Here’s how my day started: I had one thing that I just absolutely had to accomplish, just one—get my inspection sticker updated. That means, for me, since I now have no one to help with such annoying tasks, getting to the service station I have used for 40 years before they open at 8 am and making sure my car is first in line. Then I have to kill 45 minutes at a coffee shop while they do the inspection, get a call when they are done, walk over to the place, pay, pick up my car and drive home, a less than ten minute drive. To make sure I was first in line, I set the alarm clock that has served me well for 20 years to ring at 7:10 am. That would give me time to wake up, ablute, and get to the station by 7:45.
The alarm rang at 5:35 am. I had set the clock correctly: it just malfunctioned. It’s old, and picked today to break down. Half asleep, I got my super-duper, newest model Apple smart-phone, which I have never once used as an alarm clock, unlike its predecessor. To my horror, the alarm-setting controls were completely different from the earlier model, and absurdly complicated. (This made them better, see.) Half- awake, I tried to puzzle out the device’s twists and turns, which involved two screens, a dial-a-time, a pick-a-sound, volume, a damn check mark, and shifting little buttons to indicate a 7: 10 am wake up alarm. The thing had said “no alarm” and now it didn’t say “no alarm,” which I, fool that I am, assumed meant “alarm.” It didn’t, though I have yet to figure out why. I woke up in a panic at 7:55 am.
I threw on some pants, grabbed my wallet and keys and ran out the door, only to see Spuds looking needy standing behind me. So I hooked him up to his leash to let him relieve himself, which he took his own sweet time doing. Deposited my dog, who promptly went upstairs to take over my bed, ran to the car, sped to the station, and arriving at 8:05 am, found two cars ahead of me, meaning instead of 45 minutes stuck in a shopping and restaurant area, I would be stuck for over two hours, which I can’t afford.
So my inspection sticker is still expired, I got only about 5 hours sleep, I still don’t know how to use my smartphone, and I’m considering either beating my face in with a brick or getting a Jason Voorhees hockey mask and a machete as a prelude to a murder spree.
Amaze me with your ethics eloquence, on the off chance I’m still around to read it.
Ethics Alarms 
Pete Hegseth is been vilified by the Democrats and the MSM about expenditures on lobster and ribeye.
Here is the explation from RedEye:
“The answer to the steak-and-lobster scandal was rather mundane. It was for military dining facilities, in particular those deployed in war zones, or for ships and units whose deployments had just been extended as a sort of consolation prize.“
https://redstate.com/streiff/2026/03/12/hegseth-hatred-leaves-democrat-politicians-and-media-with-egg-on-their-faces-as-well-as-steak-and-lobster-n2200146
No matter how many times leftwingers make a play for the military vote they will consistently prove they have no idea what the military life is like or they do but they hate it.
Someone at our office asked what was the deal with spending money on lobster and steak. Since I knew but wanted another guy to voice it I asked a former marine at our office who wasn’t privy to the question- “what does steak and lobster mean?”
“Means I’m about to be sent to a craphole to be shot at. Or it’s just regular dinner at an Air Force dining facility that I’m not allowed to go to.”
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I find the complaint to be obviously tedious.
What amounts to about .01% of the price of some of the boondoggles the complainers insist are essential for our republic has them raging…?
There’s this weird argument about having plenty of money for bombs but never enough for food for children. Yet I’m sure the math will show that the amount of money the bombs cost is a tiny fraction of the amount we spend on various welfare programs and other quality of life programs.
If the expenditure of the bombs is for a good cause, then the expenditure is worth the price.
If the expenditure of the bombs is for a bad cause, argue against the cause…not the price of the bombs. Because, angry progressives, you never get to cry about the price of anything. Sorry.
To clarify- the army already spends money feeding soldiers. So the price of the steak and lobster *morale treat* should first have subtracted from it the regular price of feeding soldiers.
Then if the progressives want to complain about that paltry sum, which went to a time honored tradition in the military. By all means rant on with your America hating selves.
This is just a monetary version of the whole Melania Trump in combat boots picture. I have a book with a photo of Eleanor Roosevelt wearing boots while visiting U.S. troops abroad during WWII. Feeding a good meal to departing troops is not without precedent. Michelle Obama served ribeyes to troops back in 2010. These are nothing arguments that are used as filler for propaganda against President Trump and his administration. Right now, the so-called resistance is fixated on the financial costs of the conflict, ironically ignoring how much money got funneled over to Ukraine at the behest of Democrats and their allies.
