Hillary Clinton

In Defense Of Hillary, A Perfect #22

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments
Not running....

Not running….

Rationalization #22, Comparative Virtue or “It’s not the worst thing,” is my personal candidate for the worst rationalization of them all. It is so objectively so devoid of common sense, and so desperate in its relativism, that I am amazed at how often allegedly intelligent people employ it. Ethics Alarms is always on the lookout for a perfect #22, and this summer has brought a bumper crop. Donald Trump, master of rationalizations, had one in June, just four days after Madeleine Albright scored one, saying about Hillary Clinton’s e-mail scandal,

“…nobody is going to die as a result of anything that happened on emails”

Albright also could well have been wrong about that, as we now know, and only moral luck prevented one of Hillary’s carelessly handled e-mails from falling into hands that might have engineered harm for a U.S. agent abroad. Clearly, however, partisans trying to minimize Clinton’s absolute incompetence, recklessness and dishonesty regarding her private server and its illicit use are drawn to Rationalization #22, because today’s example is also an unethical attempt to excuse Hillary’s conduct by putting it in “perspective”—and what a perspective!

First let’s again review the rationalization…

22. The Comparative Virtue Excuse: “There are worse things.”

If “Everybody does it” is the Golden Rationalization, this is the bottom of the barrel. Yet amazingly, this excuse is popular in high places: witness the “Abu Ghraib was bad, but our soldiers would never cut off Nick Berg’s head” argument that was common during the height of the Iraq prisoner abuse scandal. It is true that for most ethical misconduct, there are indeed “worse things.” Lying to your boss in order to goof off at the golf course isn’t as bad as stealing a ham, and stealing a ham is nothing compared selling military secrets to North Korea. So what? We judge human conduct against ideals of good behavior that we aspire to, not by the bad behavior of others. One’s objective is to be the best human being that we can be, not to just avoid being the worst rotter anyone has ever met.

Behavior has to be assessed on its own terms, not according to some imaginary comparative scale. The fact that someone’s act is more or less ethical than yours has no effect on the ethical nature of your conduct. “There are worse things” is not an argument; it’s the desperate cry of someone who has run out of rationalizations.

(It is also the mark of someone corrupted by the Clintons. #22 got a workout, you may recall, when Bill Clinton’s lies, cover-up and obstruction of justice  regarding the intern he transformed into a Presidential sex toy got him impeached.)

Now here is the perfect #22, a headline on an editorial at MassLive, a Massachusetts news and politics website, Can it get better than this?

Clinton’s email shenanigans weren’t crime of the century

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Unethical Quote Of The Week: Matthew Dowd, ABC Political Analyst On “This Week”

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

Ginger Rogers + Swing Time

“[Hillary] is judged — she is judged a little bit, I have to say, all of the controversy surrounding her and they’re both — Donald Trump and her, she’s judged a little bit on a Ginger Rogers standard, which is, is that the bar is so low for him. I mean, Ginger Rogers, the famous like she did everything Fred Astaire did but backwards and in heels.”

–—Matthew Dowd, ABC News political analyst, during today’s “roundtable” discussion on ABC’s “This Week” regarding the various scandals and controversies keeping Hillary Clinton’s poll numbers within striking distance of Donald Trump.

1. See, what did I tell you? It’s starting already. As with Obama, the news media, taking the lead from Democrats and feminists, will shamelessly use accusations of bias to argue away any and all legitimate criticism of Hillary Clinton as a manifestation of sexism. Boy, am I sick of that; everyone should be. It is a cheap, destructive tactic, designed to suppress opposition. And to have the gall to do this in the wake of the FBI notes showing a Presidential candidate either lying her head off or confessing utter incompetence, ignorance and stupidity…how insulting to viewers. Continue reading →

Presenting Three New Rationalizations: “Narcissist Ethics,” “The Dead Horse-Beater’s Dodge,” And “The Doomsday License”

/ Jack Marshall / 37 Comments

the end of the world

I knew this was going to happen. Even as the Ethics Alarms Rationalizations list approached 70 self-serving lies in all, the cracks and crevices between them were being explored, mined and exploited. All three of today’s new additions turned up in a single, ill-begotten comment to a recent pots, and while I immediately recognized them as rationalizations, I also failed to find an exact fit for any of them on the list. It is by such a process that all rules and laws inevitably expand into near uselessness, because humans are so adept at finding loopholes.

