68% of the sons of the 1% have worked for Dad !!!!

The Atlantic Monthly is shocked, shocked to learn that 68% of the sons of the top 1% have worked for their father's company. 
It's true.  68% of family-owned businesses actually employ family members. 
It seems that entrepreneurs often start a business so they can provide for their own children, not those of a total stranger in Hobbes, New Mexico.

(Ok, enough of the sarcasm.  Here's the point.....)

My first job was at a family-owned business.  I shoveled mud in my father's rice fields.  He could've, and should've hired a more qualified person, like an unemployed accountant in New Jersey, or a needy interior decorator living in Bangor, Maine.  Instead, he kept the mud-shoveling job in the family.  I still feel guilty about it.  My sisters sometimes drove tractors and flagged for the cropdusters.  We've never spoken about our individual strategies for handling the shame of taking these jobs from others, but the conversation needs to happen.  Perhaps this Christmas.   

(Sorry, the sarcasm isn't going away quietly.) 

During the winters, I worked at another family-owned business, a winery across the river from the farm. 
The owner, Sam Rushing, started his vineyard on some land previously owned by his grandfather, Big Tom Rushing.  (When time permits, Google "Tom Rushen Blues" by the legendary Charlie Patton.  Patton wrote it about Big Tom.)  Not only did Sam hire Big Tom, his grandfather, Sam also hired a woman that he was sleeping with !!!  And he allowed this...this....this harlot to make actual decisions about the operation of the winery !!  And run the little cafe attached to the winery !!!  Just because she was willing to go to bed with him !!!  Yes !!!  Sam Rushing, that selfish bastard, hired his wife !!!

The Rushing Winery should've been surrounded by protesters chanting "No Justice, No Peace".

(Sorry, the sarcasm isn't going away quietly.)

After I moved to Fort Worth from Mississippi, I got a job at Bassham Food Services, loading trucks on the night shift.  Calvin Bassham, the patriarch of the bunch, had started the company by purchasing an egg truck.  He made deliveries to every restaurant and hotel in Fort Worth.  Then, to provide even more for his family, he started selling chickens.  Then other meat.  Next thing you know, Calvin Bassham was providing paper plates, forks, vegetable oil, string beans, corn, stewed tomatoes and such all over the Fort Worth/Dallas area.  He put in 80 hour weeks for years, not to pay more taxes, not to support our local infrastructure, and not to give back to the community. 
He did it for his family. 
He let his wife, Helen, keep the books.  Ronnie (#1 son) did most of the selling with Randy (#2 son).  Wes (#3 son) was in charge of the delivery trucks. 
Were there more qualified accountants than Helen in Fort Worth?  Could I have done a better job than Wes as the dispatcher? 
Yes and yes. 
But Calvin Bassham put in all those 80 hour weeks so he could give those jobs, and the company, to his own family.  The bastard. 

After that, I got another job doing the shipping and freight for Taylors Books.  Martha Taylor was the entrepreneur who started the company.  When her first bookstore in Dallas took off, Henry, her husband, quit his hospital administration job and went to work helping grow the book company.  Mike, their son, eventually took over the whole thing. 
Under Mike's leadership, the company went out of business.  Couldn't someone have seen this coming?  Out of all the retail managers in the world, why did they risk giving their business to Mike? 

I eventually left Taylors Books because of illness and fatigue (they got sick and tired of me).  I went to work for Bookstop, which was eventually purchased by Barnes and Noble. 
Barnes and Noble is owned by Len Riggio.  Years ago, Mr. Riggio hocked everything he owned, took some massive risks, and worked like a dog to grow B&N from a regional chain into a national brand.  He could have lost everything he owned. 
He now employs his little brother Steve Riggio.  Sometimes Steve runs purchasing, sometimes he runs their smaller shopping mall company, B. Dalton.  I've heard that Steve is sometimes allowed to run the whole thing.   
Len Riggio practices shameful nepotism of the worst sort.   

(Sorry, the sarcasm isn't going away quietly.)


When I reference my current employer on this site, I call it Jukt Micronics.  (Google it.) 

Jukt was founded in 1984 by a guy nicknamed Big D. 
We make display fixtures for the grocery and produce industry. 
Big D passed away several years ago, but his wife still comes to work so she can order the office supplies. 
His oldest son is the company president. 
His youngest son runs one of the factories.
The youngest son's college roommate is now our CEO. 
Big D's daughter runs the office at one of the factories.   
Big D's brother, one of the co-founders, retired several years ago.  He didn't like being idle, and now drives one of the local transfer trucks. 
One of the cousins does the bookkeeping. 
A nephew does installations for specialty displays. 
Another cousin works for an unrelated company selling insurance.  Guess who insures our stuff? 
Another cousin is a lawyer.  Guess who we go to for legal advice? 
Ok, this next one gets complicated....   Big D's oldest son's wife's brother now runs the mega-shipping warehouse, the freight brokerage, the trucking company, the local transfer drivers and the wood, metal and plastic shop freight docks.  (That would be me.) 

It seems that the 1% don't start companies so they can provide funding for wars in Libya, Bridges To Nowhere, Cash For Clunkers, African Genital-Washing Programs, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, The War On Drugs, military contractors in John Boehner's district, or Nancy Pelosi's air travel. 
They start these companies to provide for their own.  It's part of the glue that holds the world together.   
Everything else is an afterthought. 
No legislation will ever change this. 
Thank you. 

Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty. This is known as “bad luck.” - Robert Heinlein

Clarification

Someone can be against capital punishment, and still be in favor of law and order. 

Someone can be in favor of marijuana legalization, and still be against drug use. 

Someone can be opposed to the "No Child Left Behind Act", and be in favor of education. 

There are people who oppose the "American Jobs Act" who hope that Americans can get jobs. 

You really can care about the environment, and continue believing that it was a bad idea to give half a billion dollars to bankrupt solar-panel manufacturer Solyndra. 

There are people of good will who oppose the "Employee Free Choice Act" while also believing that employees should have a free choice in the matter of joining a union. 

Some of the people who think that Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are the biggest messes ever birthed by bureaucrats - some of those very same people don't believe that old sick people should be thrown out in the street. 

It is possible to be in favor of a strong national defense, and also believe that sending 2,500 Marines to Australia is a bad idea. 

