Biden Presidency Ethics Train Wreck

Worst of Ethics Award 2022: Most Unethical Quote Of The Year

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

There were more unethical quotes this year than I recall reading and hearing in a long time, and that’s just the ones Ethics Alarms chose to highlight. Winners in the category included The New York Times (twice) and the Washington Post, CNN’s finally dismissed hack Chris Cuomo, Joy Behar (I just picked one; there were about a hundred or so), Georgetown Law Center’s Dean, William Trainor, Donald Trump (twice!), Chris’s corrupt and disgraced brother, former NY governor Andrew Cuomo, Sen. Lindsay Graham, Sen. Amy Klobuchar, Dr. Fauci, Nusrat Jahan Choudhury, a federal court nominee who “explained” in her confirmation hearing that she lied in an address to Princeton students to “make a rhetorical point”; Joe Biden (again, for one of about a hundred 2022 quotes that would qualify); Kamala Harris of course, Nancy Pelosi, Rep Eric Swalwell, Barack Obama, Golden State Warriors owner Chamath Palihapitiya, CNN intelligence analyst Robert Baer, and Van Jones (today!), Ann Hathaway, Media Matters chief Angelo Carusone, Herschel Walker (again, take your pick), AOC (ditto), NY Governor Kathy Hochul, Liz Cheney, GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz, GOP Rep. Mary Miller, Democratic Senator Chris Coons, Kim Sill, founder of the Shelter Hope Pet Shop, and Stacey Abrams.

Many of these could have easily been winners in a more temperate year, but President Biden lapped them all with his September, televised “Soul of the Nation” speech that was “wildly unethical…irresponsible, disrespectful, unfair, and un-American, as well as hypocritical, indeed a betrayal, from a leader who promised on his Inauguration Day, “We can join forces, stop the shouting and lower the temperature. For without unity there is no peace, only bitterness and fury. No progress, only exhausting outrage. No nation, only a state of chaos. This is our historic moment of crisis and challenge, and unity is the path forward.”

Biden gave a fascist speech to accuse his political opponents of being fascists

No American President has ever delivered such a despicable addess. It debased his office, and damaged the Republic. But, to be fair, it may have influenced enough fools to keep Democrats from the mid-term wipe-out they deserved. So there’s that.

Most Unethical Quote of the Year: President Joe Biden

No contest.

Worst of Ethics Award 2022: Most Unethical Trend Of The Year

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

The Winner: Totalitarianism.

In truth, there was one more Ethics Alarms post featuring references to nascent totalitarianism in 2021 than this year, but I neglected to publish the Awards last year. Before that, the word  hardly had to be used here at all: ironic, since according one of the primary Big Lies weaponized by “the resistance,” Democrats and the mainstream media was that the previous President was an “autocrat” and seeking to end democracy.

Over the past two years we have seen direct and open defiance of the Constitution, with a President deliberately making edicts that he previously acknowledged were beyond his power. We are seeing political show trials, partisan witch hunts (the democratic norm defying Jan. 6 Commission), attempts to install truth commissions in a federal agency, efforts to cripple the Supreme Court, efforts to prevent Republicans from running for office, Justice Department intimidation of parents who oppose racist course material and the promotion of LGBTQ sexual relationships and practices, evidence of rogue law enforcement agencies with political agendas, government-encouraged suppression of speech and dissent and corporations willing to be agents of such suppression, the artificial extension of national “emergencies” to expand executive power, and punishment of dissent in the schools, universities and even law firms…all while the majority of the mainstream media rejects integrity and objectivity to issuing propaganda “for the greater good.”

Perhaps most disturbing of all, a U.S. President gave a nationally televised speech in which he directed citizens to fear the opposition party as “clear and present dangers” to the nation, while doing the most striking imitation of a fascist demagogue ever to be seen coast-to-coast. And the impression was widely praised.

Where this stops, nobody knows.

