President Barack Obama used a pseudonym in email communications with Hillary Clinton and others, according to FBI records made public Friday.
The disclosure came as the FBI released its second batch of documents from its investigation into Clinton’s private email server during her tenure as secretary of state.The 189 pages the bureau released includes interviews with some of Clinton’s closest aides, such as Huma Abedin and Cheryl Mills; senior State Department officials…In an April 5, 2016 interview with the FBI, Abedin was shown an email exchange between Clinton and Obama, but the longtime Clinton aide did not recognize the name of the sender.
“Once informed that the sender’s name is believed to be pseudonym used by the president, Abedin exclaimed: ‘How is this not classified?'” the report says. “Abedin then expressed her amazement at the president’s use of a pseudonym and asked if she could have a copy of the email.”
I chose Politico because it is a left-leaning political website and because its story, which is virtually word for word the same as similar reports on conservative sites like those of the Washington Times and and The Hill, includes the intriguing words “and others” that the conservative sites mysteriously omit.If Obama only used the pseudonym to communicate with Hillary, it would strongly suggest that he knew she was using an insecure private server all along, and that he tacitly approved it. Obama denied that last year, when he told CBS News that he learned about the home-brewed server from newspaper reports. It would mean that he lied, and would indicate that Obama was a full and knowing participant in Clinton’s efforts to hide her communications from scrutiny by Congress and public FOIA requests.
Is it unethical to fail—even to fail miserably? Is it unethical to volunteer for the impossible, nation-saving mission and fall on your face, perhaps by inadvertently igniting a grenade you are carrying and blowing your head off? Can we fairly deride the baseball player who strides to the plate with a chance to win the big game, and then looks like a Little Leaguer as he helplessly strikes out on three pitches without getting within a foot of the ball?
Maybe not. Still, when the stakes are high and a hero is needed, taking on the assignment when one lacks the acumen, skill and character to carry it off is at very least incompetent and irresponsible.
This brings us to Gary Johnson and the Libertarian Party. Again. Well, for the third time.
With Donald Trump attracting most of the media attention as the now completely politicized mainstream media devotes itself to defeating him by any means possible, and Hillary Clinton finding spectacular new and strange ways to make her own candidacy seem shaky even as the news media tries to bolster her, every interview, every second of air time, every opportunity to dazzle (because dazzling is the only chance a third party candidate has) is crucial for Gary Johnson. If he doesn’t know that, he’s an idiot. Since I assume he is not an idiot, and must know that he has to make every viewer who watches him who is not under the spell of Donald Trump or a true believer in Hillary Clinton say, “Hey! There’s a candidate on the ballot who is smart, informed, honest, dignified, healthy and rational with experience in executive governing!” Admittedly, this is difficult. There is no margin for error, and it is extremely difficult to appear brilliant and prepared unless one is brilliant and prepared.
Still, to presume to run for President of the United States is an assertion of remarkable ability, and to make that assertion without such ability is wrong, indeed horribly wrong. “Does anyone know CPR?” The intrepid volunteer steps to the fore and says, “I do!” and then proceeds to kill the stricken stranger because he doesn’t know CPR as well as he thought he did. “The pilot and co-pilot are unconscious! Can anyone fly the plane?”“I was a pilot!” says a confident passenger, who then takes the controls and power-dives the aircraft into the ground, because he’s more than a little rusty.
The Libertarian Party and its nominee have–I guess had is the proper word now—a once in a century opportunity, with both major parties betraying the public and nominating candidates who are unfit for the Presidency, and millions search for a way out. If they couldn’t do better than this, they should have left the job to someone who might have.
I have no idea what’s going on in the video above. NBC News’s Kasie Hunt was interviewing Johnson today how different things might be if he were allowed to participate in the upcoming debate between Clinton and Trump. Mid-answer, Johnson’s tongue emerges between his lips and he proceeds to try to talk, sounding for all the world like someone winning a bet by giving the Gettysburg Address while the tip of his tongue is between his fingers. It’s one of the strangest things I’ve ever seen any interview subject do, and also one of the funniest. Peter Sellers losing control of his Nazi arm in “Dr. Strangelove” was hilarious— Continue reading →
A sure sign of an ethics train wreck candidacy (we have two of them, you know) is that even campaigning for the candidates prompts unethical behavior. This malady has bitten the President hard, for on Sunday, at a Hillary Clinton fundraiser, he made his second unethical campaign pitch in a week (here was his first), arguing that Hillary Clinton was the victim of sexism. Here was the section to revile:
“There’s a reason why we haven’t had a woman president.We as a society still grapple with what it means to see powerful women and it still troubles us in a lot of ways, unfairly…This should not be a close election but it will be, and the reason it will be is not because of Hillary’s flaws.”