I’m going to have to be vigilant lest the rationalizations become so thinly sliced that the list is too burdensome to be useful: some of the current entries have been criticized as redundant already. Nonetheless, I believe the three being unveiled now cover rationalization territory worth mapping. Here they are:

Rationalization 8A. The Dead Horse-Beater’s Dodge, or “This can’t make things any worse”

Rationalization 8, The Trivial Trap  or “No harm no foul!”, relies on #3. Consequentialism, or  “It Worked Out for the Best” for its dubious logic, but is less demanding. #3 posits that unethical conduct that ends up having beneficial or desirable results has been purged of its unethical nature. #8 argues for an even more lenient standard, holding that as long as the unethical conduct—usually a lie—has no negative effects, it can’t be wrong. The Dead Horse-Beater’s Dodge, carries things even further with the theory that as long as a situation can’t be made worse by wrongful conduct, the conduct itself can’t be wrongful. The most famous invocation of #8A of recent vintage is Hillary Clinton’s exasperated question during the Benghazi hearings, “At this point, what difference does it make?” Her argument: a lack of candor now about the fatal events in Benghazi can’t bring back the dead, so why harp on it?

In ethics, wrongful conduct is usually identifiable by its nature and intent. “This can’t make things any worse” is an assumption that individuals seldom can make with guaranteed accuracy, and it usually presumes consent from the supposedly bottom-lying individual or organization that the unethical act is done to. Get the informed consent, 8A devotees, and then we’ll talk.

No, looters, the fact that a business is a smoldering wreck does not make stealing even damaged merchandise from it “okay.” No, pulling the plug on a comatose patient without his previous consent or that of someone he has authorize to give it is still wrong, both legally and ethically. In most cases, the presumption that conduct unethical in its form and substance will not “make things any worse” is something about which the rationalizing wrong-doer can’t possibly be certain. That’s what makes it a rationalization: it is a lie we tell to ourselves.

Rationalization 50A.  Narcissist Ethics , or “I don’t care” Continue reading →

The Word For The Notes On Hillary Clinton’s FBI Interview—And Everything Related To It—Is “Pathetic”

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

Hillaryshrug

Pathetic, adj.: arousing pity, especially through vulnerability or sadness.
Synonyms: pitiful, pitiable, piteous, moving, touching, poignant, plaintive, distressing, upsetting, heartbreaking, heart-rending, harrowing, wretched, forlorn

This is the word that constantly came to mind and heart as I explored the FBI’s notes (you can too, here) regarding Hillary Clinton’s decisive—at least in terms of saving her from prosecution—interview with the FBI. Everything about them arouses pity–for her, for us, for the nation. Let us count the ways.

1. Over at MSNBC, “Meet the Press” host Chuck Todd, a fully committed operative of the Democratic Party, like most of his colleagues, and like them committed through his partisan bias to saving America from Donald Trump, was overcome with an attack of objectivity.  “It bothers me as an American citizen,” he said,  that the FBI didn’t record Hillary’s interview, and left Americans to ponder merely notes taken by one agent as the public tries to assess who it may be electing President in November. “Are you kidding me?!” Todd cried. “We’re releasing notes?!”

We’re releasing notes. It’s pitiable to see one of many prominent journalists who have tried so, so hard for eight years to paper over, minimize and otherwise shrug off the constant, near complete incompetence of the Obama Administration and every agency under it to be suddenly stung by the realization that this has consequences—for trust, for truth, for belief that the government isn’t actively engaged in suppressing it. Pathetic.

2. Some of you will recall that I was collecting the various partisan reactions to  FBI director James Comey’s statement announcing that the FBI would not be recommending Clinton’s indictment to ultimately gauge which party’s reaction was more ridiculous, irresponsible, dishonest and foolish. Democrats were claiming that Comey’s report, despite showing that Clinton had lied outright about her use of the private e-mails server, and that her recklessness had endangered U.S. intelligence, exonerated Hillary. Republicans were claiming that Comey’s statement and the decision not to prosecute was indefensible. I was waiting to learn what Hillary had said in her interview, as I assumed that it would have to be released before the election. To reveal a closely guarded Ethics Alarms secret, I was prepared to declare Republicans the “winner” of the competition, as obviously idiotic as it is to say that a report declaring Clinton incompetent and dishonest could possibly “exonerate” her. Reading the notes, however, and considering the fact that the F.B.I. only has these notes to show us, I am back to, as Bobby Fisher would say, square one. Which is pathetic.

