“Wellesnet,” the online Orson Welles news and fan site has noted that Donald Trump’s campaign is coming, more and more, to resemble the doomed election bid of Charles Foster Kane in the 1941 film. One will remember that things for Citizen Kane started to come unraveled when he threatened, at a big rally, to prosecute his opponent once elected.
Trump as Kane? Hey, I produced this Photoshop for a Roger Simon article back in June:
ISN’T EVERYONE USED TO THAT FIRST PART BY NOW? Barack Obama’s Wrong: The New Cold War’s Only Just Begun.
Michael Weiss:
“Vladimir Putin,” [Mikhail] Zygar writes, “did not like the new American president from the start. For him, Barack Obama was both soft and intractable… Paradoxically, Obama, the most idealistic and peace-loving U.S. president in living memory, became a symbol of war in Russia, a target for Russian state propaganda and racist jokes, and a hate figure for millions of patriotic Russians. He was caricatured as an ill-fated enemy doomed to be defeated by Vladimir Putin.”
Surveying some much-buried news over the last seven days, one begins to appreciate the weight of this grim appraisal.
Read the whole thing.
DAN MARKEL UPDATE: More On The Hit Man’s Implication Of Wendi Adelson In Dan Markel’s Murder.
“WHEN YOU’RE A STAR, THEY LET YOU DO IT. YOU CAN DO ANYTHING:” “So Joy Behar called Bill Clinton’s accusers ‘tramps’ on ‘The View.’ Let that sink in a while.”
JOHN KASS: Will Hillary explain her dream of ‘open borders’?
A better question might be, “Will Hillary be seriously called upon to explain her dream of ‘open borders’?
OBAMA TO PROTESTERS: Get Your Own Rally.
President Obama on Tuesday told demonstrators to stage their own event elsewhere, rather than interrupt him.
“Is somebody hollering again?” he asked listeners in Greensboro, N.C., while campaigning for Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.
“Here’s the deal – try to get your own rally. If you can’t get your own rally, don’t come up and mess up somebody else’s rally. We’ve got work to do.”
Obama was disrupted by protesters at least three times during Tuesday’s rally for Clinton, his former secretary of State.
The first wave of interrupters were wearing shirts bearing the slogan “Bill Clinton is a rapist” to criticize the former president, who is Hillary Clinton’s husband.
“Get your own rally.” If a Republican said that, it would be treated like “I’ve got mine, Jack!”
HE IS NO LONGER USEFUL TO THE CAUSE: Billy Bush’s Departure From ‘Today’ Is Imminent: ‘He’s Definitely Gone’
ANALYSIS: TRUE. We’ll remember 2016 as the year no one in politics wanted to confront reality.
But then, American elites have been sticking their head in the sand for quite a long time:
It’s shouldn’t be all that surprising that the affliction eventually became bipartisan. And as Jim Geraghty writes, “This election appears poised to end a long period of American political and cultural denial. Whatever comes next, it won’t be painless.” That will prove to be true no matter who wins next month.
JUSTICE? Lawyers for Paris Attacks Suspect Stop Defending Him.
Frank Berton and Sven Mary said they’ve decided to stop representing Salah Abdeslam, who has chosen to remain silent in a protest against his prison conditions, including the 24-hour video surveillance of his cell.
Berton told a press conference on Wednesday that Abdeslam, who was arrested in Brussels in March then transferred to France, was psychologically damaged by his detention at Fleury-Merogis prison.
“I’ve been convinced for months that he is isolating and radicalizing himself, he is taking his video surveillance very badly,” Berton said. “This is not blackmail, it’s just the reality of his psychological and psychic state. The problem is related to his solitary confinement.”
According to Berton, Abdeslam was initially willing to speak and the lawyer urged French authorities to soften their tough approach.
I wonder if Abdeslam is testing a subtle new kind of lawfare meant to frustrate western legal systems.
THE 21ST CENTURY ISN’T TURNING OUT AS I’D HOPED: Blink-182’s Tom DeLonge discussed UFOs with Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager in leaked emails.
GANGSTER GOVERNMENT: The Hill: Clinton camp appeared to have contacts with DOJ on email case.
THANKS FOR THE APOLOGY, MS. BEHAR … BUT IT’S NOT ENOUGH: Why Aren’t the Other ‘View’ Hosts apologizing, too?
IN SPACE, NO ONE CAN SEE YOU HOLDING YOUR BREATH:
—The London Daily Mail, yesterday.
Chaser: Bush unveils vision for moon and beyond.
—CNN, January 15, 2004.
Hangover: “After a brief tribute to ‘our seven Challenger heroes,’ President Reagan reaffirmed his commitment to the space program and proposed to make the development of a hypersonic aerospace plane a national priority…Reagan did not say whether the new plane, with its low-orbit capability, would be assuming some of the shuttle’s duties.”
—“Reagan Proposes Aerospace Plane Futuristic Plan May Mean 2-hour Trip From US To Tokyo,” Orlando Sentinel, February 5, 1986.
WHAT HAPPENED TO AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES? Self-righteous students aren’t new. What is new: administrators who bend to their will. Actually, the students are often tools of the administrators who pretend to bend.
WHICH ONE IS MORE LIKELY TO CURE YOU? Your Surgeon Is Probably a Republican, Your Psychiatrist Probably a Democrat.
THE 21ST CENTURY ISN’T TURNING OUT AS I’D HOPED: “As Jews atone on Yom Kippur, we need to confront our white privilege,” Obama-supporting Rabbi Jonah Pesner writes in the Washington Post.
Flashback: MSNBC Host Touré Ascribes Holocaust Survival To ‘The Power of Whiteness.’
F.I.R.E. WEIGHS IN ON the University of Tennessee Porn-Star Quiz Story. That story has also generated more local-media commentary. No more actual news has appeared, though.
IN DEBLASIO’S NEW YORK, IT’S PROBABLY HEADING CLOSER TO HALF: Health Department: Nearly one-third of New Yorkers binge drink.
THE LEGAL PROFESSION’S DECLINE CONTINUES, AT LEAST AT THE BIGLAW LEVEL: WSJ: Law Firms Demote Partners as Pressure Mounts Over Profits.
All is proceeding as Ben Barton has foreseen.
WHAT TO DO IF YOU’RE ATTACKED BY A BEAR, and all you have is a knife. “Truthfully, I would rather run into a bear than a wild boar. These are becoming a problem in the [Great Smoky Mountains National Park], but while I have seen plenty of torn up ground, I have never seen a pig in the Park. Bears are relatively predictable, boars – not so much.”
STRENGTH TRAINING: The Boyfriend Problem.
WELL, IT’S THAT WAY FOR MEN, TOO. For Women, Sex Gets Better With Age.
UM, LESS THAN YOU THINK? How Much Can You Trust a “Certified Pre-Owned” Car?
CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: “Is this a FOB”: State Department prioritized Clinton cronies for access. “Hillary Clinton and her campaign have repeatedly insisted that Clinton Foundation donors and other associates of the family never received any special treatment from the State Department during Hillary’s tenure as Secretary of State. E-mails gleaned from FOIA actions tell a much different story. While the US government tried to respond to a 2010 humanitarian crisis in Haiti, State spent its time sifting through access requests to identify ‘FOBs’ — Friends of Bill — by way of the Clinton Foundation’s top executives, ABC News reports.”
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