Lincoln Chafee

Ten Ethics Observations On The Democratic Candidates Debate

/ Jack Marshall / 54 Comments

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1. It was rigged, and rigged to boost Hillary. Anyone who believes that she just happened to end up dead center—you know, like Trump ended up dead center in the first GOP debate?—by luck of the draw will believe anything. There was Clinton, a lone woman surrounded by men, next to Sanders, the only man in the group that would make her appear young by comparison, with the two candidate, Sanders and O’Malley, who have refused to criticize her directly positioned as her wing men, and the one candidate, Jim Webb, most likely to draw blood as far away from Clinton as possible. (She never addressed him once during the debate.) I don’t know if the placement was the work of the DNC, which would be my guess, but it was blatant and unfair.

2. The debate didn’t actually start for almost a half hour after its scheduled time. Anderson Cooper was talking as fast as an auctioneer, and always trying to cut off candidates in their comments. That extra time would have helped. Speaking of delays and padding, why the Star Spangled Banner? This wasn’t a ball game.

3. Apparently CNN imported the audience from Bill Maher’s HBO show. The frenzied screaming, primarily for Clinton and Sanders and anytime anyone mentioned free stuff, bashed Republicans or gave tacit, coded approval of open borders, was juvenile and made the event feel like a partisan rally…. Continue reading →

Lincoln Chafee’s Batty Ethics Argument For The Metric System

/ Jack Marshall / 58 Comments

Lincoln_Chafee_official_portrait

Ugh. I can’t let this pass.

Yesterday I happened upon Lincoln Chafee on one of the Sunday shows, giving his elevator pitch for why he should be President. You may recall that Chafee, former Republican Senator and Governor of Rhode Island, turned independent after being defeated for re-election and now is following Bernie Sanders’ example, declaring himself a Democrat for the purpose of getting nominated. Chafee is another politician, like the Bush bothers and Hillary Clinton, who owes his initial political prominence to being related to a popular political figure rather than his own innate abilities. As he made obvious the more he spoke…

His two primary campaign positions were 1) “Wage peace”—whatever that means. This is right up there with John Lennon songs as serious policy discourse,  though I’m sure ISIS is fascinated by the concept, and 2) Adopt the metric system. Chafee borrowed this from the idea machine known as the Andrew Johnson administration, as Andy was the first President to officially acknowledge the benefits of the U.S. adopting the less eccentric measurement system used by Europe. I’m sure we all can agree that this is one of the most pressing issues facing the country today.

However, Chafee really got my attention, and sparked this post, when he attempted to combine his two prime objectives, which is no mean trick. I tried to find a transcript, video or a news report to document this, but so far I have failed: maybe everyone is trying to be nice. I swear I am not making this up, though I wish I were.

Chafee argued that the United States should adopt the Metric system because it invaded Iraq and didn’t find the weapons of mass destruction.

He really did. Continue reading →

Lincoln Chafee’s Unethical Attack on Curt Schilling

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Former G.O.P. Senator Lincoln Chafee, now running for Governor of Rhode Island as an Independent, did a despicable thing yesterday, and almost certainly has no idea why it was so wrong.

During a radio interview, Chafee criticized a deal state economic development officials approved with 38 Studios, a game development company owned by former Red Sox pitcher and World Series hero Curt Schilling. Chafee, who is not alone in his criticism of the loan, argued that too much taxpayer money is being entrusted to a company that has no proven track record. That’s a legitimate point. But to hammer home his point, Chafee decided to attack the character, career accomplishments, reputation and integrity of Schilling, a man he has never met…based on nothing at all. Continue reading →