flat learning curve

Morning Ethics Warm-Up: 1/12/2018: Sigh. It Never Ends. (Part II) [UPDATED]

/ Jack Marshall / 124 Comments

A Nigerian locale, and not an atypical one.

From the Washington Post:

President Trump grew frustrated with lawmakers Thursday in the Oval Office when they discussed protecting immigrants from Haiti, El Salvador and African countries as part of a bipartisan immigration deal, according to several people briefed on the meeting.

“Why are we having all these people from shithole countries come here?” Trump said, according to these people, referring to countries mentioned by the lawmakers.

Trump then suggested that the United States should instead bring more people from countries such as Norway, whose prime minister he met with Wednesday. The president, according to a White House official, also suggested he would be open to more immigrants from Asian countries because he felt that they help the United States economically.

In addition, the president singled out Haiti, telling lawmakers that immigrants from that country must be left out of any deal, these people said.

“Why do we need more Haitians?” Trump said, according to people familiar with the meeting. “Take them out.” 

Ethics Observations:

I. “According to several people briefed on the meeting”? What? Not even according to people AT the meeting?

Based on this, without any attributions, the news media is stating that Trump making those alleged comments are fact. Here’s the Times version,

“…according to people with direct knowledge of the conversation.“

No, they don’t have “direct knowledge.” What someone tells you about what someone else said at a meeting you were not attending is indirect knowledge. It is, in fact, hearsay. If the Times and the Post did not get confirmation on the record from someone who heard what he said, then this is not fact, but rumor, inadmissible in court because of extreme prejudice and lack of reliability.

Never mind. The Times headline is Trump Alarms Lawmakers With Disparaging Words for Haiti and Africa, as if the second-hand accounts were  confirmed fact. This is unethical journalism. Outrageously so, in fact. Meanwhile, all of the news channels, including Fox, were basing hours of reporting on it.

This is not acceptable. It is not professional, and it is not justifiable. It is a disgrace, and if you accept it, you should be ashamed of yourself.

II. Trump denies that he uttered those words, on Twitter, of course:

“The language used by me at the DACA meeting was tough, but this was not the language used. What was really tough was the outlandish proposal made – a big setback for DACA!…Never said anything derogatory about Haitians other than Haiti is, obviously, a very poor and troubled country. Never said “take them out.” Made up by Dems. I have a wonderful relationship with Haitians. Probably should record future meetings – unfortunately, no trust!”

The denials mean nothing, I know. The President has such a bizarre view of reality and such a record of misstatements and reversals that he has no credibility and deserves none. However, that doesn’t mean that he did make the alleged statements either. I wouldn’t be surprised if he did. I certainly wouldn’t be “shocked.” It sounds like something he would say, because nuances of language and tone, not to mention civility ande diplomacy, are alien concepts to him. In other words, it rings true. That doesn’t mean it’s ethical to report it as fact. Continue reading →

“Why Is Madeleine Leader Still Employed?” And Related Puzzles

/ Jack Marshall / 57 Comments

That was an email from Democratic National Committee Data Services manager Madeleine Leader, announcing that the Technology Department is looking to fill several positions and asking interested parties to forward the openings to their colleagues.

Note the last sentence:

“I personally would prefer that you not forward to cisgender straight white males, since they’re already in the majority.”

Nice.

Seven questions bubble up to the surface as I ponder this:

1 Why is Madeleine Leader still employed by the DNC? I can answer that one: her email accurately reflects the culture of the Democratic National Committee, and the Democratic Party. If she wasn’t completely confident that such an open expression of prejudice and discrimination would be acceptable, she would not have dared to put such a sentiment into print.

Even so, if the Democrats had an ounce of sense or even aspired to decency, they would have fired Leader with expressions of horror, and proclaimed her a rogue employee. However, the party apparently believes that its base and perhaps even the typical Democrat will read Leader’s message and say, “What’s the matter with that?”

2. Do progressives and Democrats really think there is a difference between saying “no white, straight males need apply” and “no black lesbians need apply”? I can answer that one too. Of course they do. They really think the latter is despicable, racist, sexist homophobia, and the former is just virtuous diversity at work.

They really do. No, seriously. They do.

3. Why was this story first reported at the Daily Wire, a conservative website, then at several other conservative websites, then on Fox News, and finally at The Hill, a political website that tilts left, but not yet at any mainstream media sources?

