Tuesday Reads

Breakfast Piece, Herbert Badham

Good Morning!!

This morning, FBI Director Christopher Wray will testify in the Senate about the January 6 attack on the Capitol. It will be interesting to see what Wray has to say now that he doesn’t need to worry about a Trump freak out.

Zachary Cohen at CNN: Senators to grill FBI Director Chris Wray over security failures during January 6 insurrection.

MSNBC and CNN are showing the hearing live. 

A couple interesting articles on the insurrection:

ARLnow.com (Arlington, VA): EXCLUSIVE: While the Capitol Was Stormed, A Group of Men Gathered Near the Marine Corps War Memorial.

On Jan. 6, a group of ten or so men — at least one of whom was wearing a tactical earpiece — watched the storming of the U.S. Capitol from across the Potomac in Arlington.

Previously unpublished photos taken by ARLnow that day show the men loitering near the Marine Corps War Memorial, with the overrun Capitol in the background. Parked nearby are numerous vehicles, mostly pickup trucks and SUVs with out-of-state license plates.

One pickup truck, with large toolbox in the back, was left running.

The man with the earpiece appears to have been focused on some sort of communications device with an antenna. He was among a group standing outside, in the cold, wearing hooded sweatshirts and other inconspicuous cold weather gear. None were wearing the tactical vests and helmets that militia members who charged into the Capitol that day wore.

In the Train Compartment, Paul Gustave Fischer

Still, the group was deemed suspicious enough that Arlington County police received at least one call from a passerby, concerned about what they were doing there. An officer drove by after the 4 p.m. call but didn’t see anything, according to police department spokesman Ashley Savage….

In recalling the moment, Westcott — a Navy veteran — said the gathering “had the feeling of a rally point.” He shot the scene from a distance with a 600mm lens, reluctant to get any closer due to potential safety concerns.

By nightfall, the men had dispersed, as ARLnow originally reported in an article about the curfew that night.

What was going on? Was there a “quick reaction force” waiting for a signal from Trump?

What is known is that somewhere outside of the District that day, according to federal prosecutors, a “quick reaction force” with a stockpile of weapons was allegedly ready to join the fight if ordered to do so by President Trump.

At a Friday court hearing for Jessica Watkins, a member of the Oath Keepers militia from Ohio who is accused of helping to plot the attack on the Capitol, prosecutors told a federal judge that “[it is] our understanding” that the quick reaction force did exist and was stationed somewhere near D.C.

Read some speculation about this involving the OathKeepers at DailyKos.

The Washington Post: U.S. alleges Proud Boys planned to break into Capitol on Jan. 6 from many different points.

Ruch’s facial expression is painful to look at for anyone who has experienced sexual harassment. Two more Cuomo stories:

Moira Donegan at The Guardian: The Cuomo sexual harassment claims appear to follow a disturbing pattern.

The Washington Post: Andrew Cuomo timeline: His comments about sexual misconduct vs. the allegations against him.

It’s difficult to see how Cuomo survives this, especially since he was already facing scathing criticism of his late response to the pandemic and a cover-up of nursing home deaths in New York.

I’ll add a few more links in the comment thread. I want to watch the Wray hearing, which started a short time ago. If you’re watching too, let us know what you think.  This is an open thread of course.

Lazy Caturday Reads

Eva Skierska, A Lady and Cocotte

Good Morning!!

The vaccine rollout in Massachusetts has been awful, and Governor Charlie Baker has been taking a beating over it. Yesterday the legislature held a public hearing on the problems. WBUR: Emotions Ran High During A State Hearing On Mass.’ Vaccine Rollout. 

For six hours, a joint committee of state representatives and senators grilled Gov. Charlie Baker and members of his administration, listening to them testify on issues related to vaccine distribution and equity.

The technical problems people experienced trying to sign up for vaccine appointments loomed large at the hearing. Last week, state websites crashed under the weight of a million more vaccine seekers hustling to get one of a mere 60,000 slots. This week, people posted screenshots showing wait times in the tens or hundreds of thousands of minutes to social media.

