Douglas Caddy Posted February 21, 2021 Share Posted February 21, 2021 (edited) Living in Houston I survived the once in a century storm that hit Texas although nobody in Texas believes that it won't happen again and soon. Was without electricity for two days and without landline phone and Internet service for five days. Still don't have water. No interior or exterior damage to my apartment. Major corporations will now rethink moving to Texas as they realize the state government is controlled by Republicans who don't believe in government. Gov. Abbott claimed all the damage was done by the progressives' Green New Deal. There is a Green Deal in Texas but if is found in the ma$$ive corruption of the GOP that has controlled the Lone Star State for decades. Edited February 22, 2021 by Douglas Caddy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ron Bulman Posted February 22, 2021 Share Posted February 22, 2021 4 hours ago, Douglas Caddy said: Living in Houston I survived the once in a century storm that hit Texas although nobody in Texas believes that it won't happen again and soon. Was without electricity for two days and without landline phone and Internet service for five days. Still don't have water. No interior or exterior damage to my apartment. Major corporations will now rethink moving to Texas as they realize the state government is controlled by Republicans who don't believe in government. Gov. Abbott claimed all the damage was done by the progressives' Green New Deal. There is a Green Deal in Texas but if is found in the ma$$ive corruption of the GOP that has controlled the Lone Star State for decades. Some major corporations may well move here for that very reason. Oil and gas have greased a lot of pockets over the years, all over the country. It's good for bidniss as Molly Ivins might say. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joe Bauer Posted February 22, 2021 Share Posted February 22, 2021 (edited) 5 hours ago, Douglas Caddy said: Living in Houston I survived the once in a century storm that hit Texas although nobody in Texas believes that it won't happen again and soon. Was without electricity for two days and without landline phone and Internet service for five days. Still don't have water. No interior or exterior damage to my apartment. Major corporations will now rethink moving to Texas as they realize the state government is controlled by Republicans who don't believe in government. Gov. Abbott claimed all the damage was done by the progressives' Green New Deal. There is a Green Deal in Texas but if is found in the ma$$ive corruption of the GOP that has controlled the Lone Star State for decades. Doug, good to hear you are safe even though you are seriously inconvenienced. No water? Can you not flush your toilets? No internet? Wow. Really hard to believe how almost the entire state of Texas was brought to a life stopping stand still and with millions still without power and water and in such a short and sudden time frame way. Really shows how vulnerable we all really are and how fragile our most important infrastructure foundations truly are in this day and age of dependency on electricity and computerized control systems. About 5 years ago a transmission line exploded just outside of our local power plant in Moss Landing, CA. Electrical power was gone from Moss Landing to all of our Monterey Peninsula for 2 to 3 days. I was living out of my car at the time which I would park in shopping center or gas station/convenience store parking lots, moving every 5 hours or so to avoid anyone calling the cops to report someone basically living out of their car which is legally not allowed in most areas, especially here in this high income area. With that said, however, I got a first hand look how frantic average people got in just the course of one day when all the electric gas pumps quit working, grocery stores and convenience stores closed because their electric cash register machines quit working as well as their indoor and outside lights, their refrigeration, security cameras etc. I watched soccer moms turn into angry mob banshees pounding on the doors of these businesses screaming for somebody to let them in to buy food, diapers, water, you name it. I saw one lady with her van filled with kids crying at the closed door of a gas station, pounding on this and wailing she didn't have enough gas to even get home! Traffic was a slowed down disaster as all the traffic lights converted to flashing red so each car had to stop in every intersection before moving again. Angry car honking was everywhere. I was shocked into facing a reality of how dependent we truly are on our energy infrastructure to the point that "in just one day" of this being cut off people everywhere become frantic and desperate to screaming and cursing extremes! Kind of the same