Bernie Sanders

This Just In: George Stephanopoulos Still Has A Conflict Of Interest

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Steph-and-Bill-ClintonI just watched George Stephanopoulos grill Bernie Sanders on his Sunday morning show on ABC.

It was a fair, professional interview. It doesn’t matter. George Stephanopoulos has a bright, shining, unshakable conflict of interest of long-standing, and both he and his employer, ABC, pretend it doesn’t exist.  He is a former Clinton staffer. He has a previous relationship with Hillary Clinton. He withheld the fact that he had contributed $75,000 to  the Clinton Promotion Slush Fund And Under The Table Influence Peddling Machine, also known as the Clinton Foundation. In 2006 he was a featured attendee and panel moderator at the annual meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI). He was also a 2008 panelist at the CGI annual meeting. In 2009, he served as a panel moderator at CGI’s annual meeting. In 2010 and 2011, he was an official member of the Clinton Global initiative.In 2013 and 2014, he served with Chelsea Clinton as CGI contest judges for awards.

This long, obviously close and supportive relationship with the Clintons would dictate Stephanopoulos’s removal from any reporting of the Democratic Presidential competition between his former patron and current favored candidate and Bernie Sanders, if ABC was the least bit interested in promoting fairness, professionalism and objectivity in its journalism. Obviously, it isn’t. It isn’t even interested in avoiding a giant, blinking, neon appearance of impropriety that suggests that the fix is in.

At the very least, Stephanopoulos should have been required to give viewers a full account of his ties to the Clintons, so viewers can decide for themselves how objective he is. At very least, if he was an ethical journalist, George should have done this on his own. Continue reading →

Bad News Bernie Fans: Your Hero Is Just As Ethically Clueless As Donald Trump

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

rose and Bernie

From the transcript of Bernie Sanders’ interview with CBS’s Charlie Rose:

ROSE: But take a listen to this, this is what you’ve said. You said that, “Clinton should apologize for Iraq war deaths.”

SANDERS: This is after I was asked to apologize for the tragedy in Sandy Hook. You know, put these things into context.

ROSE: Tit for tat.

SANDERS: It is tit for tat. But I’m responding to attacks that are being made against me.

ROSE: I’m asking where the tenor of this campaign is going. And is that going too far to say she bears responsibility for Iraqi war deaths?

 SANDERS: Do I bear responsibility for the tragedy and the horrors of Sandy Hook? So, you know, let’s get off of that. Of course she doesn’t bear responsibility. She voted for the war in Iraq. That was a very bad vote, in my view. Do I hold her accountable? No.

…

ROSE: I just wanna come back to the Iraqi thing one second, and one more question. You have said that she voted for the Iraqi war. Other people did as well. Many other people. Do you hold all of them responsible for the deaths of Americans?

SANDERS: No. 

ROSE: Then why say it, Senator? That’s the question.

SANDERS: I am saying it because I was attacked.

NOTES: Continue reading →

A Donald Trump KABOOM! How Can A Creep Like This Be Running For President?

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

calvin_headexplode

A recently uncovered clip from a 1994 episode of “Lifestyle of The Rich And Famous” was shown on Comedy Central and left host Trevor Noah with a bad case of the oogies…as it will you.

I hope.

“Donald, what does Tiffany have of yours and what does she have of Marla’s?” the show’s host, Robin Leach, asked, referring to Trump’s then one-year-old daughter and her mother and Trump’s second wife, Marla Maples.

“I think she’s got a lot of Marla, she’s a beautiful baby. She’s got beautiful legs. We don’t know if she’s got this part yet,” Trump said, as he cupped his hands under his chest to signify breasts, “But time will tell.”

Kaboom. Continue reading →

Hillary’s Smoking Gun Arrogance And Entitlement

/ Jack Marshall / 25 Comments

Coronation-of-Queen-Hillary

Democrats asked for this when they decided to hand Hillary Clinton the Democratic nomination rather than make her earn it. The DNC began by rigging the debates to expose Clinton, a gaffe-artist in the rarefied league of Joe Biden but less amusing, as little as possible. It got itself a bizarre, non-competitive opponent to provide nominal opposition, Bernie Sanders—too old, not a Democrat, abrasive, deluded—who cooperated by refusing to attack Clinton where she was vulnerable. He didn’t want to win, you see. Bernie Sanders just wanted to spout Socialist propaganda in the hopes of rotting the brains of the same impressionable young who still think Barack Obama is a leader who brought hope and change.

