A/C = Bush = eeeevil

Does air conditioning make people vote Republican?

Wow. Just wow. The author attempts to make the case that A/C is responsible for the rise of the eeeevil "Bush dynasty," John McCain, and the all around degenration of the idustrial Northeast. Yep. A/C is resposible for all our social ills, chief among them the fact that more people are voting for conservatives:

As we observe Air Conditioning Appreciation Week, we should thank A/C for reducing malaria and infant mortality, for allowing pollen sufferers to breathe in the summer and for cooling the labs that produce our computer chips. But we should also talk about the unintended consequences of a machine that pumps out cold air.

Let's start with the Bush dynasty.

So... we have fewer dead babies and no one dies of malaria... BUT people are voting for George Bush! Unintended consequences, indeed.

In 1966, Texas became the first state in which half the homes were air-conditioned. That same year, George H.W. Bush was elected to Congress -- from Houston. Coincidence? Or does air conditioning make people vote Republican? After all, the GOP's rise in the South coincides with the region's adoption of air conditioning.

Yep. A/C, definitely eeeeevil.

It's easy to write this now because we've had a cool summer in Chicago. The temperature has never topped 91 degrees. On Monday night, I turned on the bedroom fan for the first time all of August. But I moved here on the day the Great Heat Wave of 1995 spiked. I nearly fainted carrying furniture up a flight of stairs. Over 500 people suffocated to death inside their apartments. Air conditioners would have saved lives, but it's too simple to say the heat wave victims died just because they didn't have them. Most were old, alone and afraid to open their windows. Some died not because they lacked air conditioning, but because they lacked it in an air-conditioned society. The traditional method of cooling off in a heat wave -- camping out in the parks -- is no longer acceptable. No one looked in on those people because, in the age of air conditioning, it's hard to remember that a heat wave can cull the weak and the elderly.

Okay, try to follow this logic: 500 elderly people suffocated to death in their apartments (in Chicago), they were too afraid to open their windows or go out into parks (in Chicago), and no one checked in on them (in Chicago). All of this is the fault of "air-conditioned society" a.k.a. Bush, Texans, and Republican voters in the south. Did you follow? No? Well, you are obviously a dumb redneck.