The problems mostly revolved around technology failures and confusion about the software being used to manage vaccines, PrepMod.

The disconnect between the state and the PrepMod system seems to be part of a larger trend of people feeling that the rollout is confusing. Clinicians running vaccine sites have expressed frustration at how the rollout policies seem to keep shifting and changing. During the hearing, state Sen. Cindy Friedman spoke to this feeling.

“[The] twists and turns, the change in plans, the communication that changes depending on who you are talking to. Even I, with all my knowledge, am completely at a loss as to what is going on at times,” she said.

The unpredictable nature of the rollout has people on edge. State Sen. Eric Lesser conveyed some of that frustration to the governor during the hearing.

“Will you say you’re sorry to the millions of people [who could not make an appointment],” Lesser demanded.

“Of course. Absolutely. Definitely. Yes,” Baker responded. A hint of exhaustion crept into his voice.

He may have to do this rodeo again. The committee chair invited Baker for another hearing in a couple weeks’ time.

“Well, this one’s been so much fun, I’ll certainly look forward to coming back,” Baker said.

There’s some good news this morning, so I’ll begin with that. 

Atelier de Jiel, Black Cat and His Flowers

LOL! The good news for me is that the state is now allowing vaccines for seniors 65 and older and those living in subsidized housing. I had already gotten an appointment for March 4 at my doctor’s office, but yesterday I learned that my town in providing vaccines for my apartment building. They will come to my door, like they did with the flu shots last fall. So I feel fortunate. But my sister who lives in California got her first shot in early February and will be getting the second soon. Still I’m grateful to get it in such a convenient way.

More good news: The House passed the Covid relief bill last night. HuffPost: House Democrats Pass $1.9 Trillion COVID-19 Relief Bill.

Thursday Reads: Texas Is A Third World State

Good Morning!!

I hope everyone is staying safe and warm. Winter storms are raging across the U.S. Here in New England, we’ve gotten a lot of snow in February and there’s more coming today, tonight and next week. But at least we know how to deal with winter weather–I’m sure glad I don’t live in the South–especially in Texas. 

Here’s the latest on the crisis in the Lone Star state.

The Texas Tribune: Texas leaders failed to heed warnings that left the state’s power grid vulnerable to winter extremes, experts say.

Millions of Texans have gone days without power or heat in subfreezing temperatures brought on by snow and ice storms. Limited regulations on companies that generate power and a history of isolating Texas from federal oversight help explain the crisis, energy and policy experts told The Texas Tribune.

While Texas Republicans were quick to pounce on renewable energy and to blame frozen wind turbines, the natural gas, nuclear and coal plants that provide most of the state’s energy also struggled to operate during the storm. Officials with the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, the energy grid operator for most of the state, said that the state’s power system was simply no match for the deep freeze….

Energy and policy experts said Texas’ decision not to require equipment upgrades to better withstand extreme winter temperatures, and choice to operate mostly isolated from other grids in the U.S. left power system unprepared for the winter crisis.

Policy observers blamed the power system failure on the legislators and state agencies who they say did not properly heed the warnings of previous storms or account for more extreme weather events warned of by climate scientists. Instead, Texas prioritized the free market.

“Clearly we need to change our regulatory focus to protect the people, not profits,” said Tom “Smitty” Smith, a now-retired former director of Public Citizen, an Austin-based consumer advocacy group who advocated for changes after in 2011 when Texas faced a similar energy crisis.

“Instead of taking any regulatory action, we ended up getting guidelines that were unenforceable and largely ignored in [power companies’] rush for profits,” he said.

It is possible to “winterize” natural gas power plants, natural gas production, wind turbines and other energy infrastructure, experts said, through practices like insulating pipelines. These upgrades help prevent major interruptions in other states with regularly cold weather.

Maybe this crisis will finally turn Texas blue again.

An Op-ed by Richard Parker at The New York Times: Texas Could Have Kept the Lights On.

A cold, sharp dagger has slashed through Texas, America’s largest and proudest producer of fossil fuels, while stranding millions without heat or light. The frigid disaster has also laid bare the fallacy, still prominent in the Lone Star State, that oil and gas are more important than impending climate catastrophe, embarrassing a political class that just weeks ago pledged to defend the oil and gas industry — its own Alamo —from the Biden administration.

