Zorro
Zorro's JournalThe Hummer is Back as a 350-mile Range 'Electric Supertruck' That Can Drive Diagonally
The Hummer — symbol of pre-2008-recession, gas-guzzling excess — has been resurrected as a 350-mile range “electric supertruck” with three electric motors, 1,000 horsepower adjustable air suspension, and a diagonal driving feature called “Crab Mode.” The electric truck is set to go into production in late 2021, possibly ahead of Tesla’s Cybertruck.
The Hummer EV is arguably the most important vehicle to be announced as part of General Motors multi-billion dollar pivot to electrification. It was revealed during a virtual event set to air during the World Series, “The Voice,” and across a barrage of social media and streaming platforms. The electric truck will be the first vehicle to feature General Motors’ new modular electric vehicle platform and battery, known as Ultium.
The resurrected Hummer will be made and sold under the GMC brand at GM’s Detroit-Hamtramck factory — recently renamed Factory Zero — which the automaker is pumping $2.2 billion into as it gears up to mass-produce electric vehicles.
Initially, the Hummer EV will be offered in four variants, none of which are cheap. Starting in fall 2021, the Hummer EV Edition 1 will go on sale for a suggested price of $112,595. This version will include Crab Mode and Extract Mode, which allows the truck’s suspension height to be raised approximately six inches (149 mm) to help negotiate “extreme off-road situations such as clearing boulders or fording water,” GMC says.
https://www.theverge.com/2020/10/20/21525290/hummer-ev-electric-truck-gmc-price-specs-range
An all-electric Hummer? What is the world coming to?
A WSJ columnist said Biden was part of Hunter's business deal. Later its reporters said the opposite
A Wall Street Journal columnist said Joe Biden was part of Hunter’s business deal. Hours later, its news reporters said the opposite.Readers of the Wall Street Journal may have felt a bit of whiplash on Thursday over a news story and an opinion column that presented sharply conflicting accounts of Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s alleged role in one of his son’s business ventures.
The Journal column — hailed as a bombshell before the final presidential debate by Biden critics, including President Trump — asserted that Biden was involved in a deal arranged by his son Hunter with a Chinese energy conglomerate in 2017.
Columnist Kimberley Strassel relied on the account of Hunter Biden’s former business partner, Tony Bobulinski, who provided documents that “suggest Hunter was cashing in on the Biden name and that Joe Biden was involved.”
But a few hours after Strassel’s column was published, the Journal’s news side offered a much different take.
“The venture .?.?. never received proposed funds from the Chinese company or completed any deals, according to people familiar with the matter,” Journal reporters Andrew Duehren and James Areddy wrote. “Corporate records reviewed by the Wall Street Journal show no role for Joe Biden.” The reporters also quoted another partner in the venture, James Gilliar, who said he was “unaware of any involvement at anytime of the former vice president.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/media/a-wall-street-journal-columnist-said-joe-biden-was-part-of-hunters-business-deal-hours-later-its-news-reporters-said-the-opposite/2020/10/23/c4f9689a-1532-11eb-bc10-40b25382f1be_story.html
Loan payments loom as Trump fights for his political future - and the future of his business
At President Trump’s hotel in Chicago, the most recent board meeting began with bad news. This year’s numbers were awful. Revenue had plunged. The hotel was just 24?percent occupied.
And worse: The hotel expected next year to be bad, too.
In fact, the hotel’s managing director, Gabriel Constantin, said the coronavirus pandemic had hurt the Trump hotel so deeply — reducing business travel and forcing the cancellation of Chicago conferences — that it might be nine years before their business returned to 2019 levels.
“The most optimistic [date] would be 2024,” Constantin said, according to an account of the meeting obtained by The Washington Post. He had a warning about the hotel’s future, if the pandemic’s economic effects didn’t ease: “It’s going to be very, very tough to keep the boat afloat.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-debt-election/2020/10/23/411ab8c2-0e33-11eb-b1e8-16b59b92b36d_story.html
What was Trump talking about? How the language of Fox News invaded the final debate.
During the final presidential debate, President Trump made reference to “the laptop from hell,” “AOC plus three? and “Russia, Russia, Russia” — yes, said three times in a row.