Many people who oppose Affirmative Action aren't racists. 

1)  There are people who had a default setting of "No" when asked to contribute money to Jimmy Swaggart, Bernie Madoff, Enron, Pets.com, and that lady in Nigeria who sent you the email about putting some money in your bank account for a short time just to get it out of the country. 

2)  There are also people who have a default setting of "No" when asked if they favor almost any government program.

If you understand the suspicions of the first group, you are closer to understanding the suspicions of the second.   

Sometimes you don't learn what you think you're going to learn.....

For the last couple of weeks I've had a great, great time with the Occupy Wall Street people. 

Radley Balko recently provided a helpful link to a piece in Forbes, where a typist named Kyle Smith hopes that the OWS movement never ends. 
Why?
Because, after all the rapes, thefts, tent gropings, assaults, Anti-Semitism, old woman toppling, public urination and the like, the cute little buggers might actually be learning something about human nature and how the world works. 

Here's Mr. Smith:

Years from now, a major political candidate will come to the fore and say, “I got my political education as a member of a protest movement known as Occupy Wall Street. And it’s the reason I stand before you as a private enterprise-loving capitalist today.”

Some editorial writers have called for evicting the OWS squatters from downtown Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park (a better solution: Lock them in! Wouldn’t society be much better off without these malodorous whiners?), but the longer the occupation lasts, the more valuable the lessons being learned by these youngsters. Their college educations obviously didn’t include even rudimentary tutelage about how a marketplace — and by extension (since most things are connected to trade) society — works. But now they’re learning, for instance, that:

1) Rule of law comes first. It doesn’t matter whether your business is widget marketing or universal social justice: You can’t work until you have secured basic order, which requires a non-corrupt constabulary authorized in the judicious use of force. The Manhattan OWS site, which is largely covered with tents that lend shelter to peaceful protesters and privacy to opportunistic felons, is being linked to more and more reports of theft, sexual assault, random groping and even rape.

The occupiers, who operate on a foolhardy belief that they are a self-policing as well as self-governing organization, have reacted to crimes by forming “shame circles” in which, as if reenacting a scene from a Nathaniel Hawthorne novel, they surround malefactors and cry, “Shame, shame, shame!” (What, without trial?) Desperadoes, unfazed by such non-punishment, have declined to flee. A society that fails adequately to punish lawbreakers will disintegrate into chaos.

2) Welfare breeds freeloading. The idealistic, studenty, ultra-left-wing quality of the Zuccotti proceedings has attracted nutritious, restaurant-caliber meals, large donations of clothing and other goods and large cash balances. All of this private charity is very much in the tradition of free enterprise, but the political types have been unnerved by the increasing presence of ordinary apolitical homeless people who don’t know much about satiric anti-capitalist puppetry, but would very much enjoy a sandwich.

OWS has been shocked to discover these folk aren’t “contributing” anything (nothing important, anyway, like slogans or resolutions), and derided them as “professional homeless people” (to distinguish them from the amateur kind). Food preparers instigated what one protester called “blacklisting” of such individuals to keep them from sharing the bounty the “productive” members of the movement have secured.

This is a crucial battle between inactivists and activists. Consider this comment on the official OWS forum:

“The money was sent for the protesters, not panhandlers. The protesters want jobs, but can’t find any. Panhandlers (In my experience, flame away) don’t want jobs. There is a difference for all the fogies spewing about hypocrisy. We should not allow people’s good intentions to be taken advantage of by miscreants and other parasites.

But exactly! Having granted the principle that you must be willing to work if you want to eat, OWS has done all the heavy lifting for those who would question whether the policies of social-democratic welfare states are even moral, much less practical. (OWS hasn’t yet run out of donated pizzas, but Europe proves you will eventually run out of other people’s money).

3) Private, profit-seeking businesses provide a social good.  Before OWS began, among the corporations you would have expected to be the least likely to receive its blessing would have been McDonald’s, which has been wolfsbane to the collegiate left since at least the 1980s. Previously known mainly as rainforest-despoiling animal-butchering obesity-inducing corporate goons, Mickey D is now A-OK with OWS. A downtown franchise half a block from Zuccotti Park allows protesters to use its bathrooms without purchase and fuels discussion of the revolution with its generous, barely profitable Dollar Menu.

There are no facilities in the plaza, suggesting the movement would have had to keep its collective legs crossed for the past few weeks were it not for the burger profits that keep the restrooms working. McDonald’s is an especially salient reminder of why dreamy idealists are able to function: Because someone, somewhere who gets up and goes to work making things people actually want to buy is subsidizing them. Just ask Karl Marx, who was sent money by his buddy Friedrich Engels to support him while he was writing “Das Kapital” — money that came directly from Engels’ father’s worker-exploiting apparatus, also known as a “factory.”

And speaking of Karl Marx, here's one of Samizdata's quotes of the day:

"I wish Karl would accumulate some capital, instead of just writing about it." - Karl Marx's Mama

First they came for the Goat-Counters

First they came for the Goat-Counters,
But I did not speak out, for I was not a Goat-Counter....

Go here. 

Thanks to Radley Balko of The Agitator Blog for speaking out about the plight of government Goat-Counters. 
When the budget-cutters come for the government's Catfish-Counters, will YOU be the one who speaks out? 

9 boys molested at government institution. No steps taken to close the facility.

A government organization recently created a media firestorm when it allowed one of its ex-employees, a known pedophile, to continue using the government's facilities and bring young boys into its showers and dressing rooms.

One government employee attempted to report that he'd seen this ex-employee raping a 10-year-old in the workplace shower.  This witness went to his supervisor, who went to his supervisor to report the crime.  No actions were ever taken to intervene or protect the child. 

The only law enforcement involved were the government organization's in-house security.  No one in the organization spoke out.   

There were other incidents with young children involving the organization's in-house security officers.  Officers made recordings of the pedophile employee apologizing to the mother of one of the boys that he molested. 

No one pressed charges for years, and other government employees took great pains to cover up the incidents and protect the reputation of the government institution. 

It appears that 9 young boys were molested in some way.  Some of them were raped. 

If this had happened at a private institution, would our government allow it to remain open for business for another 15 minutes? 

Would politicians be rushing to sponsor something called the "Victims Of Paterno's Coverup Bill of 2011"?

