In The Shadow Of Mt Hollywood

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...

BREAKING: Nancy Pelosi SNAPS at OUR Reporter - Points in Her Face and Hurls Insults When our reporter pressed @SpeakerPelosi on why she refused National Guard support on January 6th, she lost it - pointing in her face, yelling “Shut up,” and accusing her of pushing “Republican… pic.twitter.com/nXxKJaq6Gz — LindellTV (@RealLindellTV) October 15, 2025 Speaker Emerita Pelosi's "Shut up!" outburst against a reporter got a great deal of attention last week, but what struck me was how well it reflected the detective Philip Marlowe's remark, "From thirty feet away she looked like a lot of class. From ten feet away she looked like something made up to be seen from thirty feet away." In the clip above, with the well-tended hair framing sunglasses, she very briefly looks much younger, until she turns and angrily croaks, revealing every one of her 85 years. The other thing I noticed was that she now has blonde highlights in her hair. This seems to be new, along...