Of Lunatics and Light Bulbs

MSNBC had a story that stated, curiously, that people were just too dumb to buy into mercury-laced compact fluorescent lightbulbs (CFLs) and instead were still bitterly clinging onto the Thomas-Edison invented incandescent light bulbs.

While CFLs seem harsh on the eyes to many people and may pose disposal problems, they use about 80 percent less energy than incandescents and last up to 10 times as long. Lighting comprises about one-fifth of the typical monthly electrical bill. A typical household could save $10 to $50 a month by switching all incandescent bulbs to CFLs or LEDs, according to industry and consumer sources.

If every American home replaced just one incandescent bulb with one CFL, the corresponding cut in greenhouse gas emissions would equal the amount of pollutants produced by more than 800,000 vehicles, reports Greenzer.com, a shopping site that caters to the environmentally conscious. What’s more, CFL technology is slowly improving: some CFLs now can be used with dimming fixtures.

The utter nonsense of the above snippet notwithstanding, the comment section after the story had some excellent rebuttals to the story, expressing concerns with safe disposal of the mercury inherent in CFLs, CFL's inability to work efficiently as outdoor lamps in cold climates, their inability to work in dimmer-switch controlled fixtures, their inability to throw off natural light, and others.

Then came the reaction by this smarmy circus clown (a/k/a Puddleduck)

We don't always have the option to buy anything we want to use.

Seems like the same people who complain about buying oil from our enemies, are the same ones who want to keep buying more foreign oil and drilling for more oil here, so that they can hang onto their inefficient appliances.

(Yes, I know. It's such a pain pouring that gallon of gas down the back of my refrigerator--ed)

I guess that raising MPG standards for vehicles and raising efficiency standards for A/C, refrigerators, water heaters, etc., was an unnecessary intrusion into our lives and freedom, too. These rules are saving us millions of barrels of oil, per day, that we are not buying from our enemies.

I wonder if "Puddleduck" will make that same speech in the mirror when not so far down the road she has to plug in her government-approved and mandated electric car?

But here's where "Puddleduck" gets my blood REALLY boiling (emphases mine):

Unfortunately, these people are the reason that these kinds of laws have to be passed. Voluntary compliance doesn't seem to work with business or with the American people, even when compliance is in their own best interest.

If you want to try to be a patriot, then why not do something that doesn't take a lot of effort and helps this country with her energy crisis, instead of whining because one of your choices to create more pollution is being taken away from you?

To which I retorted,

We wouldn't HAVE to buy oil from our enemies if environmentalist whackos didn't have politicians in their hip pockets who prevent us from harvesting oil from our own lands (of which we have PLENTY--check out the Bakken).

We wouldn't have to buy mercury-laced CFLs if G.E. didn't have politicians in their back pocket that would MAKE us buy them, so that GE could make a boatload of money, and so that enviro-whackos could feel some sense of smug superiority in having their will imposed on others, and in the process feel like somehow they're going to control warming or cooling of the earth, even though we have no more control over the earth's climate than we do the rising and setting of the sun.

You ascribe authority and omniscience to some almighty governmental bureaucrat or politician who wouldn't know his backside from a hole in the ground as some kind of expert, just because they're elected or work in an EPA office; without any thought as to whether they either know what the heck they're talking about in the first place; or worse yet, whether they're feeding a bunch of BS to mushrooms in the dark so as to line their own pockets and/or prolong their power and control.

But go ahead, sheeple. Keep on trusting Big Brother to determine what is well and best for you, and to wipe your behind when you need it. Never. I mean NEVER--think for yourselves.

Some people's kids.

What Hath Roe v. Wade Wrought?

A legacy of over 50 million lives, snuffed before a breath could be taken.. and sometimes after a breath was taken:

Johnson learned last week that Philadelphia prosecutors believe Gosnell frequently delivered late-term babies alive at his clinic, then severed their spines with scissors, and often stored the fetal bodies — along with staff lunches — in refrigerators at the squalid facility. Tiny baby feet, prosecutors said, were discovered in specimen jars, lined up in a macabre collection.

"Did he do that to mine? Did he stab him in the neck?" Johnson asked at her North Philadelphia home. "Because I was out of it. I don't know what he did to my baby."

Gosnell was charged last week with killing seven babies born alive and with the 2009 death of a 41-year-old refugee after a botched abortion at the clinic, which prosecutors have called a drug mill by day and abortion mill by night. The medical practice alone netted him at least $1.8 million a year, much of it in cash, they say.

But the women going there were merely exercising their freedom of choice, right?

