Joe Biden

I Just Can’t Give Trump a “Julie Principle” Pass When He Says Things Like This…

/ Jack Marshall / 25 Comments

“For Fox executives only, take Jessica Tarlov off the air. She is, from her voice, to her lies, and everything else about her, one of the worst ‘personalities’ on television, a real loser! People cannot stand watching her.”

….quoth the President in a Truth Social post two days ago. Tarlov is one of the rotating progressive Democrat co-hosts on Fox News’ talk show “The Five” and routinely does what she was hired to do, which is to be the house contrarian on a biased news channel, like Scott Jennings on CNN.

It’s a lonely and crummy job, but somebody’s got to do it. Jennings does it much better, but 1) he’s smart, articulate, and usually has the right side to defend, 2) the wokies and Axis agents on the panels with him are hardly the best and the brightest, and 3) Tarlov isn’t the worst of Fox’s hired Lefties, and I’d rank her as better than Juan Williams, the thankfully departed long-time holder of that role on Fox. Faint praise, I know.

But Ethics Alarms correctly slammed the Biden White House when it dishonestly attacked Greg Gutfield of “The Five” in 2023, so I shouldn’t use The Julie Principle to give President Trump a pass now. Presidents should only carefully criticize journalists and pundits by name if at all, and Trump doesn’t do anything carefully. It is punching down by definition; it looks petty, it makes him look thin-skinned and weak, and worst of all, it hands his principle-free and shameless critics an opportunity to say he’s pro-censorship.

This has been true for years, and yet Trump has a flat learning curve. It’s like a man who keeps smashing his head against a wall without figuring out that it’s not a good idea.

The Tarlov nonsense is even worse that that, in fact. After Trump has “demanded” (he can’t demand, because its none of his business) that Fox fire someone like Tarlov, he’s given that individual immunity from getting dismissed no matter what she does. Fox News has to keep Tarlov or look like Trump is running the network. Fox News is too much of a Trump and MAGA lackey already.

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Comment of the Day: “Inauguration Prelude Ethics Round-Up, 1/18/25”

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

I woke up this morning to a much-appreciated gift from Steve-O-in-NJ, a well-researched, n excellent Inauguration Day prelude post that touches on several issues, but mostly the political history of outgoing POTUS Biden. In that sense, it is also a Comment of the Day on the final installment of the EA inquiry on The Worst President Ever, to which Steve-O already contributed an epic supplement.

Two notes before I hand the metaphorical floor over to Steve: 1) How I love it when there is a Comment of the Day covering ground that I was expecting to have to cover myself on a Sunday morning! 2) I am grateful to AM Golden for asking in a comment about whether Trump has any company as a “businessman,” which I responded to last night and that seems to have prompted Steve’s opus. The quick answer is that nobody on the list of 45 men could be called a businessman/entrepreneur/mogul except Trump. As Steve points out, Harry Truman had a modest haberdashery store [above] before going into politics, but for him to be compared to Trump as a businessman he would have had to own Brooks Brothers and Men’s Warehouse. 3)The survey of Presidential occupations and those of their fathers was a large section of my honors thesis, which could have been called “How to Become President of the United States.” In summarizing the facts, Steve omitted #17, Andrew Johnson, who may have the most astounding background story of all. Johnson is usually referred to as a tailor, but his pre-White House occupation could be arguably called “slave,” as he was an indentured servant who was literally owned until he ran away. It was a cruel twist of fate that his public image, such that he has one at all, is dominated by his disastrous tenure as President when his life story is perhaps the most amazing rise to power in in our history. He also shares with #47 an amazing comeback, being elected to the U.S. Senate as the final act in his public career.

Here is Steve-O-in NJ’s Comment of the Day on the post,“Inauguration Prelude Ethics Round-Up, 1/18/25” :

***

I actually was looking up how many presidents have been exclusively politicians their entire professional lives, and the number is comparatively few. Most of them have had at least some other profession before entering the world of politics.

Most (31) have been in the military in some capacity at some point, and 12 (Washington, Jackson, Harrison, Taylor, Pierce, Johnson, Grant, Hayes, Garfield, Arthur, Benjamin Harrison, and of course Eisenhower) have been generals, albeit some “in name only.” Many were lawyers, judges, or bureaucrats, but there were also such diverse jobs as mining engineer, farmer, haberdasher, land surveyor, actor, teacher, executive, and publisher. Arguably Jefferson and Teddy Roosevelt might qualify as polymaths, since both could do multiple things well.