The fallacy is hard to unwind even as people are dying. But some Texans are also furious about how their state’s ruinous laissez-faire governance led to a cascade of human-caused disasters of epic proportions. Indeed, this was no act of God.

Last week, 29 million Texans learned that the weather would turn unseasonably cold. It would be no ordinary blue norther: As the planet warms, so does the Arctic, disrupting the jet stream, which usually keeps the polar vortex of frigid air in place there. Now there is an emerging, if not unanimous, view among climatologists that the vortex is wobbling and dipping south, paralyzing Madrid, freezing the American Midwest and blanketing the Sierra Nevada, all since the start of this year.

Yet the folks over at the Texas power grid appear to have been caught flat-footed by spiking demand in energy to keep houses warm and phones charged. In general, there’s a storage problem in Texas when it comes to natural gas. Utility companies often don’t bother to buy gas reserves: It’s easier, cheaper and more profitable to tap the gas in the field with a pipeline — usually.

But the moment to invest in resilience has passed. The spot price in early February was under $3 per million British thermal units; this week those spot prices have soared to all-time highs. After a cold snap in 2011, the power companies were supposed to better winterize their plants. Ten years later, they hadn’t done it. It’s hard to believe they couldn’t afford it: Oncor, the giant power utility serving Dallas, reported $651 million in net income in 2019.

Read more at the NYT.

Another opinion piece from Andrew Exum at The Atlantic: I’m Freezing Cold and Burning Mad in Texas. The state’s power outages have revealed the difference between performative governance and actually governing.

The great winter storm of 2021 has terrorized Texans, overwhelmed our energy grid, and made a mockery of our politicians and our much-vaunted independence.

Here in Dallas, my family and I have intermittently been without power for three days. On Monday night, the coldest night on record in three decades, we were without power for 12 long hours. I pitched a tent in my children’s bedroom, and all of us—Mom, Dad, three kids, Scout the dog—huddled together for warmth under sleeping bags and heavy blankets.

Most houses in Texas are poorly insulated, to put it mildly. Poor Scout’s water bowl in the kitchen froze solid overnight. Indeed, when power was restored for a few hours on Tuesday morning, my wife and I scrambled to unfreeze any pipes that had seized up in spite of the fact that we had left the faucets dripping. At one point, my wife—a tough woman, and a water and sanitation engineer by training—climbed under the house and thawed out a pipe with a blow-dryer.

We have been, we must admit, very lucky. Each night, as we have said our prayers, we have thanked God for the many blessings that have been bestowed upon us. As has been apparent since the start of this emergency, the worst effects of this storm have been visited upon the most vulnerable. I shudder to think about the ways in which the poor, the homeless, and the elderly have suffered in this crisis.

Major cities across the state have opened “warming centers,” and churches and schools have opened their doors, but when the roads are so treacherous, one wonders how the vulnerable are supposed to reach shelter. The entirety of North Texas has just 30 snowplows—or about as many as you would expect to see deployed in a single neighborhood in Chicago.

The biggest story for Texans, however, is the failure of our state’s electrical grid, managed by the inaccurately named Electric Reliability Council of Texas, or ERCOT. Texas, as part of its regular and continuing efforts to distance itself from federal oversight, maintains its own electrical grid—unique in the nation—which has been overwhelmed by the storm’s effects.

Read the rest at The Atlantic.

More wild weather is in all of our futures, thanks to climate change.

The Associated Press: US needs to brace itself for more deadly storms, experts say.

Deadly weather will be hitting the U.S. more often, and America needs to get better at dealing with it, experts said as Texas and other states battled winter storms that blew past the worst-case planning of utilities, governments and millions of shivering residents.

This week’s storms — with more still heading east — fit a pattern of worsening extremes under climate change and demonstrate anew that local, state and federal officials have failed to do nearly enough to prepare for greater and more dangerous weather.

