Senator Amy Klobuchar

Confirmed: Sen. Klobuchar Is An Untrustworthy Hack

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

When I was challenged to name a woman I would feel comfortable seeing elected President and stated that there were none, two of my less-than-completely deranged progressive female associates pronounced their approval of Amy Klobuchar, proving my point. During the 2019 and 2020 candidates debates and in many settings before and since, Klobuchar had proven herself a pandering, dissembling light-weight, and her statement today on MSNBC was just another example. Behold:

“We just did something about climate change for the first time in decades. That’s why we have to win this as that hurricane bears down on Florida. We have to win in the midterms.”

How stupid does she think the public is (to be fair, MSNBC viewers are special), or, in the alternative, how stupid is she? The Democrats have done nothing “about” climate change, or taken a single step that will affect the global climate one iota, just spent a large amount of money as climate change virtue-signalling.  In focusing on hurricanes Klobuchar  has chosen a perfect example of the weakness of climate science: we have been told for many years that man-made climate change would lead to a dramatic increase in deadly hurricanes, and it simply hasn’t happened. Why? Because science isn’t as good at predicting the long-term results of global warming as climate hysterics, hucksters and patsies claim.

Klobuchar’s statement is signature significance for someone who shouldn’t be allowed to advance beyond the Senate.

Next candidate?

From The “Res Ipsa Loquitur”Files: Rob Reiner Provides A “Bias Makes You Stupid” Case Study

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

Bill Maher managed to goad outspoken Trump Deranged Hollywood progressive Rob Reiner into a spectacular demonstration of what his lockstep ideology does to brains. From Newsbusters, which generously watches Maher’s HBO show so I don’t have to:

BILL MAHER: Let me ask you a more nuanced question about, is it okay to have a conspiracy to get rid of Trump. This came up this week because my friend Sam Harris was on a podcast and he said—

ROB REINER: What do you mean a conspiracy to get rid of Trump? 

MAHER: I’m going to tell you.

REINER: Okay. Thank you.

MAHER: He was talking about—

SEN. AMY KLOBUCHAR: I’m going to defer to my lawyer here. 

MAHER: Truer than you know. They were talking about Hunter Biden’s laptop which was a story and now all the mainstream press has finally admitted it was a real story, it was a real laptop with, now look, let’s not pussyfoot around this, he was selling the influence of his father, Joe Biden. 

I mean, most political sons do, but let’s not pretend that, at least, wasn’t going on. I mean the guy, some guy from China gave him after a dinner, an $80,000 diamond, after dinner as one does. 

REINER: Yeah.

MAHER: If you are Naomi Campbell, but it doesn’t usually happen. Okay, so, Hunter Biden’s laptop was buried by the press, even the head of Twitter, Jack Dorsey, said that was a mistake. They buried this story because they remembered what happened with James Comey and the letter 11 days before the 2016 election. Comey said we have to reopen this email investigation with Hillary Clinton and it probably was the—I mean, she ran a horrible campaign, didn’t go to Wisconsin, we know all that. This is probably the last thing that sunk her. 

So, Sam Harris says it was appropriate– “it was appropriate– for Twitter and the heads of big tech and the heads of journalistic organizations to feel that they were in the presence of something that is a once-in-a-lifetime moral emergency,” meaning Trump. 

So, he’s saying it’s okay to have a conspiracy to get rid of somebody as bad as Trump. It’s a little bit of a thorny question because once you go down this road, this is sort of where we are in this country, the other side is so evil, anything is justified in preventing them from taking office, is it? 

REINER: No, no, you know it’s not justified? Using armed violence to try to kill people in the Capital. That’s not justified. 

MAHER: Answer this question. Is it, was it, answer this question—

REINER: What is the question?

MAHER: –was it appropriate. The question [crosstalk] is was it appropriate bury the Hunter Biden – 

REINER: You’re talking about the press doing that? 

MAHER: He’s saying that’s what they did and that is what they did, they buried the Hunter Biden story before the election because they were like we can’t risk having the election thrown to Trump, we’ll tell them after the election. 

REINER: And we know for fact that that’s what they did? 

MAHER: Of course, you don’t follow this? 

REINER: No, but, I’ve been saying that you know for a fact that’s what they did, I don’t know what they did. 

MAHER: I know, because you only watch MSNBC. 