Ethics Observations On The Britney Griner Trade

/ Jack Marshall / 27 Comments

 Brittney Griner, the  U.S.-hating WNBA star who was sentenced to nine years in a Russian prison for violating Russian drug laws charges was traded to the U.S for international arms dealer Viktor Bout, an international criminal who was serving a 25 year sentence. Meanwhile, retired U.S. Marine Paul Whelan, also imprisoned in Russia and for nearly four years, remains there. He was convicted on espionage charges that the U.S. has called false, which doesn’t mean they are false, of course.

Observations:

  • You knew this was going to be the result, didn’t you? It was as certain as anything in foreign relations could be. Griner is black, a female and a lesbian as well as a sports celebrity who parrots progressive anti-American ideology. Biden might appoint her to the Supreme Court: she ticks all the right boxes.
  • The Biden Administration wasn’t wrong to seek her release. Russia had deliberately throw its metaphorical book at her; bu U.S. standards, her sentence was cruel and unusual. Our government is duty bound to try to rescue its citizens when foreign governments abuse them.
  • In baseball terms, this trade was like a team trading a superstar pitcher to its major divisional rival for a third-string catcher and a bag of stale peanuts. Griner has no national security or diplomatic use whatsoever; her sole value is political, as the Democrats will apparently do anything to pander to the three constituent groups Griner belongs to. Here’s a description of Bout, in contrast:

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The Great Stupid, Global Edition: Ethics Observations On The New U.N. Climate Change Fund

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

I’ve let Major Clipton (from the Ethics Alarms TV and Movie Clips collection, #9 of 27) make the first observation, which is that this is nuts, and that it ought to be obvious to everyone that it’s nuts.

In case you missed it, ” Nearly200 countries concluded two weeks of talks early Sunday in which their main achievement was agreeing to establish a fund that would help poor, vulnerable countries cope with climate disasters made worse by the pollution spewed by wealthy nations that is dangerously heating the planet,” according to the New York Times.

The United States has reportedly “agreed” to contribute a billion dollars to the fund. Well…

1. The U.S. diplomats can’t “agree” to give away a billion dollars. Only Congress can do that. If you want a single reason to be glad the Republicans won a majority in the House of Representatives while falling on their collective, incompetent faces during the “pink ripple,” this is it. If…and it’s a big if…the new Speaker of the House can keep his troops in line, the U.N.’s Robin Hood Fund should be DOA.

2. The Biden Administration has exploded the National Debt like no other peacetime administration in history, and seems to be under the mistaken belief that taxpayer funds are just cryptocurrency—you, know funny money. The bigger the debt the more interest the U.S. pays on it, and the same regime that has exploded the debt has also created inflation that makes the debt more expensive. In fiscal 2022 alone, the federal government made $475 billion in net interest payments. It was “only” $352 billion the prior year, according to the US Treasury Department. That is more than the government spent on veterans’ benefits and transportation combined. But hey, why not just give away a billion dollars that will be mostly used to line the pockets of the corrupt and incompetent leaders of those “poor, vulnerable countries.”

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Comment Of The Day: Ethics And The Diesel Crisis, From Open Forum 11/4/2022

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

I wasn’t even aware of the diesel shortage until I was alarmed by back-up White House paid liar John Kirby—he’s the competent one— was asked about it and he huminahumina-ed “I’ll have to get back to you on that.” This means, “Hey! That’s am embarrassing question; you’re supposed to be covering for us here, not causing trouble!” Then Tucker Carlson took up the topic as his scare of the day, but since I don’t trust him, I didn’t listen to it. Yes, I should have posted on the issue then: like so many of the current government fiascos, this one is about, most prominently, competence. The perils of running out of diesel fuel implicates at least four Cabinet Departments: Energy, Commerce, Transportation and Homeland Security. It is a big topic, and fortunately, a conscientious commenter, Sarah B., has done the research and analysis that I should have done.

Here is Sarah’s essential Comment of the Day regarding the diesel fuel problem, from the most recent Ethics Alarms open forum.

***

I think we should talk about a topic near and dear to my heart: the looming crisis caused by the diesel shortage in our nation. I will say right out that I do not have a solution to this crisis, but instead, I want to discuss how we got here, and the issues that stand in the way of fixing it. Getting here was an ethical failure on many levels, most of which can be laid without much hesitation at the feet of our current President and his party, but not to the exclusion of Trump, Obama, Bush, Clinton, etc. I know this is long, but I’d love to start communication on this issue.

