The Progressive Art Of Single-Entry Bookkeeping

Dan Mitchell, at the International Liberty Blog, has written the best summary I've ever read of the failures of Keynesian economics. 

Go here. 

A slice....

To explain how this works, let’s briefly digress and explain Keynesian economics. This is the theory that you can jump-start a weak economy by having government borrow a lot of money and then “inject” this money into the economy. And that’s precisely what Obama did with the stimulus, mostly with more spending, but also with some tax cuts for favored constituencies. According to the theory, the money that is being spent by the government (and the recipients of tax cuts) will goose growth and create a ripple effect as producers hire people to deal with the increase in “aggregate demand.”

The Keynesians basically assume that there are no “opportunity costs” when government borrows money and spends it. That’s a bit of economic jargon, but it’s simply a way of saying that Keynesians think that money, for all intents and purposes, will sit idle and gather dust during an economic downturn in the absence of government.
 

This is a very nice theory…but only on a blackboard.
 

In reality, there is an “opportunity cost” when government borrows money and spends it. Resources are diverted from the productive sector of the economy. This might not be a problem if government spent money wisely, but stimulus schemes tend to reward interest groups with the most political clout. So instead of outlays for physical and human capital, which at least theoretically might improve the economy’s productive capacity, the White House directed the bulk of the stimulus to redistribution programs and handouts to state governments.

Yeah.  What he said.  Everything looks rosy as long as you restrict your analysis to what Kevin Williamson recently called "The Occult Art Of Single-Entry Bookkeeping". 

 

On "Secular Theism"

As a result of reading every scrap of libertarian/free market/Austrian economics scribbling that I can get my hands on, I've been thinking more and more about the idea of "Secular Theism". 

First, a few definitions...  A Deist is someone who believes that there is something called "god" and that god may or may not have set the world in motion.  Deists usually reject the Trinitarian formula of Father/Son/Holy Spirit.  Deists simply believe that there is a powerful entity out there called "god", and that there's just one of them.  And that's about it. 

Theists take it up a notch.  They believe that there is a god, and that god cares and god gets involved.  You could say that Christianity, Islam, Judaism, and most of the other rigmaroles are all Theistic religions. 

The term "Secular Theist", as I've seen it used, is somewhat of an insult. 

I have friends and acquaintances on the left who are rabidly anti-Christian.  They are proud to tell you that they don't believe in ghosts, goblins, gods, spirits, witches, the afterlife, or anything supernatural.  So that makes them secular, right? 

But they also have a charming, creationist-style belief that nothing happens unless guided from above.  They are the first to ask "But who would build the roads in a libertarian society?", almost like the guy in the fundamentalist fable who finds a watch on the beach, and knows that if there is a watch, there must be a skilled watchmaker.  Roads wouldn't be built without god government. 

They can't imagine a free market medical system, a system whose costs and prices would plummet (like the costs associated with lap-band surgery, liposuction, boob jobs, etc.) in an environment where government stayed the hell out.  People would be left to die without god government.

My buddies on the left look at the success of somewhat deregulated countries like Korea, Taiwan, and China in the same way that Pentecostal preachers look at 65,000,000-year-old Brontosaurus bones.  It just doesn't compute for them.  Countries can't truly prosper without more god government.

Most of my liberal friends are Theists, and when I say this, I truly mean that they are Theists of the most superstitious sort. 

Does that sound kinda harsh?  Well, here's some Luddy Von Mises, quoted by Don Boudreaux:

Organization is an association based on authority, organism is mutuality.  The primitive thinker always sees things as having been organized from outside, never as having grown themselves, organically.  He sees the arrow which he has carved, he knows how it came into existence and how it was set in motion.  So he asks of everything he sees, who made it and who sets it in motion.  He inquires after the creation of every form of life, the authors of every change in nature, and discovers an animistic explanation.

"Nobody" made the internet.  It happened.  The process, no matter what Al Gore says, was an evolutionary process involving billions and billions of both good and bad decisions. 

The same can be said for our current healthcare system, your house, your first tricycle, your car, the device you're using to read this post, and every stitch of clothing you're now wearing.  Nobody made it.  Everybody made it.  (Unless you live in a Worker's Paradise like North Korea, where, if you're lucky and have a few of these items, they were provided for you as part of a process dictated by the gods at the top of the system.) 

The older I get, the less I believe in gods - secular or theological.  They're given too much credit for things they had little or no part in. 

Never Let A Non-Crisis Go To Waste

Ok, this is some good stuff.  Please hang with me through the preliminary throat-clearing....

Here's The Economist magazine, formerly a cheerleader for Anthropogenic Global Warming, but now drifting toward well-founded skepticism for the second time in the last few months:

GLOBAL warming has slowed. The rate of warming of over the past 15 years has been lower than that of the preceding 20 years. There is no serious doubt that our planet continues to heat, but it has heated less than most climate scientists had predicted. Nate Cohn of the New Republic reports: "Since 1998, the warmest year of the twentieth century, temperatures have not kept up with computer models that seemed to project steady warming; they’re perilously close to falling beneath even the lowest projections".

Mr Cohn does his best to affirm that the urgent necessity of acting to retard warming has not abated, as does Brad Plumer of the Washington Post, as does this newspaper. But there's no way around the fact that this reprieve for the planet is bad news for proponents of policies, such as carbon taxes and emissions treaties, meant to slow warming by moderating the release of greenhouse gases. The reality is that the already meagre prospects of these policies, in America at least, will be devastated if temperatures do fall outside the lower bound of the projections that environmentalists have used to create a panicked sense of emergency. Whether or not dramatic climate-policy interventions remain advisable, they will become harder, if not impossible, to sell to the public, which will feel, not unreasonably, that the scientific and media establishment has cried wolf.

