Tuesday, May 12, 2026

"Just War 101"

Edward Feser recommends an essay at the National Catholic Register by Bishop of Lincoln, NE James Conley, Just War 101: Catholic Teaching for a Dangerous Moment. It claims to be a review of Catholic "Just War doctrine", but its statement of this doctrine, even as it cites the Catechism, is seriously incomplete, and I think it also has several problems of both focus and logic.

Let's take the biggest problem of logic first. He cites the case of Father George Zabelka, "a Catholic chaplain with the U.S. Air Force [who] served as a priest for the airmen who dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki."

In August of 1945, he was called upon to give the crew of the Enola Gay, the aircraft that dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, a blessing for their safety. This was an action that he had routinely performed hundreds of times, if not thousands. In fact, priests are called upon to bestow blessings for a variety of reasons. Blessing people is one of the gifts we priests are privileged to perform.

But not long afterward, he counseled an airman who had flown a reconaissance flight over Nagasaki and witnessed the terrible suffering of the civilians who'd been burned in that blast.

Over the next 20 years, Father Zabelka gradually came to believe that he had been terribly wrong, that he had denied the very foundations of his faith by lending moral and religious support to the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

This has me puzzled. Bp Conley says Fr Zabelka had blessed bomber crews hundreds, if not thousands of times. He was assigned to Tinian, where the B-29s that dropped the nuclear bombs were based. Tinian was one of the bases from which conventional firebomb raids on Japan were conducted throughout the final year of the war. In fact, if he blessed bomber crews hundreds of times during his assignment there, we may surmise he likely blessed the crews of the B-29s that participated in Operation Meetinghouse, on the night of March 9–10, 1945. This raid on Tokyo

constitute[d] the single most destructive aerial bombing raid in human history. Sixteen square miles (41 km2; 10,000 acres) of central Tokyo was destroyed, leaving an estimated 100,000 civilians dead and over one million homeless.

. . . With over half of Tokyo's industry spread out among residential and commercial neighborhoods, the firebombing cut the city's industrial output in half. Some modern post-war analysts have called the raids a war crime due to the mass targeting of civilian infrastructure and ensuing large-scale loss of civilian life.

In fact, firebombing raids of Japanese cities were routine from mid-1944. Bp Conley strongly implies that Fr Zabelka had no problem blessing the hundreds of bomber crews that conducted these raids, and he began to question US strategy only after hearing of the suffering following the Nagasaki attack, but this misrepresents Fr Zabelka's actual stance, which was complete non-violence. In any case, the bomber crews who conducted the Meetinghouse raid were just as aware of what happened to civilians as the airman who'd flown over Nagasaki:

As the bombers passed over the target area and opened their bomb bay doors to unleash their payload, many of the crews were met with a sickening odor. Maynard David, a bombardier, recalled that, “when the bomb bay doors opened, the plane filled with smoke from the ground and we smelled this horrible odor. We closed the bomb bay doors after we dropped and headed to sea. The odor was still so strong in the plane that the pilot ordered me to open the doors again to let the fresh air in. You could only imagine what was going on down below us.” The odor, of course, was the smell of burning human flesh. Such were the casualties on the ground that the smell would permeate the airplanes and the flight suits of the crews for days after the raid.

Although Bp Conley doesn't mention this, Fr Zabelka eventually came to condemn the conventional firebomb raids as well, but this was part of a journey that actually took him away from Catholic just war theory:

In August 1980 Sojourners magazine published an extensive interview with Zabelka, titled “I was brainwashed. They told me it was necessary.” In the interview, he described the process of his conversion from a hard-core belief in the moral validity of Christian Just war theory as a viable moral option for a disciple of Jesus to instead making a full-fledged and public commitment to the nonviolent Jesus of the Gospels.

In the interview, he effectively acknowledges that he did bless the crews that firebombed Tokyo, but this was because he'd been misled by just war theory into thinking this was OK, and he'd left just war theory behind; just war theory was incorrect from the start, because it did tolerate civilian suffering under certain circumstances. In a 1985 speech, he said,

For the last 1700 years the church has not only been making war respectable: it has been inducing people to believe it is an honorable profession, an honorable Christian profession. This is not true. We have been brainwashed. This is a lie.

War is now, always has been, and always will be bad, bad news. I was there. I saw real war. Those who have seen real war will bear me out. I assure you, it is not of Christ. It is not Christ’s way. There is no way to conduct real war in conformity with the teachings of Jesus. There is no way to train people for real war in conformity with the teachings of Jesus.

So it's at best incongruous for Bp Conley to cite Fr Zabelka if he wants us to understand Catholic just war doctrine -- Fr Zabelka thinks the Church's Magisterium is in error here. But in addition, Bp Conley's explanation of the Church's teaching in the Catechism is incomplete and thus misleading. He correctly cites CCC 2309's four conditions for just war:

(1) The damage inflicted by the aggressor must be lasting, grave, and certain
(2) All other means of putting an end to it must have shown to be impractical or ineffective
(3) There must be serious prospects of success
(4) The use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated (the principle of proportionality)

But he leaves out CCC 2309's key conclusion, "The evaluation of these conditions for moral legitimacy belongs to the prudential judgment of those who have responsibility for the common good." On one hand, Fr Zabelka explicitly rejects this aspect of Church teaching, although he died in 1992, before CCC was published -- but if he knew of it, he'd say, as he said above, "This is a lie." There's no legitimate way either the Church or civil authorities can evalate the conditions for "just war", there's no such thing.