See #1 above. One reason the DNC thinks it can pretty much duck this embarrassment is that it knows the mainstream media will cover the party’s  tracks by not reporting the story. “Democracy dies in  darkness,” pompously proclaims the Washington Post on its front page. Right. The Post doesn’t want independents or anyone who isn’t in lock-step with whatever the Democratic Party does or says to know how low the party of Jefferson, Jackson and FDR has sunk, and how much it has abandoned democratic ideals. It has been three days since Leader’s email became public. The Post has kept the story in darkness.  So has the New York Times, apparently because blatant bigotry at the DNC isn’t news fit to print. Continue reading →

Morning Ethics Warm-Up: 7/17/17 [UPDATED]

/ Jack Marshall / 80 Comments

Good morning, everyone!

1. President Trump is upset about an ABC-Washington Post poll that among other things indicates that 70% of those polled believe that he has acted “un-Presidential” since being elected. Several analysts have suggested that pollsters have slanted their polling pools toward Democrats (remember the election?), but my question regarding this poll is, “What the hell is the matter with the other 30%?”

How in the world could anyone conscious argue that Trump is “Presidential,” other than on the rather technical basis that since he’s President, what he does is by definition Presidential? It would be mighty nice if an aide, a Cabinet member, a daughter, a White House chef or someone would explain this to him, but I’m convinced: he doesn’t get it, he won’t get it, and what weve  seen is what we’ll continue to get.

2. ALERT! The forgoing was written after I was fooled by a fake news site, aided and abetted by Instapundit, which either was also fooled or linked to the site as its own joke.  Thanks to reader Tom Adams for being  more alert than I was and quickly flagging this.

And by the way, screw them. I’m taking off the link, and I will probably give the site an Unethical Website designation. The only hint that the site is a hoax site is the other stories (“GOP Adopts Christie’s Sad, Bewildered Face As New Party Mascot”), but I read dozens of stories every day, and if i stopped to check all the other boxed and highlighted pieces I would never have time to do my job. There is nothing on the home page designating the site as satirical. Unethical.

I apologize to anyone I led astray. Somebody alert Instapundit. I’m not speaking to it.  Here was the original post…

That said and mournfully accepted, he won, he’s President, and the fevered efforts to somehow turn back time (I would not be surprised to see a new Bon Jovi Direct TV ad on the subject)  by “the resistance,” the Democrats and the news media are profoundly anti-democratic. This is what Jake Tapper was alluding last week with his tongue stuck so firmly in his cheek that it almost broke through his face. “The conspiracy goes much deeper than anyone expected,” Jake Tapper said on his news segment “The Lead.” “We’re talking tens of millions of people involved in this secret plot to make sure Hillary didn’t make it into the White House and to prop up Donald Trump as the winner….It’s far more sinister than we thought.”

Yes, some conservative websites and others took Tapper’s pointed gag seriously. This tells us…

…how little trust CNN has left with many Americans..

…how dumb a lot of conservatives are…

…why broadcast news hosts and reporters, even fair and clever ones like Tapper, should avoid sarcasm, satire, or facetious statements, and stick to the facts.

…Jake Tapper should get away from CNN before its toxic culture ruins his reputation. Continue reading →

Unethical Quote Of The Week: Ace Of Spades

/ Jack Marshall / 56 Comments

“A major schism in the party is over the question of how much pretense we’re fighting to keep lying about. A lot of people seem to think that even though we’re plainly in a Cold Civil War, and even thought Joe and Mika spend three hours a day ripping Trump, Trump’s supposed to pretend we’re all (as John McCain says) Good Friends.I’m not saying Trump scored some tactical victory here. I’m saying, as I usually do- – who gives a wet shit?

How can the flailing old women of the Nominal Right huff themselves up so much to pretend outrage that a guy being attacked by the media everyday decides to occasionally attack them back?I understand the leftist media’s interest in pretending that they’re behaving normally and haven’t rewritten the professional code of conduct to allow attacks on Trump which would have been near-hanging-offenses on Obama.But what is the interest of the sissified Nominal Right over defending the media and pretending along with them?”

—-Cult conservative blogger Ace of Spades, rationalizing the latest embarrassing Presidential tweets,  hurling juvenile insults at the co-hosts of Morning Joe, those love birds Joe Scarborough and Mika.

