Democrats

Ethics Quote of the Month: Yeah, It’s Bill Maher, Much As It Pains Me To Admit It

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

“If the thought leaders in the Democratic Party keep encouraging and not rebuking the idea that America is cringe and the people who run Gaza are great,” he warned, “the Democrats are doomed.”

—HBO’s “clown nose on/clown nose off” comic Bill Maher on his weekly political commentary and discussion show “Real Time.”

I have made it clear in the past few months that I do not take professional asshole Bill Maher’s recent criticism of progressives and the Democratic Party to be sincere or particularly admirable. He is obviously making self-serving calculations regarding where his own best interests lie, and the comic is smart enough (not as smart as he thinks he is, but smart enough) to recognize a declining brand when he sees one. Nevertheless, we should always try to judge a message independently of a flawed messenger.

Maher is right. Last month a Harvard poll found that only 24% of young Democrats said they were proud of being American compared to a 76% of young Republicans. (I find it alarming that a quarter of young Republicans aren’t proud of the U.S.). The poll surveyed 2,096 Americans from 18 to 29 years old nationally, and among Democrat respondents, an amazing 54% said they are embarrassed to be Americans while 21% said they were neither proud not embarrassed. With Republicans, it was 8% embarrassed and 16% neither proud nor embarrassed

Yeah, yeah, “polls” and “Harvard.” Still.

In addition to his Quote of the Month, Maher told his audience after citing the results,

“Seriously, this is a serious problem for Democrats,” Maher said during his Friday monologue. “Less than 1 in 4 Democrats under 30 say they’re proud to be an American. 54% say they’re embarrassed by it. Embarrassed? Like America is your mom picking you up at school? You’re embarrassed to be an American? Well guess what — the feeling’s mutual, because you have no perspective. Is America perfect? No, of course not. No country is. But the US is leagues ahead of the rest of the world on most of the progressive issues that are important to young people.  America has 14-million women-owned businesses. Seventeen percent of black women are starting businesses, which is faster than white women or white men. Gay Americans are free to marry and 49% of them own property. Yes, in America gays buy buildings. In other places, they get thrown off them….And we proudly live in a land where every TV commercial features a mix-raced couple, including the ones where it makes no sense. Mom’s black, dad’s white, and the kid’s Asian.”

Well, I’m embarrassed by that last part, but Bill’s over-all analysis is valid.

It shouldn’t be too much of a surprise that the Children of the Left hate America, because for decades our education system, news media-celebrated activists and elected leaders have been assiduously indoctrinating children from kindergarten through college to believe that the U.S. is defined by slavery, racism, colonialism, bigotry, murder, unjust wars and robber barons. And for much of that period, Bill Maher and his ilk have been cheering the anti-Americanism on. But New Bill is absolutely correct about the Democrats committing cultural suicide and trying to lead the public off the cliff with them.

Whether he means it or not.

Ethics Villain and Unethical Quote of the Month: Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker (Guess What Party…)

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Yet more smoking gun evidence that the Democratic Party of the 21st Century does not want or support democracy. We shouldn’t need any more proof after the horrors of 2024, but an amazing number of Americans with misty-eyed memories of JFK, “The Great Society,” and even Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama (the fools!) refuse to accept what the party of Jefferson, Jackson, Truman and FDR has metastasized into.

Pritzker was one of the primary state dictators during the stupid pandemic response, signing 41 consecutive emergency orders during the Wuhan virus freakout to give himself unlimited powers so he could keep businesses and schools closed. His whole family is a menace: his sister is the woke empress that had Harvard select the DEI plagiarist Claudine Gay to lead Harvard further down the path to intellectual corruption.

President Trump is doing no more (and amazingly, not much less) than what he promised Americans when he was the only choice voter were given to avoid a DEI fraud claiming perfection for the most incompetent President in U.S. history. The hysterical and hypocritical Left is screaming “Dictatorship!” when the elected President is using his powers appropriately and necessarily to address the looming debt crisis, enforce the law, protect commerce, and remove the metaphorical termites from the foundations of democracy and its institutions like universities, law firms, and journalism.

And just listen to those morons cheering for this jerk! It has been speculated that Pritzker’s insurrection act (his party’s prosecutors and pundits have taken the position that telling a crown to “fight” is a call for violence, remember) is a prelude to his entering the 2028 wide-open race for President among his party’s current group of boobs, totalitarians and losers. Yeah, good luck with that, J.B…

And no, I’m not making fun of the Guv’s weight, I’m making fun of the fact that he’s deluded. In fact, conservative writers and pundits are behaving unethically by taking the low road and issuing cheap shots based on Pritzker’s girth. Here’s Powerline, for example: “The underlying message of Pritzker’s call for ‘disruption’ is that he is running for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination. Heavy!”

