Animals

“No Kings” Is Moronic, But I Might Be On Board With “No 13-Year-Olds”

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

Ugh.

President Trump posted an AI-generated video last week that showed him chasing, tackling and befriending a Siberian tiger, obviously inspired by the horrible incident at the Yorkshire Wildlife Park in Doncaster, England where a mentally disturbed young man, William Chapman, entered a tiger enclosure and was mauled to death. Trump posted the fake video, which was accompanied by The Tokens classic, “The Lion Sleeps Tonight.”

That might be excusable for a junior high school student today, but since a man died in the tragedy it should be obvious to anyone at least as mature as Ralph Malph that the video is in terrible taste, and would be even for a sanitation worker. This is the President of the United States posting such junk, however. I don’t care if it’s “trolling,” or if it’s ‘just a joke,” no American can feel secure and confident about the leader of their nation when he acts like that.

What’s wrong with him? Whatever it is, it’s been wrong with him for a long time, and he’s clearly not going to get over it. The same instinct that served Trump well when he did his McDonald’s bit during the campaign undermines his authority, trust and support when he slips down several notches to this, having fun with a the death of a troubled man. I’ve been trying to imagine any previous POTUS who, given the technology, would behave similarly in his most rash and irresponsible moments. There isn’t one. Reagan, Lyndon Johnson and even Calvin Coolidge were known to play practical jokes on friends and staffers. Silent Cal was fond of pressing his desk buzzer to summon Secret Service agents and then hiding under his desk. But none of them would think posting the tiger video was wise, or anything but harmful to both the office and Trump’s policy agenda.

I’ll take this opportunity to comment on the “No Kings” protests yesterday. Several friends posted photos of themselves, family members and others embarrassing themselves, apparently unaware that anyone, like me for example, would conclude that their participating in this foolishness reflects terribly on them all. It does seem that the majority of these protesters are seniors, and I suspect that many of the geezers participate out of boredom. They meet other wokified, Trump Deranged Democrats, and maybe hook up for a canasta date or an early dinner at Ruby Tuesday’s.

I sure hope that’s the reason, because I care about some of the people participating in these rallies, and I have to fight myself tooth and nail to avoid losing respect for them completely.

Ethics Quiz: The Kitty Boo-Boo

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

Cynthia ​Morgan, a school bus driver for Harford County Public Schools in Maryland for more than a decade, was alerted by an alarmed 10-year-old boy on board that there was an injured kitten by the side of the road. Yielding to the young student’s entreaties, Morgan stopped the bus on lightly-trafficked Heaps School Road in Pylesville and allowed the student to retrieve the kitten. The boy held the kitty in his lap until he was dropped off at school, whereupon the bus driver volunteered her lap for kitten-sitting for the rest of the route.

The incident got her fired. Morgan confirmed her dismissal to CBS News Baltimore and said she was devastated by the decision. The mother of the kitten rescuer says that her son would have been “devastated” if the cat has been left to fend for itself. “The fact that she was let go because of an act of kindness does really weigh on him,” she added. “That is unforgivable and cruel.”

Is it? Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is…

Was it ethical—responsible, fair, competent and reasonable—to fire the bus driver for permitting the emergency woulded kitten intervention?

The community, not to mention the influential feline population, is rallying behind Morgan. A petition on Change.org calls for the bus driver to be reinstated. “Over the years, Cynthia has become more than just a bus driver to our children; she is someone they look forward to seeing every morning and afternoon,” one parent wrote. “Her kind and warm nature makes the pupils feel safe and comfortable.This is not just my personal sentiment – countless parents and students share the same view.”

Another told reporters, “Every year at the beginning of the school year she buys every child on the bus school supplies. She buys them gifts for Christmas, every holiday, birthdays; she gives them birthday cards, all out of her own pocket.”

In a meeting with district officials, Morgan defended her actions and insisted that she had not put the student or those remaining in her bus in any jeopardy. For its part, the school system is staying the course. “Certification and decertification are not always based on a single factor but often involve consideration of multiple circumstances and requirements,” the school district said in a statement. “Student safety remains our top priority, and all certification decisions are made with that responsibility in mind.”

That sounds like lawyer-dictated CYA to me. Of course the district would default to an “it was the final straw” stance. Still, maybe it was. A letter from district Transportation Director Danielle Bedsaul cited “multiple incidents” involving Morgan, some including “concerns regarding inappropriate interactions with students.” Was buying students gifts and supplies among those “inappropriate actions”?

Two Acts Of Kindness…

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

1. To me. Yesterday I received a letter from a couple I hadn’t seen or spoken with in decades. It’s an important couple in my life: my first love from high school, and my best friend in high school who eventually married her. I was afraid to answer the letter, in fact; I was sure it would be about someone dying. And it was: my wife.