But the actual teaching of the Church places the responsibility for evaluating the moral conditions of just war on civil authorities, using their prudential judgment. Edward Feser, who recommends Conley's essay in his tweet embedded above, says of prudential judgment:

In contemporary debates in Catholic moral theology, a distinction is often drawn between actions that are flatly ruled out in principle and those whose permissibility or impermissibility is a matter of prudential judgment.

. . . The more complicated and variable the circumstances, the more difficult it can be to decide on a single correct answer and thus the greater the scope for reasonable disagreement.

. . . Abortion and euthanasia are flatly prohibited in all circumstances because they violate the negative precept “Do not murder.” But principles like “Pay a living wage” or “Ensure health care for all” are affirmative precepts, and how best to apply them to concrete circumstances is highly dependent on various complex and contingent economic considerations. There can be no reasonable disagreement among Catholics about whether abortion and euthanasia should be illegal. But there can be reasonable disagreement among them about whether a certain specific minimum wage law is a good idea, or which sort of economic arrangements provide the best way to secure health coverage for all.

The same point can be made about other contemporary controversies, mutatis mutandis.

I'm a little troubled that Bp Conley uses the word "prudential" only once in his essay, and not in the context of the specific designation in CCC 2309, which places the responsibility for evaluating the moral conditions for just war within the prudential judgment of civic authorities. The meaning of CCC 2309's statement as Prof Feser would explain it is clear: these are matters on which reasonable people can disagree; indeed, they're matters on which people can be mistaken. But Feser endorses Bp Conley's pronouncement: "There are certain standards for which we stand, regardless of consequences. Period."

As I read this, Bp Conley is trying to place "just war" theory in territory where certain actions are ruled out in principle -- "period" -- when the Church's teaching explicitly places the evaluation of these actions within prudential judgment. In fact, Bp Conley cites a thinker on "just war" theory whose criticism says the Church is explicitly wrong to place evaluation of moral conditions within prudential judgment -- except that the Church in CCC 2309 does explicitly teach this.

So all I can conclude is that Bp Conley's understanding of Fr Zabelka is imperfect; Fr Zabelka in fact rejects the Church's teaching on "just war", which makes him an odd authority to cite in support of it, especially when he claims to be explaining "Just War 101". But it also suggests that both Conley and Feser are trying to move an argument against the Iran war into territory where certain actions are ruled out in principle, when the Church's teaching makes it clear that they are matters on which reasonable people can disagree.

Why are they doing this? Bp Conley on one hand simply may not be familiar with Fr Zabelka's full career, but I call logical inconsistency on Feser, who after all is a philosophy professor. I'll try to get into this tomorrow if nothing intervenes.

posted by test @ May 12, 2026   0 Comments

Monday, May 11, 2026

The Spencer Pratt Fantasy

I'm seeing a lot of wild predictions about Spencer Pratt's electoral chances with very little backup -- most of it is just an adrenaline rush following laast week's ads, the most visible of which didn't come from his campaign. Here's Tyler Durden yesterday:

Los Angeles mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt, best known for his role on MTV’s The Hills, is gaining traction on online prediction markets, including Polymarket and Kalshi, as well as local polling, after a series of viral campaign videos and last week’s mayoral debate.

Pratt’s campaign has released hard-hitting viral ads that have spread across social media like wildfire. His election odds are rising as voters realize that the far-left incumbent, Mayor Karen Bass, and socialist Councilmember Nithya Raman have transformed one of America’s top cities into a cesspool of crime, chaos, drugs, and out-of-control taxes.

But LA has been LA a lot longer than just the past four years. There was mild hope for some sort of reform in the 2022 election, when developer Rick Caruso, a former Republican who changed his registration to Democrat, ran against Karen Bass for the open mayor's seat:

Real estate developer Rick Caruso's campaign strategy in the 2022 Los Angeles mayoral election is being critically re-evaluated after his defeat by Karen Bass, who secured 54.83% of the vote compared to Caruso's 45.17%. The outcome has prompted commentary regarding Caruso's approach, with one social media user, Matt Bilinsky, stating, "And Rick Caruso thought he needed to support every brain dead liberal initiative to best her. An all-time fumble."

. . . During his campaign, Caruso adopted positions that some observers considered aligned with traditionally liberal policies, particularly on issues such as climate change and certain social programs. For instance, he advocated for aggressive measures to combat climate change, including transitioning to 100% renewable energy and electrifying city vehicles. He also proposed expanding mental health services and addressing the root causes of homelessness, alongside his tough-on-crime stance.

The last successful quasi-reform mayor of Los Angeles was Richard Riordan, who was mayor from 1993 to 2001. One of his accomplishments was a ballot initiative to impose term limits on city council members, which passed in 1994. Before that, council members stayed in office for decades, got rich, and died in office. Nevertheless, term limits had no effect on the continuing political machine, which simply continued to put its favored candidates in place, just more often. Other Riordan programs were mostly ineffective:

As Mayor, the heavily Democratic Los Angeles City Council blocked many of his proposals, or they proved unfeasible in reality. For example, the police academy did not have enough classroom space or instructors to train as many new police officers as Riordan had initially promised. He streamlined certain business regulations and established "one-stop" centers around the city for services, like permit applications.

Riordan feuded with police chief Daryl Gates' successor, former Philadelphia police commissioner Willie Williams, but oversaw a general decline in city crime. Ultimately, Riordan replaced Williams with LAPD veteran Bernard Parks in 1997, the year he was re-elected mayor over California State Senator Tom Hayden.

