Post 2024 election Freakout

Friday Open Forum (and a Couple of Other Things)

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

Thing I: The most obvious ethics issue going on is, still, the post 2024 election Axis freakout. I’ve never seen anything remotely like it. When Ronald Reagan, whom the Democratic establishment in Washington regarded as a Neanderthal, washed-up actor whose most memorable film had him co-starring with a chimp (“Bedtime for Bonzo”), the reaction of liberals and Democrats wasn’t nearly this hysterical…or demeaning to them. The news media has been equally bonkers. The faces of network news anchors and hosts when a Trump administration supporter is talking are uniformly mask of pure hatred: I started noticing this yesterday. It reminded me of Katie Couric when she interviewed Ross Perot in the “Today Show” with an expression she reserved for people like David Duke…or Satan. Facial expressions and body language that tell an audience that an interviewer detests her interview subject is unprofessional, but it has now become the norm.

The same faces, restrained (and sometimes unrestrained fury) have been on display as the Democratic Senators question virtually all of Trump’s nominees. It says something that Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman, who was derided by the Right for running for the Senate after suffering actual brain damage from a stroke,has emerged as the sole voice of reason in his party. “There isn’t a constitutional crisis, and all of these things ― it’s just a lot of noise,” Fetterman said this week. “That’s why I’m only gonna swing on the strikes. I’m still wishing him the best. I’m effectively rooting for [Elon Musk] and all the nominees because they’re working for America.” This should be the position of all Democrats and progressives, especially since, unlike 2017, the majority of American feel the same way, and it is the way Americans have usually regarded newly elected POTUSes and their emerging administrations.

The fury being directed at Elon Musk, a brilliant man who is giving his time to his nation as it tries to solve the problems of government bloat, waste, corruption and abuse that everyone at least claims they want to solve is an embarrassment for the Democrats and their Axis allies. Infamous dim-bulb Georgia Congressman Hank Johnson (he’s the one who worried that Guam would flip over because too much U.S. military material was on the island) raged yesterday, “What does that mean when an unelected billionaire can waltz into our agencies and slash and burn the whole thing to the ground like a Taliban terrorist, This level of corruption is shocking. President Trump and the Republicans in Congress, all of whom have abrogated their legislative power to the King, have handed the keys to the nation’s treasury to unelected co-president Elon Musk. Their actions are taking what we know as corruption to a whole new level. This is Banana Republic style corruption at its ugliest.” I guess it shouldn’t be surprising that this idiot doesn’t know how the Executive Branch works, but the frightening thing is that so many lawyers are behaving similarly based on their social media rants. Is it possible that they are really this stupid.

Thing 2: The guest post submissions I solicited a week ago are finally coming in: another will go up today. I thank you all: what I have seen so far is of excellent quality. This effort to try to keep up with an unprecedented wave of ethics stories while freeing me from a permanent government and politics beat is important; I also want to emphasize that it does not eliminate the Comment of the Day feature here. (I think I have at least one of those languishing).

I’m sorry: that was a longer intro than I anticipated.

The stage is yours.

Not Vengeance, Just Competence…

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

My plan is to do another Post 2024 Election Freak-Out Update today, but this chapter deserves its own post.

Last night while watching the DirecTV news mix, which allows me to sample CNN, Fox News, MSNBC and BBC America simultaneously, I was puzzled to see Rachel Maddow, snearing and mugging as usual, featuring old Watergate headlines about the “Saturday Night Massacre,” when President Nixon ordered a succession of Attorneys General to fire Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox, who, the assumption went, was getting too close to uncovering Nixon’s involvement in the cover-up.

“What does that have to do with the price of beans?” I asked myself. I clicked on Rachel, which I usually won’t do unless there is a loaded pistol aimed at my head. Of course! Interim D.C. U.S. attorney Edward R. Martin, Jr. had dismissed about 30 federal prosecutors who worked on the January 6, 2021 cases over the past four years. The prosecutors who had worked on Jack Smith’s lawfare prosecutions of Trump for the mishandling of classified material at Mar-A-Largo and his alleged attempt to steal (back) the 2024 election have already been pink-slipped or soon will be. Rachel, repeating the agreed-upon Axis talking point, was saying that this is Trump emulating Nixon, preventing “justice” and hobbling law enforcement. CNN got around to the same narrative a bit later.

Indeed, all looks yellow to the jaundiced eye. President Trump would have been incompetent, foolish and naive not to fire all of these lawyers. Maybe some of them were ethical and capable of independent thought (as their ethics rules require), but there is no way to figure out which. Most of them have been poisoned by the “Deep State “Get Trump!” culture seeded bt Obama, Hillary Clinton, and others. As with the FBI and intelligence personnel who are losing their ability to sabotage this President in his second term as they did in his first, those lawyers heading out the door cannot be trusted. It would make no more sense to allow them to undermine President Trump with leaks and worse than it would have made sense to keep Jack Smith around; luckily, he had the sense to resign.

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Awww, Some Law School Seniors Just Had Their Job Offers Revoked By That Mean President Trump

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

The New York Times and other sources are weeping with the dozens of recent law school graduates whose job offers were rescinded by the Justice Department after the students thought they were about to begin entry-level positions in its antitrust, criminal, civil rights, immigration and national security divisions, and at the F.B.I. This is another good example of how the Times cannot help itself from spinning and editorializing in a partisan manner even the most straightforward story. “The offers were made through the Attorney General’s Honors Program,” sayeth the Times, “which has functioned without controversy,” for decades, it says. See? This is so unfair! Except the fact that something has avoided controversy doesn’t mean it should be free from change, reform, or even elimination. “The program appears to be the latest target of Trump political appointees intent on reversing even the most workaday decisions made by their predecessors,” sniffs the paper. Oooh, these were political appointees who obviously don’t understand a good program when they see one. And those MAGA Nazis want to mess with harmless, innocent, inconsequential “workaday” decisions! (Pssst! Hiring lawyers is never a “workaday” decision, or shouldn’t be, even in the Justice Department.)

