Harry Reid

I Repeat: April Fools Day Is Not For Ethical Professionals

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

april-fools-day-banner

In a much attacked post here way back in 2010, I offered some ethical guidelines for April Fool’s Day, which was just beginning to get out of hand. I was right, my critics were wrong, and maybe some of the mockers who are now trying to figure out when their favorite news organization is lying to them today for fun, as opposed to the rest of the year when it lies to them out of bias or incompetence, are beginning to appreciate my position.

I just watched three different morning news shows that contained fake news or commentary that the reporters and anchors, at least, seemed to think was hilarious. In one case, on Fox, conservative talk-show host Laura Ingraham dead-panned a remarkably even-handed and fair explanation for HHS Secretary Sibelius’s much-maligned TV silence when asked about the Affordable Care Act’s unpopularity.  April Fool! Laura wasn’t being fair or objective, she was just tricking Fox’s audience into being angry at her for being fair and objective, or, in my case, admiring her integrity for pointing out that the incident had more than one plausible interpretation. Got me, Laura. I just heard an NPR host plead with the audience not to regard the upcoming segment as a hoax because of the date, an especially difficult plea since NPR springs virtual hoaxes on its audience all year.

The first and most important of my April Fools guidelines was this:

1. April Fools’ Day tricks are not for professionals to play on those who depend on them, trust them, or otherwise rely on them for information or services, unless there is a special relationship as well. The risks of harm and abuse are too great.

The succeeding four years have validated my position. Journalism, government and politics are the prime examples. CNN played a video that showed Jay Carney crowing yesterday about the Affordable Care Act’s success even as the Healthcare.gov website had crashed. Wait..is this a joke? Did the Obama White House film this for fun and games? They wouldn’t do this, you say? Government officials don’t use their high office for jokes and hoaxes? Really?

Sen. Ted Cruz, also on Fox, showed his new tattoo, apparently an April Fools’ joke, but also said he was certain that the Affordable Care Act would be repealed. Which is more likely, that the AFA will be repealed, or that wacky Ted Cruz would get a tattoo? Slate has a post up by someone called Rehan Salan, which is, clearly, a clever anagram for “En Anal Rash” or something, arguing that adults without children should be forced to pay extra taxes to support parents. Hah! Good one, Slate! That should turn the “pro choice” crowd on its head: lets; punish the choice not to have children via a penalty—I’m sorry, Chief Justice Roberts, a tax, wink-wink. Wait…that isn’t a joke? Ok, well, I’m sure about this, then: that fake video showing famous tough guy Don Baylor, a record holder for being hit by pitches when he played and now a coach for the Los Angeles Angels, “breaking his leg” catching the ceremonial first pitch of the baseball season. April Fools, right ESPN? No????

Continue reading →

How Do You Know The Shut-Down Is An Ethics Train Wreck? When I Have To Defend Harry Reid…

/ Jack Marshall / 26 Comments
"Why wouldn't you want to help this adorable little puppy, Senator?"

“Why wouldn’t you want to help this adorable little puppy, Senator? What kind of a monster are you”

The government shut-down is hurtling to ethics train wreck status, not because the shut-down itself is unethical, for it is not, nor because the use of the debt limit as a bargaining chip is unethical, for it is a perfect bargaining chip, especially when bargaining with a fiscally irresponsible administration that is happy to spend taxpayer money flagrantly, as if a endlessly growing debt does not pose serious dangers to the nation’s security and prosperity in the not-so-long term. No, the shut-down is a train wreck because everyone connected with it, including pundits and the news media, are behaving badly….and it is getting worse.

Yup: train wreck.

