Michael DeLano, actor. Other credits include “Cover Up“, “Hardcastle and McCormick”, and “Banacek”.
Obit watch: November 26, 2025.
November 26th, 2025Flaming hyenas update.
November 24th, 2025The charges against James Comey and Tish James have been dismissed.
The reason is pretty much the usual one:
The charges were dismissed “without prejudice”, meaning they can be re-filed. I assume they will be if Judge Cameron Currie is overruled in this matter.
It would seem to me that, if the charges were filed before the statute of limitations expired, and the judge’s ruling is held to be in error, the charges should be able to be reinstated. But I Am Not A Lawyer.
Obit watch: November 24, 2025.
November 24th, 2025275 credits in IMDB, including “Iron Sky: The Coming Race”, “Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot”, and “Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated”.
Lee Tamahori, New Zealand director who went on to a Hollywood career. IMDB.
I never saw any of his Hollywood films. But I did see “Once Were Warriors” in a theater, and it blew me away. I highly recommend that, but be warned: it isn’t a light and happy movie.
Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin, who was also known as H. Rap Brown.
Before converting to Islam and changing his name in the 1970s, Mr. Al-Amin was one of the most incendiary orators among the Black Power activists who emerged in the late 1960s to challenge the leadership and nonviolent strategy of the civil rights movement.
An admirer of the Cuban revolution, he preached armed resistance and separatism, declaring: “Violence is necessary. Violence is a part of America’s culture. It is as American as cherry pie.”
With his trademark black beret and sunglasses, dexterous mind and imposing 6-foot-5 inch frame — 7 feet, with his Afro — he was a persuasive and charismatic figure to many, adept at rallying Black audiences to his cause while alarming many white listeners.
Elected chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in May 1967, he made an immediate mark by getting the word “nonviolent” removed from its name, persuading the organization’s leaders to change it to the Student National Coordinating Committee.
He had a long history of “involvement”, so to speak, with law enforcement.
Enmeshed in court proceedings resulting from federal and state charges he faced in five cities, Mr. Al-Amin went into hiding in 1970 and spent 18 months on the F.B.I.’s Most Wanted list. He resurfaced in Manhattan on Oct. 16, 1971, in dramatic fashion — wounded in a shootout with the New York City police. The police said he and several accomplices had tried to hold up an uptown Manhattan tavern and exchanged gunfire with officers who were pursuing them.
Mr. Brown, who denied the charges, was convicted on charges of robbery and assault with a deadly weapon. He served five years of a five-to-15-year sentence at the Attica state prison in upstate New York.
By the time he was released on parole in 1976, he had converted to the Muslim Sunni sect known as Dar-ul Islam. By his account, he had become a new man with a new name. He moved to Atlanta, where his wife, Karina, had established a law practice, and publicly renounced the revolutionary ambitions of his youth.
He was convicted of shooting two sheriff’s deputies – killing one – in 2000, and died in a federal medical center.
Firings watch: November 24, 2025.
November 24th, 2025Shane Bowen out as defensive coordinator of the New York Football Giants.
The Giants are 2-10, and blew a big lead to the Detroit Lions on Sunday.
Chip Kelly out as defensive coordinator of the Raiders. He’d only been with the team for 11 games, and the Raiders are 2-9 this season.
The California Golden Bears have fired head coach Justin Wilcox. 6-5 this season, 48-55 over nine seasons with the team.
Leadership Secrets of Non-Fictional Characters (part 14 in a series)
November 21st, 2025You may have already seen this. I got it from Bayou Renaissance Man, who got it from CDR Salamander. Army Times and Task and Purpose both picked this up too.
Don’t care. It is still a damn fine memo.
Noted.
November 20th, 2025Today, in “The New York Times discovers…”
Actually, this is a pretty respectful and fun story.
“You’ve got to show these young people respect,” he said, “because this stuff is no joke.”
Obit watch: November 20, 2025.
November 20th, 2025Col. Robert L. Stirm (USAF – ret.). He was 92.
You may not recognize the name, but you probably recognize the photo.
That’s his 15-year old daughter Lorrie in front. His wife is wearing the corsage. The photographer, Slava Veder, won the 1974 Pulitzer Prize for feature photography.
His will to survive as a P.O.W., he later said, was built on memories of his domestic life and the hope of returning one day to his family. Those thoughts sustained him after he was shot down and forced to eject from his F-105 Thunderchief during a bombing mission over North Vietnam on Oct. 27, 1967, and they continued to sustain him in prison camps, including the notorious “Hanoi Hilton,” where he was starved, tortured and subjected to mock executions.
He held the rank of major at the time he was taken prisoner and was eventually elevated to colonel. He was among 591 American prisoners of war released as part of Operation Homecoming after the Paris Peace Accords ended the United States involvement in the Vietnam War.
The photo sort of hides what was really going on.
Three days before he landed at Travis Air Force Base, he was handed what he described as a “Dear John” letter from his wife.
