By Debbie Schlussel
Well, it didn’t say that exactly. But in the wake of the law Bush signed mandating the end of production of conventional, incandescent bulbs, a USA Today cover story shows that most Americans are resistent to CFLs. It is the lifestyle of a distinct, tiny minority shoved on the majority which doesn’t believe in it.
Only 11% of Americans own CFL bulbs, and that reminds me of the claimed figure by gay activists than 10% of Americans are gay. The number is phony and highly exaggerated. But for the sake of argument, let’s say it’s true. That’s the essentially the same percentage as those in America who believe in the expensive, hazardous CFL ownership, since only 11% own them. How would you feel about a law that made you start buying gay sex toys, chains, and leather whips or some other product that is, right now, the domain of a small minority in American society? The government is forcing you to adopt an extremist lifestyle of 11% of the people? CFL bulbs today, something else tomorrow.

The marketplace is supposed to decide which products–BetaMax and HD DVD players–die, and which–VCRs and ultimately Blu-Ray–succeed, NOT the government. Such industrial policy is the hallmark of Socialist and Communist societies, not a capitalist democracy, like ours is supposed to be.
And, according to USA Today, here are some of the many problems Americans have with CFLs:

* They don’t start out at full brightness. The bulbs can take up to a minute to reach full glow. That took a while for Kay Drey of St. Louis to get used to. “It was a little alarming at first,” she says, “but then they brightened up.”
* They’re temperature-sensitive. If it gets much below 30 degrees, “they won’t start up very quickly,” Samla says. Because the phosphor in CFL bulbs that emits light takes awhile to warm up, the bulbs “like to be a little warmer. But if you get them too hot, they don’t like that. They love 77 degrees: office temperature.”
CFL bulbs also burn out quicker if they’re in a hot environment such as inside a light fixture, says Noah Horowitz, a scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council: “If you put it in an enclosed fixture, maybe it will last 3,000 or 5,000 hours, not 10,000.” . . .
* One size does not fit all. The more light a CFL puts out, the bigger it must be. The CFL equivalent of a 60-watt bulb is tiny. The 120-watt equivalent is bigger and won’t fit in many lamps and fixtures.
That’s a problem for Drey, 74, whose house is about as old as she is. “I have old lamps, so (CFL bulbs) don’t fit everywhere. . . .”
* Many CFL bulbs don’t work well with dimmer switches and three-way light fixtures. A few will work, but they’re hard to find. “If you put a regular CFL on a dimmer, in some cases it will hum and snap; it won’t live as long, and it won’t dim,” Horowitz says.
When used with a dimmer switch, CFL bulbs typically will dim to about 20% of their full intensity and then cut out. They also must be turned on at a high setting and then dimmed, says Philip Scarbro, consumer division director at Energy Federation Incorporated, a group that promotes conservation.
When used in a three-way light fixture, many CFL bulbs will pop, hiss and buzz. There are a few three-way CFL bulbs, but they’re tough to find and so big they do not fit in many lamps. Such bulbs often come with adaptors to lengthen the lamp’s harp so the bulb will fit.
* They’re still not widely available. Most supermarkets carry a limited supply of CFL bulbs. For more variety, buyers must go to a hardware store or a larger retailer such as Home Depot or Wal-Mart. . . .
For many consumers, the reluctance to use CFLs comes down to the dingy light they can emit and questions about their safety. . . .
Amateur photographer Eric Chan of Belmont, Mass.:
“I don’t like the quality” of CFL bulbs, Chan says. “As a photographer who produces my own color prints, I am unusually picky about how these prints ought to look. They look fine under daylight, incandescent and halogen bulbs but appear mediocre in comparison when lit by CFL bulbs.”

