CNN: Ryan flying to Vegas to meet with Adelson on Tuesday

[Nevernose]

36. But the mob isn't the mob anymore

FWIW, the mob isn't the mob anymore. I know mobsters, or knew, actual, honest-to-goodness leg-breaking Italians. If you have access to Lexis Nexus, you can find that their last great hang-out was a fast food joint at DI and Pecos and know I'm not bullshitting you. They're still around to collect casino debts (casinos were the first to utilize facial recognition), but the organized crime these days is on Wall Street.

I don't mean figuratively, either: they realized a long time ago that extorting pizza shop owners wasn't as lucrative as extorting 1%ers, and that organized sports betting wasn't as good as Wall Street betting. I knew a guy whose entire job was going into boardroms of major NY financial firms, distributing pictures of the board members' families at school or the gym, and saying, "Now give me a million dollars." Organized crime has moved so far beyond what anyone expects; personally, I think of Wall Street as the mafia in the forties, still able to deny culpability and about twenty years before serious prosecution begins.