open forums

Friday Open Forum, No-Election Zone

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments

I am accepting the fact that the blog from here to election day is likely to be politics heavy, and I regret that. It can’t be helped. Kamala Harris and the Democrats are operating the most nauseatingly and dangerously unethical election campaign nationwide since the days of Jim Crow, and the Presidential campaign that has been inflicted on America by Harris is stunning in its cynicism, relying on Big Lies and ad hominem attacks exclusively. A supplement to that is that the campaign is also relying on unethical, indeed anti-democratic journalism.

For the much coveted “October Surprise” that is supposed to save Harris, the best the Axis news media could come up with was an alleged Trump inflammatory quote regarding a dead soldier, one that was not even attached to a named source and that was subsequently denied by both the family of the soldier and others who were supposedly witnesses to the statement, and another private quote by disgruntled former Trump aide John Kelly supposedly praising Adolf Hitler. Yes, its back to that: after 12 years, a Trump term in office in which he resembled Adolf not at all, after a four years of a Democratic Presidential term in which Kamala Harris’s party emulated totalitarian attitudes and tactics (and that witnessed as well a frightening rise in anti-Semitism, we’re back to this…

…because, shockingly, that’s literally all they’ve got. Harris’s disastrous CNN “town hall” made this undeniable among all but liars and fools: she wouldn’t or couldn’t answer straight questions, periodically slipping into untranslatable Kamala-speak when she wasn’t obviously reciting memorized talking points.

How could such a metaphorical empty suit get to this point, where she is one national mental breakdown from the White House? Easy: she was yanked onto the 2020 Democratic ticket only because of her color and genes, handed the top spot four years later without once offering herself to voters as a Presidential candidate based on her performance as VP—which was uninspiring (and I’m being kind)—and then selected Soviet-style without giving national convention delegates a choice. And this is supposed to be a party obsessed with “choices.” It is also the party now warning the public that their opponents are threats to democracy.

If it were not so depressing, and if it did not have a chance of working, this last-ditch strategy would be funny. It should also signal the end of the Democratic Party. But it isn’t, and it won’t.

Unfortunately, I’m going to have to write more about this; there is more of it than I have time for, frankly, but it’s important. You don’t have to, though. So don’t, not here.

Deal?

Friday Open Forum, Self-Loathing Edition

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

I’m still trying to decide how much to beat myself up after an epic botch yesterday. I completely whiffed on one of my monthly (and sometimes bi-monthly) legal ethics Zoom seminars after I forgot to set my alarm clock. This has been an exhausting and stressful week, as if follows the long-planned memorial event for my wife, who died on Leap Year. Old friends and colleagues that I hadn’t seen for many years came from all across the country over the long weekend, and I was left gratified but emotionally and physically exhausted. Then I had to hustle to catch up with work, including preparing for a complicated new musical ethics program in the evening on the 16th. Then things went crazy: I had emergency calls from clients, a surprise house guest whom I had to drive to the train station at 5 am the next morning, and assorted other crises. Despite having my scheduled seminar at 9 am, I lay my head down at 6 am with the intention of catching a couple of hours sleep, but didn’t set the alarm. I woke up at 10.

I spent all day yesterday still exhausted and furious at myself, and woke up no better. After almost 8 months, I still haven’t adjusted to living and working alone. Grace handled my schedule, served as my back-up, kept me alert to upcoming appointments and commitments, screened my calls and emails, and generally made it possible for me to be productive and creative as I juggle disparate tasks and multi-process compulsively without not falling flat on my metaphorical face. And I’m just not good at that stuff. I’m not good at living alone. When unexpected complications merged with my not being at top form mentally, emotionally and physically, I couldn’t navigate the perfect storm and let a lot of people down. It’s over, there’s nothing more I can do about it, but I’m not accepting my own apology.

Well, enough about me: please use this opportunity to discuss important things involving ethics, leadership….you know, the usual.

Friday Open Forum!

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

Tomorrow, eight months after my wife’s sudden death, is the memorial event that a good friend and my sister, among others, organized because I couldn’t face it…still can’t, truthfully. I have to speak, and I’m determined to do better than this weatherman, but I still don’t know what I’m going to say.

