spin

Ethics Hero: CNN’s Jake Tapper

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Light in the darknessNot all non-conservative media journalists are working to assist Democrats in their frantic damage control now that their epic contempt for the democratic process, transparency, truth, and the American public has been exposed by the videotaped crowing of paid manipulator Jonathan Gruber.

When junior Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy (D) did his part by following the current game plan and attempting to dismiss Gruber as a footnote by tweeting…

“It’s sad to me that good political journalists are spending so much time on these irrelevant comments by this guy Gruber”

…CNN anchor Jake Tapper shot back in a tweet of his own,

“@ChrisMurphyCT respectfully, it’s sad to me that some politicians would claim the comments are irrelevant”

Tapper was using the device of ironic parallel construction, but it’s more than sad, it is horrifying. An insider who was crucial to the drafting of Obamacare admits that the Administration’s objective was to mislead the Congressional Budget Office and deceive “stupid voters,” and now the party that paid him $400,000 is covering up with a series of rationalizations, denials and lies. This is the fourth of the defenses apparently being emailed to all loyal Obamacare defenders from the high command.

First we have the rationalization: “Everybody does this with bills..it’s no big deal.”

Second is the brazen lie, or the Jumbo: “We were completely transparent!”

Third is the totalitarian mantra, “Hey, it was the only way, and it was worth it!” (The ends justify the means.)

The Fourth: airbrushing history, the Nancy Pelosi amnesia: “Who is this guy?”

The proof of Senator Murphy’s complicity is the Clintonian “this guy, Gruber, ” echoing “that woman, Miss Lewinsky.” Gruber had been lavishly praised by both Harry Reid on the floor of the Senate and Pelosi: Murphy knows damn well who “that guy” is, and why his revelations remove all semblance of trustworthiness from his party and its leaders…unless they can trick those stupid voters one more time!!

One journalist from the mainstream media, at least, is on to them.

Ethics Alarms Salutes Ron Fournier, A Real Journalist And An Honest Man

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

RON-FOURNIER

National Journal senior political columnist Ron Fournier is a former Washington bureau chief for the Associated Press. He tends to get slammed from all sides of the political spectrum, because he is a liberal journalist with integrity and an open mind, capable of objectivity and willing to criticize those who would like to regard him, like the rest of the mainstream media, as a reliable bulwark against accountability.

Fournier’s recent column examining the serial Jonathan Gruber admissions regarding the mindset behind the effort to ram the Affordable Care Act down America’s throat without even warning us to hold our noses is a spark of hope for those of us who despair of U.S. journalists ever showing the character to practice journalism. Titled, appropriately, “A Foundation of Lies,” his column bolsters several ethics assessments made on Ethics Alarms. I was especially heartened to read this sentiment regarding media spin, a topic most recently discussed on the blog here:

“…a Washington Post story headlined, “Who Is Jonathon Gruber?” …was an important and workmanlike report on the Obamacare adviser who bragged about the political advantages of deceiving voters, whom Gruber called stupid. ‘Those comments have struck a nerve on the right,” wrote Jose A. DelReal (emphasis added), “with some of the law’s critics pointing to Gruber’s comments as evidence that the administration intentionally deceived the American public on the costs of the programs.’

My first reaction was, ‘No! No! Not just on the right!’ I strongly support bipartisan efforts to expand the availability of health coverage to the working poor, and bending the cost curve that threatens federal budgets for years to come. While I think President Obama and congressional Democrats helped contribute to the 2009 standoff over what became the Affordable Care Act, I’ve openly rooted for Obamacare’s success. I’ve denounced the knee-jerk opposition from the GOP, a party that once embraced key elements of Obamacare. My ideology is amorphous; I am not “on the right.”All of that, and yet: Gruber’s remarks struck a nerve with me.”

Continue reading →

A Jumbo For Press Secretary Josh Earnest

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

jumbo

Responding to damning comments from key Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber that the passage of the ACA  was predicated on avoiding transparency and exploiting “stupid voters,” White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said this during a press briefing in Burma:

“The fact of the matter is, the process associated with the writing and passing and implementing of the Affordable Care Act has been extraordinarily transparent.”

Extraordinarily!

Except, of course, for the President and other elected officials repeatedly saying that “if you like your plan, you can keep your plan—period.”

Oh…and that it was drafted in secrecy by lobbyists from the health care industry and Congressional aides and voted on before anyone in Congress had an opportunity to read it in its final form.