REINER: No, that’s not true. That’s not true.

MAHER: Well, then you would know about this. 

REINER: I do know about that.

MAHER: Well, you’re acting like you don’t.

REINER: I do—I do know about that. I do watch Fox, but the point is we’re going to prove now that the press played, you know, tried to—

MAHER: They’re admitting it!

REINER: The press is admitting it?

MAHER: That’s not—yes, that’s not even an issue anymore, they’re saying yes we basically did this because we didn’t want this to throw the election. Yes?

KLOBUCHAR: I don’t know that they’ve all said this and I believe strongly in the First Amendment—

MAHER: Well, the New York Times definitely didn’t–

KLOBUCHAR: My dad was a reporter, I believe in it and I think you have to make sure you’re treating people fairly, but I think Rob’s point here is we are dealing with a man who used to be the president right now who literally tried to lead an armed insurrection and that’s why we are so focused on this right now.

Observations:

Continue reading →

Unethical Quote Of The Week: Sen. Amy Klobuchar

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

“The facts are clear here. This is unbelievable. You have the wife of a sitting Supreme Court justice … advocating for overturning a legal election to the sitting president’s chief of staff. She also knows this election — these cases are going to come before her husband. This is a textbook case for removing him, recusing him from these decisions.”

—-Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn) on ABC’s “This Week,” blathering nonsense to co-anchor Jonathan Karl today, as he, predictably, showed neither the erudition nor the guts to correct he, as she insisted that a conflict of interest that does not exist in law is a “textbook case.”

I was tempted to let the Senator’s outrageous misinformation (Will Twitter suspend her for it? Nah….) slide, except that 1) Too many lawyers and reasonable progressives of my acquaintance settled on her as their favored 2020 Democratic Presidential hopeful, and she said ridiculous things like this throughout the debates, using false certitude for fact and reason, and it ticked me off; 2) her statement isn’t just wrong, but spectacularly wrong, and 3) you know how I hate to see high officials that the public trusts use their megaphones and influence to make it even more ignorant than it already is.

Continue reading →

Senator Hawley’s Futile Protest Prompts A Senator And A Corporation To Expose Their Ethics Deficits

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

Secretary Mnuchin Testifies In Senate Hearing On CARES Act Implementation

Well, that’s something.

GOP Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri announced yesterday that he would object to Congress’s certification of the Electoral College results on January 6 as “an effort to highlight the failure” of states “to follow their own election laws as well as the unprecedented interference of Big Tech monopolies in the election.” “Millions of voters concerned about election integrity deserve to be heard,” he said in a statement. “I will object on Jan. 6 on their behalf.”

In other words, this is symbolic political theater, nothing more, nothing less. The Constitution requires that challenges to the certification process, which are completely legal, be approved by majorities in both the House and Senate. That;s not going to happen, obviously, and Hawley’s statement makes that clear.

And yet here is Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar, whose status as a favorite of my Democrats friends among the contenders for the Presidential nomination highlighted just how awful that field was, tweeted this:

“This is how you run for President on the Republican side in 2024. You join a coup attempt. Democracy will prevail. As lead Dem on Rules Committee, I will guarantee it. There’s a bipartisan group of electeds who will put our country first. See you on the 6th!”

That’s pretty shameless coming from a Democrat whose party tried one soft coup attempt after another since 2016, including a contrived impeachment without evidence of “high crimes and misdemeanors” and a relentless investigation designed to undermine trust and support of the President. Then there’s the fact, revealed in the New York Times, that in the last three decades, every time a Republican won the election, Democrats in Congress challenged the certification of that election, and when a Democrat won the Presidency, Congressional Republicans did not challenge the certification. Does Klobuchar believe that her party attempted coups in 2000, 2004 and 2016? She’s deliberately mischaracterizing Hawley’s action, but then that’s Amy.

Continue reading →

Morning Ethics Warm-Up, 6/19/2020: “Juneteenth” Edition

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

Good morning!

1. About “Juneteenth”: I confess: I had never heard of Juneteenth before this year, or at least never took note of it or what the day signifies. I am certain that I never heard the term while I was living in Massachusetts. It would have helped, in my case, if the unofficial holiday (except in Texas, where the event commemorated actually occurred, the freeing of the last slaves in America, and it is a state holiday) had a label that didn’t remind me of so many Madison Avenue gimmick labels and fad word mash-ups like “frenemy” or “momtrepreneur.” “Juneteenth” sounds to me like a summer music festival.