At least two dozen people have died this week, including from fire or carbon monoxide poisoning while struggling to find warmth inside their homes. In Oklahoma City, an Arctic blast plunged temperatures in the state capital as low as 14 degrees below 0 (-25 Celsius).

“This is a different kind of storm,″ said Kendra Clements, one of several businesspeople in Oklahoma City who opened their buildings to shelter homeless people, some with frostbite, hypothermia and icicles in their hair. It was also a harbinger of what social service providers and governments say will be a surge of increased needs for society’s most vulnerable as climate and natural disasters worsen.

Other Americans are at risk as well. Power supplies of all sorts failed in the extreme cold, including natural gas-fired power plants that were knocked offline amid icy conditions and, to a smaller extent, wind turbines that froze and stopped working. More than 100 million people live in areas under winter weather warnings, watches or advisories, and blackouts are expected to continue in some parts of the country for days.

The crisis sounded an alarm for power systems throughout the country: As climate change worsens, severe conditions that go beyond historical norms are becoming ever more common. Texas, for example, expects power demand to peak in the heat of summer, not the depths of winter, as it did this week.

At least the Democrats are once again in charge in Washington DC.

The dire storms come as President Joe Biden aims to spend up to $2 trillion on infrastructure and clean energy investment over four years. Biden has pledged to update the U.S. power grid to be carbon-pollution free by 2035 as well as weatherize buildings, repair roads and build electric vehicle charging stations.

“Building resilient and sustainable infrastructure that can withstand extreme weather and a changing climate will play an integral role” in creating jobs and meeting Biden’s goal of “a net-zero emissions future,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Wednesday.

More stories to check out today:

KSAT.com: Did Ted Cruz fly to Cancun during Texas‘ winter disaster?

Dallas Morning News: At least 6 dead in 133-car pileup in Fort Worth after freezing rain coats roads.

Houston Chronicle: Perry says Texans willing to suffer blackouts to keep feds out of power market.

CNN: The Supreme Court is still sitting on Trump’s tax returns, and justices aren’t saying why.

The Daily Beast: Rush Limbaugh Spent His Lifetime Speaking Ill of the Dead.

Justin Peters at Slate: Rush Limbaugh Wasn’t Funny.

The New York Times: A Grim Measure of Covid’s Toll: Life Expectancy Drops Sharply in U.S.

CNN: White House announces sweeping immigration bill.

The Washington Post: Democrats to formally introduce Biden’s citizenship bill.

Politico: It might just be game over for the Iowa caucus.

Politico: The Christian Prophets Who Say Trump Is Coming Again.

Have a great Thursday Sky Dancers. If you’re in the path of the storms, please stay safe!

Tuesday Open Thread

 Good Morning Sky Dancers!!

I’m not feeling well today, so I’m just posting this as an open thread. Don’t worry, it’s not Covid; I’m having an issue with a condition I’m being treated for and I’m in touch with my doctor. Some stories to check out:

Local GOP leaders are censoring Congresspeople who supported impeachment or conviction. This is incredible.

Mediaite: GOP Rep. Kinzinger Receives Stunning Letter from Relatives Over His Trump Opposition: ‘You Have Lost the Respect of Lou Dobbs…’

A new profile on Congressman Adam Kinzinger, one of the few House Republicans who voted to impeach Donald Trump, reveals that several family members actually sent him a handwritten letter criticizing his condemnation of the former president’s actions that led to the riots at the Capitol.

Kinzinger spoke to the New York Times about his efforts to get the GOP to move on from Trump, but the report also highlights how he’s received criticism not just from fellow Republicans but from family members.

The letter reads in part, “Oh my, what a disappointment you are to us and to God!… You have embarrassed the Kinzinger family name!”

The Times says this letter — which accuses him of joining the “devil’s army” — came from 11 members of his family.

At one point the letter says, “You should be very proud that you have lost the respect of Lou Dobbs, Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Greg Kelly, etc., and most importantly in our book, Mark Levin and Rush Limbaugh and us!”

See the letter at the NYT.

Sorry this isn’t much of a post. I hope to be back to my usual form by Thursday. Have a nice day everyone!