Give a Democrat your lightbulb and he will take your car

 

The State of New York is run by green energy extremists who hate your use of natural gas, same as in California and Washington

First they came for your toilets, dishwashers, and clothes washers, and you said nothing.

Then they came for your coal, and you said nothing.

Then they came for your lightbulbs, and you said nothing.

 

Fred Upton, Republican chucklehead, MI-6, waits until the very last hours of the Trump administration to declare: "But it is time to say: Enough is enough”

What courage! What principle! What restraint!

Upton joined nine other Republicans in the US House, including my own freshman congressman Peter Meijer, Republican chucklehead, MI-3, and all the Democrats, 222 of them, to impeach Trump a second time 232-197. Four Republicans did not vote.

The roll call is here. Upton is quoted here.

Upton, 67, has spent his life as a useless heir to a Whirlpool fortune estimated under $10 million. Once an aspiring journalist with a B.A. in journalism, instead he became a staffer to the libertarian Republican Representative David Stockman in the late 1970s and followed him to OMB under Reagan in the early 1980s. He first ran for Congress in 1986, eleven years after graduating from the U of M. He has been a congressional pest ever since, aren't they all?, who has inflicted on the American people such things as lightbulb bans, eventually styling himself as a moderate.

Meijer, now 33, is embarking on a similar trajectory, but with a gappy resume. Reportedly worth $50 million from the Meijer grocery store chain, Meijer has landed in Congress also after a decade of searching for himself.

Meijer got in to West Point but ignominiously dropped out after one year, became an Army Reservist, and went to Columbia in 2008 where he salvaged himself with a B.A. in anthropology by 2012. He interrupted this period at Columbia with service in Iraq in 2010-2011 as a sergeant. Post graduation in 2012 he served with an NGO 2013-2015. He took a wife in 2016, and an MBA from NYU, apparently 2016-2017. Then there was a brief stint in 2018 with Ilitch Holdings of billionaire family fame as an "analyst" which ended in January 2019. When Justin Amash left the Republican Party in July 2019, Meijer announced his candidacy.

Just as Upton took up the occasion of the Capitol attack as a moment of historic gravitas which inspired him to rise to impeach Trump, Meijer similarly has over-dramatized it by relating it to the drama of his "combat" experience as an intelligence advisor in Iraq (insert smirk here). He also laughably pondered out loud the danger those in the order of presidential succession were in from the trespassers on January 6. He reminds one of no one so much as the ex-bartender become US Representative, AOC, who has similarly made it a point to appear distraught and blow everything completely out of proportion to the reality in keeping with her modus operandi everywhere. Think of red-lipsticked Alexandria at the border fence a while ago, clad in white, head in her hands, weeping, sporting her $600 wristwatch.

The lefty Michael Tracey has framed such over-the-top demonstrativeness as "unhinged threat inflation" in recent days, which is exactly what we're being subjected to for demagogic purposes. The manipulation of the American people is nothing new, it's just that these young people are probably less aware of it as a technique than they are themselves victims and mimickers of the technique.

No so with Upton. He is the old hand who is too grown up and knowing for this, who knows just when to say just enough in order to receive huzzahs as a statesman instead of the harangues for the seat-warmer he is in reality. 

Somehow the American people are content to let such people put us $28 trillion in debt. We chuckleheads have the chuckleheads we deserve.

Trump replaces American civilization with trivialization

Whirlpool deletes offensive, bigoted ad contrasting successful POC with loser whites

The company that once gave lots of blacks decent middle class jobs in Benton Harbor, Michigan, but ended all that in favor of cheaper POC labor abroad.

Liberal Republican Fred "Light Bulb" Upton is their golden cuck, grandson of the founder of the company and member of Congress continuously since first elected in 1986.

 

Department of Energy reverses Obama administration overreach on lightbulb rules

Fred Upton's damn lightbulb law remains on the books, of course, but at least the Trump administration is calling a halt to making all lightbulbs even more expensive than they already are because of it.

My wasteful, liberal neighbors, but I repeat myself, here in Michigan routinely leave all their outdoor lights on all day as well as all night, but I have to pay more and more for energy efficiency. They also leave their garage doors wide open most days in winter.

Freedom which wastes cents makes no sense.

Energy Department Moves to Roll Back Light-Bulb Restriction:

A final rule set to be published in the Federal Register on Thursday allows the continued sale of four types of incandescent and halogen light bulbs: three-way lights, recessed can lights, candle-shaped lights used in chandeliers and round bulbs often found above bathroom mirrors. The rule is expected to be challenged in court.

