May 27, 2021

Brian Williams closed out his show "The 11th Hour" Thursday night with this item from Buzzfeed News: "The true number of people killed by the disastrous winter storm and power outages that devastated Texas in February is likely four or five times with the state has acknowledged so far."

While the State of Texas, run by Republicans, contends that 151 people died as a result of the freeze and its subsequent predictable power outage, the real death toll is more like over seven hundred people. "This astonishing toll exposes the full consequences of officials' neglect and preventing the power grid's collapse despite repeated warnings of its vulnerability to cold weather, as well as the state's failure to reckon with the magnitude of the crisis that followed," says BuzzFeed News.

Brian Williams didn't sugarcoat it:

BRIAN WILLIAMS: The Texas governor, the ardent Trumper Greg Abbott has been eager to move on and change the subject, anything but a further discussion that how it is the power grid was allowed to fail.

Indeed the Texas legislature has decided on its priorities.

They've passed one of the most restrictive abortion laws in the country.

They've passed a measure restricting the teaching of critical race theory...

...and as we mentioned earlier, they've passed this "no permit, no problem" measure basically meaning any adult in the state who wants a handgun should be able to get one without training or registration.

They are, in other words, doubling down on the Red, fearing that their state is turning purple politically.

Then Brian Williams showed a picture of Ted Cruz flying to Cancun during the disaster:

...It does make you wonder why they didn't just leave, get out of Texas and fly somewhere warm. I'm being told some left to go somewhere warm, but most folks were forced to stay home in Texas except for the time they spent lining up in the cold for necessities during the storm. Anyways, spare a thought for the families of the dead in Texas after a natural disaster that brought that big state to its knees.

The article, "The Graveyard Doesn't Lie," is well-worth the click.

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