Weekend Digest: The GOP ‘Hollow Men,’ bye-bye VCR, First Lady carpool karaoke edition

TV PREVIEW
On this week’s TV edition of Talk Business & Politics, which airs Sundays at 9:30 a.m. on KATV Channel 7 in Central Arkansas and in Northeast Arkansas on KAIT-NBC, Sundays at 10 a.m.:

Arkansas Travelers

Conner Eldridge. The Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate is making issue of Sen. John Boozman’s travel. Plus, what does he think of the GOP convention and the upcoming Democratic one?

Talk Politics

Our Talk Politics roundtable includes Skip Rutherford, dean of the Clinton School of Public Service, and Rex Nelson, head of the Political Animals Club. What’s their assessment of Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton and the state of the Presidential race?

Compass Report

The Compass Report. Our look at Arkansas’ four biggest metro areas shows unchanged economic conditions. Is that good or bad? We’ll explore.

Healthcare Horizon

Plus, health care challenges on the horizon. Conway Regional CEO Matt Troup weighs in on his hospital’s approach. We’ll review this past week’s big interviews from our daily newscast and preview next week.

Tune in to Talk Business & Politics in Central Arkansas on KATV Channel 7, Sundays at 9:30 a.m. and in Northeast Arkansas on KAIT-NBC, Sundays at 10 a.m.

WHAT’S ELON MUSK’S GRAND PLAN FOR TELSA?
“Elon Musk plans to invent solar Tesla cars that cost zero dollars–and he probably will,” posts Inc. Elon Musk revealed part two of Tesla’s “Master Plan” Wednesday night. And it’s a doozy.”

Musk’s plan involves combining  Tesla and SolarCity and eventually creating a solar-powered car. The manifesto, outlined in a  blog post called “Master Plan, Part Deux,” calls for a “smoothly integrated and beautiful solar-roof-with-battery” for Tesla vehicles, as well as an autopilot feature so safe and reliable that they’ll be able to pick owners up without needing a driver.

It’s all, Musk says, part of his vision to get the world to stop relying on gas and oil. “We must at some point achieve a sustainable energy economy or we will run out of fossil fuels to burn and civilization will collapse,” he wrote in the post. “The faster we achieve sustainability, the better.”

More on the autopilot issue, which Musk has come “under fire” after one Telsa driver was killed while using it, how long this grandiose plan would take, and what else Musk has up his sleeve at this link.

20-YEAR REIGN OF FOX NEWS HEAD IS OVER
The New York Times reports, “Roger Ailes stepped down on Thursday as chairman and chief executive of Fox News after a sexual harassment scandal, ending a 20-year reign as head of the cable network he built into a ratings juggernaut and an influential platform for Republican politics.”

Rupert Murdoch, the 85-year-old media mogul who started Fox News with Mr. Ailes, will assume the role of chairman and will be an interim chief executive of Fox News channel and Fox Business Network until a permanent replacement for Mr. Ailes is found.”

Mr. Ailes will receive about $40 million as part of a settlement agreement, according to two people briefed on the matter, which essentially amounts to the remainder of his existing employment contract through 2018. As part of the agreement, Mr. Ailes cannot start a competitor to Fox News. He will continue to make himself available as an adviser to Mr. Murdoch on an interim basis, the two people said, though he will not be directly involved with Fox News or its owner, 21st Century Fox.

In a statement, Mr. Murdoch praised Mr. Ailes, 76, and his “remarkable contribution” to the company, without making mention of the sexual harassment scandal that felled him.

“Despite the warm words, however, Mr. Ailes was not at the network’s Midtown Manhattan headquarters on Thursday, and one person briefed on the matter said that Mr. Murdoch had barred him from the building.”

For the complete story, go to this link.

GLENCORE DIGS OUT OF THE ABYSS
According to Fortune, “The commodities behemoth faced a ­crisis last year as prices of metals, grains, and petroleum products – as well as the company’s stock price – plummeted.”

But Fortune has posted “A rare inside look at how the secretive Swiss giant survived and how it plans to thrive again in a post-boom world.”

