big lies

From “Non-Partisan” Pro Publica, a Lie and a Misrepresentation in a “Good Illegal Immmigrant” Story.

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

ProPublica is certainly full of itself.

“ProPublica is an independent, nonprofit newsroom that produces investigative journalism with moral force,” it crows. “We dig deep into important issues, shining a light on abuses of power and betrayals of public trust — and we stick with those issues as long as it takes to hold power to account.” The reality is that whatever meaning “independent’ carries in that statement, it is deceitful. The companion word is supposed to be “objective.” Pro Publican only cares about Republican abuses of power, although it will occasionally tweak a Democrat to maintain the illusion of fairness. It is another Democratic Party ally, like CREW, Media Matters and (Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington), which has an Ethics Alarms dossier longer than my arm, that poses as non-partisan so its constant attacks on one side of the political spectrum are trusted by the inattentive and gullible.

Today it treats its readers to another “good illegal immigrant” story. The dishonest headline: Trump’s Latest Deportation Tactic: Targeting Immigrants With Minor Family Court Cases.

This is a lie. It suggest that legal immigrants and citizens of the U.S. may be deported based on child care violations. Here is the story behind the headline:

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The Latest Orwellian “Newspeak” From The Mad Left: “Loyalty Oath”

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

I am ever watchful for Trump Administration ethical and legal overreach. We know this man by now (though he is still full of surprises, some good, some frightening) , and if any leader has ever been prone to get cocky when flushed with success, leading him to breach rules, laws, ethics and common sense, Donald Trump is. So when I read in some Axis news source that university professors are “up in arms” over Trump pressing colleges and universities into signing a “loyalty oath,” my ethics alarms imitated Big Ben. Oh-oh. Loyalty oaths are anathema to democracy and the United States of America, but it sounds like something Trump might find appealing.

But upon research that took me about 15 minutes but that the members of the public this lie is aimed at deceiving won’t do, there is no “loyalty oath.” The unethical academics and activists trying to ensure that American universities remain leftist indoctrination camps came up with that label because they knew it was inflammatory and would make the Trump Deranged, their tending-toward-Trump Derangement family, friends and co-workers, and the intellectually lazy and gullible certain that a fascist takeover is approaching.

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Unethical Axis Headline of the Week: The Washington Post

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

This, of course, comes with the “Nah, there’s no mainstream media bias!” label.

The Post headline truly is despicable. Despite the entire world clamoring for an end, however temporary, to the Gaza war and the abject failure of the U.N. or anyone else to achieve the release of the Israeli hostages, the Post spins the looming success of President Trump’s diplomatic efforts as merely another example of his narcissistic quest for personal acclaim. This is Big Lie of the Resistance #8: Big Lie #8: “Trump Only Cares About Himself, Not the Country.“

It is one of the most persistent of the Big Lies that emerged during his first term: two friends repeated it just yesterday. The smear is a great default excuse to refuse ever giving this President credit for anything, even achievements that are impressive, important and remarkable. It is an especially ethically obtuse smear: motives don’t make an action ethical, the conduct does, and the right thing done for the wrong reasons is still the right thing. In this case, the motive used to minimize Trump’s diplomatic triumph is a weak one, for I can’t imagine why Trump would want a Nobel Peace Prize, so thoroughly has that honor been debased by the flagrant politicizing of the award process.

[Aside: Of the 10 Big Lies I compiled through 2023, only #1 (“Trump is just a reality TV star”) and #9 (“Trump’s Mishandling Of The Pandemic Killed People”) have largely been retired from the Axis of Unethical Conduct and the Trump Deranged mob list of justifications for reviling the President of the United States.]

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Unethical Quote of the Month (and Ethics Villain): Sen. Chris Murphy (D.-Conn)

/ Jack Marshall / 34 Comments

“What do you think about Trump’s most visible advisor, Elon Musk, performing a Nazi salute?”

—-Sen. Chris Murphy, Democrat from Connecticut and based on this question, a completely unscrupulous one, questioning Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik in her confirmation hearing to be confirmed as U.N. ambassador

Yecchh, ick, ptui, gag, retch! I’m sure it’s theoretically possible to stoop lower than Murphy, but I don’t want to think about what that would be. Urinating on the nominee perhaps?