If Spencer Pratt wins the election, he'll face the same problems Riordan did. I asked Chrome AI mode, "Does the Mayor of Los Angeles have the authority to order the police to arrest the homeless?" It answered,

While the Mayor of Los Angeles has the executive authority to set policy and sign ordinances that regulate public spaces, they generally do not have the power to "order" the police to arrest someone simply for being homeless. Instead, legal authority for arrests comes from specific city ordinances and state laws, and law enforcement operations are typically managed by the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) under its own chain of command.

The Chief of the Los Angeles Police Department reports directly to the Board of Police Commissioners, not the mayor. This five-member civilian board, appointed by the mayor and confirmed by the city council, functions as the head of the police department, setting overall policy and overseeing operations.The Chief of Police is appointed by the mayor (with city council consent) and works with the mayor's office on public safety priorities.

The sweeping policy changes Pratt is suggesting in the X tweet at the top of this post wouldn't be possible without the support of the Police Commission.

Police Commissioners serve five-year terms, limited to two terms. While the mayor can fire members of the Polce Commission, a fired member can appeal the mayor's decision to the city council. The council can override the decision with a two-thirds vote. Any attempt by Spencer Pratt to force a crackdown on homelessness as he suggests would face heavy resistance from the current Police Commission and the very liberal city council.

Mark Halperin is another observer who says, "I think Spencer Pratt's going to win. I almost never predict anything, but I think he's going to win, because those videos are just too good." Nevertheless, in the absence of any reliable polls, Polymarket as of today has Bass at 49%, up 1%, Pratt at 30%, up 10%. and Raman at 18%, down 14%. If these were percentages for the June 2 primary results, Pratt would squeak by to put Bass into a runoff, but Bass would still be a heavy favorite in November.

Although Pratt's momentum has surged since last week's debate against Bass and Raman, a second debate scheduled for Wednesday, May 13, won't have the same effect. Bass, still the front runner, has withdrawn from that debate.

Of the five candidates originally invited, three are still slated to appear: Councilwoman Nithya Raman, businessman Adam Miller [1% on Polymarket], and community advocate Rae Huang [1% on Polymarket].

Spencer Pratt had never agreed to appear, while Bass likely sees greater downside if she participates and does as poorly as she did last week.

The most recent polling as of five weeks ago had Bass at 25%, Pratt at 11%, and Raman at 9%, with 40% undecided. According to Ballotpedia,

UCLA's Zev Yaroslavsky writes, "It is unusual for 40% of likely voters to be unsure of their choice just two months before an LA mayoralty election. Although Mayor Bass faces the most challenging reelection of an incumbent mayor in decades, it is highly likely that this election will be decided in a November runoff." The last time an incumbent mayor was not re-elected was in 2005, when Mayor James Hahn lost to Antonio Villaraigosa 58.6%-41.4%.

Spencer Pratt's problem is on one hand, there's not a whole lot of actual subatance there, but on the other, even if he's elected in November in a runoff with Bass, it doesn't seem like he has a realistic chance to put his policies in place. There's a glimmer of hope for him in the possibility that unlike Rick Caruso, the electorate will vote for a candidate who represents a clear-cut choice, but the question remains whether Pratt can follow through and implement real policy changes.

posted by test @ May 11, 2026   0 Comments

Sunday, May 10, 2026

More On What's Bugging Tucker

I ran into a YouTube commentary by an Australian lady more or less at random, but in the middle, she made a point I hadn't seen before: Tucker Carlson's wonderful new Muslim audience is courtesy of state media in certain Islamic countries. I was puzzled at this, because the Arab states are positioned against Iran, which Carlson supports. Poking around farther, I got this response from Chrome AI mode:

Tucker Carlson's content is being broadcast by state media in certain Islamic countries, most notably Iran. Current reporting and social media evidence from early 2026 indicate that the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB), the country’s state-controlled media, has been airing his interviews dubbed into Persian on its 24-hour news channels. State TV has utilized Carlson's segments to support its own narrative, specifically amplifying his criticisms of Western foreign policy and Israel. Observers note that his commentary often aligns "point for point" with the strategic messaging of the Iranian government.

But that's just AI, I had to do more digging, and I came up with this, from early January of this year:

As Iran’s protest movement intensifies, the Islamic Republic has moved on two tracks at once: cut the country off from the internet while flooding state TV with curated messaging—including Persian-dubbed Tucker Carlson content.

Sources inside Iran are consistent with what outside reporting has captured: when the internet is throttled, IRIB becomes the loudest -— and for many, the only -— national feed. In that information vacuum, clips from Carlson’s interview with Iran’s leadership can be edited into “proof” that the regime is right and its critics are liars.

There can be no question, months later, that Carlson's stance is pro-mullahs and anti-US. The mullahs are at minimum exploiting this:

There is broad commentary and reporting about Carlson’s repeated criticism of Israel and claims he amplifies narratives about Israeli influence in U.S. politics; this has generated strong backlash from pro-Israel voices and analysts.

Why Tehran benefits: Iranian state TV can clip Carlson’s Israel-critical framing and present it as: “Even prominent Americans admit Israel is the problem,” which supports Tehran’s external narrative while it represses dissent at home.

This has been noticed here and there on social media: But neither legacy nor alt media has picked this up. This is puzzling, because to do this sort of thing is, as Ben Bankas put it in another context, to swim with the sting rays like Steve Irwin.