Tit-for-tat is beginning to reign supreme, which often happens in a political ETR. Witness what has befallen Harry Reid, who enjoys accusing Republicans of being sub-human curs, as a result of his  reasonable, if carelessly stated, answer to a silly question by a reporter, seeded by the President’s own careless rhetoric in the past.  In a press conference on Wednesday, the Nevada Senator was addressing a series of bills proposed by the House Republicans to fund benign programs everyone  likes rather than funding the whole government.  These bills would fund parks and other D.C. attractions, veterans needs, treating children with cancer and other research projects at the National Institutes of Health, and the National Guard, among other things. It’s a clever political move, because the bills would force a veto from President Obama if they passed through the Senate, which Democrats cannot allow since Obama and Reid have pledged not to negotiate on the budget until the “clean” CR passes. This is the exchange that has Reid defending against bogus accusations of being cruel and heartless: Continue reading →

Unethical Quote of the Week: Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid

/ Jack Marshall / 43 Comments

“The idea that allowing two loving, committed people to marry would have a negative impact on anyone else, or on our nation as a whole, has always struck me as absurd.”

—Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, after calling Wednesday’s Supreme Court ruling striking down the Defense of Marriage Act “a great, historic day for equality in America.” Reid voted for the law when it was overwhelmingly passed by the U.S. Senate, back when treating gays like second-class citizens was popular.

Harry Reid, embracing absurdity when it is politically expedient...

Harry Reid, embracing absurdity when it is politically expedient…

It’s hard to say which of the legislative lions prowling the cloak rooms of Capital Hill are more loathsome—Republican Mich McConnell, Nancy Pelosi, or Harry Reid. It’s easy to decide which is more shamelessly cynical and hypocritical, however. That would be Harry Reid.

If he “always” thought that DOMA was “absurd,” why did he vote for it? Are we to take from this that he not only is willing to vote for absurd measures (he has voted for many), but also votes for measures when he believes they are absurd? Or does he just say whatever he thinks will sound good to the low-information, knee-jerk progressives who have a memory of about two weeks (if that) regarding any issue, and possess the naïve belief, also absurd, that only Republicans lie to them? Continue reading →

Unethical Quote of the Week: Michael Moore

/ Jack Marshall / 25 Comments

“If a man with an assault weapon goes into the school where Harry Reid’s grandchildren go to school tomorrow and kills his grandchildren, would he stand in front of that microphone at five o’clock and say, ‘I know how Dianne [Feinstein] had to witness the mayor getting murdered, but my grandchildren just got killed today, but, you know, we can’t get it passed because we just don’t have the votes.’”

—Documentary Film-Maker Michael Moore, ranting about Senate Majority Harry Reid’s decision to remove Sen. Feinstein’s assault weapons ban from the Senate gun reform package.

This is when I should not say anything at all, my mother told me.

This is when I should not say anything at all, my mother told me.

I know ad hominem attacks are uncool, but truly: what an awful, awful man Michael Moore is. He lies in his documentaries; he engages in deceit routinely; he abused Charlton Heston, knowing he was in the throes of Altzheimer’s Disease; he praised Fidel Castro; he is, for all intents and purposes a Communist, his public statements are fueled by and designed to ignite hatred more often than not, and, on top of it all, he says unethical and asinine things like this. Moore is to progressives what Newt Gingrich and Donald Trump are to conservatives: any group that can endure, indeed, applaud such people has serious, deep-rooted ethical and cognitive problems. Continue reading →

Unethical Quote of the Week: House Speaker John Boehner

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments

“Go fuck yourself!”

—House Speaker John Boehner to a surprised Senator Harry Reid last week at the White House, apparently in response to Reid’s comments to reporters that Boehner was “a dictator.”

If Boehner is going to talk like that, we might as well have Ron Burgundy as Speaker. At least he's funny.

If Boehner is going to talk like that, we might as well have Ron Burgundy as Speaker. At least he’s funny.

Stay classy, Mr. Speaker.

