A recent participant in the comment wars asked if EA was going to have any further comments on the Los Angeles mayoral election, which is an ethics lemon in about every way imaginable. Thinking about it, I suppose I have…

1. In the end, it may be that the predictable result of Democrats rigging the primary and election process to ensure that two unqualified extreme leftist women-of-color oppose each other will not be what is remembered, but the emergence of Spencer Pratt as a rising force in American politics. He was in the cast of the brain-dead reality show The Hills, and his main qualification to be mayor was that he was wiped out by the L.A. wildfires that current mayor Karen Bass allowed to rage in her incompetence and then lied about it. That’s like claiming that being mugged qualifies one to be chief of police. Pratt and his reality show actress wife own Pratt Daddy, “an exclusive crystal company,” whatever that means. In L.A., though, not being a woke idiot may be a qualification all by itself.

Like Ronald Reagan half a century ago, Pratt can speak persuasively in complete sentences, and has sufficient acting chops to project intelligence and gravitas. He mopped the stage with both of his Democratic adversaries, Bass and councilwoman Nithya Raman in their debate. He also had deft, humorous, and effective online ads that may be the beacon of what campaign ads will become.

Pratt has refused to concede despite being ejected from the final race by the Democratic machine in a, shall we say, dubious but not surprising manner. As you can see in his most recent ad, he intends to expose the corruption and incompetence in L.A. politics, although I might ask what more needs to be exposed.

Today Elon Musk, already the world’s richest person, became its first trillionaire as the result of a record-setting initial public offering from SpaceX, his rocket and artificial intelligence company. As the company ended the day valued at more than $2 trillion, Musk’s wealth jumped to $1.2 trillion.

Good for him. Bravo!

The abuse being hurled his way for earning money commensurate with his contributions to civilization and the United States particularly is unusually foolish and unethical even for the political and ideological Left, from whence it is coming. Musk is a trillionaire now because he is an innovator, he is gutsy, he spends his money wisely, he takes big risks less wealthy people will not, and he has provided jobs aplenty in new industries. He is almost certain to accomplish much more going forward; it’s exciting to speculate. What’s not to like?

Mayor Zohran Mamdani of New York City wrote on X (because he’s a Communist and has never built a business in his life), “Reason #1,000,000,000,000 why we should tax the rich.” Would somebody please tell the Mayor that we do tax the rich? It is estimated that Musk has paid about 11 billion dollars in state and federals taxes over the years, and even more internationally. Senator Elizabeth Warren posted on social media that the average U.S. household would have to work more than 11 million years to attain Musk’s level of wealth. That is the epitome of “missing the point.” I read even dumber complaints about Musk on my Facebook feed.

Maybe something is wrong with me: never in my life did what someone else made, possessed or have in the bank make me envious of him or her, resentful, or feel anything at all, frankly. Maybe it is because I figured out early in life that someone making more money than me doesn’t cause me to make less unless we are both line items in a limited budget.

Musk deserves more than a trillion dollars: he deserves a heroic statue next to Miss Liberty, because his purchase of Twitter, something only he could do because he had money to burn, rescued free speech in the U.S. and open political discourse from censorship by the totalitarian Left.

Those who attack Musk because he has made a great fortune doing great things don’t comprehend liberty, capitalism, genius, risk-taking, innovation, problem-solving, oh, lots of wonderful things. And they vote for barely employed oyster-seekers who have Nazi symbols on their chests and abuse women.

Cees Van Barneveldt challenges me from the start of her Comment of the Day to lay odds on how likely it is that Democrats will try to turn Karmelo Anthony into the latest “systemic racism” martyr. One can never go broke relying on the stupidity of either political party, but I just can’t believe the Axis is foolish enough to let this happen.

Rightly or wrongly, the U.S political Left has convinced itself that the mid-terms ar in the bag because all voters care about is the price of eggs, beef and gas. (In other words, voters are even dumber than the two parties.) There has been substantial backlash against Black Lives Matter, and Karmelo is not a particularly sympathetic “victim.” It is hard to justify stabbing an unarmed teen to death.

This is Cees Van Barneveldt‘s Comment of the Day on the post, “Why Are Conservatives Trying To Get Blacks To Riot Over Karmelo Anthony?”

* * *

“Democrats can’t be dumb enough to try to make a martyr out of Karmelo Anthony. They just can’t. Right?“

I am just curious what our host is willing to bet on this; the last word of the post indicates some doubt. I am afraid that Red State may have a point here, and I hope they are wrong.

I do not like the scenes outside the courthouse. A group of black people who believe the entire case is about race, and are cheering on Karmelo Anthony. One of the protesters is on video shouting “The only good cracker is a dead cracker”. Not that I am surprised by this, given that the GiveSendGo campaign for Karmelo’s defense was motivated by the desire to fight white supremacy. For Karmelo and his family, and for the donors to this fund the issue has always about race since the arrest, and not about justice (murder or self-defense).

I also do not like the counter protesters, with their “White Lives Matters” banners, American flag T-shirts, and some of them waving confederate flags. This is like waving a red cape in front of a bull, needlessly provocative. Why would anybody not just simply follow the court proceedings on television from home, and hope and trust that the jury reaches a just verdict?

