In The Shadow Of Mt Hollywood

My biggest point yesterday was that people don't just get on Signal the way they get on Outlook. There has to be a good reason for them even to learn what it is at all, and while I've been out of the business so long that I've never worked with it myself, my instinct is that normally you have to have a tech install it, especially if you're just a suit or a talking head. Thus the most puzzling part of Dershowitz's commentary was at 4:47: Look, I don't know very much about technology, I'm really a Luddite when it comes to this, but I am on Signal. That brought me up short. He's a brilliant guy, a celebrity, a retired law professor and appellate attorney, but why does he need high-level commercial grade encryption? Remember that the German Enigma code was basically just a tweak of an earlier commercial-grade product. This is heavyweight stuff. That briefly made me wonder if in fact everyone gets Signal the way they get Outlook. But then I realize...

Feeling more and more like an op by neocons to take out Pete and damage JD. Complete and total BS. Now I’m at the point where, fine, you little twits want to dance, let’s dance: Trump should cut pretty much most of NSA and NSC, from the top down, and install Bridge Colby as NSA.… https://t.co/H5SPoDW79z — Ned Ryun (@nedryun) March 27, 2025 As I often note here, I spent much of my IT career working the nuts and bolts of computer security in both classified and civilian environments. Security works in basic ways across the board, and once you're used to it, it isn't rocket science. Thus I'm a little puzzled when I see this: Elon Musk is helping lead the investigation into the Signal chat leak involving top national security leaders and the editor-in-chief of the Atlantic, the White House press secretary said Wednesday. "The National Security Council, the White House Counsel's Office, and also, yes, Elon Musk's team" will be leading the investiga...

As I mentioned in my post on Amtrak last week , there's a whole sub-sub genre of YouTubers who liveblog their Amtrak trips. They aren't really train buffs like I am; they seem just to enjoy the scenery combined with amenities like eating in the dining car or riding in the sleeping cars or business class. This would be perfectly fine, except that Amtrak travel is predictably nightmarish, with trains regularly canceled or running nine or 12 hours late or even longer, with the diner and snack bar out of food, toilets clogged, heat out, and so forth. In that post last week, I mentioned one of the best-known Amtrak YouTube channels, Grounded Life Travel, with the charming couple Allie and Rob, who go ga-ga over the Amtrak long distance trains they ride several times a year on crosss-country trips, often between cruises on opposite coasts. Frankly, this sort of Amtrak travel is high-risk activity. Even Allie and Rob mention oh, by the way, Amtrak canceled the Coast Starlight on t...

In a remarkable interview with Bret Baier on Fox, Elon Musk and members of his DOGE team put on a surprisingly grounded performance. Musk sometimes comes off as having a little too much fun trolling his opponents, but this interview gives a clear idea of why he's gotten so rich -- he actually understands business and IT, something most business and IT people don't. However, it's difficult to find a single written transcript. The best I can come up with is in this post at Red State , which quotes extensive excerpts, for instance, MUSK: We're talking about elementary financial controls, that are necessary for any company to function. If a commercial company operated the way the federal government does, then it would immediately go bankrupt, it would be delisted, the officers would be arrested. The changes we're putting in place will enable the federal government to pass an audit, it will enable taxpayers to know where the money is going and know that the...

I found a pretty typical legacy media take from CBS Miami this morning, More than half a million Latin American, Haitian immigrants given deadline to self-deport : The Department of Homeland Security officially posted a notice to end protections for 530,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans to the Federal Register on Tuesday. This sets up a 30-day deadline, which will fall on April 24, for those affected to self-deport or face the consequences. "The Department of Homeland Security is warning that if these people do not voluntarily depart the country, they will be found, arrested and deported from the country," CBS News immigration reporter Camilo Montoya-Galvez said. "In fact, the administration is saying that the people affected by this policy change should sign up to self-register on a smartphone app provided by the government and tell people that they will be departing the country." This isn't really news to start with; this step had b...

