I choose the subject of this post I do out of acknowledgement of the fact that it has happened several times since the birth of my youngest son, all while conceding to the possibility — and possibly, probably even the reality — of the United States defaulting on its debt, which has never happened before in the history of the United States and is rumored to have potentially catastrophic effects both to it and to the world economy. It’s rumored that it will delay (or worse, stop, at least until it were resolved) all payments made by the government, which would include both of the boys’ disability checks and even the child support that Bub’s paternal grandmother pays for her adult son since it is almost guaranteed to come out of his paternal grandfather’s disability or retirement… whatever he’s getting. All of it comes from the same “pot”, so to speak, even if the criteria for the payment and even the reasons may be different. If the United States can no longer borrow — create new debt — to cover shortfalls in cash flow when it has more obligations than it does cash on hand, everything paid for by the government goes on the chopping block, and we don’t even know what the scope of that chopping block is yet other than “really bad” because the United States has thus far been responsible enough to avert that by ensuring that the debt ceiling was either raised or suspended. That may or may not happen this time since Senate Republicans are digging their heels in about how Democrats should raise the debt ceiling — they can’t suspend it this way, they have to raise it to a specific dollar amount — through reconciliation, which only requires a simple majority rather than sixty Senators agreeing to invoke cloture to allow for a vote. Or unanimous consent, which… isn’t happening.

However, reconciliation tends to take weeks, and Pelosi and Schumer… don’t want to do it.

Even though Senate Republicans have told them that they will not in any way, shape, or form help them raise or suspend the debt ceiling themselves. McConnell has even told them to raise it through reconciliation.

There are times that I don’t like this country, and now would be one of those times.

We are manufacturing drama for the sake of doing so to see who, if anyone, will blink. Other people suffer.

We are being asked to conserve energy in this state and to prepare for the possibility of rolling blackouts as the demand for electricity has increased due to the high temperatures. One would think that the governor of this state would have learned something after the winter storm that we had in February, but it appears that he hasn’t learned anything at all. He’s been grandstanding about other, unrelated things on social media — bills that he has signed — in an attempt to distract from this after we as Texans were initially informed, which actually makes matters worse. I have been keeping my phone plugged in whenever I haven’t actively been using it due to this, not wanting the battery to be depleted in the event that a rolling blackout actually hits my area. And I wish I were rich enough to afford a generator, but I’m not. I’m nowhere near that rich…

Is it seriously too much to ask for an even slightly more competent governor at this point? Is it?

If a rolling blackout actually hits this area, I’ll be sure to write about it in here once my Internet connection has been restored (even though I do have a Wi-fi hotspot on my phone that I can activate if ever necessary, I try not to use it unless circumstances leave me with no choice or I really, really have to; I have 10GB of data).

Things like these make me wish that moving costs were cheaper and that moving was easier, though.