Thursday, August 14, 2003

Self-Inflicted Terrorism. Here's a good take on the East Coast power outage from Gerard Van der Leun: [little green footballs] 7:52:27 PM    comment []

From the Wall Street Journal  Paris Is Burning? Does anyone else find this claim suspicious? "France's worst heat wave on record has killed an estimated 3,000 people across the nation, the Health Ministry said Thursday, as the government faced accusations that it failed to respond to a major health crisis," the Associated Press reports from Paris. Three thousand deaths? In a Western European country? Because of the weather? This is the kind of death toll usually reserved for Third World natural disasters--Chinese earthquakes, Bangladeshi floods and the like. Has the heat really killed 3,000 Frenchmen? As it turns out, the AP dispatch gives ample reason to regard the French claim as fishy. For one thing, the Health Ministry says the 3,000 figure includes deaths "linked directly or indirectly" to the heat. Who knows how tenuous the link would have to be to say a death was "indirectly" linked to the heat? And it turns out the claim rests at least in part on a correlation without any proof of cause and effect: In a statement, the ministry said its estimate was partly drawn from studying deaths in 23 Paris regional hospitals from July 25-Aug. 12 and from information provided by General Funeral Services. According to 2002 figures, the Paris regional hospitals that were surveyed could have expected some 39 deaths a day, the ministry said. But Tuesday, they recorded nearly 180, it said. "We note a clear increase in cases beginning Aug. 7-8, which we can regard as the start of the epidemic of deaths linked to the heat," the statement said. Morgues and funeral directors have reported skyrocketing demand for their services since the heat wave took hold. General Funeral Services, France's largest undertaker, said it handled some 3,230 deaths from Aug. 6-12, compared to 2,300 on an average week in the year--a 37 percent jump. Might it be noteworthy that the French are claiming almost the same number of deaths from the heat as America suffered on Sept. 11? A popular lunatic conspiracy theory on the "European street" has it that George W. Bush is to blame every time the weather is bad. (This cartoon from Le Monde hints at the idea.) Don't be surprised if the America-haters' next talking point is that by renouncing the Kyoto Protocols Bush killed as many people as Osama bin Laden did. 6:36:02 PM    comment []

Defenses Down, Galactic Dust Storm Hits Solar System I'm sure the Green Weenies are working hard to find out if this is the fault of SUVs or Microsoft. 6:11:24 PM    comment []

Hey New York!....Get your own recall election. I know you nice folks back there are sick and tired of hearing about nothing but LaLaLand recall election the last week or so.  I don't blame you...so are we and its just beginning...but this power thing is not the way to get the attention back on yourselves.  Just kidding!  I seem to remember a few years ago all the giggling back east about poor hapless California when we had our fake power crisis.  The media had you all thinking that we were spending the entire summer without power when in fact it was a whole two hours of the so called rolling blackout.  What happened to the wonderful system that was built after the last big blackout many years ago that was suppose to keep this from happening again?  Probably Bill Gates fault!  I'm not laughing because the same thing happened here many years ago when the whole left coast went out because of the squirrel in Idaho.  Now I'm wondering if our new grid protection system is modeled after the one back there?  Anyway...good luck to you folks tonight.  Its 98 degrees outside now but a nice 75 in this room.  Hope they get it fixed before dark or there will be another Blackout Baby Boom in 9 months. (LP) 3:37:46 PM    comment []

Liz For Governor. Hi! I'm 19 and my daddy gave me $3500! Liz is running for governor. Her platform is quite illustrative of the total lack of cognitive reasoning in our younger generation. It's quite telling that this idiot is a student at UC Berkeley. To ensure cheap and abundant supply of energy for all Californians, I propose to give more funding towards research of alternative sources of energy, such as wind and... [Right-Thinking from the Left Coast] 1:56:13 PM    comment []

The Conservative Dilemma. My local bird cage liner has a really good article on the dilemma faced by conservatives over the Arnold candidacy. That is not enough for many conservative leaders, who winced during interviews last week when Schwarzenegger refused to rule out raising taxes. "That makes him a social and economic moderate -- or liberal," Keene said,... [Right-Thinking from the Left Coast] It's so damn obvious that this bad actor is a freaking liberal trying to slip into politics through the only way he can, by the back door left wide open by the stupid Republican Party in this state.  WAKE UP PEOPLE!(LP) 1:50:14 PM    comment []

Dear Mr Beattie, Might I suggest professional help or at least Anger Management classes? Here is my comment to Mr Bettie's post on Arnold.   Here is his reply to my comment.  What's funny is that I agree with his comments on Arnold.  My comment to his post was only in reference to his calling all Republicans "lying sacks of elitist shit".  I see by his comment on my comment that I have been upgraded to "warmongering, elitist sack of shit"!  Such language!  I had to make my dog leave the room before I could turn the monitor back on and finish reading his refreshing, thoughtful and well reasoned post on Arnold. Is this typical behavior for all Libs?  If so, I will refrain from commenting on their attacks against Repubs from now on.  I would not want to be the one to cause one of them to have an aneurysm. LP   8:36:59 AM    comment []