The problem with a 2 party system is that it is often a 50-50 division. But you cannot break one party apart because then you always have the majority on the other side. Meaning, a split will never get traction.
The problem with a 20-25 party system hereabouts is that it is difficult to get alignment and concessions between the different allies. You can vote for the ideal party more or less but you never know what concessions they will make.
Concessions? What are those? That's crazy talk! Here in the US you either get everything you want (temporarily), or nothing...
I feel exactly the same way about politicians here in the UK.
I think it's a worldwide phenomenon. What amazes me is how we think it's completely normal for a politician to make a lot of promises during their campaign and then completely forgetting about those promises once they get elected. We think that's just how politics work, but it's completely screwed up.
Of course. It was not a trial after all, so no objective jury was there to make a unanimous conclusion based on the evidence.
It was just, here's the story, now give any answer you want.
The whole point of this exercise was to get every nationally elected Republican on record as to whether they are apologists for, or openly supportive of, sedition, insurrection, and the destruction of constitutional democracy. The answer is that about 85-90% of them are. As someone mentioned on Twitter about an hour ago, if Trump runs in 2024, it's going to literally be on a platform of autocracy. Many successful coups start with failed ones.
The whole ‘unconstitutional’ thing needed to be addressed prior to the trial and allowed a nice little escape for those who knew what he did was wrong and this feeble excuse to hold them accountable.
It should have went to the SCOTUS as a hypothetical scenario and have them rule on if it is constitutional or not.
The whole ‘unconstitutional’ thing needed to be addressed prior to the trial and allowed a nice little escape for those who knew what he did was wrong and this feeble excuse to hold them accountable.
It should have went to the SCOTUS as a hypothetical scenario and have them rule on if it is constitutional or not.
No one with an ounce of sense actually believes any of them voted the way they did because of a technicality. If they really believe this, it means a President can literally do ANYTHING in the last month of his term and not be held responsible in any way. Moreover, McConnell purposefully delayed the start so they would have this transparent and pathetic escape hatch. The fact is, those who voted "not guilty" did so because they don't have any issue with what happened. Shit, two of the "jurors" (Hawley and Cruz) were basically accomplices. Based on Giuliani's attempted phone call to Tommy Tuberville (that actually went to Mike Lee), you can even add a third. It was like having the getaway driver on the jury of a bank robber.
What it honestly reminds me of is the Jim Crow South, where a white man could have shot a black man in front of all 12 jurors in the courthouse and would have still been found not guilty by unanimous vote. If Trump had dragged Pence to the gallows set up outside himself, 40 Republican Senators would have still voted to acquit. No, I'm not being hyperbolic. Trump's role in what took place at the Capitol is functionality no different than Charles Manson's in relation to the Tate/Labianca murders.
The whole ‘unconstitutional’ thing needed to be addressed prior to the trial and allowed a nice little escape for those who knew what he did was wrong and this feeble excuse to hold them accountable.
It should have went to the SCOTUS as a hypothetical scenario and have them rule on if it is constitutional or not.
The whole ‘unconstitutional’ thing was merely an excuse. They wanted to find him not guilty, and that was the excuse that they grabbed on to. If that was taken off the table by the SCOTUS or another reason, they would have all agreed on a different excuse like "Well Trump wasn't even there" or something. The GOP's "impartial jurors" were working backwards from the conclusion they wanted.
It should be noted that Trump was impeached during his term, but McConnell refused to hold the trial during Trump's term. Then McConnell turned around and said that the trial was unconstitutional because it didn't take place during Trump's term.
The GOP are 90% spineless corrupt cowards with way too much political power. There's 40 million people in LA county represented by 2 Senators and 23 smaller states have 46 senators to represent 40 million citizens.
The GOP know that they can be totally corrupt and get away with it.
The whole ‘unconstitutional’ thing needed to be addressed prior to the trial and allowed a nice little escape for those who knew what he did was wrong and this feeble excuse to hold them accountable.
It should have went to the SCOTUS as a hypothetical scenario and have them rule on if it is constitutional or not.
