“The 60 generators FEMA sent to Texas are, as of this morning, sitting in a staging area in Ft. Worth waiting for delivery instructions. 10,000 gallons of diesel fuel also standing by. FEMA officials are waiting for instructions from Texas officials about were to send it” – Erin Banco, Daily Beast.

“Is Ted Cruz Superman? Do the dumb liberals expect him to fly around Texas and blast heat vision out of his eyes and defrost the Windmills?”

The current top comment on The Gateway Pundit article “Ted Cruz Comes Under Fire For Traveling to Cancun, Mexico with His Family Amid Texas Freeze“, posted Monday morning.

Former Senator and 1996 Republican Presidential candidate Bob Dole announced today that he is being treated for Stage IV lung cancer, the Washington Post reports.

A World War II veteran who lost the use of his right hand after being wounded by enemy artillery fire that damaged his vertebrae, he retired from the Army as a captain, having been awarded two Purple Hearts and two Bronze Stars.  Dole was elected to the Senate in 1968 and became Senate Majority Leader following the 1984 elections.

“While I certainly have some hurdles ahead, I also know that I join millions of Americans who face significant health challenges of their own,” the 96-year-old Kansas native said in a statement.

Karl Rove guest op-ed in the Wall Street Journal: “In suggesting that Senate Republicans oust Mr. McConnell, Mr. Trump is setting himself up for defeat. Mr. McConnell won’t be removed and replaced with a Trump toady. The former president’s screed will leave him appearing weaker while the Kentucky senator shows that Friedrich Nietzsche (and Kelly Clarkson) was right: What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Mr. Trump may not be fully aware of shifting currents among congressional Republicans. More members now admit privately that Mr. Trump had no coattails in last fall’s election. Especially in the suburbs, some Republicans and many GOP-leaning independents refused to take his lawn signs or support him. That’s why so many Republican congressional candidates ran ahead of the former president.”

“Mr. Trump crowed Tuesday that he ‘received the most votes of any sitting President in history.’ Then again, Joe Biden received more votes than any candidate in history – and seven million more votes than Mr. Trump. Despite possessing all the powers of incumbency and leading a united GOP, Mr. Trump lost the presidency. If he returned for another White House contest, leading a divided party at war with itself and out of power, he’d be wiped out. Mr. Trump should now be focused not on settling scores, but on healing, uniting and expanding the GOP. Politics is about addition, not subtraction. So next time his crackerjack wordsmiths suggest a thermonuclear attack on other Republicans, Mr. Trump ought to let the one-day story that provoked them go away on its own. But then he wouldn’t be Donald Trump, would he?”

The domestic terrorist known as “Zip tie guy” and his insurrectionist-loving mother will both be held without bail pending charges relating to their roles in the January 6th Capitol attack, the Atlanta Journal Constitution reports.

Judge Royce C. Lamberth denied a bond request for the pair–Lisa Marie Eisenhart, 56, of Woodstock, Georgia and and her son Eric Gavelek Munchel, 30, of Nashville, Tennessee–saying in a 17-page opinion that their actions “threatens the republic itself.”

Munchel brought a Taser and a knife with him to the “Save America” and the ensuing assault on the Capitol.  He was photographed in the Senate chamber with zip ties, obviously to detain members of Congress.  He also had a cell phone attached to the front of the tactical vest he wore; with it, he recorded his mother saying that the tear gas deployed by law enforcement “isn’t bad” as she encouraged him to invade the Capitol.

I always thought my dirty dishes piled up and accumulating bacteria were the most dangerous thing in a Zoom background… 😳😳😳 #SafeStorage pic.twitter.com/uveXvGfafu

— Rep. Katie Porter (@RepKatiePorter) February 18, 2021

Washington Post: “Texas is showing us the future Republicans want. This isn’t intended to mean that Republicans want a future beset by the sort of power shortages that have crippled Texas, which have left millions without power in frigid temperatures and are being exacerbated by other dire conditions, such as water shortages. No doubt many Republicans expressing outrage at the failures producing this disaster – and calling for accountability and reform – are sincere in their intentions, though we’ll see how long those demands persist.”

“But it’s painfully obvious that in an important larger sense, many aspects of their reaction to the Texas calamity do indeed demonstrate the future they want. It’s a future in which the default response to large public problems will be to increasingly retreat from real policy debates into an alternate information universe, while doubling down on scorched earth distraction politics and counter-majoritarian tactics to insulate themselves from accountability.”

Exemplar of privilege and one-time occupier of a West Wing office Ivanka Trump told Florida Republican Senator Marco Rubio that she has no intention of challenging him for his Senate seat in 2022, according to the New York Times.

“Marco did speak with Ivanka a few weeks ago,” said Nick Iacovella, a spokesman for Rubio. “Ivanka offered her support for Marco’s re-election. They had a great talk.”  A person close to Ivanka also confirmed the conversation.

Ivanka Trump and her current husband, Jared Kushner, purchased a house on an exclusive island Florida development called Indian Creek Island, spurring speculation about her political aspirations.

