The LED Bulb

The other day, I went into Home Depot. I was looking at LED bulbs. I’m kinda intrigued by them, honestly. They last about 40 times as long as a regular light bulb, and take about one eighth as much energy. Pretty cool. Unfortunately, they normally cost between $20 and $40 dollars.

So when I saw a “40 Watt equivalent” LED bulb for $9.97, I was intrigued. I thought I’d buy it, and I knew exactly where I was going to put it. I was going to put it in the lamp in my office. I’d finally get to see what one of these LED lights was like.

So I bought it and took it home. The next day, I took it out of the packaging, and went to screw it into the lamp. As I reached in the lamp to take out the old bulb, I was surprised that it wasn’t very hot. That is, until I actually got the bulb out and looked at it. Because there, staring me right in the face, was a bulb identical to the one I had just bought!

Which means, sometime in the last few months, I was at Home Depot. And I went through the exact same thought processes as I did the other day. And have absolutely no recollection of it. This is definitely NOT something that would have happened to me ten years ago.

There’s a reason why this blog is called GrayShift. Unfortunately.

My Last Political Blog (Thankfully!)

The election year is almost over, and every single one of us is certainly happy for that. Personally, I’m looking forward to writing a few meaningless blogs about trivial things that nobody cares about, like normal. (as opposed to writing political things that nobody cares about!) But in the spirit of the season, I just have to write one more. I was going to be done, but I just can’t let it go. But I promise it’s the last one. At least I think it is!

It’s that damn auto industry ad that Romney put up. Really, I could have been done with political discussion, but then that ad popped up. I understand that every campaign takes liberties, and stretches truth. But Mitt Romney has taken this to a whole new level. In a year when so many of Romney’s ads, as well as his statements, have been misleading at best, this recent ad about the auto industry tops them all.

There is so much untrue, it’s difficult to know where to start.

First of all “He is supported by the Detroit News.” The Detroit News does support Romney for president. But they support him “Despite his wrong-headedness on the auto bailout.” In fact what they said was: “We have said in past editorials that while Romney rightly advocated for structured bankruptcies in his infamous "Let Detroit Go Bankrupt" New York Times op-ed, he was wrong in suggesting the automakers could have found operating capital in the private markets. In that article, Romney suggested government-backed loans to keep the companies afloat post bankruptcy. But what GM and Chrysler needed were bridge loans to get them through the process, and the private credit markets were unwilling to provide them.”

Then “Obama took GM and Chrysler into bankruptcy.” Yes, that’s true, but again misleading. That bankruptcy included a restructuring, and all but the most ardent conservatives admit that this act saved those two companies. It’s especially disgusting because Romney himself advocated bankruptcy for those companies. Again, that’s not exactly what the ad says.

Next: “Obama sold Chrysler to Italians who are going to build Jeeps in China.” But Chrysler execs say that claim is misleading at best: “Let’s set the record straight: Jeep has no intention of shifting production of its Jeep models out of North America to China,” Ranieri said. “It’s simply reviewing the opportunities to return Jeep output to China, for the world’s largest auto market. U.S. Jeep assembly lines will continue to stay in operation.”

But even after Chrysler set the record straight, Romney doubled down and not only continued the ads, but added GM in there as well. “We've clearly entered some parallel universe during these last few days,” GM spokesman Greg Martin told the Detroit Free Press. “No amount of campaign politics at its cynical worst will diminish our record of creating jobs in the U.S. and repatriating profits back to this country.”

But Romney keeps repeating these charges, even when he knows they are not true. And please don’t say the executives are  just shills for Obama. Not too many Fortune 500 top executives would consider themselves democrats, so that just makes no sense.

Say all you want about Obama. You can think he’s wrong on many things. You don’t have to like him, his style, or his plans. But you simply will not find the distortion of facts from him that Romney has done. And this is just one issue. I could give you a list a mile long.

Is this the kind of man you want leading this country? Really? Don’t count me in on that one.