What we are witnessing with the Trump tsunami of executive orders and direct assaults on the Deep State is the creation of a new norm, one that, now that I think about it, should have manifested itself long ago. Note that I didn’t refer to the current wave of orders and directives coming out of the White House as a “blitzkrieg.” That would just feed into the hysterical narrative from the Axis that an elected U.S. President using his Constitutional powers to manage the Executive Branch is “fascist.” Apparently the Left is going to keep using the “Trump is Hitler” nonsense because it’s worked out so well for them.
A new President from the opposing party obviously has a huge tactical advantage if he moves this quickly and forcefully. The only arriving administration that came close to what Trump has done was Roosevelt’s first term, and he couldn’t move nearly this fast. The phenomenon makes me wonder if there is a previously unrealized advantage to a President taking four years off between terms and calculating what went wrong and how to do better the next time.
Trump is obviously not one to conclude, “This time, I need to think things through before I tweet or open my big yap,” but he clearly figured out that he was sabotaged his entire four years because he naively trusted entrenched government employees to be patriots loyal to their President rather than working behind the scenes to undermine him. Far from being an attack on democracy, Trump’ forceful and essential course correction is a defense of it, and entirely ethical: responsible, fair, and the fulfillment of Trump’s promises.
Good. It isn’t revenge, but it is justice.
Meanwhile…
1. What can be done about Google? It is too central to information gathering on the web to allow it to continue such insidiously partisan manipulation. The search engine buries Ethics Alarms in searched for ethics commentary, for example. Yesterday I was searching for photos of Democratic Senators’ faces contorted with rage at RFK’s confirmation hearing, and Google images gave me nothing but photos of Kennedy no matter what search terms I used. Maybe I’m too cynical at this pint about Big Tech, but I don’t trust Google. I also don’t see how it can be policed to eliminate its biases. That’s something else for Trump to work on….
2. My woke artist friends are horrified that Trump disbanded the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities. It was established by President Reagan as a way to provide a rocking chair sinecure for some of his Hollywood pals, but has devolved into a partisan propaganda organ. The government influencing the arts is another tactic of totalitarians: I experienced the kind of subtle and not-so-subtle manipulation government grants to arts organizations provide when I helped run a Virginia professional theater company. Trump killed the committee in his first term; Biden (or one of his puppeteers) revived it, citing the importance of the arts and humanities in addressing “the greatest challenges of our time, such as the climate crisis and the scourge of hate-fueled violence.” That message alone justifies killing the committee again.
3. Speaking of Google, here’s another family member snitch story. Gene Follin, 63, asked his son Jared, a 30-year-old city planner, to fix his disabled Gmail account. (I have to ask my son for this kind of assistance all the time.) The problem was that Follin’s account had been flagged by Google after its monitoring systems detected that Follin pere had uploaded illicit images of children to Google Photos. So Good Boy Jared called the cops on Dad, telling them that he found child pornography on his father’s cell phone. This in turn triggered subpoenas, a search warrant, and Gene’s arrest. Follin’s Google Photos drive yielded “952 files containing child pornography and child erotica,” police allege. Ethics Quiz: Is this the kind of offense that a son should report his father for committing? At least the father didn’t throw a sandwich…
4. Democratic House leader Hakeem Jeffries, complaining about President Trump’s “extreme MAGA Republican agenda” said, “That’s not acceptable. We are going to fight it legislatively. We are going to fight it in the courts. We’re going to fight it in the streets.” “Fight in the streets?” That’s rather inflammatory rhetoric coming from the leader of a party claiming that Trump’s use of “fight” in the same speech where he said, “I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard” was inciting an insurrection. It also comes from a party that sponsored a Special Counsel using those words to try to put Trump in prison.
