Biden Presidency Ethics Train Wreck

More Post-Debate Ethics [Expanded!]

/ Jack Marshall / 61 Comments

To a substantial extent, the aftermath of the oogy Presidential debate this week has been more revealing than the debate itself. Nobody who has been paying attention should have been surprised by President Biden disturbing performance. Just the fact that he was willing, or was allowed, to participate in the debate at all had me thinking that day, “Well, I guess they must have figured out some way for Joe to keep his dementia at bay for 90 minutes.” They hadn’t. Biden could have pulled out of the debate with relatively minimal damage, citing his health (he did have a cold) or something else. The blow-back and speculation would have not significantly more critical than what he received for skipping the traditional Presidential live appearance on the Super Bowl broadcast.

There is speculation that Joe was deliberately set up to fail. In the previous EA post about this debacle—and anyone who was pleased or amused by Biden’s distress needs an ethics transplant—I attributed the President being subjected to the national and international humiliation to his party’s, campaign’s and staff’s incompetence. Hanlon’s Razor still compels that verdict, but I must say some of the recent conspiracy theories sound increasingly plausible.

In this post from May 21, I harshly criticized George Mason professor Jeremy Mayer’s USA Today column headlined, “How Biden Can Save America From Trump’s Return To The White House: Drop Out of the Race.” Professor Mayer was gracious, good-natured and gutsy enough to come here to defend his position and also join the comment wars. He’s an admirable person and a thoughtful one, obviously. I just realized that I never apologized for calling him an “idiot” in my post. I still disagree strongly with his article, but he’s not an idiot, and I hereby apologize for that slur. It was unfair and wrong. I’m sorry, I regret it, and I will try to restrict my use of “idiot” in the future to genuine idiots.

But I digress. I would be fascinated to know how the events of this week have altered his position, if at all. To quote the USA Today piece: “Biden could announce, anytime this summer, that he’s out. He could use the same logic that got him the nomination in 2020. He sincerely and accurately believed that he was the Democrat with the best chance to beat Trump. Now, he is one of the few national Democrats who could get Trump reelected.”

Based on Biden’s defiant rally yesterday, I don’t see how he could reverse himself and withdraw without looking bullied and being further humiliated. One thing we know about Biden’s personality is that he is insecure, and as a lifetime over-achiever he bristles at criticism and being, in his view, underestimated. Many are evoking the model of President Lyndon Johnson, who withdrew from his re-election campaign in 1968. Johnson was more popular than Biden at the time, and he withdrew much earlier, in March. He also had a divisive and much hated Republican looming as his likely opponent, Richard Nixon. But Johnson really was, as George W. Bush claimed to be, “a uniter not a divider.” He saw his presence in the race as further dividing what was already an ominously divided country, as well as his party. Biden has actively encouraged division as President. Biden’s no Johnson.

Other points…

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And While We’re On the Topic of “Science” and Climate Change…

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

President Joe Biden’s climate adviser Ali Zaidi continued the intellectual dishonesty of the Biden administration’s climate change pandering, warning this week that that the President’s political rivals are preparing a “U-turn agenda” that would reverse all the administration’s “progress.” He was appealing to young, ignorant, woke climate change cultists who are threatening to refuse to support Biden’s re-election, since he hasn’t sent U.S. business and society back to the stone age.

Zaidi said that a reversal of Biden’s policies “actually puts us on a U-turn trajectory. A U-turn to [a] less competitive economy. A U-turn to unsafe communities, a U-turn on jobs. That’s a really big deal. It’s very problematic.”

He also claimed, ludicrously, that passions of young people on this topic reflects their experiences, with “wildfires turning the skies orange” and policymakers’ actions “failing to meet the urgency their generation believes is needed to keep global temperature increases in check.” He said, however, that the administration is heeding the the “call of science,” with Biden is committed to his goal of slashing U.S. emissions in half this decade.

None of the wildfires of recent years have been credibly connected to climate change. Moreover, who cares what barely-educated life-neophytes “believe”? They don’t actually know anything except what demagogues and partisan scientists dumbing down their rhetoric tell them.

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Ethics Heroes: New York Times Readers

/ Jack Marshall / 33 Comments

Who would have thought that New York Times readers could do such a terrific Peter Sellers impression?

Paul Krugman, once a Nobel Prize winner, now the very model of a modern progressive hack, issued his contribution to the current “Protect Joe Biden!” hysteria among pundits and journalists. It’s called “Why You Shouldn’t Obsess About the National Debt,” and if this won’t get the Nobel people to demand their prize in economics back, nothing will.

