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Comment by qqqwerty | Hacker News Reader

Just a reminder the your junior Senator (among many others[1]) mocked California and our electric grid when we were hit by record wild fires last year. He also voted against federal aid for Hurricane Sandy because it only impacted blue states.

And maybe you should look up the timeline on when your state representatives ran to fox news and tried to blame the green new deal and windmills for the outage. I am sure the national discourse would be a bit more sane if it wasn't kicked off by Texas politicians spreading 100% FUD.

You are asking everyone else to be reasonable while your own politicians viciously attack the other side and straight up lie to the American people.

[1] https://twitter.com/BFriedmanDC/status/1361693012225650688

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Lol, this could not be a more perfect example of exactly what I’m talking about. Nowhere in my comment did I say that Texas politicians are not to blame (in fact, I said the opposite) and yet here you come riding in to “remind me” of some actions that Texas politicians did that have absolutely no relevance to the issue at hand.

> You are asking everyone else to be reasonable while your own politicians viciously attack the other side and straight up lie to the American people.

I don’t personally control Cruz or Abbott’s actions. If I did, they wouldn’t be in office. But what I can control is how I react to situations, just like you can control how you react to situations. I choose to be reasonable and expect others around me to be reasonable, because that’s how things progress. It seems you choose to double down on unproductive finger pointing and playing “gotcha”, though.

That’s fine if you don’t like Cruz. I don’t like him either. But Cruz being a dumbass and taunting California has absolutely nothing to do with the issues that affected Texas this week, and you bringing it up is completely unneeded and unhelpful. Please go have your outrage session somewhere else.

I never liked the meme, but this guy has to be a NPC. Seriously. I couldn't agree more with you assessment about the current news/discussion life-cycle. Personally I think that the way news are produced and consumed fuels a vicious cycle that is more about tribes than information.

Ad hominems are not welcome here. See my reply to a sibling comment[1].

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26195450

From your original post:

> and if we actually want to fix things we need to stop playing these ridiculous partisan games and be honest with ourselves with the full picture of issues.

One side takes these issues very seriously. We have been fighting tooth and nail to address climate change, improve the nations infrastructure and provide adequate safety nets for when things go bad. The other side spends their time screaming about socialism and stolen elections.

The point I am trying to make is that this is not a "both sides" problem. One side is taking these issues very seriously the other refuses to even engage in a conversation about them. Obamacare is a perfect example of how this played out. The legislation literally originated as a Republican proposal, but Republicans refused to cooperate and instead trotted out the "death panels" talking point. And here we are 12 years later, and they still don't have a replacement plan.

If you are actually interested in hearing about the solutions that are on the table you can get a rough idea by visiting Biden's energy plan[1]. These are very real proposals, with broad democratic support. But to get any of this stuff passed, it will likely require input and support from Republicans. And unfortunately, I have little to no faith that they will come to the table on this. I hope I am wrong.

[1] https://joebiden.com/clean-energy/

Winterizing natural gas power plants isn't mentioned once in Joe Biden's clean energy platform. He also didn't mention anything about weatherizing natural gas generators in any of the debates.

Death panels and the ACA have nothing to do winterizing with natural gas generators.

There is a bunch of strong evidence that climate change is man made and real. There is much less evidence that climate change is causing more extreme cold events, or specifically had any influence on this polar vortex.

And wind did slightly worse than coal and natural gas generators when it comes to stability over the last week, so it's definitely not a savior.

There are a million opportunities to argue about the ACA or climate change. But this issue is about winterization/maybe connecting Texas to the national power grid. Can we just argue about that here?

Btw I voted for Biden, but the Democratic platform has very little focus on weatherizing natural gas plants.

It is a high level policy agenda, not a 10k page regulatory document. There are literally dozens of references to making infrastructure robust to the impacts of climate change, for example:

"Americans deserve infrastructure they can trust: infrastructure that is resilient to floods, fires, and other climate threats"

If we are going to criticize Democrats for not explicitly discussing an extremely niche grid infrastructure issue in their platform, maybe we should also criticize the fact the republicans didn't even bother to publish one this past election cycle[1]

> But this issue is about winterization/maybe connecting Texas to the national power grid. Can we just argue about that here?

What is there to argue? Texas failed to adequately winterize. They should make sure to fix that. End of argument.

[1] https://www.vox.com/2020/8/24/21399396/republican-convention...

Our Junior senator that peaced out to Cancun with his family this week(during a pandemic)? Yeah, he is always in our thoughts.

It was pretty gross reading about these guys going on national conservative networks playing national GOP politics spreading FUD about renewables... From under a bunch of blankets on my phone because it was 41f in my house.

This kind of attack is pretty much exactly what the GP was referring to.

If you think my reply was attack, then you are probably blinded by your own biases.

I left a substantive and truthful reply. Here is another synopsis in case it helps: Certain Texas politicians are notorious for poisoning the well when it comes to public discourse. And in this very specific example, they literally went to fox news and other outlets and blamed the issues on GND and windmills. At that point the Texas power outages were barely blip on the national radar, but their lies on national media kicked off a firestorm of headlines to counter their lies.

They literally started this. But folks keep blaming the media, and keep blaming the libs. Wake up. If you disagree with anything I said, a substantive reply is welcome. But if you are just going to cry about being attacked, go somewhere else.

>They literally started this.

What is it you think "they" started? You're really all over the place with these replies. I don't think anyone here would disagree that it's absurd for Texas politicians to blame issues on GND, but had they not done that, it's not as if Texans would be any better off. I can tell you're not a fan of Cruz, but I think the point myself and the GP are trying to make is that there are lots of situations in American politics which boil down well to Red vs. Blue. Personally I don't think this is one of them.

> What is it you think "they" started?

They walked away from the negotiating table around 12 years ago and are nearly entirely focused on playing up the culture war games rather than actually doing any sort of governing.

And yet there is a fun little internet subculture that insists both sides are at fault, the media is at fault, tribalism, etc...

> there are lots of situations in American politics which boil down well to Red vs. Blue. Personally I don't think this is one of them.

I disagree. Blue side has been warning about extreme weather events due to climate change, about how unprepared our infrastructure is. Red side has been oil money == good, deregulation == profits. I don't think there has ever been a disaster that has so vividly highlighted the contrasting platforms and priorities of the two parties.

You did it again.

It is pretty obvious from your comment history that you are just here to troll people:

"What fucked up ideology do you have"

"Method 10: Write an absolute piece of shit article on revue."

"I've read many stupid posts about de-googling ... But this one really amazes me"

"There are absolutely no words to describe the stupidity exhibited here."

That is just from the first few pages. This isn't reddit, I suggest you take that discourse over there.

Ouch, talking about ad hominem attacks...

Also, how did you go trough my comments and ignored everything else that did not support your hypothesis? You really are a NPC.

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