Your Sunday Morning Turboprop Noise

Four C-130s on the (sub-)Mach Loop:

California Has Work to Do. A Lot of Work to Do.

The California Air Resources Board today approved the trailblazing Advanced Clean Cars II rule that sets California on a path to rapidly growing the zero-emission car, pickup truck and SUV market and deliver cleaner air and massive reductions in climate-warming pollution.

The rule establishes a year-by-year roadmap so that by 2035 100% of new cars and light trucks sold in California will be zero-emission vehicles, including plug-in hybrid electric vehicles.

Compare that to this:

Californians are being asked to conserve power for the fourth day in a row as the state's grid operator expects another strain on the energy grid.

The California Independent System Operator, or Cal ISO, announced that a Flex Alert was extended to Saturday. The alerts have previously been issued for Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.

With a Flex Alert, residents are urged to conserve electricity from 4 p.m. to 9 p.m. each day as energy use is expected to increase amid a long stretch of high temperatures, the California Independent System Operator said in a release.

First off, "plug-in hybrids" are not zero-emission vehicles. Defining them as such is a slap in the face of reality.

Second, California has about a million electric vehicles. (It might seem like more; I have a relative to says that Teslas are like a plague, as the percentage of assholes driving them is even higher than for Beemers.) The state has somewhere north of 30 million registered motor vehicles. While a lot of those vehicles aren't going away (cars in parts of the state last damn near forever), getting to where Newsome wants to be will require a shitload more EVs.

How is that going to work, if the summers are getting hotter and hotter, heat waves are going to be more intense and of longer duration, and people are going to be asked not to charge their cars when they're home from work?

California is going to have to improve both their electricity production capability and the electric grid and do it goddamned fast. In this day of NIMBYism and BANANAism, it's going to take a lot of litigation to get those projects approved. Thirteen years is not very much time.

I've read articles touting hydrogen-powered vehicles. Sure, hydrogen would be pretty close to a ZEV vehicle, as it owuld only emit water vapor. But getting the production plants, storage facilities and fueling stations up and running in thirteen years? Not going to happen. Everyone who lives near any one of those things will be screaming about the Hindenberg.

Add to that, the mundane issue of road taxes. They were simple to collect from fueled vehicles (x cents per gallon). But how will they collect it from EVs?

Keep this in mind: Whatever they've projected in the past for how conditions will be in 2100 as far as climate, let alone sea-level rise, it's an even bet that we are going to be there in less than thirty years. That's because for the last 30+ years, whenever there has been a discussion of maybe doing something to prevent it, the extractive energy industries have been spreading disinformation that would make a tobacco industry executive blush. We have likely passed the point of no return for a lot of the bad shit that's going to happen, even if we were magically able to to zero global emissions today.

So this is my prediction for the history books of the 24th Century: No matter what we have done since the end of the Second World War, be it going to the Moon, cure polio, eliminate smalllpox, develop computers from machines the size of a building to ones that can worn on one's wrist, none of that will matter. The only thing that people will know about us is that we knew that we were fucking up the climate, that we were exterminating other species by the millions, and we did nothing to avert any of that.

"Those Who Would Give Up Freedom for Economic Security Will Ultimately Find Themselves With Neither."

That's not a quote that anyone I know of said, but I have an idea who would have agreed with that sentiment:

Russians who came for a last look at former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev on Saturday mourned both the man and his policies that gave them hope. ... “I want to thank him for my childhood of freedom, which we don’t have today,” said mourner Ilya, a financial services worker in his early 30s who declined to give his last name. “I am a son of perestroika,” he said, using the Russian word for Gorbachev’s reform, or reconstruction, initiatives.

Thousands of Russians waited in line for hours to pay their respects. They were well aware of what they've lost.

Artemis 1 Scrubbed, Again

Today's launch was canceled due to a hydrogen leak. NASA may have to haul it back to the VAB. If they do that, it'll be at least a month before they try again.

Spud was right.

Where Did Those Documents Go?

• Item 2: The leatherbound box, containing news clippings dated 1/2017 to 10/2018 43 empty folders with CLASSIFIED banners 28 empty folders labeled Return to Staff Secretary/Military Aide 
• Item 15: Box A-28, containing news clippings dated 10/2016 to 11/2018 2 empty folders with CLASSIFIED banners 2 empty folders labeled Return to Staff Secretary/Military Aide 
• Item 18: Box A-35, containing news clippings dated 1/2018 to 12/2019 2 empty folders labeled Return to Staff Secretary/Military Aide Item 23: 
• Box A-39, containing clippings dated 11/2016 to 6/2018 8 empty folders labeled Return to Staff Secretary/Military Aide 
• Item 25: Box A-41, containing clippings dated 10/2016 to 11/2017 1 empty folder with CLASSIFIED banners 
• Item 33: Box A-33 (includes potentially privileged documents), containing clippings dated 2/2017 to 2/2018 2 empty folders with CLASSIFIED banners 2 empty folders labeled Return to Staff Secretary/Military Aide 

All told, then, there are 48 empty CLASSIFIED document folders and 42 empty “Return to Staff Secretary/Military Aide” folders. Each of those is a highly sensitive — and now potentially missing — document.

Since it has become apparent that the Asset's lawyers were not telling the truth when they swore to the DoJ in June that everything had been turned over, can there be any certainty that there are not government-owned documents in his digs at Bedminster or in the Tower of Sedition in NYC? That those places were not searched would seemingly indicate that those cooperating with the FBI didn't say that there were any.

This is where the TOFF's claim to be persecuted falls apart. If he were an ordinary Joe Criminal, the Feds would have raided all three places.

But the overarching question is this: Where are the documents that were in those folders? The Lubyanka is what immediately comes to mind.

Caturday

Solar-powered cat.

"Ah Do Declare! Miss Lindsey Has Passed Out on the Fainting Couch!"

From "fuck your feelings" to "Heaven forfend, that cruel Mr. Biden's sharp tongue has driven me to my fainting couch with an onset of the vapors!" was a pretty short hop.

— Rick Wilson (@TheRickWilson) September 2, 2022

If you've bought into The Asset's Big Lie, then you are not a loyal American. Grab a flight to Qatar and then change planes for Moscow. You'll have the advantage of getting there before your Orange God does.

As for the Trumpists on Capitol Hill, they were there on 1/6/21. They saw what went down. For them to deny reality is pure cowardice on their part. In being a cowardly toady, Lindsey Graham leads the way (the only thing he's ever led on).

No doubt this guy's going to be praying for the TOFF to win in two years. Ex-cops tend to not do well in prison, he might find himself getting Bulgered. His lawyers may have stepped in it by arguing for lieniency because Asswipe was a cop. If anything, that could be taken as an aggravating factor in that he should have known that beating a cop with a metal pole and then tacking him and trying to rip off his gasmask and badge was frowned upon by the law.

So might this bird be hoping for Cadet Bone Spurs to come back in office.

Because It's Friday

Japanese steam:

Delineating These Down, Here

Yep, Another Opponent of Putler Manages to Fall Out of a Window

Lukoil PJSC Chairman Ravil Maganov died after falling from a window in a Moscow hospital, according to Russian media reports.

Maganov died by suicide, Tass news agency said Thursday, citing an unidentified law enforcement official with knowledge of the matter. The 67-year old was in a hospital after a heart attack and was also taking antidepressant drugs, according to the report.

Lukoil called for an end to the war, early on, which earned them Putler's emnity. He's not the only oil oligarch to die under mysterious circumstances.

Russian opponents of Putler's War have three options: Go into exile, be sent to prison or end up dead. And fleeing will not be enough if Herr Putler wants them dead.