This is pure Trump hate translated into slander. Musk, while gesticulating yesterday, ended up with one arm outstretched briefly with the palm down, and the still frantically desperate Axis, including PBS, began circulating the absurd Big Lie that Musk gave a Nazi salute for some reason. Oh! I get it! It’s because Trump is a Nazi!

I still can’t get my head around the reality that a U.S. Senator would try to join in on this gang smearing of Musk. CNN’s Scott Jennings X’d, “The only good thing about the Elon salute stupidity is that it adds to the list of people in public life who should never, ever, ever be taken seriously ever again by anyone ever.” Good point, and well said. Now, I’m ahead of Jennings, because I never took Murphy seriously anyway, except that he’s a serious jerk. Murphy is one of the worst of the worst in Congress, and missed my pre-election blacklist only because he wasn’t running. Yet even I, who regard him as an ongoing embarrassment to the Senate and the nation, didn’t see him resorting to this.

The question wasn’t even relevant to Stefanik, though she answered it with appropriate contempt, saying, “That is simply not the case. To say so – the American people see through it. They support Elon Musk.” I wish she had added, “And they are not the morons you seem to think they are. They know he didn’t give any Nazi salute.”

I find it hard to believe that the Democrats and the Trump-hating news media are really going to escalate their craziness as they try to destroy Trump for another term. Is it possible? Do they have a death wish? Are they that deluded? Is their learning curve not just flat, but upside-down? Jennings is not exaggerating. Bias makes you stupid, and hysterical bias makes you ridiculous.

(That’s Superman giving his “Nazi salute” above, courtesy of the Babylon Bee.)

“Perfect!” Axis Election Desperation and “Win By Any Means Necessary” Update

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

I doubt that Ethics Alarms will be able to keep up with the predicted (and coming to pass) pre-election hysteria and ends justify the means overload that the Axis of Unethical Conduct (“the resistance,” Democrats and the mainstream media) are inflicting on the nation as they fear their fake DEI candidate for President will lose, as she so richly deserves to. It is almost entire fueled by Big Lies, fake news, ad hominem attacks, and anything that might distract from Harris’s increasingly obvious incompetence and dishonesty.

I am serious when I say that I only drop by Fox News, CNN and MSNBC for about five minutes each day, and it’s a amazing the garbage I see anyway. I just heard Kamala Harris tell Anderson Cooper, in last night’s CNN “town hall” (Who believes Harris didn’t have the questions in advance?) that she believes that the border must be secure and that there should be “serious consequences” for illegal immigration…this in the same campaign where she has said that she supports amnesty for illegals as well as citizenship! See, if the “consequences” of illegal immigration are exactly what illegals want, that’s called an “incentive.” Naturally, Cooper didn’t call Harris on this self-evident—stupid, really— contradiction.

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Great: Trump Makes Another Stupidly Phrased Comment That The News Media Will Use To Dishonestly Claim He’s Planning On Being a Dictator

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Boy, I’m sick of Trump being so reckless in his ad-libs and of the mainstream media’s deceit and disgusting double standards. The second I read Trump’s quote to a gathering of religious conservatives at The Believers’ Summit, an event hosted by the conservative group Turning Point Action in West Palm Beach —“Christians, get out and vote. Just this time. You won’t have to do it anymore, you know what? Four more years, it’ll be fixed, it’ll be fine, you won’t have to vote anymore, my beautiful Christians!”—I knew exactly how the Axis would spin it, and I was right. Harris pounced, the Times pounced (then they changed the heading to provide the context after the initial story ran), CNN pounced, they all pounced. See? There will never be another election if Trump wins! He just admitted it!

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It Looks Like I’m Going To Have To Add Another Democratic Big Lie To The List…

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

I had to run up to the office to get this down before other outrages intervened. (The list I’m alluding to is here.)