I agree a SCOTUS ruling would have been very unlikely to change anything. There is already precedent for impeaching someone after they leave office and the punishment of prohibiting someone from public office is specifically written into the constitution. SCOTUS would then almost certainly have ruled it constitutional - and the Republicans would have just said they disagreed and voted for acquittal anyway ...
My point was to take away the excuse prior to the trial happening so they couldn’t fall back on it to dupe moderates come 2022 and 2024.
They, and I am including Democrat Senators in this as well, didn’t want that. They wanted a quick trial because the longer it took, the longer it would have been perceived of them wasting time.
I'm starting to think I could just fabricate any semi-plausible shit I wanted to, like say, "Democrats want to outlaw cat ownership because they kill birds", post it on Facebook and as long as I referenced liberals, the Clintons, Nancy Pelosi or George Soros it would go viral. I just want to turn back the clock five years or so when the main thing the right was complaining about was Obamacare...
I'm starting to think I could just fabricate any semi-plausible shit I wanted to, like say, "Democrats want to outlaw cat ownership because they kill birds", post it on Facebook and as long as I referenced liberals, the Clintons, Nancy Pelosi or George Soros it would go viral. I just want to turn back the clock five years or so when the main thing the right was complaining about was Obamacare...
In relation to that, Ronald Brownstein (who is quite familiar with the history of the party) asks the question, "is there any coming back from this" for Republicans:
I can buy into the idea even Nancy Pelosi herself espoused yesterday, which is that the country needs a functional political party on the right. But we don't have that. We have the Democrats (warts and all) and we have a party that has moved into an insane asylum and taken up permanent residence.
We have the Democrats (warts and all) and we have a party that has moved into an insane asylum and taken up permanent residence.
And those Democrats are paralyzed because Joe Manchin and Kirsten Sinema, among others, don't want to get anything done.
While the crazy Republicans have worked themself into a frenzy over this fake outrage and injustice or whatever that they work themselves into. They're so outraged that they lost an election. So what are they doing? Restricting voting. Passing stuff that will make it harder for Democrats to ever win elections. Considering taking away from the voters rights and giving to themselves in the legislature. Like how Arizona is talking about having the legislature decide who grants the state's electors in the presidential election instead of the voters.
My magic 8 Ball says this country is screwed since Republicans just attempted a coup and apparently are going to get away with it. Nothing to stop em from trying to get him later.
Hitler's failed beer hall coup was a failure, but 10 years later he was successful. I don't know that Trump's going to wait 10 years or 5 years or whatever for his next coup attempt, and it might not even be Trump himself, but you can guarantee that a cabal of Republicans will again attempt to overrule the will of the voters if they don't like the election results. Next time they might succeed.
We have the Democrats (warts and all) and we have a party that has moved into an insane asylum and taken up permanent residence.
And those Democrats are paralyzed because Joe Manchin and Kirsten Sinema, among others, don't want to get anything done.
While the crazy Republicans have worked themself into a frenzy over this fake outrage and injustice or whatever that they work themselves into. They're so outraged that they lost an election. So what are they doing? Restricting voting. Passing stuff that will make it harder for Democrats to ever win elections. Considering taking away from the voters rights and giving to themselves in the legislature. Like how Arizona is talking about having the legislature decide who grants the state's electors in the presidential election instead of the voters.
My magic 8 Ball says this country is screwed since Republicans just attempted a coup and apparently are going to get away with it. Nothing to stop em from trying to get him later.
Hitler's failed beer hall coup was a failure, but 10 years later he was successful. I don't know that Trump's going to wait 10 years or 5 years or whatever for his next coup attempt, and it might not even be Trump himself, but you can guarantee that a cabal of Republicans will again attempt to overrule the will of the voters if they don't like the election results. Next time they might succeed.
Some people have asking recently how Sinema goes from Green Party activist to one of the most conservative Democratic Senators within the span of a decade, and the best response was that alot of people seriously involved in the Green Party are essentially libertarians who care about the environment.
