'Poor Man's Tesla' Announced

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Tesla Model 3.

Base model:

215 mile driving range.

Supercharger friendly.

Autopilot capable.

0 to 60 in under six seconds.

Seating for five adults.

Five Star safety rating in all categories.

$35,000.

Production begins: late 2017

My objective: for katobradley to be a single car household by the end of 2018, and for that single car to be a Tesla 3.

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Easter. Very seriously.

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Francisco Seco / AP
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Juan Medina / Reuters
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Rodrigo Abd / AP
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Cristina Quicler / AFP / Getty
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Pablo Blazquez Dominguez / Getty
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Marcelo del Pozo / Reuters

Holy Week in Spain, March 2016.

Collected by The Atlantic.

Some Very Stray Thoughts in the Middle of a Very Strange Campaign Year

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Bernie Sanders shouldn't still be in this race. Hillary Clinton should have squashed him like a bug by now, he should have been roadkill in February. A nobody Senator from a tiny state in the Northeast? An avowed Socialist? A lifelong Independent running inside the Democratic Party? No SuperPAC, no sugar daddies, no Trump wealth? A 74-year-old grumpy guy in a rumpled $74 suit? You'd think he couldn't keep pace in a potato sack race against Pee Wee Herman, much less a race for the U.S. Presidency against anyone named Clinton.

But he's still winning primaries and winning caucuses and winning delegates and he's still rolling in the campaign contribution dough, though not enough of any of the above to actually win the nomination, not even enough to simply prevent Clinton from getting her 2383 delegates prior to the convention.

And that's really troubling when you look ahead to Clinton being the Democrats' nominee in the fall. Honestly, she's simply not particularly good at this getting-elected stuff. In 2007 she (and her team, of course, a team put together by HER) miscalculated the Obama candidacy and then never figured out how to stop it, and now she can't put out the fire that is the Sanders campaign (not enough to burn her house down but enough to keep her smoke detector going off).

I don't doubt for a minute that Hillary Clinton is the brightest mind in any given room in which she happens to be, and I don't doubt for a second that she surrounds herself with the brightest and most loyal minds to be had, but jeeez this is ridiculous.

If anyone is upset because Bernie Sanders won't quit and is still hanging around, don't blame Bernie Sanders; blame Hillary Clinton and her team.

And I am going to be ROYALLY PISSED OFF if Hillary Clinton fucks up again this fall and loses, letting Donald Trump or Ted Cruz saunter into the Oval Office. Could happen.

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The other thing I worry about in the fall is another Paris or another Brussels or another San Bernardino. If we get a major terrorist event in Europe or North America in October, it will only play in the favor of whoever the Republican candidate is and that candidate will play the Fear card until every American's head is ready to explode.

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I don't think anyone should be expecting the hordes of young Sanders supporters to turn out for Secretary Clinton in November the way they're turning out for Sanders now, not because they are 'Bernie-or-Busters' but because the youth vote is historically soft and Clinton hasn't engaged them at all so far. If they didn't come out for her to begin with, why expect them to come out for her in the fall?

Senator Sanders can't wave a wand and make the kids go to the polls and vote for Clinton, nor should that be the Clinton campaign's gameplan. Clinton has to work for their votes, she has to earn their votes, not wait for Sanders to deliver them on a silver platter.

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I have to admit that I didn't take Trump seriously when he first glided down that escalator last June. Like everyone else, I figured he would quickly fizzle and walk away. But by the time he held that rally in Mobile, when we were first getting the idea that there was nothing he could say that was so boneheaded or so evil that his supporters would flake off or run away, I wasn't counting him out. And today I'm not counting out the possibility that he will win the whole thing.

And I still don't understand any of it. I haven't read anything anywhere that begins to explain it. His success highlights the ineptitude of the Republican Party establishment and the media in serving as filtering agents to keep this kind of thing from happening in a democracy, sure, I see that, but there's got to be so much more to it.

This is like living in a comic book.