Read the whole thing if time permits, and remember the key sentence in that 2nd paragraph.  The reality is that the already meagre prospects of these policies, in America at least, will be devastated if temperatures do fall outside the lower bound of the projections that environmentalists have used to create a panicked sense of emergency.

Now we take you to Barack H. Obama, in full-blown Chicken Little mode. .   

President Obama will announce Tuesday in a speech at Georgetown University that he plans to regulate greenhouse-gas emissions from existing power plants, according to individuals who have been briefed on the plan but asked not to be identified.


In a statement Saturday afternoon sent via the White House Twitter feed, Obama said that he plans to fulfill the pledge he made in his second inaugural address to “respond to the growing threat of climate change for the sake of our children and future generations.”


“This Tuesday, I’ll lay out my vision for where I believe we need to go — a national plan to reduce carbon pollution, prepare our country for the impacts of climate change, and lead global efforts to fight it,” the president said. “This is a serious challenge — but it’s one uniquely suited to America’s strengths.”

Remember this, children.  Please, please, please remember this one thing.  The damn weather isn't cooperating with the models.  Climate isn't changing as predicted.  Obama knows that if he's going to get in another expensive boondoggle for supporters, he has to act fast. 

Here's some more of his statement.  For "economic opportunities", you can safely substitute the word "graft".  Or perhaps "kickbacks". 

In Saturday’s statement, Obama emphasized the economic opportunities that could come from tackling carbon emissions.


“We’ll need scientists to design new fuels, and farmers to grow them,” he said. “We’ll need engineers to devise new sources of energy, and businesses to make and sell them.”

Ok, enough of that damn fool.  Let's move on to another one, a senator from Hawaii. 

Senator Brian Schatz’s (D-HI) filed an amendment for the immigration bill Wednesday that would allow stateless people in the U.S. to seek conditional lawful status if their nations have been made uninhabitable by climate change.

I'll believe that I contribute to Climate Change when senator Brian Schatz’s (D-HI) starts travelling from Hawaii to D.C. in a canoe carved from a coconut tree.  Christ Almighty, do these people have no sense of shame?  At all? 
Here's more.....

Again, let me be clear about what this amendment does. It simply recognizes that climate change, like war, is one of the most significant contributors to homelessness in the world. And like with states torn apart and made uninhabitable by war, we have an obligation not to deport people back to a country made uninhabitable by sea level rise and other extreme environmental changes that render these states desolate.

The sky isn't falling, people.  It simply isn't.  We have weather.  Good, bad, and normal. 

There is no crisis.  But we're not going to let the non-crisis go to waste. 

"I can't be overdrawn. I haven't run out of checks." by Paul Krugman

Here's something from Paul Krugman of the New York Holy Times, on why we aren't having a debt crisis. 

We are not having a debt crisis. 
It’s important to make this point, because I keep seeing articles about the “fiscal cliff” that do, in fact, describe it — often in the headline — as a debt crisis. But it isn’t. The U.S. government is having no trouble borrowing to cover its deficit.

There you have it, folks.  From the #1 New York Times cheerleader and apologist for The Teleprompter Jesus. 
It's a variation on the old joke/bumpersticker that says "I can't possibly be overdrawn - I haven't run out of checks". 

Hurricane Sandy And The Ethanol Trifecta

Ethanol producers already benefit from The Statist Trifecta....

1) They've bribed the government into making their product mandatory.
2) They get massive subsidies.  Massive. 
3) Ethanol produced in other nations is hit with a massive tariff.  This alone is enough to prove that the entire program is horsecrap.  If ethanol were about Saving The Planet, we wouldn't care where it was produced.  But this boondoggle is about funneling tax money to donors. 

I've had a mental countdown going for a while, ever since Hurricane Sandy hit the northeast U.S., just waiting on something like this to appear. 

Go here. 

It's been centuries since we sacrificed virgins to the Corn God.  It's been a long, long time since the Mayans pulled a beating heart out of a sacrificial victim every morning, just to ensure that the sun came up.  I haven't heard anyone pray for rain since I left Drew Baptist Church in Drew, Mississippi.  Very few of us believe that gay marriage or outlawing public prayer in public schools causes hurricanes or earthquakes. 

But buying soybeans and corn from politically connected millionaire farmers to prevent hurricanes?  Yeah, that should work. 

On Olympics uniforms made in China

Here's Don Boudreaux of the Cafe Hayek blog, on purchasing Olympics uniforms from China:

Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) – a leader of a party whose members publicly preen themselves on their alleged devotion to science and realism – throws a conniption fit because the uniforms to be worn by U.S. athletes at the 2012 Olympics were stitched together in China rather than in America (“Burn US Olympic uniforms because they’re made in China,” July 12).

Mr. Reid’s outburst reveals his ignorance of a foundational conclusion of economic science, namely, that people are enriched when they’re free to purchase from whomever they choose regardless of political boundaries. Yes, there are economists who emphasize (mostly purely theoretical) exceptions to the case for free trade – none of which are relevant here – and even a few fringe economists who reject that case altogether. But economists’ overwhelming, non-partisan, and research-based consensus today is, as it has been for years, that free trade (even when unilateral) is beneficial. Mr. Reid’s temper tantrum proves that he is either inexcusably dimwitted about matters on which he legislates, or interested, not in science and realism and truth, but in scoring political points by appealing to the uninformed emotions of constituents.

If Mr. Reid had announced that locating water in the Mojave is easily done with divining rods, that cancer is best cured with crystals, or that the Senate chamber is haunted by Daniel Webster’s ghost, he’d be laughed out of office. But let him make a similarly laughable remark about trade and he continues to be treated as if he and his opinions deserve respect.

Sad.

Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Professor of Economics
George Mason University
Fairfax, VA 22030

A Biblical Defense Of Slavery

I recently found an old seminary Bible Course Syllabus from 1885.  It was written by Dr. J.B. Shearer of Southwestern Presbyterian University in Clarksville Tennessee, "For the use of schools, colleges, and private bible classes" is the subtitle. 

This book makes me angry.  Stark raving nuts. 
I have no words to describe the human misery caused by the thinking in this book.

Please keep in mind that J.B. Shearer was an educated man with a Doctorate.  His book on the Old Testament is still in print, at least in a download edition, for those of you who are interested. 

Here's the section from Shearer's Bible Course on "The Scripture Doctrine Of Slavery".

Please stay with me. I'm going to go through Dr. J.B. Shearer's doctrine, point-by-point.  Shearer's bullet points are in bold type, scripture references are in italics, and my stuff looks like what you're reading now. 

Here's the syllabus used for part of Dr. Shearer's classwork.  

1)  I'll never be able to flesh out Shearer's first point, the one about slavery as a social institution vs. slavery as a sin.  Dr. Shearer's lectures are lost to history.  His later bullet-points reveal his sympathies, though. 

2)  Slavery has indeed existed in all ages.  It still exists.  Dr. Shearer is drifting into the "If God doesn't want it to be, then why does it happen?" argument. 

3)  "Jewish slavery antedates The Theocracy". 

You can go here to read the story in Genesis 14:13-16 of some of Abraham's relatives being captured by Sodomites (yeah, you in the back row, Sodomites) and carried away to be household slaves. 

If the Sodomites used military captives as slaves, then slavery was around before God set up his Theocracy of priests, prophets and such.  All political systems in place at that time were part of God's plan.  And God wouldn't have allowed slavery to exist if he didn't approve of it.  

4)  Dr. Shearer sees slavery as a "positive", but not a "moral" institution.  I don't own the other volumes of Dr. Shearer's syllabus that he refers to. 
I do have this picture, though.   

5) Abraham's slaveholding was recognized in the Abrahamic Covenant....(Genesis, Chapter 17)

12  He who is eight days old among you shall be circumcised. Every male throughout your generations, whether born in your house or bought with your money from any foreigner who is not of your offspring,
13  Both he who is born in your house and he who is bought with your money, shall surely be circumcised. So shall my covenant be in your flesh an everlasting covenant.
14  Any uncircumcised male who is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin shall be cut off from his people; he has broken my covenant."

So not only was God giving them the right to your labor and effort for the rest of your life, your owners also have the right, if not the responsibility, to cut off part of your reproductive organs.  Dr. Shearer helpfully points out that this is a universal covenant (or agreement).

Slavery was acknowleged and justified in the New Testament as well as the Old.  (Galatians, Chapter 3)

27  For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.
28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
29  And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise.

According to these verses, whether or not someone owns you and keeps you in a cage at gunpoint, you are now a child of Abraham/God/Jesus and will earn your heavenly reward.  But it's a heavenly reward, not to be given in this life.  We've still got a lot of cotton to pick.

6)  The master's right and authority are reconized in the fourth and tenth commandments.  Deuteronomy, Chapter 4.  (Here is the 4th Commandment.)

12  Observe the Sabbath day, to keep it holy, as the Lord your God commanded you.
13  Six days you shall labor and do all your work,
14  But the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter or your male servant or your female servant, or your ox or your donkey or any of your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates, that your male servant and your female servant may rest as well as you.

(And the 10th Commandment:)

21  'And you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife. And you shall not desire your neighbor’s house, his field, or his male servant, or his female servant, his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor’s.'

The statues of The Ten Commandments that Alabama judges want to put in their courtrooms are edited to simply state "Honor The Sabbath" and "Thou Shalt Not Covet".

A useful strategy to combat that lunacy is to insist that the uncensored commandments be posted in the courts.  Commandment advocates would then have to defend slavery or explain the omissions, and that would be fun.  

7)  Moses' law forbade permanent Jewish slavery, but encouraged Pagan slavery.  Exodus 21: 2-3.  Leviticus 25:40-46. 

I included a little more of the Exodus passage because it includes some helpful information on how to treat the daughters of your slaves:

Here's the Leviticus 25 passage.  Do you see why Damn Yankee Christians had such a hard time convincing their Southern counterparts that slavery was pure evil?

2 “If you buy a Hebrew servant, he is to serve you for six years. But in the seventh year, he shall go free, without paying anything.
3 If he comes alone, he is to go free alone; but if he has a wife when he comes, she is to go with him. 4 If his master gives him a wife and she bears him sons or daughters, the woman and her children shall belong to her master, and only the man shall go free.

5 “But if the servant declares, ‘I love my master and my wife and children and do not want to go free,’
6 then his master must take him before the judges.  He shall take him to the door or the doorpost and pierce his ear with an awl. Then he will be his servant for life.
7 “If a man sells his daughter as a servant, she is not to go free as male servants do.
8 If she does not please the master who has selected her for himself, he must let her be redeemed. He has no right to sell her to foreigners, because he has broken faith with her.
9 If he selects her for his son, he must grant her the rights of a daughter.
10 If he marries another woman, he must not deprive the first one of her food, clothing and marital rights.
11 If he does not provide her with these three things, she is to go free, without any payment of money.

44 “‘Your male and female slaves are to come from the nations around you; from them you may buy slaves.
45 You may also buy some of the temporary residents living among you and members of their clans born in your country, and they will become your property.
46 You can bequeath them to your children as inherited property and can make them slaves for life, but you must not rule over your fellow Israelites ruthlessly.

8)  Moses' law recognized, defined, limited and defended the rights of master and slave minutely.  Exodus 21:20-32 

The logic in this law, supposedly handed down by God, was clear:  Whip your slave too hard, you take a loss, and you get punished by the community.  But if the slave is back at work in a couple of days (with an improved attitude) the process is no different than tuning up an engine. 

20 “Anyone who beats their male or female slave with a rod must be punished if the slave dies as a direct result,
21 but they are not to be punished if the slave recovers after a day or two, since the slave is their property.  

9) Captives in war were divided by Divine direction.  And in the tithing, the Lord's portion was duly set apart.  Numbers 31:28-40.

This passage from the book of Numbers explains how the Israelites divided the slaves and loot after a battle.  When the author says that certain things were to be given to "the Lord", he means Eleazar and the priestly caste.  If we were to do this in our Middle East adventures, 1/500th of the oil would go to Jimmy Swaggart, the eleven Cardinals now representing the U.S. in the Roman Catholic Church, and Thomas S. Monson, now head of the Mormons in Salt Lake City:

28  From the soldiers who fought in the battle, set apart as tribute for the LORD one one of every five hundred, whether people, cattle, donkeys or sheep.
29  Take this tribute from their half share and give it to Eleazar the priest as the LORD’s part.
30  From the Israelites’ half, select one out of every fifty, whether people, cattle, donkeys, sheep or other animals. Give them to the Levites, who are responsible for the care of the LORD’s tabernacle.”
31  So Moses and Eleazar the priest did as the LORD commanded Moses.


32  The plunder remaining from the spoils that the soldiers took was 675,000 sheep,
33  72,000 cattle,
34  61,000 donkeys
35  and 32,000 women who had never slept with a man.
36  The half share of those who fought in the battle was: 337,500 sheep,
37  of which the tribute for the LORD was 675;
38  36,000 cattle, of which the tribute for the LORD was 72;
39  30,500 donkeys, of which the tribute for the LORD was 61;
40  16,000 people, of whom the tribute for the LORD was 32.

If you aren't disturbed by verse 35 up there, the one which explains who gets the young virgins, you should be.  

10)  Slavery was in its origin a merciful system.  "Servus Quia Servatus" (The servant is saved).  The weaker were protected in the family, first by the master's interest and then by his affection.  The freemen became citizens. 

Yeah.  Well, Dr. Shearer, no one saw your Presbyterian ass signing up for a few years of picking other people's cotton in this merciful system. 

I don't have the time or desire to go through the rest of J.B. Shearer's drivel point-by-point.  Here's the second page of his chapter on slavery.  Boil it down to basics, and Shearer proves that the God of the New Testament approved of slavery just as much as he did in the time of Abrham, Isaac and Jacob. 

According to the book that we now call "Bible", God approves of slavery.  You can look it up. 

Ephesians 6:5-9: "Servants, be obedient to them that are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in singleness of your heart, as unto Christ; Not with eyeservice, as menpleasers; but as the servants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart; With good will doing service, as to the Lord, and not to men: Knowing that whatsoever good thing any man doeth, the same shall he receive of the Lord, whether he be bond or free. And, ye masters, do the same things unto them, forbearing threatening: knowing that your Master also is in heaven; neither is there respect of persons with him."

Colossians 4:1: "Masters, give unto your servants that which is just and equal; knowing that ye also have a Master in heaven."

1 Timothy 6:1-3 "Let as many servants as are under the yoke count their own masters worthy of all honor, that the name of God and his doctrine be not blasphemed. And they that have believing masters, let them not despise them, because they are brethren; but rather do them service, because they are faithful and beloved, partakers of the benefit. These things teach and exhort. If any man teach otherwise, and consent not to wholesome words, even the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, and to the doctrine which is according to godliness;"

Finally, there is the story of Onesimus, the runaway slave that Dr. Shearer mentions in bullet point #12.  Onesimus was a Christian.  Paul told him to return to his former masters.  Go here.  With the exception of "Buy Enron Stock" that's probably the worst advice in history. 

The collection loosely called "Bible" is just a book.  We don't know who wrote it.  Parts of it are interesting, parts of it are incredibly dull, and parts of it are downright evil.  It doesn't hold together very well.  If God really did inspire the book of Leviticus, then he is bat-shit crazy.  I defy you to read it and tell me otherwise.  Here's part of the leprosy cure from Leviticus 14:

Then the priest shall command to take for him who is cleansed two living and clean birds, cedar wood, scarlet, and hyssop. And the priest shall command that one of the birds be killed in an earthen vessel over running water. As for the living bird, he shall take it, the cedar wood and the scarlet and the hyssop, and dip them and the living bird in the blood of the bird that was killed over the running water. And he shall sprinkle it seven times on him who is to be cleansed from the leprosy, and shall pronounce him clean, and shall let the living bird loose in the open field. He who is to be cleansed shall wash his clothes, shave off all his hair, and wash himself in water, that he may be clean. After that he shall come into the camp, and shall stay outside his tent seven days.

For those who got lost, here's a paraphrase:

Get two birds. Kill one. Dip the live bird in the blood of the dead one. Sprinkle the blood on the leper seven times, and then let the blood-soaked bird fly away. Next find a lamb and kill it. Wipe some of its blood on the patient's right ear, thumb, and big toe. Sprinkle seven times with oil and wipe some of the oil on his right ear, thumb and big toe. Repeat. Finally find another pair of birds. Kill one and dip the live bird in the dead bird's blood. Wipe some blood on the patient's right ear, thumb, and big toe. Sprinkle the house with blood 7 times. That's all there is to it.

The Bible shouldn't be used as a manual for doctors.  The Bible shouldn't be used as a justification for opposition to gay marriage.  It shouldn't be used as an excuse to close restaurants or bars on the Muslim, Jewish, or Christian Sabbaths. 

It should have never been used as an excuse for using other humans as slaves. 

Perhaps some of you disagree.  If so, please remember some of us have more guns than you, and might have some cotton that needs picking.   

Heterosexual Marriage Is A Sin

This is starting to piss me off.  Here's the ABC News website:

A proposed amendment to North Carolina’s constitution which would make marriage between a man and woman the only legal union recognized by the state has passed a statewide vote, the Associated Press reports.

The referendum- North Carolina Amendment One- goes a step beyond outlawing same-sex marriage, which was already illegal in the state. The law decrees that “marriage between one man and one woman is the only domestic legal union that shall be valid or recognized in this State”- meaning that civil unions and potentially other types of domestic partnerships will no longer be legally recognized.

Here's more:

Tony Perkins, President of the Family Research Council- a conservative Christian organization- released a statement applauding the vote.

“We applaud North Carolina voters for joining voters in 31 other states upholding the historic and natural definition of marriage as the union of one man and one woman” the statement said. “At every opportunity, the American people have demonstrated a deep appreciation for the unique benefits that marriage between a man and a woman brings to families and society. They recognize that marriage is the only kind of union that results in natural procreation and keeps a mother and father together to raise the children produced by their union.”

Yeah, I think it's best that a child have two parents.  If a child has more than one sister and one brother, it might be best to have four parents just to help keep everybody fed and clothed. 

If a child is going to Texas A&M, it might be best for the kid to have six parents:  A mother, a father, a banker, a lottery winner, Bill Gates, and an illegal immigrant getting paid under the table, just to help pay for all the A&M fees and services. 

But back to the point raised by Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, which needs refuting.....  The Bible says that heterosexual marriage is not the ideal condition for Christians.  I repeat:  "He on She" marriage is not the ideal condition for Christians. 

This billboard is a lie. 

If you take the Apostle Paul seriously, and if you believe he was divinely inspired and not just blogging, heterosexual activity within the confines of heterosexual marriage falls short of perfection.  Therefore heterosexual sex is a "sin", just like gay sex, lesbian sex, rape, pedophilia, bestiality, and forcing children to watch the John Edwards sex video are all supposedly sins.  Sin is anything that falls short of the ideal, anything less than perfection. 

Paul said so.  Here's the man himself:

I wish that all were as I myself am. But each has his own special gift from God, one of one kind and one of another.

To the unmarried and the widows I say that it is well for them to remain single as I do. (1 Corinthians 7:7-8)

The man has spoken.  Remaning single is the ideal.  Anything else falls short of perfection.  And elsewhere in the Bible, sin is "falling short of the glory of God".  To top it off, here's James 4:17.....

¹⁷ If anyone, then, knows the good they ought to do and doesn’t do it, it is sin for them.

What you should do, according to Paul, is to remain single.  If you know what you should do (remain single) and fail, then you have sinned. 

(Note to my friend Mike Coyne, who is seriously considering falling into sin this fall....Don't do it !!!) 

Yet fundamentalist preachers do weddings all the time.  Strange. 

There are a few other problems in the biblical view of marriage (only one of these is defended at great length at the Family Research Council website). 

See, there are multiple types of marriage authorized in the "Bible".  One of the interesting ones is detailed in Deuteronomy 22:28. 

28 If a man happens to meet a virgin who is not pledged to be married and rapes her and they are discovered, 29 he shall pay her father fifty shekels of silver. He must marry the young woman, for he has violated her. He can never divorce her as long as he lives.

There are others.  The book of Judges, Chapter 19, has a long story about the responsibilities of concubines.  You can have a wife and a Ho, and if the Ho is a disappointment you can chop her into smaller pieces and send the dismembered whore parts all over Israel.  Look it up. 

Here's a helpful chart for every man who doesn't have the spiritual strength to remain celibate and single, and who wishes to sin by marrying a woman. 

Paul was the last "divinely inspired" person to write on this issue.  He said don't get married.  To anybody. 

I still don't understand why the Family Research Council is so opposed to gay marriage and not all the other kinds. 

Satan, Santorum, and Superstitions

Some of Rick Santorum's advisers are frustrated and angry that reporters are focusing more on their candidate's statements about Satan than on his positions on the issues. Here in Arizona Tuesday, Santorum faced repeated questioning about portions of a 2008 speech at a Catholic university in Florida in which he said, "Satan is attacking the great institutions of America."




Much hilarity ensued amongst the secular Statists when Santorum's statement about Satan was brought to light.

The Santorum team recently punched back, stating that according to a 2007 Gallup poll, 70 percent of us believe in The Devil and 69 percent of us believe in hell.   This put Santorum's statement in the middle of the American mainstream. 

You can look it up.  70 percent of us believe that God created a being that rebelled against him, and that this Evil One sometimes tempts us into doing bad things, causes crops to perish, created Cash For Clunkers, the Texas Department of Transportation, and the stimulus package. 

I'm on the State Libertarian Executive Platform Committee this year, and I'm going to try to get an anti-Satanic influence plank added to this year's statement. 
Satan doesn't do this crap. 
We do it. 
If there is an evil being who is in rebellion against God, we need to stop blaming him for our actions and our votes.  Who needs Satan when we have the electorate?   

Agreed?  Good. 

Sorry for the digression. 

In addition to believing in Satan, 37% of us believe that houses can be haunted, 21% of us believe in witches, and 25% of us believe in Astrology. 

As of February 23rd, 2012, 45% of us believe that Barack Obama is doing a good job. 

24% of us believe that extraterrestrial beings have visited earth. 

44% of us believe that the auto bailout was a good thing. 

21% believe that we can communicate with the dead. 

As of February 23rd, 2012, 45% of us believe that Barack Obama is doing a good job.

47% of Americans believe that the rich should be giving Washington more money to waste. 

29% of American League baseball fans say that the New York Yankees are their favorite team. 

Here's a quaint one:  32% of Americans still believe that Global Warming will be a threat to themselves or their way of life within their lifetimes. 

As of February 23rd, 2012, 45% of us believe that Barack Obama is doing a good job.

42% of us don't want to repeal ObamaCare. 

26% of Americans believe in Clairvoyance, the ability to see the past or predict the future. 

As of February 23rd, 2012, 45% of us believe that Barack Obama is doing a good job.

I thought that all of those facts were interesting. 

An Inconvenient Cooling

I've sworn off of this topic dozens of times, but in the words of Al Pacino in that 2nd Godfather movie, JUST WHEN I THOUGHT I WAS OUT....THEY PULL ME BACK IN. 

Here's something from The Mail (UK).  (I apologize in advance for illustrating this piece with Global Cooling Panic magazine covers from the 1970's.) 

The supposed ‘consensus’ on man-made global warming is facing an inconvenient challenge after the release of new temperature data showing the planet has not warmed for the past 15 years.


The figures suggest that we could even be heading for a mini ice age to rival the 70-year temperature drop that saw frost fairs held on the Thames in the 17th Century.

Based on readings from more than 30,000 measuring stations, the data was issued last week without fanfare by the Met Office and the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit. It confirms that the rising trend in world temperatures ended in 1997.

Meanwhile, leading climate scientists yesterday told The Mail on Sunday that, after emitting unusually high levels of energy throughout the 20th Century, the sun is now heading towards a ‘grand minimum’ in its output, threatening cold summers, bitter winters and a shortening of the season available for growing food.


Solar output goes through 11-year cycles, with high numbers of sunspots seen at their peak.

We are now at what should be the peak of what scientists call ‘Cycle 24’ – which is why last week’s solar storm resulted in sightings of the aurora borealis further south than usual. But sunspot numbers are running at less than half those seen during cycle peaks in the 20th Century.

Analysis by experts at NASA and the University of Arizona – derived from magnetic-field measurements 120,000 miles beneath the sun’s surface – suggest that Cycle 25, whose peak is due in 2022, will be a great deal weaker still.

We must fight this.  Let's put a subsidy on Hummers and SUV's and a hellish tax on electric cars. 

Or maybe we should simply go back to calling it "weather" and admit that Al Gore, The U.N., the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit, and NASA have no idea what future weather is going to be like, and that attempts to change the weather are pointless, but profitable for insiders.   

No one believes in Global Warming

No one believes in AGW.   Not according to Forbes:

Much was written about the most recent United Nations Climate Change Conference, which was held in Durban, South Africa November 28 through December 9 of this year. However, most commentators gave short shrift to the most important—in a sense, the only—outcome of the meeting. This was, of course, the agreement to hold yet another conference in yet another nice location (Qatar) about a year from now.

The Durban conference was the seventeenth conference of its kind. They have been held annually since 1995 in places such as Geneva (in July 1996) and Bali (in December 2007). Don’t hold your breath for one to be held in Newark, New Jersey, or Fargo, North Dakota.

Good one !  Even better...."I might believe that humans cause global warming when the next UN Climate Change Conference is held via SKYPE." 

The meeting in Durban provided an opportunity for Progressives to make their latest argument that ordinary people should surrender their freedom and hand all money and power over to unelected, unaccountable “experts” like, well, the people at the conference. This is, of course, in order to “save the planet” from “climate change”. (The issue that had for years been called “global warming” was rebranded as “climate change” when the most recent decade’s worth of data proved uncooperative.)

I'm glad other people are starting to Beat The Dead Horse of "warming" vs. "change".  It's been so lonely here, fighting that linguistics battle all alone for so many years....

First, let’s get the known and knowable facts out of the way. Is the climate changing? Yes. One feature of the manifested universe is the impermanence of all things. The climate has changed over time and will continue to change. Is the change good or bad? Like all change, it is both good and bad.

But, overall, is it good or bad? We can’t say. We don’t even have a conceptual framework that would allow us to answer that question, or even to adequately describe how the climate is changing. “Climate” is an abstraction, and all abstractions are untrue (or at least incomplete).

Is human activity causing the climate to change? We don’t know, and there is no way, even in principle, that we can know. It is difficult enough to determine the “what” of climate change. To determine the “why”, we would need to do controlled experiments. And, for this, we would need another planet, identical in every way to our own earth, which we could use as a “control”.

But wait! Isn’t the science “settled”, thus making anyone who questions the climate change “consensus” an anti-intellectual Luddite? No. Nothing in science is ever settled.

This statement is pure, undiluted greatness:  Nothing in science is ever settled.  That's why it is called science and not theology.  "Settled Science" is a phrase created by someone's marketing department. 

“Science” consists of nothing but theories that have not yet been disproved by evidence, but which, in principle, could be so disproved. Even Einstein’s theory of relativity, which has been validated by thousands of experiments and measurements over almost a century, was recently called into question by experiments involving neutrinos that appeared to travel faster than light.

If something is “settled”, it is not science. It is religious dogma, and an assault upon freedom of thought and inquiry.

Yeah.  What he said.  And one of the signs of religious dogma is an effort to prevent people from looking into the origins and fundamental truth of the dogma.  Another is a casting out of heretics, say, shit-canning any editor willing to publish something skeptical of the dogma in a peer-reviewed journal.   Or being willing to accept his resignation when he is shown the tools of the Inquisition. 

But don’t the climate scientists’ computer models prove that carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels are causing climate change? No. First, no computer model can ever prove anything (see the definition of “science” given above). Second, we do not have the capability to model a system as complex as the earth.

The most any computer model can be is a useful tool. As it happens, all of the computer models that have been developed over the years by climate change proponents have already been invalidated by events that they did not accurately predict. For example, given the fast rising CO2 concentration in the earth’s atmosphere, global temperatures should have gone up much faster than they have over the past ten years. (And, it is not even clear that they have risen at all,)

But...but...but....THE EARTH IS SUPPOSED TO HAVE A FEVER !!!!

So, we don’t know what is really happening to the earth’s “climate”. Even if we did, we could not be sure why it was happening. And, we have no way of knowing whether the change was good or bad for mankind as a whole.

But what of the Progressives’ argument that, because the effects of climate change are potentially so disastrous, we should surrender our freedom and move to a centrally planned world economy managed by experts, “just in case”?

This is known in Voodo Circles as the "Precautionary Principle".  Just in case the planet really is warming, we should buy lots of carbon credits from Al Gore's companies, we should buy indulgences purchase the right to emit carbon through a cap and trade system, we should be required to purchase lots of machinery painted green, and insist that diesel tractors get 15 miles per gallon.  All of which would enrich the Warmists and their donors.  But still, we should be safe, right?  Just in case? 

Two points about this: first, it’s not going to happen. The Progressives will have to content themselves with extracting a few billion dollars per year from taxpayers to fund cushy “research” and “advocacy” jobs, and to hold climate change conferences like the one that just concluded in Durban. Second, the climate change advocates obviously don’t believe in climate change themselves.

My favorite proof is that the Warmists still drive cars, fly in planes, plug in computers, travel about from place to place, and use electricity.  This guy apparently has some other evidence:

You can’t necessarily tell what people are truly committed to from what they say. However, you can always tell what they are truly committed to by how they negotiate. If someone really wants to do something, they will react to a suggestion by engaging it. They will “work with” the suggestion, trying to see how it can help them do what they say they want to do. If someone says that they want to do something but they really have some other agenda, they will respond to a suggestion with an instant, “Yes, but…”

Like, when an employee asks to hop in his car and drive to another factory to pick up a wicket or a sprocket that he must have to prevent a shipment from being late.  I point out that he can rob a wicket or a sprocket from another unit.  Then he mentions some paperwork that need to go to the other factory.  I point out the scanner on my desk which is capable of sending the paperwork over.  Then he leaves in a huff and goes back to work.   
He just wanted to drive to the other factory.  Listen to the radio on the way.  Get out of the heat.  Flirt with the ladies at the other shop.  The wickets, sprockets, and paperwork were an excuse. 

The climate change crowd has been frantically “yes, butting” geoengineering, which involves using technology to control the climate directly. Their efforts in this regard would be hilarious if the stakes in terms of money and freedom were not so high.

It is obvious that even if “climate change” is happening, and even if it is a bad thing, it is not going to be reversed by reducing CO2 emissions. Despite decades of climate change conferences, protocols, and agreements, fossil fuel use has been rising rapidly as people all over the world have adopted free market economics as a way of escaping poverty. So, if anything at all is going to be done about climate change, it will have to be done by “geoengineering”.

Geoengineering is a far more logical response to “global warming” than are efforts to curb CO2 emissions. First of all, geoengineering does not require that our assumption that it is man-made CO2 emissions that are causing the problem be correct. It would work regardless of what was “really” causing global temperatures to rise. Second, there are geoengineering approaches that could cool the earth at a cost of a few billion dollars per year, rather than tens of trillions of dollars per year. And, third, geoengineering does not require that the people of the world surrender their personal and economic freedom.

You can hear them in the background now, can't you?  If we can change the earth's temperature at all, using nothing more than some water and a few miles of Wal-Mart water hose, how will we ever properly punish the capitalists?  How will we make money off non-warming scam?  And most important, how will we retain our incredibly annoying air of self-righteousness? 

Given that geoengineering has the potential to actually do something about the climate change “problem”, the reaction of the climate change crowd to it has been illuminating. They have gone all-out to stop geoengineering experiments from being conducted, and they are doing everything they can to prevent geoengineering from even being discussed.

You're damn right they're going to try to prevent it from being discussed.  Wouldn't you?  Especially if it meant no more trips to Copenhagen, Kyoto, Durban, Bali or even Newark, New Jersey?  They won't even have the money to go to the Motel 6 in Yazoo City.  Think of the downfall....

Climate change proponents recently mounted a desperate effort to stop an experiment in Britain designed to spray 40 gallons of pure water into the upper atmosphere (the so-called SPICE project). Thus far, they have managed to delay the test, and they are arguing that even if the experiment goes ahead, the results should not be made public.

We've been down this road before, with the "Hide the decline" emails from East Anglia U.  There are certain things that the peasants and serfs shouldn't be allowed to see.  Science gets rather unsettled afterwards. 

The Progressives are well aware that their opposition to geoengineering experiments exposes their entire game, which is all about money, power, and central-planning control of people’s lives, and has nothing to do with concern about the earth. Unfortunately (for them), they have no choice. Geoengineering solutions might actually work, but they do not require that Progressives be given taxpayer money to hold lavish conferences in lovely places like Durban, South Africa.