The intellectual dishonesty of the piece is stunning even for Krugman—I remember how an old friend favorably posted one of Krugman’s columns to Facebook and the scales fell from my eyes making me realize that the old friend was an idiot and had always been one—and the rationalizations he uses to shrug away the $34 trillion national debt are breathtaking in their audacity. Some examples:

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Unethical Quote of the Month: President Joe Biden (Alternate Headline: “What a Shameless Asshole!”)

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

“We must face a simple truth.To protect America as a land that welcomes immigrants, we must first secure the border and secure it now.”

—President Biden, outrageously adopting Donald Trump’s long-standing position that he party has condemned as racist and “xenophobic” because his poll numbers are looking bad.

Seldom has the “Die Hard” clip (from the Ethics Alarms Hollywood Clip Archive) been more appropriate or infuriating. For more than three years, Joe Biden’s administration deliberately signaled to aspiring alien lawbreakers that they would be wink-winked into the United States despite defying immigration laws, let free to run amuck if that’s what they chose to do, and law enforcement would look the other way. Officials like Kamala Harris and Homeland Security Secretary Mayorkas gaslighted the public by insisting the border was secure when anyone with eyes or a camera could see it was anything but. An estimated 2.5 illegals have entered the country across this “secure border.” Awakening to the reality that the majority of the American public doesn’t view that as “a Great Replacement Conspiracy,” but simply as incompetent, irresponsible, dangerous and wrong—you know, like Donald Trump said in 2015 as he launched his (quixotic, everyone thought) candidacy for the Presidency and was tarred as a racist for it?—suddenly, Mirabile Dictu!, Biden is singing a different metaphorical tune.

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Another Example of How the Right, the Left, the News Media and the Government Make Certain It’s Impossible For Everyone Else to Know What the Hell is Going On….

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

The PJ Media headline is certainly a click-magnet: “Biden Admin Tampered With Evidence, Altered Biden’s Hur Interview Transcript.” If one has been following all of the machinations of this totalitarian-leaning cabal, that seems perfectly in character. Sure, why not? If they’ll contrive ways to keep their major political rival in court if not in jail a few months before the election, what won’t they try to get away with?

The story, however, is more equivocal. In a federal court filing, the Department of Justice admitted  that the transcript of President Joe Biden’s testimony to Special Counsel Robert Hur was missing “filler words (such as ‘um’ or ‘uh’)” and words that “may have been repeated when spoken (such as ‘I, I’ or ‘and, and’)”:

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Ethics Villains: Ireland, Norway, and Spain

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

This revolting development tempts me to write a dark parody of “Abraham, Martin and John” called “Ireland, Norway and Spain.” it would end with…

Anybody here not like terrorism?
Would you care to explain?
I guess it’s OK as long as it kills Jews
Say Ireland, Norway and Spain…

Spain, Norway and Ireland announced this week that they would recognize an independent Palestinian state. The coordinated announcements from the leaders of the three countries said that Palestinian independence should not have to wait for a negotiated peace deal with Israel.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel immediately condemned the announcement as validating Hamas terrorism, which it undeniably does. Netanyahu has always held that the establishment of a Palestinian state would pose an “existential danger” to Israel, called the decision by the three nations “a prize for terrorism” that would “not stop us from reaching a victory over Hamas.” Israel Katz, Israel’s foreign minister, said that Spain, Norway and Ireland had decided “to award a gold medal to Hamas terrorists.” The announcements were made just days after the International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor requested arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Israel’s defense minister, Yoav Gallant, on suspicion of war crimes.

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When Does “Correcting” a Presidential Speech Transcript Become Unethical?

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

Mediaite, a political website that has an interesting approach to bias—about 80% of its writers are mouth-foaming progressive, Trump-loathing propagandists, but it mixes in a few neutral and conservative reporters for contrast—revealed that the White House made an unusual number of significant alterations to the official transcript of President Biden’s recent speech to the NAACP.

At the very beginning of the speech, Biden said that President Obama had sent him to Detroit during the “pandemic.” (“When I was Vice President, things were kinda bad during the pandemic…”) ““Pandemic” was changed to “recession” in the White House transcript. Biden then told the NAACP he was “humbled to receive this organization.” No, he hadn’t been given the whole organization, just an award from it. The White House crossed out “organization” in the transcript and corrected it with “award.”

Biden said, “We’re cracking down on corporate landlords who keep rents down,” which was the opposite of what he intended to say, or so we are told. “We’re cracking down on corporate landlords to keep rents down” the White House changed the transcript to state as Biden’s message. Biden also called those who took part in the Capitol rioting “erectionists” which was changed to “insurrectionists.”

