Democrats

Boy, Will I Ever Want To Rub It In If The Democrats Don’t Take The House…

/ Jack Marshall / 64 Comments

The Democrats deserve to lose these midterms more than any party has deserved to lose since Republicans got clobbered after Watergate. The corrupt Tom Delay-led GOP Congress during the Bush years was pretty bad, but that was just the elected officials. The whole Democratic Party has disgraced itself along with “the resistance,” the news media, Hollywood, academia and social media  for two full years.

This is hardly a new or original interpretation. Lindsey Graham, as close to an ethical member of Congress as I could name, put it pretty clearly squarely in his perfect rant during the Kavanaugh hearing: these people want power so much they will do and say almost anything. Over the past two years, they have relentlessly engaged in fearmongering, while accusing Trump of fearmongering. They have engaged in intimidation, defiance of democratic traditions and institutions, and rejection of core values that are bulwarks of democracy while accusing Trump of being a fascist. By enlisting the mainstream news media as a partisan ally when it is critical that journalists remain objective and neutral, it has crippled the integrity of a crucial component of what makes a democracy work. Graham accurately described this part of the tragedy as well:

“Well, one of the things we’ll learn from Kavanaugh is how in the tank the media really is for the other side. I don’t think they’re the enemy of the people. They’re just allies of the Democratic Party. If a Republican had done to a Democratic nominee what they did to Kavanaugh, it would be front page news everywhere. If Barack Obama’s jobs numbers were anywhere close to what we’re talking about, they would stop the Earth from rotating to make sure everybody heard about it. So the bottom line is it doesn’t work anymore. MSNBC and NBC have become one when it comes to the news cycle. Saturday Night Live is making fun of a guy who lost his eye in Afghanistan. There is a backlash growing in this country from the over the top effort by the left to portray everything conservative as bad and mean and un-American.

The news media deserves to lose the mid-terms, and imagine where we are when that statement actually makes sense. Continue reading →

Morning Ethics Warm-Up, 11/2/18: Democratic Dinners, TV Weatherman Edicts, Truth As Racism, And More

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments

Good Morning!

I see that the October jobs report this morning is spectacularly good, with 250,000 jobs added. It is amazing that so many Americans are going to vote against Republicans in the midst of such a strong economic surge following the end of Obama’s recovery-strangling policies. The lesson for future leaders, perhaps, is that the public cares more about a President constantly acting like an asshole than they do about what he accomplishes. From an ethics point of view, I would see that as a positive development, if I didn’t strongly suspect that the real reasons for apparent votes against self-interest are 1) that the news media isn’t reporting the economic news with anything like the enthusiasm it would if this were a Democratic administration, 2) that people really believe the ridiculous spin that this is somehow an Obama recovery, and 3) that so many young Americans have been indoctrinated into socialism that even as Venezuela crumbles, they are still buying the fantasy.

1. Next try: The Oprah-Jennifer Lawrence Dinner. This is pretty funny. Following the lead of other Democratic state organizations, The New Hampshire Democrats insulted the party’s two founders, Presidents Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson, also two of the nation’s greatest leaders, by removing their names from the annual party dinner.  For 2017, the event was renamed…wait for it!…the Kennedy-Clinton Dinner! Yup, two serial sexual assaulting misogynists, assuming it’s Jack and not Teddy being honored, in which case it’s a negligent killer, for the Party of Women. What a brilliant choice! How can anyone not vote for a party capable of a decision like that? But for some reason, as the Harvey Weinstein Train Wreck rolled along, the new name came under criticism. Who could have foreseen that? So the dinner has been renamed again; now it’s called the Eleanor Roosevelt Dinner, after the cruelly-treated wife of another Democratic icon.

2. Who makes these rules? Why, Al Roker, that’s who! After he was called a hypocrite on social media for dressing up as “Doc Brown,” the Christopher Lloyd character in the “Back to the Future” films—Al, you will recall, helped get Megyn Kelly fired for saying that a white person could impersonate a black character using dark make-up without engaging in racially offensive conduct—tweeted,

“I’m going to say this one last time, but the folks who get it, understand and the ones who DON’T, won’t. I can be Doc Brown, and I wear the outfit and wig and not change my skin color if you’re white , you can be President Obama if you want. Just don’t color your skin!”

Wait: what about hair, Al? I’ve read that it’s racially offensive for a white person to wear a black-hair wig, like an Afro or Bob Marley hair. But it’s okay for you to wear a crazy old white guy wig?

