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Moron state senator Amanda Chase (Trumpist) in Virginia refuses to wear a mask in senate sessions, so they put her in a plexiglass box.

Correct, but your immune system is not the same when you get the 2nd shot. It's already been sensitized.

NASA just landed a nuclear powered aircraft carrier on Mars.

Well, it's been double blind, peer reviewed determined that it doesn't learn better between 50 and 60 as has most recently been confirmed by a study on Speakers Corner.

From my Wednesday posting of the report on the 2011 event. A quote from the summary of that report: "The storm, however, was not without precedent. There were prior severe cold weather events in the Southwest in 1983, 1989, 2003, 2006, 2008, and 2010. The worst of these was in 1989, the prior event most comparable to 2011. That year marked the first time ERCOT resorted to system-wide rolling blackouts to prevent more widespread customer outages. In all of those prior years, the natural gas delivery system experienced production declines; however, curtailments to natural gas customers in the region were essentially limited to the years 1989 and 2003." And here is the link again: https://www.ferc.gov/sites/default/files/2020-04/08-16-11-report.pdf

Why not pick something real, fact based, with meat on the bones of the issue? Gov. Andrew Cuomo appears to have covered up covid nursing home deaths. Yet its as if the right has to wait for FOX to tell them how to think before they can utter opinions.Usually always wrong.

Doubt that additional federal regulation is the answer. The last cold event was 1940. The folks that built the generation made purchase decisions each time they bought a generator. Wind turbines are available with heated gear boxes, motors and blades. Coal plants can be built for cold weather. Nuclear safety devices aren't supposed to get wet and freeze. Natural gas pipelines can be installed and made operational in cold climates. About the generators: the utility is held to a "reasonable and prudent" standard when their rate increase requests are made. The regulators look at the costs in the rate filing and decide if they are reasonable and prudent. Certain costs will be disallowed - such as alcohol, first class travel, employee recreational clubs, lobbying expense, certain advertising, glamorous offices, excess construction, and others. The utilities deal with the regulators on a regular basis and are familiar with how they make decisions. I suspect that the utilities knew that if they had bought the "cold weather" package the additional cost would have been disallowed. The regulators, in SC, are appointed and then elected by the politicians. Politicians are pestered by their electors. The public hates rate increases and they raise cane about everything. The utility would argue that the additional expense is justified because once in every 80 years it gets cold enough that it is needed. The intervenors in the rate case, Wal Mart, large energy users, the military, the consumer advocate, and anyone else that wants to testify, would argue that the cold weather package was not needed. So, they are having a once in 80 year event and, no surprise, stuff froze. The TX situation and every other grid is massively complicated. No one thing caused this problem and federal regulation won't fix it. Well, it could. They could easily require more redundancy, additional transmission capacity, more dispersed generation and just about anything else. That's fine except it costs tons of money. The expense would be paid by consumers. And consumers hate rate increases. Reliability is always a balancing act between the two. We have the same problem in SC after a hurricane. After Hugo in 1989, 31 years ago, everyone screamed, "if power lines were underground we wouldn't have this problem!" That's partially true except there are other problems with UG power lines that don't exist with overhead lines. And, it costs tons of money that no one wants pay for in a rate increase. As electricity is restored the next layer of problems is being revealed. Lack of water. The construction standards in some areas didn't contemplate this extreme. Many homes have detached garages connected to the house by a short breezeway. The copper line comes up the wall of the unheated garage into the attic area and over to the house. The pipe freezes and splits. As it warms up the leaks are evident. There is a shortage of plumbers and plumbing supplies. My buddy shipped 100' of Pex and a box of fittings to his son. There is enough stuff to fix a few dozen houses. The neighbors will luv him. Just about every problem can be prevented or minimized if one throws enough money at it. Most don't want to pay for prevention. What a mess, but no different than natural disasters in other areas of the country.

I will.

It's really simple, Chuck, free flyers do not look down. Of course that includes angle/movement groups. Belly flyers sometimes sometimes do and Tandems always do. The big reality is that upjumpers are generally willing to risk an off DZ landing, apologies to follow. The other reality is that a lot of us aren't as dialed in at what we do as we think we are so there is the constant risk of someone below us in freefall. So, any smart exit order try to limit any potential freefall collisions or off DZ landings to us, not Tandems.

Hoping 2021 is a rebound year.

Man we were young... Wendy P.

This is the same issue as the Houston flooding. The desire to have no to minimum regulation and have costs as low as possible. Great when everything works well, but also means no money is being spent on dealing with potential problems outside of immediate control. Then when it happens, they rely on government funding to bail them out. They are identical to the welfare people they despise. Unwilling to work towards getting better, unwilling to contribute, but rely on the government when it matters. The ultimate takers.

Johnny. Sorry, couldn't resist.

Perry's got a point about keeping the Feds out...have you seen the type of dipshits they let run the Department of Energy?

The real issue is why didn't Texas after the 2011 ice storm pick up the phone and call Canada that has wind turbines operating at -30F that don't freeze and ask, "Hey, how you Canadians doing that?"

I've changed my mind, this is clearly a RushMC alt-account but it's just taken him several years to remember the password.

Yes. When one guy tells his followers that COVID-19 is a joke that will be gone by April (of 2020) and that they shouldn't wear masks and that it's all just a ploy to make him look bad - and when the other guy tells everyone to distance and avoid crowds - that is EXACTLY what I would expect to happen.

Yes, if that's happening it's racism. But often it is not. In the 1950's, a lot of people were unaware of any issues. They didn't think there was an issue with black people sitting at lunch counters, because they never saw any black people sitting at lunch counters. They ate somewhere else. What's the problem?Black people sat at the back of the bus. They seem happy there and it's always been that way. What's the problem? Our CEO's have always been white men. But there are plenty of black people in the company. What's the problem? Unless you show people the problem they don't think it's a problem - because it has never been a problem for THEM. For years I would talk about how I was not privledged because I had to work so hard for what I got. I had a story about making my final tuition payment in nickels and dimes from my third job as a laundromat maintenance person. That misses that many people never had the chance to even pay tuition in the first place. So I think a lot of people catch breaks and are not aware they are catching breaks. And if you try to tell them that, their first reaction was similar to mine years and years ago - "How dare you say I didn't work for it!"