Here’s another one: I have yet to ban a commenter for doing no more than saying the mainstream media isn’t flamingly, ostentatiously, democratically and destructively biased in favor of progressives and Democrats, but the day is coming, and it’s coming fast. Ridiculous smoking guns like this one, from the New York Times, will seal the deal. The Times’ apparent standard, based on the story: If Harris says something happened with no evidence to back it up, it’s true. If Donald Trump questions the claim, he’s lying.
Got it. The sickening display of bias reminds me of the line circulating on Glenn Reynolds’ Instapundit lately: “No matter how much you hate the mainstream media, it’s not enough.”
Back in August, Ethics Alarms noted that it was becoming increasingly likely that Kamala Harris’s oft-repeated claim that she worked at McDonald’s like the typical middle-class kid she claims to have been was, like so many other Harris claims, a load of hooey. I wrote in part,
In a post three days ago, Ethics Alarms examined Christopher Rufo’s claim that Kamala Harris engaged in plagiarism in her first book, and concluded, based on the New York Times reportage, that unlike, for example, the substantial plagiarism indulged in by ex-Harvard president Claudine Gay, prompting her exit, Harris’s uncredited lifting and copying (in a book written with a co-writer, or maybe not written by Harris at all) was careless and accidental rather than deliberate.
Now another metaphorical shoe has dropped.
The Times claimed to show plagiarism expert Jonathan Bailey the passages Rufo cited as plagiarized. It reported that he ruled that the material taken without attribution “were not serious, given the size of the document.” Now Bailey writes that he was unaware of a full dossier with additional allegations.” That means that the Times gave readers the impression that he had seen all of the questionable sections when he had not.
Now that he has reviewed everything, Bailey’s conclusion is a bit different. He writes that he now believes that the “case is more serious than I commented to the New York Times.” And with that, we are thrust into a sick version of Johnny Carson’s launching pad quiz show, “Who Do You Trust?” I will not leave you in any unnecessary suspense : the answer is “Nobody.”
“European explorers ushered in a wave of devastation, violence, stealing land, and widespread disease.”
—Kamala Harris in 2021, pandering to the “America is a blight on the Earth and the world would have been better without it” bloc in the Democratic Party in a Columbus Day address.
Boy, what an idiot.
But to be fair to Kamala, I’m sure she would now say that she loves Columbus, and grew up in a middle class neighborhood.
What the European explorers ushered in was discovery, freedom from religious oppression, innovation, progress, and let’s just to cut to the chase, civilization. Had there been no United States, Harris and her relatives would probably be grease spots or serving as Nazi slaves today. But never mind, why should a basic comprehension of history, science and anthropology get it the way of a candidate for President of the United States vilifying the nation she aspires to lead? When does her campaign start handing out the “Make America Primitive Again” caps?
“At the end of 1492 most men in Western Europe felt exceedingly gloomy about the future. Christian civilization appeared to be shrinking in area and dividing into hostile units as its spherecontracted. For over a century there had been no important advance in natural science and registration in the universities dwindled as the instruction they offered became increasingly jejune and lifeless. Institutions were decaying, well-meaning people were growing cynical or desperate, and many intelligent men, for want of something betterto do, were endeavoring to escape the present through studying the pagan past. . . .Yet, even as the chroniclers of Nuremberg were correcting their proofs from Koberger’s press, a Spanish caravel named Nina scudded before a winter gale into Lisbon with news of a discovery that was to give old Europe another chance. In a few years we find the mental picture completely changed. Strong monarchs are stamping out privy conspiracy and rebellion; the Church, purged and chastened bythe Protestant Reformation, puts her house in order; new ideas flare up throughout Italy, France, Germany and the northern nations; faith in God revives and the human spirit is renewed. The change is complete and startling: A new envisagement of the world has begun, and men are no longer sighing after the imaginary golden age that lay in the distant past, but speculating as to the golden age that might possibly lie in the oncoming future.
“Christopher Columbus belonged to an age that was past, yet he became the sign and symbol of this new age of hope, glory and accomplishment. His medieval faith impelled him to a modern solution: Expansion.”
Morison’s book is superb, and I recommend it highly as an antidote to the simplistic anti-occidental prejudice of today…”
By the established standards of the news media and the rest of the Axis of Unethical Conduct, it should be, don’t you think? But apparently not.
Huh.
A throbbing example of wildly varying standards in the media depending on whether they are covering Donald Trump or Kamala Harris just raised its warty head. Did you see that Doug Emhoff, Kamala Harris’s husband who was largely invisible until she pushed President Biden off the Democratic ticket, admitted he had an adulterous affair with his nanny and got her pregnant, leading to his divorce? That happened in August, after the slimy Daily Mail broke the scandal and Emhoff came clean to CNN. I missed it entirely, which means that, for example, the New York Times either ignored it or soft-peddled it because, well, you know. But the story burst on the social media scene this week after ex-Obama paid liar Jen Psaki, now a full-time Axis propagandist at MSNBC, interviewed Emhoff and gushed that he had “reshaped the perception of masculinity.” “Has that been an evolution for you and do you think that’s part of the role you might play as first gentleman?” Psaki continued. Yecchh. That was nauseating enough (no Vice-President’s spouse has the power, visibility or status to “reshape” anything), but Emhoff’s answer exploded heads from coast to coast.
