Texas Freezes Over

The news out of Texas is, simply put, horrific...  millions of people are suffering without power, heat, and even water,  under conditions which are typical in more northerly climes, conditions which are minor annoyances.  Texas tends to send Republicans to Washington, so their congressional representatives (along with their governor) are wasting time better spent on disaster relief trying to score points on liberals.  The right-wing narrative is that Texas' reliance on wind turbines for 10% of their electricity generation was the cause of the cascading power failures... as if properly designed wind turbines cease to function in cold conditions.  The narrative is an attempt to shift blame for the disaster onto out-of-state Democrats and to make the Green New Deal look like a suicide pact.  Predictably, the truth is exactly the opposite- the power grid in Texas was not connected to the national grids so as to avoid federal regulations.  Without those connections, electricity providers in other states can't sell power to the beleaguered Tejanos.  Meanwhile, the real failure in electrical generation was a failure of the natural gas fired power plants.  Put succinctly, Texas Republicans are lying about the causes of their constituents' plight, while spending more time shitposting about AOC and the Green New Deal than on getting help for the suffering.  At least Joe Biden, not being a vindictive narcissist, already declared a state of emergency and is sending help.

In the meantime, people are truly suffering, and their suffering is compounded by their lack of knowledge of how to deal with cold weather.  Besides hypothermia, people are dying of carbon monoxide poisoning due to improper use of generators and combustion-based heaters.  People who experience cold winters regularly know to layer clothes, know to cordon off  'warm spaces' with blankets in which to huddle. 

In the meantime, it's a rare tragedy that doesn't offer some comic relief, and here we have a tale of a suburban commando who fancies himself a survivalist, albeit a survivalist who thought he'd rely on an electric can opener.