Admittedly, there are few individuals on Capitol Hill more deserving of such a rebuke than Sen. Reid, but Speaker Boehner is obligated not to be the agent delivering it. Such personal incivility is inexcusable no matter how insulted Boehner felt, and no matter how high tensions were running during the “fiscal cliff” negotiations. Americans should expect their elected officials to conduct themselves with the dignity, honor and civility their positions demand. When they stoop to vulgarity and pure invective, they not only disgrace themselves, but also shame their high offices, the institutions in which they serve, and the nation. Continue reading →

The Swiftboating of Mitt Romney, Part II: When “Balanced” is Biased

/ Jack Marshall / 36 Comments

“Did you hear? Mitt Romney killed his wife. At least, that’s what they’re saying…”

I was intrigued to see how my home town paper, The Washington Post, dealt with the latest lower-than-low and Nixonian attack on Romney from Team Obama, the “Mitt Romney killed my wife” ad.

If you have been asleep this week or just in the bathroom vomiting over what “Hope and Change” mutates into when it’s time to pay the piper, the TV ad by pro-Obama super PAC Priorities USA Action features Joe Soptic, a steelworker who claims that Romney is responsible for the death of his wife, because Romney’s company, Bain Capital, shut down his steel plant.  The facts of Soptic’s case, however, are not in dispute: Mitt Romney left Bain in 1999 to work on the Olympics.  Jonathan Lavine, now a top Obama campaign fundraiser, was running the company when it closed the GST Steel plant where Soptic worked in 2001. Soptic was, he now admits, offered a buy-out by Bain, but declined it. He then took another job but declined to purchase his employer’s insurance plan. Soptic’s wife had her own health insurance plan through 2003. In 2006, seven years after Romney gave up the management of Bain, Soptic’s wife was diagnosed with very late-stage cancer, after being misdiagnosed earlier, and died shortly thereafter.

Based on this, Joe Soptic alleges that Mitt Romney killed his wife. He is either lying, or he is nuts. But the point is that he is willing to say it on camera, and has a sad face. That is enough, you see, to justify calling Mitt Romney a murderer. Continue reading →

Ethics Hero: Richard Cohen

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

It’s more effective to compare Harry Reid to “Godfather II’s” Sen Pat Geary than to claim he’s a pederast. It takes some wit to do that, however…

I used to find Richard Cohen to be the most infuriating of knee-jerk liberal columnists, until the Washington Post added writers like Eugene Robinson and E.J. Dionne who make Cohen seem fair and balanced by comparison. And he, unlike them, also is occasionally capable of a noble bi-partisan moment, such as today’s column calling Harry Reid what he is for his Mitt Romney smear, claiming that an anonymous source from Bain Capital told him that Mitt Romney was a tax cheat.

This, sad little right-wing warriors, is how dirty politicians like Reid get their just desserts, not by mass name-calling and scrawling “Harry Reid is a poo-poo head” on your blogs. Pundits and other prominent voices on Reid’s own side don’t want to associate with him, and suddenly exhibit rare candor and honesty. A liberal writer like Cohen wounds Reid more than a million vindictive posts about his fictional pederasty. This is the system working properly, as it occasionally does. What a shame for conservatives that so many of their number exposed themselves as enthusiastic gutter-dwellers because they wouldn’t wait for a truth-telling liberal like Cohen to get to his keyboard.

Some highlights of Cohen’s terrific take-down of the Senate Majority Leader, nicely titled, “Harry Reid’s Gutter Politics”..

  • “In “The Godfather Part II,” a senator from Nevada is portrayed as corrupt. His name is Pat Geary. In real life, a senator from Nevada is a jerk. His name is Harry Reid.”
  • “Whether such a source exists, really, is beside the point. It could be that someone did indeed tell Reid that Romney paid no taxes for 10 years. Journalists get that sort of tip all the time, and their responsibility is (1) to check it out and (2) identify the source. Reid has not done the latter and apparently has not done the former, either. The truth is that Reid doesn’t really care if the charge is true or not.”
  • “He contributes to bad feelings, gridlock and the sense — nay, the reality — that everything is done for political advantage.”
  • “He is the face of the Democratic Party in the Senate and the ally of President Obama. Yet, not a single Democrat has had the spine to rebuke Reid.”
  • “…Reid has managed to draw both his party and his president into the gutter with him. When Reid accuses the Republicans of being overly partisan, he now lacks all credibility. For a long time it’s been difficult to believe anything he says. Now, it’s impossible.”
  • “As for Obama, he is tarnished by this episode. The fresh new face that promised us all a different kind of politics is suddenly looking cheesy. The soaring rhetoric that Obama used in his first campaign has come to ground in the mud of Harry Reid’s latter-day McCarthyism.”

