THEY WERE THREATENING HIM TO KEEP QUIET BEFORE: BREAKING: DOJ authorizes FBI Informant to speak with Congress concerning alleged corruption involving Clintons & Uranium One.

But don’t get cocky. A reader writes:

Something no one is considering re this dossier story: Perhaps the Dems can let go of this narrative now because they believe they have something real on Trump, something that can really hurt him. So they can put this toothless story to bed (while helping the mainstream press re establish credibility because, “look, we reported this!”). Doing this now can also – finally – puts an end any further noise from the Hillary camp about a 2020 run. This story finishes that possibility, gets Potus feeling comfortable, thinking he can relax, then they haul out whatever it is they have and the outrage-impeachment morality play goes on. OR, (slightly less or maybe more plausible) thanks to the unprecedented data base of info that Maxine Waters talked about, they have material on enough GOP house and senate members to either 1) chase them out, blaming Trump as they exit and setting up 2018 for all kinds of difficulty or 2) turn them while they remain in office. Watching 4-5 reporters yesterday asking Flake (and Corker and even Pelosi before him) about removing Trump from office does make it seem like something coordinated is in the works, and the press is chomping at the bit to get to it. If I liked popcorn I would be popping it for the next act.

Well, they’ve acted sure that they had The Donald dead to rights on many occasions. So far, the torpedoes have a tendency to circle back.

THE INSTA-WIFE: Harvey Weinstein and the Myth of “Toxic Masculinity.”

“TECH-BRO” SEEMS LIKE A SEXIST TERM: The Dangers of Tech-Bro AI.

UPDATE: From the comments: “This whole idea of tech ‘bros’ is so offensive. Tech people spend their whole childhoods getting picked on by ‘bros,’ finally find a community of their own where they can fit in, and then get condemned by feminists as ‘bros’ just because they’re not girls.”

21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: When ‘Prenup’ Is A Four Letter Word. “Matt once told me that if he could have done anything with his life, he would have been a rock journalist, à la Lester Bangs. He wasn’t unhappy with his career, but his admission suggested he had traded passion for stability, whereas I had followed my passion at the expense of stability. Why should I be entitled to his money?”

HE WAS JUST AHEAD OF THE STORY: Less than one week ago, Chris Cilizza incredulously wrote, “Donald Trump just suggested the FBI, Democrats and Russia might all be co-conspirators.”

And now. . . .

INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY: A Crime Or Just ‘Baloney’? Hillary Clinton Russian Scandal Keeps Getting Worse.

Related: The Steele dossier was a Clinton/DNC-funded operation supported by the FBI and influenced heavily by Russian operatives in the Kremlin.

The country has spent the last year with Obama intelligence officials, the media, and Democratic leaders pushing a narrative of Trump collusion with Russia to steal an election that was supposed to be won by Hillary Clinton. A meeting between Trump officials and a Russian who falsely promised dirt on Hillary Clinton is the best evidence — by far — to support this narrative.

Yet here we have the realization that the Clinton campaign, the DNC, and the FBI all worked wittingly or unwittingly with Russians to affect the results of the 2016 election. Far from just meeting with a Russian and not getting dirt on a political opponent, these groups wittingly or unwittingly paid Russian operatives for disinformation to harm Trump during the 2016 election and beyond.

Worse, these efforts perverted our justice system by forcing the attorney general to recuse himself for the crime of having attended meetings with Russian diplomats and spawning a massive, sprawling, limitless probe over Russia. These things are so much more damaging to the republic than a couple thousand dollars in ads on Facebook paid for by Russian trolls about a pipeline protest.

Sessions should un-recuse, fire Mueller, and start investigating everyone involved with this.

HMMM: Hollywood Is Dying and Not Even Star Wars Can Save It.

[Jonathan Last of the Weekly Standard:] From the outside, it looks like Hollywood is undergoing four of five simultaneous crises: there’s the systemic sexual misconduct; there’s the Worst Summer Box Office Ever; there’s the precarious position of the theatrical release and the theater experience; and there’s the rise of streaming and Silicon Valley’s incursion into the entertainment business.

It’s like the industry version of a geostorm.

Is it really as bad as all that? Or is this one of those moments where the situation isn’t so dire, that the wheels always look like they’re falling off the cart, but never do?

[Richard Rushfield of the Hollywood-themed email newsletter The Ankler:] I’d say it is as bad as all that, for the reasons you describe, which all go back to: the movie industry, in particular, has lost the plot. It’s lost sight of the reasons why people go to the movies. It’s been so focused on “What movies can you market?”—which is generally shorthand for “What movies will people just show up for without you having convince them that they actually should?”

In particular, Hollywood has lost sight of the way people under 30—the ones who used to be the core audience—consume entertainment and what sort of experience they are looking for.