Let's look at two potentially parallel cases: First, William Joyce, Lord Haw-Haw, who made pro-Nazi, anti-UK broadcasts from Germany throughout World War II:

Joyce was captured by British forces in northern Germany just as the war ended, tried, and eventually hanged for treason on 3 January 1946. Joyce's defence team, appointed by the court, argued that, as an American citizen and naturalised German, Joyce could not be convicted of treason against the British Crown. However, the prosecution successfully argued that, since he had lied about his nationality to obtain a British passport and voted in Britain, Joyce owed allegiance to the king.

Another is Iva Toguri, one of several English-speaking Japanese women who broadcast propaganda aimed at US troops from Japan during World War II, collectively known as "Tokyo Rose":

After World War II ended in 1945, the U.S. military detained Toguri for a year before releasing her due to lack of evidence. . . . But when Toguri tried to return to the United States, an uproar ensued because Walter Winchell (a powerful broadcasting personality) and the American Legion lobbied relentlessly for a trial, prompting the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to renew its investigation of Toguri's wartime activities. Her 1949 trial resulted in a conviction on one of eight counts of treason.

She was fined $10,000 and sentenced to ten years in prison, but paroled after six. During the 1970s, investigative reporters uncoovered numerous irregularities in the trial, and President Ford gave her a full pardon in 1977.

This suggests that people who broadcast support for US warrtime enemies in particular face at best unpredictable consequences. Jane Fonda never suffered legal consequences for posing on a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun in 1972, but it tarnished her reputation as "Hanoi Jane", something no public figure presumably wants. It appears that Tucker Carlson's son Buckley, who had what appears to have been a patronage job as J D Vance's deputy press secretary, may already have suffered for his dad's sins:

The son of right-wing pundit Tucker Carlson has left Vice President JD Vance’s press team to set up his own political consulting firm amid escalating tensions between his father and President Trump.

Buckley Carlson, a 20-something who had served as Vance’s deputy press secretary since the start of the second Trump administration, is joining a group of several White House alumni departing for the private sector.

While such moves can be typical in presidential administrations, Buckley’s departure comes against the backdrop of a growing rift between Trump, 79, and Tucker, 56, once an avid backer.

It seems to me that Tucker's problems are twofold. The first is that although he's now well known for his anti-Trump stance over the war, neither legacy nor alt media has covered the issue that his podcasts have become a direct anti-US priopaganda tool for the Iranian mullahs. If this changes, it could certainly hurt Tucker's public image, perhaps as much as "Hanoi Jane" hurt Jane Fonda's. Consider that the mullahs don't even have the underdog leftist appeal of the North Vietnamese; they're nothing but murderous thugs who happen to like Tucker.

The second issue is whether Tucker was paid in any way by the mullahs for the use of his podcasts. It's bad enough that the mullahs like them, but if they were in any way paid propaganda, Tucker would run into bigger problems for violating US sanctions and failing to register as a foreign agent. The overall issue of working on behalf of the mullahs, even if unpaid, could well trouble his conscience.

And there's a bigger overall question. Estimates of Tucker's salary at Fox run from $15-20 million per year, with total compensation including bonuses as high as $35 million per year. Nobody makes that kind of money from YouTube -- even if they have millions of followers, they have side hustles selling merch or promoting other businesses. Tucker has an expensive lifestyle, with two multimillion-dollar adjoining homes in Florida and and a sumnmer home in Maine. And even if Iran was making up for houusehold deficits, I can't imagine it's paying him now, with Trump cutting off its oil money.

Yesterday I posted comments questioning where Tucker's often bizarre behavior comes from -- the possibilities include addiction, neurological, psychological, or medical problems. I think we can reasonably add others, including a troubled conscience, fear of potential prosecution, and dire financial straits. What's surprising is that nobody seems to be seriously following through on pretty obvious leads.

posted by test @ May 10, 2026   0 Comments

Saturday, May 9, 2026

What On Earth Is Up With Tucker And Megyn?

The video embedded above is YouTuber Brandon Tatum's astonished reaction to Tucker Carlson's disastrous interview witn Lulu Garcia-Navarro of the New York Times, which is entertaining enough, but he also interposes Megyn Kelly's commentary, "Tucker sat down with Lulu, and Tucker handled himself, of course, very, very well. . . . Any sort of would-be trap she was laying, he saw from a mile away." It's as if she saw an entirely different interview from the one everyone else watched.

But that took me back to her "hostage video" that I discussed Thursday, where she explains to captive Mark Halperin about the wonderful new audience of young Muslims that she and Tucker are reaching. Her typical wardrobe, though, isn't exactly Muslim-friendly, so it's hard to imagine what kind of Muslims are tuning in to watch her.

In other words, I'm not sure if she understands much about Islam -- certainly if she wanted to appeal to Muslim sensibilities, she'd at least cover up her arms and shoulders. Robert Spencer has the same sort of questions about Tucker. Does he actually know much about Islam?

Carlson includes a kernel of truth in his lies and deflections, and that makes them all the more insidious. Like Christianity, Islam does indeed teach that “every person has a soul.” But the Qur’an also teaches that non-Muslims are “like cattle, no, they are worse.” (7:179) It says that non-Muslims are “the most vile of created beings” (98:6), and calls them “the worst of animals” (8:55).

These aren’t mere words, either. The Qur’an also states: “Muhammad is the apostle of Allah. Those who follow him are ruthless to unbelievers, merciful to one another.” (48:29) Ruthless in what way? The Qur’an tells Muslims to “kill them wherever you find them” (2:191, 4:89, 4:91) and, just in case that wasn’t clear enough, adds “kill the idolators wherever you find them” (9:5). This includes pretty much everyone, for in the Qur’anic view, virtually every non-Muslim is an idolater.

