Briefly on a Blues Legend:

Albert King (AK) died on December 21, 1992. He was without a doubt the blues musician who influenced rock players the most{1} and he did this despite a technique that was uniquely his own -including tuning down the guitar a whole step and playing a right handed guitar left handed resulting in the strings being reversed. As a result of this, the strings most players pushed he pulled at and his ability to generate the crying sound that epitomizes the blues through bending was without parallel.{2} He was not a flashy player nor did he play very fast but he compensated for this with focus on all the other elements that go into being a well rounded player and sadly enough, these are areas that most players take little if any notice of.

Jimi Hendrix who is usually considered one of (if not the) best guitar players in history was terrified to stand onstage with King{3} as indeed anyone who was sane would be when AK was having a good night.{4} For the man known as "The Velvet Bulldozer" had such power and intensity in his playing but was also capable of playing very delicately with careful note inflections. His vibrato was first rate and he had a certain sass{5} to his approach which coupled with his tremendous size made for an imposing stage presence.

May he rest in peace.

Notes:

{1} He was put in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2013.

{2} BB King noted in his own autobiography (not long before he noted that AK was "not my brother in blood but he was surely my brother in blues") that AK was able to bend notes in a way that would absolutely cut you in half.

{3} I am unaware of any other musician who could make this claim but then again, it was more than his style of playing that was intimidating but the man himself who stood six and a half feet tall and weighed a good 250 when in his prime.

{4} "I can't think of anybody who would go out onstage with Albert on a good night and not be absolutely terrified to play the blues next to him. That guy'll run over you like Amtrak." [Joe Walsh in Guitar World]

{5} "I don't know of anybody who can play sassier than Albert." [Stevie Ray Vaughan in Guitar World]

On President Trump and His Re-Election Odds:

This is a response to some comments seen on Facebook. My words will be in regular font. Without further ado...

[T]here is zero chance Trump will be re-elected if he runs. Why? Here are some factors: 

Number One - Trump lost the popular vote and only edged the Electoral Vote as a result of 70,000 votes spread across 3 states.

As a rule presidents win re-election by larger margins than their initial election. Obama is the only exception to this rule I can think of.

Trump has driven the economy southward, and it will be even more evident in the second half of 2019.

The economy is much better now than it was in 2016.

"It's the economy, stupid" never fails to drive voters away from a failing presidency.

See my prior comments.

Number Two - One of the states Trump relied on to put him over the top in the electoral vote count was Pennsylvania. The GOP in Pennsylvania has crashed and is in no position to bolster the rust belt coalition that got Trump over the EC hump.

Trump won with 304 electoral votes. Even assuming the same number of faithless electors in 2020 (which will not happen) and a loss of Pennsylvania, he would still have 284 electoral votes.

Number Three - The element in the Republican party that voted for Drumpf because they were spooked about Hillary, won't be taken in by that again - as represented by the suburban voters who crossed party lines to join the Blue Wave in the House elections.

Presidents usually lose congressional seats in midterms -in fact its only not happened twice since 1900 if memory serves (1934 and 2002). Claiming Trump will lose because he lost the average midterm House seats is quite ahistorical to put it nicely.

Number Four - Moreover, a significant number of Republicans have left the GOP since the election and now identify as Independents.

This also happened before 2016. Most Independent voters are former Republicans.

Trump is stinking it up with Independents.

You are forgetting it depends on whom the Democrats nominate. There are few options for them to have a candidate that is genuinely coalitional rather than a partisan factionalist. They pick from the latter and Trump is a lock to win reelection.

What does all this add up to? Trump still has a base, but the outer crust around that base is gone. Sure - his cultists will show up come hell or high water, but there just are not enough of them for lightning to strike twice.

Since so much of your math is erroneous, you might want to consider recalculation.

Points to Ponder:
(On the Manipulation of Pictures, Etc., In the Absence of Actual Argument)

[A] visceral reaction is not an argument. Ever. Good things *can* be unpleasant to look at. I eat sausage with a perfectly clear conscience. I send gifts to friends' children without any need for pictures of how the child came about. So a person's resort to pictures designed to evoke a visceral reaction immediately causes me to suspect him, on all subjects. [Victor Morton (circa September 28, 2006)]

I am still waiting to hear from the #NetNeutrality doomsday folks from a year ago...

The Internet Lives

The Origins and Approval of the Malines Conversations

More on Conservative Judicial Activism:

This to a certain extent continues the thread topic located HERE.

Roberts invented a farcical excuse to rule the unconstitutional law constitutional -- changing his vote from one to strike down the unconstitutional law to one to preserve it 

Actually, that is not true. Roberts did not go along with the absurd notion of the minority that they could not sever the mandate and therefore had to strike the entire statute. (Talk about judicial activism!) He was willing to strike the Medicaid expansion and the mandate but when told it was all or nothing, he sided with the backup argument of the government that the mandate could be read as a tax -incidentally, something the Senate themselves made clear before they passed the statute to begin with.

I do not see SCOTUS going along with the "it is not severable" nonsense this time around any more than they did previously. However, they could very well rule the mandate is no longer constitutional since it cannot be read as a tax anymore and has already been ruled unconstitutional under the commerce clause. (And thus sever it from the statute which would make the statute an unworkable mess.) If I was to guess offhand, that is what I suspect they will do with two of the most ardent (and in this case, hypocritical!) "it cannot be severed" folks from 2012 no longer on the court.

The funeral for The Weekly Standard has not even happened yet and Ace of Spades is already desecrating the corpse!