I mentioned a few days ago that I was not an Ace fan. This kind of post is why.  I was going to skip commenting on today’s Trump obscenity, though the tweets were horrible even by his low standards [“I heard poorly rated @Morning_Joe speaks badly of me (don’t watch anymore). Then how come low I.Q. Crazy Mika, along with Psycho Joe, came……to Mar-a-Lago 3 nights in a row around New Year’s Eve, and insisted on joining me. She was bleeding badly from a face-lift. I said no!”], because I’ve written that post too many times, and I don’t see the point. Do I have to keep saying, again and again, that this guy has a flat learning curve, that his staff does him no favors by not  having an intervention and telling him this nonsense stops or they’re out the door, that such outbursts are the equivalent of  punching himself in the face with brass knuckles? Anyone who comes here  knows these tweets are idiotic, and is aware of what I’ve been writing about Trump since he was a fake Presidential candidate in 2011, and nobody who doesn’t come here cares what I say anyway.

But I  read too many of these excuses for Trump in the right-wing media, which are the flip side of the “How dare the President impugn our honesty and objectivity?” squeals from the left-wing media. Both show ethical obtuseness or worse, and both ensure that the news media and Trump will continue their equally atrocious, divisive and destructive behavior. Continue reading →

The President’s London Terror Tweets

/ Jack Marshall / 31 Comments

I’ve GOT it! Make Trump move to the Mount Weather Emergency Operations Center! Problem Solved!

Flat learning curve. That’s really the most alarming thing about President Trump’s tweet barrage over the weekend, as he responded stupidly, irresponsibly and offensively to the terror attack in London. It proved that he hasn’t learned a thing, despite repeated Twitter-assisted catastrophes that in the past have turned potential victories into embarrassments, mere mistakes into disasters, and whimsy into large clubs for his enemies to beat him bloody with. How could he not be wary when he considers a tweet? What happened to “Once burned, twice shy?” How about 6,348 times burned? How analytical do you have to be to think, after hitting yourself in the head squarely with a 2 X 4 and realizing that it is permanently dented (the head, not the board), “Wow! That hurt! I sure don’t want to do that again!”?

And yet here we are.

I can’t say I’m surprised, and that itself is depressing. But I’ve dealt with enough alcoholics in my life who I have asked, following particularly devastating relapses that placed everything they cared about (or should have cared about) in jeopardy, “Why would you do that, after all you have been through?”…and watched them shrug, shake their heads, and say, in various words, “I can’t explain it, and you’ll never understand.”

After the two attacks on Saturday, the President’s tweets weren’t all terrible. The second one read, “Whatever the United States can do to help out in London and the U. K., we will be there – WE ARE WITH YOU. GOD BLESS!” Then, like a binge drinker out of rehab who takes a small sip of chablis at a reception, POTUS was on a Twitter bender—a Twender. He began exploiting the tragedy to lobby for his stalled travel ban. He blamed the attacks on political correctness. He mocked the Mayor of London. He somehow saw the episode as revealing the hypocrisy of gun control advocates. Metaphorically, the President of the United States was reeling and staggering all over the street, singing “Barnacle Bill,” stopping traffic and vomiting on pedestrians. Continue reading →

The Attorney General’s “Island In The Pacific” Gaffe

/ Jack Marshall / 48 Comments

I guess we’re going to have to get used to this sequence over the next 4-8 years (yes, 8: at the rate the Democrats are disgracing themselves, President Trump may stick around):

1) President Trump and/or one of his surrogates, spokespersons or appointees make a carelessly worded statement

2) Democrats, activists and the news media intentionally, wilfully and maliciously interpret it in the worst way possible under the convetions of the English language

3) They widely represent the statement to the public as expressing malign thoughts intent and principles

4) The Trump-related speaker, being rhetorically-challenged to begin with, fails to clarify the confusion and makes himself or herself look worse the more he tries.

5) Nobody, almost literally nobody, bothers to examine the statement from an objective point of view.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions said last week, referring to the Hawaii -chambered federal judge Derrick K. Watson, who last month blocked Trump’s revised temporary halt on travel from sslected terrorist-rich Muslim countries just before it was to go into effect,

“I really am amazed that a judge sitting on an island in the Pacific can issue an order that stops the president of the United States from what appears to be clearly his statutory and Constitutional power.”

It was an off-hand remark on conservative talk show host Mark Levin’s radio program, but it immediately provoked ridicule and attack. Sessions didn’t know Hawaii was a state. Sessions doesn’t respect Hawaii.  President Trump doesn’t like Hawaii. Just a few minutes ago, I watched ABC’s George Stephanopoulos confront Sessions about the remark. Sessions’ humina humina reply: “Nobody has a sense of humor any more.”

