t scare me, assholes, and here I come!”

It is political genius, and a great display of classic American defiance.

Bravo.

Ethics Quote of the Month: D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

“It would be a striking paradox if the President, who alone is vested with the constitutional duty to ‘take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed,’ were the sole officer capable of defying those laws with impunity…We cannot accept that the office of the Presidency places its former occupants above the law for all time thereafter.”

The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, rejecting former President Donald Trump’s bonkers claim that Presidents have absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for acts committed while in office.

The ruling is here.

Seldom has any court appeal in a high profile case had a more obvious and virtually assured resolution. The ethics alarms analysis of this issue was discussed in “Ethics Zugzwang In Trump’s Immunity Appeal,” and in this subsequent post. I hope it’s unnecessary to say that I agree with the D.C. Circuit’s ruling.

I wonder if Trump considered that if he won the appeal, President Biden could order that he and his MAGA supporters could be summarily shot as “clear and present dangers to democracy.” He could order the execution of the Republican contingent in the House, too, to forestall an impeachment.

What a great theory.

It was unethical for Trump and his lawyers to make the argument. If I had been his attorney—and before all the dust settles, Trump might eventually have to retain lawyers as inexperienced in litigation I am, and maybe even me—I would have withdrawn before I’d file such an irresponsible appeal.

If This Poll Is Accurate, The American Public May Be Too Incompetent and Irresponsible to Live In a Democracy…

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

A poll conducted by Redfield & Wilton Strategies for Newsweek found that 18% of voters are “more likely” or “significantly more likely” to vote for a candidate endorsed by pop singer Taylor Swift.

Taylor Swift has been essentially dedicated to music since she was 14, though she did graduate from high school in three years. There is nothing she has to offer in trenchant political commentary besides celebrity, and to a large number of Americans, as we already know, that’s enough.

So naturally, as the buzz was in Washington, D.C. today, the Biden campaign is working hard to get Swift to endorse Joe, if possible at the Super Bowl.

It is estimated that 8 million new voters will enter the ranks of the US electorate this year, making a total of 41 million Gen Z voters. This is also a group that surveys show has a low opinion of the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, free enterprise and the United States generally, so maybe they don’t even need Swift’s OK to vote Democratic. My guess, and maybe I’m whistling past the metaphorical graveyard, is that most of that 18% may be more likely to vote if Taylor tells them who to vote for, but the majority of them won’t be engaged enough to vote anyway.

If the election is going to turn on somethings as trivial and meaningless as celebrity endorsements, its not even worth worrying about. Those idiots will deserve what they get, and so will their elders, for letting society and the culture get that stupid.

Stop Making Me Defend Donald Trump!

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

Talk about “Democrats pounce!”

Last week, former President Donald J. Trump was riffing, as is his wont, during a speech in New Hampshire. Going off on the January 6 committee, aka. the Star Chamber, Trump said at one point, “Nikki Haley was in charge of security. We offered her 10,000 people, soldiers, National Guards, whatever they want. They turned it down. They don’t want to talk about that.”

Yes, he had just been talking about Nikki Haley, his main competition in the New Hampshire primary, and the needle got stuck. Trump kept saying “Nikki Haley” when he was referring to Nancy Pelosi.

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Fani Willis’s Sermon

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

It is beginning to look like Fani Willis, Georgia’s African-American Democrat Fulton County prosecutor who pledged to “get” Donald Trump, really is involved in a serious conflict of interest involving the case and even criminal conduct. The mainstream media is taking notice, it is no longer a “right wing conspiracy theory,” and most interestingly, Willis has not denied the allegations, which appeared in a court filing.

The New York Times published a story headlined “Atlanta D.A. Defends Qualifications of Outside Lawyer She Hired for Trump Case/At a historic Black church, Fani T. Willis pushed back against an accusation that Nathan Wade, the special prosecutor she brought on, was unqualified for the job” in which we learn that Willis spoke yesterday before the congregation of one of the oldest Black churches in Atlanta, which had invited her to be the keynote speaker for a service dedicated to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. She did not mention the details of allegations that she is in an intimate relationship with Nathan Wade, the special prosecutor she hired in 2021 for the Trump-getting, and has earned more than $650,000 in the job to date with some of the lucre benefiting her directly. Instead, she said in part,

“Wait a minute, God! You did not tell me,” she added, “as a woman of color it would not matter what I did — my motive, my talent, my ability and my character would be constantly attacked….A divorced single mom who doesn’t belong to the right social groups, who doesn’t necessarily come from the right family, doesn’t have the right pedigree — the assignment was just too high for lowly me. All I brought to the table, God, is my mind, my heart, my work ethic, my undying love for people and the community.”

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Ethics Zugzwang In Trump’s Immunity Appeal

/ Jack Marshall / 29 Comments

It’s pretty obvious that Donald Trump is going to lose his case before the three judges on the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit panel. The former President is claiming that all former Presidents are absolutely immune from prosecution for crimes they may have committed while in office. It’s easy to knock that argument down as just bad policy, and the judges did just that at oral argument this week.

Judge Florence Y. Pan asked Trump’s attorney, D. John Sauer, demanding a yes or no answer,“Could a president who ordered SEAL Team 6 to assassinate a political rival, who was not impeached, would he be subject to criminal prosecution?”

Sauer answered that prosecution would only be permitted if the President were first impeached by the House and convicted by the Senate. Of course that can’t be right. It would mean that a President with a large majority in both Houses of Congress could do virtually anything without legal consequences. One might argue that such a clear “crime or misdemeanor” would always trigger a bi-partisan impeachment, but after seeing most Republicans refuse vote to eject certified rotter George Santos from the House and Democrats line up behind Rep. Bowman after he set off a fire alarm to disrupt a House vote and then lied about it, I am no longer sure.

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