I still have social responsibilities as some friends are flying in from as far away as Seattle, so despite having a lot of work work pressing me and my Ethics Alarms duties, I’m going to be out of the office a lot today. I’m counting on the commentariat once again to provide stimulating ethics content.

I am very grateful for the terrific participants we have here.

Friday Open Forum!

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

This is one of the days I already have the topics lined up I want to post about, so try to do me a favor. While exploring ethics issues of your own choosing here, please don’t preempt me so I have to go looking for new topics unless you choose to write on one of the topics below in sufficient detail that I don’t have to. THAT I always appreciate. The looming posts are on:

  • The school principle in Washington state who responded to someone scrawling a swastika on a campus wall by reminding parents that in some cultures the symbol “has deep historical and cultural significance in other parts of the world.”
  • The hilarious response of the Harris campaign to the sudden focus on Tim Walz’s habit of lying his fool head off, nicely exposed in his debate with J.D. Vance.
  • Ethics issues raised by AI’s ability to play Rich Little and convincingly imitate celebrity voices, and…
  • President Biden’s bone-chilling response when asked “What do the states in the storm zone need — after what you saw today?” Biden said, in sum,”Which storm?”

Here is also a good place to note that I won a million dollar bet with myself that indefatigable New York Times apologist “A Friend” would respond to this post with along protest. Unfortunately “A Friend” got himself banned long ago by 1) violating the comment policies by telling me how to moderate EA and 2) eliminating any chance of being reinstated by defying the ban any time he feels like commenting, conduct that is disrespectful of the forum, and me. Here’s a tip: if you get banned, the proper and almost always successful response is “I’m sorry, I understand, and I promise to be good if you give me a second chance.”

I don’t read these unauthorized replies before sending them directly to Spam Hell, but in this case my eye caught just enough words in the first paragraph to see where the post was going: Because the Times included an op-ed critical of Walz in the same batch as M. Gessen advocating partisan bias and censorship by journalists, A Friend thinks that justifies the Times giving a regular platform to an opponent of ethical journalism and free speech. It doesn’t. There are more than one rationalizations on the list with commentary that explains that, as in the discussion of “Ethics Accounting.”

Open Forum: Think, Write and Reveal…

/ Jack Marshall / 31 Comments

…and I’ll be over here coughing.

Usually I introduce these Friday fora with some reference to current events, but I woke up sick for the second straight day, and this time I feel too foggy to focus.

So I’m counting on you while I have two cups of Italian roast and some DayQuil. Yum.

First Friday Open Forum of September!

/ Jack Marshall / 46 Comments

Last week, because of my training schedule, the Friday Forum was on a Thursday, so theoretically there ought to be more pent up ethics issues that Ethics Alarms has missed than usual. I bet there are more than usual for other reasons: as I predicted would happen as the Election to Save Democracy gets closer, EA has been set upon by single-purpose commenters whose objective is to discredit me and the site, usually by sealioning a single rebuttal to an essay critical of Harris, telling the truth about the rotting ethics of the Democratic Party, or defending Donald Trump against Axis smear attempts.

Typical was the exchange with a commenter on this post, who was determined to prove that Trump or his campaign using some video that was taken at an Arlington National Cemetery ceremony that he was invited to attend violated an “Army Rule.” When I told him that he needed to move on to another topic, as genuine and good faith commenters here do, he vanished, after wasting not just my time, but that of many commenters here as well.

No, I don’t believe that these are paid operatives; Ethics Alarms doesn’t have enough distribution or influence to be worth paying someone to do what the Trump-Deranged and knee-jerk progressives will do anyway for free.

I almost feel like I should apologize for the blog taking an obvious turn to substantially more political commentary this year, even more than in 2016 and 2020. Almost. I regard this as an unusually important ethics tipping point for the culture and the election. Trump is almost irrelevant (my opinion of the man, his character and his trustworthiness have only slightly improved since 2015): if the Axis strategy since Trump’s election in 2016 doesn’t finally result in the crushing rejection it deserves, all of those dire predictions about the fate of the U.S.A. will not be so hyperbolic after all.

But see if you can discuss something else….

Labor Day Weekend Open Forum: Defenestration Edition!

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments

This month, August, 2024, has already broken the all-time Ethics Alarms record for banned commenters with seven, the last kicked out late last night. There are still two days to go, so the chances look good for eight or more.