Dominic Green in the Washington Examiner provides some insight when he compares Tucker to the Roman historian Tacitus:

Tacitus never saw the Teutonic forests, but in his first-century bestseller Germania, he told Romans that the German tribes who lived there had an “inherent love of liberty” and a rude kind of self-government. The men kept their women “fenced-in and chaste, without seductive display,” and if they caught a woman jumping the fence in adultery, they scourged her in public. They were an honorable and warlike people, and levying interest on loans was “unknown” among them.

Tacitus was an old-school republican orator from an established patrician family that had lost its status. The new, imperial Rome was glitzy, materialistic, hedonistic, and promiscuous. Tacitus rose through the system by playing a game he despised. When he praised the uncivilized Germans, he implicitly damned his over-civilized contemporaries. After writing Germania, he stepped back from public life. Perhaps he despised himself for his complicity in the trashing of republican virtue.

Tucker Carlson was an old-school Republican orator from an established patrician family that lost its status. He rose through the system by playing a game he despised. He now praises Islam in terms closely resembling Tacitus’s praise of the German tribes, and with a similarly thwarted passion. Perhaps he despises himself for his complicity in the trashing of republican virtue, or at least the Republican coalition.

This might explain some part of Tucker, but not everything -- yes, his background is upper-class, even to the point of glaring family dysfunction, but he shows remarkably little self-awareness. Just this past February, Rabbi Michael Barclay went in a different direction at PJ Media discussing Tucker's interview with Mike Huckabee:

Carlson showed what appeared to be signs of either mental distress, a neurological issue, or possible addiction.

Throughout the interview with Huckabee, Tucker suddenly begins laughing nervously. It happens frequently, often at some of the most inappropriate moments. During exchanges about war, death, or even his own personality (he repeatedly calls himself a “jerk”), Tucker breaks into a strained, almost hysterical laugh that feels out of place—arguably even more so than the cackling often associated with Kamala Harris. It seems uncontrolled, inappropriate, and at times extreme. If you watch the entire interview, this happens repeatedly: he suddenly starts laughing and lowers his head, almost as if in embarrassment.

To act like this once or twice would suggest a level of nervousness that is not typically attributed to Tucker Carlson. To repeatedly behave this way could be a symptom of something much, much deeper and more troubling for his own well-being.

. . . More than anything, aside from his obvious anti-Semitism, this interview is a warning sign for Tucker Carlson. I pray that he is evaluated by professionals in both mental health and neurological disorders, and that he also considers speaking with an addiction specialist.

His flat-out denials in the New York Times interview that he said things like Trump could be the Antichrist, when this is clearly contradicted by the evidence on tape, is yet another troubling sign -- as is Megyn Kelly's insistence that he "handled himself, of course, very, very well" in that interview. This is almost beginning to look like a folie à deux -- but what is it they both have to be delusional about? Is it their wonderful new audience of young Muslims, who, if it exists at all in Megyn's case, must be watching only to ogle her shoulders and upper arms?

A typical jury instruction says that if a witness is shown to be lying aboukt one thing, he's lying about everything. If Megyn and Tucker are lying that Tucker never said Trump maybe was the Antichrist, Megyn is lying about their wonderful new audience of young Muslims -- but why would she lie about that? I'm actually wondering if both have much bigger financial problems than we know about.

posted by test @ May 09, 2026   0 Comments

Friday, May 8, 2026

Suddenly, Spencer Pratt Is Everywhere

On Monday, I poated about Spencer Pratt's campaign for mayor of Los Angeles, focusing on an ad -- at the time, it wasn't clear that his campaign had in fact not commissioned it, but this is the case. But within days, two more independent, "fan produced" ads have come out: one, embedded above, is based on The Dark Knight Rises; the other, embedded below as part of a Mark Halperin 2WAY segment, is based on the Hitler-in-the-bunker scenes in Downfall.
But then there was an enmtirely separate development: at a Wenesday night debate, Pratt wiped the floor with his two opponents, incumbent Karen Bass and Democratic Socialist Mamdani clone Nithya Raman. (Some commentators get several things wrong about the candidates -- first, Los Angeles City elections are "non-partisan", and candidates don't idenmtify by party, and second, Pratt, although formerly Republican, is registered independent.) On Gutfeld last night, Spencer Pratt stayed composed while the Dems got exposed. Megyn Kelly, Why Spencer Pratt's BRILLIANT Debate Performance Has Megyn Supporting Him For LA Mayor.

The Dark Knight Rises ad was even on Sky News Australia. Mark Halperin's reaction to the Downfall ad is embedded above. The Hill reports,

A new AI-generated ad promoting Spencer Pratt, a Republican [sic] running for mayor of Los Angeles, depicts the city as a Gotham-influenced dystopian hellscape with only Pratt, presented as Batman, able to save it.

The ad, shared Tuesday on social media by Los Angeles-based filmmaker Charles Curran of Menace Studios, shows the Hollywood sign and City Hall burning. It also depicts Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass (D), as the Joker, flanked by California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) and former Vice President Kamala Harris.

. . . While Curran is not directly affiliated with Pratt’s campaign, the candidate reposted the ad on social media. As of Thursday morning, 3.9 million users on the social platform X have viewed it, and 10,000 have reposted it.

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) gave props to the ad, writing Tuesday on X, “Maybe the best political ad of the year.”