Wait a second, isn't the President supposed to go on Twitter and threaten states that didn't vote for him for a week before doing this?? And aren't Democratic politicians supposed to openly mock Texas about their power grid like John Cornyn, Ted Cruz, and Dan Crenshaw did to California?? That isn't how this works?? Wow, isn't that something:
Wait a second, isn't the President supposed to go on Twitter and threaten states that didn't vote for him for a week before doing this?? And aren't Democratic politicians supposed to openly mock Texas about their power grid like John Cornyn, Ted Cruz, and Dan Crenshaw did to California?? That isn't how this works?? Wow, isn't that something:
I'm doing pretty okay. We don't have running water at my girlfriend's place, but we can flush the downstairs bathroom if we scoop some water from the pool to fill the tank, and tomorrow we might drive over to my parents' place to take advantage of their running water to shower and maybe do some laundry. Since I don't want to schlep water from the freezing backyard, I've been eating less fiber so I won't have to use the bathroom as often... I've been subsisting on junk food and bread, and driving to the grocery store is dangerous. We lost power once or twice, but not for long. We're trying to stay warm, though I don't have a lot of good clothes for that; my post-transition wardrobe doesn't have a lot of winter clothes besides a very thin coat I wear to bed.
Yesterday was actually nice. Lily had never seen so much snow before, so we went for a walk in the park. I was simultaneously really embarrassed and really proud because the only warm thing I had to wear was a cat outfit, a onesie with a little tail and a hood with a cat face on it, and I looked very silly. But it was fun to romp around the fresh snow and crack some ice around the neighborhood.
Not everyone is so lucky. Some folks have lost electricity and heat as well as running water. Losing Internet can mean you can't get work done, and Texas homes are not designed to conserve heat, nor do many folks own a lot of spare blankets to wrap up. Snow is all but unheard of in South Texas; there's no reason to prepare for a cold winter, and a lot of folks just don't have the resources or the tools to solve winter-related problems like frozen pipes. How many folks own tire chains for driving in the snow? How many people can afford to burn a few dozen dollars on buying them?
As always, poor folks are hit the hardest. Lily's family is solidly middle class; we live in a well-supplied house and have a dad who's handy and knows how to fix stuff. We have a few blankets we need to stay warm, and most of us own a winter coat. We're in walking distance from two gas stations. We have a pool to draw water from if we need to flush a toilet that can't fill its own tank. We have a fireplace and some firewood to fuel it. And I can go visit my parents if we need to shower.
Not everybody has that stuff. And buying any of it costs money that a lot of folks just don't have. How many folks have already burned up their savings trying to survive the pandemic and the shutdown and our sky-high unemployment? Not everybody has money these days.
Hasél claims that everything that he has said falls under the scope of freedom of speech, but the judge did not see it that way. He did get a reduced sentence though, since it was initially a two-year sentence:
From the link: "In this latest case, Hasél was sentenced in March 2018 to a prison term of two years and one day, but an appeals judge later reduced the sentence to nine months and one day because his Twitter messages did “not pose a real risk” to anyone. This decision was ultimately upheld by the Supreme Court in May 2020."
Maybe this isn't the time or place to bring this up (in relation to South Texas never having this kind of weather before), but alot of places that have never seen certain types of temperatures and storms are going to be seeing them, more and more, in the coming years and decades because of climate change. It's entirely possible (and indeed, normal) for entire states to function without a hitch in weather 20-30 degrees colder than what is taking place in Texas for months on end. But no one in charge of the logistics or power grid in Texas ever planned for this contingency, because that would be an admission that nature is, in fact, telling us something we don't want to hear. We can continue to ignore what's happening, but don't be surprised as these "never-before seen" events become regular occurances. Continued use of magical thinking will lead to endless repeats of what we're seeing the last 72 hours.
The situation with the wind turbines and natural gas flow isn't happening because it's the inevitable result of cold weather and you can't do anything about it. It's happening because none of it is winterized. Because that would cost alot of money certain people and companies didn't want to spend. And you know, that may have been a safe bet before we all started irrevocably destroying our planet. But it isn't anymore. "Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst" is apparently not an ethos we take any heed of these days. Especially not if it hurts the bottom line. Meanwhile, Scandanavian countries have been future-proofing their dams for the last decade.