thing with the covid monster hitting us. My wife and I are conditioned now to keeping a one or two months stock of basic need items in our home now. Bottled water, paper towels, toilet paper, food items, bags of peanut M & Ms, chocolate covered raisins, shampoo and other toiletries, Comet, you name it. We are SO DEPENDENT on our energy infrastructure that a one to three day loss of this and water seems to send us back into a stone age survival crisis. Here in California it is earthquakes we fear the most to create this kind of desperate chaos scenario. But, nature seems to be hammering us much harder in the last 25 years. Hurricanes, extreme weather temps, flooding, major area fires, tsunamis, viral pandemics! And on top of that we are at war with each other regards politics, social values, moral values, rules, laws, growing economic divide disparities, racial fears and bias's. Throw in traffic and too much dependency on oil. Corruption of our officials and corporate power. Edited February 22, 2021 by Joe Bauer Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ron Bulman Posted February 22, 2021 Share Posted February 22, 2021 23 hours ago, W. Niederhut said: Ron, Did you catch the Ed Orgeron interview on 60 Minutes last summer? It was a bit of a shocker when he mentioned that many of his football players at LSU had already tested positive for COVID. No, I have trouble understanding Ed in the first place, his voice. But regarding COVID. Tarleton played it's second DI game today, 1st BCS opponent, New Mexico State, in the Sun Bowl in El Paso, Texas. A home game for them because NM is allowing no sports gatherings. No fans at this one, except a couple of dozen on the mountain overlooking the stadium. TSU started the game with 5 offensive players out due to COVID protocols. (Passing) qb, rb, wr, rg, rt. Dual threat qb on 1st play, 70 yard td. 2nd offensive play, pass for 86 yd td. 43 - 17, never close. Could have been worse, some back up's played 4th q, running clock. Nice to listen to on a sunny 74 afternoon with the windows open after last Sunday, and last week. Unfortunately the plague was likely spread at least somewhat given the interactions necessary, in spite of the precautions. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ron Bulman Posted February 22, 2021 Share Posted February 22, 2021 (edited) 27 minutes ago, Joe Bauer said: Doug, good to hear you are safe even though you are seriously inconvenienced. No water? Can you not flush your toilets? No internet? Wow. Really hard to believe how almost the entire state of Texas was brought to a life stopping stand still and with millions still without power and water and in such a short and sudden time frame way. Really shows how vulnerable we all really are and how fragile our most important infrastructure foundations truly are in this day and age of dependency on electricity and computerized control systems. About 5 years ago a transmission line exploded just outside of our local power plant in Moss Landing, CA. Electrical power was gone from Moss Landing to all of our Monterey Peninsula for 2 to 3 days. I was living out of my car at the time which I would park in shopping center or gas station/convenient store parking lots, moving every 5 hours or so to avoid anyone calling the cops to report someone basically living out of their car which is legally not allowed in most areas, especially here in this high income area. With that said, however, I got a first hand look how frantic average people got in just the course of one day when all the electric gas pumps quit qorking, grocery stores and convenient storeres closed because their electric cash register machines quit working as well as the indoor and outside lights, their refigeration, security cameras etc. I watched soccer moms turn into angry mob banshees pounding on the doors of these businesses screaming for somebody to let them in to buy food, diapers, water, you name it. I heard one lady with her van filled with kids crying at the closed door of a gas station wailing she didn't have enough gas to even get home! Traffic was a slowed down disaster as all the traffic lights converted to flashing red so each car had to stop in every intersection before moving again. Angry car honking was everywhere. I was shocked into facing a reality of how dependent we truly are on our energy infrastructure to the point that "in just one day" of this being cut off people everywhere become frantic and desperate to screaming and cursing extremes! Kind of the same thing with the covid monster hitting us. My wife and I are conditioned now to keeping a one or two months stock of basic need items in our home now. Bottled water, paper towels, toilet paper, food items, bags of peanut M & Ms, chocolate covered raisins, shampoo and other toiletries, Comet, you name it. We are SO DEPENDENT