First, let us all take a moment and have a good laugh over the President’s glaringly dishonest claim that if the election is close, it won’t be because of Hillary’s “flaws.” Does anyone, including Obama, believe that? If Hillary Clinton wasn’t a chilly campaigner, an abrasive speaker, a venal master of crony politics, a compulsive liar, didn’t risk national security to avoid public scrutiny and lie about it, hadn’t been a mediocre Secretary of State involved in a failed foreign policy, didn’t aid, abet, deny and excuse her sexual predator husband, and wasn’t going to turn 69 before the election and do so in dubious health—these are all flaws, by the way—is there any question that she would be heading for a landslide victory, instead of facing very possible defeat? PBS pundit Mark Shields told a Georgetown University audience last week that Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, who is less qualified for the Presidency than Clinton by far, who supports many of Bernie Sanders’ nuttier positions and who has some political baggage of her own, would have beaten Trump in a landslide, and he’s right.
In Donald Trump’s meaningless statement yesterday, which was covered by the news media as if it was the revelation of the millennium, he officially conceded that Barack Obama is a natural born U.S. citizen. He also used the silly media attention to drag out his announcement into a long campaign infomercial for which he didn’t have to pay a cent. Nice, and it serves the broadcast media right for giving any significance to a five-year-long trolling exercise.
Trump used the phony controversy over President Obama’s birth certificate to get publicity five years ago, because he is shameless. That’s all. Did he really think Obama was born in Kenya? Oh, who knows? He is an idiot, after all. Then again, he is a skilled professional troll. Whether he believed it or not, Trump used the issue to get attention then, and now has used his 180 degree reversal to get attention now. Obviously nothing has changed that would justify this flip-flop if he believed what he insisted was true for five years. A more transparently cynical and insincere retraction I cannot conceive. Who cares what Trump says he believes at any point, about anything?
But I digress. What really seemed to enrage the journalists who have embraced Rationalizations #28. The Revolutionary’s Excuse: “These are not ordinary times,” and #31. The Troublesome Luxury: “Ethics is a luxury we can’t afford right now” to anoint themselves as full-time volunteer members of the Hillary for President campaign, was that Trump said this:
“Hillary Clinton and her campaign of 2008 started the birther controversy. I finished it.”
“You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic — you name it. And unfortunately there are people like that. And he has lifted them up. He has given voice to their websites that used to only have 11,000 people — now 11 million. He tweets and retweets their offensive, hateful, mean-spirited rhetoric. Now some of those folks — they are irredeemable, but thankfully they are not America.”
—-Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton during a fundraiser—just as Mitt Romney’s infamous “47%” comment in 2012 was made at a fundraiser!—the LGBT for Hillary Gala in New York City on Sept. 9, 2016.
One of the consistent features of both Clintons is that they engage in so much problematic conduct that often one incident worthy of serious criticism will be knocked out of the headlines by another.
Hillary’s 9/11 “over-heating, well, dehydration, well, ok, since it’s on video, she has pneumonia” fiasco, demonstrating that suspicions that she and her campaign aren’t being truthful about the state of her health are not “conspiracy theories,” effectively muted discussion about her “basket of deplorables” classic, complete with an imaginary word, “generalistic,” that if it had been uttered by George W. Bush would have been mocked far and wide.
I categorize this as an ethics quote rather than an unethical quote, because it is both ethical and unethical simultaneously. (The Clinton’\s seldom say things that aren’t adaptable to multiple interpretations; this allows them to leap from one to the other, like they are ice floes, when one meaning is justly condemned or found to be false.)
On the ethical side, it is completely fair and accurate to diagnose Trump supporters as deplorable, defined as “lamentable, or deserving censure or contempt.” This doesn’t apply to those conflicted potential voters who have reluctantly decided that in the terrible binary choice Americans have had shoved down their civic gullets by the two incompetent political parties, Donald Trump is preferable to Hillary Clinton. That is not the most responsible choice—it can’t ever be responsible to give such power to an unstable and ignorant boor—but it is an excusable mistake, given the horrible dilemma.
Supporting Trump, however, as in actively wanting him to become President, is as good a definition of “deplorable” as I can imagine. In this respect, Hillary was too generous. 100%, not merely 50%, of Trump’s supporters are deplorable. They lack the values, civic responsibility, understanding of their own nation and its history, or sufficient intelligence to be competent voters.
Clinton surrogate Chris Cuomo…but it’s OK, everybody’s doing it.
Mainstream broadcast news media’s all-in, full-throated support for Hillary Clinton and biased coverage of Donald Trump is pervasive and disgraceful, but since they all enable each other and have successfully isolated Fox, nobody whom anyone pays attention to is going to call foul, and as this abandonment of journalism ethics is gathering momentum. nobody can stop it, either. Trump was attacked far and wide for saying the election was rigged; and who knows what he meant (who knows what he ever means?), but when a democracy’s journalists cover the campaign by acting as relentless partisan advocates for one candidate, that’s one way to rig an election.