Would Nancy Pelosi be standing in front of cameras, pontificating about the need for more regulation and oversight of the education industry? 

Just wondering. 

Seen and Unseen and Obscene in Washington State

Radley Balko, of The Agitator Blog, has been linking to and commenting on some of the greatest stuff ever.  I've started going to his recommended links now and then, hitting a few, ranting about them, and saving them for a slow news day.  Here's a ferinstance:

If you've read any Libertarian-ish stuff at all in the last few years, you know that Washington State and Pennsylvania have state-controlled liquor monopolies. 
Here are a few quotes Balko selected from Reason magazine on Washington State's recent decision to allow its plantation worker citizens to purchase Jim Beam from someplace besides the plantation commisary:

Here's a little Seen And Unseen for you:

Seen:


Beginning next June, liquor sales will shift from the state to grocery and warehouse stores, including Costco. It means more than 900 state employees will lose their jobs, most of them workers at state-run liquor stores.

Unseen:

The state budgeting office figures the number of outlets selling liquor will jump from 328 to 1,428. It also expects the change to generate an average of $80 million more in annual revenue for the state and local governments over the next six years....Some liquor prices are expected to drop.

Plus bonus hilarious overstatement from vested interests:

Tom Geiger, communication director for the union representing more than 700 workers in state-run liquor stores, said he thought the results raised questions about democracy itself.

Anybody who doesn't think that's funny needs to have a drink.  From a low-cost, private establishment that isn't subsidized by theft, of course. 

It's time to go knock back a few and watch the Buffalo Bills cover a 5 1/2 point spread against Jerry Jones's Dallas Cowboys.  Have a good Sunday. 

How To Win The Libertarian Argument

How does one win the "Libertarian Argument"?

By going here. 

Enjoy. 

You can find more of Mr. Micklethwait's fine work by going here. 

The cartoon below showing many of our failed evangelism practices came from here. 

 

Was Cash For Clunkers A Clunker?

Was Cash For Clunkers A Clunker?

That's the question that Ezra Klein of The Washington Post asks if you go here. 

To even ask that question is to answer it. 

Yes, the program was a clunker.  It was a clunker of such magnitude that to even ask the question is to answer it.  If you're pay more for something than it is worth, or to expedite or reward a lopsided trade of that type, then you are participating in Clunkerite behavior. 

Good Lord in heaven, this thing made me crazy back in the day.  Now even the Official Newsletter Of The Obama Vandalism Team is almost admitting that the program was dumber than a box of rocks.  Here's Klein:

For one thing, the fuel-economy requirements were fairly lax: A person could, in theory, trade in a Hummer that got 14 mpg and get a $3,500 voucher for a new 18-mpg SUV. What’s more, that slight gain in efficiency would be partially offset by the energy costs involved in manufacturing the new car. And on the economic front, critics argued, the program might just move up purchases that would’ve happened anyway — thereby providing little actual stimulus.

And that's exactly the type of thing that the smarter people among us did.
 
My employer, Jukt Micronics, participated in a similar Texas program for forklifts.  It was supposedly about lowering carbon emissions, but in reality it was about using up some of the Texas government's 2009 budget.  Hit this link.  The forklift giveaway was pure, undiluted, insane, government mandated greatness.  I can't thank you good taxpayers enough for giving me these forklifts , by the way.  Oh, and we're letting these things idle all night so that the government inspectors will see that they're getting enough hours, which is the only way they can prove that I really needed them. 
Long story.  Hit the link.  I'm begging you. 
Go ahead.  Hit this link. 
You'll continue to vote for Democrat or Republican idiots unless you hit this link. 

But that's enough chatter about how I'm letting forklifts idle all night so the odometers will prove that I really did need the forklifts that you gave me so that I could help reduce carbon emissions.....Back to Ezra Klein at the WaPo:

So were the naysayers right? It seems so. A newly updated analysis from economists at Resources for the Future finds that the actual benefits of the program were pretty meager. The paper examined U.S. car sales using trends in Canada as a control group, and estimated that about 45 percent of cash-for-clunker vouchers went to consumers who would have bought new cars anyway. In the end, the program boosted U.S. vehicle sales by just 360,000 in July and August of 2009 and provided no stimulus thereafter. What’s more, the program increased average fuel economy in the United States by just 0.65 miles per gallon.

Ezra, you ignorant slut. 
The program was not about stimulus, or fuel economy.  I don't know why this is so hard to admit.   
The program was a political favor to Detroit which harmed most of the rest of us.  It annihilated the used car and used parts market.  Mission accomplished on that score. 

Now, there’s a case to be made that that’s better than nothing. For one, handing $3,500 vouchers to people who would’ve bought cars anyway still counts as stimulus. What’s more, as the RFF paper found, the program reduced overall U.S. carbon-dioxide emissions by between 9 million and 28.4 million tons. But even so, that implies that it cost between $91 and $288 per ton to get those reductions — a pretty lousy bargain as far as carbon policy goes. Even if the program did have some benefits, it’s hard to argue that it was an efficient way to dole out cash.

Oh for Christ's sake !!!   It doesn't count as "stimulus".  Ezra, if I take money from you and give it to a forklift manufacturer, it doesn't stimulate anything but my do-gooder credentials.  You won't get to spend the money the way you wanted to, and the forklift manufacturer gets to spend it the way he wants to.  Net gain: Zero. 

And chances are, the manufacturer is going to spend some of it on campaign contributions for the person who took away your money, you idiot.  

Here's one of my least favorite videos of all time. 

Let's go into business together !!

I found this on Libertarian Reddit:

We will go into business together.

Now, I don't have any money, since I have never produced anything, and I have no ideas. You will have to come up with an idea, a business model and all of the capital, but we will be partners and I will take 35% of the profit.
I will tell you what you can not produce, I will tell you what materials you may not use, I will tell you where you may not locate your factory, I will dictate the working conditions of your employees including the number of hours they work and how much you must pay them.
I will make you jump through hoops.
In exchange for all of this, all I ask is 35%.
Then, after growing and maturing your business over years and years, when you are ready to retire you may sell your business and I will take 20% of everything that you have spent your entire life building.

Sound like a good deal?

I'm sorry, this is NOT a choice.

