Donald Trump

A Brief Note On The Site’s Background Images

/ Jack Marshall / 30 Comments

Limp wrist O

The Ethics Alarms web design uses backgrounds to illustrate ongoing ethics issues in the news. For some time, the background has featured a photo of Donald Trump, whose candidacy I regard as a long-running ethics train wreck of uncertain destination. I could justify leaving it up until sanity regains control and he is finally subdued and returned to the Crackerjack box from whence he came. That could take eight years, however.

Sorry. I know that made you throw up in your mouth a little. Me too.

Lately, readers whose gorges react similarly to mine when forced to view Mr. Trump’s visage have been calling on me to take him down, which I have reluctantly done. I can’t promise that he won’t be back, but the new background is the very strange photo from yesterday of President Obama letting his hand and arm go limp as it is raised by Cuba’s dictator—but his health care is grrrrreat!— Raul Castro.

I’m not sure what exactly is unethical here, or who is the unethical one, but something is. I would only suggest that if an American President chooses to boost the credibility and prestige of a ruthless tyrant, he can’t simultaneously act like his host has cooties. It certainly looks like Obama is saying, “Oops! I don’t want to look as if I am friends with this guy!”

I would suggest that this awkward moment is something that should have been worked out well in advance, as it was wholly predictable.

John Kasich Flunks An Honesty Test…Or Is It Sanity That’s His Problem?

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments
"I have a question for Gov. Kasich. WHAT THE HELL IS THE MATTER WITH YOU???"

“I have a question for Gov. Kasich. WHAT THE HELL IS THE MATTER WITH YOU???”

When Donald Trump again decided to boycott a Fox New debate because of his apparent terror of Megyn Kelly, it presented the remaining contenders for the Republican nomination to make their respective cases for 150 minutes without risking ad hominem attacks and having their best soundbites superseded the next day by whatever inflammatory gibberish Trump happened to launch that night for the fascination of talking heads.

What an opportunity—especially for long-time underdog John Kasich, who always seemed like he was on the margins of combat. Yet incredibly, Kasich pulled out of the debate too, forcing Fox to choose between a Ted Cruz monologue or no debate at all. The network chose the latter.

Thank you, Fox.

What sense did this make for Kasich? What politician running for office turns down free national exposure? Theories emerged, one complimentary to Kasich. Had he made a deal with Trump, a la Chris Christie? Was he afraid to go head to head with master debater Ted Cruz? Continue reading →

KABOOM! The Worst Presidential Endorsement Ever From The Biggest Fool Ever To Run For President

/ Jack Marshall / 77 Comments
"Excuse me, Can someone direct me to Dr. Carson's head?"

“Excuse me. Can someone direct me to Dr. Carson’s head?”

I must admit, I’m a little annoyed at my head for exploding this time, even given the provocation. After all, it involves Ben Carson, and I assumed that the small but nauseating doses of Ben Carson idiocy I was forced to listen to during all those debates served as an anti-head explosion vaccination of sorts, though if Donald Trump is to believed, which of course he isn’t, I was risking autism. I assumed there wasn’t anything the deluded doctor could say that would be so stupid and outrageous that it could cause a brain-pan eruption at this point. Obviously, as I stare up at the brain-splattered ceiling in my office, I was wrong.

I now realize that Ben Carson may be the only living human being alive whom I would consider voting for Donald Trump to keep out of the Presidency. I’m not certain, mind you, but it’s stunning to me that anyone is even close to that bad. What would a choice between Trump and Dr. Ben be like? It would be like choosing between Billionaire Biff in “Back to the Future II” and Chance, the well-meaning, lucky moron in “Being There.“ It would be like choosing between Mister Burns and Homer Simpson.

When Carson announced he was endorsing Trump, some pundit wrote that it was “huge.” I tried to imagine the kind of voter who would regard the judgment of a manifest dim-wit like Carson a persuasive reason to vote for a massive fraud like Donald Trump. See, endorsements are silly all by themselves, unless you are just lost. Who is so devoid of pride and self-confidence that they think, “Well, I admire X, and thus I will assume that X’s judgement about who I should vote for to lead my country is better than my own”?*

Now imagine someone thinking that when the endorsement comes from someone who isn’t wearing pants, has a gooney bird nesting on his head, and is carrying a sign that says “Kourtney Kardashsian is God.” What kind of a person is persuaded by that fool’s presidential choice? Yet Ben Carson, with his bizarre belief about how the best person to handle the most difficult job in the world would be someone with no relevant skills or experience whatsoever—let’s not even get into his beliefs about pyramids and other matters—is no less ridiculous than the pantless goony bird character, and a lot more arrogant.