It’s this man’s brain, not his belly, that’s the problem. Try to stay focused.

Pssst! Somebody Tell Sen. Klobuchar That She Needn’t Work So Hard At Embarrassing Minnesota With Gov. Walz Doing Such a Bang-Up Job of It…

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

When did “Minnesota Nice” mutate into “Minnesota Stupid”?

Following the charging of a Wisconsin judge who pretty clearly obstructed justice and used her position to prevent an illegal immigrant and criminal from being arrested, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D. Minn), as you can see above, tweeted, “This is not normal. The Administration’s arrest of a sitting judge in Wisconsin is a drastic move that threatens the rule of law. While we don’t have all the details, this is a grave step and undermines our system of checks and balances.”

Remind me to shake that in front of the faces of my various friends and relatives who supported this shallow, foolish woman when she was running for President in 2020. Her tweet is one more smoking gun proving that Democratic officials will find excuses to accuse President Trump of threatening the “rule of law” and “separation of powers” and creating a “constitutional crisis” regardless of what he and his administration does.

Hilariously, Klobuchar admits that she doesn’t know what she’s talking about —“we don’t have all the details”—but in fact the details already made it as clear as Saran-wrap that Milwaukee Judge Hannah Dugan deliberately set out to interfere with the lawful arrest of an illegal immigrant. Dugan’s bizarre conduct revived memories of another lawless judge with a soft spot for illegals, Massachusetts District Court Judge Shelley M. Richmond Joseph, who was indicted in federal court in Boston on obstruction of justice charges for preventing an U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer from taking custody of an alien defendant. She delayed ICE while her staff secretly let the illegal escape out the courthouse back door in the Spring of 2018, before Trump Derangement had reached pandemic levels.

The details on Dugan’s effort to thwart law enforcement are worse, as this thread by Prof. Margot Cleveland amply demonstrates. Also hilariously, Democrats are condemning what sure looks like a legitimate criminal charge against a Democratic judge as politically motivated after they spent 2024 applauding lame, contrived and blazingly political prosecutions of Donald Trump while they intoned, “Nobody is above the law.”

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Unethical Quote of the Week: Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY)

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

“This is the political weaponization of the DOJ. Trump uses his official authority to defend his benefactor Elon Musk. The FBI then creates a task force to use our law enforcement to ‘crack down’ on adversaries of Musk’s. Where are the Republicans so opposed to ‘lawfare’?”

—Rep. Daniel Goldman (D-NY), mounting his challenge to be the most irresponsible and dishonest hack in Congress.

Just when I think I’ve figured out who the most disgracefully unethical member of Congress is after the merciful departures of George Santos, Cori Bush and Jamaal Bowman, another contender says “Hold my beer!”

I thought the current run-away champ was shaping up to be potty-mouthed, jive-talking Rep. Jasmine Crockett, who padded her lead yesterday during the House Oversight Committee’s Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency hearing titled “Anti-American Airwaves: Holding the heads of NPR and PBS Accountable. ” Demonstrating once again that she either doesn’t understand the Constitution or wants to make sure the public doesn’t understand it, she said in one of her characteristic rants, “To be clear, free speech is not about whatever it is that y’all want somebody to say, and the idea that you want to shut down everybody that is not Fox News is bullshit. We need to stop playing, because that’s what you all are doing here, you don’t want to hear the opinions of anybody else,” Crockett said.

I don’t understand why someone, maybe even a Democrat with some self-respect and integrity, didn’t have the sense or guts to point out to this demagogue that the First Amendment doesn’t require the government to subsidize political speech, only to avoid restricting it. PBS and NPR will be free to be as biased, partisan and dishonest as they please, but someone other than taxpayers should pay for it. Goldman’s idiocy, however, was even more flagrant. Let me turn the metaphorical mic over to Professor Turley, who already has neatly described what Goldman is doing:

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House Democrats Emulate Al Green En Masse Just So There Is No Mistaking The Party’s Descent Into…[Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 30 Comments

Early during President Trump’s State of the Union Message [See footnote below], Texas Representative Al Green, who already filed articles of impeachment against the President, shook his cane and shouted, refusing to stop disrupting the speech until Speaker Mike Johnson had the House Sergeant of Arms escort him out of the chamber. Green then went to the first camera he saw and declared, “I’ll accept my punishment! It was worth it.”

