TEST DRIVE: 2018 Tesla Model 3 Long Range: The perils of outsize expectations. “It’s important to note that the Model 3, as it now exists, is not the $36,000 electric sedan for everyone. Tesla’s latest estimate is that zero-option Model 3s won’t enter production until late this year. Each current Model 3 is equipped with two mandatory options. First, a Long Range battery pack for $9000 takes the estimated driving range from 220 miles to 310 miles. Second, a Premium Upgrades package for $5000 adds features such as heated power front seats, leatherette upholstery, a panoramic glass roof, and a premium audio system. We’re already at $50,000. Any color other than black costs $1000, and ticking the box for Enhanced Autopilot semi-automation features adds another $5000. The car you see here had all these options and stickered for $56,000. (Oh, and Model 3 drivers pay for juice at the company’s Supercharger network, unlike Model S and Model X owners, who get at least some of their electrons for free.)”
Archive for 2018
April 10, 2018
HOW MANY SIGNS IS THAT NOW? Sign of the Apocalypse? Trumpet-Like Sounds Recorded on Video in Hawaii.
ACTUAL XX WOMEN MIGHT AS WELL SKIP THIS FROM NOW ON: Boston Marathon will allow transgender women to compete as women this year.
MEADOWS THREATENS “CONSEQUENCES WELL BEYOND CONTEMPT OF CONGRESS:” House Freedom Caucus Chairman Rep. Mark Meadows has had it up to here with excuses from the Department of Justice and the FBI for not producing for the House Judiciary Committee the estimated 1.2 million documents the panel has been seeking for nearly a year on Hillary Clinton’s private server and alleged contacts between President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russian interests.
As I explained Friday, the way to spell “way beyond contempt” is J-A-I-L. The last time Congress did it was 1935. Given the recent conduct of Eric Holder, Lois Lerner, Rod Rosenstein and Christopher Wray, one might easily conclude it’s been too long since that last time.
IT’S LIKE THE WHOLE THING IS JUST A SHOW FOR THE RUBES: Zuckerberg Being Grilled on Hill by His Company’s Cash Recipients.
AH YES, THE CLASSICS: Review: Walther PPK Pistol.
DAVID STEINBERG: Social Justice for Diamond and Silk! “Will the Women’s March and BLM give it to Zuckerberg?”
In Diamond and Silk’s case, just simple, plain-old real justice would suffice.
THE SPIRIT OF RESISTANCE LIVES, EVEN IN TODAY’S BRITAIN: An ‘infuriated’ vigilante has filmed himself tearing down the shrine erected in memory of a burglar killed by a homeowner he was trying to rob calling the flowers, cards and balloons ‘trash’. You know who else was trash? The burglar. And his parents should be ashamed — and shamed — for raising a “career criminal” who broke into old people’s homes and assaulted them.
THE MORE THINGS CHANGE: Why Nuclear Fusion Is Back. Again.
FALLEN ANGELS WAS JUST A NOVEL — RIGHT? Mid-Ocean Seismicity Portends Global Cooling.
Scott Adams tweets: “How many heads would explode if global temperatures head lower during the Trump administration?”
DON’T DARE LEAVE THE LIBERAL PLANTATION: Black NRATV Host: Left-Leaning Media Labeled Me a ‘Token’ Because of My Race.
JEFF REYNOLDS: Leftist Double Standards: Bashing Scott Pruitt While Ignoring Obama’s EPA Scandals. “Pruitt’s transgressions pale in comparison.”
Double standards must be twice as good as regular standards, right?
EVERGREEN HEADLINE: Can we just say it? Loretta Lynch is lying.
YOU MAY NOT BE INTERESTED IN THE GLEICHSCHALTUNG, BUT THE GLEICHSCHALTUNG IS INTERESTED IN YOUR DOCTOR: Why should we care about the opinions of aspiring doctors? “In 2015, the Association of American Medical Colleges revised the Medical College Admissions Test (MCAT) for the first time in nearly 25 years, stretching the full exam-day experience from around five hours to eight or more. The test drew attention at the time for its sheer length; less widely noted was the explicitly ideological bent of the new exam.”
SLATE: Neil Gorsuch’s Legacy Is Already Devastating.
Winning!
JONAH GOLDBERG: The Cohen Raid: Mueller had better be right. “I’ve talked to several lawyers with DOJ experience. There are serious and strict guidelines against doing anything like this at the DOJ and FBI, particularly when the subject/target has been cooperating. They — and a judge — must have seen something significant to go ahead with this. Back on the first hand, I think Hugh Hewitt is right that this is a politically unprecedented move to go after the president’s lawyer and, by extension, the president’s private papers. Which means that whatever warranted this had better be big enough and clear enough to the public to justify such a move, or a lot of people are going to have egg on their faces.”
The problem is, many, many people won’t believe claims that nonpartisan officials using meticulous procedures are acting fairly. There’s been too much egg on too many faces already. But the potential consequences here go beyond embarrassment. There can’t even be a shadow of a possibility that someone is overturning an election via bureaucratic war, or there will be hell to pay, and I don’t just mean embarrassment for a few top bureaucrats.
UPDATE: Confirmed: Rod Rosenstein signed off on the Michael Cohen raid.
OOPS: Wisconsin Man Killed in Home Blast Had White Supremacist Materials, Stash of TATP and Guns. “TATP has been used in several high-profile terrorist attacks; warrant says Morrow also had Tannerite, which explodes when shot.”
MELISSA MACKENZIE: Those who’ve declared war on the elected president see this as the beginning of the end for him.
To the lawyerly among the Twitterati, there must be a there, there. One commenter mused upon the “slow roll of the Nixon investigation” and saw an analogy. And he’s right. There is an analogy. The media hate Donald Trump just as they hated Richard Nixon. Democrats hate Donald Trump just as they hated Richard Nixon. And there are enough Republicans who cannot abide the shift in the demographics of the Republican electorate that they profoundly desire to see Donald Trump fail. And then, Donald Trump’s own pugnacious streak makes him frustrating enough that even his devoted followers grow exasperated at his behavior.
But, Donald Trump is not Richard Nixon and America today is not the Vietnam-era times fraught with an unpopular foreign war. Today, the war being fought is cold and civil and cultural. In D.C. and cities around the country, elites are shocked and horrified that someone such as Trump even is in office. They hate him. They hate anyone who would support him. The fact that Donald Trump enjoys 86% approval among Republicans fills them with revulsion at him and them. Those people.
Many from Mueller on down believe they are doing God’s own work by investigating Trump and following the trail to wherever it leads, even though it’s leading away from Russian collusion and into the Siberia of business sleaze.
Read the whole thing.