The Obama administration, just as it was winding down, published a rule that eliminated exemptions that were part of the 2007 law. Under the Obama rule, the four types of light bulbs would be subject to the efficiency standards set to take effect on Jan. 1, 2020.

The Trump administration’s rule restores exemptions granted to the four products. The Energy Department said the Obama administration’s decision was “not consistent with the best reading of the statute.”

The department also said it doesn’t intend to move forward with new standards to improve the efficiency of the pear-shaped light bulbs called general service incandescent lamps. The tighter standards are “not economically justified,” according to the proposal, which is open for a 60-day comment period.

Wow, pro-amnesty Zuckerberg funded fwd dot us is running an ad on Rush Limbaugh's show asking me to thank Fred Upton for protecting the dreamers

They're taking the battle to the enemy, folks.

Republican turncoat Fred "lightbulb" Upton represents MI-6.

Campaign finance reform for the people

Under an expanded US House of Representatives, wouldn't current campaign finance laws still be a problem?

Well, duh.

But there is a simple solution.

Your man or woman in Congress should represent YOU, not Freedom Works, The Club for Growth, People for the American Way, Planned Parenthood or any other national organization, including his or her own political party. It is not right that the RNC collects contributions for Kevin Yoder in Kansas-3 and spends them on the US House race of Maria Elvira Salazar in Florida-27.

Your representative should represent YOU, and the money that elects him or her should represent you, too, and therefore all campaign contributions must come from his or her congressional district, from people and businesses actually domiciled within district boundaries. That's it. No other limits.

Nancy Pelosi can raise all the money she wants from tuna companies domiciled in her district who exploit workers on Pacific islands. Let the actual residents of her (much reduced in size) district decide if they're still OK with that. And Fred Upton of Whirlpool fortune fame in Michigan can find out for himself if his much reduced number of constituents are OK with making their lightbulbs more expensive or unobtainable.

Power to the people.

GE's Obama champion Jeff Immelt took its bonds from AAA to one notch above junk, just like its products

From the story here, which never once mentions the problem of declining product quality:

It’s a bad day for a CEO when he announces he’s retiring and the stock goes up. That was Jeff Immelt’s day on June 12, 2017. ... Its bonds, rated triple-A when Immelt became chief, are now rated five tiers lower at A2 and trade at prices more consistent with a Baa rating, one notch above junk.

Did Immelt run GE into the ground?

Look no further than its light bulb business. While GE-branded lightbulbs shifted to compact-fluorescent technology and then to LED with big promises of longevity which never panned out (trust me, I have BAGS FULL of expensive, failed examples of each), it somehow stopped knowing how to make incandescent lightbulbs which worked, too.

I discovered this with its appliance bulbs. A couple of years ago I had to replace an oven bulb after a few years of service from the original one. None of the GE replacement bulbs lasted more than a day. When I went online I discovered the problem wasn't mine alone. Customers all over the country were having the same problem.

I've had a similar experience with another GE appliance component: gas oven igniters. The OEM part lasted just six years. The OEM replacement? Less than two.

Additionally, GE's long-term care insurance business appears to be tracking the same history. It sold off some of that business not long after 911, and what business it has kept in that line has been in the (bad) news lately as well. GE over-promised on some plans it issued and undercharged for them, not realizing that claims would exceed expectations, making the plans unprofitable. I'm sure that's unsettling to policy holders who trusted GE. How long before the long-term care plans of older customers stop working altogether?

And is it just a coincidence that the Fukushima nuclear reactors were of GE design?

Yeah, sure. Just a coincidence.

The unending fascination of Sarah Palin for little Democrat minds

Dunderhead Democrat Party hack William Daley is stuck on stupid.

Here he is in full flutter in WaPo, like a moth drawn to a lightbulb, typing "The GOP’s dysfunction all started with Sarah Palin". It proves nothing but that it takes a dunderhead to know a dunderhead. The GOP has failed, he says, to distance itself from this simpleton who flunked Newspapers 101, and her ilk. Reading it one wonders when Democrats will distance themselves from ignoramuses like Bill Daley, but then you realize they're all ignoramuses. Where would they go?

Certainly not Chicago.  

Bill Daley, it must remembered, comes from the same Democrat family which presided over the decades long ruination of the finances of that once great city, and with it of the state. The place is now so bankrupt it can't even pay lottery winners. Those who can flee the state, do. Illinois ranks first in America for out-migration in 2014. These nincompoop Daleys are the same people who seriously thought they could afford to host the Summer Olympics next year, forgetting how all those $100,000+ pensions for unionized teachers can really add up. As it is Chicago's bonds have this year achieved junk status, despite the highest sales taxes in the nation and the highest property taxes of any state, save New Jersey. The place is teetering on the edge of bankruptcy because of perennially spendthrift Democrats.