The material was very familiar to — and maybe only familiar to — regular viewers of Fox News opinion hosts such as Sean Hannity.
“I feel like he almost was speaking the language of Fox prime time,” Chuck Todd, host of “Meet the Press,” said on NBC after the debate. “If you watch a lot of Fox prime time, you understand what he’s saying. If you don’t, you have no idea.”
It was a point made over and over again across networks as political commentators and journalists wondered aloud whether Trump’s attacks on former vice president Joe Biden flew over the heads of many Americans who aren’t regular consumers of conservative television, radio and websites.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/media/2020/10/23/trump-fox-news-final-debate/
The ultimate political yard sign: painting 'Trump' on your roof
It could also be a St. Petersburg code violation.
It’s probably someone’s version of the American dream.
A charming house on a quiet street in a safe neighborhood, where the neighbors know each others names. Shady canopy of oak trees, white picket fence, gigantic “Trump 2020” painted directly on the roof.
Two weeks before a presidential election, it’s no surprise we’ve reached peak candidate-yard-sign density in St. Petersburg.
But one home in the Euclid St. Paul’s neighborhood has cranked it up a notch with support for President Donald Trump displayed in bright white letters, 20 feet wide.
The neighborhood is in a precinct that voted overwhelmingly for Hillary Clinton in 2016, and is currently dominated by yard signs for Democratic candidate Joe Biden. One neighbor across the street displays a sign with a row of Black power fists in rainbow colors. Another has posted in their window, that “in this house, we believe, Black lives matter, women’s rights are human rights and science is real.”
https://www.tampabay.com/life-culture/2020/10/23/the-ultimate-political-yard-sign-painting-trump-on-your-roof/
Analysts give both candidates mixed marks -- except on Fox News
The debate showdown between President Trump and Joe Biden produced some sharp contrasts Thursday night, but none as drastic as the divide that emerged in the television world’s post-debate analysis — with Fox News delivering one worldview and most of the rest of the TV news ecosystem presenting a starkly different one.
Fox News commentators who immediately followed the debate suggested it was unlikely to sway many undecided voters. But their more moderate remarks were quickly washed away when Trump ally Sean Hannity delivered an hourlong beatdown against Biden, who the Fox star falsely insisted had been caught in “lie after lie after lie.”
Hannity devoted much of the rest of his program to a disquisition on unsubstantiated allegations about Biden’s son Hunter’s overseas contacts as an energy consultant.
It would be hard for the average viewer to believe that Hannity was watching the same debate as the commentators at rival CNN or NBC, the network that sponsored the debate and provided the moderator, correspondent Kristen Welker.
https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2020-10-23/fox-news-says-trump-won-debate
That's the Last We Need to Hear From Trump
He was nasty. He was dishonest. Next, please.By Frank Bruni
It’s funny that everybody talks about Joe Biden as the old jalopy in this race, because on Thursday night in Nashville, it was Donald Trump who seemed to be running on fumes.
I don’t mean physically: He had his full repertoire of facial expressions (cocky, kooky, menacing, martyred) and the usual grating bray. I mean metaphorically. I mean politically.
He needed to show voters something different from what he had been showing them over the course of this wretched year, and he just didn’t have it in him.
He needed to part company with his foul temper, but that’s really the only weather left in him. His calmness during the first third or so of the debate gave way to the usual excitability during the rest of it. He was back to his characteristic grandiosity, his customary falsehoods, his mocking, his taunting.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/23/opinion/debate-trump-biden-.html
The only thing worse for Trump than an unwatchable debate is a watchable one
Opinion by Dana Milbank
The debate commission muted his microphone. President Trump’s own advisers told him to pipe down. Heck, maybe somebody slipped some Ambien into his Diet Coke.
And it worked, sort of. Trump saved most of his hectoring and his over-talking of the moderator, NBC’s Kristen Welker, for the second half of Thursday night’s final presidential debate. The more subdued Trump at least made the debate watchable, unlike the first encounter.
But there was something Trump’s advisers apparently hadn’t considered when they told him, in more polite words, to “shut up, man,” as Joe Biden requested during the last debate: The only thing worse for Trump than having an unwatchable debate is having a watchable debate.
