BERLIN (AP) — A German electric company says it may know the cause of yesterday’s chain-reaction blackout that hit parts of Europe.
The company says systems may have become overloaded after a high-voltage transmission line was shut down over a river to let a ship pass.

Resulting power outages affected as many as ten million people in Germany, France, Italy, Austria, Belgium and Spain.

The outages raised fresh questions about the reliability of Europe’s interconnected power grids.

Italy’s prime minister says the incident shows that Europe may need to strengthen its coordination of power supplies.

But a utilities official insisted that Europe’s power network had worked well.

He said that’s how the region was able to avoid a “total blackout.”

That utility official was merely repeating Dick Cheney’s assessment of the blackout.

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I’ve shot men for less

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Dickie Angry!!!

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I would love to fly over some to the cheaper islands. I mean c’mon - $28500 for a 3 acres island in Tonga? It must be a not-so-dormant volcano.

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Since I can’t link straight to an anchor on FafBlog, I’m just going to post it. An road interview with Donald Rumsfeld about life.

Drivin With Donald (Rumsfeld)

Donald Rumsfeld is no perfectionist.So we’re ridin on down the road in our Cross Country Journey of Inner Discovery and Of Course the American Dream when Donald Rumsfeld hits a moose.

“Maybe we should stop an get a tow truck,” says me.
“Gosh, that seems pretty excessive,” says Donald Rumsfeld. “I mean, was a moose hit? Yes. Do the antlers sticking through the windshield make driving trickier? You bet. But should we just turn around and quit because the road got a little bumpy? I’d say no.”

One thing about Donald Rumsfeld that you have to give him credit for is he always cuts through the crap to tell it like it is in his no-nonsense style. I am reminded of this when we hit the second moose.

“Moose happen,” says Donald Rumsfeld. “There are moose, and we’ll hit ‘em. That’s the way it goes. We’ve lost two tires and the brakes. That’s life. I’m drunk, legally blind and have been charged with eight counts of vehicular manslaughter in the last three years. Gotta deal with it. Nothing’s perfect.”
“If you think about it the more moose get hit by us, the fewer moose there are to get hit by us!” says me.
“I like the way you think,” says Donald Rumsfeld.

Donald grabs a beer an misses a pedestrian. Hooray! One of the moose is still alive an kicks at the engine. “Bad moose,” says me. “No beer until you stop.” Donald Rumsfeld throws an open bottle a Coors at the back seat to put out the fire.

“Are parts of the car on fire? Sure. Would we like them not to be? Of course. Have I gone insane from three decades of snorting military-grade rubber cement? Quite possibly. Do we need everything to be perfect for us to go out on the road? Well, that’s absurd,” says Donald Rumsfeld.
“That’s very true,” says me. “We cannot make the perfect the enemy of the terrible.”

The bridge up ahead is either out or doesn’t exist. But if we waited for everything to be perfect before we did stuff well then we’d never get anythin done! Forward, onward, downward, Donald Rumsfeld!”

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