Then there was the fact that the usual procedure of vetting the bill through committees in the House and Senate was bypassed, and floor debate was curtailed.

Of course, the bill was so long and written in such impenetrable jargon and had so many cross-references that it was unreadable. This is wht Nancy Pelosi explained that we had to pass it to find out what was in it.

Other than that, though…wait!

There was the little device of swearing that the individual mandate was not a tax until the bill was passed, then arguing before the Supreme Court that it was in fact a tax, as the bill’s architects intended from the start.

Extraordinarily transparent.

“Elephant? What elephant?”

Jumbo.

 

Jonathan Gruber’s Obamacare Fraud Confession [UPDATE]: “Nothing To See Here…Move Along”

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

[Yes, I know I’ve had this video up twice already, but since the mainstream media is pretending that it either doesn’t exist or is the equivalent of one showing a cat getting its head stuck in a jelly jar—come to think of it, they would probably show that—I’m going to keep posting it, and asking you to send it far and wide, until every American with two objective brain cells to rum together can see it and consider what their elected leadership thinks of them.]

Give credit to the Washington Post: four days after a video surfaced in which Affordable Care Act architect Jonathan Gruber told an academic audience that the Affordable Care Act was intentionally written to hide the fact that it was a tax and that the process intentionally avoided transparency to deceive “stupid voters,” it is the only member in good standing of the Mainstream Media Obama Administration Promotion and Defense Club to mention Gruber’s revelations. Not in its print edition, mind you (well, not exactly: more on this in a bit), but online. That’s still an achievement, because as of my writing this, news sources referencing Gruber’s cheery admission that the Administration willfully lied to the American public include: Hot Air, Fox News, The Weekly Standard, The Huffington Post, Mediaite, Politico, The Boston Herald (Boston’s conservative alternative to the Globe), The Washington Times, Bangor News, Forbes, The Free Beacon, The Federalist, The Blaze, National Review, Bloomberg, and the Daily Caller. (Oh: MSNBC, the official Obama shilling network,  put Gruber on to defend himself on friendly turf. His defense? His words were “inappropriate.”)

See a trend? No NPR, CBS, NBC, CNN, ABC, New York Times….it’s a conservative story, you see. Pay no attention, you know how those “baggers” are. They make stuff up, or twist things, or edit tapes to make it look like Democrats and Obama are doing bad things. It’s mostly racism. Bigotry. You don’t want to go there. Stick with us! We’ll tell you the Truth.

The problem with this approach—-which has certainly served Obama well, as the media has largely minimized the damage from multiple scandals and flagrant instances of disastrous incompetence that the same news media would be proclaiming its horror in skywriting if the Administration was headed by a Reagan, Bush or Romney—-is that this one can’t be hidden, won’t go away, and has unavoidable significance. Obamacare is going back to the Supreme Court, you see, and the issue will turn on what the words and the intent of the law is. Will it make a difference that one of the key figures in writing the law—which never went through a House or Senate committee, nor was subjected to floor debate in its final form—admitted, indeed boasted in public that the text of the law was an exercise in obfuscation and deception?  It just might. That makes the video not just news, but big news, news the public has a right to know, news that is fit to print.

Thus this is a journalism scandal as well as a scandal of trust. Continue reading →

Unethical Quote Of The Week: Wisconsin State Journal

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

“Critics accused her of copying campaign materials after parts of her jobs plan and other proposals included segments that were identical to those other Democratic candidates.”

—-Wisconsin State Journal reporter Mary Spicuzza, in a story for the paper about how  Democratic Wisconsin gubernatorial candidate Mary Burke felts she was abused and “dragged through the mud” while running, unsuccessfully, against Gov. Scott Walker, arguably the most savaged state politician in any state.

finger-pointingAs I wrote about here, Burke DID copy campaign materials. The “critics accused” deceit is increasingly common in today’s journalism, as in “conservatives accused Democrats of using racially divisive tactics in Congressional races.” It’s despicable, and I salute Ann Althouse, a Wisconsin resident, for flagging this unintentionally hilarious example.

Spicuzza wrote “Critics accused” as if the accuracy of the accusation was still a matter of dispute, then stated in the same sentence that “parts of her jobs plans and other proposals” were identical to those of previous candidates. It’s not an accusation then, is it? It’s a fact that her opponents accurately and correctly pointed out, and as I pointed out, one that should have bothered her supporters as much it did “critics.”

This is how partisan and biased journalists warp public perceptions. Burke is claiming to have been “dragged though the mud,” implying unfair treatment, by revelations of accurate and damning facts, and the journalist is supporting that narrative by misleading reporting.