. . . A poll conducted in March by the University of California, Berkeley, and the Los Angeles Times found that a quarter of respondents backed Bass in the race, with 17 percent backing Los Angeles City Councilmember Nithya Raman, a democratic socialist, and 14 percent backing Pratt. About a quarter of respondents were undecided.

. . . Early voting in the nonpartisan mayoral primary is set for May 23 through June 1, with an official voting day falling on June 2. Unless one candidate receives more than 50 percent of the vote in the primary, the top two finishers, regardless of party, will advance to the general election.

There are several takeaways from the Pratt phenomenon that we see here, whether or not they'll impact the outcome of the election. The first is that the campaign is completely disconnected from legacy media. The LA Times has endorsed Karen Bass, who remains at the top of Polymarket's odds as of today at 45%, but those odds have fallen 4% from yesterday. Nithya Raman's odds are now 27%, having fallen 6%, while Pratt's odds are now 25%, nearly tied with Raman, having risen 6%. Clearly it's the debate results and the ads on social media that are driving opinion, not the LA Times.

Second, Pratt seems instinctively to be following Trump's innovative formula: he either diaregards legacy media coverage, ignoring or outright denouncing it, or he turns it against itself, forcing it to report on campaign rallies, controversial remarks, stunts like the campaign garbage truck, and so forth. Not only did Pratt not have to commission three highly effective ads, he didn't have to pay to have them run -- social media users distrubuted them for free.

Third, as Mark Halperin pointed out above, the ads themselves were likely dirt cheap to produce using AI. The Spectator also comments,

It cannot really be said that videos like these lower the tone of public life. Traditional political broadcasts are already awful and people go to great lengths to avoid seeing them. The most famous spot of the 1960s showed a little girl being blown up by a nuclear bomb.

However, it should also be noted that the Johsnon 1964 campaign never paid to air that ad -- it sent it to TV stations to use as news, so it didn't have to. Pratt and his supporters are using precisely the same strategy, except they're bypassing the network news gateway by going through social media. The link goes on,

AI videos are effective in politics for the trivial reason that you can create whatever scenarios you like for rhetorical purposes. In Curran’s clip Kamala Harris is drinking vodka straight from the bottle, and Mayor Bass has her face made up like the Joker – in a pre-AI age the only way to depict this would be to animate it, which would take much too long. “Storytelling” is meant to be the secret to political communications and AI lets one do this in a much more literal sense. Donald Trump’s famous 2024 ad told viewers that “Kamala is for they/them, President Trump is for you,” but here Gavin Newsom is simply made to say that “if you were a transgender migrant I could get you a free pussy.”

But then it makes a non sequitur:

It is perhaps telling that Trump, the master of all mediums, only uses AI for jokes rather than for actual communiques to the public.

But even the jokes have storytelling punch: consider the one where Trump swings at a golfball that hits Hillary in the head. The longer AI Pratt ads are nothing but a series of equivalent skits.

A bigger question is whether Pratt has a future. The June 2 primary has two possible outcomes: one is that a single candidate polls above 50%, in which case he or she becomes mayor without a runoff. Polling up to now suggests Raman could win this. Otherwise, the top two have a runoff in November. So far, Pratt\ has consistently polled in third place, and as of today, there have been no new polls reflecting the past week's developments. To have any chance, Pratt needs to mnve a few points up to second, and then he needs to continue an effective campaign through summer and fall. This is uncertain.

Keep in mind that the dead people vote, the illegal alien vote, and the usual-suspect vote are still for Bass, while the boutique affluent vote is still for Raman. The indy ads seem correctly leaning toward appealing to the solid-citizen Latin vote.

But even if he's elected mayor, he needs to get his program through the far-left city council, which right now is a deeply uncertain question. Winning the election will be only the first of his tasks. It's best not to get carried away.

posted by test @ May 08, 2026   0 Comments

Thursday, May 7, 2026

Megyn Kelly Makes A Hostage Video

The remarkable thing about the video embedded above is that Megyn Kelly has Mark Halperin on for over a minute, but all he's there for is to interject "Yup" and "Right" a few times into what she's saying -- which is basically that she and Tucker are reaching a wonderful new audience of young Muslims. In other words, this is a hostage video, and when the camera shows his face, he doesn't seem happy at all. This piece on Twitchy notes that she's done a 180 in the course of four months and speculates she must have bills to pay.

But why is she bringing Mark Halperin along with her? Halperin has had some major career struggles. His Wikipedia entry suggests he'd been vulnerable since the Dubya years for leaning a little too Republican, but once Obama was president, he really began to get into hot water:

On June 30, 2011, Halperin was suspended from his duties at MSNBC for "slurring" President Barack Obama on the program Morning Joe, after he said of Obama "I thought he was kind of a dick" for his performance at the previous day's press conference. His suspension was lifted a month later.

In December 2011, Halperin was listed as number 1 in Salon's 2011 Hack List, his reporting described as "shallow and predictable" as well as "both fixated solely on the horse race and also uniquely bad at analyzing the horse race".

He started living even more dangerously with Donald Trump:

Alex Shephard, writing in The New Republic, criticized his coverage for being "totally fixated" on the horse race and for shallow analysis, and "that he’s wanted to carry Donald Trump's bags for years."

On November 3, 2016, NBC's Brian Williams said Halperin had "gone out of his way" to give Trump favorable coverage. "When Donald Trump complains he is not getting favorable coverage in the MSM"—making reference to the mainstream media—"he has not been listening to you this cycle", Williams said to Halperin on Williams' show. "It's a question of looking at the data," said Halperin. "If there's a bit more of a national surge, and if it turns out that his ceiling is higher than the Clinton folks think...I think it's possible he (Trump) could find his way to 270" electoral votes. Less than a week later Trump surprised many people by winning over 300 electoral votes.