It wasn’t a battle between Biden and Trump. It was a battle between reality and fantasy. In front of tens of millions, Trump played the fantasist — utterly removed from Americans’ suffering and from the most obvious truths.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-only-thing-worse-for-trump-than-an-unwatchable-debate-is-a-watchable-one/2020/10/22/5f17735e-14c5-11eb-ba42-ec6a580836ed_story.html
The last debate is the final straw
Opinion by Jennifer Rubin
The good news is that we likely will never be forced to endure another debate featuring President Trump.
The better news is that even before the Thursday night event, Trump sabotaged himself by pre-releasing an interview for “60 Minutes” with CBS News’s Lesley Stahl in which he declared flatly that he hoped the Supreme Court would invalidate the Affordable Care Act. "I hope that they end it. It’ll be so good if they end it,” Trump said. This is what they call in soccer an “own goal.” Former vice president Joe Biden could not have asked for more going into a debate. But as a bonus, Trump not only displayed his whiny, thin-skinned demeanor, but he also let on that he has no replacement health-care plan for Obamacare.
Nothing that occurred during Thursday night’s debate increases the chances we will have to endure four more years of the unhinged, know-nothing narcissistic president. Voters who made it through the 90-minute event saw a sharper, more fact-filled Biden than they have seen in previous performances. Meanwhile, the meandering, mean-spirited president was forced to resort to a flood of lies.
First, Trump appeared subdued at the onset. Deprived of the opportunity to interrupt by the mute button, he rambled and repeated self-congratulations during his time allotments. He insisted he could raise as much money as Biden has (claiming incorrectly that Biden’s had received the bulk of his money from Wall Street), but chose not to. Trump is plainly sensitive that he was clobbered in the money race. He has never learned what matters to voters. When Biden argued that we should talk about real issues affecting American families, Trump mocked him. Rarely has a politician showed such contempt for voters. Never has a president bragged that a dictator liked him more than his predecessor. Trump’s reticence was short-lived as he embarked on long-winded and often incoherent riffs filled with ludicrous accusations.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/10/22/last-debate-is-final-straw/
Trump guaranteed the election would be all about him
Opinion by Jennifer Rubin
Coming into the final presidential debate Thursday night, former vice president Joe Biden holds a commanding lead in national polls and in a sufficient number of states to comfortably clear the hurdle of 270 electoral votes. Gallup on Thursday summed up his opponent’s fundamental problem: “The majority of U.S. registered voters, 56%, believe President Donald Trump does not deserve to be reelected, while 43% say he does.” That is a seven-point drop in his “deserves reelection” number taken in January.
Every presidential reelection campaign is a referendum on the president’s performance. With a president whose performance is as rotten as Trump’s (Gallup also shows him with a 43 percent job approval rating), his only hope was to make his opponent even more unappealing than himself. Trump, however, never settled on an effective attack on Biden and, in any case, cannot stand ceding attention to anyone else. Trump’s performance, his lies, his antics, his insults, his crackpot conspiracy theories, his attacks on the media and his financial scandals have remained front and center. In other words, Trump’s raging narcissism has prevented him from doing what was necessary to give him a reasonable chance to win reelection.
The final nail in Trump’s political coffin, aside from his antics in the closing weeks of the campaign, might be the shift in public perception of his performance on the economy. The Financial Times reports: “The final monthly survey of likely voters before November 3 for the [Financial Times] and the Peter G Peterson Foundation found 46 per cent of Americans believe Mr Trump’s policies had hurt the economy, compared to 44 per cent who said the policies had helped.” Even more troubling for Trump is the finding that “only 32 per cent of Americans believe they are better off financially now than they were when Mr Trump took office four years ago — equal to the lowest total since the FT-Peterson survey began 12 months ago.”
Similarly, the New York Times-Siena College poll released this week confirms, “The president has even lost his longstanding advantage on economic matters: Voters are now evenly split on whether they have more trust in him or Mr. Biden to manage the economy.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/10/22/trump-guaranteed-election-would-be-all-about-him/
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