Speaker Mike Johnson had issued several warnings. “Members are directed to uphold and maintain decorum in the House and to cease any further disruptions,” he said. Then, “That’s your warning. Members are engaging in willful and continuing breach of decorum. And the Chair is prepared to direct the Sergeant at arms to restore order to the joint session. Take your seat,” Johnson said. Finally, “The members continue to engage in willful and concerted disruption of proper decorum. The chair now directs the Sergeant at Arms to restore order. Remove this gentleman from the chamber.”

Green’s official censure was assumed to be a certainty, and sure enough, Green was censured the next day. The vote was 224-198, with 10 Democrats joining all Republicans, so we know that at least ten Democrats have a shred of dignity and respect for the institution of Congress. (Green and freshman Rep. Shomari Figures, D-Ala., voted “present”) As the vote proceeded, Green sat by himself along the center aisle as tradition dictates.

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OK, a Show of Hands: How Many Believe That Gavin Newsom Has Had a Change of Heart Regarding Transgender Competitors In Women’s Sports?

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

I sure don’t.

In the debut episode of the California governor’s new podcast “This Is Gavin Newsom,” Newsom invited Turning Point USA founder and conservative activist Charlie Kirk to banter about politics and public policy. To Kirk’s amazement (the New York Times assumes), Newsom concurred with the political right’s position regarding biological men participating in women’s sports. “I think it’s an issue of fairness, I completely agree with you on that,” Newsom told Kirk. “It is an issue of fairness. It’s deeply unfair.”

The Times was shocked—shocked!—that Newsom would break from the official party line on the issue. In the Senate last week, not a single Democrat supported the House-passed bill banning such cross-gender competitors, despite polls showing that this is an issue in which about 80% of the public agree with conservatives. “The comments by Mr. Newsom, who has backed LGPTQ causes for decades and was one of the first American elected officials to officiate same-sex weddings,” the Times said, “represented a remarkable break from other top Democrats on the issue, and signaled a newly defensive position on transgender rights among many in his party.”

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Never Mind “The Appearance of Impropriety,” Democrats Need To Avoid The Appearance of Stupidity

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

Let’s see: the ethical values that Congressional Democrats spat upon last night were competence, responsibility, integrity, respect, civility, courtesy, decency, dignity, self-restraint, prudence, fairness and patriotism. That’s quite an accomplishment in a single event. The party’s decision to challenge the GOP’s well-earned title as “The Stupid Party” last night during the State of the Union address was, in turn,

  • Foolish
  • Juvenile
  • Desperate
  • Embarrassing (to their party, the  nation and the institution of Congress)
  • Damning
  • Damaging to democracy
  • An appeal to the Trump Deranged while simultaneously proving how crippling the malady can be…and…
  • …a gift to the man they hate so much, President Trump.

In “True Grit,” the villain Tom Cheney is shot by young Maddie Ross after he taunts her by telling the girl how to cock the giant pistol she has aimed at him. He is stunned when she shoots him, and cries out, “I didn’t think you’d do it!”

I might make “The Cheney” a new Ethics Alarms distinction. I had read about the ridiculous college campus protest-level tactics Democrats were considering, and posted about them yesterday, as well as noting that the party’s leader in the House, Hakeem Jefferies, had advised them to eschew such nonsense in favor of a “strong, determined and dignified Democratic presence in the chamber.” Jeffries was right for a change, and I really thought all of the stories about the Democrats bringing props and dressing up would prove to be false alarms. I didn’t think they’d do it! Yet when the time for the yearly Presidential “speech “state of the nation” speech arrived, there were the Democrats, looking like the studio audience in a particularly ugly episode of “Let’s Make a Deal.”

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Ethics Irony: Democrats “Resisting” the President During the State of the Union Address Will Be More Destructive Than the J-6 Riot

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

But they’ll do it anyway.

Some Democrats have told colleagues they will storm out of the chamber if and when Trump says specific lines they find objectionable. Some are going to boycott the speech entirely. They are considering using props, like noisemakers, signs (like the “war criminal” sign “Squad” member Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) held up during Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s speech last year, eggs or empty egg cartons to taunt Trump for not bringing down inflation in less than two months, and so on.

