The Caldor Fire had burned 204,390 acres and 20%-contained
The raging Caldor Fire that has already forced thousands of people to evacuate, is now becoming a critical threat to the popular tourist location, South Lake Tahoe. Reports of more than 34,000 structures are at risk.
There are approximately 4,000 firefighters and 1,000 California National Guard members that are helping to fight off the growing fires.
A spokesperson for California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services told CNN that over 53,000 people have been placed under evacuation orders.
The fire has already burned more than 300 square miles and destroyed hundred of residential structures. The city is facing wind gusts blowing at 35 miles per hour and stronger which continues to help the fire spread further down into the Tahoe basin.
Devastating Wildfires – continued reminders of the Climate Crisis
Greta Thunberg, the vocal climate crisis activist retweeted the below the video of the fires in California. There is so much confusion over the question of exactly which of the many, many “extreme weather events” as they are now called, are directly attributable to climate change, global warming and Co2 in the atmosphere.
This is, for Greta Thunberg and anyone reading this with an ounce of sense, a moot point. The larger overarching point is that the threat of total world destruction as a result of buying fossil fuel and other human impacts on the environment has been long settled as a very dangerous and rapidly worsening reality.
Splitting hairs by constantly questioning alternative origins for extreme events, that clearly are increasing in their number and severity, is a kind of “climate denial-lite” that is as ridiculous as it is dangerous. Ultimately it is the perspective of those like Greta, that must be adopted and understood by the millions (billions), before it is too late. Only then, when the threat is faced head on, is there a chance we might prevent a rapid slide into oblivion.
Thunberg tweeted this week “Wildfires, floods, droughts, heatwaves and other (un)natural disasters rage all over the world. Many now ask “What will it take for people in power to act?”. Well, it will many things, but above all it will take: massive pressure from media and massive pressure from the public.”
Ongoing attempts to enable travel between cities within a matter of minutes take form and shape…
A new concept video of the company’s plans for its Hyperloop system has been released, and if realized, the system will be a very fast one. The trains would travel inside a near-vacuum environment within a tube. The absence of air allows for the luxury train-like pods to travel at low power yet at extremely fast speeds, reaching up to 1,080km/hour or 670 mph.
The concept of a Hyperloop system is not a new one, and actually it was Elon Musk that initially brought the idea of developing a hyperloop transportation concept into the mainstream via the Boring Company.
photo / Virgin Hyperloop
Plans to build fully realized systems did not materialize under his watch, perhaps due to his very full agenda with sustainable energy, EVs, the moon and mars all on his plate, and now Virgin appears to be picking up the mantel and aiming for a complete transport system. With jet speeds, comfort of luxury train travel and the flexibility of car individuality the concept projections are, at the very least, beautifully imagined.
While the slick, enjoyable video (below) might make you eager to jump into a pod pronto, the reality, if realized, of the system in some kind of full commercial operations, is projected for 2027 and beyond.
All of this is promised, along with nearly zero emissions. Looking forward using a 30 year time horizon the company’s studies estimated that there could be a reduction CO2 emissions by 2.4 million tons with a connection built between three cities creating $300 billion in overall economic benefits.
This somewhat utopian vision would enable incredibly smooth, clean, cheap transportation between cities and be fast. Really fast. Although it may be easy to scoff at this rosy view of the future – it is exactly the kind of bold utopian vision that will be required if humanity is going to be saved from oblivion. Climate crisis disasters, financial meltdowns, political gridlock and corruption, these are the obvious likely candidates for a believable future.
On the other hand, ideas like universal basic income (paid in bitcoin mined by cell phone), emission free ultra luxurious hi-speed transport systems, powered with renewable energy, a world where scarcity and want are not the measurement of reality, these are the necessities of utopia.
Perhaps it’s time to start thinking it could be possible. Since the alternative is oblivion and extinction, why not?
“It starts off with two people riding a Hyperloop. It ends with hundreds of millions of people riding on a Hyperloop and that’s what the 2020s, the roaring ’20s will be”
Virgin Hyperloop Co-founder and Chief Executive Josh Giegel
One difference between the Virgin Hyperloop and a high-speed maglev train system, for example, is the idea of an individual pod system which would allow for individual pods to break away and head to secondary tubes leading towards a different destination.
Virgin Hyperloop is part of the Virgin empire created by Richard Branson, below he shared the video explaining how travel pods work.
Even Democrats are Repeating the Nonsense that Sanders is “Putin’s Choice”
On February 21st, Democratic Presidential Candidate Bernie Sanders revealed in an interview that, about a month ago, U.S. Intelligence Dept. Officials briefed him that Russia has plans to ‘assist’ him in the 2020 election. Sanders response to the prospective foreign assistance was direct—he told Russia to “Stay out of American elections, and as president I will make sure that you do.”
The Vermont Senator also went on to call Russian President Vladimir Putin “an autocratic thug” and clarified, “Unlike Donald Trump, I do not consider Vladimir Putin a good friend… I stand firmly against (Russia’s) efforts, and any other foreign power that wants to interfere in our election.” He speaks of course of Trump’s close relationship with the Russian leader, and of Trump’s encouragement, in plain sight, of Russian interference in his 2016 campaign.
