Zorro
Zorro's JournalRoy Clark, Country Music Hall of Fame member, dies at 85
Source: The Tennessean
According to his publicist, Country Music Hall of Fame member and versatile entertainer Roy Clark died Thursday at his Tulsa, Oklahoma home due to complications from pneumonia. He was 85 years old.
A fleet-fingered instrumentalist best known for his 24 years as a "Hee Haw" co-host, the affable Clark was one of country music's most beloved ambassadors.
He brought heart and humor to audiences around the world, guest-hosted "The Tonight Show," worked with greats like Hank Williams and blues artist Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown, and inspired countless pickers, including a young Brad Paisley, with his instructional guitar books.
"He's honest," said fellow Country Music Hall of Famer Harold Bradley when Clark was inducted in 2009. "Whether he's playing guitar or singing, he's honest. Whatever he does, he sparkles."
Read more: https://www.tennessean.com/story/entertainment/music/2018/11/15/roy-clark-dead-85/1978910002/
Another exceptional talent gone.
Disney World banned a man who waved 'Trump 2020' banner on Splash Mountain
Dion Cini calls his photos at Florida’s Walt Disney World Resort “guerrilla marketing.”
One picture shows the 49-year-old with a slight smile, holding a “Trump 2020” banner on the Splash Mountain log ride. Another shows him on a roller coaster, holding a sign that reads “Keep America GREAT!”
His plan, he said, was to go viral, drawing support for President Trump’s campaign.
According to Newsweek, in the past several months he has also unfurled pro-Trump banners on Broadway and at Yankee Stadium to show his support for the president.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2018/11/13/disney-world-banned-man-who-waved-trump-banner-splash-mountain
GOP Rep. Denham falls behind Democrat as 3 other Republicans lose ground in Friday's ballot tally
Republican Rep. Jeff Denham lost his lead over Democrat Josh Harder on Friday in one of California’s four unresolved congressional races as updated ballot counts showed the GOP in growing danger of losing as many as six House seats in the state.
GOP Rep. Dana Rohrabacher of Costa Mesa fell further behind Democrat Harley Rouda, who is now more than 7,300 votes ahead of the 15-term congressman.
Another Republican Orange County incumbent, Rep. Mimi Walters, has seen her election-night lead of 6,233 votes drop to 2,020 in her race against Democrat Katie Porter.
The tabulation Friday was also alarming for Republican candidate Young Kim of Fullerton, whose election-night lead over Democrat Gil Cisneros has shrunk to 2,672 votes.
http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/us-politics/la-me-pol-house-vote-counts-20181109-story.html
It's also interesting to read about how ballots with "love notes" are handled.
Jeff Sessions leaves a dark mark on the Justice Department
Under almost any other circumstances, the firing of Attorney General Jeff Sessions would be a moment for dancing in the streets. Sessions oversaw a Justice Department that systematically undermined civil liberties and civil rights.
But his departure portends no improvement on these fronts. And the fact that President Trump fired him, notwithstanding his faithful advancement of the president’s agenda, should raise alarm bells.
Sessions leaves the Justice Department far less committed to justice than he found it. Under President Barack Obama, the department expanded the rights of LGBTQ individuals, responded aggressively to police abuse, directed federal prosecutors to use their charging discretion wisely to reduce mass incarceration, promoted voting rights, reduced reliance on private prisons and commuted lengthy sentences imposed on nonviolent drug offenders. Sessions could not reincarcerate the men and women whose sentences Obama commuted, but he reversed virtually everything else.
Instead of protecting the most vulnerable among us, the Justice Department under Sessions targeted them. One of his earliest actions was to rescind a guidance requiring schools to allow transgender students to use the bathroom associated with their gender identity. In then-ongoing litigation, he abandoned the department’s long-standing position that Texas’s voter-ID law was racially discriminatory. He sought to back out of a consent decree with the Baltimore Police Department requiring it to reform its civil rights violations, and issued a memo as he was leaving the office that radically curtails the federal government’s ability to impose reform on abusive police departments nationwide. He directed federal prosecutors to pursue the most severe charges possible against criminal defendants, regardless of mitigating circumstances. He reversed 20 years of consistent Justice Department policy to support an Ohio practice of purging voters from the rolls for failing to vote.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/jeff-sessions-leaves-a-dark-mark-on-the-justice-department/2018/11/09/0f8aced0-e452-11e8-ab2c-b31dcd53ca6b_story.html
These news anchors are professional and efficient. They're also not human.