Why, Al? For that matter, why isn’t wearing make-up that allows someone to actually look like the person or character he or she is portraying acceptable? Who makes these rules? Oh! Right! You do!

When I first saw that picture, I didn’t know who the hell Al was playing. I thought it might be Michael Jackson if he had lived, let himself go, and grew his nose back. Continue reading →

Morning Ethics Warm-Up, 10/29/2018: Codes, Cars, Carter And The Caravan

/ Jack Marshall / 51 Comments

Boy, this really IS a good morning!

(The warm-up may rely a bit more on links and quotes than usual…as Bob Cratchit tells Scrooge, “I was making rather merry yesterday.”)

1. Breaking News: Jimmy Carter is right! Former President Jimmy Carter, now 94, has injected himself into the Georgia governor’s race by asking Republican candidate Brian Kemp to resign as secretary of state. Carter’s argument is that there is an appearance of impropriety in his being officially responsible for an election in which he is a candidate, and that his resignation is essential  to preserve public confidence in the outcome of Kemp’s race against Democrat Stacey Abrams. Carter’s made the request in an Oct. 22 letter .

“One of the key requirements for a fair and trusted process is that there be a nonbiased supervision of the electoral process,” Carter wrote, explaining that stepping aside “would be a sign that you recognize the importance of this key democratic principle and want to ensure the confidence of our citizens in the outcome.”

When he’s right, he’s right. Kemp should resign, and his lamer than lame rationalization for not doing so, that it isn’t really he who supervises the election but his staff, would be sufficient reason not to vote for him in the gubernatorial election.

2. Ethics Dunce: Red Sox owner John Henry. You would think the progressive owner of the Boston Globe could restrain himself from blatant virtue-signaling while his team was celebrating its historic season and World Series victory, but no. Henry saluted his team for being “diverse” in his post-game remarks. Nobody sane cares how diverse, whatever that means (Where were the women, John? Where were the Asians? The differently-abled? Muslims? LGBT representatives?), a pro sports team is as long as it wins, and if it doesn’t win, its check-offs on an EEOC form won’t make it any better or its losing more palatable. The 2018 Red Sox were assembled according to the skills and talents of its personnel, with race and ethnicity a non-factor. What mattered is that the team’s manager (he’s Puerto Rican, and I don’t care) proved himself a natural leader who created a selfless, courageous, professional culture on his team, none of whom mentioned race, religion or creed all season, and properly so.

The compulsion to spurt progressive cant at every opportunity is pathological. Continue reading →

Mostly Non-Baseball Ethics Musings While Nervously Watching The World Series [UPDATED!]

/ Jack Marshall / 28 Comments

1. Dave Roberts did indeed get a standing ovation from the Boston fans when he was introduced in the pre-game ceremonies. As I promised…

2. Another family has written an attack letter against a member running for office. This is the second instance of this ugly campaign tactic this election  cycle. I don’t care what party is involved, or who the candidates are. Amy family members who would do this are contemptible.  The Laxalt family members, the culprits this time, even wrote that they didn’t know their target very well. If they don’t know him, why do their opinions matter?  Have they no decency? Has no one any decency?

3. I thought my left-wing echo-chamber addled Facebook friends were kidding when they suggested that President Trump and the Republicans were paying for the herd of illegal aliens marching on our borders. No, apparently some progressive pundits and journalists are actually claiming this, with a Blasey Ford level of evidence. You know, none. So illegal immigrants, encouraged by open-borders rhetoric from American progressives, Democrats and the biased news media, set out to force themselves past our laws and borders, and because this display risks enlightening the public about just how irresponsible and dangerous the left’s romanticized fantasy about illegal immigration is, they are denying that it’s real, and blaming it on Trump. Amazing.

4. Now here’s a campaign controversy you don’t see very often: the Democratic  candidate for the Minnesota State legislature may have married her brother. I  might argue that such incest is not necessarily relevant to her qualifications as a legislature, except that there is evidence that the marriage was a factor in possible immigration fraud and student loan fraud. Continue reading →

Conclusion: If #MeToo Has No Integrity, Then It Is Doomed, And Deserves To Be

/ Jack Marshall / 31 Comments

When the #MeToo movement emerged, the idea appeared to be that women (and men!) should speak out about sexual assault and sexual harassment, that powerful people should not feel entitled to take physical liberties with others, and that the culture needed to unequivocally and clearly condemn such conduct. Like most abstract concepts, it sounded good in theory, until—

—the question about what constituted sexual assault and harassment remained unanswered, because in so many cases it is a matter of perception and perspective.

