https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/virginia-politics/virginia-not-a-swing-state/2020/09/18/9741e2e4-f843-11ea-89e3-4b9efa36dc64_story.html



RICHMOND — Barack Obama held the very last rally of his 2008 campaign in Virginia, the longtime Republican stronghold he flipped on his way to the White House.

Four years later, Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney made more visits and aired more television ads here than nearly anywhere else. And in 2016, Donald Trump staged rally after rally in the Old Dominion while Hillary Clinton picked a Virginian as her running mate.

But Virginia isn’t getting the swing-state treatment this time around. As in-person early voting got underway Friday, President Trump and Democratic challenger Joe Biden were dark on broadcast television. Super PACs were clogging somebody else’s airwaves. Even as Trump and Biden have resumed limited travel amid the coronavirus pandemic, neither has stumped in the Old Dominion.

“There’s really no discussion about the state being in play,” said Amy Walter, national editor of the nonpartisan Cook Political Report. “If you’re Ohio or New Hampshire, or Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, you’ve always been in that spotlight. Virginia got it for such a short period of time.”

The last time presidential candidates stayed out of Virginia and off its airwaves was 2004. The state was reliably red then, having backed Republicans for the White House every year since 1968. Now Virginia seems to be getting the cold shoulder because it’s considered solidly blue.

https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/donald-trump-mocked-for-95-minute-slurring-campaign-speech-before-crowd-packed-in-like-sardines-in-wisconsin/

President Donald Trump gave a fear-filled and factually inaccurate campaign rally in Mosinee, Wisconsin on Thursday.

The rally, held in spite of the COVID-19 pandemic, featured a large crowd closely packed together.

Here’s some of what people were saying about Trump’s speech, which lasted approximately 95 minutes:

https://twitter.com/bad_takes/status/1306758848577966081

https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1306763425335439368

https://twitter.com/DanScavino/status/1306775933660082176

https://www.axios.com/nra-spending-election-216cafe9-ccbe-4160-863c-7160b812dfed.html

The National Rifle Association has spent $9.2 million on political expenditures this cycle, about one-sixth of the $54.4 million reported in 2016, according to Federal Election Commission data tracked by Open Secrets.

Why it matters: While the group has vowed to support President Trump's re-election, mounting fees from fights with regulators, internal infighting and the pandemic have devastated its finances — and could mute its future influence.

By the numbers: The NRA has spent less than one-fifth on TV ads this year compared to what it spent in 2016, according to data from Advertising Analytics.

So far this year, it's spent $4.7 million on TV ads compared with $27.34 million through the end of 2016.
It's spent about $3.7 million for online ads this cycle, mostly Facebook and some Google ads, per Advertising Analytics. The group doesn't track digital advertising dating back to 2016.
NRA spokesperson Amy Hunter told Axios that given that it's still September, it "wouldn't be fair to compare where we are now with our spending with what we spent total in 2016."

To her point, about 56% of the NRA's television ad spend last cycle occurred in October. But according to Advertising Analytics, the group hasn't booked any ads yet for October or November.
And it still spent more than $10 million through September 2016. It's spent less than half of that so far through mid-September 2020.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/14/business/bp-oil-demand-peak-coronavirus/index.html

London (CNN Business)Demand for oil may have peaked last year, according to BP, which says the global market for crude might never recover from the coronavirus pandemic.

In a new report published on Monday, the company lays out three scenarios for energy demand, all of which forecast a decline in demand for oil over the next 30 years. The scale and pace of the decline will be driven by the increasing efficiency and electrification of road transportation, BP (BP) said.

In a "business-as-usual" scenario, in which government policies and social preferences evolve in the same way as in the recent past, oil demand picks up slightly following the coronavirus hit, but then plateaus around 2025 and starts to decline after 2030.
In two other scenarios, in which governments take more aggressive steps to curb carbon emissions and there are significant shifts in societal behavior, demand for oil never fully recovers from the decline caused by the pandemic. That would mean that oil demand peaked in 2019.

The new report is a major change from last year, when BP expected growth in oil demand to continue into the 2030s.

The shift reflects the profound effect that the pandemic, which brought travel and manufacturing to a near standstill, has had on global energy markets. Analysts think the crisis will accelerate the shift away from fossil fuels towards renewable forms of energy, particularly as governments and investors heap pressure on companies to tackle the climate crisis amid growing evidence of its devastating effects.

When They Came To An Oregon Town To Take Pictures Of The Fires, Armed Locals Thought They Were Antifa Arsonists

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/christopherm51/oregon-fires-antifa-rumors



Gabriel Trumbly, a Portland videographer who has spent roughly 90 of the past 100 days capturing the protests, wanted to take footage of the forest fires raging in Oregon. So on Wednesday night, the 29-year-old Army veteran, set out with his partner, Jennifer Paulsen, 24, to see what was happening near her childhood home of Molalla, a town of 9,000 people known for its annual rodeo, the Buckeroo. Fires surrounding the town were so intense they had prompted a level-3 “GO NOW” warning to evacuate.