The new anchors at China’s state-run news agency have perfect hair and no pulse.
Xinhua News just unveiled what it is calling the world’s first news anchors powered by artificial intelligence, at the World Internet Conference on Wednesday in China’s Zhejiang province. From the outside, they are almost indistinguishable from their human counterparts, crisp-suited and even-keeled. Although Xinhua says the anchors have the “voice, facial expressions and actions of a real person,” the robotic anchors relay whatever text is fed to them in stilted speech that sounds less human than Siri or Alexa.
“I will work tirelessly to keep you informed as texts will be typed into my system uninterrupted,” the English-speaking version says in its debut video.
Developed jointly by Xinhua News and Chinese search engine company Sogou.com, the anchors learn from live broadcasting videos and social media and can work “24 hours a day.” The robots are supposed to help cut costs and improve efficiency, but their presence in the media landscape — marked by limited press freedom and tightly controlled Internet — raises many questions about the quality of information Chinese citizens are given by their government.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2018/11/09/these-news-anchors-are-professional-efficient-theyre-also-not-human
I think this will be a part of our future too.
Trump Unveils Reelection Campaign Plan To Drive Bus Into Crowds Across Country
WASHINGTON—In an effort to appeal to his base and build enthusiasm for his reelection bid, President Donald Trump announced Wednesday that his 2020 campaign included plans to drive a specially decorated tour bus into crowds across the country.
“I’ll have these amazing crowds, the biggest, most beautiful crowds you’ve ever seen, and we’ll just plow right through them in our bus,” said Trump, explaining his strategy for retaining control of the White House by energizing his base with campaign rallies and appearances and then crushing them under the weight of a chartered bus.
“No one has campaigned like this before––bringing a gorgeous bus to huge crowds of everyday Americans and running them down. It’s the, you know, the people, and I’m the people’s president. It will probably say that on the bus. Important. Connect with voters. We’re going to the South, through the—what they call it since Obama—the rustbelt, meeting supporters, driving into them, driving over them. Driving over thousands of people. Men, women, children, everyday Americans, they’ll love it. They love buses. We get huge crowds of folks at my rallies, you know? These people, they’ll chant my name while I drive over them in our bus. Big bus, just beautiful. I’ll drive the bus myself—I can drive. The bus can go, like, 90 miles per hour, so we’ll—you know, I’m gonna do that. Run them over. Crush them, drum up so many votes.”
A special TrumpBus companion website reportedly features a special section for donors pledging over $1,000 to Trump’s reelection campaign in exchange for president slowly backing his bus over the donor’s entire extended family has already sold out.
https://politics.theonion.com/trump-unveils-reelection-campaign-plan-to-drive-bus-int-1830283639
An obituary for old Orange County, dead at age 128
“Orange County,” the California collection of 34 cities and 3.2 million residents once described by President Reagan as where “all the good Republicans go to die,” died Tuesday. It was 128 years old.
Long famous for its wealth, whiteness and conservative values, Orange County is survived by its offspring, who include a population that is about 60% people of color, some of the most crowded and poor neighborhoods in the United States and a Republican Party that’s on the ropes. Once reliably red, the official cause of O.C.’s passing is a case of the blue flu, which turned its politics more purple than Barney the dinosaur.
Election results weren’t official as of press time, but it seemed likely that Democrats would represent at least some of the seven congressional districts that are are entirely or partially in the county — a once-unthinkable prospect in the land that spawned the modern-day GOP.
The death shocked everyone who hadn’t bothered to pay attention for decades. County boosters and leaders had desperately tried to mask its failing health with a series of anti-immigrant resolutions, orange-shaped balloons at Great Park, and a string of increasingly vapid reality TV series. But as the years went on, the Orange County of old gradually succumbed to a new generation of working-class unions, multicultural youngsters and middle-class voters who just didn’t care about demonizing the downtrodden, except for the homeless.
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-arellano-orange-county-obit-20181107-story.html
View from the ground
I'm a 50th District poll worker for today's election (my wife volunteered me for the position, and it's my first time). It's been extraordinarily busy for the first five hours today, with a steady stream of voters of all ages.