Why too much spending sometimes isn't enough

From Andrew Coulson of The Cato Institute:

The Washington Times reports today on a candle-light vigil beseeching the federal government for extra cash for new computers. The group organizing the vigil, OurDC, shares this “horror story” from former technology teacher Toval Rolston:

I’ve been in D.C. schools where the computers are so antiquated that you can’t even download a basic pdf file; our children don’t have the tools to compete in today’s high tech world.

The twin implications of this plea are that DC schools are underfunded and that more money will actually be spent wisely. The first statement is false and the second is decidedly unlikely. The last time I calculated total spending on K-12 education in DC, from the official budget documents, it came out to over $28,000 per pupil  (the linked post points to a spreadsheet with all the numbers).

How do you manage to spend $28,000 per pupil and not manage to keep your computer hardware up to date? Or, for that matter, manage to have among the worst academic performance in the country? Maybe, just maybe, it has something to do with not being capable, or perhaps even inclined, to spend the money on what works.

The Washington Times, by the way, points out that OurDC is headquartered at the same address as the Service Employees International Union. Go figure.

This one is easy.  They're spending $28,000.00 per pupil in the D.C. public schools.  Multiply that by the number of kids in a typical classroom (let's call it 20), and you'll get $560,000.00 per classroom of kids. 

The kids aren't doing well in the D.C. schools. 

This is very similar to the problem that we had with the last Stimulus Package.  We spent $750,000,000,000.00 (that's $750 billion) to revive the economy and it didn't work.  Economist Paul Krugman explained the poor results:  The stimulus was too small. 

That is obviously the problem with the D.C. schools.  We're spending enough to hire someone from (ahem) "The 1%" to teach each classroom of kids.  But it's not working.  The results are horrific.   

Therefore, more spending per child is necessary.  We need to be spending enough to hire someone from The 1% of The 1% to teach each classroom of kids.   

Anytime the nation needs someone to explain these things, I provide this service at no charge. 

The picture of the Memphis Jr. High School's "Literacy Night Tonigt" came from Memphis resident Scott Moore's Facebook page. 

John Spivey on the Alan Ross Gay/Lesbian Pride Parade

My friend John Spivey, chair of the Tarrant County Libertarian Party, posted story on Facebook today.  I've written about participating in the Alan Ross Gay/Lesbian parade before, and if you've got the time I hope you'll hit this link just to look at the pictures.  Here's my first paragraph:

Since I didn't think our transvestite could walk the entire parade route, I agreed to walk beside the Alamo, which was a good thing, because two different people handed me Jello Shots while I was handing out flyers and freebies, and I couldn't hear myself think because our DJ's on top of the Alamo had AC/DC techno-mixes cranked up to ELEVEN, and most of the crowd was screaming and clapping and shouting, and it was sometimes hard to stay in line behind the gay choir and the bicyclists with Aids.

It was a fun, fun day. 

Rather than repost the same pictures, I'm gonna throw in some other protest pics that I've been saving for an occasion like this. 
Here's Big Daddy John Spivey on that event.  Enjoy ! 

So - Allen Patterson, Michelle, Richard Forsythe and a bunch of Tarrant County Libertarians helped out the Dallas County LP with their float in the Alan Ross Pride Parade - a huge gay event in Dallas. It's a big event each year - and we think it's a pretty good 'recruiting spot' for us as many, many gay folk are fiscally conservative and obviously, socially tolerant. To paint a picture for you...


We're in a float that is shaped like the Alamo, with a sign that says "Remember the Rainbow" (the Rainbow Lounge raid was big news then).

We had Jeff Daiell, an LP Gubernatorial Candidate on board with his wife. He's wearing a nice suit, she's in a conservative outfit. They're just wonderful folks. We also had an awesome DJ on board John John John-Ra Weidenfeller who was playing some AWESOME music. I particularly enjoyed the 'techno version of Strawberry Fields Forever'. We even had our own transvestite!

Well, we had a GREAT time in the parade, as we were behind a giant float with a jungle theme, which featured mean dressed as women dressed as animals. In bikinis. - We gave (threw) pens, candy and other LP logo'ed items.

 At the end of the parade, we were instructed to 'move along - not clog up the ending spot of the parade - and find a clear area to park.

 As I mentioned this is a huge event, so we had to drive around to find a spot. So, Allen and I were up on the rolling Alamo with Daiell and his wife - and John-Ra was still spinning tunes with an awesome (and loud) PA system. Well, we couldn't find a spot so we started driving down Cedar Springs.

We pulled into a Starbucks Parking lot where a REALLY drunk - and flambloyant - gay dude quickly climbed up onto the float and screamed, "Oh MY GOD - I LOVE LIBERTARIANS!!" And started to dance to the music.

He is introduced to Mr. Daiell and began - er, 'overhugging' him. Jeff is a great person and was very nice as this guy attached himself to him.

We had to move from this spot - and our stow-away got trapped on the float with us as we drove around a Tom Thumb parking lot - and as we were dodging low hanging tree limbs, on a giant Alamo, with a overhugging, techno dancing, drunken and very noisy gay guy, "120 BPM 'Strawberry Fields' blaring - - Allen Patterson looks at me and says as deadpan as can be, "You know, this kind of thing happens to me every day."

I've never taken LSD - but I now feel I don't have to. I had a completely sober psychedelic experience.
 
Seriously, you've got to hit this link and look at the parade pics.  It was a fun, fun day.
Here's a pic of me on parade day with some Spokesmodels for a product that doesn't really matter.
 

 

Herman Cain and Ron Paul on The Housing Bubble

Let's kick Herman Cain while he's down, shall we?  After all, he was Deputy Chair of the K.C. Fed for a couple of years, and still defends that vile organization. 

Here are some crusty old Herman Cain and Ron Paul quotes about the possibility of there ever ever ever being a "housing bubble". 

One of these guys was proven right. 

What to do with 250 copies of "The Book Of Mormon"

A Southern Baptist Witch Doctor, Robert Jeffress of First Baptist Dallas, recently made some waves by stating that Christians shouldn't vote for Mitt Romney because he's a member of a cult.  (Romney is a member of the LDS church.  Also known as the Mormon church.) 
The Robert Jeffress publicity stunt reminded me of something that I did about 25 years ago.
 