And, of course, there are the problems connected with CFL bulbs’ hazardous quality. They contain mercury, and there’s no easy recycling system.
The law mandating the end of conventional bulbs won’t stop a huge black market for them. I’ll be the first in line.
And, no surprise, the legislation was orchestrated by lobbyists for companies like General Electric, which want to increase lightbulb profits. Remember their old ad, “GE: We Bring Good Things To Life.” Boy, is that a lie, considering the end to incandescent bulbs.
I don’t want to live the lifestyle of the minority gay community in America. Why does the government get to tell me to live the lifestyle of the minority Laurie David-Sheryl Crow-Ed Begley, Jr. community in America?
Whips and chains and CFL bulbs.
Read more about the buzzkill called CFL.

By Debbie Schlussel
Wow. I never thought this would happen. Amazingly, the People’s Republic of the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in the no-closet city, San Francisco, has cleared the way for enforcement of Arizona’s anti-illegal alien law.
Since a three-judge panel of the court refused to grant an injunction stopping enforcement of the law, beginning Saturday Airzona can shut down businesses for knowingly hiring illegal aliens.
That’s great news and it’s significant because, heretofore, such laws have been tied up in litigation or held to be illegal in various federal courts around the country.
This is a turning point. Things are finally changing. Although it’s only a three-judge panel, that this ruling came out of the Ninth Circuit is significant. That’s the same court that has issued most of the absurd opinions you’ve heard on Church-state issues, the Pledge of Allegiance, a WWII memorial on a hill featuring a Cross, etc. It’s also the same court that repeatedly issues boneheaded far left opinions on a cornucopia of other issues.

There Will Be Less of This in Arizona
More:

An appeals court’s decision Thursday against temporarily putting on hold Arizona’s employer sanctions law clears the way for prosecutors to begin bringing cases against businesses that knowingly hire illegal immigrants.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals denied an injunction request made by business groups that are challenging the law and appealing a lower court’s decision that upheld the law. The groups sought to block the law while their case was under appeal.
“This removes what may have been a potential obstacle,” said Roger Hall, an attorney representing 10 of Arizona’s 15 county prosecutors in the case.
The law, intended to weaken the economic incentive for immigrants to sneak across the border, took effect Jan. 1 but prosecutors agreed to not file any cases before March 1 to allow enough time for lawyers to file appeals.
It prohibits businesses from knowingly hiring illegal immigrants and suspends or revokes business license penalties for violators.

Where The ICE Princess, Julie L. Myers, won’t do her job, now Arizonans can expand their assumption of that arena.

By Debbie Schlussel
We all know there are Hezbollah terrorist cells in America. Or you should know if you don’t. I can even tell you the restaurants in Dearbornistan where they meet and organize. And I can tell you the names of some of the terrorist groups’ agents here in America.
But the FBI won’t admit it. Intstead, at a counterterrorism conference in the UK, FBI Assistant Director for Counterterrorism Joseph Billy said he has intelligence showing that Hezbollah operatives “might” be here. Might? They’re here. There’s a reason the FBI Detroit office has a full-time Hezbollah guy, Special Agent Mark Green. Hint: It’s not because there “might” be Hezbollah terrorist cells here.
But the FBI–more concerned with being on the right side of things with Muslims than on the right side of things with American security–won’t admit there are Hezbollah terrorist cells because they’re wimps and afraid of Arab Muslim whining. Remember post-9/11 when Newsweek reported on a Michigan State Police report that there are terrorist cells in Dearbornistan?

After the report came out, there immediately erupted the predictable, on-cue histrionics and conniptions of prominent Detroit Muslims like Osama Siblani–publisher of the Arab American News and one of Hezbollah’s top American operatives. Then, the Michigan State Police apologized and recanted its factual report. The terrorist cells didn’t go away from the Detroit area with the absurd recantation. And they’re still here and multiplied.
The only thing that’s multiplied with them is the level of PC butt-kissing by the FBI’s top people to the giant rear end of the Muslim community here in America.
Hey Mr. Billy, you need to add “goat” to the end of your name. Or just change it altogether to Sgt. Schultz.