The first thing to know about the diesel shortage is that it isn’t just diesel. In refining terms, the shortage is of all distillates. Light and medium distillates include kerosene, heating oil, jet fuel, aviation fuel, and diesel. Each of these are competing products from similar oil breakdowns, so a shortage of one results in a shortage of all. Many of these products seem as though they are the same thing with different names, and to an extent they are. But the government regulates and licenses each one slightly differently with slightly different specifications on each product, so aviation fuel and jet fuel can both run an airplane, but depending on the airplane, one is legal, the other isn’t. The point, however, is that the diesel shortage extends beyond what we typically recognize as diesel usage.

What is the extent of this problem? Some sites note that we have a 25.9-day supply of diesel, which is the lowest point we’ve been, comparatively, in a very long time. Generally speaking we tend to want to run at about 35-40 days. More specifically, the diesel supply is at the lowest point this nation has ever seen coming into winter. Some pundits argue that we are fine, that we’ve seen years with similar shortages, but they are being either ignorant or disingenuous. The shortages they cite occurred in April of their respective years, such as 1925. April shortages are a different beast than October and November shortages. April is at the far end of the cold season; October is at the very beginning. April is at the tail end of most major southern refinery turnaround season, whereas October is just entering into turnaround season. In other words, a shortage in October is like have a food shortage right after harvest and going into the lean months, whereas a shortage in April is expected because we’ve just emerged from the lean months, but we expect new crops soon. And if the shortage is bad now, how bad will it be by April?

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Andrew Sullivan Makes An Ethics Case For Throwing Out The Democrats

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Because he writes so well and because he is an accomplished critical thinker, iconic blogging pioneer Andrew Sullivan’s opinion pieces are always worth reading even when he’s completely wrong. True, bias sometimes makes Andrew stupid, which shows the awesome power of bias because he’s definitely not stupid. Sullivan’s devotion to gayness is one source of emotionalism for him; another is his blind hatred of Donald Trump, which to my eye seems to be of the George Will/Bill Kristol variety: Sullivan thinks Trump is an unmannerly low-life too vulgar for him to agree with. I think Sullivan may be terrified of cognitive dissonance self-destruction if he admits to agreeing with Trump on most substantive issues, which he does.

In his latest substack newsletter, Sullivan spins his topic a bit to avoid alienating his mostly left-leaning readership, calling it “Will Biden And The Dems Finally Get It? Their far-left record has made the far right more electable.” Oh, see? The real problem with the Biden policy fiascos is that they will let the evil far right gain power. Shame on you, Andrew. Have the guts and integrity to be clear about what you are really saying…which is this:

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On Biden’s Speech….

/ Jack Marshall / 28 Comments

I’m not even sure the partisan campaign speech President Joe Biden delivered last night from Union Station [text here] in Washington, DC even rises to the level of grasping at straws. It was certainly desperate and pathetic in its desperation and hypocrisy: Ethics Alarms has been predicting that as the reality of public lashback against the spectacularly failed Democratic Party rule since 2020 (and in many places, before) became undeniable, the lies, tantrums and other excesses of those accountable would escalate. I’m sure even worse is on the horizon, but the most charitable thing one could say about Biden’s speech last night is that it wasn’t a terrible as his earlier one calling Republicans fascists. Nonetheless, in my preliminary research, no President has ever given two such divisive and intellectually indefensible speeches in their entire time in office, and Joe Biden gave them within 60 days of each other.

The speech comes as the various polls are finally showing what anyone paying attention knew was the case long before: Democrats are losing support even from their base, and face an epic shellacking. The slashing conservative blogger Ace of Spades, I think, has this scam figured out. He writes that the polling organizations, most of them allied with with progressive universities and biased news organizations, deliberately slanted their polling groups towards Democrats in order to please their clients. (Another analyst adds that such fake news gives Democrats sufficient hope to peddle in fundraising appeals, knowing well that the real numbers would be far more discouraging.) Now, however, because their future credibility depends on not looking like idiots when the votes are tallied, the pollsters are finally playing it straight.