Kansas revokes drivers licenses of 1700 trans identifying individuals here. Question: does the state of Kansas act ethically here.
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2026/03/11/report-kansas-revokes-drivers-licenses-of-1700-trans-identifying-individuals/
Yelling Allahu Ackbar in a crowded theater.
Would someone have a reasonable claim of self defense for shooting someone if they felt in mortal danger of a man running into a crowd screaming “allah ackbar!” but was not immediately perceptible as being armed in any way?
I would say yes. The idea of those guys having a bomb hidden somewhere is well established in people’s minds, and not without good reason. Shoot him, perhaps make him drop the bomb switch, maybe survive to face trial tomorrow. Don’t shoot him, he probably blows up the whole seating area, if not the building in full. The math (or at least probabilities) makes sense to me.
I guess I’m the lady you’d want in the jury.
This is a really grey area for me. In and of itself, no. Yelling “Allahu Akbar” is annoying, but should not warrant such a defensive posture. It’s not different than a Christian yelling, “God is great!” That being said, the phrase is becoming connected to violence by radical Muslims.
I think the question here is, “Do we allow words, phrases, symbols to be appropriated by extremists?” From the Okay gesture to the Don’t Tread on Me flag, the Left has argued that appropriation by far right-wing groups has changed the meaning of those symbols, allowing for perfectly innocent displays of them to label users as extremists.
Am I the only one who seems to have to sign in to WordPress to comment? Every time?
WordPress puts me through this in phases. Sometimes I can go weeks on a single sign in. Sometimes for a week straight I have to log in every single comment. Even if made minutes apart.
I dread those times because some log in attempts become a crap shoot on whether or not WordPress completely “disappears” my comment. Only for me to copy paste the comment, resubmit, and have WordPress reply “cannot publish a duplicate comment” and I’m sitting there dumbfounded since my first try is not even on the page.
For about three weeks I’ve had to sign in for each comment.
I don’t have a WordPress account but I get a pop-up screen when I comment. I just ‘click’ outside the pop-up window and it goes away.
It’s the subscribe window that pop-up for me, not the login. I just click outside the box and the comment registers. I guess I’ve never been asked to login. Generally, I don’t create online accounts and so if WordPress asked me to login or create an account I wouldn’t comment. But, no loss, I’m not one of the “five”.
For example, if I wrote a comment worthy of “Comment of The Day” it would be equivalent to the 69 Mets winning the world series or Buster Douglas knocking out Mike Tyson.
A little humor for Friday 13th. 😂
OB. I created a new email address to bypass that annoying box asking me to login. If WP has your email address because you signed up by accident they will prompt you for that until the end of days
OB, I did the same thing. I created a WordPress log-in that turned out to be more of a hindrance than a help. Every time I tried to comment, it began prompting me to sign in first. I have to bypass that by slightly altering my screen name – I took the periods out of A.M. – and using a different email address. Otherwise, trying to use the same name and email address I used when registering will not allow me to comment without signing in.
I made the mistake of logging into word press. Something is wonky with the account I created and it won’t let me comment at all. So now I had to create an alternate email just to post here.
Word press is just another installment of enshitification.
Crapadapa.
WordPress won’t let ME comment on my own posts directly. That’s why al of my comments are relies to other commenters.
I’ve had to sign in with every post for years, at least if I’m accessing Ethics Alarms directly. If I am in WordPress first and get to Ethics Alarms that way, I can post more freely. At least WordPress is no longer sending every comment to spam or just disappearing them, which was a problem for a couple of years.
Jack, that sounds like a horrible morning.
You can set an alarm on an iPhone without it being a wake up alarm. The morning alarm is far more complicated, but for a simple alarm, hit the clock icon. There is a plus on the right side of the top of the screen. Push that, pick a time, hit the check mark. There are a lot of options, but you can skip them. Those options mean a lot to me, as I use them for a variety of reasons, like school bells, therapy warnings, tutoring times, etc, all with a variety of labels, sounds, snooze options, etc. The basic alarm though is simple and quick. No, Apple does not explain this well and the wake-up alarm sucks to set up.
I want to put out there, is there some ethical or practical reason why we can’t get rid of daylight savings time? Practically everyone wants it. Sure, there’s the debate about whether to keep standard or daylight time, but we pass laws that piss off half the country all the time. What would this matter? Also, even if I got my unpreferred time, the lack of chaos from changing my clocks and dealing with screaming toddlers and starving pets would be worth it. The clock change, especially in the spring, leads to increased deaths, at least by some measures that I have not had time to investigate because my week has been horrible. And throwing off children, pets, and farm animals all for the sake of a tradition that makes no sense today seems…stupid in my sleep deprived brain. Why do we still do this?