Texas has seen a lot of insane weather demonstrating the impact of climate change. Weird crap started happening in the 2000s with that horrific drought that killed prickly pears and live oaks alive. That awful hurricane came out of nowhere a few years ago during the Trump era. And now we have yet another unforeseen bout of snow, much more intense than any I've seen in my 20 years in Texas, taking down utilities and grinding parts of the city to a halt.
I drove to my parents' house just so I could shower and use a flushing toilet, and on the way home, a 30-minute drive that took over an hour because of all the road closures, I just saw so many traffic lights and street lights that had gone dark. Random lights all over the city went black because we were so unprepared for a white winter.
That's always been the biggest danger of climate change. Unpredictability and natural disasters.
FOX News and right-wing media are working overtime on their lies this evening, blaming wind energy for the situation in Texas.
Let me state this right now. I live in ND, and grew up in MN. It's been so cold here the last 14 days my eyelids have almost frozen shut in 3 minutes walking to the gym. It makes the temperature in Texas right now seem like Daytona Beach on spring break. The wind chill has been as low as -40 at night. No wind turbines or natural gas lines have frozen at ANY time up here during the past two weeks.
This has nothing to do with wind energy being unreliable in cold weather. It has everything to do with not thinking the mechanical parts that allow power to flow needed to be winterized. Again, it's Texas, maybe that was a reasonable assumption once upon a time. But pretending this is a "green energy problem" rather than one of lack of preparation for cold weather is just the kind of purposeful propaganda and dishonesty that is all the American right trades in in 2021.
Apparently the new narrative on the right is that green energy is responsible for the blackouts in Texas because of windmills being frozen.
Only 20% of our electricity comes from wind energy, and windmills were affected less by the weather than our biggest source of electricity, which is natural gas lines. It shouldn't be hard to imagine why a pipeline full of liquid would be easier to freeze than a solid metal windmill (especially considering so many of us have literally just had our water pipes frozen over), and it shouldn't be surprising that Texas of all states is more reliant on fossil fuels than green energy.
It's a really half assed attempt to blame liberals and green energy for energy problems happening to a Republican state that runs on fossil fuels.
Apparently the new narrative on the right is that green energy is responsible for the blackouts in Texas because of windmills being frozen.
Only 20% of our electricity comes from wind energy, and windmills were affected less by the weather than our biggest source of electricity, which is natural gas lines. It shouldn't be hard to imagine why a pipeline full of liquid would be easier to freeze than a solid metal windmill (especially considering so many of us have literally just had our water pipes frozen over), and it shouldn't be surprising that Texas of all states is more reliant on fossil fuels than green energy.
It's a really half assed attempt to blame liberals and green energy for energy problems happening to a Republican state that runs on fossil fuels.
That isn't even the half of it. The main picture being shared of a frozen windmill today in right-wing social media isn't even FROM Texas. It's from Sweden or Scotland (I forget which) from over 5 years ago. And the mayor of one Texas town actually took to Facebook chastising his own residents in a deranged rant that was basically telling people upset about the situation to quit expecting handouts from the government AND their electric company (I wasn't aware any got electricity without paying for it). His suggestion was basically "nut up and become a survivalist overnight, or freeze to death."
Moreover, FOX News is just straight-up blaming the "Green New Deal", a bill that hasn't even come up for a committee vote, much less been sent to the floor, much less been passed, much less signed by the President and enacted. The urge to purposefully sabotage the only planet we have, and the absolute insistence we do absolutely nothing about it, and, in fact, seek out ways to make it worse, by one political party is, frankly, demented.
You have to admit, there is a certain irony in blaming renewable energy, our best bet to avoid (further) irreparable damage from climate change... due to an extreme weather event that was almost certainly affected by climate changes due to climate change.
You have to admit, there is a certain irony in blaming renewable energy, our best bet to avoid (further) irreparable damage from climate change... due to an extreme weather event that was almost certainly affected by climate changes due to climate change.
Getting alot of "how do you account for a once in a hundred year weather event" pushback today. The answer to the question to those people asking it is that your once in a hundred year event is quickly becoming once every 10 years, and pretty soon, annually.