This is an unlikely story, so I'm going to copy my friend Henry Farrish when I throw it on Facebook. 

Henry can't vouch for the buildup, but he can verify the aftermath.  And the aftermath was pure, undiluted greatness. 

Here goes:

I moved to Fort Worth, Texas, in January of 1984 to attend Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.
The training didn’t take.

I dropped out of seminary because of a crisis of faith, because my heart wasn’t in it, because of The White Elephant Saloon in the Fort Worth Stockyards, and because of the discovery that God just might not have plans to torture Jews and Muslims for eternity for their lack of belief in things they’d never heard of.

I eventually went to work doing shipping and receiving for Taylors Books, a local retail chain. My last semester, the spring of ’85 (?), I skipped all of my classes except for a couple that I liked and spent most of my time working at Taylors and reading heretical literature in the seminary library.

If you ever want to know more about the Marcionite heresy, I’m your man.

While I was going through my dark night of the soul, a couple of Mormon missionaries were on a parallel track.  Customers and employees of Taylors Books could look out the store windows and see these two depressed Mormon lads on their bicycles, pedaling around the Camp Bowie Boulevard neighborhood in their black slacks, white IBM shirts and black ties, going through a lackluster routine of handing out pamphlets and hardback copies of The Book Of Mormon. I wish those boys had come in the store so we could compare notes.

The pic of a couple of random Mormon missionaries came from here. 

They reminded me of those kids who are paid minimum wage to put on a Hot Dog costume and pass out coupons for Big Dawgs House O’ Wieners. Any photo of these missionaries could’ve been captioned “So….it really has come to this”.

These boys decided that spreading the message of the late prophet Joseph Smith was a poor career choice. They eventually gave up on evangelism and quietly dumped two massive cases of “The Book Of Mormon” at the back door of Taylors Books and said “screw it”.  Maybe they would’ve felt too guilty about throwing the books into a dumpster, but figured that a bookstore might sell them.  We never saw them again, and as far as I know they took their bicycles to I-20 and pedaled back to Salt Lake City.

They left me with about 250 free copies of “The Book Of Mormon – Another Testimony Of Jesus Christ”.

What to do, what to do….

I’ve got to digress for a moment.  You won't miss much if you skip the next 7 paragraphs....

Here’s what was going on at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary at the time. They were having a Holy War.  There was a conservative faction in the Southern Baptist Convention that didn’t believe that women should be allowed to preach, or even teach men (I’m serious). They didn’t believe that women should be leaders in the church or in the home - a concept called the “subordination of women”. (This rule doesn’t apply at the national level, though, as some conservatives found enough wiggle room in their policies to support Sarah Palin, who was godless enough to run for Vice President despite owning a real live vagina.)

The conservatives claimed that every word of the arbitrary collection loosely called “Bible” is without error, they insisted on a literal 6 day creation, and that humans speak multiple languages because some people at Babel once built an offensive tower, and that gays and lesbians were sinners who chose homosexuality the way that you choose Coke instead of Pepsi.

Very few people stopped to wonder if God didn’t like Muslims, women, Jews, or homosexuals, why oh why did he keep making so many of them?

Up until that point, Southern Baptists had advocated a couple of concepts called “Autonomy Of The Local Church” and “Priesthood Of The Believer”.  I don’t have the time, space or inclination to go into those traditions here, since I no longer have a dog in that fight, but those concepts imply that individual churches and individual Christians are free to find their own way, for better or for worse.

Those old libertarian-ish traditions weren’t good enough for many of the grim young strivers of Southwestern Baptist Theological Semitary. Any system that leaves people alone, theologically or politically, is a blatant affront to those who just know what is best for everyone else. How can you pull of a successful Disney boycott or a big war if some churches and some people won’t participate in the hatin’ ??

The conservative faction was opposed by a “liberal Baptist” faction. (Yeah, roll that phrase around in your mouth for a while. There is such a thing!) The liberal Baptists were a smaller, less powerful group which has gone on to become Episcopalian.

Let’s just say that I wasn’t happy there. I couldn’t imagine spending the rest of my life enmeshed in those debates. I had already blown off half of my classes and was half-auditing the others just to learn more, with no intention of taking any final exams. I didn’t know what I wanted to do with the rest of my life and didn’t have an immediate goal.

But someone had given me 250 copies of The Book Of Mormon. I took that as a sign from God, or Jupiter, Zeus, Zool, or the Flying Spaghetti Monster (who had not yet been revealed unto us, Bless His Noodly Appendage), that those books should be put to use.

Early one Saturday morning, I put on a generic denim shirt, one that could’ve been issued to someone’s maintenance crew. I got my cases of Joseph Smith’s Epistle To The Polygamists, a couple of shopping bags, and drove to school.

Other than the professorial and administrative offices, Southwestern Semitary classrooms were as open and empty as the tomb of the slain Galilean. I decided to hit the school of Theology first. I went into a classroom and propped a copy of “The Book Of Mormon: Another Testimony Of Jesus Christ” on the chalkrail of the blackboard. Front and center. It felt good. It looked right. A Hustler centerfold of Hillary Clinton couldn’t have been more offensive in that environment. I took a few steps back to admire my work, “and saw that it was good.” (Genesis 1:10 )

I went from classroom to classroom, like a Utah Johnny Appleseed, spreading the Mormon Gospel of Sacred Undergarments, Celestial Marriage, Republican Governors, and large families. What were they going to do to me, throw me out of school? Plus, the only way I was going to get caught was if I kept breaking out in loud giggles.

I went to the Preaching Lab, a mini-church sanctuary with a pulpit, piano, and pews. I put a copy in the hymnal rack on the back of each pew, left one on the pulpit, and then propped open one on the piano.
Next, I entered to the chapel. Entering this room with those Joseph Smith’s books was like performing a Muslim ritual Hajj to Mecca, approaching the holy Kaaba, and then whipping out a Pizza Hut Deep Dish Pork Lover’s special (with extra bacon) just to see how it would go over with the other pilgrims. I decorated the chapel with my heretical books. Thus was The School Of Theology evangelized.