Oddly, the Democratic leadership had forgotten how our current unqualified, weak and hapless POTUS got elected: he’s President only because Hillary Clinton can’t beat anyone fair and square. She’s dislikable and untrustworthy, and the “vote for my sex organs” bit only goes so far.  Now her campaign is in trouble, and Sanders is threatening to make some super-delegates ( the way Democrats rig their nominating process, allowing them to ridicule Republicans for looking for ways to block Donald Trump) change their plans. He and his supporters see blood in the water, and are finally sharpening their attacks on Hillary.

What??? Actually attacking one’s opponent? This cannot be borne! Thus the Hillary campaign has told Sanders that he must “change his tone” or the Pre-Anointed Nominee won’t deign to debate with him, so there. “Let’s see if he goes back to the kind of tone he said he was going to set early on. If he does that, then we’ll talk about debates,” Hillary’s spokesperson told CNN. Continue reading →

Bernie Sanders Fails An Integrity Test…and Worse

/ Jack Marshall / 65 Comments

Sanders protest

At the conclusion of yesterday’s post in reaction to the violent protests in Chicago that shut down a planned Donald Trump rally, I wrote, as my final observation…

8. Ethics test: Let’s see if Bernie Sanders, without prompting,  has the integrity to condemn the conduct of his fervent fans.

My guess?

No.

Well.

Bernie Sanders has escaped much scrutiny of his character thus far, in a crowd of frighteningly flawed competitors. He’s not as corrupt or dishonest as Clinton, nor as ruthless as Cruz, nor as weak as Rubio, nor lacking any redeeming qualities of character at all,  like Donald Trump. Here, however, Berrnie betrays the moral rot of the leftist revolutionary, willing to excuse violence to overturn the established order for “the greater good.” We saw this during the last Democratic debate, in which he refused to condemn the Castro regime in Cuba nor repudiate his past praise of Fidel’s accomplishments.  Hillary Clinton, given an under-hand soft-ball pitch to hit out of the park, swung from then heels and launched it into the stands:

“You know, if the values are that you oppress people, you disappear, you imprison people, even kill people, for expressing their opinions … that is not the kind of revolution of values that I ever want to see anywhere.”

Bingo. But Bernie Sanders, like the Communist totalitarians he admires for their health care and distribution of wealth, is willing to put up with some violence to achieve his revolution, and he proved it here. Abetted in some respects by the biased news media that were thrilled to blame an example of violence squelching political speech on the victim rather than the true offenders—because they don’t like the victim, you see, and if journalists and pundits don’t like someone, they discard the basic standards of decency and fairness that they will rush to demand for their political favorites—Sanders released a telling defense of the actions of his supporters, even though his supporters had admitted their deliberate mounting of a near riot to silence Trump: Continue reading →

Observations On The Chicago Trump Rally Protests

/ Jack Marshall / 50 Comments

Trump rally riot

Donald Trump postponed a rally in Chicago after fights between supporters and demonstrators and protests in the streets convinced him that the event could no longer be held safely. “People For Bernie,” a pro-Sanders group that grew out of the Occupy movement, claimed early credit for shutting down the rally. Later, the left-wing sophomores at Move-On.Org announced that they were responsible, their leader, Illya Sheyman, stating,

“Mr. Trump and the Republican leaders who support him and his hate-filled rhetoric should be on notice after tonight’s events. These protests are a direct result of the violence that has occurred at Trump rallies and that has been encouraged by Trump himself from the stage. Our country is better than the shameful, dangerous, and bigoted rhetoric that has been the hallmark of the Trump campaign. To all of those who took to the streets of Chicago, we say thank you for standing up and saying enough is enough. To Donald Trump, and the GOP, we say, welcome to the general election. Trump and those who peddle hate and incite violence have no place in our politics and most certainly do not belong in the White House.”