The end of slavery is certainly a legitimate subject for a new paid Federal holiday (as well as many others). Getting the holiday established as part of the George Floyd Freakout white guilting strategy cheapens it, I think, placing the holiday in the same pandering package with HBO Max pulling “Gone  With The Wind” or the University of Florida  banning the “Gator Bait” cheer. As with so much else going on, I am concerned that this will exacerbate rather than ameliorate racial tensions, with an official nation-wide “Juneteeth” having the effect of making July 4th a “white” holiday.

2. Deceitful withdrawal of the decade? Senator Amy Klobuchar, whose prospects for being named Joe Biden’s running mate vanished as soon as it was publicized that she was responsible for Minneapolis cop Derek Chauvin not being prosecuted for earlier claims of police misconduct, grandly announced that she had called Biden and withdrawn her name from consideration, an amusing variation on “You can’t fire me, I quit!  “America must seize on the moment and I truly believe — as I actually told the VP last night when I called him — that I think this is a moment to put a woman of color on that ticket,” Klobuchar told MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell last night. “And there are so many incredible, qualified women. But if you wanna heal this nation right now, my party yes, but our nation, this is a helluva way to do it.”

No, choosing a Vice-President purely on the basis of gender and color is not a “helluva way” to run a country, but that’s progressivism and the Democratic Party in 2020: group identity matters, actual skill and qualifications don’t. (And if there are so many “incredible, qualified women, why isn’t Biden considering any of them?) Ann Althouse writes, amusingly,

So what I hear in her effort at a high-minded statement is an undercutting of the other women who are in the running. First, Elizabeth Warren — who is not a woman of color except in her memory of younger days when family lore and a desire to identify were enough. Why step on her chances, Amy? Second, all the various black women who are in the running. Amy is ensuring that when one of them is picked, everyone will believe they were picked because of their race.

Because whoever it is will have been picked because of her race and gender! Klobuchar isn’t signaling anything that everyone paying attention hadn’t figured out months ago. As for Warren, I have never believed that the Democrats would be so foolish as to have two over-70 politicians on the ticket. Continue reading →

In-Between Ethics Warm-Up, Late 5/28/ Or Early 5/29/2020…

/ Jack Marshall / 91 Comments

Good whatever-it-is…

One problem with having to take a nap every couple of hours is that all sleep patterns inevitably get wrecked, and that’s where I am now, awake and staring in the early morning or late night…what fun.

1. I see that we have riots in Minneapolis. The Third Precinct police station was set on fire; earlier, rioters burned down a six-story, 190-unit affordable housing project  slated to open in the spring of 2021. That development cost approximately $37 million. Never mind: MSNBC’s reliably ridiculous Ali Velshi told his viewers, literally as flames raged behind him, that “this is mostly a protest. It is not generally speaking unruly.” I would say this is unbelievable, but it only slightly moves the needle in the manner the current left-mainstream media regards reality as a flexible concept.

Meanwhile, there is absolutely no rational nor ethical justification for riots, ever, as a response to a single instance of police brutality, or in response to anything else. Nevertheless, we will get rationalizations and excuses from the usual suspects, as well as pious humming that it’s “understandable” for people to act this way. Not if rioters are to be regarded as adults, it’s not. They are harming innocent fellow citizens and business owners, and making matter worse, not better. The enablers and the apologists for such conduct should be duly marked, identified, and condemned, and no, the four rogue police officers who appear to have killed George Floyd did not “cause” the riots. The rioters caused the riots; it’s a choice, and an inexcusable one. The protests elsewhere demanding premature charges and the abandonment of due process regarding the officers are similarly indefensible.

This isn’t even a close call, and it is frightening that so few  are willing to articulate it without equivocation. Continue reading →

End Of Day Ethics Reflections, 5/7/2020: Obama! Klobuchar! Flynn! Fake Winston Churchill!

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

Tired and anxious here.

You?

1. This is discouraging. A quote extolling the virtues of perseverance  that I am especially fond of because it defines me as a success despite all outward appearances to the contrary is not, as I have been told repeatedly, most recently in the film “Molly’s Game”—more on that later— from Winston Churchill. Nobody knows who said it, if anyone did. It fits Churchill’s career, philosophy and wit, but he just didn’t say it. The quote: “Success is the ability to move from one failure to another without losing your enthusiasm.”