Recent speculation has another member of the Trump kclan, Lara Trump, the current wife of Ewik Trump, investigating a run for Senate in North Carolina.  A former entertainment television producer, Lara Trump was a fundraiser for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.

Punchbowl’s Jake Sherman reports that someone with the first initial “R” and the last name starting with “Cru” has booked a flight out of Cancun to Houston Thursday afternoon.  “R Cru” was second on the upgrade list, awaiting business class.  (Cruz apparently missed the upgrade.)

The details match the passenger manifest for United Airlines flight 1015, departing Cancun at 2:35 p.m. and arriving in Houston at 4:05 p.m. local time.

Rafael “Ted” Cruz, the Republican Senator from Texas, has been the subject of ridicule as he and his family were spotted on a flight to the vacation resort town of Cancun as millions of people in his home state of Texas suffer without power.

US life expectancy dropped a full year in the first part of 2020, an effect of the skyrocketing fatalities due to the spread of the coronavirus across the United States according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, ABC News reports.

In the first half of 2020, life expectancy in the United States dropped to 77.8 years, its lowest level since 2006.  That’s down from 78.8 years in 2019.

Black Americans lost 2.9 years in average life expectancy to 72 years; Hispanics saw their life expectancy fall 1.9 years to 79.9 years.  White Americans also saw a decline of only 0.8 years, to 78.0 years.  Men’s life expectancy dropped more than a year, from 76.3 to 75.1, while women dropped less than a year from 81.4 to 80.5.

“Sen. Ted Cruz flew to Cancun, Mexico, with his family this week as Texas dealt with a winter storm that left millions without power, Fox News has confirmed. Photographs of Cruz, R-Texas, at an airport began circulating on social media late Wednesday, with people alleging that the senator had left amid a major crisis. A Republican source told Fox News that the allegations Cruz was traveling to the Mexican city are true. ‘The photos speak for themselves,’ the source said” – Fox News.

Daily Beast: “Former President Donald Trump kicked off a right-wing media tour on Wednesday, hitting up One America News, Newsmax, and Fox News for phone interviews after being largely absent from the public eye since leaving the White House. And while the disgraced ex-president continued to spread debunked election conspiracies during a pair of pre-taped interviews with Newsmax and OAN on Wednesday night, Trump steered clear of directly mentioning the voting software companies that had been at the heart of his most deranged voter fraud lies.”

“According to a source familiar with the matter, Trump has recently been reminded that he shouldn’t mention, and definitely not call out by name, Dominion Voting Systems or Smartmatic during new media interviews or public appearances. Earlier in the day, the former president broke his weeks-long media silence when he called into Fox News to talk about conservative radio icon Rush Limbaugh’s death from lung cancer. The Wednesday afternoon Fox chat, which eventually devolved into Trump peddling the lie that the 2020 election was stolen from him, was his first television interview since before the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection that he incited.”

“Cruz’s office has not responded to photos on social media showing him traveling to Cancun. They haven’t confirmed or denied anything yet, not responding since last night. Comes as residents in Texas are left without running water or power amid the winter storm” reports CNN’s Manu Raju.

“The power outages in Texas are the latest in a series of disasters that will be harder to fix – or prevent from happening again – because Americans are retreating to partisan and cultural corners instead of trying to solve problems. From COVID to the election fallout to the utter collapse of Texas’ electric grid, America is no longer showing the rest of the world how to conquer its biggest challenges. Instead, there’s always another uncivil war to be fought – even when democracy, global health and now climate change are on the line. Between extreme weather events, a pandemic and an attack on democracy itself, America has been pummeled with the kinds of existential disasters that usually come along once every 100 years – and are testing whether we still have the ability to overcome them” – Axios.

The Atlantic: “In folklore and rhetoric, there’s a concept known as the ‘rule of three.’ A trio of events, characters or ideas, the reasoning goes, is for some reason more engaging to the human mind than collections of two or four. The major crises that will define Donald Trump’s attacks on democracy and the rule of law have now reached that crucial number. First, there was the Russian election interference in 2016 and Trump’s efforts to overturn the investigation into it; second, Trump’s extortion of Ukraine in 2019, which led to his first impeachment; and finally, his incitement of a violent mob against the Capitol on January 6. From a storyteller’s perspective, the arc of Trump’s presidency is finally complete.”

“The crises share certain common elements. In each instance, Trump worked to cheat in an election and then turned the power of the presidency against those who resisted his wrongdoing or worked to uncover it. But as with any good story, there’s also a narrative trajectory. As Trump’s presidency progressed from a battle over Russian election interference to his subsequent efforts to strong-arm Ukraine into providing derogatory information on the then–presidential candidate Joe Biden during the Democratic primary, to a ploy to undermine faith in the 2020 election, his predations moved from being somewhat abstract or theoretical to startlingly concrete and proximate, even to those Americans who were at first sheltered from those abuses.”