By Debbie Schlussel
. . . Congrats, America, we only have control of 30% of Afghanistan. The rest is controlled by tribes very friendly to the Taliban and Al-Qaeda:

The Afghan government under President Hamid Karzai controls just 30 percent of the country, the top U.S. intelligence official said Wednesday.
National Intelligence Director Michael McConnell told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the resurgent Taliban controls 10 percent to 11 percent of the country and Karzai’s government controls 30 percent to 31 percent. But more than six years after the U.S. invasion to oust the Taliban and establish a stable central government, the majority of Afghanistan’s population remains under local tribal control, he said. . . .

These Two Failed Big-Time in Afghanistan

“The tribal areas remain largely ungovernable and, as such, they will continue to provide vital sanctuary to al-Qaida, the Taliban and regional extremism more broadly.”

Score another “Mission Accomplished” for George W. Heckuva Job, Bushie.
More American soldiers will die there until we drop bombs and show we mean business (. . . or leave). Just staying there to go through the motions and make nice to extremely barbaric people accomplishes nothing.
Happy poppy growing season.

By Debbie Schlussel
And it’s not just any skank. It’s a pregnant skank.
One question: Why? Answer?: Because it’s there?
Aww. “I’ll never wash my baby bump again.”

Spring Training: Detroit Tiger Curtis Granderson Signs Womb of Janis King

By Debbie Schlussel
Just a reminder. I’m doing my regular weekly appearance on “The Jaz McKay Show” on KNZR 1560-AM in Bakersfield, at 1:00 p.m. Pacific/4:00 p.m. Eastern. I’m on every Thursday at that time. I love doing this show. The great Jaz is a smart, fun, entertaining conservative. Listen Live.

By Debbie Schlussel
**** SCROLL DOWN FOR UPDATE ****
So, let me get this straight:
The head of one of Boston’s biggest mosques in Boston is convicted of visa fraud. He lied to American immigration officials–five counts of lying. But, he won’t serve a day in jail. And the U.S. might not deport him. HUH?!
Call it, “Nada Nadim Prouty, the Sequel” or “America: Desperate But Not Serious”:

A local imam plans to plead guilty to visa fraud charges in a plea deal with federal prosecutors that would give him probation.
Muhammad Masood, a citizen of Pakistan, is the former spiritual leader of the Islamic Center of New England’s Sharon mosque. His lawyer says Masood is expected to plead guilty today to five charges of making false statements to immigration officials.

A joint recommendation from Masood’s attorney and prosecutors calls for him to receive three years of probation, but it is unclear whether Masood‚Äôs guilty plea will result in his deportation.
The arrest of Masood and another local imam on visa fraud charges in November 2006 prompted an outcry from the Muslim community.

Hmmm . . . is your community has a loud enough “outcry,” anything is possible. What a country.
Thanks to reader Chip for sending this absurdity.
**** More on this phony Masood. He overstayed a student visa since 1991. To apply for any new visa, he was required to return to Pakistan for two years before re-entry and/or re-application for a new visa into the country. But instead, he stayed here and then lied to ICE officials, telling them that he returned to Pakistan and then was ushered back into the U.S. by “men in black” who bypassed Customs. Riiight:

In a 2003 immigration interview for a religious-worker visa, Imam Masood explained his re-entry with an account that some who have read the affidavit have dubbed the “men in black” story, a reference to the shadowy agents who show up in pop-culture conspiracy theories.
Imam Masood told immigration agents that two men he didn‚Äôt know helped him onto his 1993 flight from Islamabad – after they took his passport – and that two white Americans in business suits with no badges met him at the baggage claim at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York. He said that duo “appeared to know the immigration officers” and escorted him through an unmarked door so he didn‚Äôt have to go through customs.
The imam acknowledged that he had no proof of his account. According to the affidavit, there are no State Department or Customs records of any departure or return after 1990.
Instead of leaving the U.S., according to the criminal affidavit, Imam Masood filed for a leave of absence from BU and worked as a security guard and parking-garage attendant, among other jobs. He also got a couple of traffic tickets.
He continued to live in BU graduate housing with his wife, Rehana, and their children, and he re-enrolled at BU in 1992, bought a car and was with his wife at the hospital when their youngest child was born, the affidavit says.
Some longtime Islamic Center members say Imam Masood was active with campus Muslim groups and Boston-area mosques through the mid-1990s, while his wife worked part-time. (According to the government affidavit, he also claimed to be imam at the Worcester mosque from 1993 to 1997.)
Terminated at BU in 1995 for a lack of academic work, he kept a campus apartment by claiming that he was enrolled. According to the affidavit, the family was still living in BU’s Warren Hall when the Islamic Center hired him as a religious-school teacher in 1996. (Imam Masood eventually resumed his studies and got a master’s degree from BU in 2005.)

That this criminal and liar gets to stay here is nauseating. Well, when you are a prominent Muslim religious leader, all bets are off.
Guh-reat job, U.S. Government. Any other plea deals we need to know about? Sadly, there are so many like this.
**** UPDATE, 2/29/08: Forgot to mention that Miss Kelly is a very important, Boston-based site that has been following this story and has excellent coverage. ****

By Debbie Schlussel
I saved this one from over the weekend, when it ran on the front page of the Saturday Wall Street Journal. (Since it’s only available to subscribers, the link is to another site that reprinted it.)
After wasting at least $84 millionon a “virtual fence,” the project is rife with problems and malfunctions. Yet Michael “Serpenthead” Chertoff “took delivery,” which means he accepts the problems and the fence “as is.” And he has no plans to have any more virtual fences after this . . . because it’s a failure.
As you read below about the problems with this phony border fence, their significance is great, as both Hillary Rodham Cankles Clinton and Barack Hussein Obama think a “virtual fence” is the way to go:

The government yesterday officially unveiled its $20
million “virtual fence,” touted for months as one of the most
effective ways to secure America’s leaky U.S.-Mexico border.

Barack’s Virtual Border Fence a Flop

But the problems that have plagued the high-tech barrier mean that the fence’s first 28 miles will also likely be its last. The Department of Homeland Security now says it doesn’t plan to replicate the Boeing Co. initiative anywhere else. A spokeswoman says there are no plans to expand the project beyond its first phase, although Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff says “some elements” of the project may be used in other locations.
The effective mothballing of the concept is a setback for the
government’s border-protection efforts, an embarrassment for
politicians backing the idea of an electronic fence and a blow to
Boeing, the project’s designer. It will also do little to settle the
fractious politics of immigration, which continue to reverberate
around the campaign trail.
The virtual fence, called Project 28, came up during Thursday’s debate in Austin, Texas, when both Democratic presidential candidates
expressed their support for a high-tech alternative to the federal
government’s construction of a 12-foot-tall physical fence. That
project, begun last year, has elicited outcry from Texas property
owners and local officials.
“Let’s deploy more technology and personnel, instead of the physical
barrier,” said New York Sen. Hillary Clinton. Barack Obama of Illinois agreed: “There may be areas where it makes sense to have some fencing. But for the most part, having [the] border patrolled, surveillance,deploying effective technology, that’s going to be the better approach.” Both senators had earlier voted for legislation mandating 700 miles of physical fence in sections of California, Arizona and Texas. . . .
Project 28 was based on off-the-shelf technology tied together by
Boeing. Cameras and radar mounted atop 98-foot towers would pick out
smugglers and illegal immigrants from miles away, allowing fewer
agents to patrol a given stretch of border. Command centers and mobile communications systems were also part of the contract.
But getting all these elements to work together harmoniously has
proven problematic. Project 28’s technology problems included software integration issues and difficulty getting the towers’ cameras to synch with the radar systems. The radar had trouble identifying objects amid desert scrub and trees. Rain posed problems to the surveillance systems, and concerns persist that the towers are tempting targets for increasingly well-armed drug gangs looking to shut down the system. . . .
Last month during a tour, customs and border-patrol officials showed
Attorney General Michael Mukasey the rugged terrain that Project 28
oversees. A Homeland Security Blackhawk helicopter soared above a vast expanse of breathtaking jagged desert peaks, amid which Project 28 towers stood their sentinel watch over the border. “Admittedly, we
gave Boeing some of the roughest parts of the border to work with,” a
border-patrol official told the attorney general, explaining what he
said were many problems the system had encountered.
In August, Boeing replaced the manager of Project 28. For months,
Boeing and Homeland Security wouldn’t say when the work was going to be complete. In early December, the government said it was closing in
on taking delivery. But that same month, the government gave Boeing another $64 million contract to fix the “common operating picture,” which lets agents in vehicles see imagery from the towers’ surveillance systems. Yesterday’s announcement marked the final end of the testing period.
Homeland Security officials took possession of the system over the objections of Congress, which has been critical of the department and of Boeing for the problems that have bedeviled the program. “We are no safer and out millions of dollars,” said Democratic Pennsylvania Congressman Christopher Carney, oversight chairman in the House Homeland Security committee. “We were led to believe that this was going to be a Beta test for a virtual fence for the border. Certainly this is not the force multiplier it was supposed to be.”