Pure politicians, the Presidents who spent their entire professional lives or close to it in elective office, have been relatively few. FDR almost was, but his political career was derailed for a time by the illness that left him wheelchair-bound. LBJ comes close, since he taught only briefly before getting into politics, and left only briefly to serve in the Navy in WW2. JFK definitely was, since he came out of the Navy, spent something like a year and a half as a “special correspondent” for Hearst Newspapers, then ran for the House and never looked back. Bill Clinton has often been described as never having a “real job” outside of politics.

Biden was also pretty much purely a politician. He came out of law school, spent about a year in private practice, then possibly less than a year as a public defender (the history is murky, and he only “rediscovered” it when he needed social justice creds in 2020) before he ran for his first office and never looked back until the four years between being Obama’s vice president and running himself, during which he “wrote” a memoir and was an “honorary professor” at the University of Pennsylvania.

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NO, Frank Bruni, Joe Biden Is NOT a “Good Man” and the Fact That You Would Say That Makes Me Wonder If You Know What Good Is

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

“…And that’s the millionth reason I’m fervently hoping and desperately praying that Harris prevails. I believe Biden to be a good man who has done much good for us…”

—Long-time progressive NYT pundit Frank Bruni in one of the “Harris must win, Trump is terrible” stories and columns in the Times today.

I counted 11 of the latter. Twelve. Nah, there’s no mainstream media bias! Whatever would make you think that?

Bruni has been a member of the Times staff and editorial board for 25 years. Res ipsa loquitur. The Times has at least one (they have, in truth, many) columnist who had a regular platform to spread his biases and misconceptions, and he thinks (or says he thinks) Joe Biden is a good man. Right. There are few politicians of such longevity who have ever left such an unambiguous record of not being a good man, woman, or public servant. Since I’m not writing a book, I’ll just list the bits of Joe’s biography that stick out for me at the moment:

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Unethical Quote of the Week: President Joe Biden

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

“Some things are more important than staying in power.”

—-President Biden at the U.N., stumbling through his speech on world affairs even with the assistance of his teleprompter.

Even though our President is demented, deluded, habitually dishonest and without shame, I am still astounded that he would have the gall to say that at the United Nations. I guess he thinks the delegates are as stupid and gullible as his party evidently thinks the U.S. public is.

No, the context of that head-exploding statement doesn’t make it less nauseating:

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Yes Indeed, Most Presidents Have Had Emotional, Mental or Serious Physical Problems, But That Doesn’t Make Joe Biden Fit to Be One

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

I’ve been holding on to this post for a while now, waiting for Presidents Day. An old “Psychology Today” article has been dredged up lately by various pundits desperately seeking a way to deny what is now undeniable. President Biden is in the throes of serious mental decline, and allowing him to run again, at an advanced age and when his memory, stamina, and cognitive health are rapidly receding into the fog, is irresponsible—which doesn’t mean that the Axis won’t do it anyway. The argument being mounted to justify such a desperate and stupid course is a version of the #1 rationalization on the list, “Everybody does it!” Joe’s problems are no big deal, you see, because, as Dr. Guy Winch wrote in 2016: “a study by Jonathan Davidson of the Duke University Medical Center and colleagues, who reviewed biographical sources for the first 37 presidents (1776-1974), half of those men had been afflicted by mental illness—and 27% met those criteria while in office, something that could have clearly affected their ability to perform their jobs.”

Whew! Well, that’s a relief!

I hadn’t seen the study, but it was heartwarming, since its findings echoed those of my American Government honors thesis, now deep in the stacks of Widener Library. I hypothesized that being outside the norm emotionally, mentally and physically was among the factors that selected out the extraordinary individuals who become Presidents of the United States. Leaders, to give an even shorter version, are not normal by definition.

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Oh, I Can’t Let THIS Pass: David Brooks Abuses A Baseball Metaphor To Lie About Joe Biden

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

I read this yesterday, decided that it was a double Julie Principle abomination (“Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly, Biden’s demented, the Times gotta lie…“) and too outrageous to be worth even my pathetic time, and then it kept ticking away in my skull like a home-made bomb until I couldn’t stand it any more.