Endorsing Donald Trump is foolish, but no surprise when a Ben Carson—you know, a moron— is the endorser. Today, however, he “explained” his endorsement, and revealed that it was even more incompetent and irresponsible than an endorsement of an atrocious candidate is by nature.

Interviewed  on the “Steve Malzberg Show” yesterday, Carson explained that..

I. He wasn’t really all that sure that Trump would be a good President. See, Ben, an endorsement is supposed to tell people that you have decided that a candidate is the best candidate, and that generally is taken to mean that the endorser at least thinks he would be a good President. Ben is apparently from the Bizarro Planet, however, and he said…

“Even if Donald Trump turns out not to be such a great president, which I don’t think is the case — I think he’s going to surround himself with really good people — but even if he didn’t, we’re only looking at four years, as opposed to multiple generations and perhaps the loss of the American dream forever.”

Wait—who is running against Trump who will be elected for  “multiple generations” ? What the heck is Carson babbling about?

Get the gooney bird! But it got worse.

At least Carson thinks Trump is the best of a bad lot, right? Well, not exactly. Here’s Ben:

“I didn’t see a path for Kasich, who I like, or for Rubio, who I like. As far as  Cruz is concerned, I don’t think he’s gonna be able to draw independents and Democrats unless has has some kind of miraculous change… Is there another scenario that I would have preferred? Yes. But that scenario isn’t available.”

“With one of the other candidates, you mean?” Malzberg asked.

“Yes,” Carson replied.

What exactly does Carson think helps about a Presidential endorsement that is accompanied by the disclaimers that he isn’t really sure his candidate will be very good at the job, and that he would have preferred to endorse any of three other candidates? Does Carson think? Can he think? Continue reading →

The Ethics Lesson Of Breitbart’s Implosion: Unethical Cultures Are Deadly, And So Is Donald Trump’s Touch

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments
Nice job, Andrew!

Nice job, Andrew! That’s some legacy!

The Breitbart conservative website empire is in the process of wrecking itself through its own corruption. Good. This is an invaluable lesson in the field of organizational culture, and perhaps it will prompt other unethical organizations to reform their cultures before it is too late.

I had  the good sense to abandon Breitbart as a trustworthy news source long ago, after I was burned by the site’s doctored Shirley Sherrod video. Conservatives, like liberals, often hold on to their heroes long after they have proven themselves unworthy of reverence or even respect; Andrew Breitbart was an especially unfortunate example. He created a group of websites that really delivered news the way Fox is unfairly accused of reporting. They ignored stories that impugned the honesty, integrity or reliability of conservatives, and actively sought stories that showed the worst of progressives, and often slanted those stories to mislead readers, shamelessly appealing to their confirmation bias. The corrupt culture he built, cheered by prominent conservative pundits who should have known better like Glenn Reynolds (Breitbart was “punching back twice as hard,” you see: Rationalization #2 A. Sicilian Ethics, or “They had it coming”), predictably became worse after its architect’s untimely death. Nothing showed this more vividly than Breibart’s decision to become, as resigning editor Ben Shapiro called it today, “Donald Trump’s personal Pravda.”  It attacked Trump’s critics and rationalized Trump’s outrages. I dissected a particularly disgraceful example here, but there were many others.

Then came, as almost always does, a chance event that has shattered Breitbart along its rotting fault lines. Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: Neil DeGrasse Tyson

/ Jack Marshall / 44 Comments
Oh, shut up.

Oh, shut up.

Wrote acclaimed pop astrophysicist Tyson in a tweet:

“People who are anti-Trump are actually anti-Trump supporters — they oppose free citizens voting for the @realDonaldTrump.”

Hmmmm.