“Congressional Democrats are calling on Postmaster General Louis DeJoy to protect the country’s mail from future delivery delays and raising questions about his leadership, urging President Joe Biden to fill vacancies on the US Postal Service’s Board of Governors so that the board can ‘seriously consider’ whether the Trump administration appointee ‘is suitable to continue in his role.’ In two separate letters sent to DeJoy and Biden this week, scores of Democratic lawmakers raised a number of complaints about the postmaster general, who has told those close to him he wants to stay in his role under the new President, two sources told CNN earlier this month, despite his troubled tenure at the helm of the USPS and his background as a supporter and donor to former President Donald Trump.”

“Together, the two letters underscore the party’s deep frustration with DeJoy, whose decisions in the run-up to the 2020 election were criticized by Democrats for hamstringing USPS at a time when many Americans were relying on it to cast mail-in ballots. Federal judges across the country issued unprecedented decisions to temporarily block DeJoy’s changes from being implemented ahead of the election. ‘It is your duty, first and foremost, to protect service and ensure timely mail delivery for every person in this nation,’ 34 Dem senators wrote to DeJoy Wednesday, acknowledging that USPS ‘fulfilled its duties during the 2020 general election and executed extraordinary measures to prioritize timely delivery of election mail’ but that concerns remain about delivery delays” – CNN.

Politico: “Republicans are starting their life in the Senate minority mired in a civil war over the future of the GOP and former President Donald Trump’s role in the party. Trump’s scathing attack on Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell Tuesday exposed rifts that could dash the GOP’s hopes of retaking the Senate in 2022 if they are allowed to fester. Some in McConnell’s orbit already blame Trump for losing the majority in Georgia last month. Now, the GOP leader has to hold together a fractured conference and guide Senate candidates through difficult primaries while holding onto seats in states Trump lost last year.”

“With McConnell castigating Trump over the Jan. 6 Capitol riot and Trump firing back in personal terms, Senate Republicans have reacted by trying to defuse the situation — a sign of recognition that they need Trump loyalists and more traditional Republican voters to stick together for future success. Following Trump’s call for Republicans to move on from McConnell, POLITICO on Wednesday reached out to all 16 Republican senators running for reelection in 2022 to ask if they supported the Kentuckian as majority leader. Only two responded. ‘Leader McConnell has my full support and confidence,’ Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), the No. 2 Senate Republican who drew Trump’s ire and a primary threat after condemning the then-president’s refusal to accept the election results, said in a statement to POLITICO. ‘No one understands the Senate better than he does.'”

“Photos circulating on Twitter late Wednesday purport to show Texas Senator Ted Cruz on a flight to Cancun, Mexico, during the state‘s historic disaster. The images show a man with a striking similarity to Cruz in an airport and on a plane. Cruz’s office didn‘t respond to a request for comment but this story will be updated if they do. Other reporters said they had reached out as well but not heard back. Some Twitter sleuths claimed they matched a mask, glasses, a ring, tennis shoes and headphones to past social media posts. One photo appears to show Cruz’s wife – who has appeared on national television – at his side. Keith Edwards, a Democratic operative who worked on Georgia Senator Jon Ossof’s campaign, tweeted that people who were on the flight with Cruz had confirmed to him the photos veracity in direct messages”- KSAT.

Reuters: “The winter storm that crippled the Texas electrical grid is moving out of the state, but freezing temperatures remain, hampering attempts to restore full power as residents struggle. With 2.7 million Texas households still without heat Thursday morning, leaders warned of the dangers with a domino effect on infrastructure. The lack of power has cut off water supplies for millions, further strained hospitals’ ability to treat patients amid a pandemic, and isolated vulnerable communities with frozen roads still impassable in parts of the state. ‘This is in many ways disasters within the disaster,’ said Judge Lina Hidalgo, the top elected official in Harris County, which encompasses Houston. ‘The cascading effects are not going to go away.'”

“Residents in over 100 counties in Texas have been told to boil their drinking water as treatment plants continue to suffer from energy blackouts, officials said. Upward of 12 million people in the state – the country’s second largest with a population of roughly 29 million – either have no drinking water on tap in their homes or have drinking water available only intermittently. With freezing temperatures expected through the weekend, getting the lights back on will be a slow process, as Texas has lost 40% of its generating capacity, with natural gas wells and pipelines, along with wind turbines, frozen shut. Hospitals in Houston, the state’s largest city, and elsewhere in Texas have reported they have no water. Nearly two dozens deaths have been attributed to the cold snap. Officials say they suspect many more have died – but their bodies have not been discovered yet.”

Although Republican Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin recently claimed he didn’t think the January 6th domestic terrorist attack on the Capitol was an “armed insurrection,” police confiscated scores of weapons from the attackers, CNN reports.

Police confiscated a baseball bat, a fire extinguisher, a wooden club, a spear, crutches, a flagpole, bear spray, mace, chemical irritants, stolen police shields, a wooden beam, a hockey stick, a stun gun, and knives.

Police arrested Christopher Alberts of Maryland as he left the Capitol building for having a handgun on him.  He tried to flee, but was caught by police.  He also had 25 rounds of ammunition on him.