In The Shadow Of Mt Hollywood

Via Breitbart News : U.S. military strikes against cartel drug boats in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean journeying from South America are “unacceptable” and must stop, the U.N. human rights chief Volker Türk warned Friday. Türk, an Austrian-born career U.N. bureaucrat, called for an immediate investigation into the strikes against narco terrorists in what is the first such condemnation of its kind from the globalist organization. The problem is that the previous strategy for stopping drug traffic via sea routes has been clearly identified, and although supported by existing law, completely ineffective. According to a September article at the US Naval Institute, For decades, the United States has relied on the Coast Guard’s unique legal authorities, backed by Navy support, to interdict drug shipments on the high seas. Those operations follow a predictable pattern: warning shots, disabling fire, boarding, seizure of evidence, and arrest. A patchwork of bilat...

Trump: Then I will look at New York in a little while… If we need to we'll do the same thing in Chicago. We have an incompetent Governor there. Pritzker is incompetent. His family threw him out of the business pic.twitter.com/1zw5PIWLvX — Acyn (@Acyn) August 11, 2025 I asked Chrome AI mode, "Was J B Pritzker thrown out of the family business?" It answered, Reports from trusted news outlets contradict the claim that J. B. Pritzker was "thrown out" of the family business. While his family restructured its assets, he was a successful entrepreneur who co-founded his own private equity firm, Pritzker Group. A social media post from August 2025, which falsely claimed he was thrown out, appears to stem from comments made by Donald Trump. . . . After the death of his uncle, Jay Pritzker, in 1999, the family underwent a planned and highly publicized restructuring of its assets. J. B. Pritzker and his cousins chose to divide the family fortune among themselves...

In Sunday's post , I mentioned Tim Donaghy, a former NBA referee who in 2007 pleaded guilty to federal charges of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and conspiracy to transmit wagering information across state lines. After his inbitial plea in 2007 but before his sentencing in 2008, he made a number of allegations regarding overall corruption in NBA refereeing. According to Wikipedia , On June 11, 2008, Donaghy alleged in a statement through his lawyers that several series in the NBA Playoffs had been improperly refereed according to the NBA's instructions. He alluded specifically to a playoff game where "personal fouls [resulting in obviously injured players] were ignored even when they occurred in full view of the referees" because "it was in the NBA's interest to add another game to the series." . . . Donaghy also referred to a playoff series where "Team 3's Owner alleged that referees were letting a Team 4 player get away w...

Yesterday, the president of the American Federation of Government Employees posted on the AFGE website: This week, Congress pushed our nation into the fourth week of a full government shutdown – an avoidable crisis that is harming families, communities, and the very institutions that hold our country together. Both political parties have made their point, and still there is no clear end in sight. Today I’m making mine: it’s time to pass a clean continuing resolution and end this shutdown today. No half measures, and no gamesmanship. Put every single federal worker back on the job with full back pay — today. Illinois Sen Dick Durbin, the Senate Democratic Whip, who is second in leadership to Sen Schumer, replied with a rambling and equivocal statement : “It has a lot of impact, and they’ve been our friends and we’ve worked with them over the years,” Durbin told reporters on Monday, adding that he has talked to representatives with the union and recognizes t...

Over the weekend, I saw two conflicting versions of the demographic at the No Kings rallies on October 18. The most common was that those who attended were retirees accompanied by a smaller contingent of younger, male "furries" dressed in animal suits. This essay from a retail store manager serving protesters stocking up on poster board goes into more depth: [O]nce we got so busy that I needed to jump on a register to help move the lines along, I was able to speak with a 60-something lady with a yellow cap (covering the proverbial “Karen” haircut) about the meaning of all the yellow. She shared with me that yellow was the color of “resistance” . . . . she was a walking stereotype of the retired Boomers that made up a large portion of the people who were participating in these protests. Boomers who like Bruce Springsteen [want] to relive their “glory days” when they protested the Vietnam War or marched for civil rights. Let's recall that the civil right...

Via CNN , A sprawling FBI probe into mafia-linked gambling and sports rigging schemes led to the arrests this morning of Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier and Portland Trail Blazers head coach Chauncey Billups, according to federal law enforcement officials. The NBA says both men have been placed on leave. . . . Among the defendants in the dual operations are members of four major American crime families, as well as current and former NBA players and coaches, New York City Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said. Via The Gateway Pundit, Former mobster Michael Franzese reacted to the FBI’s raid on an NBA gambling ring tied to the Italian Mafia. Michael Franzese worked for the Colombo crime family in the 1980s and made a fortune in the gasoline business. His father, Sonny Franzese, also a notorious mafioso, was the underboss for the Colombo crime family. . . . Rudy Giuliani indicted Michael Franzese five times in the 1980s – and Franzese beat the government f...