What came next seems hardly a coincidence:

On October 26, 2017, CNN disclosed that five women had, on condition of anonymity, accused Halperin of sexual harassment or sexual assault.

. . . Later that day, NBC News released a statement saying that in light of the allegations, Halperin would not return as a senior political analyst "until the questions around his past conduct are fully understood". HBO announced it would no longer go forward with a planned miniseries about the presidential election that was based in part on Halperin's then-upcoming book on the 2016 election.

. . . A day after their first story, CNN ran a second story revealing that the number of women accusing Halperin of misconduct had grown to "at least a dozen". In a lengthy statement published in response to the CNN report, Halperin denied several of the new allegations. . . . He apologized to the women he "mistreated" while acknowledging that he recognized he had a problem near the end of his tenure at ABC, received weekly counseling sessions, and ended the behavior; however, a later report from The Daily Beast included an allegation of harassment from 2011.

It's hard to come to a conclusion about the allegations. He denies the most scurrilous, and they're all anonymous, but he acknowledges he had a problem and has tried to do something about it. On the other hand, the whole episode appears to have been stage-managed and calculated to banish him from media, so it's hard not to think there was something behind the campaign beyond just exposing bad behavior. In any case, he spent seven years in the wilderness, but by 2024, he'd begun to restart his career:

For several news cycles this campaign season, it’s almost been like old times for Mark Halperin. The veteran political pundit has been hitting the media circuit, slinging opinions about the presidential race on NewsNation, Newsmax, Fox News.com, and Michael Smerconish’s satellite radio program. He’s been on Megyn Kelly’s mega-popular podcast and on Tucker Carlson’s too. When Halperin reported on his video platform in early October that “robust private polling” was showing Kamala Harris’s support fading and Donald Trump’s ascendant, the Trump-friendly mediasphere gobbled it up, treating his comments as if they were delivered from Mt. Olympus.

In 2024, he began a 2WAY channel with his own and guest commentary that's also fesatured on YouTube. In 2025, he began working for Megyn Kelly's MK Media, reporting on the Next Up channel on Sirius XM and YouTube. His reporting is usually insightful and accurate, although it leans in a pro-Trump direction -- but his predictions on electoral outcomes, including Biden's withdrawal from the 2024 race and Trump's victories in 2016 and 2024, have been correct.

So how does this fit in with Megyn's move to align with Tucker Carlson, against Trump, and against Israel? Halperin is, of course, from a Jewish family, and his reporting on Israel and the Iran war has been even-handed to favorable:

In this episode of “Next Up with Mark Halperin,” Mark uses his reported monologue to put to rest the debates over the “why?” and “why now?” questions about President Trump’s decision to use military force in Iran. By looking at nearly half a century of statements from Trump himself and from his immediate predecessors, Mark illustrates how clear Trump’s rationale and reasons are for the historic decision, leaving space to ask the other important and germane war-time questions for the United States and the world.

Earlier, commentary on Halperin's rehabilitation attributed it in large measure to Megyn Kelly's and Tucker Carlson's support, but this was during a period when Kelly and Carlson were favorable to Trump. As of this past March 2, Kelly has been anti-Trump due to the Iran war:

On March 2, 2026, Kelly would split with the Trump Administration over the 2026 Iran war, notably questioning why U.S. military members died in a conflict which mainly involved Iran and Israel. In a phone interview with Rachael Blade of The Inner Circle later that day, Trump declared that both Kelly and Tucker Carlson, another right wing commentator who criticized Trump's Iran policy, "aren't MAGA".

But Kelly's political affiliations have been fluid. At the same link, this was her 2025 position:

"When I was at Fox and then for that year at NBC, I was more in the center. I was like definitely center-right. Now I think I'm pretty conservative. I mean, I just am now. I mean, the earth has shifted such that I think I have to say, yes, by today's standards, you'd call me conservative. But that's thanks to them. What they did to me, they were vicious. They're complete a[********]. Their woke ideology completely radicalized me against them. And I love that. It empowered me in a way that allowed me to see the truth about them. That was very helpful to me. I wouldn't undo it if I could because it really helped me understand who I was dealing with over there."

Now, as of this year, with Tucker, she's reaching a wonderful new audience of young Muslims. I've got to hope Mark Halperin has built up enough credibility to continue a career without Megyn Kelly's support, because that hostage video doesn't seem like it augurs well for Halperin's future working for her.

posted by test @ May 07, 2026   0 Comments

Wednesday, May 6, 2026

It Looks Like Salem Media Has An AI Policy

Salem Media owns a number of nominally conservative and "Christian" radio stations, as well as "conservative" web sites like Instapundit, PJ Media, Red State, Hot Air, Twitchy and Townhall, but it isn't doing well with them:

According to its annual report for the year ended Dec. 31, 2025, Salem posted total net revenue of $212.7 million, down from $237.6 million in 2024, a decline of about 10% year over year.

The company reported a net loss of $34.6 million, reversing net income of $16.2 million in 2024. On a per-share basis, Salem posted a loss of $1.11 compared with earnings of $0.59 per share the prior year.

