Day 30 – What Did You Expect?

Thursday February 18, 2021

While Texas is in the grip of a terrible ice storm and freezing cold temperatures Senator Ted Cruz (R – Texas) and his family have left for Cancun, Mexico.

Let’s be clear about the problems in Texas. This is self inflicted. This is the result of years of cozy Republican leadership and business in Texas. 

Could anyone have seen this coming? Yeah. They had the same problem in 2011. They had the same problem in 1989. 

It makes me think of Genghis Khan when he returned to the edge of Europe and was stunned to see that the Europeans had done nothing to prepare to defend themselves. I take that back. They created some racist propaganda about the Moguls, calling them Tartars. Other than that, nothing. 

What did Khan do? His men all were on mounted horses. They had strings of horses. The Germans had heavy draft horses and were weighed down with hundreds of pounds of armor and they had a big lance. The knights had to be hoisted onto their horses. The Moguls lined up against the Germans. Germany at the time was a disparate bunch of principalities. As the Germans charged the Moguls retreated. The Germans chased them. For seven days. Then the Moguls turned and ran down and slaughtered the strung out knightly force.

After the 2011 cold snap the Federal government issued a 750 page report outlining what went wrong in Texas and what they needed to do. Essentially, the electric facilities were not prepared for such cold weather and they froze. The solution was to insulate the facilities. 

What did Texas do? 

They made sure that they had their own in-state electric commission and that none of their electricity crossed state lines. That way the Federal government couldn’t tell them what to do. 

Three months ago Texas was talking about they should succeed from the union. Now? Now they are blaming AOC and the Green New Deal, frozen natural gas pipe lines and anything else they can think of. 

One mayor quit his job and then took to social media to tell the citizens that elected him that they were on their own.

This is Republican state level leadership.

Meanwhile nationally, the numbers of Covid cases is coming down. There is talk of reopening schools and getting back to some semblance of normal by mid-year or at the latest the end of the year. The Biden administration has been in office one month.

PS Blue for you.