Around 2 a.m. the power went out, which is a fairly loud affair around here, with battery backups and the alarm system going off. Then another brownout five minutes later.

Then the front reached us in its rush, and the temperature plunged ten degrees, the wind kicked up twenty more miles an hour, and outside it came down … sleetily … not hail, not snow, just a fine frozen rain from the heavens.

I went to bed, to listen to it and be cozy.

This morning it’s back to a seemingly untroubled blue, 23 degrees but feels-like 13.

The covenant promises temperatures in the 50’s later, and then the same for days and days until the Solstice or even Christmas.

Talking about the weather is the privilege of old men, but I covenant with you that I shan’t overindulge it anyway.

Eleven thirty-four and I have my space again. Getting to that point was exhausting, but I’m putting more coffee on right now. My mien is fierce.

So it’s been a while since we’ve heard anything about this glorious build-back-better Human Infrastructure bill, yeah?

That’s the one that began life as a 16 trillion dollar gleam in Bernie’s eye called the Green New Deal, the shrank to a Bideny 10 trillion that still had some good things in it for me personally (about 20K worth); dropped to 6T and then 3.5T and then 1.7, and as of today is suspended in midair as it heads straight over a cliff with the ‘child tax credit’ falling out of it on the bloody way down to zero.

Being mad at Joe Manchin about it is worse than useless. He always was and always will be an evil toad, and he’s just doing predictable evil toad things. The rest of the story from Robert Durden:

Turns out the Squad NOT “Holding the Line” has consequences

Yes I’m pissed, and yes it’s mostly about my own momentary moral struggle. No I don’t actually expect anything better from politicians, even if they are inevitably co-opted completely fake ‘progressives’.

This is nothing more than an appendix of catharsis.

Adding in JD’s take on the same, a few days on.