Re: Daylight Savings Time.
It is my understanding that Daylight Savings Time was created in the 1910s or 1920s as a way to help schools transport school children to and from schools on busses, and possibly to save on heating oils during the winter months.
Now, it is an an anachronism that should be ended. I thought Trump 1.0 signed legislation and/or an executive order ending the thing. There are three or four state that do not observe the time change and most of the civilized world thinks it’s a silly idea. To me, keeping it going is simply dumb.
jvb
I might have used “anachronism” incorrectly but I really wanted to do that. See, besides, Rush, I do have other musical interests. Case in point: There is this British prog/folk prog band called “Big Big Train” consisting of a number of studio players and heavy hitters in the prog/neo prog genre. Their lead singer/writer/flautist is a guy named David Longdon. Tremendous voice and a terrific lyricist (though Greg Spawton may be a bit better because he writes songs about trains). Here is a YouTube video of the song I am about to discuss:
Longdon wrote this song called “Judas Unrepentant” about an English painter, Tom Keating, from the 1950s and 1960s who restored masterpieces and great works of art. Well, it turns out that Painter Keating was annoyed he didn’t get the recognition or success he thought he deserved (read that as cash) for his great talents. So, he began forging paintings and selling them as original works. But, it seems Ol’ Tom had a bit of a conscience because he included telltale signs of mischief in his paintings that would clearly show the work was not an original. For example, he painted legends in lead paint that would show on xrays. Or, he would paint things that were not of that time periods – anachronisms – much like the guitar Michael J. Fox played in “Back to the Future.”
‘That song has a lyric”
“His time bombs are in place
And anachronisms
Clues pointing to the truth
If ever they are X-rayed”
Well, there it is – that word. I know that Jack has told us how is beloved wife would watch movies and point out inconsistencies in scenes. I do that, too, much to my long-suffering wife’s chagrin.
I like the song but I wonder about the ethics of Tom’s actions. He showed that art critics and experts were nothing of the sort because he fooled them. Yet, by inserting the inconsistencies, did he really defraud people? I would think he did. He, did, though, change the art market by allowing sales of reproductions of great works. Is that simply a byproduct of his unethical actions? I am no expert and I couldn’t tell a Rembrandt from a Titian though I could recognize an El Greco or Picasso but there is no way I would be able to tell if that work were original or a reprint.
jvb
My state didn’t observe it until we changed over in 2006. I’ve never recovered.
Holy Cow! A Democrat insider’s insider takes a remarkable stance:
Partisanship on Iran Is Dangerous for America – WSJ
David Boies weighs in! Stunning! I wonder whether he’ll never have any work again. He may be an ethics hero.
Remember, he was a pal of Harvey Weinstein and tried to scare the Times reporters who outed Harvey as a serial harasser and rapist into scrapping their story. So he’s already been cancelled.
I thought he was still on the Mount Rushmore of Dem operatives!
Anyway, it’s a refreshingly lucid piece.
After being summarily smack-daddied out of office (securing a whopping 12% of the vote), former democrat Dolton, IL Mayor from Hell/municipal fund spender/embezzler extraordinaire (currently under federal investigation for a missing $1.9 million) Tiffany Henyard packed up her Carpetbag and skeedaddled to Fulton County, GA*** where she’s registered to run for the County Board of Commissioners District 5 seat…as (and this is where it gets GOOD!) a Republican.
***Fulton County being the bailiwick of one Fani Willis, perhaps Henyard chose it thinking it’s likely…um…tolerant of ethics bereft morons?
Anywho, is the Republican Party ethically bound to tell her shove it?
PWS
Yes, the GOP is obligated to say, “Thanks, but no thanks.”
jvb
For the “You Can’t Hate the Biased Mainstream Media Enough” files:
Remember the widespread uproar over a mother using a racial slur to a Somali child who was rooting through her son’s backpack in a park? There’s even a Wikipedia entry for it.
Now, did anyone hear about THIS INCIDENT of the horrific unprovoked murder of a small child and severe injury of three others last month? That link is the closest thing I could find to what might approach being a national outlet, rather than minor local news sources at the time. I only ran across it from someone’s post on X (maybe an Elon re-post).
I overslept this morning, too. I normally don’t use an alarm clock because I’m pretty consistent about waking up at the same time. I wouldn’t have any idea how to use a phone to set an alarm.