3.  Why? Well, we have just learned that  Clinton had her server “wiped”  after the New York Times, on March 3, 2015, broke the story of the server system’s existence. At the same time, she and her surrogates were telling the news media and us, “I want the public to see my email,” even as she directed her henchmen to destroy it. The FBI knew this, yet still found Clinton’s actions just negligent, and not criminal. Five months later–back in those halcyon days when she actually held press conferences— she feigned ignorance when Fox News’s Ed Henry asked, “Did you wipe the server?” saying, “Like with a cloth or something?” Now we know, vie the FBI notes , that she had the server emptied using a sophisticated software program, BleachBit, that is designed to make purged e-mails virtually unrecoverable, and indeed several thousand of hers were successfully destroyed. Clinton got away with this, her supporters don’t think it matters, and the FBI apparently minimized these efforts to obstruct justice. Pathetic.
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How Can You Tell If Hillary Clinton Is Lying? Her Lips Are Moving…

/ Jack Marshall / 35 Comments

Hillary Clinton

Non-partisan, irony-obsessed, law professor  blogger Ann Althouse noted this quote today, from Hillary’s almost completely ignored speech on “American exceptionalism”:

“If there’s one core belief that has guided and inspired me every step of the way, it is this: The United States is an exceptional nation.”

“Why does everything sound like a lie?” Althouse asks. Then, in the comments to her post site, she finds the answer from a commenter called Rob: because it is a lie. He wrote:

Hillary chose her words carefully: “if there’s one core belief that has guided and inspired me every step of the way . . . .” In fact, there is not one core belief that has guided her–unless you count ambition as a core belief.

Ann’s response: “Rob, are you a lawyer? Good catch!”

Yes, it turns out, Rob is a lawyer; he went to law school with Hillary, in fact. And it is a good catch, too, one that Hillary and Bill and all of the politicians who use deceit as a primary language count on most listeners NOT catching. Hillary never said that she believes or is guided by the belief that “the United States is an exceptional nation.” She only said that if she were guided by a core belief, that would be it, but said it in a way that most people will hear to mean that she does believe in American exceptionalism. It’s like me saying that if there was one mass murdering dictator that I admired, it would be Mao. But there are no mass murdering dictators that I admire in the least, and I don’t admire Mao.

I don’t especially care if a candidate believes in American exceptionalism or not. I do care that a candidate uses words and crafts sentences to deceive trusting listeners.

Somebody might inadvertently utter a sentence like Clinton’s without trying to deceive and mislead. Hillary, however, like her husband, long ago lost any right to the benefit of the doubt in this realm.

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Pointer: Ann Althouse

This Just In From PBS: Ethical Journalism Is STILL Dead, And Unethical Journalism Is Being Funded By Your Tax Dollars

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments
To be fair, this photo should only show about 40% of Jill Stein's face...

(To be fair, this photo should only show about 40% of Jill Stein’s face…)

Last week, PBS featured an interview with Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein. It began as a live interview on Facebook, but what was broadcast on the PBS’s NewsHour was significantly different from the actual interview. Here. courtesy of Newsbusters, are Stein’s missing comments, in bold:

JUDY WOODRUFF, PBS: You’ve made it clear you think both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump would be terrible presidents for the country. So are you saying that literally that Hillary Clinton is every bit as bad for the country as Donald Trump?

GREEN PARTY PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE JILL STEIN: I wouldn’t say there are no differences, but the differences are not enough to save your job, because Hillary Clinton, you know, and now her transition director Ken Salazar, y’know, they’re big proponents of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which is basically NAFTA on steroids. And, uh, most observers believe that it will send our jobs overseas, as well as undermine American sovereignty by bringing in these international tribunals that get to pass judgment on our laws, on our public health protections, on our worker protections.

So we, you know, we can’t count on saving our jobs, saving our lives — 1 in 3 Americans now cannot afford health care under Obamacare — or saving the planet, because Hillary has been a big proponent of fracking, as is Ken Salazar, her transition director.

So we feel that in this election, we’re not just deciding what kind of a world we’re going to have, but whether we’re going to have a world or not going forward, and knowing that the majority of Americans is unhappy with these two party choices, this is the time for us to open up.