Via The Guardian , An artificial intelligence system (AI) apparently mistook a high school student’s bag of Doritos for a firearm and called local police to tell them the pupil was armed. Taki Allen was sitting with friends on Monday night outside Kenwood high school in Baltimore and eating a snack when police officers with guns approached him. “At first, I didn’t know where they were going until they started walking toward me with guns, talking about, ‘Get on the ground,’ and I was like, ‘What?’” Allen told the WBAL-TV 11 News television station. Allen said they made him get on his knees, handcuffed and searched him – finding nothing. They then showed him a copy of the picture that had triggered the alert. “I was just holding a Doritos bag – it was two hands and one finger out, and they said it looked like a gun,” Allen said. Recently, Chrome added an "AI mode" to its search feature that has a prompt, "Ask anything". Unlike Chat GPT, this ...

I've already said that I'm staying away from the female Archbishop of Canterbury story, but this latest quasi-ecumenical gesture is mostly unrelated, and it has me scratching my head: King Charles III and Queen Camilla prayed Thursday [October 16] with Pope Leo XIV in an historic visit to the Vatican to forge closer relations between the Church of England and the Catholic Church, a welcome spiritual respite for the royals from the turmoil at home over sexual misconduct allegations against Prince Andrew. Charles, who is the titular head of the Church of England, and Camilla sat in golden thrones on the raised altar of the Sistine Chapel, in front of Michelangelo’s “Last Judgment,” while Leo and the Anglican archbishop of York presided over an ecumenical service. Although one of King Charles's titles is "Supreme Governor of the Church of England", as the UK constitutional monarchy has developed, his role vis-a-vis the Church is exclusively to appoi...

BREAKING: FBI releases new info, offers $500,000 reward for suspect who planted pipe bombs near the DNC on January 5, 2021 pic.twitter.com/GUbAI8Mzev — Breaking911 (@Breaking911) October 22, 2025 There's been a flurry of new stories about the FBI releasing video footage of a person who appears to be planting pipe bombs next to the Republican and Democrat National Committee headquarters buildings the evening before January 6, 2021. Actually, there seems to be little new. The FBI has a web page on its site dated September 8, 2021 , only eight monthd after the incident, that includes nearly all the information about the suspect that media claims to be "new" in the latest release. This includes still shots from the video and essentially the same description as in the renewed appeal, including, The person who placed these bombs wore a face mask, glasses, a grey hooded sweatshirt, gloves, and black and light grey Nike Air Max Speed Turf shoes with a yellow lo...

I check Real Clear Politics twice a day for a take on the conventional wisdom. What's odd today is that nowhere in the list of headlines does the word "shutdown" appear. On the other hand, near the top of the list, there are two big think pieces on the No Kings demonstrations, which appear to be among the biggest non-events in history. But isn't the current government shutdown a much bigger dog that isn't barking? Curious, I asked Chrome AI mode, "How is trump polling in the shutdown?" Normally, "AI" prefaces its response with a couple of paragraphs to let me know the correct way to think about the question, but this morning, it just listed a bunch of headline links without comment: Newsweek: Donald Trump Is Winning the Government Shutdown, Polls Suggest Reuters: Trump's approval edges up despite Americans blaming Republicans for shutdown The Hill: Trump approval ticks up despite GOP shutdown blame: Survey CNN: Could ...

I'm seeing very little commentary on the shutdown that takes into account what we've been learning about Trump. First, as we've seen with the Hanas deal, little pieces of an overall strategy fall into place over a period of months. The June B-2 raid on Iran's nuclear facilities was seen as an isolated episode that was maybe even ineffective. By October, it began to be recognized that it was a big enoujgh blow to Iranian power and prestige that Iran's neighbors could agree to pressure Iran's client Hamas into a peace deal. By the same token, the shutdown is just one part of an overall domestic strategy to break down the current structure of the Democrat party. Several things are working to his advantage: Democrat leadership figures are simply aging out: Nancy Pelosi is 85, already retired as Speaker, still retaining her House seat, but increasingly frail. Bernie Sanders is 84, still vocal only because there are no credible younger replacements who aren...