appeal to authority

Incompetent Elected Official Of The Month: Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.)

/ Jack Marshall / 114 Comments
OK, have I got this straight, Congressman? You want to abolish the Electoral College, because its antidemocratic, but before you do, you want to use it to overturn an election that you agree was fair and square. Got it. You're an idiot.

OK, have I got this straight, Congressman? You want to abolish the Electoral College, because it’s antidemocratic, but before you do, you want to use it to overturn an election that you agree was fair and square. Got it. You’re an idiot.

Now a member of Congress has sided with the history-addled cheating advocates who are pressuring Republican electors to overturn the results of the 2016 election. One might expect electors to be this ignorant and confused, since they are not vetted or qualified and may be, for all voters know, self-righteous paramedics.  Smug and partisan social justice warriors using fake names are also not surprising us when they advocate something this unethical. However, we should be able to expect our elected representatives to have more respect for and understanding of our system. Unfortunately, we can’t.

Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.) concedes that Donald Trump won the election “fair and square.” (This is a small point in Himes’ favor, at least, since so many of his political brethren won’t even admit that). Nonetheless, he has announced that electors should defy the electorate and make Hillary Clinton President when they gather on December 19to  vote,despite the fact that Trump beat Clinton by winning states that gave him, or were supposed to, 306 Electoral College votes.

Himes’s “argument“ mark him as a bona fide idiot. We should not have bona fide idiots in Congress.

“We’re 5 wks from Inauguration & the President Elect is completely unhinged. The electoral college must do what it was designed for,” he tweeted yesterday. No, in fact, that was not what it was designed for. The Electoral College was designed to prevent big states in a federal system from dictating to the other states, which might not share their culture or sensitivities. Imagine a big, wacko state like California dominating our politics. In fact, that’s exactly what would happen without the Electoral College. In the election just completed, Clinton won the Golden Bankrupt Illegal Immigrant-Enabling State by almost 4 million votes, while Trump got more votes than  Clinton in the other 49 states and the District of Columbia.  That’s why we have the Electoral College, and a more brilliant device the Founders never devised. Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: Texas Elector Christopher Suprun [UPDATED]

/ Jack Marshall / 145 Comments
Shut up, Chris; shut up, Alexander.

Oh, shut up, Chris; you too,, Alexander.

Another faithless Texas elector has announced himself. This time, it’s Christopher Suprun, the latest previously anonymous figure to exploit the 2016 Presidential candidacy of Donald Trump for 15 minutes of fame. Let’s see: there was Trump’s former lawyer, who breached or nicked several legal ethics duties to get a column in the Huffington Post, Trump’s ghostwriter, and all of the women who never saw fit to complain of being sexually assaulted by the President Elect until their accusations could do maximum harm and spark maximum exposure. Now we have Suprun, who penned a self-righteous op-ed for the New York Times explaining why he feels he is entitled, all by himself, to ignore the will of the people and cast his vote as elector for someone other than the candidate Texas insisted he pledge to vote for: the winner of the most votes by participating Texas citizens in the November 12 election.

The measure of Suprun’s gravitas and qualifications to take this responsibility on himself is aptly illustrated by the first of his justifications for his untenable position: “Mr. Trump goes out of his way to attack the cast of “Saturday Night Live” for bias.” Naturally, he appeals to the authority of Alexander Hamilton, whose various employments in the post-election train wreck has convinced me that he, not Old Hickory, really should move off the currency and make way for someone with the right number of chromosomes. If I hear one more quote from Federalist Paper 68—which no one is 100% certain that Hamilton even wrote—I may strip off my clothes and run screaming Norse epithets into the night. Assuming, as most do, that the author was Hamilton, so what? The paper was written after the Constitutional Convention. Hamilton’s concept for that document and the structure of the government was rejected. He didn’t trust the public, or democracy, wanted George Washington to be king, and championed a system the resembled Great Britain’s. Using him to justify a concept of the Electoral College that has never been employed or accepted in the United States is a classic logical fallacy. Continue reading →

Spectacularly Incompetent Candidate Of The Month: Paul Ryan Challenger Paul Nehlen

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments
"This is Paul. Won't you help him? Paul, like millions of other victims across the land, suffers from Constitution Ignorance Syndrome. This dread malady causes its victims to advocate fascist policies and to sound like idiots in their public statements. But there is hope for Paul, and those like him. Please give, and give generously, To "Educate Paul." a non-profit charity. Your gift is tax-deductible, and you will have made the United States a little less stupid with every penny you contribute to this vital cause."

“This is Paul. Won’t you help him? Paul, like millions of other victims across the land, suffers from Constitution Ignorance Syndrome. This dread malady causes its victims to advocate fascist policies and to sound like idiots in their public statements. But there is hope for Paul, and those like him. Please give, and give generously, To Educate Paul a non-profit charity. Your gift is tax-deductible, and you will have made the United States a little less stupid with every penny you contribute to this vital cause.”

This was the guy that Donald Trump was supposedly going to endorse as retribution for Speaker Ryan’s negative comments? It’s comforting, isn’t it, that Trump isn’t that irrational? Ann Coulter is, but Trump isn’t. (At least in this case.)

Paul Nehlen is the arch conservative and certifiable ignoramus who is challenging House Speaker Paul Ryan in Wisconsin’s First Congressional District’s Republican primary. Interviewed last week on “Chicago’s Morning Answer,” Nehlen said that he wonders why we have any Muslims in the country, and suggested that there should be a public debate about tossing Muslims out of the U.S.