2. Tonight’s Democratic female VP candidate hypocrisy and double-talk update.         a) Senator Amy Klobuchar: Congressional reporter Manu Raju asked the Senator if she believes Tara Reade (the way she reflexively believed Christine Blasey Ford). Her answer: “I think he’s answered all the questions and he’s made clear that he supports her right to come forward.”  Raju then asked about criticism that Democrats are exhibiting a double-standard, Klobuchar “didn’t answer and walked into an awaiting car.” b)  Stacy Abrams, who has virtually no relevant experience to recommend her as a potential vice-president (well, she did lose an election for governor) has been aggressively promoting herself for the slot, because the only qualifications that matter, as Joe has made clear to all, are x-chromosomes and the right skin pigment. While being interviewed by CNN’s Christiane Amanpour yesterday, Abrams responded to a rambling question about her “auditioning” and why “as a black woman,” she felt it was appropriate to do so, with this:

I haven’t been pitching myself, which has been a mischaracterization, I think, because I answer questions honestly. I’ve been getting this question for 14 months, since March of 2019. I’ve repeatedly received the question, and I’m honored that people would put me into the category and think that that was a question to ask. My responsibility is not to question what journalists think is a valid question, but to answer for the audience that they’re speaking to. And as a woman, as a person of color, as a woman of color, it is my responsibility to answer honestly and forthrightly. And if the question is about whether I am competent and qualified for the job, my answer must be unequivocal, because I’m not simply speaking for myself. I’m also speaking to that young woman of color who is thinking about what is in her future. And if I deny her, and deny myself, then I’m doing a disservice to women, to communities of color, and to any disadvantaged community that does not see themselves as the face of leadership.”

Authentic Frontier Gibberish! Continue reading →

Unethical Quote Of The Week: Rachel Maddow

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

“If Hillary Clinton can’t win when she gets the nomination and you can’t get the nomination and neither can Kamala Harris, and neither can Amy Klobuchar, and neither can Kirsten Gillibrand. I mean, I think part of what’s going on today is women around the country are like, ‘OK, honestly!’ If it’s not going to be any of them, let’s get real. Is it just that it can’t be any woman ever?”

——The allegedly intelligent MSNBC host Rachel Maddow, making a statement with stunning disregard of facts and logic, indeed reality, in order to advance a divisive and false narrative.

This was an irresponsible argument in the midst of a generally irresponsible and dishonest discourse by Maddow while interviewing Elizabeth Warren following the end of her campaign. She was attempting to bolster Warren’s ethically bankrupt claims that it was sexism that doomed her campaign, just as Hillary Clinton claimed the same, among all the excuses and rationalizations she assembled (and is still assembling) to duck accountability for her own upset loss to Donald Trump, who was generally dismissed as a pushover.

If she wanted to educate her viewers, which Maddow does not—she wants to push an ideological agenda—she would explain that none of the women she mentioned were successful state governors, and that state houses and military command, not Congress, have been the launching pad for the majority of Presidents.  She could explain that the failed candidates she mentioned all had thin resumes for a White House run, including Warren, who is a former university professor and lawyer barely into her second term as a U.S. Senator.

Hillary had the most impressive experience of the group, but there is no avoiding the conclusion  that the only reason she was in a position to get the nomination was by coasting on her husband’s resilient popularity. She had not been an especially outstanding Senator, and her tenure as Secretary of State was marred by many dubious episodes, not the least of which was the email scandal that she persisted in lying about. Moreover, Clinton disproved Maddow’s theory by getting a plurality of votes cast in 2016, an achievement that will elect a candidate President approximately 90% of the time. She was unlucky, that’s all. Hillary  nearly won despite more adverse baggage and dubious character than any Presidential candidate other than  Richard Nixon. Continue reading →

Amy’s Exit, Joe’s Door-Hanger [UPDATED!]