Only problem of note was a voter who showed up before the polls opened wearing a "Lock Her Up" t-shirt -- he wanted to argue that he was exercising his freedom of speech and that Hillary wasn't on the ballot, and demanded to be shown where it wasn't allowed when I told him it was not permissible.
Told him it was a political electioneering message and pointed out on the sign outside the polling place where it said "No electioneering within 100 feet". He apparently was prepared for this, and had changed to a "Retired Veteran" shirt when the polls opened but still acted dickish when registering to vote.
Anyway, this has been a very busy day so far. It will be interesting to see what the Hunter/Campa-Najjar vote will be. This is still a very red district and there a lots of mail ballots, so it may be a few days before that result is announced.
Trump Warns That Democrats Would Drag Nation Back to Days of Tolerance and Decorum
CHATTANOOGA (The Borowitz Report)—Employing the fear tactics that have typified his midterm campaigning, Donald J. Trump told a rally audience on Sunday that electing Democrats would drag the nation back to the dark days of tolerance and decorum.
Trump made his closing argument to the Chattanooga, Tennessee, audience by raising the spectre of a return to the dignified and restrained discourse that plagued the nation during the regime of his predecessor, Barack Obama.
“We had eight years of talking about people of different genders, races, and nationalities as if they were human beings,” Trump warned. “Do we want to go back to that?” “No!” the crowd shouted. “Do we want our public figures to consider the consequences of their words and actions?” he asked. “No!” they thundered.
Appearing on Fox News, Vice-President Mike Pence defended Trump against charges that he was irresponsibly stoking his supporters’ worst fears about a return to compassion and civility. “This election is about whether we, as a nation, want to move forward or backward,” Pence said. “And I have faith that the American people want to keep moving backward.”
https://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/trump-warns-that-democrats-would-drag-nation-back-to-days-of-tolerance-and-decorum
Guess What? Everyone Was Wrong About Tesla
Pretty much everything has been said about Tesla: it was selling vehicles at a loss and would never be able to make them under the right conditions and fast enough, that its founder was crazy and would lead the company to ruin, while one industry veteran acclaimed the Model S, calling on car collectors to buy one “before the company goes belly up.” But this quarter, Tesla has not only made tons of money, boosting its share price and giving the NASDAQ its best day in months, but has also fulfilled its production and distribution objectives, showing every sign of staying in the black, at least until it has to pay interest on loans in the first quarter of next year.
For once, this third quarter does not seem to be the exception: everything indicates the company has found a stable way to generate profits. What’s more, Tesla is no longer an industry quirk: many have laughed at its production difficulties, grossly underestimating the achievement of moving from a standing start to mass producing 80,000 vehicles per quarter, but the company is now outselling Porsche, Mercedes Benz and BMW, making it the best-selling domestically-made car in the United States, and what’s more with a model that while expensive, is more advanced technologically, as well as cheaper and much safer to run that its internal combustion powered competitors.
This quarter’s spectacular results have confounded the analysts’ forecasts, proving what some of us have been saying for a while now, that few in the motor industry and its so-called experts few understand the strategic vision of a company prepared to take risks to change the world. Virtually everyone was wrong about Tesla’s finances and its future, and many analysts are now scratching their heads trying to understand what happened while still making recommendations of questionable credibility. For one thing, most analysts simply can’t get their head round the idea that a company’s customers would volunteer to help distribute its vehicles, contributing to a project they consider themselves part of. Elon Musk will doubtless be basking in the warm glow of his “I told you so” triumph, because he does understand that people want to be part of a project that is not about selling cars, but changing the world.
Understanding a business model like Tesla’s means understanding that the biggest difficulties aren’t necessarily the ones you imagine. Tesla has shown that difficult challenges can be overcome, as many other companies have done before. It has shown that it’s possible to design long-term strategies and implement them successfully, even if that means having to listen to baseless nonsense from people who don’t understand what it’s are doing. For example, that the company was wrong not to locate in China, that its production costs were unsustainable and would drive it out of business. Yet Tesla’s assembly line is now making progressive savings as production increases, and next year, depending on global demand, it could even consider moving a part of its manufacturing to China: now, not before.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/enriquedans/2018/10/28/guess-what-everyone-was-wrong-about-tesla
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Gender: MaleHometown: America's Finest City
Current location: District 48
Member since: 2001
Number of posts: 15,740