That’s showing how it’s done, Mr. Cohen.

Bravo.

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Source: Richard Cohen

 

Ethics Dunce: Redstate Blogger Moe Lane

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

The other Moe, the one who probably COULD use a search engine…

Redstate blogger Moe Lane is offended that I think emulating Harry Reid to get even with Harry Reid is as despicable as Harry Reid, and since Lane hasn’t the wit or diligence to make a coherent argument against the position articulated in my recent post, which has flushed out a covey of mouth-foaming right-wingers, he plays the hypocrisy card, and like most players, doesn’t really know what hypocrisy is. Unlike many players, however, he doesn’t even bother to get his facts right, apparently because the Ethics Alarms search engine is too tricky for him. As I opined that the Right was attempting to “santorum” Reid by associating his name with something unsavory (in his case, pederasty), Lane fulminates that I didn’t express similar objections when Santorum himself was santorumed. He writes:

“…Hence the aforementioned shocked, shocked response from this Ethics Alarms site, which is very disapproving of the whole thing, and goes so far as to call it ‘santoruming.’ For those unfamiliar with the concept, Ethics Alarms provides a footnote: “Thanks to blogger Dan Savage, the former GOP Senator’s name is now a synonym for a disgusting bodily discharge.” And that, of course, is just as bad when it happens to Harry Reid as it was when it happened to Rick Santorum.”…which, given that (as near as I can tell) this seems to be the first time that Ethics Alarms has bothered to mention to the world that, hey, attacking Rick Santorum like that was bad, just indicates to me that the “Reid is a Pederast” meme is having the desired effect. It’s getting self-absorbed, pretentious websites that hate hardcore social conservatives** to stand up for those self-same social conservatives! Without prompting, even! Lo, indeed, truly we live in an Age of Wonders.”

Well, no, Moe, in fact this was not the first time that I expressed disapproval of Dan Savage’s successful effort to slime Rick Santorum, and if you could search the web or my site with the deftness of the typical Special Ed teen, you would have seen that over a year ago I wrote a post entitled, Dan Savage’s Curse on Rick Santorum: Funny! But Wrong. Note that the title was specifically evoked by the heading for the recent Reid post, which would have been a big fat clue for anyone who cared about being fair and accurate rather than being snide and obnoxious, like Moe Lane. Continue reading →

“Goody Goody” to the Least Sympathetic Betrayal Victim of the Year, Former Senator Arlen Specter

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

First, this musical introduction, courtesy of the brilliant and tragic Frankie Lymon:

Ironically, over the weekend I wrote, in a reply to a comment, about how badly I felt when I finally met Arlen Specter and he was very complimentary to me, after I had described his 2009 defection from the Republican Party in very uncomplimentary terms. Now comes the news that the former Pennsylvania Senator’s new book includes a lament that neither President Obama, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid nor other key Democrats delivered on the promises that caused him to betray his party and those who had voted for him.

Arlen, Arlen, Arlen. Continue reading →

Unethical Website of the Month: Facebook Event—“If Boehner shuts down the government I am taking my trash to his house”

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Hypothesis: If you can't persuade your adversary he is wrong, dump this on his lawn.

Two guys who shouldn’t be allowed out of the house, or near a laptop, without adult supervision have launched an unethical Facebook event, entitled “If Boehner shuts down the government I am taking my trash to his house.” See, if the federal government shuts down, one of the District’s services that will stop is trash pickup. Clever boys.

The organizers of the event are Jonah Goodman, who is listed in the Democratic National Committee network and Nolan Treadway, the political and logistics director for the liberal group Netroots Nation, lead off their “event” announcement saying that… Continue reading →