It is shocking how openly this is being done. One has to wonder how the networks will ever be trusted again, or how they can return to ethical norms. Continue reading →
CBS should have run this photo with Bill’s cleaned up interview. Doesn’t she look nice and healthy?
It must be reassuring, I’d think, to know that the news media will do everything in its power to cover for you, slant news to bolster you, ignore gaffes, and whenever possible, use clever edits to clean-up annoying little hints that you might not be all you’re cracked up to be.
Here is what Bill Clinton said in an interview with Charley Rose this week, when Rose asked if there was any chance her problems over the weekend could be a sign of a serious health issue. Clinton, saying that he didn’t believe that, added,
“Well if it is, it’s a mystery to me and all of her doctors because frequently—well not frequently, rarely—but on more than one occasion, over the last many, many years, the same sort of thing happened to her when she got severely dehydrated.”
Interesting slip by Bill, don’t you think? Suggesting that Hillary frequently suffers fainting spells would add to the speculation about her health and the fact that she has not been her usual, honest, transparent self on that issue. Bill catches himself and says, in effect, “Did I say frequently? When I say frequently, I mean almost never.” Could mean nothing, could mean something, but he said it.
Can’t have Bill causing more trouble for his wife, though, so when CBS broadcasts the interview again that night, it magically comes out like this: Continue reading →
Once the New York Times embraced the rationalization “Ethics is a luxury we can’t afford” and announced that journalists had a duty to bias their reporting to block Donald Trump’s election, this result was foretold. It was really foretold in 2008, when the news media first abandoned even the pretense of fairness and objectivity to ensure the election of our first black President.
Matt Lauer, of all people, became the object of furious invective after he hosted a live prime-time forum with Trump and Hillary. He was accused of unfairness, gullibility and even sexism in his handling of the event. His main offenses: not “fact-checking” Trump, as when he said, not for the first time, that he opposed the Iraq invasion from the beginning (he didn’t), and grilling Hillary about her e-mail machinations.
The only way the transcript supports the latter contention is if one is Bernie Sanders and believes Hillary’s “stupid e-mail” is irrelevant. Lauer didn’t spend an inappropriate time on this issue, given what a perfect example it is of Clinton’s Arrogance, deviousness, lack of transparency, and, apparently, incompetence and recklessness. I’d say he was easy on Hillary: he didn’t mention her sleazy conflicts with Clinton Foundation donors at all, and she is much less adept at spinning that slam-dunk conflict of interest and ethical violation than with her e-mail, which she has been lying about for more than a year. Pro-Clinton news media, which is to say, news media, howled about Lauer not challenging Trump’s thoroughly disproven claim about opposing the Iraq War, but Clinton already had done this, saying, “Now, my opponent was for the war in Iraq. He says he wasn’t. You can go back and look at the record. He supported it. He told Howard Stern he supported it.” Maybe Lauer thought that was enough; it should have been: Trump’s lie on this score has been well-publicized, including here, on Ethics Alarms.
Meanwhile, he did not challenge Clinton on her obviously false claim that emails cannot be considered classified if they do not contain formal classification markings, and worst of all, he did not challenge her unconstitutional call to ban citizens who are placed on a no-fly list from exercising their Second Amendment rights. This is especially important, because this fact isn’t understood by most Americans, and a Presidential candidate advocating defiance of the Constitution is, or should be, a big deal. Never mind, though: Lauer wasn’t supposed to be tough on Hillary. He was only supposed to be hard on Trump, and because he wasn’t “hard enough,” a.k.a., “harder,” a.k.a. “biased like the rest of the mainstream coverage,” then it means that he was incompetent. Continue reading →
As of the time I’m writing this, the New York Times mentions nothing about Clinton’s coughing fit, either on its website, or in its hard copy edition. Not does the Post, which I just had delivered to me despite having cancelled our subscription weeks ago, mention the coughing. None of the major networks covered her coughing fit yesterday.
What’s going on here?
Good question, and not just from the usual ethics analysis perspective, which often starts with this query. What is going on with Hillary?
1. I have no idea. I do know that when I have two-minute coughing fits, it means that I’m sick. It doesn’t mean I’m dying, but if the cough becomes chronic, I see a doctor. Hillary Clinton has been having coughing episodes during speeches and televised appearances for quite some time, though none this severe. However, a Presidential candidate having a coughing fit while speaking is the news item, not the joke she makes to recover. (By the way, that was quick thinking by Hillary, and I admire the quip…unless she had it pre-planned in case she had a coughing fit.). She is in her late sixties. There are some doubts about her health. A presidential campaign is grueling for anyone; I’m amazed it hasn’t incapacitated a candidate yet. The fact that the conservative, Hillary-hating news media is all over this story is expected, but that doesn’t mean their attention isn’t valid and responsible journalism. The news media has an ethical obligation to investigate and let the public know whether or not a candidate for President is fit, temporarily under the weather, or suffering from some more serious malady that might affect his or her ability to do the job.
