In The Shadow Of Mt Hollywood

With respectable journalists still on Christmas break, Trump sends the military into Venezuela and plucks out Maduro and his wife to face indictment and trial on drug and weapons charges, just like that. The Chairman of the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) said on Saturday morning that “Maduro wasn’t just an illegitimate dictator; he also ran a vast drug-trafficking operation. That’s why he was indicted in U.S. court nearly six years ago for drug trafficking and narco-terrorism.” Senator Cotton said that he spoke with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who informed him that Maduro is in custody in the United States “and will face justice for his crimes against our citizens.” “I commend President Trump and our brave troops and law-enforcement officers for this incredible operation. The interim government in Venezuela must now decide whether to continue the drug trafficking and colluding with adversaries like Iran an...

The video embedded above was made by Nick Shirley, the interlocutor in the vignette, about a month before his big video on the Minnesota Somali daycare centers went viral. What strikes me is he's done his homework: he's in St Cloud, MN, where I noted in this post here that House Republican Whip Tom Emmer, suddenly a big advocate of deportimng Somali scammers, had told his constituents there in July 2015 that nothing could be done about the Somalis. Shirley had clearly been aware of that meeting when he set up this interview , and he knew what questions to ask. Now he's got legacy media running scared. Quasi-mainstream NewsNation, whose business model seems to be to hire former prime-time anchors like Bill O'Reilly and Chris Cuomo from big outlets once they're past their sell-by dates, had its reporter Rich McHugh out in the Minnesota snow on New Year's Eve knocking on Somali heath agency doors. For some reason, I can't embed the tweet, but the Instap...

Intellectual welterweight Glenn Reynolds posted this on Instapundit , linking to a substack essay by Alex Berenson , who is smarter, although I'm not always sure by how much. Berenson says, It is impossible to understand the massive chunk of the world that runs from Morocco 4,000 miles east to Pakistan and south across Africa without realizing the importance of tribes. . . . What it shares more than anything is a commitment to tribe as the center of identity. In Arab and Muslim countries, cousin marriage helps sustain tribal identity; marriages between cousins account for two-thirds of all marriages in Pakistan and nearly as many in some Arab countries. Wait a moment. Let's rewrite the first sentence: "It is impossible to understand the massive chunk of the world that runs 10,500 miles from the Bering Strait to Cape Horn in the pre-Colombian era without realizing the importance of tribes." This might sound appealing to Ivy Leaguers, but it's a meaningles...

🚨 Here is the full 42 minutes of my crew and I exposing Minnesota fraud, this might be my most important work yet. We uncovered over $110,000,000 in ONE day. Like it and share it around like wildfire! Its time to hold these corrupt politicians and fraudsters accountable We ALL… pic.twitter.com/E3Penx2o7a — Nick shirley (@nickshirleyy) December 26, 2025 Just yesterday, House Majority Whip Tom Emmer called for deportations and denaturalizations of Somali fraudsters : I have three words regarding Somalis who have committed fraud against American taxpayers: Send them home. If they’re here illegally, deport them immediately; if they’re naturalized citizens, revoke their citizenship and deport them quickly thereafter. If we need to change the law to do that, I will. Our nation will not tolerate those who take advantage of our charity and refuse to assimilate into our culture. But just like cameras are everywhere, the internet is forever. Via the Daily Caller, Minnesotans Beg...

This piece says more than intended about AI: A study conducted by Anaïs Galdin from Dartmouth and Jesse Silbert from Princeton analyzed cover letters for tens of thousands of job applications on Freelancer.com. The researchers discovered that after the introduction of ChatGPT in 2022, the cover letters became longer and better-written. However, this improvement in quality led companies to place less emphasis on the cover letters, making it more difficult to identify qualified candidates from the applicant pool. Consequently, the hiring rate and average starting wage decreased. I've been out of the job market for some years, but I don't believe that, at least after I went into tech, I ever submitted a formal cover letter with my resume. I either mailed the resume in to the individual listed on the help wanted ad, or I e-mailed it, with at most a note saying something like, "I'm applying for the ___ job you advertised on Monster.com" or whatever other site...

I notice a piece in Politico, The Democratic Split Over Whether to Befriend AI — or Vilify It , that takes 2800 words to tell us that Demnocrats are split over AI. Well, everyone is split over AI, in part because nobody seems to be able to tell us what AI is. I think what's generally meant falls within the category of "generative AI", which creates "new" content using a combination of natural language processing and massive data search. For example, I asked Chrome AI mode, "Please write me a 500-word report on George Washington". It answered, in part, George Washington (1732–1799) was the foundational figure of the United States, serving as the Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army during the American Revolution and as the nation’s first president. His leadership style, defined by a commitment to republicanism and the voluntary relinquishing of power, set the precedents for the American executive branch. Military Leadership and the ...

I'm convinced that Victor Davis Hanson is actually an AI bot, but the intellectual welterweights at Instapundit are linking to his latest essay, Pseudo-Recessions : As the 1992 campaign approached, incumbent president George H.W. Bush was seen as a shoo-in for reelection. The First Gulf War ended in 1991 with a spectacular U.S. victory at the head of a coalition that had expelled Saddam Hussein from Kuwait with few losses. For much of 1991, Bush’s approval ratings hovered between 90 and 70 percent. By February 1992, an obscure Arkansas governor, Bill Clinton, emerged as the favorite Democratic nominee. But he was written off as having little chance to knock off the popular Republican incumbent president with far more foreign affairs experience. Bush, however, had just lost his brilliant 1988 campaign manager, Lee Atwater, to cancer. And third-party prairie-fire candidate Ross Perot had entered the race, drawing off conservative Bush support. I'm even older than...