New York Times Stockholm Syndrome columnist David Brooks, once a conservative with intellectual pretensions, not just another Times progressive toady, actually wrote…

“The Republicans who portray [Biden] as a doddering old man based on highly selective YouTube clips are wrong. In my interviews with him, he’s like a pitcher who used to throw 94 miles an hour who now throws 87. He is clearly still an effective pitcher. People who work with him allow that he does tire more easily, but they say that he is very much the dynamic force driving this administration. In fact, I’ve noticed some improvements in his communication style as he’s aged. He used to try to cram every fact in the known universe into every answer; now he’s more disciplined. When he’s describing some national problem, he is more crisp and focused than he used to be, clearer on what is the essential point here — more confidence-inspiring, not less….”

I’m pretty sure I’ve been watching Joe Biden longer than David Brooks has, and I’m dead certain I know more about baseball than he does, so I must offer this correction. If you must compare Biden to a pitcher, it would not be one who once had a 94 mph fastball (actually, today that’s not very impressive, as most successful pitchers throw at least 96 or so), but rather a journeyman hurler who at his peak could throw maybe 86 or 87 at best, and who has bounced around from team to team as an innings-eating mop-up man for an inexplicably long time, never being more than the guy who barely makes the last slot on the squad out of Spring Training, never given a start in a big game or brought on in relief in a “high leverage situation,” and who holds on to a job by being an upbeat presence in the clubhouse, loyal to his managers, and encouraging to younger, more talented pitchers coming up. There is no baseball analogy to Biden after that, because when pitchers obviously decline in their abilities and those abilities were nothing to get them on a Wheaties box in the first place, they get cut. If they are lucky, maybe they get a job as a pitching coach on a minor league team in Altoona.

[I should mention that the geezer making that horrible pitch in the GIF above is the great Nolan Ryan.]

Almost no pitchers who weren’t Hall of Fame level at their peaks can survive if they lose 7 miles an hour off their fastballs. As it happens, the Boston Red Sox this season learned this the hard way. Corey Kluber was a two-time Cy Young winner, one of the best pitchers in the game, when he threw 93 miles an hour. Then little by little he lost it, had arm trouble, and by last year barely managed a .500 record with a team that played winning ball, the Tampa Bay Rays. They wisely didn’t re-sign him, but the Red Sox did, though Kluber’s best fastball was then about 87. He got clobbered, ending the season with an earned run average over 7, which is the level of a batting practice pitcher.

But Kluber was at least a great pitcher once. Nobody ever thought Joe Biden was a great U.S. Senator. I was writing about what an obvious dummy he was decades ago, and I was far from the only one. I think it was about 2018 when I noticed that what little glint of intelligence that had been in Joe’s eye had vanished, along with his energy level and orientation. I was stunned that he ran for President, stunned that his wife and family allowed him to do it, and I would have been stunned that the Democratic Party nominated him except by that time I realized that it had become so Machiavellian that it would have nominated—oh, pick any celebrity moron—if it calculated that he would attract more votes than the awful group of 2020 election contenders.

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Sometimes Republicans Really DO “Pounce,” Or Stop Making Me Defend Joe Biden!

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Speaking in Maryland, President Biden fumbled while extolling Maryland’s first black governor’s days playing wide receiver on the Johns Hopkins football team.

“You got a hell of a new governor in Wes Moore. He’s the real deal and the boy looks like he can still play,” Biden said. “He’s got some guns on him!”

Obviously the President was showing his racist streak, right? After all, calling a black man “boy” is a racist slur. Watch “In the Heat of the Night.” Thus conservative websites, blogs, pundits and news sources have feigned horror, and produced condemnations of Joe’s words–racist dog whistles!—worthy of Charles M. Blow or Joy Reid.

Oh, I get it, I do. This is a genuine IIPTDXTTNMIAFB (Ethics Alarms initials for “Imagine if President Trump did X that the news media is accepting from Biden.”) if there ever was one. The news media’s double standards in regard to Trump and Biden are ridiculous: Donald Trump would be called racist if he referred to a black 7-year-old as a “boy.” In all matters, actions, words and policies, Trump is presumed to have a malign motive, because he’s baaaaaad. Joe, in stark contrast, is always given the benefit of the doubt because he is obviously a nice guy who has never had a mean thought in his life. (He’s not a nice guy, but never mind; I assume you know that.) The conservative and Republican pouncers are just trying to inject some equity into the “gotcha!” wars. “Sauce for the goose” and all that.

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Wait, WHAT? Joe Biden’s Daughter Wrote That Her Father Showered With Her?