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A big plus from Nixon's Presidency and especially his campaign's Southern Strategy: effectively defoliating the Democratic Party of its reactionary and uber conservative elements, leaving the Dems as the natural home for moderation, liberalism, progressivism, and the mixing thereof, thus rendering the Republican Party (which never had a true liberal wing, not even Nelson Rockefeller) as the natural locus for extremism and intolerance. That extremism and that intolerance are now eating the Republican Party alive, from the inside out.

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Garry Shandling, 1949 - 2016

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Shocking news. Garry Shandling is dead at 66.

'The Larry Sanders Show' was nothing short of brilliant, redefining television comedy as we knew it. It is still redefining television.

I'm a long-time fan. I've followed him on Twitter for a long while, and saw him just a week or so ago on Jerry Seinfeld's Comedians In Cars Getting Coffee. He and Seinfeld discussed their shock at the death of Robin Williams, how a comedian's material dies with him, and their own creeping mortality. The episode is titled, 'It's Great That Garry Shandling Is Still Alive.'

Show some respect: no flipping.

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Downsizing and [Not] Downgrading

I'm pretty sure the SE is going to be my next iPhone. Unless this September's iPhone 7 loses the 6-class curved sides and/or has some must-have feature and/or design that I can't begin to imagine, I'm all-in for a reborn 5-class chassis with the guts of a 6s (I'm still using a 6-no-s so the SE will actually be an upgrade for me). Its compact 'squared-up' size feels so much better in the hand than the too-smooth too-slight 6. And to me, a 4-inch screen just seems like the right size for a handheld.

The iPhone 4 is my definitive ideal of all of the iPhone designs (its look still reminds me of a vintage Leica) but no way will Apple bring back that kind of heft. Sigh.

UPDATE: Didn’t happen. No SE for me. Natch.

Go! Go! Go!

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Allen Ginsberg reading Howl | Town Hall Theater, Berkeley CA | 18 March 1956 | © Walter Lehrman


Sixty years ago today, at the Town Hall Theater on Shattuck Avenue in Berkeley, Allen Ginsberg read his new poem Howl in public and in full for the first time. Listen here:



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Allen Ginsberg, Philip Whalen, Michael McClure, and Gary Snyder | Town Hall Theater, Berkeley CA |
18 March 1956 | © Walter Lehrman


Fun fact for locals: the Town Hall Theater, which is still standing, became the original location for Berkeley Bowl and today is home to Kirala and Sconehenge.

George Martin, 1926 - 2016

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Signage

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Office building, Dohuk, North Iraq

Photo: R Daniels | 2007

The Honest Truth

On the face of it, this is coming across (at least to me) as a pretty innocent and a very stupid mistake. For five years she was taking it to enhance her performance. OK. But it wasn't a prohibited substance. Then on January 1 2016 it became a prohibited substance and, well, she didn't get the memo. Busted at the Australian Open in January.

Whatever the honest truth is here, you have to admire her for stepping up instead of lawyering up. She played it the way you wish Bonds, McGwire, et. al. had played it.

Can't give her a bye on this, though, even if it was an innocent mistake. The elites can't play by different rules.

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Maria Sharapova Admits She Took Drug Newly Banned by Tennis

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Bud Collins

His exuberance for the game and the florid spews of language his exuberance often ignited (not to mention the clothes) made it too easy for casual observers of the game to dismiss him but you could never overlook him, and you ignored him at your peril because he truly was fountain of knowledge about the game and its players and its history. In the late 70s and the 80s, when I came full throttle to the sport (as a spectator), he was as much the face of tennis for the American audience as was 'bad boy' national hero John McEnroe. I remember many a "Breakfast at Wimbledon" (NBC's Sunday morning broadcasts of the men's finals) with him in my Oakland apartment, eating steak and eggs and biscuits instead of strawberries and cream (in those days I also didn't have a taste for champagne yet, either).

RIP, Bud Collins.

Photo: Gill Allen | Associated Press | Wimbledon 1993

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Bud Collings, Who Covered Tennis With Authority and Flash, Dies at 86

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Political Reality


they keep it all hid

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