This week was a panoply of activity. I started it off by teaching the Middle School Sunday School lesson on Daniel refusing to eat the unhealthy-likely-unkosher-diet of the Babylonians which gave me the opportunity of addressing how the Babylonians wanted the Hebrews they’d taken into captivity to assimilate so completely into Babylonian culture that they even changed the Hebrews’ names to those praising Babylonian gods. I made sure to point out that visiting or even moving to another country voluntarily should involve one’s willingness to learn the language and obey local laws and rules which is different from how Daniel and his friends were taken forcibly from their homes and expected to assimilate fully into the new culture.
I read “Innocents Abroad” by Mark Twain (my favorite of this week’s reading), “The Time Machine” by H.G. Wells, “Heart of Darkness” by Joseph Conrad and “Northanger Abbey” by Jane Austen. I just cannot get into Austen’s work. I also read Shirley Jackson’s short story “The Lottery”.
I finished “Gilmore Girls” season 7 with a series finale that tried to make up for the nonsense of the rest of the season, but was just too little too late.
I also watched the season finale of “Star Trek: Starfleet Academy”.
Spoiler Warning:
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Don’t read if you don’t want to know what happens.
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I’m serious. I’m going to spoil it.
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In this era of “Star Trek”, the Federation – the epitome of futuristic utopian socialism – has broken up because of an event called The Burn in which all of the dilithium used to power the warp engines of spaceships was made inactive as the result of a psychic shockwave caused by a sheltered Kelpian youth in grief upon the death of his mother (I am NOT making this up). Instead of turning to alternative forms of energy, Earth, Vulcan and a bunch of other planets left the Federation and those on colonies throughout the galaxy were forced to fend for themselves.
After The Burn was resolved and they were able to use dilithium again, the planets started rethinking their choices and began working on restoring the Federation, beginning with installing the first new class at Starfleet Academy in decades. This is where Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations is exchanged for most of the students being not white and half of the characters gay.
But I digress…
In episode one, we were introduced to Caleb Mir, a brown-skinned young man whose desperate mother aided and abetted a scenery-chewing Paul Giamatti into hijacking a shuttle so they could take the supplies and feed her child. During this crime, Giamatti’s character killed the shuttle pilot. Once caught, Mrs. Mir cooperated with the authorities in exchange for some vague deal that wasn’t honored. The terms of this deal are never fully examined: Suffice it to say, Mrs. Mir was sentenced to many years in a rehabilitation camp (The Federation’s rehabilitation camps are like Club Fed. The last one we saw – in the “Star Trek: Voyager” pilot – had pleasant walkways where inmates were pruning the flowers). She’s not sentenced to the institution Giamatti’s character was or for nearly as long, but she threw a fit anyway, especially when she learned that her son would become a ward of the Federation during her incarceration. She yelled at her 8-year old son to run and not trust them, he ran, got away and spent the next ten years living the hardscrabble life of a vagabond-turned-criminal until Holly Hunter – guilt-ridden for not pushing harder to make her superiors honor the mystery deal she’d arranged with the mother – finds teenage Caleb and offers to spring him from jail if he enrolls in Starfleet Academy.
I had asked the far-left redditors ten weeks ago what they thought should have happened? Should Mrs. Mir not have been incarcerated at all for her crime? Even if she didn’t know Giamatti was going to kill the shuttle pilot, she still took part in the theft. Should she have been given a shorter sentence? Why should having a child play a factor here? The Federation, or what’s left of it, clearly doesn’t incarcerate children with their parents. If she was given less time to serve, she would still have been separated from her child during that sentence.
Last night, Caleb’s mother had the opportunity to confront Holly Hunter in a mock trial presided over by Giamatti’s character. In this trial, Hunter reminded the audience that someone died because of the crime. That person left a family behind, too. It was also revealed that Giamatti’s character was bitter because of a misinterpretation of events he witnessed as a child. Hunter’s asking of his followers if they really wanted to follow a hot-headed person like him with his hand on the trigger based on a lie (Note: clearly, this was a potshot at the caricature of Donald Trump created by the Left). Hunter even admitted that leadership often requires hard choices to be made. What it did not address at all, though, was my paragraph above: what other choices were there for Caleb and his mother?