Still, even as all around Biden are losing their heads and blaming it on him, I cannot fathom the epic gall required for this President of all Presidents to base a last ditch appeal for his party on the argument that “we the people must decide whether we’re going to sustain a republic where reality is accepted, the law is obeyed, and your vote is truly sacred.”

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Another Damning IIPTDXTTNMIAFB: President Biden Intentionally Violates The Constitution, Hoping He Can Get Away With It

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

IIPTDXTTNMIAFB are the Ethics Alarms initials for “Imagine if President Trump did X that the news media is accepting from Biden.” The phenomenon has been a theme of the Biden Presidency Ethics Train Wreck so far: The Washington Post isn’t keeping an archive of Biden’s lies like they did for President Trump (and most of what they archived weren’t lies anyway), and Biden has arguably engaged in far more substantive and deliberate untruths in less than two years than Trump did in four. It was a recent Biden lie of breathtaking audacity that reminded me to write about this issue: over the weekend just passed, Biden told an interviewer regarding his student loan debt bailout: “It’s passed. I got it passed by a vote or two.”

No, this was an Executive Order. It wasn’t a bill, it wasn’t voted on by Congress, and it didn’t “pass”—that’s exactly why it is unconstitutional. The scary possibility is that Biden actually thinks it did pass, but I refuse to accept “He’s senile, and doesn’t know what the hell is going on” as a defense for such blatant falsehoods.

Prof. Turley, who is becoming increasingly outraged at the Democratic Party’s disregard and disrespect for the Constitution, blasted away at Biden’s deliberate defiance of the law of the land in a recent post. Noting that Biden falsely (or ignorantly) boasted that the courts “are on his side” regarding the illegal EO despite the fact that the initial law suits blocking it were rejected on procedural and not substantive legal grounds (amazingly, Biden went to law school), Turley fumed…

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Most Unethical Non-Criminal Cabinet Member In History?

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Well, I don’t know. Quite a few Cabinet members have been convicted of crimes in office, and the Biden Cabinet has other bad apples, notably Attorney General Merrick Garland. Still, it’s hard to imagine any federal department head more incompetent or guilty of dereliction of duty than Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. Or more of a weasel. To be fair, he is the first Cuban-born Homeland Security Secretary, which makes him “historic” and yet another diversity feather in the current Democratic regime’s cap. And after all, that’s what’s really important, right?

I wish I were kidding.

Mayorkas, you no doubt recall, says that our Southern border is “secure,” apparently using the archaic definition of “secure” that meant “as porous as cheesecloth” in Chaucerian English. He also attempted to install an Orwellian “Disinformation Governance Board, until even the Democratic Party’s captive news media objected, which always signals that the Left’s totalitarian aspirations are getting ahead of themselves. But he really secured his place in the U.S. Cabinet Members Chamber of Horrors, it has now been revealed, by deliberately condemning border agents of whipping illegal immigrants along the Texas-Mexico border when he knew the allegations were false.

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Funniest Ethics Quote Ever: The Marshall Project

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

—The Marshall Project, in its analysis of President Biden’s much ballyhooed mass pardon for people convicted of federal marijuana possession, heralded in the news media as the largest act of clemency in a generation.

Weeell, that wasn’t exactly true, was it? As the Marshall Project analysis explains, while the act may have symbolic force in prompting some states to extend clemency to pot violators, and while at the federal level there aboutt 6,500 people with prior marijuana possession convictions on their records may benefit from the pardon by restoring civic rights like voting, or serving on juries,  but only if the marijuana charge was the only felony on their record.

In short, the grand gesture, a sop to the Democratic Party’s drug-loving base, was pure deceit, misleading the public to believe it was something it was not to a ridiculous degree. The way the mainstream media played it, the President was letting harmless, non-violent offenders out of prison and addressing “over-incarceration.” In realty, the “mass pardon” released nobody. Continue reading →