—basic due process and the presumption of innocence were ignored, minimized, or jettisoned entirely, turning the accused into victims themselves

—Democrats sought to weaponized the movement politically, raising questions about motive, equal justice, and bias, and turning what should have been a bi-partisan movement into a cynical partisan one.

—The “women must be believed” mantra, discriminatory, unjust and ridiculous on its face, became part of the narrative and burst into open misandry and outrageous double standards.

Then the Harvey Weinstein Ethics Train Wreck collided head-on with the Brett Kavanaugh Ethics Train Wreck, and here we are among ethical and cultural carnage.

Good job, everybody!

Now here’s where we are: Continue reading →

Sunday Morning Ethics Warm-Up, 10/14/18…Stretching the Truth: Fake Accusations, Fake Supreme Court News, Fake Fake Doctors

/ Jack Marshall / 29 Comments

Good Morning!

1.Who Could Have Predicted That Black Men Would Identify With Brett Kavanaugh?,cont. From the New York Times yesterday:

A white woman who called police after claiming that a young black boy touched her behind in a Brooklyn deli drew a storm of ridicule and criticism on social media, and late Friday she made a public apology to the child.

Critics characterized the incident as the latest example of a hypersensitive white person calling the police to report black people for dubious reasons. Many detractors imputed racist motives to the woman, Teresa Klein.

She was quickly labeled “Cornerstore Caroline” by Jason Littlejohn, 37, a lifelong Flatbush resident who recorded the commotion Wednesday outside the Sahara Deli Market on Albemarle Road. Littlejohn’s Facebook recording of the incident had been viewed 4 million times by Friday evening.

“I was just sexually assaulted by a child,” Klein is heard saying on the video as she was on the phone with the police. The boy, who is about 9, and another child burst into tears outside the store as bystanders confronted Klein about the incident. “The son grabbed my ass and she decided to yell at me,” Klein continued in the video, referring to his mother. The video was first reported by The New York Post.

I just don’t think the Left thought through this “believe all women who claim to be victims” bit. And I’m still confused about the rules. You have to believe a white woman who accuses a white high school kid of sexual assault if she remembers it 30 years later, but you don’t have to believe a white woman who accuses an even younger kid immediately, if he’s black? Does it matter if she’s black? If the accused was a white high school kid, then would everyone have to believe her?

2. Newton’s Third Law! From the Huffington Post: 

Minutes after an event at a Manhattan Republican club meant to celebrate violence against leftists, attendees belonging to a proto-fascist, pro-Trump street gang reportedly pummeled three people on the sidewalk in Manhattan’s Upper East Side while shouting homophobic slurs.

Footage posted online by video journalist Sandi Bachom shows a group of men who appear to be Proud Boys — a misogynistic and anti-Muslim fraternity known for committing acts of political violence across the country — kicking and punching three apparent anti-fascist protesters as they lay prone on the sidewalk.

“Do you feel brave now, faggot?” one of the attackers yelled, according to Bachom and another journalist, photographer Shay Horse. Another video shows multiple attackers yelling “faggot.”

HuffPo, being smear-meisters, calls the group “Pro-Trump” in its headline. I don’t recall any news source calling the antifa a “pro-Obama group” when it was running amuck punching people on Inauguration Day. Speaking of the antifa,  here’s a tweet from a Portland journalist from October 8: Continue reading →

From The “Bias Makes You Stupid Files”: Who Could Have Predicted That Black Men Would Identify With Brett Kavanaugh?

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Kanye West may be crazy, but he isn’t wrong.

Writes the former race-baiting ESPN reporter Jamele Hill in The Atlantic:

On Tuesday night, I was in an auditorium with 100 black men in the city of Baltimore, when the subject pivoted to Brett Kavanaugh. I expected to hear frustration that the sexual-assault allegations against him had failed to derail his Supreme Court appointment. Instead, I encountered sympathy. One man stood up and asked, passionately, “What happened to due process?” He was met with a smattering of applause, and an array of head nods.