5. Now we know why the third crew member and co-pilot of the Army helicopter involved in the fatal crash with the American Airline plane was withheld while the names of the other two were released. She was female, thus giving more impetus to President Trump’s irresponsible speculation that DEI policies played a part in the tragedy. There is no reason to believe she was unqualified to fly the chopper, but withholding her identity, which is very unusual in such incidents, only adds to doubts and suspicion.
6. Good. From the Secretary of Defense:
“Our unity and purpose are instrumental to meeting the Department’s warfighting mission. Efforts to divide the force – to put one group ahead of another – erode camaraderie and threaten mission execution.
“Going forward, DoD Components and Military Departments will not use official resources, to include man-hours, to host celebrations or events related to cultural awareness months, including National African American/Black History Month, Women’s History Month, Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, Pride Month, National Hispanic Heritage Month, National Disability Employment Awareness Month, and National American Indian Heritage Month. Service members and civilians remain permitted to attend these events in an unofficial capacity outside of duty hours.
“Installations, units, and offices are encouraged to celebrate the valor and success of military heroes of all races, genders, and backgrounds as we restore our warrior culture and ethos. We are proud of our warriors and their history, but we will focus on the character of their service instead of their immutable characteristics. This guidance is effectively immediately.”
7. The ethical values being breached are competence and responsibility: Ken Martin, the hard, hard Left longtime leader of Minnesota’s Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party who called for President Donald Trump to be put on trial for treason, was elected as the new chair of the Democratic National Committee yesterday. He immediately announced that racism and misogyny were key factors in Kamala Harris’s defeat. If that’s not proof enough that the Democratic Party is clueless, look who they elected Vice-Chair…
Yes, it’s anti-Second Amendment PTSD victim David Hogg!
8. Now let’s see what my Trump Deranged Facebook friends are fuming about today...[Checking…]…Okay, here”s one….
“The current FOF (“Followers of FOTUS”) universal response of “DEI!” whenever anything bad happens is incredible. And I mean that literally. But they’ve been well prepped for this sort of thing. For the last 40+ years the universal panacea for everything that ailed us was “tax cuts for the wealthy.” Time are good? Tax cuts for the wealthy! Times are bad? Tax cuts for the wealthy! Times are, well, meh? Tax cuts for the wealthy! An aging society creates demographic challenges? Tax cuts for the wealthy! Etc. But they may have realized that most of the rest of us are tired of giving money to billionaires. So now they slide in “DEI!!1!” “Woke!!1!” Which divides and distracts us while they prepare (wait for it …): TAX CUTS FIR THE WEALTHY!”
Ethics Alarms 
2. “Biden (or one of his puppeteers) revived it, citing the importance of the arts and humanities in addressing “the greatest challenges of our time, such as the climate crisis and the scourge of hate-fueled violence.”
AKA Propaganda tool.
3. Yes, it’s ethical. Child pornography is the picture of a crime. It’s evidence.
4. The double standard continues. Absolutely, the exact words used by Donald Trump would be treated as smoking gun evidence of a call to violence.
6. No one’s stopping them from celebrating the days and months of their choice. Just not on “company time”.
7. It’s a Nazi salute!
8. And they complain of Republicans having a broken record! The Democrats have their tried and true mantras that have been honed over decades, too.
Hah! Ja!
The DNC seems to be going full “Thelma and Louise.” Clearly, Biden and Harris were not far enough to the left.
Ooops. Following up AM on No. 7.
Actually, isn’t #7 closer to a Soviet salute, maybe for Comrade Lenin or Comrade Stalin?
I guess Communists don’t rate as poorly as Nazis, although they killed a lot more people than the Nazis. But they didn’t discriminate so much, they killed everyone. And did it over a much longer period of time (and are still doing it). So I guess that’s better, eh?
More on Ken Martin from an ABC News piece:
Martin said his posture will be aggressive against Trump and leading Republicans in Washington, claiming he’d “take the low road so my candidates and elected officials can take the high road.”
“Meaning, I’m going to throw a punch,” Martin said. “So Donald Trump, Republican Party — this is a new DNC. We are not going to sit back and not take you on when you fail the American people.”