Appropriately, this morning I will be holding this month’s version of my two hour, Continuing Legal Education legal ethics Zoom seminar for TRT, “Professionalism, the Key to Ethical Lawyering and Trustworthy Justice.” It was my noting in this post that I taught this seminar from my home office 90 minutes after finding my wife of 43 years dead in our living room that partially triggered the barrage, it appears.

Frequent commenter and critic here Extradimensional Cephalopod usefully pointed out that commenters who thought (or claimed to think) I was an unfeeling Mike Dukakis clone (or something) couldn’t grasp the concept of professionalism because, well, they apparently weren’t professionals. However, these now banished Ethics Alarms visitors could have enlightened themselves had they availed themselves of the EA search engine, which would have revealed that as a professional ethics specialist, I have discussed and explained the concept repeatedly.

Other banned commenters, including the previous record-setting group just two months ago, in June, may have descended on Ethics Alarms because I decided to become active on my newish Twitter/”X” account by linking to the Ethics Alarms posts that concentrated on the 2024 Election Ethics Train Wreck and related matters, and a political party whose name I will not mention (and shouldn’t need to) will try to destroy anyone who dares to offer opposition to its quest for power.

Ask Robert Kennedy, Jr.

But I digress. This is your weekly space to discuss whatever ethics issues you want to discuss, even me, as long as you haven’t been banned.

I’ll be fulfilling my professional obligations….

Post KAmala Coronation Open Forum

/ Jack Marshall / 31 Comments

Well, the morning is off to a roaring start…

  • I discovered that I had completely missed the intent of the incident discussed in this post, and had to humble myself before readers of greater perception and dirtier minds.
  • I got two emergency calls from clients, one of whom made me realize that a major state bar association is clinically insane.
  • I confirmed that the Democrats really and truly are going to try to win the election by presenting Harris as a generic Democrat and making the only issue whether you hate and fear Donald Trump, or as Glenn Beck put it in a tweet,

They need you to hate Donald Trump more than inflation. They need to you hate Donald Trump more than open borders. They need to you hate Donald Trump more than fentanyl and drugs on our streets. They need to you hate Donald Trump more than our children being killed by illegals. They need to you hate Donald Trump more than the homelessness epidemic. They need you to hate Donald Trump more than the abortion cult of death. They need you to hate Donald Trump more than the possibility of nuclear war. That’s what a vote for Kamala Harris is actually about.

(I would have added “They need to you to hate Donald Trump more than single party rule by a cabal that embraces totalitarian values, Big Lies, unaccountable leadership, state-allied journalism, and public education centered on ideological indoctrination,” but Beck’s list is good enough to start with.)

  • THIS (Pointer: JutGory)
  • And I discovered that the credit monitoring company I pay for every month has been over-stating my credit score by 70 points, and makes it impossible to cancel a membership by phone or online.

Oh yeah, this is going to be a great day…

We have clearance, Clarence. Over to you…

It’s Time For The Friday Open Forum!

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

It is sometimes a mistake to revisit what you thought was perfection. I’m a long-time admirer of the “Back to the Future” trilogy, which I view as the pinnacle of original, careful, creative, professional scripting and direction. I’ve seen all three films many times, but this week I started watching them again after at least a decade.

This time, for some reason, I noticed logical fallacies and holes in the plot (and time travel logic) that had never registered on me before. (No, I’m not talking about Marty’s cute girlfriend being inexplicably replaced by Elizabeth Shue, never to be seen again.) It didn’t diminish my enjoyment or admiration for the trilogy (I regard “Back to the Future 2” as by far the best middle installment of any film trio), but it was disappointing. Mostly, I was disappointed in myself for taking so long to pick up on the flaws.

But I digress. Let’s see what ethics controversies you can unpack today.

Friday Open Forum on “Un-elected President Day”

/ Jack Marshall / 26 Comments

Propitiously enough, August 9 is the anniversary of our first un-elected President of the United States taking office at high noon in 1974. Gerald Ford was never on a Presidential ticket, having been appointed as Vice President upon the resignation of Richard Nixon’s vile VP, Spiro T. Agnew. At least Ford’s ascension came courtesy of a Constitutional amendment: it’s not like he bypassed a democratic nominating process or anything, but who would try something like that?

Let’s see what you can come up with to discuss today….