Unfortunately, the episode did not address the fact that the only way that the mother and child would not be separated is if the mother were let off scott free. It didn’t go there because the point wasn’t to address what happens to criminals and their families. Caleb and his mother were avatars for plucky brown-skinned migrants just wanting a better life and who are cruelly separated by a racist unfair system. It’s not a bold brave storyline because the object was not to do actual bold, brave stories. It was to pretend to do bold, brave stories that, in reality, only score hot-button political points with true believers who will nod like bobbleheads and low-information viewers who will widen their eyes and think, “Ohhhhh! That’s terrible! That’s what separating families looks like!” It’s annoying. And it misrepresents what’s happening.
When I asked, again, what options were there for not separating Caleb and his mother, another redditor pointed out that this is no longer the utopian Federation of the 23rd/24th centuries, but a timeline in which everyone is out for himself. I couldn’t help but ask if the ideals of the Federation were so flimsy that they could be tossed out just because no one could use dilithium.
Is this is a future in which, we are often told, mankind has overcome its problems with greed, savagery, the need to dominate? Mankind hasn’t overcome anything if it gives up the minute one source of power can’t be used. We’ve come a long way since the original series painted Frank Gorshin half black and half white, but this tendency to paint the future as dark and gritty as possible in order to caricature the President and his policies is at an eye-rolling level of lame.
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End of Spoilers
Also, movie recommendation: “Richard III” starring Ian McKellan who deliciously inhabits his role in an alt-timeline in which Richard and his followers increasingly use fascist symbolism, uniforms and weaponry during 1930s England. I watched it last week and it was a hoot.
Wait. You read “Innocents Abroad” by Mark Twain (my favorite of this week’s reading), “The Time Machine” by H.G. Wells, “Heart of Darkness” by Joseph Conrad and “Northanger Abbey” by Jane Austen. I just cannot get into Austen’s work. I also read Shirley Jackson’s short story “The Lottery” and still had time to watch “Gilmore Girls” and the “Star Trek” finale? Sheesh. I thought I did well slogging through the remaining chapters of Dan Brown’s new book, “Secret of Secrets” and started “The Voynich Codex” by Gary McAvoy.
jvb
To be fair, “The Time Machine” is only 120 pages long and is labeled juvenile fiction (though I cannot imagine a middle schooler, much less a high schooler, of this present day being able to read it). “Heart of Darkness” is also a relatively short one of about 100 pages.
“Gilmore Girls” was only two episodes of 45 minutes in length, but I’ll grant you that the Trek episode was over an hour.
Our church’s doctrine includes a proviso that each episode of “Gilmore Girls” watched erases a year in Purgatory. No word on whether watching them more than once counts extra, though it obviously should.
I’ve been working through Owens’ “Mr. Jefferson’s Hammer” (on William Henry Harrison), which has been a bit of a slog (though better as I progress). I’m reading it mostly to get to Leahy’s bio of John Tyler and another on polar explorer Ernest Shackleton.
P.S. Thanks so much for listing what you’re reading. I love…no…LOVE to know what books are on other people’s lists.
You’re welcome. And, when I get back to reading history, what is the name of the Shackleton biography?
Recent terrorist attacks on American soil have been called blowback for the war efforts in Iran. This includes an attack at a synagogue in Michigan, and the shooting at Old Dominion, Norfolk, VA. A prosecutor in Norfolk blames guns and the GOP for the shooting by a convicted supporter of ISIS.
This is just another narrative the Left cannot let go. They’ve invested so much in the Orange Man Bad, White Christian Nationalist militias, gender theory, critical race theory and other pablum that they cannot just walk away from it. Guns Evil is part of that narrative and they’re going to stick to it until Muslim-majority communities eliminate Republican opposition and then turn on the useful idiots on the Left who carried them across the river on their backs like the frog carried the scorpion.
He’s an Iranian-American.
Sure. Guns, the GOP, and the GOP love of guns forced this honorable, God-fearing fellow to do what he did. He really had no choice. If those contemptable GOPiers would stop their gun-loving ways, people would not impelled to take drastic actions to stop the GOPiers’ gun-loving ways.
jvb
Does this woman have a case of slander against the AI company that misidentified her using facial recognition software?
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/mar/12/tennessee-grandmother-ai-fraud
At the end of the article, they add this:
As your resident ACAB commenter, I will reminder you that no matter how much you hate the police, it is insufficient.
I’m sorry you’re having issues with your alarm. I just got a new I phone as well, my other one was an I phone 11 so it’s been a minute. There are a lot of teeny differences for sure. I haven’t set an alarm yet but I would be tempted to use Siri for the task. My biggest issue is the email that stacks conversations. I’m on a board with over 20 members. I tend to misplace the attachments in the stack.