This particular device has been bothering me for a long time. Is it trivial? Sure, each individual example is trivial. Cumulatively, all the examples result in significantly warped and distorted public perceptions. I had to mention it at least once, and how sick to death I am of journalists who can’t just give us facts fairly without pushing their own candidates and agendas.

Is There An Ethical Interpretation of Hillary’s Response To The Illegal Immigration Activist In Iowa?

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments
Psst! The "thumbs up" really means, "I like your shoes"...

Psst! The “thumbs up” really means, “I like your shoes”…

In case you missed it while waiting for the next NFL player to beat up someone, Hillary Clinton, who is in Iowa theoretically testing the waters for a Presidential bid, answered this way when pressed by an activist on the rope line to give her views on President Obama’s delay of his promised executive order granting some privileges to illegals…

“I think we have to elect more Democrats.”

What did she intend to convey by this, and can such an intent possibly be defended? Some possibilities:

A. Translation: “I am running for President, and to be successful, I can’t possibly tell you my real views on this topic, since whatever position I take will lose votes. So I’m going to answer with a non-sequitur, as if I didn’t hear the question.”

Is this ethical? No. It’s an important issue, and if she is running for President, she has an obligation to communicate her views. If she has a position but doesn’t have the integrity and courage to communicate it, that’s cowardly and a breach or responsibility.

B. Translation: “We risk losing at the polls in November if voters know what the President really intends to do, and those who stand to benefit from his unilateral act circumventing the democratic process will vote Democratic anyway, even if the delay infuriates them. So it’s the smart move.”

Is this ethical? Surely not. It’s an admission that the President is trying to gull low-information voters, and that she approves of the strategy. It’s an expression of support for allowing the deportation of human beings for speculative political gain. It’s an endorsement of “the ends justify the means.” Continue reading →

Would You Want To Join A Coalition With People Who Talk This Way?

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Lost and Confused Signpost

I just returned home from a funeral last night, and am running off to give an ethics presentation, but saw this and cannot resist pointing it out.

From the Hill:

The United States is at war with the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS or ISIL), the White House and Pentagon said Friday, a day after Secretary of State John Kerry repeatedly declined to use that phrase.

“In the same way that we are at war with Al Qaeda and its affiliates around the globe, we are at war with ISIL,” White House press secretary Josh Earnest told reporters at the White House.

Pentagon spokesman John Kirby echoed that sentiment, telling reporters that while the effort was “not the Iraq war,” they should “make no mistake, we know we are at war with ISIL.”

Earnest said that it was important to distinguish that this was “different than the strategies previously pursued in Iraq” and that by “we,” he meant a “broader international coalition” that was fighting the terrorist organization. Earnest also said that the strategy for handling ISIS was “consistent with the counterterrorism strategy we’ve pursued in cases all around the world.”

“This president, as is expected of American presidents, is stepping up to lead an international coalition to confront that threat and to deny ISIL a safe haven. And ultimately, this international coalition will be responsible for degrading and destroying ISIL,” he said.

In a series of interviews on Thursday, Secretary of State John Kerry repeatedly rejected characterizations of the U.S. efforts against ISIS as war.

Kerry said the administration’s plan to combat ISIS includes “many different things that one doesn’t think of normally in context of war” during an interview with CNN.

…

In a separate interview with CBS News, Kerry also rejected the word “war” to describe the U.S. effort and encouraged the public not to “get into war fever” over the conflict.

“We’re engaged in a major counterterrorism operation, and it’s going to be a long-term counterterrorism operation. I think war is the wrong terminology and analogy but the fact is that we are engaged in a very significant global effort to curb terrorist activity,” Kerry told the network.

“I don’t think people need to get into war fever on this. I think they have to view it as a heightened level of counter terrorist activity … but it’s not dissimilar similar to what we’ve been doing the last few years with al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan and in Yemen and elsewhere,” Kerry said.

I see! So we’re at war, though you shouldn’t call it a war, though it is like the war we officially said was not a war, and although it is in Iraq, it’s not an Iraq war, and it really isn’t going to be like what you typically expect in a war, so we shouldn’t go into war fever. It’s more like what we’ve been doing in some places where we haven’t been at war, like Pakistan.

How can anyone trust these people?

Ethics Dunce and Incompetent Elected Official of the Month: Rep. Peter King (R-NY)

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments
President Obama, disgracing us all.