The reason this happened is the deregulation of the Texas power industry. Period, full-stop. They are not required to winterize the equipment, and they aren't require to maintain reserves for these situations. Another late-stage capitalism nightmare. Wait til you see where we are in 2040.
Wait a second, isn't the President supposed to go on Twitter and threaten states that didn't vote for him for a week before doing this?? And aren't Democratic politicians supposed to openly mock Texas about their power grid like John Cornyn, Ted Cruz, and Dan Crenshaw did to California?? That isn't how this works?? Wow, isn't that something:
Wait a second, isn't the President supposed to go on Twitter and threaten states that didn't vote for him for a week before doing this?? And aren't Democratic politicians supposed to openly mock Texas about their power grid like John Cornyn, Ted Cruz, and Dan Crenshaw did to California?? That isn't how this works?? Wow, isn't that something:
That said, hope our Texas forumites are safe. I think both Mathsorcerer and semiticgoddess are Texans.
Man did I call it. It wasn't a joke even though it seeps of irony and delusion.
I honestly just watch in amazement at how shameless and effective it is sometimes. The American left has no real effective counter-message to this firehose of bullshit.
I mentioned this earlier, but here it is in it's full glory. Get a load of this. Libertarian, "pull yourself up by your bootstrap" mentality as a full-on religious belief system completely divorced from reality:
These people should have no place in government unless it's taking place on a deserted island and being organized by British schoolboys who survived a plane crash. I'd honestly like @semiticgoddess to have a go at dissecting this statement if she is willing, because she has a way of making the points I would like to without the snark and condescension I am basically incapable of holding in.
The biggest issue I have with these articles is that I cannot understand the temperatures. Fahrenheit has some strange cut offs (40, 59, 68, 77, equaling to 4, 15, 20, 25 celcius).
I see constant mentioning that the thermostat should be turned down to either 77 or 68... that is wasting so much energy. Hereabouts we keep a thermostat at 18 or less and it is plenty warm.
The Colorado City mayor apparently resigned a few days before making that post. But I'm not sure that means that his replacement is going to do anything different.
It's the most explicit example I can recall seeing of the GOP's belief that the government is not supposed to help people who are suffering, that the government "owes you nothing," that you should expect no assistance from the government you elected and funded with your tax dollars, and that you are to blame for anything that happens to you, even if no one in the state saw these temperatures coming.
I've complained before that the only times people ever mention "personal responsibility" are when they're trying to shove their own responsibilities onto someone else. A good example would be a politician who says that their constituents should take care of themselves because the politician doesn't feel like protecting them.
He does not even describe whatever solutions to the issue of power outages and lack of running water that an individual family could do... I don't think the man actually knows how to un-freeze the water pipes deep underground beneath my home. Does he expect us to grab a shovel, dig through icy ground in freezing temperatures, then cut down the only tree in our backyard so we can burn it on top of a section of pipe and warm it up for 3 hours before it re-freezes and leaves us without water again?
Because he flat out tells us that if we can't fix the local power grid or water supply ourselves, we should "parish" (a misspelling of "perish"). This man is explicitly saying, that if we can't keep our families warm, we are supposed to die. He doesn't even disguise it.
When people are suffering and dying, the government should help them. The bigger question is how to help people, but the GOP's root philosophy is that the government should not even try to solve these problems, even if they're a matter of life and death.
We've been told that government is the problem, not the solution. But the government didn't freeze the pipes in my home. The weather did.
I can't un-freeze those pipes. No private company is rushing in to fix the problem. And while charity groups are trying to help people stay warm, they only have so much power and so much money to spend. If our government doesn't feel like chipping in, we're just left out in the cold.
Comments
Concessions? What are those? That's crazy talk! Here in the US you either get everything you want (temporarily), or nothing...
I think it's a worldwide phenomenon. What amazes me is how we think it's completely normal for a politician to make a lot of promises during their campaign and then completely forgetting about those promises once they get elected. We think that's just how politics work, but it's completely screwed up.
The GOP is still the party of Trump
It was just, here's the story, now give any answer you want.