“Shimmering below our eight-seater plane in the dazzling African light is a mammoth hole gouged out of the terrain of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. From the air, the green and black hues offer just a hint of the huge mineral wealth lying under one of the poorest, most remote countries on earth. Yet it is only after we have landed on a tiny airstrip and bumped along in an off-road vehicle for half an hour past mud-brick houses that the full extent of those riches becomes clear. From the rim of the pit, the rock 450 feet down at the bottom looks as if it has been drawn with neon Crayolas, its green popping against the deep-black earth.”

As unique as this bounty is, so, too, is the company that owns it: Glencore. To most regular folk, the company’s name is largely unknown, and that’s not by accident. The commodities behemoth’s headquarters are far from the frenzy of Wall Street and the City of London, in the sleepy, low-tax town of Baar, Switzerland, near Zurich.

From this idyll, Glencore has for decades carefully guarded its privacy while building one of the greatest – and, some would say, quite notorious – natural-resources operations that the world has ever seen. Its head-turning $170.5 billion in sales in 2015 is enough for Glencore to rank No. 14 on this year’s Global 500, far above household names such as AT&T, Chevron, and GE. And the breadth of its reach is perhaps unsurpassed by any other company.

“In fact, the commodities that Glencore mines and moves now touch virtually every facet of our hyperwired lives. Charge your cell phone, turn on your computer, flick the light switch, drive your car, ride a train, take a flight, eat a bowl of cereal or a plate of sushi, or drink some sugared coffee – Glencore could have had a hand in all of that.”

But Glencore took a huge hit, “by the dramatic collapse in the prices of raw materials that began in 2014.” Debt piled up and investors fell off. So how did this giant “dig out of the abyss?”

Click here for the full read.

TO INCREASE SALES, GET CUSTOMERS TO COMMIT A LITTLE AT A TIME
Harvard Business Review says, “Most sales models include a conversion funnel in which reps try to convert a marketing-generated lead into a prospect and then a customer through sequential steps. In this model, sales people are expected to make the process as friction-less as possible for the potential buyer and to close the deal at the end by using certain phrases and techniques to “overcome objections.” This perspective is promoted in books and seminars, but research indicates it is not how people buy.

As one of us noted in a previous article, buyers work their way through parallel streams (rather than a funnel) as they explore, evaluate, and engage in purchase decisions via web sites, white papers, social media, and contact with other buyers through sites like Marketo, and so on.”

This why the end of a sales process is the worst time to handle objections – prospects typically contemplate their objections long before “close,” and, to avoid conflict, often cite a socially-acceptable rationale such as price, which may not be the real barrier to buying. To better address this reality, sellers should ask prospects to make incremental commitments throughout the process.

Along with improving sales results, research has shown that incremental commitments can boost charitable giving, increase show rates for blood drives, and reduce smoking.

For a complete inside look at the “incremental” process and how it could benefit your sales, go to this link.

HILLARY CLINTON PICKS TIM KAINE FOR VP
Boring. That’s how many, including the candidates themselves, have described Hillary Clinton’s pick of Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine as her running mate.

“I love that about him,” Clinton told an interviewer this week.

The Hill reports that those who know Kaine say his selection makes sense.

“He’s very smart, a quick study, works across the aisle and he’s never lost an election,” said Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond, where Kaine has spent some time teaching. “He’s outgoing, understated and self-efacing. He gets along with everybody but he’s willing to speak his mind if it’s something important.”

Republicans pounced on the selection, progressives and liberals will have issues with the choice, but there is calculation and strategy involved in Clinton’s pick. Read more at this link.

TRUMP SETS CONDITIONS FOR DEFENDING NATO ALLIES AGAINST ATTACK
“Donald J. Trump, on the eve of accepting the Republican nomination for president, explicitly raised new questions on Wednesday about his commitment to automatically defending NATO allies if they are attacked, saying he would first look at their contributions to the alliance,” reports The New York Times.

Asked about Russia’s threatening activities, which have unnerved the small Baltic States that are among the more recent entrants into NATO, Mr. Trump said that if Russia attacked them, he would decide whether to come to their aid only after reviewing if those nations have “fulfilled their obligations to us.”

“If they fulfill their obligations to us,” he added, “the answer is yes.”