President Obama, disgracing us all.

It is fools like Rep. Peter King who make it so easy for partisans in the media to diminish anything any Republican says, and to dismiss all criticism of President Obama, even when it is legitimate.

But it’s even worse than that.

Long Island Republican Representative Peter King thought Obama’s tan suit was inappropriate for him to appear in while commenting on anti-terrorist policies. Not a bunny costume, not a hula skirt, not a barrel and two straps, mind you. A tan suit and a tie. (The President looked great; if only he sounded one-tenth as impressive as he looked.) King—I can’t believe I’m writing this— actually said..

“There’s no way, I don’t think, any of us can excuse what the president did yesterday. I mean, you have the world watching. For him to walk out — I’m not trying to be trivial here — in a light suit, a light tan suit, saying that first he wants to talk about what most Americans care about, and he said that’s the revision of second quarter numbers on the economy. This is a week after Jim Foley was beheaded, and he’s trying to act like, you know, real Americans care about the economy, not about ISIS and not about terrorism. And then he goes on to say that he has no strategy.”

I’m not going to insult anyone reading here by explaining why the tan suit indictment is so bizarre, foolish and wrong. King’s comments, however, transcended his idiotic sartorial indictment. By combining this silly, silly, silly complaint—personally, I find Peter King’s brain inappropriate—with substantive criticism, he allowed the Masters of Spin at the White House and elsewhere to trivialize any criticism of the President’s statement yesterday, and it deserved to be criticized.

How can any objective and rational citizen respect a political party that includes in its leadership someone so jaw-droppingly stupid as to not merely think this, which is bad enough, but not to realize the damage he does to the public trust in Congress, the government, and his party by  saying it in public?

We are being governed by hysterics, children and boobs.

God Save The United States of America.

______________________

Facts and Graphic: New York Magazine

 

 

Ethics Train Wrecks Collide, As The Redskins And Trayvon Martin’s Mother Board The Ferguson Express

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

trains_collision

I just can’t find a photograph of three trains running into each other–in the world of rail transport, that’s impossible.* With Ethics Train Wrecks, however, anything is possible, especially stupid, dishonest, and irresponsible things.

  • The Washington Redskins, one would think, have enough problems guiding their own Ethics Train Wreck, with the team’s owner, who would have been wise, prudent  and responsible to quietly get rid of an archaic name and logo before it became the focus of extreme political correctness bullying, having to battle government censors and opponents of free speech as well as censorious journalists and cynical Native American race-hucksters. But no! Some members of the team apparently feel that if one Ethics Train Wreck is fun, two is twice as nice. Thus it came to pass that during Monday night’s pregame introductions for the televised exhibition game against the Cleveland Browns, several Redskins players ran onto the field with their hands raised as a gesture of support for the slain Ferguson teen, Michael Brown. Brown, writes Yahoo’s Jay Busbee, “was killed by police even after witnesses said he raised his arms and told police he was unarmed. As a result, arms raised in surrender have become a symbol of solidarity and protest in connection with the Ferguson story.” [ Side Note: This is incompetent and biased reporting. Some witnesses say that; others dispute it. No account has been certified as true. Busbee suggests otherwise, and he also can’t write worth a damn: How could Brown have been killed by police after witnesses reported how he was killed?]  The idea originated with Washington safety Brandon Meriweather and cornerback DeAngelo Hall, and several players followed their lead.

Wrong, wrong, wrong: Continue reading →

Ethics Quote Of The Week: Blogger Ann Althouse

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

“(The link goes to The New York Times, not to some Obama-bashing site.)”

—Law professor/bloggress Ann Althouse, sending readers to an article about the Obama administration has apparently squandered 11 billion dollars on a mismanaged, ill-conceived, never realistic effort to launch high speed rail in the U.S.

Now you guys, we can only trust on POSITIVE Obama stories....

Now you guys, we can only trust on POSITIVE Obama stories….

Quite apart from the story itself, which reveals just another example of the stunning ineptitude and waste in this most incompetent of all possible presidencies, Althouse’s statement raises several important ethical issues. Admittedly, there are websites that literally won’t publish anything positive about Barack Obama’s efforts, but to be fair, any media outlet that is objective and doing its job will become, by necessity, an “Obama-bashing site,” because the President’s record, results, conduct and leadership skills have been routinely dreadful. The fact that most sites that qualify for that description are already biased against progressives and Democrats shows how hopelessly polarized, and lacking in journalistic integrity the mainstream media is. Continue reading →