“I have changed drastically — forced into a situation where I finally had to grow up,” his wife of 18 years wrote. “Bob, I feel sure that in your heart you know we can’t make it together — and it doesn’t make sense to be unhappy when you can do something about it. Life is too short.”
“I love you — we all love you,” she continued, “but you must remember how very unhappy we were together.”
Her daughter says she had an affair while Col. Strim was in captivity.
They divorced in 1974.
…
You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! (#155 in a series)
November 20th, 2025Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick is a Democratic congresswoman from Florida.
Ms. Cherfilus-McCormick was indicted yesterday.
This time around, it isn’t mortgage fraud.
The allegations, announced by the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida, are related to the family healthcare company where Cherfilus-McCormick and her brother worked in 2021. According to the Department of Justice, their company received a $5 million overpayment of federal covid relief funds.
Prosecutors allege that a “substantial portion of the misappropriated funds” were then redirected back to Cherfilus-McCormick’s congressional campaign through straw donors and by passing the money through family and friends. “Using disaster relief funds for self-enrichment is a particularly selfish, cynical crime,” Attorney General Pam Bondi wrote in a statement announcing the indictment.
Also charged: her brother Edwin Cherfilus, Nadege Leblanc, and Ms. Cherfilus-McCormick’s tax preparer David Spencer.
Are you a pelican or a peliCAN’T?
November 15th, 2025In some haste, because I am on the road for a wedding. But:
Willie Green out as head coach of the New Orleans Pelicans. ESPN:
The team is 2-10 to start the season. Which, sort of surprisingly, isn’t the worst record in the NBA so far this season: Brooklyn, Indiana, and Washington are all 1-11.
You’re smoking in a no-smoking zone, you tax-fattened hyena!
November 13th, 2025And I’m looking forward to full on flames.
Headline on the front page of the NYPost:
Dem rep’s $1.2 million DC home target of DOJ mortgage fraud criminal referral
We’re almost getting to the point where “politician charged with mortgage fraud” is the new “car bomb explodes in Beirut”.
But this one is special.
You may remember Eric Swalwell for such hits as “banging a Chinese spy”:
In January 2023, former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) kicked Swalwell off the House Intelligence Committee, following reports three years prior that a suspected Chinese spy had infiltrated the congressman’s campaign — and got close to him.
Fang Fang, also known as Christine Fang, was a purported honeytrap who entered the US from China as a college student in 2011 — but allegedly spent the next four years wooing state and federal lawmakers to potentially obtain sensitive government intelligence.
At least two mayors of midwestern US cities had a romantic or sexual relationship with her, a US intelligence official and former elected official told Axios in 2020.
You may also remember Rep. Swalwell for threatening to use nuclear weapons against gun owners.
If Rep. Swalwell is convicted (and as much as I despise the man, he is still entitled to the presumption of innocence) he will, of course, lose all rights to own guns. I assume this includes any access he may have to nuclear weapons.
Obit watch: November 12, 2025.
November 12th, 2025Sally Kirkland, actress.
Other credits include “Supertrain”, the good “Hawaii Five-0”, “Bronk”, and an uncredited role in “Blazing Saddles”.
Tatsuya Nakadai, Japanese actor.
He did a lot of work with Akira Kurosawa, including the lead role in “Kagemusha”. He was also the lead character in “Ran”, Kurosawa’s version of “King Lear”.
Early in his career, Mr. Nakadai often worked opposite Toshiro Mifune, one of Japan’s best-known acting exports. They could not have been less alike: Mr. Mifune, untrained as an actor but with wild energy, often presented a gruff, overtly physical persona, while Mr. Nakadai took on vastly different characters and delivered subtly intricate performances.
They usually played adversaries. In “Yojimbo” (1961) and “Sanjuro” (1962), both directed by Mr. Kurosawa, and “Samurai Rebellion” (1967), directed by Mr. Kobayashi, the two meet in climatic duels, with Mr. Mifune’s character winning each time with a horizontal slash to the midsection. In “Sanjuro,” the fatal cut released a towering fountain of blood.
…
Firings watch.
November 11th, 2025Nico Harrison out as general manager of the Dallas Mavericks. ESPN.
They were 182-157 over four seasons, with three playoff appearances. But they’re 3-8 so far this season, and…
…Harrison will long be remembered as the architect of what’s been called the worst trade in NBA history. His decision last season to trade Luka Doncic to the Los Angeles Lakers in exchange for Anthony Davis and Max Christie yielded immediate backlash from fans, whose chants of “Fire Nico” became a universal swan song anytime the Mavericks found themselves in an unfortunate position.
They chanted the phrase in the team’s first home game following the trade. They rallied together and chanted it the first time Doncic returned to American Airlines Center as a member of the Lakers. Nine months later, they’ve chanted it during home games as Harrison sat from his new seats inside the arena, several rows behind the team’s broadcast booth.