Kamala Harris’s tendency to answer questions with circular, redundant nonsense, known around Ethics Alarms as “Authentic Frontier Gibberish” in honor of “Blazing Saddles'” Gabby Johnson, was mostly left alone during the last four years due to the application of the “Julie Principle.” The Julie Principle comes into play when an undesirable or annoying characteristic or behavior pattern in a person or organization appears to be hard-wired and part of their essence. In judging such a person or entity, it is useful to keep the lyrics of Julie’s song from “Show Boat” (“Can’t Help Lovin’ That Man O’ Mine,” lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein Jr., music by Jerome Kern) firmly in mind, when she sings…Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly…I’ve gotta love that man til I die…Can’t help lovin’ that man of mine! To constantly harp on something the individual can’t change ultimately becomes pointless and cruel, and hence unethical.
When one is a major party’s nominee for President, however, Julie Principle privileges must be suspended. When one is a nominee for President who was spared the vetting, competitive nomination process, debates and primaries every other major party nominee has been required to conquer for almost 200 years, Julie Principle privileges really have to be suspended. And when your strategy is to try to avoid as many unscripted, competent and unbiased interviews as possible before election day so voters will know as little as possible about you, Julie Principle privileges really, really, really have to be suspended.
Thus we must ponder how Harris responded to a question at a National Association of Black Journalists panel discussion yesterday, before an audience strongly inclined to support her. Moderator Tanya Mosley of Philadelphia radio station WHYY asked the elevated Veep where she draws “the line between” Israel’s “aggression and defense” in the Israel-Hamas war.
Harris began by saying there was “a lot to unpack” in the question (Translation:“Huminahumina…”) then said that the Jewish state “has a right to defend itself.” Since Mosley was obviously asking how Harris squares that mantra with her demand that there be an “immediate and permanent cease fire,” she pressed Harris for a real answer. And the real answer was…
“No, no, let me finish! It’s important to put it in context, which is what I’m doing, and I’ll get to that. There must be stability and peace in that region, in as much as what we do in our goal is to ensure that Israelis have security, and Palestinians in equal measure have security, have self-determination, and dignity. That there be an ability to have security in the region, for all concerned, in a way that we create stability, and—let us all also recognize—in a way that ensures that Iran is not empowered in this whole scenario in terms of the peace and stability in the region.”
Oh.
This is called “faking it,” and not very well at that.
Without intense preparation, without biased and complicit moderators helping her along, without being able to shift focus to an adversary, this is what Kamala Harris is. Here we have just a ten minute interview featuring soft-ball questions from a friendly Philidelphia journalist, and the result is evasiveness, gibberish and vacuous non-answers.
Some highlights:
Asked about the ephemeral “opportunity economy,” Harris says,
“For example, thinking about developing and creating an opportunity economy where it’s about investing in areas that really need a lot of work and maybe focusing on, again, the aspirations and the dreams but also just recognizing that at this moment in time some of this stuff we could take for granted years ago, we can’t take for granted anymore.”
Oh. What????
Here’s Harris filibustering the basic and easy question, “Talk about bringing down prices and making life more affordable for people. What are one or two specific things you have in mind for that?”…
Well, I’ll start with this. I grew up a middle-class kid. My mother raised my sister and me. She worked very hard. She was able to finally save up enough money to buy our first house when I was a teenager. I grew up in a community of hardworking people. You know, construction workers and nurses and teachers. I try to explain to some people who might not have had the same experience, but a lot of people will relate to this.
You know, I grew up in a neighborhood of people who were really proud of their lawn, you know, and I was raised to believe and to know that all people deserve dignity and that we as Americans have a beautiful character. You know, we have ambitions and aspirations and dreams, but not everyone necessarily has access to the resources that can help them fuel those dreams and ambitions. So, when I talk about building an opportunity economy, it is very much with the mind of investing in the ambitions and aspirations and the incredible work ethic of the American people and creating opportunity for people, for example, to start a small business.
The only competent response to that babbling is to repeat the question as if Harris had a coughing fit or something, which the interviewer did not.
Here’s another Harris gem: “My focus is very much about what we need to do over the next 10-20 years to catch up to the 21st century around, again, capacity, but also challenges.”
Right. I do a lot of public speaking, and if I ever hear myself talking like that, I will check myself into the hospital on suspicion of suffering a stroke.
This is the candidate the Democratic Party believed was so superior to all other options that she was nominated by acclamation, without having to face any opposition at all. Here I would typically add, “Democracy!” but “Idiocracy!” seems more apt.