My two old friends had somehow just learned about Grace’s death in 2024, and wrote me a long, heartfelt letter expressing their sympathy and reminiscing about our shared past. They had met Grace on a couple of occasions. Now I have to write them a letter that will be five times as long, but it is the least I can do in gratitude. It’s lonely around here—thank God for Spuds. That letter was a ray of metaphorical sunshine is shaping up as a gray and drizzly week.

2. To my dog. Speaking of Spuds: we were at the dog park recently where, as usual, my exuberant pit bull mix ran joyfully amuck, greeting and charming all the dog owners and only then playing with their dogs. The Stick Game is one of Spuds’ favorites: he finds a stick, inducing other dogs to chase him and try to take it from him, he lets one get it, then he chases that dog and tries to get the stick back, usually after a spirited tug-o’-war. He was at the latter stage of the game when suddenly his opponent got frustrated and attacked him, biting him several times until his owner pulled him away.

Poor Spuds was clearly upset. Three of the owners that he had greeted earlier and who had witnessed the incident ran over to my dog before I reached him. All three kneeled down in front of him and started stoking and comforting him. I heard one, a young woman whose dog had been involved in Spuds’ stick routine, say, with her face inches from Spuds’ muzzle, “You did nothing wrong…that wasn’t your fault. That was a mean dog…are you okay?” Then they all checked my dogs’ wounds, which fortunately were superficial.

Spuds wagged his tail vigorously. gave each a kiss, and seemed to be back to his usual high spirits.

Now THIS Is An Unethical Foster Parent…

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Brenda Deutsch, 70, a serial foster mother in Missouri, was sentenced to seven years in prison for child endangerment, because, among other things, she traded her teenage foster daughter for a monkey.

 Nonetheless this creature—Deutch, not the monkey—avoided prison time, or even zoo time. Judge Thomas Frawley condemned her in open court as reprehensible and apologized to her alleged victims for a foster care system that had failed them, but he suspended execution of the sentence and placed her on three years of probation. Hey, after all, she was good to the monkey! The judge also revoked Deutsch’s foster care license and criticized the state of Missouri for allowing her to keep it.

Deutsch was arrested in April after authorities investigated allegations that she sent the girl she was fostering, now 17, to Texas to stay in a home that Deutsch admitted in court she knew nothing about. After Deutsch sought permission to take the girl to visit “a friend” in Texas, an anonymous caller alerted the Missouri Department of Social Services Children’s Division that Deutsch was allegedly physically and mentally abusing a child. Investigators later learned that the girl had been allegedly traded for “an exotic animal,” aka. the monkey, and was now living in Texas with the “friend.” She was also apparently living in squalor, because her new home was packed with animals. The teenager told investigators that Foster Mom had told her trading partner that she could keep the girl, but that Deutsch “will be keeping the check.” And the monkey, of course.

I don’t understand why Deutch isn’t receiving the same kind of passionate support Lindsay Clancy is. Heck, all Deutch did was trade a child for a monkey; she didn’t kill her. And everyone knows that teenagers are much more annoying than toddlers and babies.

It also seems pretty clear that Deutch is at least as nuts as Clancy is, just in different ways. (Note that I resisted saying that she was “bananas”…) So where’s the compassion? Where are the demonstrators in pink? How many mothers haven’t had moments when they would have happily traded their unruly, hateful teen for a monkey, a Hershey Bar or a 1958 Gino Cimoli baseball card? I see no signs reading “Listen to Mothers…Who want to Trade Their Teens for Monkeys!” This is a double standard.

Apparently Deutch has fostered over 200 kids. What a great child welfare system we have!

Yet Another Great Stupid Outbreak, But It’s In Minnesota, So We Shouldn’t Be Surprised…

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

I’m busy today, but fortunately I am being inundated by ethics stories that write themselves. Watch that video above. A Minneapolis dog park is being decommissioned because someone discovered it was on “sacred Native American land.” The rational response to that “problem” is “so what?” If it was sacred, the reasons are lost to antiquity. Not one living human being is harmed by supervised dogs running free in the area. Nonetheless, this uber-woke stste is besotted with victim-mongering and its culture embraces the batty “land acknowledgments” progressives are now addicted to. (One was read before the official dedication of Obama’s “The Empire Strikes Back” styled library.)

And please someone tell me: why are unleashed dogs more disrespectful to dead Indians than leashed dogs?

It continues to amaze me that so many once intelligent, reasonable people have been indoctrinated, bullied, and propagandized into such madness. But they have.

Now what?

Spuds is perplexed.

[Pointer: James Rogers]

Comment of the Day: Ethics Quiz: The Dogs of The Titanic

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Recently esteemed veteran Ethics Alarms commenter Michael West has been active in commenting again. For as long as it lasts this time, I am grateful. Under his initial handle texagg04, or “tex” for short, Michael elevated the level of discourse here, and notably vanquished Ethics Alarms’ most aggressive progressive/libertarian warrior among the commentariate, the legendary tgt. (Don’t get me wrong: I like and miss tgt, who was sharp, articulate and civil, but he fled the battlefield.)

