open forums

Open Forum, Hopefully Not Entirely Dominated By Joe Biden’s Dementia, But First, THIS…[Corrected: Wrong Link Fixed]

/ Jack Marshall / 51 Comments

Nah, there’s no mainstream media bias! Once again, I am resolving to ding any commenter who comes here to argue that the news media is, as that damning headline and banner has the nerve to suggest by the “Support” button, “Independent Fact-based Journalism.”

The White House’s reliance on today’s pre-taped [!!!!], pitifully short (30 minutes? Seriously?) Biden interview with Democratic Party operative George Stephanopoulos to put everyone at ease is more flaming evidence that this administration is convinced that the public is too stupid to metaphorically come out of the rain. So what if Biden can get through a single, carefully planned interview with a friendly, indeed complicit, talking head? That interview last week was signature significance. A trustworthy, fit leaders doesn’t have a “bad night” like that, even once. Equating not having a “bad night” once with the significance of having one is so mild-meltingly stupid that it competes vigorously with the other ridiculous attempts to minimize the epic irresponsibility of Biden running for a second term in the White House. “So he babbled and froze and faded out and gaped like a grouper: He doesn’t always do that!” This is like arguing, “So he had a massive heart attack—he doesn’t always have heart attacks!” And the news media is actually running with this talking point like it isn’t the stupidest thing making making Kamala Harris Vice-President.

[UGH! I just saw this disgraceful “It isn’t what it is” piece. How can these hacks look themselves in the mirror?]

NOTICE of CORRECTION: For some reason, that link was mistakenly to the debate transcript. That wasn’t where it was supposed to go, though the transcript is also infuriating—check Biden’s worst answer, the one that ends with “we beat Medicare.” The transcript makes it seem like Biden’s answer was half-comprehensible, which it wasn’t. At all. But the linked article is to a Baltimore Sun column [“Biden’s debate performance a B-, not a bomb”] where the shameless tool of a gaslighter blames the whole disaster on Biden’s alleged “stutter.”

Incidentally, is anyone working today? I am, but it sure seem like I’m the only one….

‘Everything Is Seemingly Spinning Out of Control!’ Open Forum

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

See if you can make any sense of things, ethically of course.

Everywhere I’m looking today, I see insanity and chaos. Conservative activist Scott Presler is being applauded for saying,”If every Christian voted, we would never lose another Presidential election ever,” noting that many evangelicals are not even registered to vote.  This same statement could be made about almost any group imaginable: it’s not news, it’s not remarkable, its not perceptive, and its not useful.

Then, in a “Great Stupid” incident that shocked even me, Fani Willis toy-boy Nathan Wade appeared on Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show” in its feature “Choppin’ It Up With ‘Quon,” where he was interviewed by satirist Marlon Wayans playing ‘Quon. (The character Quon has been described as a “Hip-hop Borat.”) Yeah, this will help the case that he was hired to help Willis prosecute Donald Trump on his merits as a serious, qualified lawyer! Wade apparently thought he could defend his sexual relationship with Willis in the appearance as Wayans, who is approximately 6.78 times smarter than Wade, used his improvisational talents to make Wade look like the idiot he is.

“How can you not hit that?! How can you not?!” Wayans/Quon declared, as Wade laughed. “We spending that much time together, we doing everything, we might as well!” Anthony Michael Kreis, a constitutional law professor at Georgia State University College of Law, tweeted, “This is gross. Nathan Wade should be embarrassed. And Fani Willis, whatever her mistakes, deserves better than this. As do the people of Fulton County.”

How does Willis “deserve better” if she’s the one who hired Wade, almost certainly sabotaged her own dubious prosecution of Trump by mixing her prosecution duties with nookie, and, like Wade, has continued to argue that using a high-profile case for personal benefit is no big deal? How does Fulton County “deserve better” if its voters elected someone that incompetent?

Don’t get me started. You start instead…

Friday Open Forum [Trump Verdict Free Zone]

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

I felt it was time for Gene, Donald and Debbie this morning. It’s been a while.

Do confine your commentary on the story that is certain to dominate today to this post, and reserve the forum for other matters.

Friday Open Forum: Try To Be More Astute Than The Washington Post (It Won’t Be Difficult)

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

Before turning the stage over to all of you (on Fridays “all” is hyperbole), I have to let you gawk at this, smoking gun evidence 1) of why I stopped getting the Post delivered to my front lawn; 2) that bias makes you stupid, and by “you” I mean especially Trump-Deranged Washington Post pundits; and 3) that the mainstream media thinks Americans are morons. Note the giggly, lowest common denominator tone of this piece of junk.

This is a gift article from me, meaning you don’t have to pay for it like I do. Its title is “How in the world is Trump’s trial not hurting him?” How in the world can even Washington Post Trump-hating columnists ask such a stupid question?

Well, you can muse on that mystery if you choose. I have a Serbian/Canadian podcast on conflicts of interest to do, and no, I’m not joking.

Early Friday Open Forum on Thursday!

/ Jack Marshall / 48 Comments

Gah! I have a Zoom legal ethics program om professionalism to teach in about 30 minutes and overslept, so you’ll have to hold down Fort Ethics until I can get a post up around noon. Sorry!

Revolutionary Open Forum, Friday, April 19, 2024

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

“On the 18th of April in ’75…Hardly a man is now alive who remembers that famous day and year.” I was going to post all of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s “Paul Revere’s Ride” (the first substantial poem I ever memorized) yesterday, but, as usual, stuff happened. That means today is the 19th of April, a date banged into the heads of children living in Arlington, Massachusetts like me, the anniversary of the ugly little battle that took place just up Massachusetts Avenue a bit on Lexington Green, that officially started the Revolutionary War.

700 British troops were marching on a mission to capture traitors/patriots John Hancock and Samuel Adams and seize a rebel arsenal when they were blocked by 77 Minutemen under Captain John Parker. British Major John Pitcairn ordered ragtag army to disperse, but the proverbial shot rang out, everybody started firing their muskets, and a few minutes later eight Colonists were dead or dying and ten more were wounded. Only one British soldier was injured, but at around 7 am the same fateful day, the Redcoats got what was coming to them a little further up the road, at Concord Bridge.

One subsidiary benefit of memorizing “Paul Revere’s Ride” is that I’ll never forget that famous day and year, or the day after it. I wonder how many of today’s public school-educated children, even those in neighboring Arlington, know the significance of April 19. Heck, I wonder if it will be mentioned in the mainstream media’s blathering today at all. It would be a good day for the President of the United States to use his “bully pulpit” for something positive and remind everyone, but no, these days that platform is reserved to call half the nation fascists.

I digress, however. Celebrate the beginnings of America by taking about ethics, for this is the only nation in the world that was created to embody ethical principles and to model ethical values.

That battle rages on.

‘Thank God It’s the Friday Open Forum!’ (TGITFO)

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Yikes. Once again, the Ethics Alarms attic is chaos, and I am waaaay behind in covering important ethics stories, breaking ethics stories and developments in recent ethics stories I did get around to. Yesterday, for example, we learned that LA Dodger two-way superstar Shohei Ohtani’s good friend and interpreter stole 16 million bucks from the player to cover his illegal gambling problem, not “just” four million.

I’m hoping the Wisdom of Crowds can help clear the metaphorical decks today.