Morons. Of course, Ethics Villain Nancy Pelosi set the precedent for such juvenile and divisive tactics when she ostentatiously ripped up the text of Trump’s last State of the Union Speech in 2020. Remember when GOP Representative Joe Wilson was excoriated in the media and by both Republicans and Democrats by shouting “You lie!” at President Barack Obama during a joint session of Congress in 2009? Wilson was formally rebuked by the House , which held that by shouting that during the president’s speech the Congressman had committed a “breach of decorum and degraded the proceedings of the joint session, to the discredit of the House.” The State of the Union is the most notable and in most years the most important joint session of the House and Senate, as well as a traditional demonstration of unity and respect for the U.S.’s government, the Presidency, and it institution. Elected officials deliberately breaching this “democratic norm” and showing such disrespect for a newly elected POTUS in the first address of his first year in office is destabilizing, dangerously divisive, and an unequivocal demonstration that the party will not give the people’s choice a fair chance—just like the last time.

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Cognitive Dissonance Scale Lesson For Senate Democrats

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

I have mentioned here frequently that one of two things I learned in college that have been most useful in my life and career is Leon Festinger’s Cognitive Dissonance Scale. The concept illustrated by the scale is also one of the most useful tools for ethical analysis, often essential to answering the question, “What’s going on here?” the entry point to many perplexing situations. Check the tag: it just took me 15 minutes to scroll though the posts that got it. I was surprised to find that I didn’t use the tag until 2014, when the scale helped me conclude that the Tea Party, then in ascendancy, was “doomed by a powerful phenomenon it obviously doesn’t understand: Cognitive Dissonance.” Heard much about the Tea Party lately? See, I’m smart! I’m not dumb like everybody says… I wrote then,

As psychologist Leon Festinger showed a half a century ago, we form our likes, dislikes, opinions and beliefs to a great extent based on our subconscious reactions to who and what they are connected with and associated to. This is, to a considerable extent, why leaders and celebrities are such powerful influences on society. It explains why we tend to adopt the values of our parents, and it largely explains many marketing and advertising techniques that manipulate our desires and preferences. Simply put, if someone we admire adopts a position or endorses a product, person or idea, he or she will naturally raise it in our estimation. If however, that position, product, person or idea is already extremely low in our esteem, even though his endorsement might raise it, even substantially, his own status will suffer, and fall. He will slide down the admiration scale, even if that which he endorses rises. If what the individual endorses is sufficiently deplored, it might even wipe out his positive standing entirely.

The implications of this phenomenon are many and varied, and sometimes complex. If a popular and admired politician espouses a policy, many will assume the policy is wise simply because he supports it. If an unpopular fool then argues passionately for the same policy, Festinger’s theory tells us, it might..

1. Raise the fool’s popularity, if the policy is sufficiently popular.

2. Lower support for the policy, if he is sufficiently reviled, and even

3. Lower the popularity of the admired politician, who will suffer for being associated with an idea that had been embraced by a despised dolt.

This subconscious shifting, said Festinger, goes on constantly, effecting everything from what movies we like to the clothes we wear to how we vote.

Here, for the heaven-knows-how-many-th time, is the scale in simplified form…

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Pundit Malpractice, Part II: A Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc Masterpiece From “The Hill”

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

This is truly a “Hold my beer!” moment to savor from “The Hill.” David Brooks’ fake history lesson, draped in his usual smarty-pants rhetoric, was unforgivable, but The Hill’s opinion piece with the click-bait title, “Blue Alert: Why Democrats are poised to win in 2028 and 2032” is so silly, lazy and idiotic that even Brooks gets leave to make fun of it.

Authored by GOP operatives Gary D. Alexander and Rick Cunningham, the thing makes it crystal clear how the Republican Party got the moniker “The Stupid Party” if it pays for advice from people capable of writing such junk. To state the obvious, Democrats aren’t “poised” to do anything at this point. The party has no leader; its President just exited the White House with one of the worst six months in Presidential annals; its Senators made asses of themselves in the hearings on Trump’s nominees so far, and its House members have declared themselves fans of biological men spiking volleyballs that crush women’s faces and illegal aliens who rape and kill. Its DEI Presidential candidate ran an embarrassing campaign while the party’s platform became “Abort more babies” and “Having a rally in Madison Square Garden proves Trump is Hitler.” Poised? Poisoned is more like it.

The article flags itself as bonkers by the third sentence, asserting that Democrats were already in an advantageous position to win in 2032. That’s eight years from now: I’m going to forgo the amusing but needless exercise of pointing out how unpredictable American political fortunes have been even two years in the future for most of our history. In eight years, the little fifth grade girl next door will be on the pill and registered to vote. Ah, but these two swamis write that their entrails readings “are deeply rooted in history and strategic realities.” You know, like Brooks’ one-term Presidents proving that populism doesn’t work.

Let’s examine these “realities”:

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