1. Tyson cannot help himself: he frequently mixes political bias into his supposedly “just facts and science!”lectures, and in cases like this, lets the cat out of the bag: he’s a partisan hack. The news media and allies of Hillary Clinton are doing their best to help Donald Trump get nominated, because they see him as one of the very few candidates that the awful Hillary Clinton could beat in a general election. Tyson reveals himself as one of them with his tweet. This was the same kind of calculation the Republican Party made when it allowed Trump, a Democrat, to run in the Republican primaries, and didn’t that work out well?

2. Tyson isn’t exactly a member of the news media, but he’s a media personality who carries some weight, as his opinions on things he really knows little about are given undue credibility because, you know, he’s smart. Well,  Tyson’s dangerous game is dumb, and he’s also abusing his authority by playing it. It puts the U.S. at risk of a President Trump….and for what, to achieve the Nirvana of a President Clinton?  He and others trying these tactics need to remember that any candidate who is nominated has a chance of being elected, especially running against a corrupt and bumbling liar like Hillary Clinton. Continue reading →

Obviously, Democratic Base Demonstrators Are Planning To Disrupt July’s Republican National Convention In Cleveland. Here Are Seven Ethical Mandates To Prevent It…

/ Jack Marshall / 42 Comments

1. Integrity, Citizenship and Responsibility: President Obama should begin speaking, now, about the integrity of the democratic process, the duty of all Americans to respect the opinions of others, and the civic obligation to allow elections to be peaceful and fair. he should also stop sowing partisan animus, and seeking to divide the nation for the Democratic Party ‘s advantage.

2. Responsibility and Competence: The Republican Party should tell Donald Trump that he has disgraced the party’s values, that he will no longer be considered as a candidate, and that he can do his worst. (Just for fun, it should challenge Democrats to be equally responsible and disqualify Hillary Clinton for conspiring to foil the Freedom of Information Act, which is pretty obviously what the private server was all about.)

3.  Responsibility: The GOP should move the convention out of Cleveland. It may already be too late, but it needs to do this, and should have done so the second the Tamir Rice shooting occurred. Holding a national convention in that city is inviting violence. My recommendation: move it to Honolulu, so demonstrators will have to spend a fortune to get there, while placing it in Obama’s home state, bring the division he has sought and nourished into his back yard. Continue reading →

Bernie Sanders Fails An Integrity Test…and Worse

/ Jack Marshall / 65 Comments

Sanders protest

At the conclusion of yesterday’s post in reaction to the violent protests in Chicago that shut down a planned Donald Trump rally, I wrote, as my final observation…

8. Ethics test: Let’s see if Bernie Sanders, without prompting,  has the integrity to condemn the conduct of his fervent fans.

My guess?

No.

Well.

Bernie Sanders has escaped much scrutiny of his character thus far, in a crowd of frighteningly flawed competitors. He’s not as corrupt or dishonest as Clinton, nor as ruthless as Cruz, nor as weak as Rubio, nor lacking any redeeming qualities of character at all,  like Donald Trump. Here, however, Berrnie betrays the moral rot of the leftist revolutionary, willing to excuse violence to overturn the established order for “the greater good.” We saw this during the last Democratic debate, in which he refused to condemn the Castro regime in Cuba nor repudiate his past praise of Fidel’s accomplishments.  Hillary Clinton, given an under-hand soft-ball pitch to hit out of the park, swung from then heels and launched it into the stands:

“You know, if the values are that you oppress people, you disappear, you imprison people, even kill people, for expressing their opinions … that is not the kind of revolution of values that I ever want to see anywhere.”

Bingo. But Bernie Sanders, like the Communist totalitarians he admires for their health care and distribution of wealth, is willing to put up with some violence to achieve his revolution, and he proved it here. Abetted in some respects by the biased news media that were thrilled to blame an example of violence squelching political speech on the victim rather than the true offenders—because they don’t like the victim, you see, and if journalists and pundits don’t like someone, they discard the basic standards of decency and fairness that they will rush to demand for their political favorites—Sanders released a telling defense of the actions of his supporters, even though his supporters had admitted their deliberate mounting of a near riot to silence Trump: Continue reading →

Observations On The Chicago Trump Rally Protests

/ Jack Marshall / 50 Comments

Trump rally riot

Donald Trump postponed a rally in Chicago after fights between supporters and demonstrators and protests in the streets convinced him that the event could no longer be held safely. “People For Bernie,” a pro-Sanders group that grew out of the Occupy movement, claimed early credit for shutting down the rally. Later, the left-wing sophomores at Move-On.Org announced that they were responsible, their leader, Illya Sheyman, stating,