Despite Sander’s straight answer to the news regarding Russia, Trump was not hesitant to bring it up during a Las Vegas rally the day before the Nevada caucus. He quipped about Bernie honeymooning in Moscow and snidely warned Democrats to be careful about foreign interference in elections. Then, he bragged that Putin really wants four more years of Trump.
Trump’s snarky speech is ironic given the fact that when Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire first informed the President about Russia’s support of him for 2020, he reportedly threw a fit, angry that Maguire would disclose such information with Democratic nemesis Adam Schiff in the room. Even though reporting such activity to the POTUS is part of the DNI job description, Trump ended up terminating Maguire for, essentially, telling the truth and doing his job.
No one Knows Who is “Electable” even though all the Candidates Try to Claim they are the One that can Beat Trump
The conventional wisdom is that only a moderate centrist Democrat can defeat Trump. There are, however, only a lot of theories, based on the standard data, to support this contention and the same people espousing those theories are the ones that said that Hillary, based on the same methods of predicting election outcomes, would beat Trump with ease.
Bernie Sanders does have “extreme” proposals, compared with the bland, compromise based plans of the more moderate wing of the party. Maybe, just maybe, going up against the most extreme most volatile and completely corrupt politician in recent history requires an extreme challenger? Trump will cheat and lie, that is clear, and someone to take him on must be ready for that and must be able to show that he (or she) can survive the shit storm he will create and then take the country out of this nightmare.
You can not compromise with a sociopath.
2016 All Over Again but with a twist, and perhaps, a Different Outcome
The propaganda spin that appears to have been planned long in advance seems to be working already. Viewing various tweets from Democrats who are not aligned with Sanders indicate that they are actively parroting the Putin planted misinformation.
The two threads they have, apparently subconsciously, picked up are:
A – Sanders has no chance and the proof is that he is the Putin’s preferred opponent for Tump (unsubstantiated inferences stated as fact and as original thought)
Or
B – That Sanders is going to be called a Communist (or is a Communist) and that his past, regardless how innocent compared to Trump, makes him an easy target that he has no chance to win in the general election. There are even those that posit that he must be a Communist because Putin “likes” him.
In other words, they have taken the bait, hook, line and sinker.
According to the New York Times:
The Russians have been preparing — and experimenting — for the 2020 election, undeterred by American efforts to thwart them but aware that they needed a new playbook of as-yet-undetectable methods, United States officials said
They have made more creative use of Facebook and other social media.
Rather than impersonating Americans as they did in 2016, Russian operatives are working to get Americans to repeat disinformation, the officials said. That strategy gets around social media companies’ rules that prohibit “inauthentic speech.”
(emphasis mine)
Typical examples of the parroting of the Russian disinformation:
Not even close…tells us something when Russia and trump are fronting for him…
The disturbing thing is that these supposedly intelligent Democratic voters are immediately jumping to the first thoughts that Putin has planted in their minds.
The real truth is that Sanders is the most dangerous candidate to both Trump and Putin and should be seen as such. They have an elaborate plan to stop him but they fear that he will do the one thing that they can not overcome; awaken the American people to the power they already have.
And Outsider Rises Up in Spite of Both Republican and Democrat Establishments being Against Him: Sound Familliar?
The cable news pundits have already started repeating that Sanders, “a socialist candidate” has little chance to win and will hurt down ballot races for the House and Senate. Naturally, they have no proof of this and no idea if another candidate would do any better in that regard. They are parroting conventional “wisdom” and creating noise just like Putin wants.
There are also already rumblings and propaganda-troll posts that are implying that because Sanders was in Moscow many years ago on his Honeymoon (supposedly) that he is therefore, obviously, a Communist.
The fact that so many have taken it at face value that Putin is “helping” him, although zero evidence has been revealed and no details exist showing what exactly this “help” consists of, creates a perfect launching pad for what is likely to be the most blatant and ridiculous-nonsense mudslinging contest in history.
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On the other side is the rock-solid record and consistency of Sanders. People can disagree with his goals and platform but it will be difficult, indeed, to rattle him when trying to sling random insults and trying to make up lies about him to dissuade those who have followed his political career.
Likewise, Trump’s response to the briefing—both his hysterics in Washington and his jests in Vegas—illustrates a subliminal touch of fear. Fear that Bernie will win the primary, which he did, “bigly”, without but in reality in spite of, supposed Russian assistance.
As Bernie leads the Democratic race after definitive wins in New Hampshire and Nevada, it is looking increasingly likely that it will ultimately come down to “Trump v. Sanders” in November.
Trump and the Republicans will undoubtedly try to turn this murky Russian briefing report against Bernie again, spinning the wheels of propaganda over and over. We can all relate, in the meantime to the sentiment of Bernie’s final word when interviewed on the topic on the eve of the Nevada Caucuses: “I don’t care, frankly, who Putin wants to be president.”
