• A horrific thunderstorm plowed through DC on Friday night, snapping trees and leading to widespread, long-term power outages during a brutal heat wave. Newt Gingrich called it “mild taste of what an emp (electromagnetic pulse) attack would do”, Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post cited it as evidence of climate change, Nancy Pelosi called it “part of the comprehensive Republican voter-suppression effort,” and Joe Biden stood by his window repeatedly yelling “BOOM!”
• Escaping from the storm was Chief Justice John Roberts, who took a much needed family vacation after a stressful end to the court’s term. One night, his kids asked for dessert, but their mother said their behavior had been so bad that day that they weren’t allowed to eat dessert. Roberts said he agreed with their mother that they didn’t deserve dessert because of their bad behavior, but then gave them money to go buy milkshakes so they wouldn’t technically be eating dessert, but drinking it.
• CERN physicists announced that they’ve probably discovered the Higgs Boson, aka “the God Particle”, which could give insight into the Big Bang. Upon hearing the news, a visibly perturbed Obama said, “You know, I originally wanted to predict that in my acceptance speech instead of the ridiculous “oceans will stop their rise” line. That was the last time I let Biden overrule me.”
• Reports came out that Obamacare implementation efforts have already burned through $1 billion and lawyers have drafted over 13,000 pages of new regulations, with more to come. In response to this massive expansion of federal government power represented by all the new codes, media members are asking the obvious question, “Is the Romney campaign going to call them rules or regulations?”
• In California, one bill was proposed that would enable children to have more than two legal parents, and another that would prohibit police officers from turning over non-felon illegal immigrants for deportation. When asked about the possibility of radical Muslims crossing the border and seeking sanctuary in the state, police said that there’s nothing they’ll be able to do about it, other than hope they just came for the polygamy.
• San Diego’s famous Big Bay fireworks show lasted only 15 seconds as a programming glitch caused all of the fireworks to blow up simultaneously. Show organizers are assuring the public that they did not intend it as an ominous portent for the state’s budget… but they’d be a lot cooler if they did.
• On Thursday, “global central banks went on the offensive against the faltering world economy, cutting interest rates and increasing bond buying as a round of international stimulus gathers pace.” In a similar story, a junkie struggling with withdrawal convinced himself that just a little more heroin would help him cope, and finally set him on a straight path.
• On Tuesday, stocks on Wall Street abruptly stopped trading shortly after 1pm. Market observers declared that simultaneous unemployment, Euro, and Middle East worries had caused the entire market to have a seizure, before realizing that the market had simply closed early for the Fourth of July.
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As you can see from the map above, California’s prices vastly exceed the rest of the country. To ease the price point, Governor Jerry Brown is permitting a cheaper winter fuel mixture to propagate through the market several weeks before California’s usual end-of-October deadline, a tacit acknowledgment that environmental regulations do drive up costs and hurt economic activity. The rest of the country makes the move to the cheaper mixture on September 15th, some six weeks ahead of the Golden State, which means California is chasing a limited supply. This problem was further exacerbated when two refineries went offline due to emergencies and maintenance.