“Mr. Trump and the Republican leaders who support him and his hate-filled rhetoric should be on notice after tonight’s events. These protests are a direct result of the violence that has occurred at Trump rallies and that has been encouraged by Trump himself from the stage. Our country is better than the shameful, dangerous, and bigoted rhetoric that has been the hallmark of the Trump campaign. To all of those who took to the streets of Chicago, we say thank you for standing up and saying enough is enough. To Donald Trump, and the GOP, we say, welcome to the general election. Trump and those who peddle hate and incite violence have no place in our politics and most certainly do not belong in the White House.”

Observations:

1. Trump was right to postpone the rally. It is true that this kind of anti-democratic speech censorship should not be encouraged by giving protesters a success from their unethical tactics, but violence was likely.

2. The protesters, whoever they were, are completely responsible for the incident. Blaming it on Trump’s “hate speech” and “irresponsible rhetoric” is a transparent rationalization. He has a right to hold a private event and say anything he wants to say. This is unequivocal.

3. Has Trump been playing with fire by taunting protesters in other events? Yes. He’s a jerk. That’s a reason to not vote for him for President, not to blame him when the left’s fascists disrupt his rally. Continue reading →

“A Nation Of Assholes” Epilogue, Baseball Edition

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

To be fair, Donald Trump supporters and Trump himself are not the only ones who would transform the United States into a rude, boorish snakepit of jerks and narcissists.

There is Bryce Harper, for example, shown above in his minor league days blowing a kiss to a pitcher after a home run.  In a much discussed interview with ESPN, Harper decried the “unwritten rules” of Major League Baseball, which, among other things, disapprove of showboating, trash-talking, styling, and showing up  opposing players. Naturally, many sportswriters, whose IQ and ethical standards hover perilously close to those of the juvenile, none-too-swift Harper, are flocking to his side.

“It’s a tired sport because you can’t express yourself. You can’t do what people in other sports do,” Harper said in the interview. “I’m not saying baseball is . . . boring . . . but it’s the excitement of the young guys who are coming into the game now who have flair. If that’s Matt Harvey or Jacob deGrom or Manny Machado or Joc Pederson or Andrew McCutchen or Yasiel Puig — there’s so many guys now who are so much fun.”

Nobody’s against fun, of course, and there have been many players past and present whose unique flair was justly celebrated. Harper, not being a rhetoric master, probably mixed up the harmless with the toxic in his list unintentionally, but there’s no excuse for Pulitzer Prize-winning sportswriter Tom Boswell, other than the fact that intellectual dishonesty is his career calling card.

“From Willie Mays basket catches to Pete Rose sprinting to first on a walk to Dennis Eckersley fanning his finger-pistol at hitters he had struck out, baseball needs all the authentic extroverted individuality it can get, ” writes Boswell in his piece about Harper in the Washington Post. Ah yes, the device of the deceptive metaphor. Willie Mays used the basket catch because that’s the way he caught baseballs. Pete Rose ran to first on walks because he hustled.

The pistol routine Eckersley used (occasionally)? He was being a jerk. Continue reading →

“A Nation Of Assholes”: Epilogue

/ Jack Marshall / 44 Comments

Daily News

In this post titled “A Nation of Assholes: The Ultimate, Undeniable And Crucial Reason Donald Trump Must Never Be President.” I explained why a Donald Trump presidency would corrupt and warp American culture to a tragic, dangerous, and perhaps incurable degree. The post did not deal with policy issues, or Trump’s incoherent and ever-changing positions. because those are only tangentially in the realm of ethics. The post was about character and societal standards, as well as the importance of ethics, which are central themes here.

That post was written and published on September 10, 2015. If I ever deluded myself that what I write here has any more significance than a lone pigeon feather tossed in the breeze, this should disabuse me of that notion. Nevertheless, the post was correct, and subsequent events have validated every assertion, which, I have to say, were already fully obvious to those capable of paying attention six months ago.

The events of last week have helped enlighten a few more, and I guess that’s progress.

Cokie Roberts gets it, though her example wasn’t the best. On MSNBC, she cross-examined Trump, who, as usual, blabbered incoherently: Continue reading →