In The Shadow Of Mt Hollywood

NEW: The Maria Bartiromo backstory, per multiple sources familiar.... Maria Bartiromo wanted to pursue a story related to China and 2020 election voting conspiracies... a major sensitivity for the network given its Dominion and Smartmatic lawsuits. A Fox Business executive sent… — Dylan Byers (@DylanByers) September 3, 2026 One of the sponsors to Bruce Rivers's often-hilarious Criminal Lawyer Reacts YouTube Channel is Askalawyer.com. For $50 a month, you can get an AI answer, assisted by a real attorney, to your legal questions, and depending on your business, it could be a real bargain. But Rivers often plugs it when discussing some bizarre arrests and convictions, saying "For $50 a month, he could have used Askalawyer.com to find out if it's OK to rob a bank." Somehow, I get this feeling about Maria Bartiromo. I don't subscribe to Askalawyer.com -- I'm married to a retired attorney who can just as easily explain why I shouldn't rob a bank -- but I d...

After I made yesterday's post, I was still left with the question of what the US alternatives would be if Canada made some sort of move toward a military alliance with Russia or China. The closest I came to anything like an answer was this paper from last June at the Stimson Institute, When Formal Alliances Stop Doing Political Work: The Canada-US Alliance in Crisis . Reading it, I found the usual gas clouds of conventionial wisdom, so I asked the AI oracle, "Is the Stimson Center part of the foreign policy establishment?" It replied, Yes, the Stimson Center is widely considered part of the Washington foreign policy establishment. Founded in 1989 and named after the legendary bipartisan statesman Henry L. Stimson, the Stimson Center operates at the core of mainstream international relations. It is routinely ranked among the top think tanks in the United States, actively advising government agencies, educating Congress, and shaping conventional wisdom on global secur...

Remarks from Prime Minister Carney to reporters yesterday suggest things aren't going as he'd expected: OTTAWA — Prime Minister Mark Carney still sees a path to a mutually beneficial trade deal with the U.S. — once Washington stops playing games. Carney said any deal with the U.S. “must” recognize Canadian sovereignty, which includes respecting the French language and Quebec culture. “When the Americans stop doing memes, stop throwing shade, stop trying to be tough and start being serious about having those discussions — we can have those discussions,” Carney said to reporters on Tuesday. The problem is that last Friday, Carney was the one who ended negotiations, and the US currently sees no reason to try to reopen them. Negotiations between Canada and the U.S. have stopped completely. Both sides remain far apart after Carney walked away from a deal that he said “asked too much and offered too little.” Speaking to POLITICO on Monday night, U.S. Trade Representat...

Syracuse University has been in the news lately, starting last spring : Syracuse University will eliminate 93 academic programs identified as having low or no enrollment, the private New York institution announced Wednesday. But unlike many colleges making cuts, Syracuse is not doing so out of financial necessity, according to Lois Agnew, the university’s provost and chief academic officer. But according to the Wall Street Journal, the cuts are in fact due to financial necessity : This school year, which began Aug. 24, enrollment fell short, sending the school into a 1.5% budget shortfall. Syracuse also added nearly half a billion in debt to build desperately needed new dorms, which brought on a bond market reprimand. And it recently cut programs it said weren’t popular. A national brand-name institution with a $2.5 billion endowment and a storied 150-year tradition is suddenly beginning to flail. But the problems aren't unique to Syracuse: Fewer young people ar...