___________
Can anyone explain this? The WordPress AI bot was apparently completely confused by Harris’s blather and told me to tag this post “Harry Potter,” “Football” “Dreams” and “Fantasy.”
I told my freind that I bailed on the debate when the ABC Axis hacks didn’t factcheck Harris’s repeating the Big Lie about Trump praising the Charlottesville white supremacists. My freind, who is about as Trump-Deranged as one can get, argued that yes, it’s true that Trump didn’t mean that and that the insinuation that he did had been debunked repeatedly, even on CNN and by Snopes. But, she said, Harris accurately quoted Trump, so she was technically accurate.
I reminded my freind, a lawyer who should know better, that using a fact out of context to mislead is called “deceit,” and that deceit is a variety of lie. Her response: “Well, Trump speaks imprecisely, so it’s legitimate to call attention to that.” But, I said, calmly, that wasn’t Harris’s purpose in using the quote. To that, my friend replied, “Then Trump should have explained what he meant.”
“So,” I said, “your theory is that it was Trump’s job to factcheck Harris, while the moderators factchecked him! That seems fair…” She also told me that her extreme-Left daughter saw the debate and thought that the moderators were clearly trying to help Trump.
Wow.
All of this leads me to quote Ann Coulter,whom I have scrupulously ignored for years once it became clear that she is a performance artist who concocts her opinions in order to get the most headlines and the most campus speaking gigs, and has no integrity whatsoever. I have no idea what she really believes, and I certainly don’t care. Ann is, however, not stupid. She has also credibly (to some) posed as a Never Trump conservative, so I found her observations about the debate interesting, and, as they appear to dovetail with mine, astute:
Trump is Trump, a known quantity. His scattershot delivery isn’t going to shock anyone. If you already detest the man, your view was confirmed. But if you don’t hate him, Trump put a lot of points on the board, while Harris said nothing, and said it smugly.
The debate sure didn’t give undecided voters what they wanted from Harris. As has been widelyreported, they are waiting breathlessly for some hint of what shebelievesand what she would do as president. After the ABC debate, they’re still waiting. About all they learned is that Harris comes from a middle-class family…
But they know that life was better under Trump. And they know that Harris, like Clinton, is a nasty woman.
This is a short one, but not am easy one, because bias is so likely to be involved.
Althouse posted the [I almost wrote “horrifying,” but that would be biasing you]clip above that has “surfaced” from a podcast earlier this year. (Isn’t it fascinating that virtually no one was paying attention to Harris most of the time until she was suddenly anointed?).
Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day:
Is it fair to conclude that Harris is an idiot from that response?
Or can her supposed endorsement of astrology (which in my view is about like saying you worship the Greek gods) be excused as just typical politician pandering to a substantial voting block? Althouse links to a list of ten leaders who supposedly believed in astrology, a collection which I would take with about about a truckload of salt. The claim that Ronald Reagan “leaned on astrology for guidance” is particularly weak: he met with an astrologer once, and he indulged Nancy’s interest in the nonsense, as most loving spouses would.
One question that occurred to me as I looked at the list: what is the cut-off point before which it is fair to attribute an individual’s belief in astrology to the absence of scientific knowledge generally?
It’s just one poll, but it’s a New York Times poll, and if any left-leaning, biased polling result is likely to try to bury bad news for the Democrats, it’s this one. The New York Times/Siena national poll was released this morning, and showed Donald Trump starting to regain the edge he had before Joe Biden was forced out and the news media joined the Democrats in a “She Isn’t What She Is” campaign of excitement, joy, and virtually no substance whatsoever.
Trump now leads Kamala Harris nationally among likely voters by a 48–47 margin, and Trump hasn’t received as much as 48% at the ballot box yet, not in 2016 or 2020. Though Newsbuster’s analysis shows Harris getting over 80% positive press coverage in this period (for doing nothing but repeating boilerplate, non-substantive speeches off teleprompters and avoiding any one-on-one interviews with even friendly journalists), and though she has reversed many of her most radical positions (more on that in a second) while saying that “her values haven’t changed,” whatever that means, “the ruse isn’t working,” as Jeff Blehar says at the Never Trump National Review:
Of course, only a moron would seriously ask Alexa who to vote for, but then morons are the pivotal voting bloc in any Presidential election.
One would think Amazon would be a bit more careful not to show its hand like this. One would be wrong.
This is how you fix an election and then deny later that the election was “stolen”: Millions of little slants, nudges, lies, smears and bits of propaganda, none them by themselves significant enough to point to as corrupting, but collectively very powerful.
Watch Amazon say that this was just an inadvertent “mistake.” Sure it was. What are you, a conspiracy theorist? Big Tech would never be so openly biased and manipulative before an election! This was a glitch, that’s all. AI still has glitches! Be patient!
Hilariously, the best Alexa can come up with as a Harris “accomplishment” despite stating that there are so, so many is her DEI status. Perfect.
Ethics Alarms 