It should have went to the SCOTUS as a hypothetical scenario and have them rule on if it is constitutional or not.
No one with an ounce of sense actually believes any of them voted the way they did because of a technicality. If they really believe this, it means a President can literally do ANYTHING in the last month of his term and not be held responsible in any way. Moreover, McConnell purposefully delayed the start so they would have this transparent and pathetic escape hatch. The fact is, those who voted "not guilty" did so because they don't have any issue with what happened. Shit, two of the "jurors" (Hawley and Cruz) were basically accomplices. Based on Giuliani's attempted phone call to Tommy Tuberville (that actually went to Mike Lee), you can even add a third. It was like having the getaway driver on the jury of a bank robber.
What it honestly reminds me of is the Jim Crow South, where a white man could have shot a black man in front of all 12 jurors in the courthouse and would have still been found not guilty by unanimous vote. If Trump had dragged Pence to the gallows set up outside himself, 40 Republican Senators would have still voted to acquit. No, I'm not being hyperbolic. Trump's role in what took place at the Capitol is functionality no different than Charles Manson's in relation to the Tate/Labianca murders.
The whole ‘unconstitutional’ thing was merely an excuse. They wanted to find him not guilty, and that was the excuse that they grabbed on to. If that was taken off the table by the SCOTUS or another reason, they would have all agreed on a different excuse like "Well Trump wasn't even there" or something. The GOP's "impartial jurors" were working backwards from the conclusion they wanted.
It should be noted that Trump was impeached during his term, but McConnell refused to hold the trial during Trump's term. Then McConnell turned around and said that the trial was unconstitutional because it didn't take place during Trump's term.
The GOP are 90% spineless corrupt cowards with way too much political power. There's 40 million people in LA county represented by 2 Senators and 23 smaller states have 46 senators to represent 40 million citizens.
The GOP know that they can be totally corrupt and get away with it.
I agree a SCOTUS ruling would have been very unlikely to change anything. There is already precedent for impeaching someone after they leave office and the punishment of prohibiting someone from public office is specifically written into the constitution. SCOTUS would then almost certainly have ruled it constitutional - and the Republicans would have just said they disagreed and voted for acquittal anyway ...
They, and I am including Democrat Senators in this as well, didn’t want that. They wanted a quick trial because the longer it took, the longer it would have been perceived of them wasting time.
https://instinctmagazine.com/another-loony-conspiracy-theory-from-the-pizzagate-folks/
I'm starting to think I could just fabricate any semi-plausible shit I wanted to, like say, "Democrats want to outlaw cat ownership because they kill birds", post it on Facebook and as long as I referenced liberals, the Clintons, Nancy Pelosi or George Soros it would go viral. I just want to turn back the clock five years or so when the main thing the right was complaining about was Obamacare...
In relation to that, Ronald Brownstein (who is quite familiar with the history of the party) asks the question, "is there any coming back from this" for Republicans:
https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/14/politics/republican-extremism-trump-impeachment/index.html
I can buy into the idea even Nancy Pelosi herself espoused yesterday, which is that the country needs a functional political party on the right. But we don't have that. We have the Democrats (warts and all) and we have a party that has moved into an insane asylum and taken up permanent residence.
And those Democrats are paralyzed because Joe Manchin and Kirsten Sinema, among others, don't want to get anything done.
While the crazy Republicans have worked themself into a frenzy over this fake outrage and injustice or whatever that they work themselves into. They're so outraged that they lost an election. So what are they doing? Restricting voting. Passing stuff that will make it harder for Democrats to ever win elections. Considering taking away from the voters rights and giving to themselves in the legislature. Like how Arizona is talking about having the legislature decide who grants the state's electors in the presidential election instead of the voters.
My magic 8 Ball says this country is screwed since Republicans just attempted a coup and apparently are going to get away with it. Nothing to stop em from trying to get him later.
Hitler's failed beer hall coup was a failure, but 10 years later he was successful. I don't know that Trump's going to wait 10 years or 5 years or whatever for his next coup attempt, and it might not even be Trump himself, but you can guarantee that a cabal of Republicans will again attempt to overrule the will of the voters if they don't like the election results. Next time they might succeed.
