Unethical Quote of the Month: Lawrence Martin

“The greater likelihood is that extremes of free speech will continue to be tolerated, creating a pathway for more Donald Trumps.”

—Washington, D.C.-based journalist Lawrence Martin, a Canadian journalist, bemoaning how the “elites” no longer control the limits of free speech because of the internet, and the results are disastrous in a column titled, Excessive free speech is a breeding ground for more Trumps.”

Even though this guy could be classified as a Canadian journalist, make no mistake: he is stating out loud how a large component, even a majority perhaps, feels about freedom of speech when it doesn’t stop with letting  journalists and their favorite politicians and glitterati say, state and opine about what ever they want in the public square. This is exactly what “saying the quiet part out loud” means.

For that, I suppose we should be thankful to Martin. I would say we should also be thankful that he almost exclusively writes for Canadian publications—you know, the ones that cover the Great Stupid infected country to the north that is seriously considering a law,  Bill C-63, that would establish life sentences for “speech crimes.” Oh, don’t worry: Martin feels that the bill goes “too far.” That’s nice. Based on his screed, I’m sure he favors lesser sentences. Continue reading

Just In Time For the 2024 Campaign, George Stephanopoulos Reminds Us Just How Partisan, Biased and Unethical He Is

Thanks, George!

George Stephanopoulos has been polluting broadcast journalism with the unconscionable conflicts of interest he brings to his prominent news show hosting roles for so long that a lot of viewers probably don’t realize just how outrageous it was for ABC to give such a huge megaphone to one of the most prominent Clinton henchmen. Yesterday on ABC’s “This Week,” George was interviewing Republican Representative for South Carolina’s 1st congressional district Nancy Mace. She’s a Trump supporter, so George felt a cheap shot was justified. Though she was on his show to talk about the election, Stephanopoulos blindsided her by referencing Mace’s past rape, and using it against her. To her credit, Mace called his tactic out immediately:

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Another “Nah, There’s No Mainstream Media Bias!” Smoking Gun: Trying to Pretend That Another Murder by an Illegal Immigrant Isn’t Blood on Biden’s Hands

On today’s CNN’s “AC360,” host Anderson Cooper described the “horrifying” details of student Laken Hope Riley’s murder on the University of Georgia campus last week, then quickly pivoted to spinning that “the revelation the suspect was in this country unlawfully” had caused the murder to be “politicized.” Earlier, CNN’s Jake Tapper similarly adopted the “Republicans pounce!” tactic, saying “They’re seizing on this as an example of Biden’s failure to protect the American people and secure the border.”

Damn right, because that’s what it is. This death should be politicized: it’s Willie Horton all over again, except that Biden and the open-borders Democrats didn’t just goof by releasing one dangerous criminal to prey on the public, they have released many, and are releasing many more. Trump on Truth Social said the obvious, that Riley’s murder should’ve ‘never happened.’” Of course it should never have happened. Illegal immigrants shouldn’t be allowed to roam free, and this one had already been arrested more than once.

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Forget “Nah, There’s No Mainstream Media Bias!” The Proper Reaction Should Be “What the Hell Is the Matter With You Hacks?”

The furious wagon-circling by left-biased journalists (or “journalists,” for short) in response to the DOJ Special Counsel’s stunning “Look! The Emperor has no clothes!” declaration in his report is another smoking gun in the “controversy” over whether Donald Trump was as right as he has ever been to call the media “enemies of the people.” It might even be the smokiest gun of all—more damning than the news media’s blatant cheer-leading for Barack Obama’s candidacy and destructive Presidency, more damning than its Black Lives Matter pandering during the BLM riots and its fearmongering during the pandemic, even more damning, perhaps, than its successful efforts to hide the evidence of Hunter Biden’s laptop until Donald Trump was safely defeated.

Confirmation bias and willful blindness still have their limits. How can any American with two brain cells to rub together observe the shameless gaslighting compiled in the video above and not be offended, disgusted, and angry?

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Popcorn-Popping Friday Forum!