About not having an African American on the jury, this is not evidence of jury rigging in disfavor of Karmelo by the prosecution. The county in which the trial took place has a 12% black population. The likelihood of a jury without any African American by random selection is 20%; this means that there was no significant bias against African Americans during jury selection. Statistics often uses a likelihood of below five percent as significant. One of the black juror prospects demonstrated bias during jury selection by stating that he “would have a hard time convicting a brother”, and had to be stricken for reason. The jury was not all white as there were four minority members on the jury, just not black. I do not blame the prosecution for trying to prevent racially biased jurors reaching an OJ Simpson style verdict based on racial considerations.

The trial proceedings did not show racial bias. Many of the witnesses against Karmelo Anthony were black. Austin Metcalf’s coach is black.

If the defense attorney is worth his salt and salary (which he has not proven during this trial) the best thing he can do is appeal the verdict based on the jury selection process. We will see how much merit it has. The speed and clarity of the verdict will be a big hurdle for the defense to get an appeal.

Sadly enough this society has enough low IQ people who will milk their grievance till the bitter end and will be willing to burn this society like in 2020. To them I would say “bring it on and make my day” and see how this works out in the mid-terms. They will find that accusations of racism have lost the power to shame and manipulate people, and now only contribute to the phenomenon of “black fatigue”.

[The headline refers to this post.]

I keep hoping someone, maybe one of you, dear readers, will make a YouTube video of the moment at the end of “The Godfather” where Connie confronts Michael, now the new and soulless Corleone family mafia boss, accusing him of having her husband (who deserved it, but never mind) murdered. I want the three seconds where, sobbing, she rages to Diane Keaton as Michael’s clueless wife Kay to look at the newspapers: “That’s your husband! That’s your husband!”

I want to add it to the Ethics Alarms Hollywood Clip Archive, because it has become the perfect metaphor for how the Trump Deranged and desperate Democrats are behaving as they try to take over the nation’s culture and government by any means necessary. Dear progressives and Democrats: “That’s your party! That’s your party!”

In particular, Maine’s female Democrats should have to wear their heads under bags. They had a woman as an alternative to vote for rather than the domestic abuser, sexting Nazi-admirer and didn’t. Why, you well may ask? Rotten values? Civic ignorance? Stupidity? Women don’t “read the papers”? It doesn’t matter why; this is res ipsa loquitur. Now we know #MeToo was a cynical partisan scam; we already knew, or should, that the now defunct “Times Up!”was a lie with a non-profit designation. No “feminist” who voted for Platner or who supports the political party trying to put this epic creep in the U.S. Senate should ever be taken seriously again. Former governor Janet Mills is no prize, but I can guarantee that she’s never sent anyone dick picks. I’m pretty sure she didn’t have a Nazi symbol tattooed on her chest either.

I just learned, from former Mainer commenter Arthur in Maine (below), that about 14% of Maine’s Democrats bothered to vote. That is also disgraceful.

Count on the New York Times to come up with fatuous rationalizations for why this damning primary result is a good thing. In “The Good That Can Come From Platner’s Candidacy,” intermittently conscious Times captive conservative Bret Stephens argues that two alleged boons may come from the Democrats chucking all of their alleged principles to present an absolute bounder to the public as an acceptable member of the Senate:

Black teen Karmelo Anthony, 19, was found guilty of murder today in the fatal stabbing of an unarmed white teen, 17-year-old Austin Metcalf, at a high school track meet last year in Frisco, Texas, in April 2025. Ahead of closing arguments today, the judge decided that jurors could also consider manslaughter, which carries a sentence of up to 20 years in prison. Jurors were not moved. The jury began deliberating today before and reached a verdict in only three hours, the mark of an open-and-shut case.

It always seemed like one. The victim was unarmed. Apparently he touched or pushed Anthony, and the defense argued that Anthony stabbed him in the heart in self-defense. None of the witnesses felt that Anthony’s actions were justified.

However, the news media and conservative pundits have been suggesting ominously that a guilty verdict would be likely to set off George Floyd or Michael Brown level, Black Lives Matter rioting. A recent piece in Red State is typical. Teri Cristophe writes in “Is This How Democrats Will Solve Their Graham Platner Problem?”:

“Wouldn’t it have been funny if the all-the-way-to-Wisconsin plea had worked? Oh, yeah, poor you, going to Wisconsin, let me sit back down and yammer on with you, because you endured the ordeal of coming to Wisconsin. How many times has Trump traveled to Wisconsin in his political career? 40? 60? He’s put in the hard work of demonstrating to Wisconsin that we matter, and here’s Kristen Welker obviously irked to have had to touch down in a flyover state. I can’t believe I came to this hellhole for you!”

—-Wisconsin Bloggress Ann Althouse, mocking “Meet the Press’s” Kristin Welker for pleading to President Trump not to end his interview with her because she “traveled all the way to Wisconsin” to grill him.

Brava to Ann for picking pick up on Welker’s Coastal bias and thinly veiled disdain for “flyover country.”! I missed that: I only thought her pleading made her look foolish.

Maybe this is one more example of journalists’ obnoxious presumption of superiority and the pervasive arrogance of the news media finally sinking in. Boy, I hope so. Once you have concluded that a messenger is an untrustworthy asshole, it’s a lot easier to be properly skeptical of the message.

The comments to Ann’s post are fascinating—many ascribe to my conclusions regarding election fraud— and a bit shocking, both in the nastiness between commenters and the language Ann’s moderation let through. It is also remarkable how red-pilled her commentariate has become, with just a few bitter, and in my view, hysterical Axis fans remaining.

For example: