If Barack Obama Were To Enter My Department Store

It looks like it's going to be "All Trayvon, All The Time" through the November 2014 elections.  We're going to be overlooking the tragedy, and the easily preventable causes, of thousands of black kids murdered by other black kids every year (see previous post) and concentrate on the one black kid who was murdered by a Hispanic guy who was also partly black and part white.  I think. 

I'm so sick and freakin' tired of political hacks dividing us into Hutu's and Tutsi's.  But if you had Obama's track record to defend, you'd talk Trayvon too. 

Therefore, it's time to start ridiculing every statement that the President Of The United States makes on the subject of race.  He gave a shameful speech the other day, in which he identified with the black kid who had the Hispanic guy on the ground, pounding his head into the curb.  There was no indication that this shooting was a "hate crime", but that's the direction that Obama, going off-teleprompter, chose to take it. 

There are very few African-American men in this country who haven’t had the experience of being followed when they were shopping in a department store. That includes me.

Oh, sweet mantle of victimhood !! 

Barack, if you think people were following you around before you were president, wait until you see what happens afterwards.....

The actor James Woods recently tweeted that they only reason they've ever followed you was to make sure you wouldn't raise their taxes. 

I can top that.....  If Barack Obama were to enter my department store, I'd have him followed to make sure he wasn't going to break my windows.  The "broken windows" parable of Frederic Bastiat really does appear to be his dominant economic misunderstanding. 

If Barack Obama were to enter my department store, I'd have him followed to make sure he didn't take what wasn't his.  I've never known a human who was so enthusiastic about taking money from Person A to give to Person B, but not before raking some off the top to give to his Washington flunkies in Group C. 

If Barack Obama were to enter my department store, yeah, I'd have him followed.  "You Didn't Build That" isn't that much of a leap from "You Don't Deserve That", followed closely by "I Know Some People Who Could Use That And They All Voted For Me".

If Barack Obama were to enter my department store, well, I gotta be honest.....  I'd ask him for a subsidy.  I'd point out my Green Energy Perpetual Motion Machines that are invisible to the naked eye, I'd show him the documentation that the entire store is heated and cooled by Compressed Green Fairy Flatulence, and I'd agree to change the name of my website to "The Greened Sepulchre".  And, like so many of his other green energy subsidy benefactors, I might get a buncha money that I could walk away with before letting the thing go bankrupt. 

If Barack Obama were to enter my department store, I'd ask him to simply buy it.  Then I'd watch him destroy it, the way we shamefully destroyed all those cars during the "Cash For Clunkers" debacle. 

If Barack Obama were to enter my department store, I wouldn't insist on a cash payment.  Hell, there's no telling how much more of the stuff was printed while his limo waited in the parking lot.  I wouldn't want a check.  All of his post-dated checks are going to be bouncing soon.  I would want his credit card.  Please dear God, I know that I'm a sinner, but let me get my hands on that damn fool's credit card.  Whatever he bought, I'd add $51,000.00 to the total charge.  That's the additional amount that he's put on mine. 

Which Green Energy "Company" will go under next?

The Heritage Foundation has compiled a list of the Green Energy Scams that were financially blessed by Barry, Bringer Of Light. 
The ones with asterisks are the ones that have already gone under.  The others are still a few laps from the drain.  Amuse yourself with betting pools, setting the over/under, and guessing how much money each company donated to Barry's election. 

The dollar amounts reflect the amount that was offered to each CEO, not what was actually accepted.  This amount doesn't include any state, county, or city graft.   Don't worry about the CEO's of the bankrupt companies, their children, or their homes.  Seriously.  I have a feeling that they'll get by....  

Why people are still confused about the failure of the $700 billion stimulus remains a mystery.  Barack Obama couldn't pick the winner of The Atlanta Falcons vs. The North Sunflower Academy Rebels. 

I'll give a free dachsund (great as pets or for scientific experiments!) to whoever guesses which of these Green Money-Laundering Shells goes under next:

1.Evergreen Solar ($24 million)*


2.SpectraWatt ($500,000)*

3.Solyndra ($535 million)*

4.Beacon Power ($69 million)*

5.AES’s subsidiary Eastern Energy ($17.1 million)

6.Nevada Geothermal ($98.5 million)

7.SunPower ($1.5 billion)

8.First Solar ($1.46 billion)

9.Babcock and Brown ($178 million)

10.EnerDel’s subsidiary Ener1 ($118.5 million)*

11.Amonix ($5.9 million)

12.National Renewable Energy Lab ($200 million)

13.Fisker Automotive ($528 million)

14.Abound Solar ($374 million)*

15.A123 Systems ($279 million)*

16.Willard and Kelsey Solar Group ($6 million)

17.Johnson Controls ($299 million)

18.Schneider Electric ($86 million)

19.Brightsource ($1.6 billion)

20.ECOtality ($126.2 million)

21.Raser Technologies ($33 million)*

22.Energy Conversion Devices ($13.3 million)*

23.Mountain Plaza, Inc. ($2 million)*

24.Olsen’s Crop Service and Olsen’s Mills Acquisition Company ($10 million)*

25.Range Fuels ($80 million)*

26.Thompson River Power ($6.4 million)*

27.Stirling Energy Systems ($7 million)*

28.LSP Energy ($2.1 billion)*

29.UniSolar ($100 million)*

30.Azure Dynamics ($120 million)*

31.GreenVolts ($500,000)

32.Vestas ($50 million)

33.LG Chem’s subsidiary Compact Power ($150 million)

34.Nordic Windpower ($16 million)*

35.Navistar ($10 million)

36.Satcon ($3 million)*

Enjoy !  Unlike the comps you might sometimes get in Vegas, you aren't playing with "house" money.  This time the house is playing with your money.  Might as well have fun watching them blow it. 

The next next next next Solyndra

They're all going belly-up. 
If their ideas were good, they would've attracted private capital. 

The donors have been rewarded, the victims (you) have been fleeced, and it was all as predictable as the winner of The Texas Rangers vs the Little Sisters Of The Blind softball match. 

Where are the crowds with pitchforks and torches?  Folks, they stole your money, gave it to their friends, called it "green", and they expect you to act like it's business as usual. 

Go here.  If you have time to read about the most recent scam, go here.

 

Reinventing the already invented

Go here to learn about The Department Of Energy's exciting contest for app developers!!!  The D of E wants  you to start developing a phone app to monitor energy usage !!!! !! ! !!!!

YOU COULD WIN....ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS ! 

Go here to see Facebook's and OPower's already existing app that already accomplishes the same goal, and that was developed without taxpayer money.  Unfortunately, it does nothing to keep D of E lifers busy. 

The government uses force and the threat of violence to take money away from you to pay for this redundant crap.  (Unless you are part of the .0001% who voluntarily contribute more than the enforcers demand.)  Unbelievable. 

Coming soon:  A Department of Transportation contest to develop solid circular objects that can be fitted onto axles to expedite movement.  They want to call it "The Wheel". 

Pic of wheel came from here. 
A fresh coat of Whitening to Paul Conner for the links. 

Barack Obama - Most Effective President Ever !!!

The man says he wants to make something happen, and by golly, it happens. 
Here's The Teleprompter Jesus, in the flesh, talking about how he's going to make you pay more at the pump so you'll stop buying SUV's and become more fuel-efficient. 




Go here to read a summary of the mindset.  Back in the day, someone would come out with a new product, and if it was any good it would catch on, and the old way would slowly die. 

Contrast that approach with the one used in the Year Of Our Lord 2012, where new product-makers lobby Washington for subsidies, Washington mandates their use, Washington punishes their competitors (see LightSquared), and Obama then forces you to use the new product made by people who owe their very existence to Obama.  

It's like watching that wasp on Animal planet, the one that stings and paralyzes a caterpillar and drags it into its nest so the baby wasps can feast until they're grown.  In a way, it's beautiful. 

Please, please, please somebody make Barack Obama stay at home

Remember that William H. Macy movie called "The Cooler"? 

Macy plays a degenerate gambler whose luck is so bad that Alec Baldwin, playing a casino owner, actually pays him to sit down next to other gamblers who are on winning streaks.  Macy's mere presence at the table is enough to chase good luck away.   

If Barack Obama ever walks into a casino when I'm playing blackjack, I'm gone. 

First, Obama appeared at solar panel manufacturer Solyndra, praising them and their products for leading the way into the new, green, wholesome, stimulus-funded, just freakin' awesome future.  Solyndra went bankrupt. 

Then came LightSquared.  Obama himself was an early investory in the company.  Now there are nasty allegations that folks at the White House encouraged an Air Force general to change his sworn testimony about the company's finances.  LightSquared isn't bankrupt yet, but it is getting ugly.  If you need the White House to destroy your competitors, you're probably about two laps away from the drain. 

I won't bore you with all the failed "stimulus" boondoggles.  Let's get to the latest financial misadventure of this deluded little man who just happens to have access to your money to your great-grandchildren's credit cards. 

And that would be the Chevy Volt.  The taxpayer subsidy on each of these little go-carts is already set at $10,000.00 each.  We've already had to save G.M. from bankruptcy. 

Here's an enthusiastic video of "The Cooler" at the G.M. Hamtramck plant making a victory lap around a Chevy Golf Cart that needs a new $9,000.00 battery every five years.  (And the old battery is hell to get rid of in an environmentally responsible way.  I'm not a greenie, but I do care about taking care of the earth, avoiding negative externalities, etc.)  A Fresh Coat Of Whitening to Michelle Malkin for the link to this video, BTW. 



Flash forward two years.  Here's the Detroit Freep:

General Motors has told 1,300 employees at its Detroit Hamtramck that they will be temporarily laid off for five weeks as the company halts production of the Chevrolet Volt and its European counterpart, the Opel Ampera.


“Even with sales up in February over January, we are still seeking to align our production with demand,” said GM spokesman Chris Lee.

"Aligning our production with demand".  What a glorious statement.  That was the problem faced by the last buggy-whip manufacturer.  The makers of New Coke also had to deal with aligning production with demand.  Ditto for the producers of Milli Vanilli's last CD.  Kodak recently failed to align production with demand.  When you fail to align production with demand, you go broke.  That's what generally happens when politicians try to "produce" with stolen money.  They have no freakin' clue what consumers "demand".  One thing they don't demand is the Chevy Volt. 

Lee said employees were told Thursday that production would put on hold from March 19 to April 23.


The Chevrolet Volt, an extended-range electric car, is both a political lightning rod and a symbol of the company’s technological capability.


Chevrolet sold 1,023 Volts in the U.S. in February and has sold 1,626 so far this year.


In 2011, Chevrolet sold 7,671 Volts, but fell short of its initial goal of 10,000.


GM had planned to expand production of its Volt plug-in hybrid to 60,000 this year, with 45,000 earmarked for the U.S.

At 1,626 for the year, they're on pace to sell about 9,500.  IF people aren't scared away by the exploding batteries.  Did you know that the batteries explode?  Here's what it looks like when you leave a Volt in your garage unattended for a week:

 
Last fall, the GM and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration spent several weeks trying to explain why two Volts whose batteries were punctured caught on fire after sitting around for at least a week.


NHTSA determined that the range-extended electric Volt is as safe as any gasoline-powered vehicle on the road.


GM said on Jan. 5 that it would improve the structure and battery-coolant system of the Volt sedan to protect it better against fires after crashes.


The incident also was the subject of a congressional hearing in January that included testimony from GM CEO Dan Akerson.


“We did not design the Volt to become a political punching bag and that’s what it’s become,” Akerson told Congress on Jan. 25.

Sorry dude.  The only reason your product exists is politics. 
Now you've been visited by "The Cooler". 
You're doors are going to close. 
Man, I used to love my Chevy pickup.  This is a shame. 

The picture of the Chevy Volt fire came from here.  The cartoon of all the Chevy Volt subsidies came from here.  The propaganda below came from the White House website. 

Well done, sir. Well done.

Mission Accomplished, Team Obama !!!


From The Wall Street Journal:

Mr. Obama plans soon to introduce his energy and environment team, which will include Nobel Prize-winning physicist Steven Chu as energy secretary and former Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Carol Browner as White House energy adviser.

The team's makeup shows that Mr. Obama plans to put a heavy emphasis on combating climate change and promoting technologies to wean the U.S. off imported oil. He is packaging such priorities as a way to boost employment and help the economy by pouring money into efficiency projects.

.But the next administration will face a range of obstacles on the energy front, from plummeting oil prices and a declining economy to potential rifts among Mr. Obama's own advisers.

In a sign of one major internal difference, Mr. Chu has called for gradually ramping up gasoline taxes over 15 years to coax consumers into buying more-efficient cars and living in neighborhoods closer to work.

"Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe," Mr. Chu, who directs the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California, said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal in September.

Well done, Mr. Chu.  Well done ! 

Any time you see an electric car, remember what powers it

A Modest Proposal For The Defense Of South Korea

We're spending a fortune defending South Korea from North Korea. 

We've been spending billions per year there ever since our unsuccessful Foreign Policy Adventure there in the 1950's. 

You can go here and here to learn more about the relatively small amount that the Republic Of Korea contributes toward this effort.  The rest is an outright massive subsidy of the Korean government.  And Korean industry. 

As long as Lockheed, Bell, Halliburton, etc. are contributing toward election campaigns, this isn't likely to change.

We keep sending our children over there to not fight, and then they retire at age 45 with massive pensions. 

We're 15 trillion in debt.  What to do, what to do? 

Here's a suggestion.....  Let's outsource the defense of Korea to the Koreans !!!!

Seriously.  We could start paying the Koreans to defend their own country.  It would cost less. 

We wouldn't have to move so many people around.  It would be a "green" movement. 

We wouldn't necessarily have to pay pensions for Korean retirees. 

As a cost-cutting measure, I see nothing wrong with this idea. 

Barack Obama is my broker

From ABC News:

The Obama administration has defended its decision to allow Fisker Automotive to assemble its high concept electric sports sedan, the Karma, in Finland, even though U.S. taxpayers had made a major investment in the car's development -- saying none of the American money was spent on the car's overseas assembly.

That is not the scandal.  What they did with the money doesn't matter.  What matters is that they took the money from you and gave it to their friends.  No matter how many green smiley faces they slap on the sides of those cars, it was a theft.  The cars could've been built in your back yard, and it would still be a theft. 
Plus, the green companies give this money back to The Teleprompter Jesus in the form of campaign donations.  Everything else surrounding the theft is wholesome, green camouflage.
He took your money and spent it on things and people that he liked.  They'll give some of it back to him. 

But Republican critics this weekend challenged the administration's explanation, saying federal loans should have only supported applicants who would be building their cars on American soil.

No, no, no, dammit, no.  If the car manufacturer has a good plan, he can attract private capital from people who are prepared to take the risk and take the losses.  The "stimulus" system is just a wealth transfer.  Nothing more.  I would've been just as happy if Fisker had outsourced the work to elves at the North Pole. 

"The Department of Energy and Fisker executives are splitting hairs about where the money went," said Rep. Tim Murphy, a Pennsylvania Republican who sits on the House committee that has been investigating the Obama Administration's "green energy" loan program. "Ultimately, American taxpayer dollars went to a Finnish automaker to build high-end luxury automobiles for Hollywood."

That doesn't matter.  The location or eventual use of the stolen money doesn't matter.  The theft is what matters.  This is what happens when you allow a Community Organizer/Law Professor to act as your stockbroker. 

The criticism came on the heels of online reports published Thursday by ABCNews.com in partnership with the Center for Public Integrity's iWatch News, and a Friday report on ABC News' "Good Morning America" about Fisker Automotive, the recipient of a "green energy" loan in 2010. The reports quoted auto industry experts who said Fisker's loan invited comparisons to the ill-fated Energy Department loan to Solyndra, because delays and obstacles have hampered progress on the luxury electric car, called the Karma. Solyndra, a solar panel manufacturer that received $535 million in taxpayer support, declared bankruptcy earlier this year. That federal loan is now the subject of investigations by the Justice Department and by inspectors general from the Energy and Treasury departments.

Speaking of Solyndra....
I go to lots and lots of auctions, and this one will be great. 
They're going to auction off the "Solyndra - Made In America" banner that was used as a backdrop for the Teleprompter Jesus when he announced that he was investing half a billion dollars of your money in that company.  Hit the link. 

I must own it. 
I want it soooo bad. 
I've picked out the spot in the warehouse where it's going to hang. 

A Green Energy Update

From The Washington Examiner:

Solar panel company Solyndra, which went bankrupt after getting a half-billion subsidy from the U.S. government, is largely owned by Obama fundraiser George Kaiser, who has visited the White House 16 times.

And the Feds are raiding the homes of Solyndra's top execs as we speak.  Do you think some of your half-billion might have wound up in the wrong pockets? 

Al Gore acolyte Cathy Zoi was Obama's assistant secretary for energy efficiency and renewable energy while her husband was an executive at a company that received direct subsidies from the Obama administration and profited from the Cash-for-Caulkers bill Zoi's division implemented. Zoi has since left DOE to run a clean-tech hedge fund owned in large part by Democratic mega-donor George Soros.

A group of Democratic operatives have formed an investment company called U.S. Renewable Energy Group, or US-REG, which seems to exist for the sake of buying green-tech companies, and then helping them get subsidies. In at least one case, US-REG appeared to be a U.S. beard for a Chinese company seeking U.S. dollars to make wind turbines in China.

The Department of Energy's inspector general has repeatedly found that a loan program created by the 2005 energy bill and expanded by Obama's stimulus falls short on transparency and accountability.

The company with the biggest investments in green energy is General Electric, whose CEO is a top Obama advisor.

And last year, G.E. paid absolutely no taxes.  As The Aggie would say, "Good people to know, that Barack Obama." 

Treasury Department chief of staff Mark Patterson was a Goldman Sachs lobbyist advocating susbidies for cellulosic ethanol while Goldman was buying up a cellulosic ethanol company. Patterson never received a waiver from the administration's restrictions on former lobbyists, but the adminstration has never explained how a Goldman lobbyist could work at Treasury without working on issues affecting tax law, finance, banking, or Goldman.

Sometimes I have to sit back and admire The Ethanol Trifecta, as I've heard it called.  The government has subsidized it, mandated it, and now, protected it from foreign competition.  One day, I swear I'm going to start a "green" dachshund manure company and see if I can get some of the same loot. 

A Soperton, Ga., ethanol plant -- founded by major Democratic donor Vinod Khosla -- sucked up more than $162 in federal and state subsidies before shutting down without ever producing a drop of ethanol.

But with the same net benefit to the world as if he had done so.  You've got to love it. 

8 Steps For Revitalizing The U.S. Economy

Industry Week  has a piece in their online edition by Dr. Ken Mayland, an economist who covers manufacturing and business trends. 
Here are Dr. Mayland's "Eight Steps For Revitalizing The U.S. Economy".  I've been ranting about seven of these for years, and I don't even have a Doctorate in Economics.  Or a Masters.  Or a Bachelors.  I do, however, work in the shipping and logistics industry, and that qualifies me to comment on these things. 

1.  Kill the 2010 health care reform bill.

Well, duh, of course.  Nobody knows who exactly wrote it.  Nobody knows what it is supposed to accomplish.  It's too long for anyone to know what is in it.  A lot of people who lobbied for it have now been exempted from it.  But everyone fears it. 

2.  Do a "reverse course" on developing domestic energy and ease access and permitting for all forms of energy production.

Yeah.  Drill, Baby, Drill.  The Green Energy Scam is slowly being exposed.  Within a year and a half, it'll be dead as a doornail.  Drill, Baby, Drill.  Now.   

3.  Eliminate the minimum wage. Mayland said: "Economists have long know that politicians cannot legislate the productivity of a worker. If you raise the minimum wage above the basic productivity of the worker, the worker will be fired or not hired." Mayland said since the minimum wage was last raised, the biggest increase in unemployment has been among teenagers -- "exactly where you would expect a minimum-wage increase to hurt."

The minimum wage is zero.  The higher you set an artificial price floor for unskilled workers, the more of them you condemn to earning the true minimum wage - zero. 

4.  Repeal the Frank-Dodd financial reform law and Sarbanes-Oxley, which he said put U.S. businesses at a disadvantage compared to businesses in other countries.

I know absolutely nothing about this.  Some might say that this shortcoming has never prevented any of my other rants, but there you have it.  I know nothing about SarbOx.  But this guy does. 

5.  Rein in EPA and the National Labor Relations Board.

Or we could continue to allow the NLRB to tell businesses where they can and can't operate.  Pick one. 

6.  Pass free-trade agreements with Panama, Columbia and South Korea.

This is great as long as it is Free Trade and not Managed Trade.  Any Free Trade Agreement that's 900 pages long is automatically suspect. 

7.  Pare back overly generous unemployment benefits from the current 99 weeks. Mayland cited a scholarly study that if unemployment benefits were 26 weeks, the unemployment rate would be 2% to 2.5% lower.

Yep, and it wouldn't be pretty.  But combine #3 and #7, and you would rapidly approach full employment.  Companies would accomplish more with less.  But it wouldn't be fair !  So we're going to continue to borrow from our fetuses ! 

8.  Trash the tax code and install a flat tax. Mayland said once the appropriate tax rate was determined, taxpayers could fill out their tax return "on a postcard."

Go here for a picture of the Hong Kong tax postcard. 

There you have it.  If Obama and Congress knew that they were going to be propped against a wall and shot if the economy didn't improve within one year, they would implement all of Ken Mayland's Libertarian-ish suggestions tomorrow morning.  Hit the labels below if you want to read earlier rants on any of these topics.

On the joy of spending other people's money on people that you really like

If an entrepreneur is about to start a new business, he investigates every possible thing that can go wrong. 
If an investor is about to throw some money into a new enterprise, he investigates every possible thing that can go wrong. 
After all, these two hypothetical guys have something at stake: their money or their reputations. 

Would you invest in an entrepreneur's project if he had nothing at all at stake in the business?  If he didn't have any of his own money in the project? 

Here's Barack Obama at a plant/factory called Solyndra back in May of last year.  He's making a victory lap in front of the Solyndra employees, having succesfully shat $530,000,000.00 of taxpayer money into the business.  We'll never know why.  He didn't put any of his and Michelle's money into the place, as far as we know. 

There was apparently nothing special about Solyndra.  They were a good candidate for the Green Jobs scam of the last two years.  Their primary business was solar panels, but it could just as well have been Bottled Fairy Farts.  It was politically expedient for Obama to squat over Solyndra and bury the company with unearned dollars. 

Here's the great Milton Friedman on the 4 types of spending:

There are four ways in which you can spend money.

1)  You can spend your own money on yourself. When you do that, why then you really watch out what you’re doing, and you try to get the most for your money.

2) Then you can spend your own money on somebody else. For example, I buy a birthday present for someone. Well, then I’m not so careful about the content of the present, but I’m very careful about the cost. 3) Then, I can spend somebody else’s money on myself. And if I spend somebody else’s money on myself, then I’m sure going to have a good lunch!

4) Finally, I can spend somebody else’s money on somebody else. And if I spend somebody else’s money on somebody else, I’m not concerned about how much it is, and I’m not concerned about what I get. And that’s government. And that’s close to 40% of our national income.

So what's the big deal?  Obama took a massive stimulus dump over a solar panel factory.  Jobs were "created".  Here's NBC:

President Obama faces political catastrophe in the form of Solyndra -- a San Francisco Bay area solar company that he touted as a gleaming example of green technology. It has announced it will declare Chapter 11 bankruptcy. More than 1,100 people will lose their jobs.


During a visit to the Fremont facility in spring of 2010, the President said the factory "is just a testament to American ingenuity and dynamism and the fact that we continue to have the best universities in the world, the best technology in the world, and most importantly the best workers in the world. "


It's not his statements the administration will regret; it's the loan guarantees. The President was celebrating $535 million in federal promises from the Department of Energy to the solar startup. The administration didn't do its due diligence, says the Government Accountability Office. "There's a consequence if you don't follow a rigorous process that's transparent," Franklin Rusco of GAO told the website iWatch News.


The President touted the federally back money as a way to create jobs. The President's opponents immediately jumped on the deal as Solyndra made its first layoffs.


Republican Congressman Cliff Stearns of Florida warned, "I am concerned that the DOE is providing loans and loan guarantees to firms that aren't capable of competing in the global market, even with government subsidies."

Another critic, Fred Upton of Michigan: "The unfortunate reality is that loan guarantee highlights many of the systemic flaws associated with the stimulus in the mad dash to spend hundreds of billions of dollars."

Mitt Romney's Top Eleven Bizarre Beliefs

Let me begin this by stating that I'm a member of an organization that believes a Jewish prophet once made an axe head float, that another man was once reprimanded by his donkey, and that if we eat some Ritz crackers and drink some Welch's grape juice, it kinda represents the body and blood of God and we become more like him.  I'm what is called a "Baptist".

I have other friends who believe that it is best to get the virgin Mary involved if you want to communicate with Jesus.  They believe that when they eat the Ritz and Welch's, it literally becomes the body and blood of God, instead of just a symbol.  They are called "Catholics".     
   
My daughter believes that it's a good idea to split 10's against a dealer Ace.  She is what is called "lucky".   

We all have our quirks. 


Mitt Romney, who announced his candidacy for the presidency a few days ago, has his quirks.  Mr. Romney is a member of the LDS church, AKA the Mormons. 


Mitt has some strange beliefs relative to the irrefutable spiritual opinions that the rest of us hold.  As Mark Twain once said about the Christian Scientists, "he is no more insane than the rest of us.  But he is more picturesquely insane than some of us." 


Here are Romney's Top Eleven Bizarre Beliefs, courtesy of Listverse.com.  (The eleventh came from elsewhere). 

References to "D and C" are to the Mormon book of "Doctrine and Covenants". 

10. Tithing



While tithes are not uncommon among religion, rarely are they mandatory. LDS theology states that in order to make it to the highest kingdom of heaven, you must pay a full and honest tithe.

D and C 119: 3-63 And this shall be the beginning of the tithing of my people.

4 And after that, those who have thus been tithed shall pay one-tenth of all their interest annually; and this shall be a standing law unto them forever, for my holy priesthood, saith the Lord.

5 Verily I say unto you, it shall come to pass that all those who gather unto the land of Zion shall be tithed of their surplus properties, and shall observe this law, or they shall not be found worthy to abide among you.

6 And I say unto you, if my people observe not this law, to keep it holy, and by this law sanctify the land of Zion unto me, that my statutes and my judgments may be kept thereon, that it may be most holy, behold, verily I say unto you, it shall not be a land of Zion unto you.

9. Pleasure in Life



This is one of the most famous pieces of LDS doctrine. It’s also the cause of many myths about Mormons. Basically; no coffee, no drugs, no tobacco.

D and C 89: 5-13
5 That inasmuch as any man drinketh wine or strong drink among you, behold it is not good, neither meet in the sight of your Father, only in assembling yourselves together to offer up your sacraments before him.

6 And, behold, this should be wine, yea, pure wine of the grape of the vine, of your own make.

7 And, again, strong drinks are not for the belly, but for the washing of your bodies.

8 And again, tobacco is not for the body, neither for the belly, and is not good for man, but is an herb for bruises and all sick cattle, to be used with judgment and skill.

9 And again, hot drinks are not for the body or belly.

10 And again, verily I say unto you, all wholesome herbs God hath ordained for the constitution, nature, and use of man—

11 Every herb in the season thereof, and every fruit in the season thereof; all these to be used with prudence and thanksgiving.

12 Yea, flesh also of beasts and of the fowls of the air, I, the Lord, have ordained for the use of man with thanksgiving; nevertheless they are to be used sparingly;

13 And it is pleasing unto me that they should not be used, only in times of winter, or of cold, or famine.

8. Spirits



This one is very unique to the LDS faith. Basically, everyone on earth now was a spirit in the pre-existence. When we die, our spirits are separated from our bodies and if we were good they go to “spirit paradise.” If we were bad they go to “spirit prison.” The spirit world exists as a place for spirits to go while awaiting the second coming.

D and C 138: 8-14
8 “By which also he went and preached unto the spirits in prison;

9 “Which sometime were disobedient, when once the long-suffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls were saved by water.” (1 Peter 3:18—20.)

10 “For for this cause was the gospel preached also to them that are dead, that they might be judged according to men in the flesh, but live according to God in the spirit.” (1 Peter 4:6.)

11 As I pondered over these things which are written, the eyes of my understanding were opened, and the Spirit of the Lord rested upon me, and I saw the hosts of the dead, both small and great.

12 And there were gathered together in one place an innumerable company of the spirits of the just, who had been faithful in the testimony of Jesus while they lived in mortality;

13 And who had offered sacrifice in the similitude of the great sacrifice of the Son of God, and had suffered tribulation in their Redeemer’s name.

14 All these had departed the mortal life, firm in the hope of a glorious resurrection, through the grace of God the Father and his Only Begotten Son, Jesus Christ.

7. Modern Revelation



Almost everyone who knows anything about the Mormon religion knows they have a prophet. What many don’t know, is anything that the prophet says in official capacity is considered official canon.

D and C 43: 2-9
2 For behold, verily, verily, I say unto you, that ye have received a commandment for a law unto my church, through him whom I have appointed unto you to receive commandments and revelations from my hand.

3 And this ye shall know assuredly—that there is none other appointed unto you to receive commandments and revelations until he be taken, if he abide in me.

4 But verily, verily, I say unto you, that none else shall be appointed unto this gift except it be through him; for if it be taken from him he shall not have power except to appoint another in his stead.

5 And this shall be a law unto you, that ye receive not the teachings of any that shall come before you as revelations or commandments;

6 And this I give unto you that you may not be deceived, that you may know they are not of me.

7 For verily I say unto you, that he that is ordained of me shall come in at the gate and be ordained as I have told you before, to teach those revelations which you have received and shall receive through him whom I have appointed.

8 And now, behold, I give unto you a commandment, that when ye are assembled together ye shall instruct and edify each other, that ye may know how to act and direct my church, how to act upon the points of my law and commandments, which I have given.

9 And thus ye shall become instructed in the law of my church, and be sanctified by that which ye have received, and ye shall bind yourselves to act in all holiness before me—

6. Jesus visited the Americas



The Book of Mormon is a book of LDS scripture that takes place during the same time as the Bible and takes place on the American continent. It follows the stories of two tribes who descended from the family of Lehi. After Jesus’ resurrection LDS people believe he visited the peoples of the Americas.

3 Nephi 11: 7-12
7 Behold my Beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased, in whom I have glorified my name—hear ye him.

8 And it came to pass, as they understood they cast their eyes up again towards heaven; and behold, they saw a Man descending out of heaven; and he was clothed in a white robe; and he came down and stood in the midst of them; and the eyes of the whole multitude were turned upon him, and they durst not open their mouths, even one to another, and wist not what it meant, for they thought it was an angel that had appeared unto them.

9 And it came to pass that he stretched forth his hand and spake unto the people, saying:

10 Behold, I am Jesus Christ, whom the prophets testified shall come into the world.

11 And behold, I am the alight and the life of the world; and I have drunk out of that bitter cup which the Father hath given me, and have glorified the Father in taking upon me the sins of the world, in the which I have suffered the will of the Father in all things from the beginning.

12 And it came to pass that when Jesus had spoken these words the whole multitude fell to the earth; for they remembered that it had been prophesied among them that Christ should show himself unto them after his ascension into heaven.

5. The Nature of God



While most religions believe in God, the LDS religion believes in God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit as separate beings. They also believe that God, Jesus and resurrected beings have bodies of “flesh and bone.”

D and C 129:1-5
1 There are two kinds of beings in heaven, namely: Angels, who are resurrected personages, having bodies of flesh and bones—

2 For instance, Jesus said: Handle me and see, for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have.

3 Secondly: the spirits of just men made perfect, they who are not resurrected, but inherit the same glory.

4 When a messenger comes saying he has a message from God, offer him your hand and request him to shake hands with you.

5 If he be an angel he will do so, and you will feel his hand.

D and C 130: 22-23
22 The Father has a body of flesh and bones as tangible as man’s; the Son also; but the Holy Ghost has not a body of flesh and bones, but is a personage of Spirit. Were it not so, the Holy Ghost could not dwell in us.

23 A man may receive the Holy Ghost, and it may descend upon him and not tarry with him.

4. Priesthood



In the LDS religion any worthy male can be given the priesthood and is given specific duties. Black people were not allowed to have the priesthood until 1978. Females are not allowed to have the priesthood.

D and C 107: 1-51 There are, in the church, two priesthoods, namely, the Melchizedek and Aaronic, including the Levitical Priesthood.

2 Why the first is called the Melchizedek Priesthood is because Melchizedek was such a great high priest.

3 Before his day it was called the Holy Priesthood, after the Order of the Son of God.

4 But out of respect or reverence to the name of the Supreme Being, to avoid the too frequent repetition of his name, they, the church, in ancient days, called that priesthood after Melchizedek, or the Melchizedek Priesthood.

5 All other authorities or offices in the church are appendages to this priesthood.

Official Declaration – 2, 1978
Aware of the promises made by the prophets and presidents of the Church who have preceded us that at some time, in God’s eternal plan, all of our brethren who are worthy may receive the priesthood, and witnessing the faithfulness of those from whom the priesthood has been withheld, we have pleaded long and earnestly in behalf of these, our faithful brethren, spending many hours in the Upper Room of the Temple supplicating the Lord for divine guidance.

3. Multiple Heavens



In LDS doctrine there are three heavens: the Celestial Kingdom, Terrestrial Kingdom, and Telestial Kingdom. The Celestial is the highest, where God and the ones who followed his law reside. The Terrestrial is the middle, where people who followed the Law of Moses reside. The Telestial is the lowest, where the ones who followed carnal law reside.

D and C 76: 94-98
94 They who dwell in his presence are the church of the Firstborn; and they see as they are seen, and know as they are known, having received of his fulness and of his grace;

95 And he makes them equal in power, and in might, and in dominion.

96 And the glory of the celestial is one, even as the glory of the sun is one.

97 And the glory of the terrestrial is one, even as the glory of the moon is one.

98 And the glory of the telestial is one, even as the glory of the stars is one; for as one star differs from another star in glory, even so differs one from another in glory in the telestial world;

2. Forgiveness



In LDS theology you can be forgiven for any sin, save two. First, denying the Holy Spirit, and second, murder. Also, God is infinitely forgiving, until the second coming. After that, you end up where you end up, no matter what. There are no second chances. Period.

D and C 76: 43-45
43 Who glorifies the Father, and saves all the works of his hands, except those sons of perdition who deny the Son after the Father has revealed him.

44 Wherefore, he saves all except them—they shall go away into everlasting punishment, which is endless punishment, which is eternal punishment, to reign with the devil and his angels in eternity, where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched, which is their torment—

45 And the end thereof, neither the place thereof, nor their torment, no man knows;

D and C 18: 42
18 And now, behold, I speak unto the church. Thou shalt not kill; and he that kills shall not have forgiveness in this world, nor in the world to come.

D and C 76: 111-112
111 For they shall be judged according to their works, and every man shall receive according to his own works, his own dominion, in the mansions which are prepared;

112 And they shall be servants of the Most High; but where God and Christ dwell they cannot come, worlds without end.

1. Multiple Worlds and Multiple Gods



This deserves some explanation. Mormons believe that God created multiple worlds and each world has people living on it. They also believe that multiple Gods exist but each has their own universe. We are only subject to our God and if we obtain the highest level of heaven we can become gods ourselves.

D and C 76: 2424 That by him, and through him, and of him, the worlds are and were created, and the inhabitants thereof are begotten sons and daughters unto God.

D and C 93: 10
10 The worlds were made by him; men were made by him; all things were made by him, and through him, and of him.

Moses 1: 33
33 And worlds without number have I created; and I also created them for mine own purpose; and by the Son I created them, which is mine Only Begotten.

D and C 76: 108
108 Then shall he be crowned with the crown of his glory, to sit on the throne of his power to reign forever and ever.

D and C 131: 1-5
1 In the celestial glory there are three heavens or degrees;

2 And in order to obtain the highest, a man must enter into this order of the priesthood [meaning the new and everlasting covenant of marriage];

3 And if he does not, he cannot obtain it.

4 He may enter into the other, but that is the end of his kingdom; he cannot have an increase.

5 (May 17th, 1843.) The more sure word of prophecy means a man’s knowing that he is sealed up unto eternal life, by revelation and the spirit of prophecy, through the power of the Holy Priesthood.

Ok, those are Mitt Romney's Top 10 Bizarre Beliefs. 
But there's one more.....

11.  Man-made Global Warming

Presidential hopeful Mitt Romney broke with Republican orthodoxy on Friday by saying he believes that humans are responsible, at least to some extent, for climate change.


“I believe the world is getting warmer, and I believe that humans have contributed to that,” he told a crowd of about 200 at a town hall meeting in Manchester, New Hampshire.

“It’s important for us to reduce our emissions of pollutants and greenhouse gases that may be significant contributors.”…

In addressing climate change and energy policy, Romney called on the United States to break its dependence on foreign oil, and expand alternative energies including solar, wind, nuclear and clean coal.

Notice that he didn't say "Climate Change", or cover his bets in any way.  Mr. Romney is accustomed to ridicule and doubled down on "Global Warming".  I applaud his courage. 

If Romney had stopped his press conference to advocate prayer as a means of changing the weather, he would have been ridiculed mercilessly. 

But Mitt supports wind power in an effort to change the weather.  Boldy, and without blinking.  No one in the mainstream media will criticize him for this, no one will compare goals with results, and no one will laugh.  But you can bet your ass that the Mainstream Media will ask Romney if he really believes that Jesus once came to America.  
  
Putting up windmills is a colossal waste, and future generations will look back on our new west Texas windmills the way we look at putting gargoyles on the sides of cathedrals, burying New Age crystals in your house foundation, or any other superstition.
 
Wind power is almost like being a Baptist.  Parts of it are silly, but nobody laughs. 

Mitt Romney goes to Iowa and Speaks Truth To Power !!

No, not really. 

Mitt spoke Flattery To Leeches. 

Mitt Romney wouldn't stand up to the Iowa Ethanol Producers at gunpoint.  He doesn't have enough starch in his sacred Mormon undergarments: 

It was an odd setting for a policy pronouncement, but on the sidewalk outside the Historical Building here, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney embraced ethanol subsidies. It came just days after and blocks from where his rival for the Republican presidential nomination, Tim Pawlenty, said the subsidies should be phased out.

“I support the subsidy of ethanol,” he told an Iowa voter. “I believe ethanol is an important part of our energy solution for this country.” Iowa leads the nation in the production of corn, a main source of ethanol.

Here's the truth on ethanol, from Saint Albert, The Goracle Of Music City, Tennessee:

Al Gore says his support for corn-based ethanol subsidies while serving as vice president was a mistake that had more to do with his desire to cultivate farm votes in the 2000 presidential election than with what was good for the environment.

"It is not a good policy to have these massive subsidies for first-generation ethanol," Gore said at a green energy conference in Athens, Greece, according to Reuters. First generation refers to the most basic, energy-intensive process of converting corn to ethanol for use as a motor vehicle fuel additive.
On reflection, Gore said the energy conversion ratios -- how much energy is produced in the process -- "are at best very small." "One of the reasons I made that mistake is that I paid particular attention to the farmers in my home state of Tennessee," he said, "and I had a certain fondness for the farmers in the state of Iowa because I was about to run for president."

When Al Gore makes more sense on harmful fuel subsidies than your leading presidential candidate, your political party has a problem.  

What if the Evil Oil Companies got the same tax breaks as the Wholesome Green Companies?

West Texas is slowly being covered with windmills. 
They're built to reduce our dependence on foreign oil, and our own reliance on evil, polluting, non-green, greedy corporations. 

You may have heard that the evil, polluting, non-green, greedy oil companies get a massive subsidy from our government.  This is because our government would give a subsidy to prevent alien invasions from the planet Nekthor in exchange for campaign contributions. 

All that aside, what if the oil companies got a subsidy similar to that received by the windmill producers?  (Windmills, ironically, are now called an "industry of the future".)  Here's The Foundry:

With the current debate over ending oil producers’ subsidies the question arises as to what subsidies do the producers actually get. It is a surprisingly complicated question. Wind producers also get subsidies that take complex forms—investment tax credits, production tax credits, mandates, property tax exemptions, etc. But the major federal subsidy for wind producers is the option to take a 30 percent investment tax credit or to receive a 2.2 cents per kilowatt-hour production tax credit.


“2.2 cents” doesn’t seem like much, but, depending on the time of year, it falls somewhere between 25 percent and 100 percent of the wholesale price of electricity. Forty percent if frequently used as the average.

So, what would an oil-production subsidy look like if it were the same magnitude?

Deepwater drilling rigs can cost over $400,000 per day. With other costs, a rough per-well figure would be $100,000,000 per well. If an oil company could get the same 30 percent investment tax credit as wind producers, the government would write the company a $30,000,000 check for each well completed. For the lower cost, shallow-water wells, the government would write a check closer to $3,000,000 for every well drilled.

If on the other hand, the oil company opted for a production tax credit (and it was set at 40 percent of the 2010 average price of about $75 per barrel) then the government would write the oil company a check for $30 for each barrel produced (onshore as well as offshore).

If a subsidy like that was the deal oil companies had, then cut away. But the $4 billion per year that oil’s detractors keep repeating works out to $0.60 per barrel, and upon closer examination they do not even qualify as oil-industry subsidies.

Heritage’s Nick Loris and Curtis Dubay have sorted it all out. Of course, there are subsidies for the oil and gas industry, but they come from the Department of Energy, not from unfair tax benefits, and they work out to about a nickel per barrel. So, leave it to Washington to misidentify and exaggerate the problem.

Yeah, you can paint a windmill green, but you can't make it as efficient as oil. 

 

The Green Industry - A few things you probably already knew

This bit of brilliance is by Timothy P. Carney of the Washington Examiner. 
No, the industry of painting machines green isn't driven by a a desire to save the planet. 

Environmental policy is not driven by tree-hugging activists, earnest liberal bloggers, or ecologically minded citizens. Instead, it flows from the lobbyists and executives of well-connected multinational corporations and built-for-subsidy startups that see profit in the loan guarantees, handouts, mandates, and tax credits Congress creates in the name of saving the planet.
K Street is the epicenter of this green-industrial complex, and ground zero might be the firm founded by Democratic revolving-door earmark lobbyist Steve McBee.

McBee, a former top staffer for Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., and powerful House Appropriations Committee member Rep. Norm Dicks, D-Wash., reportedly wrote key provisions in the stimulus bill to open the spigot of green corporate welfare. Also, he has hired up the Capitol Hill staff at the center of big environmental legislative pushes like cap and trade.

Exploring corporate lobbyists' central role in Obama's "green energy" push provides us two important lessons. First, it reveals as hypocritical the Democratic attack that opponents of cap and trade and other green policies are simply shills for big business.

Second, it ought to heighten our skepticism that these "green" policies are really crafted with an eye to helping the environment -- they are more likely skewed toward the bottom line of lobbied-up Big Business.

McBee's clients include SolarCity and the Green Tech Action Fund as well as electric-car maker Better Place Inc., waste-to-power company Ze-gen, and solar-power developer BrightSource Energy. But the big guys -- Boeing, JP Morgan, and Google -- also hire McBee to lobby for green-energy subsidies.

Electric car company Tesla signed on with McBee days after Obama's election, and soon won a $465 million loan guarantee to aid in building a new all-electric car.

With McBee's former boss being a senior Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, McBee Strategic used to be an earmark factory. After Obama's election, though, McBee pivoted to green energy and saw revenues soar in 2009.

"I attribute it to the bets we've made on clean energy and energy," he told Roll Call.

Late last year McBee hired Kathleen Frangione, described by Politico as "Sen. John Kerry's top climate staffer." You see the play: advance green legislation, then lobby for the companies trying to make money off that legislation.

Hit the link up top to read the whole thing. 
The pictures of the Room Cleaner (a space heater with a feather duster taped to it) and the gasoline powered alarm clock, both of which were approved as "Energy Stars" by regulators, came from here. 

On building new cathedrals to make the Weather Gods happy (It creates jobs !)

The Republicans are making a show of opposing the latest EPA boondoggles. 
Riding to the defense of the EPA is The Boston Globe's Derrick Z. Jackson. 
Derrick Z. Jackson is so deeply and profoundly wrong, I've liked him on Facebook just to keep track of his whereabouts. 
Here's Mr. Jackson on how the EPA's insistence on new machinery painted green is going to create jobs. 

Lisa Jackson, the EPA administrator, was ready to combat the job-killing rhetoric. In her opening statement to a House Energy and Commerce Committee subcommittee, she quoted a UMass Amherst study that found that the construction and retrofitting investments in the eastern US under two new EPA air quality rules would produce nearly 1.5 million jobs over the next five years.

James Heintz, associate director at the UMass’s Political Economy Research Institute, which did the study, said in a telephone interview that the potential job growth was not only dynamic, but diverse. “You are talking about an intense infusion of new capital for construction and installation and direct jobs for [people making] boilers, pollution control technologies, scrubbers, and component parts,’’ he said. “The indirect jobs are the kind created that when you install a natural gas-fired generator’’ which includes components made at factories across the country.


The study was based on forecasts by the Boston-based Charles River Associates of pollution control installations, coal plant retirements, and construction for new power generation. The study estimated that about 640,000 direct jobs and 820,000 indirect jobs would be created.


Good Lord in heaven.  Al Gore on a pogo stick.  Paul Krugman riding side-saddle on a shetland pony. 

Yeah, if the EPA were to demand that we all drop everything we're doing to create 300 giant aluminum statues of Calvin Coolidge to ward off alien invasions from the planet Nekthar, and those statues had to be 89 stories tall, and engraved with the poetry of the late Helen Steiner Rice, that would create lots of jobs.  It would require a full-time commitment from just about everybody. 

But would it be productive?  Would it allow us to do what we're already doing, but at less expense?  If you weigh the cost of building the statues against the likelihood of an alien invasion from Nekthar, is the expense worth the economic loss? 

That's the question that Derrick Z. Jackson fails to ask.  Lordy, look at how much of Europe's wealth was spent on new cathedrals to make various gods happy.  Do you think everyone's time could have been spent on more productive projects?  I mean, they're pretty, and still draw tourists, but....

Speaking of questions that people are failing to ask....Here's the Wall Street Journal on whether the weather (the reason the EPA wants us to buy new machinery painted green) is really getting more extreme:

Last week a severe storm froze Dallas under a sheet of ice, just in time to disrupt the plans of the tens of thousands of (American) football fans descending on the city for the Super Bowl. On the other side of the globe, Cyclone Yasi slammed northeastern Australia, destroying homes and crops and displacing hundreds of thousands of people.


Some climate alarmists would have us believe that these storms are yet another baleful consequence of man-made CO2 emissions. In addition to the latest weather events, they also point to recent cyclones in Burma, last winter's fatal chills in Nepal and Bangladesh, December's blizzards in Britain, and every other drought, typhoon and unseasonable heat wave around the world.


But is it true? To answer that question, you need to understand whether recent weather trends are extreme by historical standards. The Twentieth Century Reanalysis Project is the latest attempt to find out, using super-computers to generate a dataset of global atmospheric circulation from 1871 to the present.

As it happens, the project's initial findings, published last month, show no evidence of an intensifying weather trend. "In the climate models, the extremes get more extreme as we move into a doubled CO2 world in 100 years," atmospheric scientist Gilbert Compo, one of the researchers on the project, tells me from his office at the University of Colorado, Boulder. "So we were surprised that none of the three major indices of climate variability that we used show a trend of increased circulation going back to 1871."

In other words, researchers have yet to find evidence of more-extreme weather patterns over the period, contrary to what the models predict. "There's no data-driven answer yet to the question of how human activity has affected extreme weather," adds Roger Pielke Jr., another University of Colorado climate researcher.

We do know that carbon dioxide and other gases trap and re-radiate heat. We also know that humans have emitted ever-more of these gases since the Industrial Revolution. What we don't know is exactly how sensitive the climate is to increases in these gases versus other possible factors—solar variability, oceanic currents, Pacific heating and cooling cycles, planets' gravitational and magnetic oscillations, and so on.

Given the unknowns, it's possible that even if we spend trillions of dollars, and forgo trillions more in future economic growth, to cut carbon emissions to pre-industrial levels, the climate will continue to change—as it always has.

That's not to say we're helpless. There is at least one climate lesson that we can draw from the recent weather: Whatever happens, prosperity and preparedness help. North Texas's ice storm wreaked havoc and left hundreds of football fans stranded, cold, and angry. But thanks to modern infrastructure, 21st century health care, and stockpiles of magnesium chloride and snow plows, the storm caused no reported deaths and Dallas managed to host the big game on Sunday.

Compare that outcome to the 55 people who reportedly died of pneumonia, respiratory problems and other cold-related illnesses in Bangladesh and Nepal when temperatures dropped to just above freezing last winter. Even rich countries can be caught off guard: Witness the thousands stranded when Heathrow skimped on de-icing supplies and let five inches of snow ground flights for two days before Christmas. Britain's GDP shrank by 0.5% in the fourth quarter of 2010, for which the Office of National Statistics mostly blames "the bad weather."

Arguably, global warming was a factor in that case. Or at least the idea of global warming was. The London-based Global Warming Policy Foundation charges that British authorities are so committed to the notion that Britain's future will be warmer that they have failed to plan for winter storms that have hit the country three years running.

A sliver of the billions that British taxpayers spend on trying to control their climes could have bought them more of the supplies that helped Dallas recover more quickly. And, with a fraction of that sliver of prosperity, more Bangladeshis and Nepalis could have acquired the antibiotics and respirators to survive their cold spell.

A comparison of cyclones Yasi and Nargis tells a similar story: As devastating as Yasi has been, Australia's infrastructure, medicine, and emergency protocols meant the Category 5 storm has killed only one person so far. Australians are now mulling all the ways they could have better protected their property and economy.

But if they feel like counting their blessings, they need only look to the similar cyclone that hit the Irrawaddy Delta in 2008. Burma's military regime hadn't allowed for much of an economy before the cyclone, but Nargis destroyed nearly all the Delta had. Afterwards, the junta blocked foreign aid workers from delivering needed water purification and medical supplies. In the end, the government let Nargis kill more than 130,000 people.

Global-warming alarmists insist that economic activity is the problem, when the available evidence show it to be part of the solution. We may not be able to do anything about the weather, extreme or otherwise. But we can make sure we have the resources to deal with it when it comes.

Insane Locavore quote of the day

Various people have told me to broaden my horizons and stop reading and viewing so much libertarian propaganda.
So yesterday I went to Barnes & Noble and picked up this month's copy of Adbusters, the most anti-capitalist publication I could get my hands on.  (The New York Holy Times was sold out.) 

Adbusters is a big-time environmentalist, anti-capitalist, anti-consumption and anti-marketing periodical.  They have a visceral hatred of shopping malls.  Adbusters gives the impression that the Soviet empire fell because of bad luck and poor execution of the Marxist roadmap.  "Profit", the concept that supports Adbusters, is in such ill-repute that I would feel guilty about ever purchasing a copy.   

Adbusters supports something called "Buy Nothing Day"

(It's on November 26th.  You're supposed to purchase nothing.  Don't support your neighbors, your friends, or anyone but yourself.  Don't swap your own stuff for anyone else's. Regardless of their intent, that'll be the result.)

They do have some cool advertising parodies.  Here's one taking a stab at Joe Camel.

I was kind of enjoying their (ahem) unique point of view until I got to this quote.  It's from a guy named Bill Mollison, founder of something called the Permaculture Movement.

"We're only truly secure when we can look out our kitchen window and see our food growing and our friends working nearby." - Bill Mollison

Oh for the love of God.  Where to begin, where to begin. 

We are more secure than we've ever been because we can't look out our kitchen windows and see our entire food supply.  If the view from your kitchen is your only food supply, and something happens to the area in front of the kitchen window, you're in deep, deep shit.  Google the word "famine" when time permits. 

But if you have cheerfully taken part in the capitalist evils of globalization, you don't have to worry as much.  Iowa could waste its entire wheat crop by converting it to enthanol or some other useless boondoggle, and it will hurt me.  But there's always Nebraska.  And Canada.  And Russia.  The Ukraine.  As long as those places are growing wheat, and as long as someone in our government doesn't shut down the supply of wheat (to protect American jobs), then I'll probably be okay. 

As long as some raving locavore doesn't require me to live off what's visible from my kitchen window, I'll be okay. 

 But wait, Mr. Bill Mollison, founder of the Permaculture Movement, there's more.  I've got more for you.  Where are you going to get your kitchen, the kitchen you're going to look out from to view your wheat, your bananas, your strawberries, your lowfat decaf triple-skinny mocha, your carrots, lettuce, arugula, your mineral supplements and your chicken, fish, and occasional slice of roast beef?  Where will this kitchen be produced?  The kitchen itself.  The wood, the brick, the sheetrock, the heat and air vents, the electrical wiring, the ducts, the oven, the stove, the sink and the water faucets?  The refrigerator?  Pots, pans, and George Foreman Grill?  Does that have to come from your front yard?   

Will you need to grow the trees for wood within view of the damn kitchen, just to feel safe?  Are you going to set up a kiln to make bricks out of local mud?  Mr. Mollison, have you ever looked at the different locations that Adam Smith's Invisible Hand blindly coordinates in a united effort to put ceramic tile on your countertops and your floors?  Are you going to go off into a blind lefty panic if some of that stuff is manufactured by little dark people who don't look like you, you racist son of a bitch? 

Sorry about that.  I can't stand racism masquerading as compassionate save-the-earth do-goodism.  Back to the topic at hand....

Let's get to the window itself, that window Mollison is looking out of to see his garden and his wheat field and chickens and goats and fish tank and brick kiln and lumber forest and all the other things required to make Bill Mollison feel safe from the efforts of other people in strange places with funny names. 

Bill, do you have any idea, any idea at all, what goes into making a damn window?  Do you want all that going on in your front yard?  Or is food the only thing that makes you break out in fantods if it's handled by Mexicans?  Is it ok if Mexicans or Canadians, or people from across the county line make your window? 

"We're only truly secure when we can look out our kitchen window and see our food growing and our friends working nearby." - Bill Mollison

Ok, we're getting to the end of that insane sentence.  "We're only truly secure when we can look out our kitchen window....and see our friends working nearby."  Hell, is there going to be room for them if Bill Mollison requires all of this industry in his front yard?  Or are they all going to be Bill Mollison's employees? 
What will the view have to look like from their kitchen windows if they have the same phobias and anxieties that afflict Bill Mollison? 

Do you think we might all be better off if we allow everyone else in the world to compete for the honor and privilege of producing our food, kitchens and windows?  And we can give them what we produce in return?  And maybe, just maybe, they can one day have a kitchen of their own?  With windows? 

Sorry for such an ill-tempered rant.  I wrote Mollison's sentence down in my notepad yesterday and just found it a few minutes ago.  If you want to read a more calm and measured explanation of the evils (yeah, evils) of Bill Mollison's worldview, check out "The Future And Its Enemies" by Virginia Postrel.