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Post 2024 Election Freakout Update, Fashion Ethics Division: How Hateful Are The Trump-Haters? THIS Hateful…

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

Believe it or not, the social media Trump Hate mob was offended by that photo and others of Ivanka Trump wearing the dress at President Trump’s Inaugural Ball. Why, you well may ask, especially if you are of sound mind and under the age of 80? This is why…

Yes, Ivanka had the audacity to wear a recreation of one of the dresses Audrey Hepburn wore in “Sabrina,” a 1954 film with William Holden (above) and Humphrey Bogart. That film is so old that it had a remake, and the actor who played Bogart’s part is in his 80s, Harrison Ford. My late wife Grace loved Audrey Hepburn, and though I re-watched that film with her just about a year ago, I wouldn’t have picked up on the dress homage. But nothing is too petty and bonkers to attack a Trump over.

“She [Audrey] is the complete opposite of Ivanka’s silver spoon life,” read the comment of one lunatic. Typical ignoramus: Hepburn was raised in a wealthy family among the Dutch aristocracy; her mother was a baroness, her father a wealthy oil executive. But facts don’t matter to these nutcases.

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Today’s Trump-Deranged Lament (Or Lamott?)

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

This one is by novelist Anne Lamott. At least it’s well-written. It still is evidence of what the Axis propaganda has done to many previously rational minds, though Lamott is a long-time woke activist (she lives in California, naturally) so she probably is more a purveyor of anti-Trump hysteria than a victim of it.

She contributes to Salon, which is pure leftist propaganda 90% of the time. She called the Tea Party “hateful.” She actually praised Harry Reid, at last report being butt-raped by flaming demon water buffalo on a bed of spikes in Hell.

Her cry of pain is all emotional argle-bargle with very little paranoid progressive fantasy, but some. Nonetheless, treating the electoral defeat of a candidate as irredeemable as Kamala Harris as if it were the death of a lover is evidence of warped priorities and historical naivete, as well as far too little diversity in thought among one’s friends. Aren’t people like her supposed to be champions of diversity and inclusion? I have diversity and inclusion among my friends: that’s why visiting my Facebook feed is like watching a performance of “The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade” usually shortened to Marat/Sade.

Here’s Anne……….

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The Final Scene in “Michael Clayton” As a Metaphor For the 2024 Election And A Lesson For Democrats Which They May Be Incapable Of Learning…

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

In the scene above, which has already made it onto many lists of American cinema’s best ending scenes, Michael Clayton, a law firm fixer who has survived a murder attempt paid for by the general counsel of a chemical company that presents its products as boons to civilization but which is really covering up a massive pollution scandal, confronts the general counsel with his survival, knowledge of her and her company’s crimes. Unknown to her Clayton is wearing a wire, and her incriminating responses to the confrontation will bring down the company. Arthur, Clayton’s friend whom he refers to, was the whistle-blowing lawyer that the general counsel had murdered to prevent him from revealing the smoking gun company document Clayton is holding, evidence of the company’s knowing contamination that harmed or killed millions.

It is ironic that George Clooney, in what is easily his best movie and best performance, played a central role in the failed Democratic Party palace coup that resulted in the disastrous campaign and defeat of Kamala Harris. The unhinged and folish reactions of the now re-loading “resistance,” Democrats and their corrupt media allies (“The Axis of Unethical Conduct” in Ethics Alarms parlance) brought this scene to mind. You should show it to your deranged Facebook friends and relatives, but here’s a guide for you to use if they are incapable of grasping the lessons it holds…

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Trump Derangement Friday Begins….

/ Jack Marshall / 45 Comments

The hysterical, fearful diatribe below came from my Facebook feed. This is a friend. A very nice guy. I don’t have the energy or heart to fisk it; if you feel like making the effort, even if you just do part of it, go ahead. It won’t be hard.

I am very angry at the people, officials, celebrities and publications responsible for doing this to my friend. I’m sure he really believes everything he has written. He’s an innocent, caring, trusting soul who was a sitting duck for the diabolical propaganda the Axis marinated good people like him in for almost ten years for their own political agendas.

It can’t feel good believing you and your friends are at “mortal risk.” Deceiving people like my friend so they are terrified of the future is despicably cruel. Yes, my friend is an artist and artists are emotional and often politically unsophisticated and under-educated (and our civic education is terrible anyway.) It is not just artists though. I know lawyers who are expressing essentially the same fears.

Bad, cynical, ruthless and unethical people are responsible for all this crazy panic. Today, the execrable Karine Jean-Pierre was pressed on this point by a Fox News reporter: If Biden was telling the truth about how a Trump administration would create an existential danger to the republic, that if he was elected “rights would be stripped away” and “democracy would crumble,” why did the President say in his remarks today that everything is going to be okay?

Karine, who would have a hard time answering a question about what her favorite color is, gave a rambling non-answer, then complained that the question was unfair, and left the room in a huff. But we know the answer, don’t we? Biden and the Democrats always knew all of that Hitler fearmongering and the “last election ever” warnings were pure nonsense, but they thought it might win the election. If trusting souls like my friend were reduced to permanent anxiety, eh, well, so what? Collateral damage. The ends justifies the means. Screw ’em.

This is who today’s Democrats are. Remember.

How here’s my poor friend….

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