"A man can never have too many flashlights"

Whenever I try out the old saw that "a women can never have too many shoes"  on Mrs. Philosopher, she counters that based on my example, "a man can never have too many flashlights." I have to confess that it is true - I have one (or more) for every room in the house and every desk and every vehicle, not to mention special purpose ones like spotlights, lanterns, and penlights.

Lately, I have been reading the LED flashlight reviews, checking out the various on and offline stores, and converting or replacing most of the existing flashlights with LED flashlights. The advantages of LEDs are obvious - much better bulb life and better battery life than incandescent bulbs. In recent years LED prices have gone down and LED flashlights have gotten brighter and started using standard batteries instead of the usually pricey (and unrechargeable) coin cells that used to be typical. LEDs are also showing up in much more than light bulbs, but even sticking to that, traffic lights everywhere are converting to LED as well as many exterior car lights excepting headlights for which LEDs are still not bright enough.

Now here's the big puzzle. How did this major power saving technological improvement occur without Senator Barbara ("Call me dopey") Boxer and some Federal bureaucracy mandating its use like the annoying and poisonous Compact Fluorescent Light bulbs (CFL)? It sure is a puzzlement, but maybe, just maybe, it has to do with LEDs actually being better than incandescent bulbs for many applications and not some just some ecoweenie fantasy.

So why don't they make LED replacements for regular incandescent light bulbs? Actually, if you look around you can find some and they provide similar power savings and much better color rendering than CFLs without the poisonous mercury, but at the moment they are still rather expensive. Hopefully they get down the commodity pricing curve soon before the greentards give us all mercury poisoning.

Now it's dishwasher detergent smuggling!

Lefties are all about ill-conceived programs that are mostly worse than the "problems" they purport to fix (e.g. Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) or the current mortgage mess which in the name of affirmative action forced banks to give mortgages to deadbeats and illegal aliens). However, the mother lode of leftist nostrum comedy gold lies in the the various ecological dicta imposed by the ecoweenie branch of the libtard family which the regular folks always manage to get around. My favorite still is toilet smuggling, but we now have a new candidate - dishwasher detergent smuggling.

SPOKANE, Wash. – The quest for squeaky-clean dishes has turned some law-abiding people in Spokane into dishwater-detergent smugglers. They are bringing Cascade or Electrasol in from out of state because the eco-friendly varieties required under Washington state law don't work as well. Spokane County became the launch pad last July for the nation's strictest ban on dishwasher detergent made with phosphates, a measure aimed at reducing water pollution. The ban will be expanded statewide in July 2010, the same time similar laws take effect in several other states.

But it's not easy to get sparkling dishes when you go green.

Many people were shocked to find that products like Seventh Generation, Ecover and Trader Joe's left their dishes encrusted with food, smeared with grease and too gross to use without rewashing them by hand. The culprit was hard water, which is mineral-rich and resistant to soap.

As a result, there has been a quiet rush of Spokane-area shoppers heading east on Interstate 90 into Idaho in search of old-school suds.

Real estate agent Patti Marcotte of Spokane stocks up on detergent at a Costco in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, and doesn't care who knows it.

"Yes, I am a smuggler," she said. "I'm taking my chances because dirty dishes I cannot live with."

There's more hilarity by following the link, but if the ecoweenies get the ban imposed everywhere, what can the average person do besides rewashing by hand?

For his part, Beck has taken to washing his dishes on his machine's pots-and-pans cycle, which takes longer and uses five gallons more water. Beck wonders if that isn't as tough on the environment as phosphates.

"How much is this really costing us?" Beck said. "Aren't we transferring the environmental consequences to something else?"

Welcome to liberal land where goofy gestures prevail. As for me, my latest get rich quick scheme is to fill up a storage unit with dishwasher detergent - I can sell it along with the incandescent light bulbs I have tucked away. By the way, that investment is looking mighty good since compact fluorescent bulbs (CFL) are still crap.

First it was toilets, now it's light bulbs

The last time the Donks controlled Congress we got the Gore-Toilet (the wimp flusher that saved no water because it required extra flushes and led to toilet smuggling). Well, the Donks are back in control of Congress and guess what? Now it's Gore-bulbs:

You know the energy bill that Congress passed and President Bush signed into law today? Tucked into the legislation is a provision that mandates the phase-out of the 125-year-old incandescent bulb in the next four to 12 years in favor of a new generation of trendy, supposedly energy-efficient Gorebulbs.

No one bothered to check the fine print at the White House?

These feel-good dim bulbs give you crappy lighting, don’t live up to their longevity promises, and are a pain in the neck to dispose of–but they sure make enviro-nitwits and Big Greenie water-carriers feel good about themselves.

I tried the compact fluorescents some years back because I have some ceiling fixtures in the out buildings whose bulbs are a pain to change and I liked the idea of 5-year life. Well, despite the package claims they were noticeably dimmer than incandescents and lasted no longer. When they burned out, I threw them in the trash like I and 99% of the citizenry do with all burned out fluorescents. Now we're supposed to save them for some sort of hazardous waste disposal. Sounds like a heck of a plan to me.

Still there is some good news. Most global warming profiteering is for the swells like Al Gore, but here's a way for the little guy to cash in. I'm just going to clear some space and stock up with cases of incandescents. I'll see ya on eBay in a few years.