The tone for the past five years or so has very much reminded me of the mood you’d get around newsrooms 15 years ago, when if newspaper people were told that no one under 40 was reading the papers, they’d just harumph that “It’s about time someone explained to those whippersnappers how great newspapers actually are!” And I can see this all working out for the studios similar to how losing a couple generations of readers worked out for newspapers.

Plus:

[Rushfield:] To boil this down, movies for me are about space. They are relatively condensed experiences—just a couple hours—but heightened (when they are good) by the intense craftsmanship that goes into every moment.

That’s why you can see your favorite films a hundred times and still find something new, why people watch them over and over even when they can recite the dialogue by heart. There’s this heightened reality that makes films special and begs to be seen in the best possible circumstances.

Television shows (dramas in particular) are about time—about building a relationship with the characters over the course of years. Game of Thrones didn’t become a vital experience in the minds of its viewers until the second or third season, after we’d spent 15 or 20 hours with the characters. That’s why in the great shows, the relationship with the characters grows over the years in a way that it might not if you were going to the theaters to see The Godfather Part 27.

Anyhow, there’s something about these Netflix movies every week that just radiates, non-special, non-heightened experience. That telegraphs You are not going to watch this fifty times.

Read the whole thing.

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): What struck me at Marshall last night was that before the show they had more ads for programs on Amazon, Netflix, etc. than they had trailers for movies.

1967: IN FIFTY YEARS WE’LL HAVE FLYING CARS!

2017: Meet Nurx, the ‘Uber for Birth Control.’

TAMARA KEEL: The Drawbacks of a Subcompact Single-Stack 9mm.

WHAT IDENTITY POLITICS HAS WROUGHT: Majority Of White Americans Say They Believe Whites Face Discrimination. “Notable, however, is that while a majority of whites in the poll say discrimination against them exists, a much smaller percentage say that they have actually experienced it. Also important to note is that 84 percent of whites believe discrimination exists against racial and ethnic minorities in America today.”

FROM MOLLIE HEMINGWAY: Here Are The 10 Most Important Reported Claims About The Steele Dossier On Russia.

OK THEN: Trump’s Lack of Diversity is Weakening National Security, Top Dem Argues.

OH: De Blasio spending over $3M a year to keep repeat offenders out of jail.

INFO (AND SPECULATION) on the 2019 Toyota Supra.

AT AMAZON, save on Generators and Portable Power.

Plus, deals on Sports Collectibles.

TYLER O’NEIL: 5 Potential Conservative Replacements for Sen. Jeff Flake Besides Kelli Ward.

Ward’s own former advisors (who came to her from Breitbart) have disavowed their own candidate.

DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE LENDS HAND IN FREE SPEECH LAWSUIT: A California college student is suing his school for stifling his First Amendment rights. Now, the DOJ is issuing a “statement of interest” in the FIRE-sponsored litigation.

UNEXPECTEDLY: Progressive, “Fair Wage” Pizza Shop Closing Its Doors.

WELL, GOOD: New drug may block muscle scarring linked to heart failure.

JAMES HOHMANN: Flake and Corker feel liberated to speak their minds. That should terrify Trump.

But a much better outcome for President Trump would have been if Flake ran and lost in the primary. Public and private polls showed that he was deeply vulnerable to a challenge from anyone aligned with the administration.

Flake was building up a serious campaign apparatus, and his advisers were telling him that he had to be cautious. If he had decided to take his chances, the senator’s critiques of Trump would have been very measured. If he subsequently lost in a primary, it would be much easier for the president’s allies to dismiss future attacks as sour grapes from a senator scorned.

— Flake’s decision to retire means that he gets to leave the Senate on his own terms and apparently that entails going full “Bulworth.”

In an op-ed for The Post, Flake explains that he decided not to seek reelection in order “to remove all considerations of what is normally considered to be safe politically.”

“For the next 14 months, relieved of the strictures of politics, I will be guided only by the dictates of conscience,” he promises. “It’s time we all say: Enough.”

I fail to see how a Republican Senator who has annoyed his own constituents so much that he doomed himself in the coming primary becomes somehow more powerful now that he has no constituency at all.

P.S. Bulworth’s outspoken antics won him his primary, James.

YOU’RE GONNA NEED A BIGGER BLOG: Clinton Corruption Update for October 25, 2017.

THEY CALLED HIM “THE LION OF THE SENATE” BECAUSE HE MATED AT WILL AND KILLED WITHOUT REMORSE: Semi-bio pic of Ted Kennedy’s 1969 car crash is coming.

QUESTION ASKED: Can Saudi Arabia Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman drag his fundamentalist country into the 21st Century?

WHAT’S THE POINT? Genetically modified pigs bred with 24% less fat.