Little did they know when they arrived that Trumbly and Paulsen's presence would spark national rumors that far-left activists were starting fires across the West Coast.

After parking their car on the side of a road, the couple pulled on gas masks and shot video of towering flames. As they worked, they encountered people who had rigged a garden hose to a water tank in the bed of a truck and were trying to put out a fire in the driveway. Trumbly and Paulsen briefly spoke with them, as well as a driver who asked them if they needed any water.

Trumbly and Paulsen, both of whom spoke to BuzzFeed News by phone from Portland on Thursday, said the interactions seemed “normal.” They said the fire was moving quickly, so they didn’t stay long in Molalla. “We thought it was getting a bit dangerous, so we left,” Trumbly said.

https://www.cnet.com/news/why-wildfires-are-turning-skies-into-a-sinister-orange/

Blue skies. Gray skies. Those are the colors we most commonly associate with our atmosphere. On Wednesday, things went wonky for the San Francisco Bay Area when the skies turned a freaky, disorienting shade of orange that made morning and afternoon seem like night.

The disturbing color shift was due to a plague of ongoing wildfires in California. Residents have been sharing photos on social media that look like they could have been taken on the set of Blade Runner 2049.

While it looked like the apocalypse had arrived, the National Weather Service offered a scientific explanation for the phenomenon. The NWS Bay Area office tweeted a satellite image of a thick layer of smoke over California and wrote, "This smoke is filtering the incoming energy from the sun, causing much cooler temperatures and dark, dreary red-shifted skies across many areas."

https://twitter.com/NWSBayArea/status/1303757408678760448

NASA went into more detail on this type of occurrence while explaining red-tinted sunsets triggered by Siberian fires back in 2015. "The smoke particles from the fires allow sunlight's longer wavelength colors like red and orange to get through while blocking the shorter wavelengths of yellow, blue and green," the space agency said.

https://twitter.com/flySFO/status/1303762650917040128

https://wtop.com/dc/2020/09/new-dc-initiative-to-provide-low-income-students-with-free-internet-access/

D.C. started a $3.3 million initiative to bridge the digital divide and make sure low-income students have access to free internet now that schools are online virtually because of the coronavirus pandemic.

A strong internet connection is a vital component to making virtual learning a success, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser said in launching the Internet for All initiative. Its goal is to provide free internet access for as many as 25,000 low-income students who attend D.C. Public Schools and the city’s public charter schools.

“During this virtual school term, we know how critical it is for all of our students to have internet access to successfully learn at home and stay connected to their teachers outside of the classroom,” Bowser said in a news release.

“This investment continues our commitment not only to supporting families during virtual school term, but also to building a more digitally inclusive D.C. in the long-term,” Bowser said.

The initiative will make broadband available to students at home. Broadband is more reliable and powerful than mobile MiFi devices or cellular connections. It will come into homes through Comcast’s Internet Essentials and RCN’s Internet First programs.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/02/investing/joe-biden-stock-market-donald-trump/index.html

New York (CNN Business)The presidential election is only two months away and the stock market is soaring.

In theory, that should bode well for President Trump since a bull market has historically benefited the incumbent. But Trump is trailing Democratic challenger Joe Biden in many head-to-head national polls.

Although the market's sharp rebound since March could be viewed as a sign that investors expect the coronavirus-induced recession to be brief, you need to dig deeper and look at how the recovery is unfolding.

It turns out a basket of stocks that could fare well in a Biden presidency have been outperforming the overall market — as well as a portfolio of stocks that might benefit from a second Trump term.

Blue stocks vs red

According to data from Strategas that was shared with CNN Business, a group of infrastructure, renewable energy, pro-globalization, health care and cannabis stocks are up more than 10% since early June.

This so-called Biden or blue list includes companies like Granite Construction (GVA), Tesla (TSLA), First Solar (FSLR), chip giant Broadcom (AVGO) and the iShares MSCI Germany ETF (EWG), which owns several top German stocks.

The bet is that these companies might thrive if Biden wins and pushes for the United States to rebuild highways and bridges, wean America off oil and restore fractured trade relations with China, Japan, Europe and other global economic leaders.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/31/media/cobra-kai-netflix-youtube-red/index.html

New York (CNN Business)After languishing in relative obscurity on YouTube Red, the "Karate Kid" spinoff "Cobra Kai" has become one of the fastest-rising series on streaming. That's the power of Netflix.

The digital series, which stars much of the original cast of the 1980s "Karate Kid" movies, debuted three years ago on YouTube Red, the site's subscription service now known as YouTube Premium, and ran for two seasons.

It won critical acclaim, and even a couple of Emmy nominations, but it lacked a big audience.

Netflix announced in June that it scooped up the rights to "Cobra Kai" as YouTube Premium shifted away from scripted original content.
The first two seasons landed on Netflix on Friday, and quickly shot up to No. 1 on the platform's trending ranks.