When Davida Johnson walked into Dr. Kermit Gosnell's clinic to get an abortion in 2001, she saw what she described as dazed women sitting in dirty, bloodstained recliners. As the abortion got under way, she had a change of heart — but claims she was forced by the doctor to continue.

"I said, 'I don't want to do this,' and he smacked me. They tied my hands and arms down and gave me more medication," Johnson told The Associated Press.

The AP tries to mitigate the horror of abortion by blaming it on the abortion protesters:

Johnson, then 21, had a 3-year-old daughter when she became pregnant again. She said she first went to Planned Parenthood in downtown Philadelphia but was frightened away by protesters.

"The picketers out there, they just scared me half to death," Johnson, now 30, recalled this week.

Someone sent her to Gosnell's West Philadelphia clinic, at the Women's Medical Society, saying anti-abortion protesters wouldn't be a problem there. She said she paid him $400 cash.

But really, what is the difference between what Gosnell does and what other abortion providers do on a regular basis? It comes down to a difference of only around 6 inches. You see, while most late-term abortion providers wait until the baby is partially delivered up to the neck before inserting a pair of scissors into the baby's skull, Gosnell did the exact procedure, only a minute or two later after the baby was fully delivered.

Either way presents a heinous end; grand larceny committed against human beings of their chance, nay their right to live their lives; the only offense committed by the infant being its mere existence.

Contrary to popular belief, examples of man's inhumanity to man do not exist exclusively on battlefields, gulags, nor death camps. Man's inhumanity to man is illustrated every day of the year, right within our own neighborhoods, right under our noses, to the most innocent and the most vulnerable among us.

As Mother Teresa of Calcutta once said, "It is a very great poverty to decide that a child must die that you might live as you wish."

Is Tim Mahoney a Poster Child for Cluelessness?

My representative, Steve Gottwalt, sent this gem along...

from Rep. Tim Mahoney (DFL- St. Paul) . . .

“Taxes are just a cost of doing business,” Mahoney said. “If you’re going to be ill, you’d rather be ill in Minnesota. We have a more high-service government than in Texas.”

Mr Gottwalt added (emphases mine),

"Mahoney and the DFL like high taxes -- they firmly believe higher levels of government spending result in a higher standard of living. He obviously has not checked the examples around the country. Take Maine and New Hampshire, for instance. One has reduced government; the other has grown it. Guess which one is doing better economically? We need lawmakers willing to embrace the reality that state government is living beyond its means, making promises it cannot keep with money it does not have -- and that does not lead to a better Minnesota. We need lawmakers with the wisdom and foresight to focus on sustainable outcomes, not just more spending. Minnesota's business and regulatory climate places it near dead
last in the nation. That's costing Minnesota jobs, prosperity and revenues.

In light of Illinois' democrat-controlled legislature's near unconscionable decision to raise taxes by 66 percent in a futile attempt to solve its budget woes, it should be quite apparent that the last thing one should do when one finds oneself in a hole is to keep on digging. After all, when the golden-egg laying producers vote with their feet as a reaction to these tax hikes, who will be left to foot the bill? Yet, in an exercise in magical thinking of epic proportions, Illinois democrat governor Pat Quinn praised the 'courageous' decision to raise taxes:

Patrick J. Quinn, the governor of Illinois and a Democrat, praised the decision of state lawmakers — in the wee hours of the morning on Wednesday — to raise the individual income tax rate by about 66 percent as a necessity to avert the state’s “fiscal emergency,” which includes a budget deficit of more than $13 billion, about $8 billion in unpaid bills to social service agencies, pharmacies and others, and a sinking bond rating.

“Our state was careening towards bankruptcy and fiscal insolvency,” Mr. Quinn told reporters, after indicating that he intended to sign the tax increase.

Gee.. and I wonder just how the State of Illinois found itself in fiscal insolvency and bankruptcy to begin with? Could it have been... Oh, I don't know, OUT OF CONTROL SPENDING???

Yet the same candy-man a/k/a Santa Claus mentality that had the effect of literally bringing Illinois to its knees, continues to be touted by clueless DFL legislators like Mahoney as if it's some sort of badge of honor.

DFLers like Mahoney can be compared to a guy sitting in a restaurant who observes folks at the next table begin to keel over from food poisoning. Now, anyone with a modicum of common sense would make it a point to see what they were eating, so as to avoid ordering the same thing, lest he suffer the same fate. Yet the magical thinking that is the hallmark of 'progressive' thought will not allow for such a blatant application of common sense. You see, fiscal train wrecks occur in other states--not ours!

A very wise man once said, "Learn from others' mistakes. You won't live long enough to make them all yourself."

It would appear that Mahoney and Co. have a very long, long way to go in learning that lesson.