And it’s not the solution to our border problems. A physical fence, profiling, tougher immigration enforcment, and limits on Muslim immigration to America are. Don’t expect any Beta tests on those . . . ever.

By Debbie Schlussel
Many readers over the last couple of years have been sending me videos of Englishman Pat Condell. Please stop. I have never posted Mr. Condell’s work on Islam, which you’d think I agree with. I do. But here’s why I won’t glorify the work of Condell by posting it to my readers:
Pat Condell is no more than a more affable version of Christopher Hitchens. Like Hitchens, he hates all religions and sees them as morally equivalent to Islam. He’s said exactly that. And, more important, Condell is anti-Israel, virulently so. He’s among the many anti-Semites who claim they “love the Jews” but want Jews out of Israel. Americans fall in love with anyone with an English accent, no matter how backward his information is, and Pat Condell is Exhibit A of that. His sophistries about Jews, Israel, and Jerusalem are telling in their ignorance.

Pat Condell
In a monologue video on the Jews, Condell starts out with the phony premise that he loves the Jews. But then he does a bait-and-switch that shows he actually hates them as much as the Muslims do. Condell says that the Jews have as much right to Germany as they do Israel. Wrong. He says there has never been a Jewish presence in Jerusalem and that it has always been a Muslim Arab city. Oh, really? I suppose the men who were kings over it and built the temple were King “Dawud” and King “Suleiman.” Puh-leeze. Jerusalem has always been a Jewish city. There has always been a Jewish presence there. Read my column, “Whose Jerusalem?” which answers the BS Condell spews on that issue.
Yet, the wholly wrong Condell has bought into the Arab Muslim propaganda that Israel was only carved out for the Jews as a response to the Holocaust and the rest of their propaganda.
If you jump all over the utterances of Pat Condell merely because you think he says the right things about Islam, you must ask yourself if you can accept his call for the Jews to be yanked out of Israel. His position and the HAMAS position are identical.
Is that your position?
Next time you watch the words of Pat Condell, be more of a critical thinker. He gets it completely wrong on Jews and Israel and religion in general. And, therefore, you can’t listen to him on much of anything else, no matter how right he may be about the Islam he wants to enable in Israel, but not in his cozy British home.
Bottom line: Pat Condell believes in, “Let the Jews eat falafel and homicide bombings, but let me continue with my bangers and mash in peace.”
Stop sending me his taped views. I couldn’t care less.
***
If you are looking for someone with a smart-sounding English accent who is actually the real deal in the fight against Islamofascism, it ain’t Condell. It’s the great Melanie Phillips, coiner of the term “Londonistan” (title of her book) and a columnist for the Daily Mail. Much of what Condell decries in his videos was first reported and written about by Phillips. And her work is minus the anti-Israel propaganda and hatred. And frankly, she is the brave one over there in the UK, not Condell who takes the conventional Islamist view when it comes to the Mid-East.