They really do fly to South Africa to discuss how to reduce carbon emissions.  I don't care who you are, you've gotta admit it.  That's funny. 

James Hansen and the Corruption Of Science

From The Powerline Blog:

It recently came out that James Hansen, one of the two or three most prominent global warming alarmists on whose work the IPCC reports rest, “forgot” to report $1.6 million in outside income, as required by his government contracts. Is that significant? Well, yes: A handful of scientists, including Hansen, have gotten wealthy on climate alarmism. They have an enormous financial interest in the faux science they have done so much to perpetrate. It is more likely that the Pope would renounce Christianity than that Hansen, Michael Mann, etc., would change their minds about global warming, regardless of the evidence. (I say that because the Pope has far more intellectual integrity than the climate alarmists.)

IMHO, the Pope sometimes plays the same game.  More on that later. 

Beyond that handful of leading alarmists, if you are involved in any way in climate science, you have a financial interest in alarmism.

Ok, let's take a brief timeout here.  This is why there has been no need for a grand conspiracy of evil scientists working in a hollowed-out volcano.  I repeat: this is why there is no Global Warming Conspiracy.  Dump this many trillion dollars on the table, and the market will take care of the rest.  There are billions in it for everybody.  Except you, of course. 

Even minor climate scientists get consulting contracts and are invited to present papers in exotic locales. And if you are not an alarmist, you have little or no chance of cashing in on the billions of dollars in government grants for climate research.

Remember what happens to journal editors who allow heretical opinions into the AGW Liturgy?  They suddenly resign in disgrace. 

Essentially, the closed world of climate “science” has been bought and paid for, largely with our tax dollars. Under these circumstances, it is remarkable that so many real scientists have been willing to forgo financial advantage and blow the whistle on the alarmists’ frauds.

Ken Haapala, Executive Vice President of the Science and Environmental Policy Project, comments:

NASA’s James Hansen is back in the news for two reasons. He has a new paper claiming that the Moscow heat wave during 2010 and the Texas heat wave during 2011 provide a form of statistical proof of global warming. The pause in warming must be justified somehow! The study was quickly refuted by several commentators, most devastatingly by Lubos Motl.

The second reason Hansen is in the news is that he failed to report some $1,600,000 of outside income over several years as required by his contract for government employment. Normally, TWTW would not bother with such, but this is an exception for a number of reasons. One, in 1988 with great publicity, Hansen announced with great certainty that global warming threatens humanity. Two, with great publicity, Hansen declared that President Bush was trying to muzzle him. And, three, he was cited as the scientific advisor of Al Gore’s scientifically disgraceful film. Apparently, Hansen believes that his celebrity status exempts him from the regulations that govern other government scientists.

We can’t say it enough: global warming alarmism is not science. It is politics at best, outright fraud at worst.

But in a way, it is beautiful. 
Sometimes I have to sit back and marvel at it. 
Weather/Climate/Rain/Cold/Heat have all fluctuated wildly for billions of years.  Primitive people have usually believed these changes were their fault, and made sacrifices to their gods to appease the clouds, the sun, the rain or the volcano. 
Priests of various species have usually been willing to take charge of these sacrifices in exchange for a percentage off the top.
And the weather just keeps on doing what it is gonna do.   

Richard Dawkins - "The Magic Of Reality"

From Richard Dawkins' new book, The Magic Of Reality.  The book is obviously for children, or possibly for those of us with a religious fundamentalist upbringing who need little reminders from time to time to avoid slipping back into religious tribalism. 
Those are the two reasons why I'll probably buy it. 
Parts of this fable that Dawkins shares in his book might sound familiar.  Names, characters, gods, and incidents are the products of the pre-civilized imagination.  Any resemblance to actual events, characters, gods and incidents, living or dead is entirely coincidental.   

Utnapashtim told Gilgamesh of an occasion, many centuries earlier, when the gods were angry with humankind becase we made so much noise they couldn't sleep. 

The chief god, Enlil, suggested that they should send a great flood to destroy everybody, so the gods could get a good night's rest.  But the water god, Ea, decided to warn Utnapashtim.  Ea told Utnapashtim to tear down his house and build a boat. 

It would have to be a very big boat, because Utnapashtim was to take into it 'the seed of all living creatures'. 

Utnapashtim built the boat just in time, before it rained for six days without stopping.  The flood that followed drowned everybody and everything that was not safely inside the boat.  On the seventh day the wind dropped and the waters grew calm and flat. 

Utnapashtim opened a hatch in the tightly sealed boat and released a dove.  The dove flew away, looking for land, but failed to find any and returned.  Then Utnapashtim released a swallow, but the same thing happened. 

Finally Utnapashtim released a raven.  The raven didn't come back, which suggested to Utnapashtim that there was dry land somewhere and the raven had found it. 

Eventually the boat came to rest on a mountaintop poking out of the water.  Another god, Ishtar, created the first rainbow, as a token of the gods' promise to send no more terrible floods. 

So that is how the rainbow came into being, according to the ancient legend of the Sumerians..... In fact, it is obvious that the Jewish story of Noah is nothing more than a retelling of the older legend of Utnapashtim.  It was a folk tale that got passed around, and it travelled down the centuries.  We often find that seemingly ancient legends have come from even older legends, usually with some names or other details changed. 

Go here to read a story about a Dutch Creationist who built a full-size "replica" of the ark from the Noah story.  
Go here to read what percentage of Americans believe that this story is literally true.  (Noah's, but not Utnapashtim's.)

The pics of Utnapashtim came from here and here and here and here and here.