The theme today is going to be the fun of watching Democrats, the news media, and your Trump-Deranged friends (and mine) freak out, spin themselves dizzy, and go whataboutism bat-crazy after yesterday’s one-two punch combination to Joe Biden’s hopes of staying in the White House. Almost lost in the stunning indictment of Biden’s mental state and the prospect of a genuine and justified invocation of the 25th Amendment’s disability clause was the fact that the report probably doomed the prosecution of Trump for mishandling classified documents.

I almost dedicated this installment of the Friday Open Forum to “The Simpsons'” Nelson Muntz (“Ha ha!”) I have no sympathy for Biden’s enablers, allies, paid liars, puppeteers, party or family. None. Zilch. They deserve to be mocked mercilessly, as does everyone who voted for a President who was so obviously in the twilight of senility at least as far back as 2019.

The assessment of Biden’s DOJ’s special counsel and Biden’s disastrous public address trying to debunk it arrived late enough yesterday that reeling pundits had an excuse not to write about their humiliation immediately, but Paul Krugman, the NYT’s shamelessly biased Nobel Prize-winning hack, dived right in:

“When the news broke about the special counsel’s hit job — his snide, unwarranted, obviously politically motivated slurs about President Biden’s memory — I found myself thinking about my mother. What year did she die? It turned out that I didn’t know offhand; I knew that it was after I moved from Princeton to CUNY, because I was regularly commuting out to New Jersey to see her, but before the pandemic. I actually had to look into my records to confirm that she died in 2017.

I’ll bet that many readers are similarly vague about the dates of major life events. You remember the circumstances, but not necessarily the precise year. And whatever you think of me, I’m pretty sure I don’t write or sound like an old man. The idea that Biden’s difficulty in pinning down the year of his son’s death shows his incapacity — in the middle of the Gaza crisis! — is disgusting.

As it happens, I had an hour-long off-the-record meeting with Biden in August. I can’t talk about the content, but I can assure you that he’s perfectly lucid, with a good grasp of events. And outside that personal experience, on several occasions when I thought he was making a serious misjudgment — like his handling of the debt ceiling crisis — he was right and I was wrong.

And my God, consider his opponent….

Glorious.

You can write about any ethics issue you want, as always. But pop that popcorn….

The Deceitful January Jobs Report

It seems increasingly apparent that the Democrats and Joe Biden’s election strategy, besides trying to convince the public that Donald Trump is the spawn of Hitler and Satan, is to lie, deceive and gaslight voters into believing that down is up, bad is good, and that Biden has done a wonderful job even though by all visible markers his administration has been a disastrous failure.

In the latest example, the January jobs report was hailed by Joe and his minions as more proof that the economy was not just good, but spectacular. Naturally, the news media carried the message. “January Jobs Report Was a Blowout. Disregard the Seasonal Noise” proclaimed Barrons. NPR, our Democratic Party mouthpiece, crowed, “The U.S. created an extraordinary number of jobs in January. Here’s a deeper look.” “U.S. employment soars by 353,000, stunning Wall Street,” said an obviously stunned MarketWatch. “Another shockingly good jobs report shows America’s economy is booming” said CNN. The New York Times joined the parade, as expected: “Blockbuster Jobs Report Backs Up Fed’s Patience as It Waits to Cut Rates.” NBC News was positively giddy: “The great American jobs machine keeps revving in an election year.”

My son, an auto mechanic who is, as far as I can tell, completely apolitical, had just recently conveyed a completely different picture. He says that everyone he knows is struggling financially, and that he personally had a disastrous month because he is largely paid by the hour. Few Northern Virginians were bringing their cars in to be serviced. “Nobody has any money,” he told me. He worked the fewest hours last month than any time since the pandemic lockdown. Apparently he wasn’t the only one.

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Stop Making Me Defend Donald Trump!

Talk about “Democrats pounce!”