I understood the meaning of Sessions’ statement to Levin the minute I heard it, because I thought the same thing at the time of the judge’s ruling: Hawaii is the weirdest place for Trump’s order to be litigated, since the state  is uniquely insulated from the illegal immigration problems facing the other 49 states, has never had anything close to a terrorism attack, and has a negligible Muslim population. The particular problems that the President’s order purports to address is an abstract one for Hawaiians, more than any other state. Sessions’ comment was rueful, intended as irony (to a friendly interviewer), and none of the vile things it was subsequently accused of being. Continue reading →

Unethical Quote Of The Month: President Trump

/ Jack Marshall / 25 Comments

“I think he shouldn’t have settled; personally I think he shouldn’t have settled. Because you should have taken it all the way. I don’t think Bill did anything wrong. I think he’s a person I know well — he is a good person.”

—President Trump to the New York Times , speaking of the sexual harassment allegations intensifying around star Fox News Bloviator Bill O’Reilly.

Now President Trump is acting like President Obama. The President of the United States abuses his power and position by ever commenting upon or registering an opinion about matters that do not involve the national welfare or his direct responsibilities. These include local law enforcement episodes (Trayvon Martin, the arrest of an African-American professor in Cambridge by a white cop), employment matters, private lawsuits, pending criminal trials, TV shows (Saturday Night Live), media coverage (don’t get me started), legal business decisions and sports controversies (Colin Kaepernick). Obama never learned this (among other leadership basics, a problem fagged as “flat learning curve” on Ethics Alarms), and, not surprisingly, Trump is going to be even worse. Continue reading →

Observations Regarding Donald Trump’s Most Recent Idiotic Ad Lib

/ Jack Marshall / 59 Comments
Just more of the same...

Just more of the same…

The statement, which has dominated social media and news commentary since burped out by Trump during what he calls “a speech” yesterday:

“Hillary wants to abolish — essentially abolish the Second Amendment. By the way, if she gets to pick, if she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is, I don’t know…”

Observations:

1. Trump’s juvenile and inarticulate habit of expressing half-formed thoughts as they occur to him requires him to figure out what he has said after the fact, as he is now with his latest blather. This is no different from his infamous “rapist” remark, his complaint about the “Mexican” judge, and so many, many others. When a competent adult makes a mistake with dire consequences, he or she typically adjusts future conduct accordingly. Not this idiot. This kind of thing will happen over and over again, almost daily, until the election. This was obvious too, years ago. Good job, Republicans. You disgust me.

2. Even knowing that Trump says things extemporaneously with no more thought than a frog gives to catching a fly, the news media (and of course the Clinton campaign) intentionally are treating it was if it were a solemn scripted statement developed over days of careful consideration. The Clinton campaign can be forgiven: any political campaign would do this when an adversary makes a fool of himself. The news media, however, is intentionally reporting the comment as something it’s not. It was not a call to assassinate Hillary. It was just an ad-lib that popped into Trump’s alleged brain. Was it a bad joke? A “speako”? Who knows? Trump definitely doesn’t know. Whatever it was, the comment was not a serious, substantive statement, though certainly not something a responsible or trustworthy individual would utter in public. And, of course, Trump is 100% accountable for it, and all the disruption it causes, as he will be for the hundreds of similar irresponsible ad libs he makes between now and November.

3. Much more substantive news could and should be covered by the news media, including newly released Hillary Clinton e-mails that show the extent to which she used her position and her staff in the State Department to enrich the Clinton Foundation. This is pure corruption, a true outrage, and a smoking gun. But we know that the news media is rooting for Hillary, so Trump’s comment–did I mention that he’s an idiot?—give journalists an excuse to allow Clinton’s actual misconduct slip under the radar, while they obsess about The Donald’s addled musings. Although the fact that Trump is an irresponsible fool is something the public needs to know, they also have a right to know that the woman they have to elect to protect the nation from Trump is perhaps the most corrupt and dishonest individual ever to be this close to the White House.

4. Trump’s latest self-created controversy is signature significance. No trustworthy, competent, intelligent candidate for high office would or could be so undisciplined, inarticulate, and impulsive to allow something like this to issue from his mouth, in public, on video. Those who are defending him in this instance are proving themselves to be untrustworthy, or incompetent, or both.