Go high? What planet has he been living on? I challenge him to name one Democrat that has gone high in the last 8 years. And, yes, I know he was talking about his colleagues in the news media. I just didn’t want to repeat myself when referring to Democrats.
This guy’s job will be coming up with strategies and, wait for it, talking points. And who will be implementing those “low” strategies and reading those “low” talking points? Candidates and elected officials!
4. Fight in the streets? Like we saw in 2020 with the Antifa riots, BLM riots, the riots near the White House during Trump’s acceptance speech, when they almost burned down St John’s cathedral? I did not expect Hakeem Jeffries to be such an insurrectionist!
7. All the candidates for DNC chair raised their hand when asked whether the election loss of last November was due to racism and misogyny. The GOP must be laughing right now, because it is precisely this message that helped them lose that election. Combined with the declining relevance of the mainstream media, things are looking good for the GOP in the 2026 elections…. There got to be some ethical lesson in here, such as learning from your mistakes, and a basic sense of humility.
Self-analysis is not a current Dem operative strength. Talk about beating a dead horse. What a bunch of lemmings.
Many have pointed out that both top officials elected are white males. I guess they don’t trust DEI when the existance of the party is on the line…or they are trying to prove that DEI couldn’t possibly give them worse leaders. What THE HELL is going on?
From an admittedly lefty but “flyover” state. And he’s not even a Democrat. He’s a member of that weird Minnesota Farmers party. Which I doubt has many farmers in it these days. Other than pot growers. Jut could probably give us the low down on that Minnesota party. And the other guy Wikler seemed like the Wisconsin version of Martin.
“Self-analysis is not a current Dem operative strength.“
Heh; you don’t say?
Jake Tapper to Timmy Kaine: Why Is Your Party So Staggeringly Unpopular?
Why indeed!
PWS
With respect to the new DNC chairman’s query if racism and misogyny played a role in Harris’ loss, a similar question could be asked if racism and misandry played a role in votes cast for Harris.
These queries mean nothing. They are designed to suggest that the only reason or a substantial number of voters were misogynistic racists.
This is what is wrong with politics.
That and the fact that addled, unthinking, ideologically rigid boobs like Kamala Harris get elected to anything….
If that stunt wasn’t an example of absolutely inebriated virtue signaling, I don’t know what is. Is “arm jerking” a metaphor? What a bunch of weenies. I bet they’ve all been in numerous “anti-racist” struggle sessions, which is what that even appears to have been.
I wonder if they were both elected the DNC chair and vice-chair because people were so confused about the voting process. “We will eliminate all people with 0 votes and 6 people based on gender equity”. This is then a confused round of questions and a series of ‘experts’ to figure out what the statement meant (the people speaking it didn’t know). Maybe they elected these 2 crazy white males because they couldn’t figure out the voting scheme, maybe the diversity candidates were worse, or maybe these were protest votes against the insanity of the DNC.
Item 1: There is a way for you to get the photos you want without searching for photos that someone else posted.
You can go to C-Span, find the entire confirmation hearings, create the photo you want by pausing the video at the point you want to create a photo, and then use the “Snipping Tool” that Microsoft provides with the operating system, save the photo to your computer, then upload the photo to your “Media” in WordPress. It’s a really great tool once you learn the basic steps of how to use it.
I just created this one…
If you would like help learning how to do this, we can have a telephone conversation and I can talk you through it.
#3: Authorities will need to be increasingly careful with investigating and enforcing this type of potential crime to avoid finding themselves on the receiving end of lawsuits. CGI now makes discerning real pictures from AI produced content more difficult, and that will only get worse. Swatting is now enhanced, as well.
A lethal pre-dawn raid triggered by a fake “murder” vid, or a ruined reputation from public exposure of some perv viewing grotesque, but not illegal, cartoons could be costly in $ and support for law enforcement.