Observations:

1. Trump was right to postpone the rally. It is true that this kind of anti-democratic speech censorship should not be encouraged by giving protesters a success from their unethical tactics, but violence was likely.

2. The protesters, whoever they were, are completely responsible for the incident. Blaming it on Trump’s “hate speech” and “irresponsible rhetoric” is a transparent rationalization. He has a right to hold a private event and say anything he wants to say. This is unequivocal.

3. Has Trump been playing with fire by taunting protesters in other events? Yes. He’s a jerk. That’s a reason to not vote for him for President, not to blame him when the left’s fascists disrupt his rally. Continue reading →

Ethics Quote Of The Week: Garry Kasparov, Former Russian Chess Champion And Dissident, And While I’m Thinking Of It, Is It Too Late To Draft HIM For President?

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

Checkmate Strategy

“I’m enjoying the irony of American Sanders supporters lecturing me, a former Soviet citizen, on the glories of Socialism and what it really means! Socialism sounds great in speech soundbites and on Facebook, but please keep it there. In practice, it corrodes not only the economy but the human spirit itself, and the ambition and achievement that made modern capitalism possible and brought billions of people out of poverty. Talking about Socialism is a huge luxury, a luxury that was paid for by the successes of capitalism. Income inequality is a huge problem, absolutely. But the idea that the solution is more government, more regulation, more debt, and less risk is dangerously absurd.”

—-Former chess grandmaster and Soviet dissident Garry Kasparov on Facebook, explaining to  clueless  U.S. citizens what they don’t appreciate about their own system, from the perspective of an immigrant who has seen where socialist fantasies lead.

Of course, Kasparov isn’t remotely eligible to be President, since he was born in Russia and is now a Croatian citizen. Yet if I could, I would vote for him over any of the leading candidates in both parties even if he couldn’t speak English and had to commute from Croatia.

Kasperov, who is the chairman of the New York-based Human Rights Foundation and the author of Winter is Coming: Why Vladimir Putin and the Enemies of the Free World Must Be Stopped, elaborated on his theme at the Daily Beast, giving an American history lesson in the process (Does Donald Trump know any of this stuff? No chance!) and saying in part… Continue reading →

Observations On The Democratic Candidates Debate In Flint, MI.

/ Jack Marshall / 47 Comments

Dems debate

Here’s the transcript.

1. The smug comments from Democratic pundits and operatives about how “substantive” the Democratic debates have been and how “ugly” and “childish” the GOP debates have been is really nauseating, and the news media should flag it as such. When one candidate is ugly and childish, as well as shameless about being so, the other candidates have little choice but to get down in the mud. That’s the situation in the Republican debates, and that is entirely due to Donald Trump. When, meanwhile, one candidate is notable for lack of trustworthiness and dishonesty, and her only opposition refuses to reference the major reason the public (accurately) believes her to be so,  the resulting debate will be muted. Sanders, in short, isn’t doing his job. That’s nothing for Democrats to be smug about.

2. Last week it was learned that at least 2,079 emails Clinton sent or received on her unsecured, private server contained classified material, though she initially said that she handled no classified material whatsoever. That’s at least 2,079 lies. We learned that she received those emails on two devices , a BlackBerry and an iPad that she received in June 2010, despite the fact that she said, after news broke about her personal email account,  she’d done this as a matter of convenience so she would not have to carry two devices, saying, “I thought it would be easier to carry just one device for my work and for my personal emails instead of two.” This was also a lie.

We learned that many, many  people, including lobbyists, lawmakers, White House officials, State Department employees, John Kerry and President Obama communicated directly with Clinton using her personal email address. This is just another part of the Obama Administration Ethics Train Wreck, Outrageous Arrogance and Incompetence Division. That so many should have reported it and didn’t, as well as stopped it, is no excuse for the corrupted Clinton enablers to latch onto, and it doesn’t make what she did any less outrageous and reckless. It doesn’t excuse her irresponsible conduct at all. It just shows how lazy and amateurish others were as well.

We earlier learned that hackers with ties to Russia tried at least five times to access Clinton’s account over a four hour period  on the morning of Aug. 3, 2011, by sending her emails. The Clinton campaign says there is no evidence to suggest she opened them, giving the hackers access to her computer. That is just moral luck.