Via Breitbart : Canada’s conservative leader wants to win the nation’s April 28 national elections and is hammering Justin Trudeau’s replacement for supporting the massive legal immigration that has caused massive pocketbook damage to ordinary Canadians. . . . The two parties are close in the polls as Poilievre slams Carney for supporting Trudeau’s very unpopular immigration policy. n 2015, the investor-led Century Initiative persuaded Trudeau to grow the economy by inflating the nation’s population from 36 million to 100 million by 2100. Since then, Trudeau has imported four million migrants — or 10 percent of the nation’s population, which is the equivalent of 33 million migrants in the United States. That huge population of legal migrants — which includes many Indians and migrants who are too old to work — inflicted an economic shock and massive economic damage to 30 million ordinary Canadians. It cut wages, exacerbated healthcare shortages, and spiked housing costs. I...

I still find myself in a peculiar rabbit hole trying to make sense of the various refugee resettlement programs for which the Trump administration has cut funding, especially those delegated by various departments to the US Catholic Bishops and Catholic Charities. No discussion I've seen is especially precise or seems to reflect any real understanding of how these programs work, much less which program is which, especially those under the Catholic umbrella. Let's start with the USCCB's lawsuit against the Trump administration filed in February : Catholic bishops sued the Trump administration on Tuesday [February 18] over its abrupt halt to funding of refugee resettlement, calling the action unlawful and harmful to newly arrived refugees and to the nation's largest private resettlement program. . . . The conference's Migration and Refugee Services has sent layoff notices to 50 workers, more than half its staff, with additional cuts expected in local...

I'm surprised that I hadn't even heard of the CHNV program before I learned just the other day that the Trump administration had discontinued it. According to Wikipedia , which appears to be the most complete account: Humanitarian Parole for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans was a program under which citizens of these four countries, and their immediate family members, could be paroled into the United States for a period of up to two years if a person in the US agreed to financially support them. The program allowed a combined total of 30,000 people per month from the four countries to enter the US. The program was implemented in 2022 (Venezuela) to 2023 (Cuba, Haiti, and Nicaragua) in response to high numbers of migrants and asylum seekers from these countries crossing into the US at the southwest border with Mexico. . . . The CHNV Program is credited with greatly reducing numbers of people of these nationalities crossing into the US at the southwest ...

The goal of the Biden administration was to strategically place illegals in swing states and make their status legal, thereby turning swing states Democrat. The net result would have been permanent one-party rule of the USA, just like what they did in California. https://t.co/n9iOL6QP7P — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 22, 2025 Whatever Elon Musk may be, one thing he certainly isn't is a Biblical scholar. But there's scriptural support for his position in the post above, and it's something the USCCB, among whom there must certainly be some Biblical scholars, omit in their web page outlining the Church's teaching on migration : Both the Old and New Testaments tell compelling stories of refugees forced to flee because of oppression. Exodus tells the story of the Chosen People, Israel, who were victims of bitter slavery in Egypt. They were utterly helpless by themselves, but with God's powerful intervention they were able to escape and take refuge in the desert...

Now and then, I've mentioned here the role Catholic Charities has played in enabling settlement of quasi-legal migrants in places like Springfield, OH and Charleroi, PA, to the extent that the large numbers of those resettled have badly strained community resources and driven up housing and insurance costs. I've also questioned the apparent lowball estimates of how much money the US bishops receive from the federal government . This story gives an indication of the effect Trump administration cutbacks have had on Catholic Charities, at least in Columbia, MO: The Central and Northern Missouri chapter of Catholic Charities will end its resettlement program March 31. In an email to supporters, Executive Director Litz Main said the nonprofit had to end the program due to the lack of federal funding. “We deeply appreciate your partnership and shared commitment to serving those in need,” Main said in the email. “As we navigate this transition, we welcome opportunit...

DOJ charges 3 suspects in separate Molotov attacks on Tesla properties—each facing up to 20 YEARS in prison. - Elias Marquez – Salem, OR - Jordan Weller – Loveland, CO - Darnell Brooks – Charleston, SC pic.twitter.com/aXKHCrW8zC — Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) March 20, 2025 David Strom at Hot Air posted Trans Violence Is a Real Thing, and It Is Out of Control this morning, and he embedded the post above that lists three trans-identifying people who've been charged by the Department of Justice for arson against Tesla dealerships. Transgender people make up a TINY fraction of the population, even with the explosion in self-identity and trans propaganda. Several of the recent school shooters have been trans, for instance, and more relevantly to today's issues the Tesla terrorism includes a large number of trans activists for some reason. Actually, the three charged by the DOJ aren't the only ones. An instagram post from February 26 discusses a Colorado man id...