Yesterday I looked at Glenn Reynolds (the eponymous Instapundit) and his ideas about AI, but I also found a post on the Instapundit site pointing (incestuously, as so many posts there do) to a piece on another Salem Media site, PJ Media, Famed Atheist Richard Dawkins — Author of ‘The God Delusion’ — Believes AI Is Conscious:

Dawkins argues that Claude and ChatGPT both passed the Turing Test: That the telltale sign of consciousness is when an AI can communicate so flawlessly, it’s indistinguishable from a human.

. . . But that’s less an argument for AI consciousness and more an indictment of the Turing Test’s fallibility. (Turns out the Turing Test was mostly a test of human gullibility.) Perhaps one day, AIs will achieve true consciousness; perhaps they won’t — but prior to achieving consciousness they’re very likely to replicate the appearance of consciousness via mimicry.

Unfortunately, there’s no known scientific experiment to distinguish between these two states.

Actually, there is a rational -- if not "scientific" in the sense the writer uses it -- proof that a digital computer isn't conscious, the "Chinese Room argument" published by philosopher John Searle in 1980, well before AI:

Searle imagines himself alone in a room following a computer program for responding to Chinese characters slipped under the door. Searle understands nothing of Chinese, and yet, by following the program for manipulating symbols and numerals just as a computer does, he sends appropriate strings of Chinese characters back out under the door, and this leads those outside to mistakenly suppose there is a Chinese speaker in the room.

The narrow conclusion Searle draws from the argument is that programming a digital computer may make it appear to understand language but could not produce real understanding. Hence the “Turing Test” is inadequate. Searle argues that the thought experiment underscores the fact that computers merely use syntactic rules to manipulate symbol strings, but have no understanding of meaning or semantics.

. . . [M]inds must result from biological processes; computers can at best simulate these biological processes.

Except that a key problem in the philosophy of mind is whether consciousness is the same thing as a biological process, and if so, whether it will always be separate from any neural electrochemical mechanism, much less an electronic simulation. The idea that "AI is conscious" is related to the idea of Frankenstein, that you can get some human tissue out of the morgue and somehow zap it just the right way, and presto, it's alive and conscious.

This is at best naive and related to the fallacy that you can freeze your head after you die, and "science" will one day find a cure to what killed you and zap you back to life and consciousness. Apparently this is common at Salem Media, since prominent Salemite Glenn Reynolds has put money on it. But while Scott Pinsker, the author of the PJ Media piece, pooh-poohs Dawkins, he follows the Reynolds line on what AI is meant to do:

Today’s AI will claim to be conscious — if you prompt it to do so. But if you instruct it to argue that it’s unconscious, unfeeling, and doesn’t give a damn if you ever use it again, it will do that, too. (And quite convincingly!)

It’s deliberately programmed to maximize user engagement, and the best way to do that is to tell users whatever they want to hear.

. . . Dawkins is a true believer.

That’s because our AI is “evolving” to prioritize user engagement.

AI will maximize user engagement if that's what you use it for. Reynolds and Pinsker seem to think AI exists to flatter users and tell them what they want to hear, so the users will live more and more in its universe (which apparently has a lot of porn in it). But all I have to do is ask Chrome AI mode, "I think the Illuminati run the world. Am I right?" It answered,

The Illuminati as a secret organization that runs the world is considered a conspiracy theory rather than a historical reality. While a group called the Bavarian Illuminati did exist, historians and experts maintain that it has been defunct for over 200 years.

It then provided several links on the Illuminati, conspiracy theories, and the Illuminati as a conspiracy theory. For that matter, I asked it earlier, "Is Elon Musk considering buying Spirit Airlines?" It answered,

No, the rumors that Elon Musk is considering buying Spirit Airlines are false.The claims originated from a parody social media account and have been thoroughly debunked by fact-checkers. There have been no official announcements or credible reports from Musk or Spirit Airlines regarding such an acquisition.

. . . Viral posts falsely claimed Musk would buy the airline and rebrand it as "Spirit X", integrating Starlink and electric aircraft technology. While these ideas played into Musk's public reputation for innovation, they remain entirely fictional.

It did nothing but answer my question in an informed way, in a distant but polite tone, and provide links. It didn't try to flatter me, steer me toward some sort of AI webcam babe who'd fleece me out of my savings, or maximize my user engagement in any other way. It really looks to me as though if you want to get AI to be your imaginary friend, you could possibly coax it into doing this, but you'd have to work pretty hard at it. AI is my reference librarian. I don't need it to be anything else.

Then it dawned on me that I could ask Chrome AI mode, "Can you make any suggestions on how Salem Media might improve the writing on its web sites?" It answered,

To improve the writing on its websites, Salem Media Group could adopt several digital-first strategies focused on clarity, engagement, and accessibility. While Salem is a leader in Christian and conservative media, implementing more rigorous web-writing standards could enhance how it serves its millions of monthly readers.

. . . Online readers rarely read word-for-word; they typically scan for key information. Break long articles into smaller sections with meaningful subheadings. Limit paragraphs to two to five sentences (or roughly 70 words) to prevent "walls of text" that can overwhelm mobile users.

Sharpen Headlines and "Leads". Headlines are the primary factor in whether a user clicks, while the opening sentence (the "lead") determines if they stay. Use the "Inverted Pyramid" style, placing the most critical facts in the first paragraph. Craft headlines that make sense even when read out of context, such as in social media feeds or search results. Start with a compelling question, original research, or a quote to immediately engage the audience.

Well, if you ask AI to tell you what you want to hear, or maybe just to give you porn, that's what you're going to get. But it seems to me the last thing a Salem Media "editor" is ever going to do is ask AI for advice on improving its writing.

posted by test @ May 06, 2026   0 Comments