I had to go back to my truck and restock my supply several times. I worked over the School Of Education, the School Of Music, the fitness center, and the childcare facility. No Mormon has ever spread the LDS gospel to a hostile audience the way I spread it that morning, and if there really is a multi-tiered Mormon heaven with Celestial, Terrestrial, and Telestial kingdoms, I believe I’m going spend eternity looking down on a lot of other Baptists. I did my work better than Brigham Young, dammit.

(Here's a helpful Mormon chart showing where I shall take my rightful place in the highest circle, The Celestial Kingdom.  I'm going to get into the highest Mormon Heaven because of my good works for The Faith.)

Nobody noticed anything until Tuesday morning. (Southwestern Semitary doesn’t have classes on Mondays. This allows part-time preachers with churches in Oklahoma, Louisiana and West Texas to return to The Angel Factory on Monday instead of driving all Sunday night.)

Tuesday morning, there was a massive uproar all over campus. Outrage. Sturdy, strapping young Baptists discussed marching on Salt Lake City to plant copies of Herschell Hobbs’ landmark tract “The Baptist Faith And Message” in the Mormon Tabernacle Choir loft. Some professors declared it to be a harmless prank, while others began their classes with a prayer that all Mormons/LDS church members would listen for the Spirit’s voice, find the true path, repent of their errors, and blah blah blah freakin’ blah. (That was the approach taken by Dr. Boyd Hunt in Systematic Theology, by the way. I know because I was there for it.)

That night, I went to my job at Bassham Food Services. The Bassham’s night shift was 50% Seminary students working their way through school, and 50% bewildered stoners and neighborhood kids who were very, very tired of being evangelized by Seminary students.

The breakroom conversations were about the cropdusting of the Seminary with copies of “The Book Of Mormon”. Theories of Whodunnit were proposed. Nobody could come up with a satisfactory explanation.

I just sat there grinning, looking like the guy who knows Who Farted.

My friend, co-worker, and roommate Henry Farrish looked at me for a while. Henry and I have known each other since the 4th grade.

Henry whispered “Did you do that?????”

I winked.

Later on, we went into a corner of the warehouse and laughed and laughed and laughed. Wish you could’ve seen it.

And that is what you do with 250 copies of “The Book Of Mormon”.

Even within the 99%, there is a 1%

From KDFW:

DALLAS - Protesters in Dallas voted Thursday evening to close down the camp near city hall and relocate somewhere within the Dallas city limits.

Occupy Dallas has been struggling with people in the encampment who are not part of the cause, including some people who have criminal backgrounds.

For example, protesters said someone showed up to the camp this week and pulled a knife on someone. Nobone knew who he was.

Last week a convicted sex offender was arrested at the camp for the sexual assault of 14-year-old runaway and Thursday morning Child Protective Services workers showed up to question a family about staying in a tent with a 9-month-old baby.

And in addition to the bad publicity, the protesters said there are people who have been taking advantage of the movement by sleeping in donated tents and eating donated food.

“I know we’re supposed to be helping the 99 percent, but they need to help us help them by not being a drain on our resources,” said Otto Wagner.

Many protesters are fed up and hope by relocating the camp they can create a system to better monitor themselves.

“We’re not going to have formal sign ins. You’re not going to have to show an ID. You’re basically going to show up, give a name that we’re going to be calling you by,” Wagner said.

Crisis intervention teams will be walking through the camp checking on people’s welfare as temperatures reach near freezing Thursday night.

No further comments necessary on my part.  But here's an entire page of the New York Post:

Some Occupiers are more equal than others.  Let's go ahead and call them The 1%

Two videos that will make you flinch

Here's a horrific video of ex-Libyan dictator Colonel Muammar Gaddafi being sodomized by his captors with a sharp stick. 



Here's a horrific video of U.S. President Barack Obama claiming that we're better off than we would've been without him. 



I don't know why, but both of these videos make me flinch in the same way. 

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 handy scorecard

From The Jawa Report comes a handy scorecard. 

"In God We Trust", but we're still going to vote in the primaries

From Roll Call, the unofficial magazine/website/playbook of the United States Congress:

Republicans Shift Focus From Jobs to God


•Oct. 31, 2011, Midnight

Republicans may be trying to focus their messaging on jobs and the economy — and hammering President Barack Obama for campaigning — but they still have time for some red meat base-baiting on the House floor.

To wit: House Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s (Va.) decision to bring to the floor a measure that “reaffirms ‘In God We Trust’ as the official motto of the United States and supports and encourages the public display of the national motto in all public buildings, public schools, and other government institutions,” according to the resolution, sponsored by Rep. Randy Forbes (R-Va.).

Just think of it...The Federal Reserve is bankrupting every retiree who did the right thing and set aside some cash.  They're printing money like mad.  They're counterfeiting.  They're evil.  But they will have "In God We Trust" on a massive medallion hanging in the lobby. 

The resolution is one of three measures being considered by the House on Tuesday and is nonbinding.

Cantor’s office declined to comment for this story.

Democrats ridiculed the decision to bring up the measure.

“The last time we checked, ‘In God We Trust’ is the national motto of the United States, adopted in 1956, and China was still getting off scot-free while Republican House leaders refuse to bring up a bipartisan bill to level the playing field for American workers,” said Nadeam Elshami, spokesman for House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.).

Anytime I find myself siding with Nancy Pelosi's minions, it is going to be a bad day.  I'm calling in sick before the workplace accidents begin. 

Go here for an explanation of the painting.  Dr. Ralph, eat your heart out. 

“How hard is it for the Republican leadership to reaffirm its commitment to the middle class by allowing a vote on the bipartisan China currency legislation that will create more than 1 million jobs? Apparently, they’re just too busy,” Elshami added.

In a statement, Forbes defended bringing the bill to the floor, arguing that Congress needs to directly confront “a disturbing trend of inaccuracies and omissions, misunderstandings of church and state, rogue court challenges, and efforts to remove God from the public domain by unelected bureaucrats.”

Randy Forbes, you ignorant slut.  There are a lot of us who don't want any "gods" leading the charge in your dirty little wars.  We don't want Yahweh, Zeus, Jehovah, Jesus, or Neptune to have any part of Obama's Jobs Bill.  There are no misunderstandings. 
Here's an excerpt from The Treaty Of Tripoli, originated by John Adams (Sr.), unanimously approved by Congress, and then signed into law in 1797:

As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion,—as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility, of Mussulmen (Muslims),—and as the said States never entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mahometan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.