Why did Hill expect a group that  has historically been the victim of “believe the white woman” more than anyone to regret the failure of the desperation hit on the SCOTUS nominee using the banneer of #meToo waving over an unsupported accuser? Why did the Democrats? It’s pure bias: they assume that any group in their base automatically approves of their “ends justifies the means” tactics, no matter what basic principles of justice or democracy  have to be sacrificed. I heard about Hill’s bias-driven myopia before I read the whole article, and immediately wondered what Brian Banks, the promising high school football player whose life was upended when a jury believed his false accuser, Wanetta Gibson, would think of the argument that Kavanaugh’s appointment should be forfeit because a single accuser “must be believed.” As it turns out, Hill thought about Banks too, and even approached him.

I reached out to Banks and asked whether he had any thoughts about this solidarity some black men seem to feel with Kavanaugh, but he politely declined to comment. I can’t say that I blame him, since there’s probably nothing Banks could say that wouldn’t be interpreted as being unsympathetic toward victims.

Interpreted by who? I’m sympathetic toward victims, but like Banks, I suspect, I’m not sympathetic with those who want to ruin the lives of men, be they a an African American high school athlete or a judge with an impeccable personal and professional record as an adult, by discarding the principles of due process, equal justice, and presumption of innocence. Nobody can say that Blasey-Ford is a victim any more than the women who got Emmet Till killed was a victim. Democrats wanted her to be a victim, and that was the sole basis for her to be believed more than the man she accused. Continue reading →

Ethics Hero: Michelle Obama

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments

Like it or not, Michelle Obama has established herself as a cultural role model, and millions of American respect her statements and opinions and take them to heart. As clearly contrary to reality as  her now-famous “When the go low, we go high” remark was—its is difficult to remember the last time the Democratic leadership “went high”—the statement would have been an ethical one if it were true, and was still arguably aspirational, unless regards it as cynical public deception.

(Which, I confess, I have…)

This week, as important voices in her party increasingly courted hate, anger and violence among members of the public in the wake of Operation Smear Kavanaugh failing so spectacularly, the former First Lady refused to encourage the mob, and told the Today Show,

“Fear is not … a proper motivator. Hope wins out, and if you think about how you want your kids to be raised, how you want them to think about life and their opportunities, do you want them afraid of their neighbors? Do you want them angry? Do you want them vengeful?…Which motto do you want them to live by? And I have to think about that as a mother.”

Continue reading →

Wait, WHAT? Democrats Think That They Aren’t Unethical ENOUGH?

/ Jack Marshall / 70 Comments

There are so many things in today’s post-Kavanugh confirmation Politico piece that might explode an ethics-savvy readers’ head, the CDC should seek leave to ban it as a menace to public health.  The Thing is titled, Democrats Fear They’re the Wet Rag Party: Kavanaugh’s victory leaves many on the left saying it’s time to get mad—and even, and better proof of the reality of Trump Derangement and the ethics collapse of the Left  would  be hard to find.

A digression: Well, not TOO hard. A novelist and passionate progressive blogger named Chuck Wendig published this Twitter rant after the confirmation vote:

There will be renewed calls for civility. Ignore them. They ask for civility as a way for you to grant them complicity in what they do. Civility is for normalcy. When things are normal and working as intended, civility is part of maintaining balance. But when that balance is gone, civility does not help return it but rather, destabilize it further. Because your civility gives them cover for evil. Note: this isn’t the same as calling for violence. But it is suggesting that you should not be shamed for using vigorous, vulgar language. Or for standing up in disobedience. Or for demanding acknowledgement and action in whatever way you must.

Fuck Trump. But he’s just the ugly fake-gold mask they’ve put on this thing. Fuck all the GOP, fuck that blubbering, bristling frat boy judge, fuck McConnell, Ryan, Grassley, Collins, every last one of them. Fuck them for how they’ve shamed victims and helped dismantle democracy. They will tell you to smile, that we need to get back to business, that we gotta heal the rift and blah blah blah — but that’s the desire of a savvy bully, who wants you to stop crying after he hit you, who wants you not to fight back. But you can cry. And you can fight back. They can eat shit. All of them. They can eat a boot covered in shit. Winter is coming, you callous fucknecks, you prolapsed assholes, you grotesque monsters, you racists and rapists and wretched abusers, you vengeful petty horrors.

Sidenote: some will tell you to be civil because our rage and scorn will fuel the other side, but fuck that double standard in both its ears.

Well, if you hadn’t said those SASSY WORDS and demonstrated ANGER at our whittled-down democracy, I for a second might’ve been convinced not to eat this baby. But fie! Fie on you! Your incivility MADE me eat this baby!” Spoiler warning: they were always gonna eat that baby.