on our energy infrastructure that a one to three day loss of this and water seems to send us back into a stone age survival crisis. Here in California it is earthquakes we fear the most to create this kind of desperate chaos scenario. But, nature seems to be hammering us much harder in the last 25 years. Hurricanes, extreme weather temps, flooding, major area fires, tsunamis, viral pandemics! And on top of that we are at war with each other regards politics, social values, moral values, rules, laws, growing economic divide disparities, racial fears and bias's. Throw in traffic and too much dependency on oil. Corruption of our officials and corporate power. After last week I'm buying the largest propane tank I can afford and a new propane heater, like I used to back up to in years gone by and get my legs burnnin hot. With a propane stove I can still cook if the A/C goes out in the summer, while I melt. We could get by a month as it is. Will probably stock up more now. Edited February 22, 2021 by Ron Bulman Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Douglas Caddy Posted February 22, 2021 Share Posted February 22, 2021 11 hours ago, Joe Bauer said: Doug, good to hear you are safe even though you are seriously inconvenienced. No water? Can you not flush your toilets? No internet? Wow. Really hard to believe how almost the entire state of Texas was brought to a life stopping stand still and with millions still without power and water and in such a short and sudden time frame way. Really shows how vulnerable we all really are and how fragile our most important infrastructure foundations truly are in this day and age of dependency on electricity and computerized control systems. About 5 years ago a transmission line exploded just outside of our local power plant in Moss Landing, CA. Electrical power was gone from Moss Landing to all of our Monterey Peninsula for 2 to 3 days. I was living out of my car at the time which I would park in shopping center or gas station/convenience store parking lots, moving every 5 hours or so to avoid anyone calling the cops to report someone basically living out of their car which is legally not allowed in most areas, especially here in this high income area. With that said, however, I got a first hand look how frantic average people got in just the course of one day when all the electric gas pumps quit working, grocery stores and convenience stores closed because their electric cash register machines quit working as well as their indoor and outside lights, their refrigeration, security cameras etc. I watched soccer moms turn into angry mob banshees pounding on the doors of these businesses screaming for somebody to let them in to buy food, diapers, water, you name it. I saw one lady with her van filled with kids crying at the closed door of a gas station, pounding on this and wailing she didn't have enough gas to even get home! Traffic was a slowed down disaster as all the traffic lights converted to flashing red so each car had to stop in every intersection before moving again. Angry car honking was everywhere. I was shocked into facing a reality of how dependent we truly are on our energy infrastructure to the point that "in just one day" of this being cut off people everywhere become frantic and desperate to screaming and cursing extremes! Kind of the same thing with the covid monster hitting us. My wife and I are conditioned now to keeping a one or two months stock of basic need items in our home now. Bottled water, paper towels, toilet paper, food items, bags of peanut M & Ms, chocolate covered raisins, shampoo and other toiletries, Comet, you name it. We are SO DEPENDENT on our energy infrastructure that a one to three day loss of this and water seems to send us back into a stone age survival crisis. Here in California it is earthquakes we fear the most to create this kind of desperate chaos scenario. But, nature seems to be hammering us much harder in the last 25 years. Hurricanes, extreme weather temps, flooding, major area fires, tsunamis, viral pandemics! And on top of that we are at war with each other regards politics, social values, moral values, rules, laws, growing economic divide disparities, racial fears and bias's. Throw in traffic and too much dependency on oil. Corruption of our officials and corporate power. Joe: After reading what you and your wife went through in California 5 years ago, I realize that what we in Texas are suffering is not an isolated event. If an enemy exploded a bomb over our country that would knock out the transmission of electricity for months, few citizens would long survive. Most would be dead within 8 weeks. Such a bomb exists. We have it as do Russia and China. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