By Debbie Schlussel
So, Israel gives up a huge protective barrier of land–Gaza–to its enemy, Islamic terrorists bent on its destruction. Since then, the same Islamic terrorists now running that land are shelling Israel and killing its citizens. The rockets and other shelling is in Sderot, a poor working class city, where many of the residents are Sephardic Jews whose families fled Arab countries to escape this kind of thing.
Since the beginning of the Gaza HAMAS shelling, residents have been killed, houses and schools destroyed, and children have lost their limbs. Today, one of those Jews–Roni Yechiah (also spelled in English, “Yihye”) 47, a father of four and a student–was murdered by the HAMAS rocketing.
So how does Israel respond? Well, the ideal thing would be to invade Gaza and rampage and kill 20 Palestinians–10 for Yihye’s life and another 10 because he was a father. But that’s not what Israel does. Instead, they struck at the empty office of HAMAS leader/Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh. Big whoop. You’d better believe Israel knew he wasn’t there. This is a meek message to him. Not good enough.

Roni Yechiah:
Poor, Working-Class Father of Four Murdered by HAMAS
I go back, again and again, on this site to the Sean Connery utterance in the Elliot Ness movie:

They put one of your men in the hospital, you put one of their men on the morgue.

If I ran Israel, here’s what my policy would be: We kill ten of your men for every Israeli you murder. We kill an additional ten for every parent you murder.
That’s the only way these animals know you mean business. But they don’t know because here’s Israel’s policy:
They put one of your men in the hospital, you call for more talks to amputate more of your country and give it to those who put your man in the hospital.
They put one of your men in the morgue, you strike an empty building that is not occupied by the man who ordered the murder.
Speak loudly and carry a toothpick. That’s the Olmert that runs Israel . . . into the ground . . . six feet under.
More on Roni Yihye’s sad death at the hand of Omert’s and Bush’s “peace partners”–they are the ones who will soon take over the PA-controlled parts of the so-called “West Bank”:

The shrapnel lodged in Yihye’s chest, and despite the aid of passersby, including a Magen David Adom paramedic who studies at the school, an MDA team was unable to resuscitate him.
Another student in the school’s parking lot was wounded in the leg by shrapnel, a victim of a second volley of Kassams that hit the Sderot area in less than 90 minutes.

Further:

Yechiah is survived by his wife, Esther, and four children: Niv, who is currently serving in the Israel Defense Forces, Lital, a 17-year-old high school pupil, her 14-year-old sister Coral and 8-year-old brother Idan.
The head of the Merchavim Regional Council, Avner Mory, was Yechiah’s distant relative. He said Roni Yechiah is survived by 10 brothers. He recalled that five years ago, the family struggled to fund a badly-needed kidney transplant for Yechiah.
Before the transplant, Mory said, Yechiah worked for a large construction company as the operator of a cement-mixer. Yechiah began studying logistics at Sapir after completing a long process of convalescence. His funeral is scheduled to take place today at 3 P.M. at the Btecha cemetery.
Yechiah was the first Israeli killed by a rocket since May, when two died in separate attacks. “We call on the government to do everything it possibly can to stop this carnage,” Mory said.
“The people of Sderot and the towns around the Gaza Strip must not be made to live their lives like this, not knowing whether they will be next,” he added.

Roni Yechiah, Zichrono LiVracha [Blessed Be His Memory].
Ismail Haniyeh and Ehud Olmert, Rot In Hell.
Thanks to reader BB for the tip on the airstrikes on Haniyeh’s office.