It really is that simple.  The Founders saw all the wars that began as European religious spats, and decided that they wanted no part of it.  The End.  Full Stop. 
Forbes points to a number of instances that are driving the need for the bill, including Obama referring to E Pluribus Unum as “our” motto and omission of the motto from parts of the Capitol Visitor Center, among others.

“As our nation faces challenging times, it is appropriate for Members of Congress and our nation — like our predecessors — to firmly declare our trust in God, believing that it will sustain us for generations to come,” he added.

Ok, Randy, put up or shut up.  Let's not run anyone against Barack.  Let the Fed keep printing money.  Give ACORN, SEIU, OWS, and the government bureaucracies everything they want. 
Do we have ineffective schools?  Just pray about it. 
Do we have more black men in cages than the Confederacy?  Put it in the Lord's hands. 

Trust in God. 
Somehow, I don't think you want to do that. 

More updates in Settled Science

Please enjoy this terrifying propaganda piece while contemplating the following info from Don Surber:

Today in settled science: A bird expert sees blobs in a photo, and promptly declares polar bears headed to extinction.

Remember the U.S. government report report five years ago that polar bears were drowning? Kassie Siegel, director of the U.S.-based Center for Biological Diversity, cited the report in her call to place the polar bear on the endangered species list. Never mind that we now have 5 times as many polar bears today than we did 50 years ago. We must take action immediately. Based on one report. Because that’s how science works. One report is all it takes to leap to a conclusion that may cost society billions.

In December 2006, Kassie Siegel told the Ottawa Citizen: “This is a watershed decision in the way this country deals with climate change. The science of global warming and the impact to polar bears are so clear that not even the Bush administration can deny that polar bears are threatened with extinction because of global warming.”

Well, it turns out that report was likely crap. The Office of Inspector General of the U.S. Department of the Interior is investigating the veracity of the report.

From the Independent: “The 2006 report from American wildlife researchers Jeffrey Gleason and Charles Monnett told of dead bears floating in the Arctic Ocean in 2004, apparently drowned, and focused attention on the vulnerability of the animals to the melting of the Arctic ice, which they need for hunting. Widespread references were made to the dead bears and they figured in the film An Inconvenient Truth, made by Al Gore to highlight the risks of global warming.”

Drowning polar bears made no sense since polar bears are sturdy swimmers. But then considering Jeffrey Gleason is an avian biologist, perhaps the researchers did not know that. In July, the government suspended Charles Monnett from his job as an Arctic wildlife biologist at the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement, a Department of the Interior agency. He has since returned to work.

But Jeffrey Gleason now faces a lie detector test to determine his integrity, the London newspaper reported. Jeffrey Gleason’s lawyer, Jeff Ruch, told the Independent: “There appears to be kind of a desperate, almost fierce nature to pursue this until they find something.”

On July 29, 2011, the Guardian published the transcript of an interview by Special Agents Eric May and John Meskel of the inspector general’s office:

ERIC MAY: When you did take the photos, were you able to tell what they were?

JEFFREY GLEASON: Most of the time, yeah. We saw some dead polar bears at one time, and it was pretty obvious with the naked eye what it was. But the pictures, they just kind of turned out to be a white blob in the photos. And I can’t remember, we probably took three or four pictures, and it’s sort of white blob floating in the ocean, so it’s pretty hard to tell.

ERIC MAY: Dead polar bears, how far off the land were you?

JEFFREY GLEASON: I can’t remember. We published a paper on that as well, 20 to 50 kilometers I suppose.

And there was this:

JEFFREY GLEASON: And it was not just the dead polar bears that was of interest to us, but it was the number of swimming polar bears and the distance we observed some of those polar bears offshore. And we went back, you know, you noted at the time and I was pretty curious. So we went back into the database, which is, you know, 30 years of records, and it was the most swimming polar bears that had been observed and the distances. And there were no records of any dead polar bears floating out there.

You start thinking about probabilities, detection probabilities, which is basically what is the potential that I’ll actually observe an individual on these surveys, on these transects. It’s not like you’re covering the entire ocean. It’s a needle in a haystack. And when you start thinking about seeing a swimming polar bear or a dead polar bear out in the middle of an ocean from an aircraft moving that fast, covering roughly an observation transect of maybe a mile, half a mile out of each window under ideal conditions, it’s staggering what the potential is. I mean, it’s really low.

So when we started putting it together, that particular paper, there was a windstorm that came up. I’m trying to remember how that fell out that year. There was a windstorm. We had done some survey work about three days prior, and there was about three days of very strong winds. And we had seen these animals swimming offshore that last survey. And then, following that windstorm, it was pretty calm, and that’s when we saw the dead ones.

ERIC MAY: So is that what attributed to them dying?

JEFFREY GLEASON: We attributed it to that. Of course, we have no way to determine actual cause of death. We can’t pick them up. There’s no way. But given the distances and the number of polar bears we saw preceding the storm, and then the dead polar bears after the storm, it seemed probably the most parsimonious explanation for what happened.

JOHN MESKEL: The most what?

JEFFREY GLEASON: The simplest sort of rationale and reason.

So we have an expert on birds guessing that white blobs on a photo are drowned polar bears.

That’s it.

That’s the science.

He called it a parsimonious explanation. I call it Rorschach.

Well said, sir !!!

The People Of Wal-Mart !!!!

In addition to working in freight and shipping, I also supervise an assembly line that produces DVD dump bins for Wal-Mart, probably because my current warehouse had room for the project and nobody else wanted it. 

These things have caused me to miss weekends, birthdays, funerals, dental appointments, and sleep. 
This one has candy signs; others are done for movies.

 
After I missed my 30-year high school reunion (because of dump bins) I asked everyone in my class to have their picture taken with the dump bin at the Wal-Mart nearest their current residence, post the pic on Facebook, and tag me.

I got a nice flurry of dump bin pics from everywhere.  It was funny for a couple of weeks. 

That was nothing.  My project is now famous all across the U.S.A.!!! 

There's a fun website called The People Of Wal-Mart.  The site celebrates the diversity of Rednecks Backward Americans in all their creative, uninhibited glory.  Hit the link. 

Here's the picture of my DVD bin that made it onto the site. 