W. Niederhut Posted February 22, 2021 Author Share Posted February 22, 2021 27 minutes ago, Douglas Caddy said: Joe: After reading what you and your wife went through in California 5 years ago, I realize that what we in Texas are suffering is not an isolated event. If an enemy exploded a bomb over our country that would knock out the transmission of electricity for months, few citizens would long survive. Most would be dead within 8 weeks. Such a bomb exists. We have it as do Russia and China. We have periodic power outages here in my Denver neighborhood from tree branches knocking down the power lines during snow storms in the spring and fall. One trick I have learned over the years is to cook on our gas grill, and to heat the house with a gas log fireplace. The problem is that some gas log fireplaces can only be turned on with electronic ignition switches, so I had to replace my old fireplace with gas logs that can be turned on even during electrical power outages. It's a way to keep the house (and water pipes) from freezing. Fortunately, we have a well-regulated public utility company here, called XCEL, that does an excellent job of managing our grid, an increasingly difficult task as a result of catastrophic climate change-- hotter summers, increasingly erratic cold spells, and more frequent, destructive hail storms. (Every house in my neighborhood has had roof repairs at least once in the past few years from hail damage.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Douglas Caddy Posted February 22, 2021 Share Posted February 22, 2021 12 hours ago, Ron Bulman said: Some major corporations may well move here for that very reason. Oil and gas have greased a lot of pockets over the years, all over the country. It's good for bidniss as Molly Ivins might say. Major corporations are acknowledging that an economy runs on oil and gas is accelerating climate change. Biden is turning out to be the greatest president in my lifetime. He creating policy that dictates cars with be entirely battery operated in the next decade with 3500 stations erected around the nation allowing a driver to recharge his car's battery in five minutes or less. GM recently announced its cars in the 2030's will not longer use gas but will be battery operated, Ford Motor Company is following suit. Biden undoubtedly will expand on this policy in his upcoming State of the Union Address (its date has not been announced.) For an old guy Biden grasps intellectually what will be best for America for the future. If Molly Ivins were alive today she would be cheering him on. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joe Bauer Posted February 22, 2021 Share Posted February 22, 2021 (edited) Yes, we also have many outages due to fallen trees and limbs during windy winter rain storms. If they go on for two full days or more we lose all the food in our refrigerator. I am not sure but are our water systems totally computerized and electric? And same with our sewage systems? My guess is 100% of urban residents are totally dependent on their city water systems. No hand pump water wells for them. Even in our rural areas their wells are almost always equipped with electric pumping systems. Nature regularly rears up and brings millions of people's lives to a standstill all over the world. The great Indian Ocean Tsunami of 2004, Fukushima Daiichi Tsunami in 2011, great flooding in Europe just a few years ago, our own natural disasters the last 25 years. High Richter Scale Earthquakes. Out of control deadly virus pandemics. Record extremes in temperature and rainfall. One of the possible disasters I have imagined every now and then is a major earthquake ( 8 point or higher ) devastating the Los Angeles area. 20 million people live in that metro-area! Can you imagine water lines severed, electricity cut off, freeways collapsed, no fire and police protection, hospitals unable to treat the injured, stores stripped or robbed of food, looting, assaults, jail unrest within days after? Talk about a true life apocalyptic nightmare! New Orleans collapsed like that with Katrina. Police abandoned their stations and duties. Rest home workers abandoned their patients. Certain areas of town blocking others from entering with guns drawn. Law and order and health and social services collapsed. Paul and Ann Erhlich's book "Population Bomb" laid out the over-population /dwindling natural resources/natural disaster math equation. It's playing out as they predicted although on a more drawn out time line. Too many people, not enough resources, Earth climate and natural disaster stresses on hundreds of millions of people resulting in massive political and social upheaval. Probably wars, revolutions. The poor masses demanding equal access to what resources there are. Doug, I agree regards your asssessment of Biden to some important degrees. No President yet has proposed such immediate, all out, full