Last week, former President Donald J. Trump was riffing, as is his wont, during a speech in New Hampshire. Going off on the January 6 committee, aka. the Star Chamber, Trump said at one point, “Nikki Haley was in charge of security. We offered her 10,000 people, soldiers, National Guards, whatever they want. They turned it down. They don’t want to talk about that.”

Yes, he had just been talking about Nikki Haley, his main competition in the New Hampshire primary, and the needle got stuck. Trump kept saying “Nikki Haley” when he was referring to Nancy Pelosi.

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A “Nah, There’s No Mainstream Media Bias” Classic: CBS Reports on the Fani Willis Scandal

Now that the anti-Trump, Democrat propaganda-promoting, biased and incompetent mainstream media has been forced to cover the unfolding Fani Willis ethics debacle that threatens to swallow her partisan “Get Trump!” prosecution, it is giving us blazing examples of just how untrustworthy its coverage can be. The headline above looms over CBS’s “news” story that is really a lame and transparent effort to try to spin the Fulton County DA out of the mess of her own making.

The focus of the report is that poor Fani just about had to hire her lover as one of the prosecutors in the high profile case against Donald Trump, because she was “unable to find someone in the DA’s office with the stature and credentials needed for the case,” and “turned to at least two other legal heavy hitters in Atlanta who turned the job down.” Then the article, while conceding that Nathan Wade had little relevant experience, tells us that Wade was Willis’s “friend and mentor” <cough!> and that she told colleagues he “had the toughness to handle the scorched-earth legal tactics that Trump’s lawyers and their co-counsel were likely to employ in the legal battle.” You know, because Trump is such an evil bastard.

Then the article explains that…

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Ethics Dunce: “Face the Nation” Host Margaret Brennan

Ooooh, I would fire Brennan for this if I were in charge of CBS news.

Brennan tried to cross-examine Speaker of the House Mike Johnson on last weekend’s “Face the Nation” about his stance on the 2020 election. “Back in 2021, you were the lawmaker who circulated the legal brief known as the “Texas Amicus Brief [actually Texas v. Pennsylvania] challenging the 2020 election outcome in a number of states,” Brennan stated, “which by CBS editorial standards makes you an election denier.”

“That’s nonsense,”Johnson replied, and when Brennan said: “Can I get you on the record on that?,” he continued, “I’ve always been consistent on the record. Did you read the brief? Did you get a chance to read what we filed with the Supreme Court?”

Her shocking answer, a veritable huminhuminhumina if ever there was one:”Well- I have read extensively some criticisms of that…”

Oh! She read some criticisms of the brief by her biased, propagandist colleagues, so that was sufficient preparation, she believed, to call someone who supported the brief’s arguments an “election denier.” That’s like using a book review to write a book report on a book you never read.

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Observations on Media Research Center’s 2023 Political Joke Survey

The Media Research Center, a conservative “media watchdog” roughly the Right’s equivalent of Media Matters but with a much bigger job, analyzed six of the daily late night comedy shows: Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show,” ABC’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live!”, NBC’s “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” and “Late Night with Seth Meyers,” CBS’s “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” and “The Late Late Show with James Corden” until its April exit, from January 3, 2023 through December 22, 2023. The results are here. The researchers counted 9,518 jokes they judged political in nature, and broke them down into categories. 1,601 targeted progressive, Democrats and figures on the left of the political spectrum. 186 aimed at people, groups, or institutions not associated with either side. 7,729 or 81% of the jokes were considered barbs at were directed at individual, organization or positions considered to be conservative. 493 targets were the objects of a single joke, with 285 of these on the right, 167 on the left, and the remaining 41 on non-partisan topics.

The unbalanced percentages are only a surprise in that they are less lopsided than I would have guessed, but still obviously showan absurdly unfair partisan bias. If, as was once the norm in all political comedy, all sides and parties were mocked relatively equally with the President in the White House taking most of the fire, political humor can be fairly categorized as entertainment with the primary objective being to make as many people laugh as possible. Distorted to this extent, however, late night comedy becomes a self-evident propaganda weapon that plays a significant part in the mainstream media mission to sway elections and manipulate public opinion.

Some telling findings:

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