Americans have not only a right to vote, but a right to know who we can vote for.

So we’re pushing for opening up the debates, and then let’s see how the chips fall.

WOODRUFF: Dr. Jill Stein, with the Green Party. We thank you.

STEIN: Thank you, Judy.

You can watch the unedited version of Stein’s answer on a PBS livestreamed Facebook clip, beginning after the 6:40 mark. On  the PBS website and on PBS’ YouTube clip, however, all you’ll find is the edited answer. Even if Woodruff says, “You can hear the entire interview at…,” it doesn’t undo the damage. When an interviewer says this, do you assume that the “entire interview” means “the internal sentences and paragraphs we cut out to completely misrepresent what the actual answers were”? I don’t. Why don’t I, by now? Boy, am I an idiot.

Idiot or not, I am still the victim of an ethics foul, and disgustingly so. If the NewsHour has to cut some of the interview for time, fine: cut a question and its answer, don’t distort the answers by cutting out the middle of them, and the parts which just happen to be critical of—SURPRISE!—Hillary Clinton. If PBS does this, it is also ethically obligated to tell viewers that it has cut her answers, and where they can find what she really said. It didn’t do this.

It is absolutely unethical to distort the answer to a question in an interview by redacting it like that, and the fact that the whole interview is available intact on another medium—one could only find Stein’s unedited answers on Facebook if one knew where to look even as one was being deceived on TV—is no defense, and no more of one more than if the unmanipulated interview could be found buried under a rock with a map to it available online.

I apologize for the high dudgeon, but how dare PBS do this? How dare a publicly funded news source so blatantly play Pravda for the party in the White House? Continue reading →

Did You Know Hillary Confessed To Repeated, Intentional And Blatant Unethical Conduct As Secretary Of State? Because She Did…

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Confess

Now, to be fair, you may not have realized that Clinton made this unusually candid—for her—admission, because the statement was made in a phone interview with CNN, with a typically ignorant and incompetent interviewer (“THIS is CNN!”) who either doesn’t know the first thing about government ethics, or doesn’t care if Clinton complied with them. Moreover, virtually no mainstream media sources pointed out the significance of what Clinton said, because…well, read the last part of the last sentence.

Talking about the various news reports and new email content that indicated a disturbingly close relationship between Clinton’s Foundation interests—that is, raising money that assists the Clintons’ personal fortunes in various ways—and her State Department duties, which were supposed to occur completely free of such conflicts of interest, Hillary said, straight out…

“I know there’s a lot of smoke and there’s no fire.”

Bingo! Gotcha! DINGDINGDINGDINGDING!

And there we have it, Ladies and Gentlemen, a confession of official wrongdoing! For as an officer of the Executive Branch and a government employee, Clinton was subject to  Executive Order 12731 of October 17, 1990, “PRINCIPLES OF ETHICAL CONDUCT  FOR GOVERNMENT OFFICERS AND EMPLOYEES,” as are all such officers and employees today. That order, which has the force of law, as well as the order it amended, states very clearly, in black and white, that.. Continue reading →

New Media Ethics Rule For The Presidential Campaign…

/ Jack Marshall / 25 Comments

RedSmears

This kind of smear (from Salon)…

Washington man stabs kissing interracial couple, cites Donald Trump when arrested

…has got to stop.

It doesn’t matter which candidate some despicable, hateful wacko “cites.” It’s not news, it means nothing, and it proves nothing positively or negatively about the individual so mentioned, praised, or referenced. Any news source that highlights it to suggest otherwise is playing despicable cognitive dissonance games, and is devoid of fairness and honesty.

Of course, this is Salon. But it is not alone. Continue reading →

KABOOM! The Washington Post Really Lets A Reporter Publish A Story Saying That Bill Clinton “Allegedly” Cheated On His Wife.

/ Jack Marshall / 45 Comments

HeadExplode3

Unbelievable.

UNBELIEVABLE!

Here is the quote, from today’s Washington Post Magazine. I’m looking at it right now, wiping pieces of my brain and skull off the pages. (And the Marshall household just cancelled its subscription to the Post, after 35 years):

In a puff piece by by reporter Neely Tucker called From Wild Bill to Supportive Spouse: Can Clinton stick to his script?, we see this, in reference to poor, misunderstood, underappreciated Bill Clinton:

“He allegedly cheated on his wife, repeatedly, even in the Oval Office, and with a young woman who wasn’t that much older than their daughter.”