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

1. Senator Klobuchar eliminated the “none of the above” option from Democratic primary voters by dropping out today. This makes little sense: she’s dropping out because Biden won in South Carolina, where he was expected to win all along? Then she endorsed Joe Biden, which is irresponsible. Biden is a slowly devolving wreck, and every member of the Democratic Party has an obligation to at least try to present a mentally capable candidate for the public to consider. At his current rate of decline (let’s see, not to complain, just to be up-to-date, what did he say today? Nope, nothing, He must have been resting),

UPDATE! Joe wasn’t resting, so he did have brain synapse issues. From the Washington Examiner (Pointer:  77Zoomie):

2020 Democrat Joe Biden stumbled over his words as he attempted to recite the Declaration of Independence ahead of Super Tuesday. “We hold these truths to be self-evident,” the former vice president said during a campaign event in Texas on Monday. “All men and women created by — you know, you know, the thing”….he also accidentally referred to Super Tuesday as “Super Thursday” before correcting himself.

Joe will be a walking, babbling appeal to the 25th Amendment before November rolls around.

Ah-HA! Could that be why Amy endorsed him? Biden’s Vice-President choice will be scrutinized more carefully than any #2 since Richard Nixon in 1956 when Ike was running for a second term following a heart attack. (My wife asked today what Mrs. Biden was like, referencing Mrs. Wilson secretly taking over for Woodrow after his devastating stroke. Biden presumably has to pick an African American or a woman as his running mate.

Her choice is also a betrayal by the sisterhood of Elizabeth Warren, who is still hanging around, hoping for intervention from The Great Spirit, or something. Biden is a serial sexual harasser and assault master. The feminist, #MeToo wing of the Democratic Party  are as hypocritical in its support of Joe as the NAACP is in its support of Michael Jackson imitator Gov. Ralph Northam. In all the debates, neither Warren, nor Klobuchar, nor Kamala Harris, nor even pariah Tulsi Gabbard had the guts and integrity to confront Biden on his dirty old uncle routine. No Democratic woman should endorse Biden; it’s as unethical as cheering Bill Clinton. Oh, right…

The consensus among pundits right now is that Klobuchar’s endorsement signals that the Democratic establishment is desperate to stop Bernie Sanders from getting the nomination. That Joe Biden is their “firewall” tells us just how spectacularly the party has failed its job of finding a competent and trustworthy candidate, just as both parties failed in 2016.

2. Klobuchar’s withdrawal won’t have as much impact on tomorrow’s primaries because so many states allow early voting. This is one more reason early voting is wrong, and should be banned. It deceives voters into making a crucial decision without all the data is in, sometimes rendering votes null and virtuously void.

3. The party of women, minorities and the young somehow has managed to reach the nomination’s final laps with four white candidates, with Senator Warren being the only woman and the relative whippersnapper at 70. Of the remaining three men, one isn’t a Democrat (Sanders), one served in his only significant elected position as a Republican, and the other is relying on his connection to the inexplicably popular Barack Obama, whose failure to endorse him is a neon indictment.

Yikes. Good job, everybody! Continue reading →

Sundown Ethics, 2/20/2020: Post Nevada Debate Mourning Edition

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

I hope you had a nice day…

The reaction among the Facebook Borg after last night’s car wreck of a debate was interesting; very muted, subdued, remarkably few comments regarding the debate, some denial, and some epicly stupid comments. I use four classes of the Deranged on Facebook: there are four or five genuine friends who are in clinically dire condition but who also don’t take serious disagreements personally. There are the inexplicable Facebook Friends who I don’t care if I upset them or not, or, franfly, if I ever see r hear from them again. Then there are nice people who I like and respect when they aren’t reciting back resistance talking points drilled into their brains like in a Mengele experiment. I leave them alone, even when one of them writes something unbelievably stupid. Today’s example: the kind, funny, brilliant actress and teacher who wrote, “Bernie and Warren are not extremist left. Sorry. They demand systemic change to support the people.” I had to wrestle myself to the ground not to respond to that one. And she’s a teacher.  Any more questions about why so many twenty-somethings are hypnotized by Sanders’ Bolshevik leftovers?

In the fourth class are strangers who are friends of friends. I randomly pick off a few of these every day for fun and practice.

1. Speaking of denial: here’s a Twitter exchange passed along by Arthur in Maine:

On the related topic of Bernie supporters’ often ugly rhetoric, it is amusing to read the same people who have used the actions of most extreme of President Trump’s supporters to characterize him protesting that Bernie bears no responsibility for his followers’ misconduct. Continue reading →