In charge of the Department of Commerce under Bill Clinton, Bill Daley long ago proved his own incompetence. The man couldn't even manage to find a staffer at the Bureau of Economic Analysis to give him the correct figure for year 1900 gross domestic product in a 1999 speech commemorating the invention of the metric under FDR. Daley was only off by an order of magnitude and fifty years at the time, saying the year 1900 $20 billion economy was actually $300 billion in size, a level which it did not reach . . . until 1950! Bill Daley only ran the place. You'd think he could at least get its monthly claim to headline fame right.

But Democrats have good reason to forget the size of things, especially GDP. After all under them it took eleven long years to restore the 1929 $100 billion economy back to its size, in 1940. And presently the chief Democrat holding a veto pen in one hand and a copy of Rules for Radicals in the other is on schedule to produce the very worst GDP record since that Great Depression.

At least Sarah Palin has learned a few things along the way since her quixotic candidacy, for example rejecting the appropriateness of bailouts and crony capitalism. Democrats on the other hand have learned nothing, and only keep repeating the mistakes of the past.

Government Just Made Two Things You Liked Obsolete: Your Health Insurance And The Lightbulb

Tim Carney, here, says the government ban on the traditional lightbulb is a case of crony capitalism in which industry persuaded government to help it increase energy efficiencies profits by eliminating the bulbs which consumers preferred in order to give them bulbs they didn't want but which cost a lot more, boosting profits they couldn't otherwise make.

You know, just like ObamaCare gives you coverages you neither want nor need and makes your insurance much more expensive than it used to be, and forces everyone to buy it. Insurance companies are happy to get all the new customers, and all the extra profits.

Big business is the enemy of Americans, and of capitalism. Unfortunately, so is the government.

Sen. Marco Rubio Avoids Talking About Defacto Amnesty On Rush Limbaugh

And Rush avoided bringing up the subject. All Rubio said was that we have "an existing problem":

Look, I think there's this false argument that's been advanced by the left that conservatism and Republicans are anti-immigrant and anti-immigration. And we're not. Never have been. 

On the contrary, we are pro-legal immigration. And we recognize that our legal immigration system needs to be reformed. We also recognize, because conservatism's always been about common sense, that we do have an existing problem that needs to be dealt with in the best way possible.

But it came up on Mark Levin's show, as Washington Watcher noted at VDare, here:

In promoting his amnesty on the Mark Levin show last week, Rubio came up with what appeared to Levin to be a novel argument. Rubio claimed that by not enforcing the law, we currently have a “de facto amnesty”—which will continue unless we support his plan, which involves illegals supposedly paying a fine, community service, learning English and various other bits [of] unenforceable window-dressing. Levin, who has been solid on immigration in the past (and, it should be noted, has not come out in support of Rubio’s amnesty), found this argument compelling. He noted:

"We have de facto amnesty right now. When he said it, it set a light bulb off. Maybe I am a little slow. I said, ‘Well he’s right, we do have de facto amnesty.’ Which is exactly why Obama wants to really do nothing." . . . 

[D]espite Mark Levin’s “light bulb” moment, this argument is not novel. Thus in 2007, John McCain said "For us to do nothing is silent and de facto amnesty."  [GOP Candidates Shy Away From Bush, by Glen Johnson, Associated Press, June 6, 2007]  Even Barack Obama has sold amnesty as a punishment . . ..

It's clear Sen. Rubio is sensitive to negative feedback. He's fine tuning the message for the skulls full of mush out there in order to build the case for the Senate Gang of Eight amnesty plan. But as Washington Watcher says in his article, only the first of several reasons the status quo is preferable is that an outright amnesty will trigger a deluge of illegal immigration to take advantage of it.

The country is already full of unassimilated foreigners, so, pace Sen. Rubio, they represent the reason for conservatives to be against more legal immigration, not just the illegal kind. The law and the law-abiding have been the victims in this charade, not the illegals, and it is they who need to pay. It's about time so-called conservatives started saying so instead of cooking up compromises with the devil.

What's The Difference Between A Light Bulb And A Rear End?

You can unscrew a lightbulb.

How Many Gay Sailors Does It Take To Screw In A Light Bulb?

One. However, it takes a whole emergency room to get it out.