“Mr. Trump’s statement appeared to be the first time that a major candidate for president had suggested conditioning the United States’ defense of its major allies. It was consistent, however, with his previous threat to withdraw American forces from Europe and Asia if those allies fail to pay more for American protection.”

For more on Trump’s statements regarding the defense of NATO allies, follow here.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG ON THE REPUBLICAN PARTY’S HOLLOW MEN
Jeffrey Goldberg in The Atlantic asks, “Why didn’t the most talented, most influential Republican politicians – men like Chris Christie, Tom Cotton, and Paul Ryan – do more to stop Donald Trump?”

“I recognize that it took millions of Republican primary voters to bring America to this frightening moment, a moment in which a preposterous grifter of authoritarian bent whose mental health is the subject of pervasive and anxious speculation, has become a major-party nominee for president. But it was men like Christie who were indispensable in the creation of this moment. Donald J. Trump could have been stopped. I believe he could have been stopped early, by a concerted effort to unify the party behind a single, viable, non-fraudulent candidate; and he could have been stopped late, if Republicans like Christie had not crumpled before Trump.”

A handful of honorable men did, in fact, try to stop him. But they were too few in number, and too marginal to make a difference. Collectively, the most influential and smartest Republican elected officials – people who fall into the general category of Them That Knew Better – just might have been able to devise a way to prevent what is happening from happening. But abdication of responsibility and self-debasement in the pursuit of power were the order of the day.

For the past several weeks, I’ve found myself thinking about the role in this dangerous drama played by Christie and two other elected officials of my acquaintance: Tom Cotton, the junior senator from Arkansas, and Paul Ryan, the Speaker of the House. I’ve been troubled by their actions not only because I’m familiar with these men and their records, but because they are politicians of unusual gifts, from whom much has been expected.

So why are all these politicians, “the Republican party’s hollow men,” in Goldberg’s mind? Find out here.

WATCH EXPERT EXPLAIN WHAT WILL MAKE ‘POKEMON GO’ BETTER
“Sure, Pokémon Go is fun, but what’s made it such a phenomenon? According to artist and director of New York University’s Mobile Augmented Reality Lab Mark Skwarek, it’s been years in the making.”

While the augmented reality technology that makes the game possible has existed since around 2008, only now do we all have the hardware in our pockets to make it possible on such an overwhelming scale. But what could they improve about the game – and what is Skwarek looking forward to this fall that he says will “change the face of video gaming?”

Rolling Stone has posted a video by Skwarek “on how hit mobile game works, and how it might get even better this fall.” View it here, and join the craze if you haven’t already.

R.I.P. TO THE VCR
“Nietzsche wrote, “God is dead.” Whether or not you agree with the cheerful German, there is another powerful three-letter entity that no one can deny has met its maker: the VCR,” says Entrepreneur.

“Japanese consumer electronics company Funai Electric, the last remaining manufacturer of VCRs, announced that by August they will permanently shut down their production lines.”

Never again will a blinking – 12:00! 12:00! 12:00! – clock need to be set. Never again will a tracking wheel be fiddled with to stop static from messing up an already pretty terrible picture. Never again will we blow into a machine with the hope that it might make the aforementioned terrible picture 0.00002% less terrible.

Does it make anyone else feel really old that an innovation that was developed during our lifetime has unequivocally been declared obsolete? “Fast forward” here for more on the end of an era.

CARPOOL KARAOKE WITH THE FIRST LADY
It has become and phenomenon. James Corden’s The Late Late Show on CBS has featured many stars driving around with him indulging in quite spectacular “Carpool Karaoke.” And now the First Lady has joined the ranks.

In a “Carpool Karaoke” segment that will surely mortify her daughters, Michelle Obama drives around the White House grounds enthusiastically singing and dancing with Late Late Show host James Corden.

The two start with Stevie Wonder (well documented as the first lady’s favorite) singing “Signed, Sealed, Delivered.” Then, Beyonce’s “Single Ladies,” complete with the moves, of course.

Obama says she’s only been able to “rock out” from the passenger’s seat of a car one time in 7 1/2 years — when her daughter Malia learned how to drive.

“Then a surprise guest gets in the back.” Watch what happens by clicking here from NPR.