Some people have asking recently how Sinema goes from Green Party activist to one of the most conservative Democratic Senators within the span of a decade, and the best response was that alot of people seriously involved in the Green Party are essentially libertarians who care about the environment.
Nah. It’s all renewable green energy’s fault that millions are without power:
https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/15/us/power-outages-texas-monday/index.html
Very unreliable. Texas should just go back to coal power plants is going to be the right’s troll spin on this.
That said, hope our Texas forumites are safe. I think both @Mathsorcerer and @semiticgoddess are Texans.
Yesterday was actually nice. Lily had never seen so much snow before, so we went for a walk in the park. I was simultaneously really embarrassed and really proud because the only warm thing I had to wear was a cat outfit, a onesie with a little tail and a hood with a cat face on it, and I looked very silly. But it was fun to romp around the fresh snow and crack some ice around the neighborhood.
Not everyone is so lucky. Some folks have lost electricity and heat as well as running water. Losing Internet can mean you can't get work done, and Texas homes are not designed to conserve heat, nor do many folks own a lot of spare blankets to wrap up. Snow is all but unheard of in South Texas; there's no reason to prepare for a cold winter, and a lot of folks just don't have the resources or the tools to solve winter-related problems like frozen pipes. How many folks own tire chains for driving in the snow? How many people can afford to burn a few dozen dollars on buying them?
As always, poor folks are hit the hardest. Lily's family is solidly middle class; we live in a well-supplied house and have a dad who's handy and knows how to fix stuff. We have a few blankets we need to stay warm, and most of us own a winter coat. We're in walking distance from two gas stations. We have a pool to draw water from if we need to flush a toilet that can't fill its own tank. We have a fireplace and some firewood to fuel it. And I can go visit my parents if we need to shower.
Not everybody has that stuff. And buying any of it costs money that a lot of folks just don't have. How many folks have already burned up their savings trying to survive the pandemic and the shutdown and our sky-high unemployment? Not everybody has money these days.
Yes, I'm safe. But not everyone is so lucky.
Hasél claims that everything that he has said falls under the scope of freedom of speech, but the judge did not see it that way. He did get a reduced sentence though, since it was initially a two-year sentence:
From the link: "In this latest case, Hasél was sentenced in March 2018 to a prison term of two years and one day, but an appeals judge later reduced the sentence to nine months and one day because his Twitter messages did “not pose a real risk” to anyone. This decision was ultimately upheld by the Supreme Court in May 2020."
The situation with the wind turbines and natural gas flow isn't happening because it's the inevitable result of cold weather and you can't do anything about it. It's happening because none of it is winterized. Because that would cost alot of money certain people and companies didn't want to spend. And you know, that may have been a safe bet before we all started irrevocably destroying our planet. But it isn't anymore. "Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst" is apparently not an ethos we take any heed of these days. Especially not if it hurts the bottom line. Meanwhile, Scandanavian countries have been future-proofing their dams for the last decade.
I drove to my parents' house just so I could shower and use a flushing toilet, and on the way home, a 30-minute drive that took over an hour because of all the road closures, I just saw so many traffic lights and street lights that had gone dark. Random lights all over the city went black because we were so unprepared for a white winter.
That's always been the biggest danger of climate change. Unpredictability and natural disasters.
Let me state this right now. I live in ND, and grew up in MN. It's been so cold here the last 14 days my eyelids have almost frozen shut in 3 minutes walking to the gym. It makes the temperature in Texas right now seem like Daytona Beach on spring break. The wind chill has been as low as -40 at night. No wind turbines or natural gas lines have frozen at ANY time up here during the past two weeks.
This has nothing to do with wind energy being unreliable in cold weather. It has everything to do with not thinking the mechanical parts that allow power to flow needed to be winterized. Again, it's Texas, maybe that was a reasonable assumption once upon a time. But pretending this is a "green energy problem" rather than one of lack of preparation for cold weather is just the kind of purposeful propaganda and dishonesty that is all the American right trades in in 2021.