I don't know what's so strange about it.  It looks like a perfectly constructed DVD display to me. 

Bill Clinton: "No country on earth believes that government is the problem"

Ok, deep, deep breath.

Nazi Germany
Cuba
North Korea
Uganda
China
Mussolini's Italy
Greece
Iran
Iraq
Pakistan
Sudan
Zimbabwe
Burma
Saudi Arabia
Libya
Egypt
Somalia (which is actually improving, now that it has no government)
Venezuela
Equatorial Guinea
Turkmenistan
Swaziland
Bloomberg's New York City
California

People need a government to secure their own borders, provide a dollop of infrastructure, enforce contracts, provide a courts system, and referee any spats about externalities. 
The other things that governments attempt usually create problems.
Governments are a necessary evil.  No more than that. 

The United States is 15 trillion dollars in debt.  This is the biggest financial problem ever created by a government, or anyone else. 
 
Every taxpayer in the U.S. has to cough up $150,000.00 before we can work our way back up to the level of "Homeless Destitute Wino". 
And that's still not enough to take care of our government's future financial obligations, all of which are unfunded.

You can take away every penny earned by the Evil Rich, and it still won't cover the tab. 
Do you want to tax the hell out of the people earning more than 1 million per year? 
If you want to take care of just this year's tax bill, all you have to do is tax them 6 million per year. 
The math doesn't work, does it? 

Bill Clinton has gotten filthy rich because of "serving" in government.
But chances are, you are broke because of Clinton and his ilk.

Wake up.   

Panic! Panic! Send Us Money! (Oh. Wait a minute....)

Panic, panic, panic !  Send us your money !  Repent of your environmental sins!  The end is near!  Confess your planet-warming habits, and bow before the throne of Saint Albert, The Goracle Of Music City, Tennessee !!!!   Purchase carbon credit indulgences from Saint Albert, The One who knows the desires of Gaia the earth-goddess !!!

Recycle your toilet paper !!!
Keep burning oil, but send Washington your money as a sign of atonement !!!
Goddammit, stop moving around on those freakin' machines !  It infuriates your superiors when you can escape their cages !!

Oh.  Wait a minute.....

From London's Daily Mail:

It was hailed as the scientific study that ended the global warming debate once and for all – the research that, in the words of its director, ‘proved you should not be a sceptic, at least not any longer’.

Professor Richard Muller, of Berkeley University in California, and his colleagues from the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperatures project team (BEST) claimed to have shown that the planet has warmed by almost a degree centigrade since 1950 and is warming continually.

Published last week ahead of a major United Nations climate summit in Durban, South Africa, next month, their work was cited around the world as irrefutable evidence that only the most stringent measures to reduce carbon dioxide emissions can save civilisation as we know it.

It was cited uncritically by, among others, reporters and commentators from the BBC, The Independent, The Guardian, The Economist and numerous media outlets in America.

The Washington Post said the BEST study had ‘settled the climate change debate’ and showed that anyone who remained a sceptic was committing a ‘cynical fraud’.

Speaking of "cynical frauds", one of the best ways to detect them is to look and see who flies to Durban, South Africa, next month.  Remember the Climate Change conference they had in Copenhagen, the one where there were so many Lear Jets, Gulfstreams, private planes and airliners trying to get into Denmark that they had to park a lot of them elsewhere in Scandinavia? 
If you fly in an airplane, you aren't concerned about human activity contributing to Global Warming.  It really is that simple.

 But today The Mail on Sunday can reveal that a leading member of Prof Muller’s team has accused him of trying to mislead the public by hiding the fact that BEST’s research shows global warming has stopped.

Prof Judith Curry, who chairs the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at America’s prestigious Georgia Institute of Technology, said that Prof Muller’s claim that he has proven global warming sceptics wrong was also a ‘huge mistake’, with no scientific basis.

Prof Curry is a distinguished climate researcher with more than 30 years experience and the second named co-author of the BEST project’s four research papers.

Her comments, in an exclusive interview with The Mail on Sunday, seem certain to ignite a furious academic row. She said this affair had to be compared to the notorious ‘Climategate’ scandal two years ago.

Like the scientists exposed then by leaked emails from East Anglia University’s Climatic Research Unit, her colleagues from the BEST project seem to be trying to ‘hide the decline’ in rates of global warming.

In fact, Prof Curry said, the project’s research data show there has been no increase in world temperatures since the end of the Nineties – a fact confirmed by a new analysis that The Mail on Sunday has obtained.

‘There is no scientific basis for saying that warming hasn’t stopped,’ she said. ‘To say that there is detracts from the credibility of the data, which is very unfortunate.’

However, Prof Muller denied warming was at a standstill.

‘We see no evidence of it [global warming] having slowed down,’ he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. There was, he added, ‘no levelling off’.

A graph issued by the BEST project also suggests a continuing steep increase.

You can hit the link at the top to read the rest.  None of it matters.
No matter what Jimmy Swaggart, Pat Robertson, and Jerry Falwell say, we aren't big enough to influence the weather, much less the climate.  Yes, we have sinned, but Gaia isn't angry.   
Here are the lyrics to Monty Python's "Galaxy Song". 

Just remember that you're standing on a planet that's evolving
And revolving at nine hundred miles an hour,
That's orbiting at nineteen miles a second, so it's reckoned,
A sun that is the source of all our power.
The sun and you and me and all the stars that we can see
Are moving at a million miles a day
In an outer spiral arm, at forty thousand miles an hour,
Of the galaxy we call the 'Milky Way'.
Our galaxy itself contains a hundred billion stars.
It's a hundred thousand light years side to side.
It bulges in the middle, sixteen thousand light years thick,
But out by us, it's just three thousand light years wide.
We're thirty thousand light years from galactic central point.
We go 'round every two hundred million years,
And our galaxy is only one of millions of billions
In this amazing and expanding universe.

The universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding
In all of the directions it can whizz
As fast as it can go, at the speed of light, you know,
Twelve million miles a minute, and that's the fastest speed there is.
So remember, when you're feeling very small and insecure,
How amazingly unlikely is your birth,
And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere up in space,
'Cause there's bugger all down here on Earth.

Oh, and in related news, more than a million people lost power in the Northeast yesterday, October 29th. 
Snowstorms.