2. The initial reaction of most of the mainstream media was to shrug off this story, bury it, or ignore it, while the conservative news media was almost gleefully running with it, especially Drudge, who has been chronicling Hillary’s chronic cough for a long time. MSNBC even cut from its live feed away mid-fit, which is inexcusable, but exactly the kind of reflex Clinton-protecting we are seeing more and more frequently. This is another smoking gun example of the unprofessional and dangerous partisan bias in the media, as well as the reason why rational Americans should be grateful that there are right-slanting news sources to prevent journalists and liberal politicians collaborating in cover-ups.
3. The comics and celebrities, as well as liberal pundits, are going to look very bad if their mockery of those asking legitimate questions about Clinton ends up being rebutted by facts. They already look bad. Some have equated concerns about Clinton’s health with the Obama birth certificate controversy, coining the term “healthers,” to set up legitimate inquiries for condemnation as bias or derangement. New York Times columnist Frank Bruni submitted a satirical column about suspicions that Hillary has “an 11th toe,” writing…
“I don’t have the medical records. She refuses to release them. But just try to come up with some other explanation for why she’s so infrequently photographed in sandals or flip-flops; why she seldom appears barefoot in public; why, during debates, she keeps her legs, especially the lower halves, tucked carefully behind the lectern…She’s covering something up, and it’s that freakish, disqualifying digit.”
On CBS “Late Night, ” host Stephen Colbert said he was shocked to learn that he has started menopause, using the same method of medical research Clinton critics are basing questions about her health upon: searching the web.
The Clinton health issue on the liberal side is entering Jumbo territory: “Coughing fits? What coughing fits?”
4. The mainstream media’s double standard could not be more glaring. Journalists obsessed over John McCain’s age and his melanoma removal during the 2008 campaign, as they celebrated Obama’s youth and energy. The incidents and circumstantial evidence relating to Hillary Clinton’s health and suggesting that there may be a problem have reached the point where the question demands a full and aggressive media inquiry. Her serious fall and concussion are well documented. She appears unsteady in many photographs. She uses steps to get into her car. She appears to be avoiding live interviews and press conferences. She used her concussion as an explanation for why she couldn’t remember State protocols for her e-mails. She has coughing fits. It could all add up to nothing, and it could be something. The array raises legitimate doubts, and since we are talking about the Clintons, there is no reason to believe the Hillary’s camp’s reassurances. We know she lies, and that her staff lies for her. The public has a right to know what, if anything, is going on with her health.
5. The conservative website WND has mostly excellent coverage of the coughing fit (and apparently a second Clinton suffered talking to reporters on her plane). It also has statements from several physicians who argue that it is completely legitimate for doctors to raise questions about Clinton’s health. Said one of them, Dr. Jane Orient, M.D., executive director of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons:
“I’m not making a diagnosis. I can look at the video. You can look .For a or a medical professional to simply ignore the evidence would be completely reckless…Meeting someone with these symptoms personally would require a “How are you?” These are not ridiculous questions.”
[UPDATE: I forgot to note, as I intended, that one of the ways the WND story is NOT excellent is that it perpetuates the current false accusation that CNN’s Dr. Drew Pinsky had his show cancelled because he questioned Hillary’s health in a radio interview. The game is classic post hoc ergo propter hoc nonsense: his show’s cancellation was announced after his statement, hence it must have been cancelled because of his statement. Dr. Drew has debunked this himself, though he confirmed that the blowback from CNN after his statement was severe.]
6. Of course they aren’t. But just as some journalists have suggested that the perceived special danger posed by Donald Trump justifies the psychiatric profession diagnosing his supposed mental instability from afar, that same perceived danger seems to be causing journalists to rationalize ignoring troubling health symptoms from his opposition. The reasoning clinician Hal Brown used in his post on the Daily Kos to argue for professionals issuing opinions regarding Trump’s narcissism applies with even more force to Hillary’s physical symptoms.
7. I don’t know why the anti-Trump news media isn’t eagerly covering Clinton’s health problems. Tim Kaine, bland and wishy-washy as he is, wasn’t a terrible governor of Virginia (where I live). He’s much more trustworthy and honest than Hillary–heck, virtually anyone in public life is. He’d be an easy choice over Trump; I’d even feel better about voting for Hillary knowing that it was likely that she wouldn’t finish her term. Hillary can lose to Trump, who, whatever else one might think about him, always shows energy and appears to be younger than he is, like Ronald Reagan. Watch what happens in the polls when Clinton has a two-minute coughing fit during a debate, and defaults to the same line about being allergic to Trump.
Ethics Alarms 