Low Earth Orbit

French consistency

there has been no massive increase in emergencies, even if more elderly people were being admitted to hospital.

A heat wave in France has killed an estimated 3,000 people, mostly the elderly, in the past week

California - laboratory for Democratic policy

"Anne Coulter":http://anncoulter.org hasn't gone completely off the deep end. She does an excellent dissection on the "political crisis in California":http://www.anncoulter.org/columns/2003/081303.htm

California is, in fact, a perfect petri dish of Democratic policies. This is what happens when you let Democrats govern: You get a state -- or as it's now known, a "job-free zone" - with a $38 billion deficit, which is larger than the budgets of 48 states. There are reports that Argentina and the Congo are sending their fiscal policy experts to Sacramento to help stabilize the situation. California's credit rating has been slashed to junk-bond status, and citizens are advised to stock up for the not-too-far-off day when cigarettes and Botox become the hard currency of choice. […] Democrats governed their petri dish as they always govern. They buy the votes of government workers with taxpayer-funded jobs, salaries and benefits -- and then turn around and accuse the productive class of "greed" for wanting their taxes cut. […] And yet, Bill and Hillary Clinton and the rest of the Democratic Party think Gray Davis is doing a super job. Democrats have denounced the recall -- a genuine citizens' revolt -- as a "circus." According to recent polls, two out of three people in this overwhelmingly Democratic state want Davis out, and still the recall is being called a "Republican power grab."