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Ultra-NYT Partisan Propagandist Provides A Terrific Example of the Ravages of Bias, Denial, and Bubble Dwelling

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

I find this article incredible, even from Ezra Klein, one of the most openly and proudly biased partisan hacks in captivity. How could he write this swill? Is he really that delusional? How could the Times publish it? Do the editors not see how foolish it makes the paper look?

Read this thing. I have a pay wall free link here, though I almost feel like it’s an insulting gift for you. The headline is “Seven Theories for Why Biden Is Losing (and What He Should Do About It).” Theories for why Biden is losing? Who needs to search for theories unless their heads are so burrowed into their nether regions that they can lick their intestines. Theories? Here are facts:

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Biden Stabs Israel in the Back to Keep His Anti-Semitic Vote and Gets Justly Hammered For His Betrayal? Mainstream Media To The Rescue!

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

“Nah, there’s no mainstream media bias!” To be fair, it’s past time to rephrase the oft-used Ethics Alarm catch phase as, “Nah, the mainstream media doesn’t just take marching orders from the Democratic National Committee to cover for Biden’s indefensible leadership!”

Too long, I know. OK, it needs some work.

Suddenly, all through the news media over the weekend, the tale of how President Ronald Reagan intervened with a threat to withhold arms that had already been approved for delivery to Israel to force the nation to change its military strategy was being thrown in the faces of Biden critics and Israel supporters. Huh. Where did that come from?

Surprise! It came from the New York Times, the flagship of the corrupt, partisan media, just in time to fuel the “advocacy journalists'” efforts over the weekend to help block Israel’s right to defend its existence and its citizens from terrorism.

Interviewing GOP Senator Lindsey Graham, and by “interviewing” I mean debating as she took the side of Democrats, the Biden Administration, the anti-Semitic students roiling campuses and Hamas, NBC News anchor Kristen Welker said, “As you know, former President Ronald Reagan, on multiple occasions, withheld weapons to impact Israel’s military actions,” Welker said. “Did President Reagan show that using U.S. military aid, as leverage, can actually be an effective way to rein in and impact Israel’s policy?”

What a perfect factoid to weaponize for an appeal to authority and Rationalization #32. The Unethical Role Model: “He/She would have done the same thing”! The timely Times revelation: in August of 1982, Israel was shelling Palestinian terrorist strongholds in Lebanon, then a failing state in the throes of a civil war, with Palestinian forces controlling territory on its southern border. President Reagan saw films of a Lebanese child horribly wounded in the attack, and called up then Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin to threaten a withdrawal of U.S. aid if the shelling didn’t stop. Begin gave in. The Times also informed its readers that President Eisenhower threatened economic sanctions and to cut off aid to force Israel to withdraw from the Sinai Peninsula after it invaded Egypt in 1956. So, the Times concluded, “If it was reasonable for the Republican presidential icon to limit arms to impose his will on Israel…it should be acceptable for the current Democratic president to do the same.” Well, the Times wrote “they argued,” meaning defenders of all-things Democrat, but we know, or should, that by “they” in such situations, the mainstream media means “we.”

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Ethics Quote of the Week: Ann Althouse

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

“My working theory would be that Joe Biden has prioritized his own reelection. And he’s not even performing well at that. Ironically, his reelection theme seems to be that he — and not Trump — is a man of integrity. I would recommend that the old man step back from the tawdry exercise of getting reelected and actually behave with integrity.”

—Law professor/”Fiercely neutral” blogress Ann Althouse, characterizing President Biden’s contradictory and cynical treatment of Israel after he announced that the U.S. will withhold critical arms support for the attack on the Hamas stronghold of Rafah despite previously agreeing that Hamas had to be destroyed.

Ann adds, “But I suspect he’s too far gone to give us that.”

I was pondering how to frame a post about Biden’s craven perfidy regarding the Hamas-Israel conflict, as he literally tries to take both sides at once in order to avoid rejection by the Democratic Party’s pro-terrorism bloc, which has turned out to be a lot bigger than even critics suspected. Then I read Ann’s post highlighting Jon Podhoretz’s article for Commentary, “Biden’s Shameful Betrayal.” (Full disclosure: I know Jon, and like him: he was a member of my theater company’s board until he moved out of the District.) I don’t think Althouse has been red-pilled exactly—I’ll still lay odds that she ends up voting for Biden—but she seems genuinely disgusted by the age-addled President’s latest example of fecklessness and irresponsible leadership, as should we all.

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