________________________

Sources:  Daily Kos, Mother Jones, Politicus USA, Washington Post, Raw Story, Taylor Marsh, Common Dreams, Boing Boing, Occupy Democrats, The American Spectator, The Atlantic, Business Insider, BuzzFeed, The New Civil Rights Movement, Vox, Mashable, Media Matters for America, Mediaite, Washington Free Beacon, MichelleMalkin.com,  Althouse, Esquire, BizPac Review, The Times of Israel, Occupy Democrats,  twitchy.com, NBC News, KTLA, Politicus USA, ABC News, The Week, The Democratic Daily, Politico, Deadline,  CBS Pittsburgh, CBS Los Angeles

 

Ethics Quote Of The Day: Ann Althouse

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

politifact_photos_Obama_speaking_in_Poland

Why is racial discord the problem of the summer 2016? If anyone has what it takes to unify the country over race it is Barack Obama, who is President right now and who had been President for 7 1/2 years. If it makes any sense to be deciding the current presidential election on this issue, if this longed-for capacity is something that can possibly exist, then Barack Obama would be doing it now and would have been doing it for years.

Before you push us to judge whether Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump would do better in bringing us together in racial harmony, Mr. Healy, please say a few words about why President Obama has failed. Of course, neither Clinton nor Trump inspires hope for a new opportunity at racial harmony. That’s what Obama did in 2008. He was ideal for that issue and we voted for the hope. Now, so many years later, things seem even worse. Can you analyze how that happened? Because that did happen. I don’t see how we can begin to think about what more Trump or Clinton could do unless we understand why President Obama failed.

—–Law professor Ann Althouse, on her blog, responding to an op-ed piece in the New York Times by Pat Healy bemoaning the inability of either Trump of Clinton to respond to the Dallas shootings in a manner that unifies rather than divides.

1. I admit it: sometimes I look for other commentators who have discerned what I have discerned and use their quotes to state what I would normally be writing myself. Althouse is a left-leaning eccentric moderate who is not overtly political, and who is skilled at overcoming her own biases. She voted for Obama (at least once), and she plies her craft as a law professor in Madison, Wisconsin, as progressive a community as there is. I have found Obama’s leadership ability and Presidential performance wanting in almost all respects since early in his administration and have explained my analysis here.  The price I pay for this is that those who are in denial over what should be obvious (though terribly disappointing and sad) feel that my consistent  criticism gives them the opportunity to mask their denial by  labeling me an Obama-hater, a partisan (as if I wouldn’t be equally critical of an incompetent Republican President with a flat learning curve) and even a racist. A quote like Althouse’s is not so much an appeal to authority—I disagree with Professor Althouse a lot, though not her dislike of men wearing shorts—but choosing to allow someone else to say well what I may not have said any better, and to prove that I’m not the only one coming to such conclusions.

2. The President’s comments on the shooting deaths of officer-involved deaths of Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and Philando Castile, in Falcon Heights, Minnesota were irresponsible, inflammatory, and typical of his approach to race relations from the very beginning, when he stuck his influential nose into a controversy between a competent white Cambridge police officer and a race-baiting black Harvard professor. Then, without knowing any of the underlying facts, he suggested that the white police officer was at fault and the black professor (a friend of his) was blameless. His remarks about the police shootings in Louisiana and Minnesota issued from the same bias. I’ll just comment on the beginning of his statement, which is enough to make the point: Continue reading →

Ethics Observations On The President’s Peace Sign Stunt

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

peace signclose-up peace sign

UPDATE: This post was based on intentionally distorted and misleading reporting, and is retracted. Ethics Alarms apologizes for being misled. 

Fifty-four world leaders joined President Barack Obama in a Washington, D.C.  two-day summit on nuclear weapons, including the threat of their use by terrorists. A they posed for a ‘team photo,’ Obama flashed the “peace sign.”

Observations:

1. The photo is a bias test. If someone has decided that Obama is hopeless incompetent who habitually confuses grandstanding with leadership, and who long ago checked out emotionally and intellectually and is less concerned than ever about “optics” as well as all those other annoying component of being a competent President, this shot confirms it all. If, on the other hand, one has already concluded that Obama can do no wrong, this is just more proof that he is “cool,” and the negative reaction to it (only from conservatives, of course) shows how he has been the victim of bigotry and unfair criticism.

2.  And if you are objective, or at least able  to still your confirmation bias? You ask yourself if you have ever, in all the times you have seen such photos, witnessed any world leader intentionally draw attention to himself  like the class clown in a junior high school graduation photo. The answer is no. Of course you haven’t, because world leaders, even the worst of them, understand that such conduct is disrespectful, undignified, trivializes such gatherings, is rude, irresponsible and unfair, and makes the leader behaving in such an inappropriate manner look like buffoon. Continue reading →