“Allegedly”?

“Allegedly”??

“Allegedly”???

“Allegedly” means claimed but unproven. The claims of Paul Jones, Kathleen Willey, and Juanita Broaddrick of, respectively, sexual harassment, sexual  assault and rape are indeed unproven and alleged only. Not the affair with Lewinsky, however. Clinton admitted it. Lewinsky confirmed it. An investigation documented it in nauseating detail. Clinton refers to it in his autobiography. There is DNA evidence, for God’s sake!

Using “allegedly” at this stage has no possible effect but to cast unwarranted doubts on the truth. What else can it be but a dishonest effort to try to mitigate the undeniable sleaziness of Bill Clinton, and the hypocrisy of his wife, who has enabled and facilitated his sexual compulsions throughout his political career, all while posing as a feminist champion? There are many young voters who are both ignorant and naive, who Clinton needs to have going to the polls for her. Such outrageous dishonesty by the Post can only be designed to make them disregard the ugly facts about Clinton’s despicable use and abuse of Lewinsky as just typical right wing rumors.

Post editors allowed this. They allowed it! When is the use of “alleged” the same as a lie?

This is.

Incredibly, the damning phrase links to a column by the Post’s own Factchecker, in which he describes the Lewinsky affair as documented ( along with FIVE others!)

The  corruption of American journalism is complete. Democracy has no chance, when journalists feel they can lie and deceive to make certain that their candidates win and their candidates prevail. All I can do is cancel this once-great newspaper that cannot be trusted to tell the truth about anything at this point. That’s not nearly enough.

Of course, this smoking gun proof of journalism’s betrayal of the public trust comes to us through the efforts of Bill and Hillary Clinton, and the party they have thoroughly corrupted.

Of course.

 

The Clinton Foundation’s Confession, (or) “Is The Public Really As Stupid As The Clintons Think It Is?”

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

stupidity1

Bill Clinton said last week that the Clinton Foundation would no longer accept foreign or corporate money and also that he would resign from its board should Hillary Clinton win the Presidency.

The logic of this, one assumes, is to allay any fears that President Hillary Clinton would allow access and influence to be purchased by foreign powers by contributing to a foundation that exists substantially to line the pockets of the three and to provide a foundation...but the other kind, not the non-profit kind—for Clinton power-brokering, career advancement and mutual back scratching.

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Allow me to pause for a brief expansion on that…

The New York Times, which really is good at telling the truth while deceiving its readers anyway, describes the Clinton Foundation as working “globally to combat AIDS/H.I.V., malaria, childhood obesity and climate change, and promotes women’s rights and other causes.” This is true, but it is also lying by omission, because it intentionally omits the shady side of the story. Here is how Jonathan Chait, as full-throated a Clinton booster as you can find in the pundit ranks, describes the Foundation:

“The purpose of the Clinton Foundation is to leverage Clinton fame into charitable donations. That purpose has important positive effects — shaking loose donations for AIDS prevention and training African farmers and other worthy causes. But it also has the unavoidable side effect of giving rich people a way to curry favor with a powerful elected official.”

Exactly. Perfectly stated, except that “giving rich people a way to curry favor with a powerful elected official” is a euphemism for “quid pro quo,” or better yet, bribery. It is unethical, and also illegal if you can prove it, which is generally hard to do, especially when the “contributions” are designated for worthy causes, though much of them somehow end up paying for the Clintons’ regal lifestyle. Chait’s uncritical assessment of this per se corruption is stated thusly:

“There’s a reason the term politician is synonymous with lying, calculation, and ambition — these are common qualities for politicians. The Clintons are common politicians, motivated in general by a desire to implement policy changes they think will make the world a better place, but not immune to trimming and getting rich in the process. None of their behavior is disqualifying, given the number of elected officials, presidents included, who have done the same”

Translation: “Everybody does it, but the Clintons are just better at doing it and getting rich in the process. Stop bitching.”

That Chait says that behaving this way isn’t disqualifying explains everything, including why the metastasizing  ethics rot in our government will slowly but surely result in the predatory elected official conduct common in Africa if the public doesn’t insist that it is disqualifying, and start recognizing ethically-hollow opinion makers like Chait for what they are…enablers and courtiers.

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Parenthetical discourse over; thank-you for your attention. Continue reading →