Texas: Cruz fled to the sun, blamed on wind power

Of: Johan edgar

Published: February 20, 2021 at 00.57

Millions of Texans are experiencing food and water shortages after the cold snap.

Amid the disaster, Senator Ted Cruz fled on vacation in the sun and the governor blamed the crisis on wind power.

Both may have frustrated his dreams of replacing Donald Trump as the next Republican in the White House.

Jenn Studebaker from Austin and her family have had a terrible week. When the winter storm came, both the heat and the water disappeared. The house turned icy and they were forced to use chairs, bookshelves, and whatever else they could find to build a fire in the fireplace.

They got water by filtering the shovel of beans into cans and when they ran out, the family started melting snow in the tub to drink. Now the power is back, but it remains a challenge to find something to eat. They waited in line for five hours to enter the store and buy essentials.

Jenn Studebaker reported all of this in an interview with CNN.

Across Texas, thousands of people have witnessed similar desperate acts as the state was paralyzed by the worst winter cold in living memory. Several million people have been without heat or water for several days a week.

At least 30 people have died in Texas from the cold for various reasons. Five people, including children, died of carbon monoxide poisoning after using indoor gas grills or heating their cars in locked garages in a desperate attempt to keep warm. At least ten people are said to have frozen to death in the Houston region alone.

By Friday night, 14 million people were reported still without access to clean running water. Many water pipes have frozen from the cold and in many cities there is either no water or it is so polluted that it has to be boiled. Grocery stores are crowded and very empty.

Blamed on wind power

President Biden said Friday that he will approve a request for a state of emergency in Texas and plans to visit the state next week.

“The people of Texas are angry and they have every right to be. The electricity, water and communications that have fallen have certainly taken several lives,” conservative activist JoAnne Flemming tells Politico.

In the midst of the crisis, the demand for political responsibility has begun. Republican Gov. Greg Abbott has received much criticism for his slow efforts against the catastrophe.

Despite the fact that authorities knew almost a week in advance about the coming cold snap, they failed to protect power grids, water pipes or people from the impending disaster.

In a television interview, Greg Abbott tried to blame the power outages on renewable energy sources, such as wind and solar, which he said froze in the cold. But he quickly had to remove it when fossil energy sources were shut down in similar amounts, according to the Austin American-Statesman.

He then said during the week that he had now decided that the power grid would be secured for the winter. He also responded when it emerged that experts had already recommended it ten years ago in connection with another winter storm.

In addition, the authorities have also received much criticism for its electricity grid, which has been sold to private interests. The reason was that Texas wanted to be free from the federal government on energy. But other states bordering Texas have not experienced the same disaster during the same winter storm. They are connected to the federal electricity grid.

The governor has also been criticized for inadequate planning when it comes to clearing roads of snow and ice, which has created a series of traffic accidents and left many trapped in their frozen homes.

Images posted by a reporter on The Weather Channel on Twitter show how the highway that runs right on the state line was plowed on the side that belongs to Arkansas, but not the side that belongs to Texas.

But Gov. Greg Abbott is probably grateful for Texas Senator Ted Cruz’s bizarre self-defense amid the giant crisis, which has taken up much of the critical media coverage.

I went on vacation in the sun

Ted Cruz landed on the Mexican paradise beach of Cancun on Wednesday night when the people of Texas were in the middle of the crisis, and then the scandal was already a fact.

When he was in the air, images of him began to circulate from the Houston airport, dressed casually and with a suitcase in hand.

Exactly one day after his plane took off for the heat, he returned to Houston on Thursday. And then he managed to make matters worse with conflicting, or possibly false, information about why he left the state in the midst of its worst crisis in many years.

First, Cruz said in a statement that he would only leave his daughters in Cancun because they wanted to go on trips anyway when the school was closed. He indicated that he intended to return immediately from the beginning.

“When school is closed this week, our girls asked to go on a trip with friends. Because I wanted to be a good father, I flew with them last night and will fly back this afternoon, ”he told himself early Thursday.

A few hours later, the senator told reporters that it was on the air that he changed his mind, that he actually intended to stay until Saturday, but realized that he was needed in Texas to help coordinate efforts during the crisis.

Cruz still believed that it was the daughters who were the reason for the trip.

– The trip was obviously a mistake, he said Thursday at the same time that his trip was criticized by many other Republicans and caused people to stand outside his home and demand his resignation.

The information about the daughters was contradicted by leaked text messages that his wife Hedi Cruz sent to their neighbors before leaving. She wrote that the house is freezing, they can’t stay, and she planned a trip to Cancun.

She told neighbors about the Ritz Carlton hotel where they would be staying for about 3,000 crowns a night and urged them to join her.

Snowflake the dog left in the cold

Things got even worse for the senator when a New York Magazine reporter at Ted Cruz’s Houston villa on Thursday managed to snap a photo of the family’s Snowflake dog staring out of the front door’s glass window.

The information that the family left the dog in the cold further enraged angry Texans.

Ted Cruz, who himself has repeatedly criticized Democratic representatives who left their states during crises and natural disasters, tried to deal with crises by asking for understanding.

– Of course I understand that people are angry. We live in strange times where Twitter is crazy and the media is crazy and there is so much hatred and anger on both sides that I think is unfortunate. I believe that everyone should treat each other with respect and common sense and try to understand each other more, especially in times of crisis, the senator told reporters Thursday night.

That has not always been his mantra. Ted Cruz has been repeatedly called “America’s most hated politician.” In the Senate, he made many enemies when he participated in the shutdown of the entire federal public sector in 2013. The following year, he tried the same thing again.

In 2016, when he was a candidate in the presidential elections against Donald Trump, he was called “the devil incarnate” by former Republican President John Boehner. Senator and party colleague Lindsey Graham said “you can kill Ted Cruz in the House and if the trial were to take place in the Senate they would acquit you.”

During the primary election campaign, Ted Cruz ended up in several fights with Donald Trump. After the election, he was scolded and accused of lacking a moral compass when he completely turned around and became one of Trump’s closest allies, despite calling Cruz “Lying Ted” during the election campaign, say his wife was unattractive and hint that his father might be involved in the assassination of John F Kennedy.

“Brain-dead decision”

Local Republican George Seay tells Politico that his flight to Mexico could hurt Ted Cruz in his future plans, but even worse were his protests against the election result regarding the Congressional vote count when the mob stormed into building.

– Are you focused on things that are good for Texas? Not really. He is focused on running in the 2024 presidential election and is politically intriguing, he tells the site.

“He’s a person that people don’t like,” political consultant Bill Miller, who has worked with representatives of both parties in Texas, told the New York Times in an article titled “How Ted Cruz Became The Least Sympathetic Politician of the United States “”.

– And now he’s mortally wounded. It is as if he is betraying the state in its most vulnerable state. It is an indefensible act.

He adds that he sees Ted Cruz as “smart, sharp, agile and ambitious,” but that the trip to Mexico was “a brain-dead decision that he will remember for the rest of his life.”

Texas Republican Chad Prather tells Politico that he thinks Greg Abbott is worse off than Ted Cruz.

– The person who will have the most consequences from this is probably Abbott. Rumor has it that he, too, aspires to run for the presidential election and that the role of governor is likely to be a low priority. We seem to have it a bit empty at the top, he says.

Published: February 20, 2021 at 00.57