One of Michael’s most interesting recent contribution is the one below, which examines exactly the issues I was hoping to have discussed when I composed the ethics quiz about the dogs on the Titanic. Before I turn the floor over to Michael, I want to emphasize a few points that have been obscured in the discussion:

  • One reason I offered this quiz was because I am so sure that my late wife Grace would have wanted to stay with the sinking ship rather than let a beloved pet die alone. I would have had to put her in restraints and drag her into the lifeboat, and she would have divorced (or murdered) me for doing it if I somehow survived. I’m not kidding. And I would have been the one comforting the dog…
  • Several commenters said that they would never take a dog on a ship because of the implied danger. Remember that there were no planes in 1912. For anyone leaving the US to stay overseas or vice-versa, the choice was to bring their non-human companions, not to go, or leave them behind.
  • Passengers did and do take dogs on cruise-ships, and while Michael in other posts reminds us that the Titanic was never exactly marketed as unsinkable, it was marketed as the safest ship there was, which was translated in the minds of travelers as “virtually unsinkable.”
  • I don’t want to contribute to false history. As I stated in the post, there is no evidence that Ann Elizabeth Isham chose to die with her dog, or even that she had a dog with her. She was one of the four First Class women who didn’t get into a lifeboat when the rule was “women and children first.” The others stayed with their husbands, so the story about her Great Dane was posited as an explanation. She could have saved herself and didn’t. Nobody knows why.
  • The sinking of the Titanic is one of those historical events that is so studied and written about that new evidence and theories still keep, ah, surfacing. We may not have heard the last of Ann and her ghostly Great Dane.

Now here is Michael West’s Comment of the Day on the post, “Ethics Quiz: The Dogs of The Titanic”:

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Ethics Quiz: The Dogs of The Titanic

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

According to J. Joseph Edgette from Widener University, there were twelve dogs that have been confirmed as passengers on the iconic doomed ship, which sank in April of 1912. Three of the dogs survived; they were all small breeds that their owners could wrap up in blankets and hide in their coats. The crew told passengers (only the First Class passengers brought their dogs) that the limited number of life boats meant that dogs would have to be left behind. 

When the ship struck the iceberg and it became clear that it was going down, the dog-loving steward in charge of the ship’s kennel released all of its canine occupants, which then ran all over the ship, surely confused, while the chaos intensified. (How did James Cameron not use that in his movie?) The three survivors were all kept in their owners’ staterooms. Lady, a Pomeranian belonging to passenger Margaret Hays, was one; Sun Yat Sen, a Pekingese belonging to Myra Harper and Henry Harper, was another, and a second Pomeranian owned by Martin and Elizabeth Rothschild was the third lucky dog.

The larger dogs that died included a King Charles Spaniel, a Poodle, a Borzoi, an Airedale, another large terrier, a Chow-Chow, a Fox Terrier, a French Bulldog and a Great Dane.

According to Titanic lore, Ann Elizabeth Isham owned the Great Dane pictured above. Rather than leave him to die alone, she chose to stay behind and comfort her beloved dog as the sea rushed in. Isham was one of the four first-class female passengers who lost their lives on the Titanic, but the only one who allegedly decided to die rather than leave her pet.

In fact, there is no evidence that she really died that way, or that she ever owned a dog, much less died with one. Nonetheless, Isham has acquired a saintly reputation among dog lovers, so let’s assume she did die rather than abandon her dog.

Your Ethics Alarms Change-of-Pace Ethics Quiz of the Day is…

Was that decision rational and ethical or emotional and irresponsible?

Would you do that under similar circumstances?

I’m pretty sure my late wife Grace would have.

Incidentally, there is another famous dog story about Titanic that has also been debunked. Supposedly a Newfoundland named Rigel belonging to Titanic’s First Officer William Murdoch was able to withstand the freezing waters after the ship sank. As the rescue ship Carpathia approached, nobel Rigel barked so loudly that the ship could locate the lifeboats. 

The tale is fiction. Murdoch had no dog on board. No survivor mentioned “Rigel.” The story apparently first popped up in 1912, in “The New York Herald.” See? The news media was making stuff up even back then. The news reporter also claimed that Donald Trump was to blame for the sinking. 

Kidding!

Update on “Dog-Rapegate”: Israel Is Suing the Times

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Good.