PS— It’s okay if you’re not okay.

I keep hearing the talking point that confirming Kavanaugh somehow undermined democracy. This is essentially a Big Lie, which the Democrats and “the resistance,” being totalitarians in training, are employing with increasing frequency, if not deftness. Democracy is allowing elected Presidents to appoint qualified judges to the Supreme Court, which is what Trump did, and the Democrats tried to prevent. Our democracy demands the presumption of innocence and due process, which Democrats tried to declare null and void. Our democracy demands equal justice under law, which means that accusers and the accused both have rights, and one gender isn’t accorded greater deference than the other.

How did poor Chuck’s brains and values get this scrambled?

End of digression: back to Politico. Reporter John Harris tells us that Democrats think they were too nice when they employed every cheap trick, unfair avenue of inquiry and a series of late, legally and factually dubious attacks on Kavanaugh’s character to defeat or at least delay his confirmation.

Does this post-confirmation quote make your head explode? Continue reading →

Saturday Morning Ethics Warm-Up, 10/6/18: As “The Bad Guys” Throw A Tantrum Because Their Plot Blew Up In Their Smug Faces

/ Jack Marshall / 27 Comments

Good Morning!

Wish I was there!

In this post, and later this one, I directly stated that the Left, “the resistance,” progressives, Democrats, had increasingly embraced objectively wrongful conduct and unethical means and objectives as routine, and that the Kavanaugh confirmation fiasco proved it. The commenter here who goes by the handle of “Chrissy Boy” accused me of being openly partisan, which is demonstrably false: I would write exactly the same thing about the Republican Party if it were trying to eliminate due process, the presumption of innocence, fairness, decency, respect for elections, respect for dissent, a competent and objective press, and the integrity of national institutions. But you see, the current strategy of the Left is to make it crushingly clear that you are either with them, or “the other.” They certainly don’t like being “othered” themselves, but when you set out to topple an elected government and a Constitution, that’s what you deserve. In one of its Sunday Reviews—they all run together, since it it is really “The Resistance This Week” under a deceptively neutral name—the New York Times led with an essay in which the writer wrote that the term “resistance” was unfair and untrue, since they were trying to “create a new nation” and the Trump administration was resisting the inevitable. That new nation, the last few weeks proved, would reject the values I just listed.

This is why, though I have a backlog of ethics issues on a variety of topics, as well as some excellent Comments of the Day that require posting, I have to use the limited time I have right now to chronicle the carnage of the Brett Kavanaugh Nomination Ethics Train Wreck, which, it appears though I am afraid to hope, includes dramatically reduced public support for the “resistance,” the news media, and the Democratic Party. President Trump’s approval ratings (whatever they mean) are way up. Approval of the Democratic Party is crashing, and with it the likelihood of a “blue wave” that might allow the Democrats to execute that coup they’ve been attempting. I have been counting on the historical, cultural reality that in the United States of America, we don’t like Bad Guys, and don’t want to support them. I am still hoping that this prompts the Left to have its Michael Douglas epiphany, and start being the Good Guys again. So far, however, the signs are not good.

Ann Althouse flagged this tantrum from Matt Yglesies at Vox  yesterday (several self-exiled Ethics Alarms progressives insisted Vox was an objective commentary site–suuuuure), neatly summing up:

When the Supreme Court gives lefties outcomes lefties like, they want conservatives to stand down and accept that the Court is doing proper, even brilliant, legal work.

Yes, this is a quality of Bad Guys: they have no integrity. Remember that same sex marriage decision that the evil old reloigious right claimed was “illegitimate” because it opposed “God’s law”?

1. It’s Hate Senator Collins Day! I’m not a Susan Collins fan, as I have always found her annoyingly wishy-washy, equivocal, pandering and a poor role model for women in power whose manner and speaking style illustrates why it is that more women aren’t in positions of power. However, she gave a ringing speech yesterday explaining why she would be voting for Kavanaugh’s confirmation, verbally nailing the coffin shut that contained the Democratic schemes to defeat him. My Facebook ffed is filled with people writing that she is a coward, a traitor (to her gender! to #MeToo!), an idiot. Althouse also flagged this comment (with over 1000 “likes”) to the Times piece, “Collins and Manchin Will Vote for Kavanaugh, Ensuring His Confirmation”:
Continue reading →