I'm shocked! The Germans are stocking up on those nasty incandescent light bulbs!

Germans Hoarding Traditional Light Bulbs:

As the Sept. 1 deadline for the implementation of the first phase of the EU's ban on incandescent light bulbs approaches, shoppers, retailers and even museums are hoarding the precious wares -- and helping the manufacturers make a bundle.

The EU ban, adopted in March, calls for the gradual replacement of traditional light bulbs with supposedly more energy-efficient compact fluorescent bulbs (CFL). The first to go, on Sept. 1, will be 100-watt bulbs. Bulbs of other wattages will then gradually fall under the ban, which is expected to cover all such bulbs by Sept. 1, 2012 (see graphic below).

Hardware stores and home-improvement chains in Germany are seeing massive increases in the sales of the traditional bulbs. Obi reports a 27 percent growth in sales over the same period a year ago. Hornbach has seen its frosted-glass light bulb sales increase by 40-112 percent. When it comes to 100-watt bulbs, Max Bahr has seen an 80 percent jump in sales, while the figure has been 150 percent for its competitor Praktiker.

"It's unbelievable what is happening," says Werner Wiesner, the head of Megaman, a manufacturer of energy-saving bulbs. Wiesner recounts a story of how one of his field representatives recently saw a man in a hardware store with a shopping cart full of light bulbs of all types worth more than €200 ($285). "That's enough for the next 20 years."

Not when you are going to sell the incandescent bulbs on eBay. Speaking of which, have you heard how the ecoweenies banned the inhalers used by asthmatics and replaced them with "earth friendly" substitutes that don't work and are more expensive? You can apparently still buy the old fashioned kind of inhalers that work on eBay.

Obama gets a nice old fashioned tea party welcome in Raleigh

Our national disgrace, Barack Obama, was in Raleigh yesterday flogging Obamacare and was greeted by throngs of fervent tea partiers. My vote for favorite sign is this one with a pithy summary of Obamacare:

Señor Citizens Get FREE Healthcare. Senior Citizens Can Drop Dead!

Second prize goes to this one:

Not a protester in the 60's. Now a protester in MY 60's!

Henry Louis Gates, Jr. - another affirmative action mediocrity

I really like ole Henry Gates' job description:

Gates said in a phone interview from his other home in Martha’s Vineyard. “If he apologizes sincerely, I am willing to forgive him. And if he admits his error, I am willing to educate him about the history of racism in America and the issue of racial profiling … That’s what I do for a living.”

Translation: Gates is an affirmative action hack who along with his fellow academic travelers make good coin off white liberal guilt in institutions of "higher learning" across the USA with a pretense at scholarship. Roger Kimball elaborates:

Two points. The first cannot be properly investigated in the present climate of racial hypersensitivity, so I bequeath it to a future historian of American culture. You can scarcely find a mention of Henry Louis Gates, Jr. that does not assure you of his eminence and scholarly distinction. Don’t believe it. To call him second rate is a calumny upon respectable mediocrity. He is a desperately pedestrian scholar who, except for the accident of skin color, would be lucky to be teaching at the University of Southern North Dakota, Hoople. Instead he is the Yada-yada-yada Professor of racial grievance &c &c at Harvard. Some future anthropologist will set the record straight.

The second point concerns Gates’s favorite (really his only) intellectual gambit: playing the race card. His scholarship is concerned with nothing else, and he has just demonstrated that his academic interests are all of a piece with his amour propre. Gates claims to want to push beyond racialism, but his every move, personal as well as intellectual, depends upon and reinforces it.

I would also observe that a more pernicious effect of  "academics" like Gates is the crop of students they produce that claim a college education after sitting about whining for four years. No wonder the Obamas like him.