(I originally published this post without a graphic, waiting for the memes to come out. I decided on the one above…)

Israeli officials not only released a bombshell report this week extensively documenting Hamas violence on and after the October 7 terrorist ambush, but they are also suing The New York Times for libel as a response to its publishing Nick Kristof’s outrageous claim that Israel was torturing Palestinian prisoners by, among other methods, having them sexually assaulted by trained dogs. The Times also released the libelous accusation on the day before a new, thoroughly sourced report on Hamas violence, “Silenced No More,” was scheduled for release. The Times, almost alone among news outlets, refused to publish that because it reflected poorly on Hamas. It preferred to assert that Jews are training Lassie and Rin Tin Tin to get off on anal rape.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry announced May 14, “Following the publication by Nicholas Kristof in The New York Times of one of the most hideous and distorted lies ever published against the State of Israel in the modern press, which also received the backing of the newspaper, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar have instructed the initiation of a defamation lawsuit against The New York Times.”

The news media has been abusing its privilege under New York Times v. Sullivan with increasing boldness in recent years, and many have suggested (including me) that the standards for punishable slander and libel need to be re-thought in light of a profession no longer committed to honesty and independent public service. To be fair, it is jolly decent of the Times to eliminate any question that the paper is nothing less than a Democratic talking point propaganda organ. Democrats hate Israel and Jews now, or perhaps you haven’t noticed. The Times has, as I wrote here (#6), even doubled-down on Kristof’s evidence-free claims.

As CNN token conservative Scott Jennings wrote on “X”: “Dying on dog rape hill. What a choice.”

The UK’s Frightening Warning On Cultural Pollution From Assimilation-Adverse Immigrants

/ Jack Marshall / 45 Comments

There are some cultures and some immigrants, refugees and illegal aliens that a nation has good reason to avoid letting into its territory. Islamic culture and Muslims are a blazing example. Europe and the UK are learning this hard lesson—that cultural diversity is only a boon if a nation’s traditional culture is nurtured and protected—too late. It remains to be seen if the U.S. will.

The flashing neon sign that the Mad Left will pooh-pooh, shrug off, deny or refuse to acknowledge? This:

Nearly 70 dog breeds in the UK could be banned under proposed new legislation on the sham theory that they are “unhealthy.” A new 10-point checklist of “extreme” physical characteristics will decide which dogs will suffer from health problems due to certain physical characteristics. The excuses for banning the breeds include “mottled coloration,” “excessive” skin folds (like English bulldogs), “fat faces” (like pit bulls and mastiffs), “temperament,” bulging outward-turning eyes (pugs), drooping eyelids, being low to the ground (like Queen Elizabeth’s Corgis) and more.

Don’t kid yourself and believe that this assault on freedom and family has anything to do with canine health. This an assault on dogs by Muslims, who believe that dogs are “unclean,” as Nerdeen Kiswani, a Palestinian Muslim New Yorker and activist, said in a recent social media post. This led Representative Randy Fine (R-Fla.) to reply, “If they force us to choose, the choice between dogs and Muslims is not a difficult one.” In response to that, Congressional Democrats are demanding that Fine be censured, because, after all, tearing down American culture is part of the current party’s mission.

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Comment of the Day: “Ethics Quiz: Rep. Fine’s ‘Islamaphobic’ Quote”

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

[Apologies to all: I was so eager to get Steve’s Comment of the Day up that I forgot to add the headline!]

The historically literate, unrestrained Ethics Alarms veteran commenter Steve-O-in NJ returns to the familiar (to him) Comment of the Day podium making the case that Rep. Fine was not being one bit unreasonable and certainly not “Islamophobic” when he responded to a New York City Muslim activists assertion that dogs should not be kept as pets in the Big Apple with the quip, “If they force us to choose, the choice between dogs and Muslims is not a difficult one.”

In casual conversation about Fine’s line (not to be confused with “a fine line” ) I have yet to encounter anyone who doesn’t feel he got the better of the exchange. One lawyer friend, known for his combative courtroom style, opined that the woman’s ‘Islam is right that dogs are dirty’ remark was such a metaphorical hanging curve ball that it would have been unethical not to hit it out of the park.

Here is Steve-O-in-NJ’s Comment of the Day on the post, “Ethics Quiz: Rep. Fine’s ‘Islamaphobic’ Quote”:

***

Islamic attitudes toward dogs vary. Some think of them as okay to use as working animals (herding, hunting etc.), but not pets. Judaism also for a time was anti-dog, and I think that ported over to Islam, same as the rule against pork.

I for one have never owned a dog, but I have known many, and I think they are useful in a number of ways, including as companion animals. They assist the disabled, protect and direct livestock, find people (or bodies), save those stranded on mountains, assist the emergency services, and even tow carts with Christmas trees or other evergreen decorations (the Bernese Mountain Dog is the usual breed for this). I’ll take a large gentle dog or an affectionate energetic dog (little yappy dogs are not my thing) over a hyper-religious neighbor who wants to tell me what to do any day. I’ve said a few times that Islam is not compatible with Western values, and this is just one other reason why it isn’t.

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