Finally, we learned this week that Hillary Clinton, as Secretary of State WROTE 104 emails, using her private server, that the State Department has since designated as classified.

Was Clinton asked about anything related to her e-mail lies and incompetence regarding national security last night, or about her incompetent oversight of her own agency, which is supposedly one of the credits that makes her so qualified to be President?

No. That’s a breach of competence by CNN and Anderson Cooper, with pure complicity by Bernie Sanders. Continue reading →

Observations On The CNN-Telemundo GOP Candidates Debate

/ Jack Marshall / 25 Comments

1.  I heard that National Anthem rendition on my car radio, and thought, “That can’t possibly be as off-key as it sounds, can it?” Then my various singer friends started howling on Facebook. I don’t know why debates are now treated like ball games, but there are thousands upon thousands of singers, male, female, and juvenile, who can sing the anthem well, and a lot better than Dina Carter did last night. There’s no excuse for getting someone who can’t stay on pitch.

2. Ben Carson prompted me to throw a magazine at the TV with his fatuous “we won’t solve America’s problems by trying to destroy each other.” It’s a competition, you fool. Someone should have shown you how ridiculous your wasteful candidacy was months ago, and you wouldn’t be clogging up the process now. If Donald Trump, a viper in the nursery, wasn’t ahead, Reagan’s admonition not to attack fellow Republicans might be a wise and ethical practice. Now, it is the equivalent of pacifism during World War II.

3. That was weak, incompetent moderating by Wolf Blitzer and Dana Bash, allowing Trump to speak over Rubio and Cruz who were doing a good job pointing up his hypocrisy and corruption. As usual, Trump’s rebuttals weren’t rebuttals at all but distracting attacks, pitched to the gullible.

  • Rubio said, correctly, that Trump criticized Mitt Romney for talking about “self-deportation” in 2012, while Trump is talking about self-deportation now.  Trump said: “I criticized Mitt Romney for losing the election. . . . He ran one terrible campaign!”  No, actually Trump criticized Romney’s self-deportation policy specifically.
  • Rubio said Trump is the only person on the stage who’s hired people from other countries for “jobs that Americans could have filled.” Trump replied, “I’m the only one on the stage who’s hired people! . . . You haven’t hired one person in your life!” It’s completely irrelevant to the issue, just another deflection.
  • Cruz pointed out that Trump contributed to the three Democratic Senators and two of the  Republican Senators he now accuses of pushing “amnesty.” Trump retorted that “I get along with everybody; you get along with nobody,” an ad hominem attack that ducks a legitimate criticism.

4.  Trump had one brilliant, perfect, Presidential and appropriately tough response to ex-Mexican President Vicente Fox who swore Mexico would never pay for Trump’s “fucking wall.” (We have heard increasing vulgarity from media figures like Chris Matthews, President Obama and others, and now the breakdown in official civility has crossed our borders. Yes, I blame Donald Trump, and as he grandstanded about the “disgusting” word used, someone should have had the wit to note that he has personally lowered the standards of leadership discourse more than any figure since the Nixon tapes were released.) Trump’s response: “The wall just got 10 feet taller!”

Excellent. Continue reading →

Tech And Terrorism Ethics: Apple Is Right. The Government Is Wrong.

/ Jack Marshall / 60 Comments

FBI-APPLE

If, in some future nightmare scenario come true, the FBI needs to break the encryption on a private i-phone to find the secret code to defuse the Doomsday Machine  President Donald Trump set up after his mind finally snapped and he thought he was the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man, I assume that Apple won’t stand on principle and will do what needs to be done to save the world. The current dilemma, however, is not that dire.

Although President Obama announced last year that he had decided not to pursue legislation requiring tech companies to give law enforcement access to users’ encrypted data, he proved once again that if you don’t like Obama’s promises, just wait a minute.  For last week, the FBI persuaded a judge to order Apple to create software that would help federal investigators crack into the iPhone 5C that terrorist Syed Rizwan Farook was using before he and his wife slaughtered guests at his company Christmas party in San Bernardino last December. Apple has vowed to defy the order.

Good. Continue reading →