To start off the hearing today continuing the House inquiry into the Trump shooting, Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), began with a rant against “political violence” that he quickly turned into a partisan attack on Republicans. Among his statements was that Donald Trump had said that “there would be a bloodbath” if he wasn’t elected in 2024.

That’s a lie. It has been conclusively shown to be a lie. I wrote about the widespread misrepresentation of Trump’s comment at the time. Trump was using ‘bloodbath” in the economic sense, which is included in many dictionary definitions (“a period of disastrous loss or reversal“), referring to the auto industry. Quoting him out of that specific context, and placing the quote in the false context of “political violence” is intentional deceit, and deceit is lying.

The Democrats, including Nadler, know what Trump said and meant, but they keep using this false characterization anyway. Biden alluded to it repeatedly. Kamala Harris will be sure to do the same: let me know if I miss it when she does.

There are so many awful members of Congress on both sides of the aisle that I often forget about Nadler, one of the worst. He revealed himself to be a hyper-partisan hack during the Clinton House impeachment hearings, when he and the equally horrible Maxine Waters battled to a tie in the Democrats’ “it isn’t what it is” competition. He hasn’t improved since.

Democrats, all of them, are ethically estopped from repeating the mantra that Trump lies all the time as long as their party is addicted to Big Lies, which it is. Similarly, the newsmedia is hypocritical if it “factchecks” Trump without also pointing out deliberate dishonest smears like the one Nadler just vomited up.

Oh! I see that John Hammond has raised his hand! Yes, John?

I don’t blame you a bit.

How Low Will The Mainstream Media Stoop In Its Desperation To Somehow Save Joe Biden? Oh, Even Lower Than This…Just Give It Time…

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Journalism! Yes, it’s true: trying to smear Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to pick up a couple straying percentage points as a whole point herd seems to be abandoning President Gabby Johnson (“Rarit!”) after his debate debacle, Vanity Fair actually published an “exposé” claiming that the third party candidate was photographed eating a barbecued dog in Korea:

Nah, there’s no mainstream media bias! Or stupidity…I read about that story and decided it was obviously nonsense. Then I saw the photo, and knew it was nonsense: As Lloyd Bentsen would say, “I’ve kept goats. I’ve seen barbecued goats, and dogs have been friends of mine: that was no dog.”

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The New York Times Uses Joe Lieberman’s Death to Spread the 2000 Election Big Lie Again

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

The just can’t help themselves. In “Revisiting Florida 2000 and the Butterfly Effect,” New York Times reporter reminds readers (or as I would prefer to ssay, “whines”) that “the evidence is strong that Al Gore would have won had it not been for an infamous ballot design in Palm Beach County.” The Times will not, when Jimmy Carter dies, reminisce that “the evidence is strong” that if Jimmy Carter had not used the single Presidential debate against Ronald Reagan to appeal to the authority of his then 13-year old daughter Amy regarding nuclear proliferation, Carter would have been elected to a second term,” but then that wouldn’t have given the hypocritical paper an opportunity to claim, falsely and with complete knowledge that the claim was false, that Reagan’s history-altering election wasn’t legitimate. Nate Cohn, one of the rising leftist propagandists in the Times stable of dishonest pundits, does pivot to that claim regarding George W. Bush’s election.

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An Ethics Alarms 2-Post Mash-Up! “Stop Making Me Defend Donald Trump Especially When He Just Barely Deserves To Be Defended!” Meets “Ethics Quiz: The RBG Awards”

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

A dissent from a well-respected contributor here spawned this post. The mainstream media is still pushing the Big Lie (discussed in this post)that Donald Trump promised to unleash a “bloodbath” if he lost the upcoming election (MSNBC mentioned it several times this morning). As I was pondering the argument (prompted by this post) that Elon Musk does not deserve the RBG Leadership Award for rescuing Twitter, now “X” from the Left-wing biased and censorious cabal that had captured it, I encountered the sequence below on the platform. Musk’s version of Twitter does not ban the progressives from spreading their “misinformation,” and he allows the crucial opportunity for countering the news media that is on display. This is undeniably a good thing. And I believe the the Notorious R.B.G. would agree.

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