/ Jack Marshall / 50 Comments

Ew.

But more importantly, since this information was published on line more than a year ago, why are we only hearing about it now?

Let’s back up, shall we? The matter came to the media’s attention after Federal agents in New York raided two homes, one in New York City and one in suburban Westchester County, targeting members of Project Veritas, James O’Keefe’s shady guerilla journalism group. The investigation is being handled by FBI agents and federal prosecutors in Manhattan who work on public corruption matters, and relates to the theft of Ashley Biden’s diary in 2020. Project Veritas did not publish her diary, but dozens of handwritten pages from it were posted on the National File on Oct. 24, 2020, a little more than a week before the Presidential election.

I never heard about this, did you? The mainstream media embargoed the story—they were already occupied trying to make sure the public thought Hunter Biden’s laptop revelations were “Russian disinformation,” and even conservative media ducked diary and its revelations. Entries in the diary include Biden’s daughter writing that she believes she was sexually molested as a child; that she shared “probably not appropriate” showers with her father, [Probably???], her struggle with drug abuse and her troubled marriage and multiple affairs, plus entries showing the Biden family’s fears of scandals involving her brother and others that show a deep resentment for her father. 

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Inauguration Day Ethics Warm-Up, 1/20/2021: Welcome And Good Luck, President Biden!

/ Jack Marshall / 70 Comments

Biden P

1. Too late! Fox News fired Chris Stirewalt yesterday. He is the veteran politics editor who was the prime onscreen face of the supposedly conservative-tilting network’s election night projections that Joseph Biden . had defeated President Trump in Arizona. Arnon Mishkin, a long-time Democratic Party pollster, was Fox News decision desk chief for the 2020 presidential election. He called the state of Arizona and its 11 electoral votes for Joe Biden at 11:20 p.m. Eastern time on election night, not long after the polls closed. Fox news anchor Bill Hemmer, standing at the Fox News election map, expressed surprise. “What is happening here? Why is Arizona blue?” he asked. “Did we just call it? Did we just make a call in Arizona?”

Stirewalt quickly came onscreen to defend the network’s decision, explaining that vote margins were too great in Arizona for the Republican candidate to overcome. He assured viewers that “We’re going to be careful, cautious, and earnest,” adding that “Arizona is doing just what we expected it to do and we remain serene and pristine. He dismissed voter fraud claims, “Lawsuits, schmawsuits — we haven’t seen any evidence yet that there’s anything wrong.” Mishkin also came on camera later to defend the call. I found him supercilious and obnoxious.

Reflecting on the decision to fire Stirewalt, the usual media suspects are pointing out that in the end, Fox’s call was correct. That’s pure moral luck. Fox News was the first news outlet to call Arizona for Biden, anmd when your brand is the news network that balances the hard progressive, Democratic, anti-Trump bias of 95% of the news media, that’s a stupid unforced error. Stirewalt has to be aware of the company’s brand and best interests. Why jump the gun to call a state Trump probably needed to win? Furthermore, Stirewalt’s “Arizona is doing just what we expected it to do” sounded like spin, because it was. The polls, including Fox’s, had already been proven wildly off, and the voting “expectations” were based on polling.

It would not have cost Fox anything to wait to call Arizona, especially since networks declaring winners in states is subjective, unnecessary, and arguably manipulative. Regular Fox viewers were alienated, and this was predictable. President Trump denounced the networkand urged supporters to watch Newsmax and One America News instead. He should not have done that, but it was also predictable. Stirewalt was substantially responsible for losing Fox News viewers and revenue, and accomplished nothing.

He deserved to be fired. I would have fired him too.

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Unethical Tweet Of The Month—But Funny!: The Biden Transition Team

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

Biden tw

Huh.

What am I missing here? Biden promised last week,

Biden Promise

Now, I could be wrong, but when you give “priority” to some groups of Americans over others, that doesn’t seem like being a President “for” all Americans to me. That sounds like bias, favoritism, and discrimination.

I know: objecting to white, male second class citizenship makes you a sexist white supremacist, but I just can’t reconcile these two tweets. Can you?

All facetiousness aside, I think this is hilarious. The Democrats don’t even think they have to try to make sense, be consistent or not blatantly lie. The arrogance is magnificent. They really think everyone is stupid. They need to read more Greek tragedy. Hubris kills, and the joke will very likely be on them.