Here’s a partial transcript of the relevant comments Nehlen made to hosts Amy Jacobson and Dan Croft: Continue reading →

(PSSST! Bill Nye Fans? Honorary Degrees Aren’t Real Credentials…)

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

bill-nye-the-science-guy

I detest  stupid debates. In college I watched a local TV debate in Boston between Madalyn Murray O’Hair, the infamous atheist, and a local Catholic wacko known as Mrs. Warren, who talked like Chico Marx, on the topic of the existence of God. I finally called into the fiasco as “Jehovah” and got through the screeners for the program, which was called “Cracker Barrel. I used a cardboard toilet paper tube to make my voice sound unworldly as I assured O’Hair that Jehovah approved of her challenging the faithful, and would not turn her into a pillar of salt. O’Hair and the host thought it was funny. Warren said she would pray for me.

The upcoming debate between TV’s “Science Guy” and Sarah Palin over climate change is a good bet to be even more stupid than that debate, and for some of the same reasons. Like that debate, there is zero chance that anybody who is silly enough to bother watching will have their minds changed by what transpires because they, like Palin and Nye, already have their minds made up and facts have little to do with their points of view. Like the “Cracker Barrel” debate, it will really be about faith, what the adversaries want to think is true, and who they prefer to believe. Do either Sarah Palin or Bill Nye know what the world’s climate will be like in 100 years? No. Can either say with certainty that any particular policy measures will or will not have a salutary effect on conditions a hundred years from now? No.

It’s a stupid debate.

Nevertheless, only Palin is being mocked for participating in it, because Sarah Palin could cure cancer and the news media would mock her. It’s ridiculous for her to presume to debate anyone about climate change, but what about the fool who thinks its worth anything to debate her, whether he “wins” or not? It’s like mocking a Labrador retriever for having the hubris to debate John Kerry on U.S. foreign policy. What’s Kerry’s excuse? Continue reading →

Yes Indeed, Elite College Grads Can Still Be Civically Incompetent Fools

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments
They have been rumored, and caught in dubious, fuzzy photos, but does an intelligent, rational Donald Trump supporter really exist? The quest continues...

They have been rumored, and caught in dubious, fuzzy photos, but does an intelligent, rational Donald Trump supporter really exist? The quest continues…

In my constant quest to find someone, anyone, who can defend their support of Donald Trump with a substantive argument rather than the emotional, nonsensical rationalizations I have heard and read so far, I came upon  a USA Today essay by “Weekly Standard” contributing right-winger Charlotte Allen—she is kind of like Ann Coulter, but not funny— called “Why a Stanford grad joined the Trump revolt.” I was momentarily thrilled, then my hopes were immediately dashed. The answer to the headline’s question is simply “Because graduates of prestigious schools can be just as irresponsible and ignorant as anyone else.” Her pathetic essay proves it.

To begin with, appeal to authority is a lazy debate fallacy (“Proposition X is valid because Authority A says so”—you know, like “bats are blind because Neil De Grasse Tyson says so”…), but appealing to your own authority is ridiculous. “I went to Stanford, and I voted for Donald Trump. So did my husband. He went to Yale,” Allen begins. The required response: Who the hell cares? The only people who think a degree means you are smart are dumb people, some of whom have impressive degrees themselves.

Now, the essay could have been so dazzling in its pro-Trump logic that it simultaneously redeemed Trump supporters and the two schools the piece embarrasses. It was not.

The essay begins with the boot-strapping argument that it isn’t ignorant and irresponsible to vote for Trump because in Massachusetts a lot of educated people voted for him. “Low-information voter” doesn’t mean uneducated voter, however. It means people who aren’t paying attention, or who filter out information they don’t want to hear, or who are informed in some areas but get their political news from partisan websites and cable stations.  Continue reading →

Disqualified For High Office: Senator Ted Cruz (R-Tx)

/ Jack Marshall / 52 Comments
See, Ted, it's crazy to keep criticizing Iran while suggesting that the US should be come LIKE Iran. Never mind. Just stay in the Senate, and you can say stupid things you don't believe with minimal harm.

See, Ted, it’s crazy to keep criticizing Iran while suggesting that the US should be come LIKE Iran. Oh, never mind. Just stay in the Senate, and you can say stupid things you don’t believe with minimal harm. Deal?

Eventually, I may have to post a full list of the current Presidential candidates who have definitively disqualified themselves, by evidence of character, integrity, honesty, temperament, trustworthiness, leadership ability  and core values (or, in the cases of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, the absence of them), from the very office they seek. Frankly, I’m afraid that no one will be left.

Senator Ted Cruz’s recent statement about Kim Davis, the now correctly jailed Kentucky clerk who cites God’s authority to justify defying the law, is so irresponsible, dishonest and cynical that he has to be moved to the top of the list.

Here it is. My comments are in bold.

“Today, judicial lawlessness crossed into judicial tyranny. Today, for the first time ever, the government arrested a Christian woman for living according to her faith. This is wrong. This is not America…

This is a lie, and a gross mischaracterization of the facts. Kim Davis can live and worship any way she chooses. She objects to same sex marriage, and she may refuse to associate with gay married couples, refuse to attend gay weddings, make whatever statements opposing gay marriage she chooses, picket gay weddings, lobby for a Constitutional amendment and more.

What she cannot do is refuse to perform the duties of her office, and withhold from citizens the government services they have a right to receive because of her religious beliefs. It is beyond legitimate question in law and ethics that she does not have the right to do this. She has been arrested for defying a court order and being in open contempt of legal judicial authority. This is not unprecedented, this is America, and must be America if democracy and rule of law is to function. Continue reading →