steam ahead measures of change in regards to our energy consumption and choices. I have said before though that I sense Biden is a Bloomberg Wall Street Corporate type and far from a working class progressive advocate. Hence his recent appointment of Wall Street cozy ( $7 million in Wall Street "speaking fees?" - please ) Janet Yellen as Treasury Secretary. And if Biden truly wanted to make a hugely needed and effecting positive change in tens of millions of stressed Americans lives he would forgive most of their slave chains student debt, instead of a measly $10,000 worth. Biden's protecting the interests of the holders of that debt over the needs of their crushing burdened slaves? Hang on to your seats. The 2020's are going to be a harrowing roller coaster ride for the U.S. and the entire world! Tremendous upheaval and change. Stock up on your comfort food to help you through the roughest parts. Ours are M&M peanuts, chocolate covered raisins and other similar treats. 0- Edited February 22, 2021 by Joe Bauer Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Douglas Caddy Posted February 22, 2021 Share Posted February 22, 2021 From the New York Times editorial: If building resilience is one imperative, another is making sure that America’s power systems, the grid in particular, are reconfigured to do the ambitious job Mr. Biden has in mind for them — to not just survive the effects of climate change but to lead the fight against it. Mr. Biden’s lofty goal is to achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions by midcentury and to eliminate fossil fuel emissions from the power sector by 2035. In the simplest terms, this will mean electrifying everything in sight: a huge increase in battery-powered cars and in charging stations to serve them; a big jump in the number of homes and buildings heated by electric heat pumps instead of oil and gas; and, crucially, a grid that delivers all this electricity from clean energy sources like wind and solar. Opinion | The Lessons of the Texas Power Disaster - The New York Times (nytimes.com) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ron Bulman Posted February 22, 2021 Share Posted February 22, 2021 Supply had not caught up with demand as of yesterday morning. I'd read on facebook last Thursday about Wal Mart being out of milk among many other items, when they weren't closed because of no power. I usually buy a weekend local paper and a Fort Worth Star Telegram on Sunday morning. I needed a gallon of skim milk as I use a cup in the morning's to take pills and vitamins with. Also a gallon of whole milk for grandkids coming later in the day. Went to the one big full service grocery in town (HEB) as they are one of the few places to reliably get the Star Telegram. First sign was the totally empty 50' of bread aisle (ok, 2 small loaves of high $ multi grain specialty bread), next to it 6' of empty tortilla shelves. Round the corner into refrigerated, not an egg in sight, nor any margarine, biscuits, or milk. No bacon, sausage, sandwich meats or cheese. Good thing our freezer is full. I asked the lady at the checkout if she'd heard any rumors about milk coming in. No, but she heard Aldi and Dollar General had milk. Stopped at Aldi. Round the corner to refrigerated, a full door of eggs (limit 2), empty shelves, then I spied One gallon of milk. Looked for other shoppers nearby as I rushed to it. 1%, works for me. Lady in line in front of me (6') said is that all you have? Go ahead. She only had 4-5 items. That's ok, no hurry but thanks. This is the last gallon of milk in the store, HEB has none, was told here or Dollar General. She had been to DG before Aldi, and noticed, no milk there. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Douglas Caddy Posted February 22, 2021 Share Posted February 22, 2021 Fascinating report: CIA Election Meddling - LewRockwell Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Douglas Caddy Posted February 22, 2021 Share Posted February 22, 2021 Take a break and read something really enjoyable: Gstaadios - Taki's Magazine - Taki's Magazine (takimag.com) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kirk Gallaway Posted February 22, 2021 Share Posted February 22, 2021 I bought a generator a long time ago for power failure up in the Mountains. It works well, but it doesn't give you heat and you have to get an ice chest, for food. It's kind of loud because logistically I can't dig a hole for it. But it's been quite a security blanket. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ron Bulman Posted February 23, 2021 Share Posted February 23, 2021 A half million of us in a year, and counting. A grim milestone indeed. Why the US has the highest Covid-19 death toll (msn.com) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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