Only 20% of our electricity comes from wind energy, and windmills were affected less by the weather than our biggest source of electricity, which is natural gas lines. It shouldn't be hard to imagine why a pipeline full of liquid would be easier to freeze than a solid metal windmill (especially considering so many of us have literally just had our water pipes frozen over), and it shouldn't be surprising that Texas of all states is more reliant on fossil fuels than green energy.
It's a really half assed attempt to blame liberals and green energy for energy problems happening to a Republican state that runs on fossil fuels.
That isn't even the half of it. The main picture being shared of a frozen windmill today in right-wing social media isn't even FROM Texas. It's from Sweden or Scotland (I forget which) from over 5 years ago. And the mayor of one Texas town actually took to Facebook chastising his own residents in a deranged rant that was basically telling people upset about the situation to quit expecting handouts from the government AND their electric company (I wasn't aware any got electricity without paying for it). His suggestion was basically "nut up and become a survivalist overnight, or freeze to death."
Moreover, FOX News is just straight-up blaming the "Green New Deal", a bill that hasn't even come up for a committee vote, much less been sent to the floor, much less been passed, much less signed by the President and enacted. The urge to purposefully sabotage the only planet we have, and the absolute insistence we do absolutely nothing about it, and, in fact, seek out ways to make it worse, by one political party is, frankly, demented.
Getting alot of "how do you account for a once in a hundred year weather event" pushback today. The answer to the question to those people asking it is that your once in a hundred year event is quickly becoming once every 10 years, and pretty soon, annually.
The reason this happened is the deregulation of the Texas power industry. Period, full-stop. They are not required to winterize the equipment, and they aren't require to maintain reserves for these situations. Another late-stage capitalism nightmare. Wait til you see where we are in 2040.
Man did I call it. It wasn't a joke even though it seeps of irony and delusion.
I honestly just watch in amazement at how shameless and effective it is sometimes. The American left has no real effective counter-message to this firehose of bullshit.
I mentioned this earlier, but here it is in it's full glory. Get a load of this. Libertarian, "pull yourself up by your bootstrap" mentality as a full-on religious belief system completely divorced from reality:
These people should have no place in government unless it's taking place on a deserted island and being organized by British schoolboys who survived a plane crash. I'd honestly like @semiticgoddess to have a go at dissecting this statement if she is willing, because she has a way of making the points I would like to without the snark and condescension I am basically incapable of holding in.
I see constant mentioning that the thermostat should be turned down to either 77 or 68... that is wasting so much energy. Hereabouts we keep a thermostat at 18 or less and it is plenty warm.
What is the insulation like in US houses?
It's the most explicit example I can recall seeing of the GOP's belief that the government is not supposed to help people who are suffering, that the government "owes you nothing," that you should expect no assistance from the government you elected and funded with your tax dollars, and that you are to blame for anything that happens to you, even if no one in the state saw these temperatures coming.
I've complained before that the only times people ever mention "personal responsibility" are when they're trying to shove their own responsibilities onto someone else. A good example would be a politician who says that their constituents should take care of themselves because the politician doesn't feel like protecting them.
He does not even describe whatever solutions to the issue of power outages and lack of running water that an individual family could do... I don't think the man actually knows how to un-freeze the water pipes deep underground beneath my home. Does he expect us to grab a shovel, dig through icy ground in freezing temperatures, then cut down the only tree in our backyard so we can burn it on top of a section of pipe and warm it up for 3 hours before it re-freezes and leaves us without water again?
Because he flat out tells us that if we can't fix the local power grid or water supply ourselves, we should "parish" (a misspelling of "perish"). This man is explicitly saying, that if we can't keep our families warm, we are supposed to die. He doesn't even disguise it.
When people are suffering and dying, the government should help them. The bigger question is how to help people, but the GOP's root philosophy is that the government should not even try to solve these problems, even if they're a matter of life and death.
We've been told that government is the problem, not the solution. But the government didn't freeze the pipes in my home. The weather did.
I can't un-freeze those pipes. No private company is rushing in to fix the problem. And while charity groups are trying to help people stay warm, they only have so much power and so much money to spend. If our government doesn't feel like chipping in, we're just left out in the cold.