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Some of y’all may have heard about the recent flood in Vermont.  I did, but only because my friends Carol and Al live there.  In Texas, Vermont is considered a foreign country and a not very friendly one at that.

So, Carol sent me a story in her local newspaper about some folks who learned something from Governor Rick Perry about being a Christian so they made themselves up some shirts and decided the best thing they could do for the folks neck deep in water and mud in Vermont would be to knock on their doors and pray for them.

It was not as well-received as you would suspect.

In June, we brought you the story of Roz Payne, who sought assistance from 2-1-1 for her flooded North Hero camp and instead was met with a Southern Baptist prayer circle. The “help” came in the form of a minister and his wife, members of the Southern Baptist Disaster Relief of New England, who, rather than helping salvage Payne’s belongings that were worth saving, suggested they pray.

As Payne told reporter Andy Bromage, “I do not think holding hands in a circle in the name of Jesus helped to save the contents of my house.”

So, Ms. Payne, who is 70 years old and really could have used some help, registered complaints with the proper authorities that when she calls 2-1-1 for help, she doesn’t mean prayer partners.  The prayin’ part she can handle on her own.  It’s the lifting and toting she needs help with.

So, the latest flooding brought back the Southern Baptist to Vermont.

Rev. Emily C. Heath, pastor of Wilmington and West Dover Congregational churches, has a master’s degree in divinity and is working on her doctoral degree in ministry.  She says she noticed something strange.

Last week, as Heath helped organize relief efforts in Wilmington, one of the towns hardest hit by flooding, she noticed people wandering around town wearing T-shirts that said “Chaplain.” Some of them were wearing badges from the International Fellowship of Chaplains, which has ties to the Assemblies of God, a Pentecostal denomination, and has been accused of fundamentalist extremism and anti-gay rhetoric.

Uh oh.  Here comes my favorite part.

Heath, who describes herself as a “big butch lesbian,” approached the so-called chaplains to introduce herself as the pastor of the local congregational church. They told her they were there to “counsel people,” but something seemed off, Heath says.

Wouldn’t you have paid cash American money to see their faces?

After seeing these folks do little except hand out some water, Rev. Heath told the newspaper….

“I think it’s unethical,” she says. “It’s one thing to provide people with hope and carry out the Gospel to help them. It’s another thing to use a disaster area to prey on people at their most vulnerable.”

I think the Steeple People have met their match.  Thank you, Sweet Jesus, for the likes of Rev. Emily C. Heath.

Thanks to Carol for the heads-up.

I’m so glad I nagged you.

Barbara reports that we’re closing in on $800 for the folks in Bastrop.  It will make a significant difference for some people with immediate needs.  Barbara’s a tad busy right now but she has saved your return addresses for me to send you a thank you note.   I’ll get to it before Christmas.  Promise.

Thank you, customers!  I deeply appreciate it.  If you’re new here, it’s not too late to send a dollar to help.

No, seriously, I promise.

Louie Gohmert.  What can I say that hasn’t already been written on bathroom walls all across Texas?

I checked at Google and it says I’ve written about East Texas Republican Congressman Louie Gohmert no less than 79 times.  That’s embarrassing even for me.

Louie Gohmert: tee hee hee, gigggle, snort, tee hee, giggle

For starters, Louie is so narrow minded that his ears rub together.  He’s unwilling to be confused with facts and he’s so immature that he’s been asked to vacate the premises at kindergarten birthday parties.  In short, he’s the perfect congressman for east Texas.

Now, he’s done something really cute.

Moving faster than the White House and its Democratic allies, GOP Rep. Louie Gohmert of Tyler has snagged the title “American Jobs Act of 2011” — the bill title President Obama wanted for his $450 billion jobs-creation package.

Safe to say, Gohmert’s bill isn’t anything like what Obama wants. It’s a two-page proposal to repeal the corporate income tax.

He’s giggling and bragging about his smooth move on Twitter because lordgawdalmighty, grabbing President Obama’s previously announced name for his bill is far more important than actually getting America to work.

So the East Texas Rotary Club is meeting this week all a’snickerin’ because Louie stole the President’s job bill name.  The meeting will be followed by removing their togas, letting the waitress out of the hall locker, a few towel slap in the bathroom, and putting their Gameboys back in their briefcases.

It’s one thing to be dumb.  But, it’s a whole ‘nother thing to be joyful about it.

The Washington Post is reporting that Rick Perry went to Liberty University, scampered up next to Jerry Falwell and rubbed both his IQ points together.  Good Lord, he bragged about his bad grades.  And he fit  in like scales on a fish.

Perry casts himself as anti-intellectual, says his life shaped by faith

Perry mused about his personal failings — not realizing his dream of becoming a veterinarian because he flunked organic chemistry, being ordered to do push-ups as a college cadet when his superiors in morning inspections discovered insufficiently shined shoes, straying from his faith and being “lost” as a young Air Force pilot overseas.

“He who knows the number of drops in the ocean, he counts the sands in the desert, he knows you by name . . . He doesn’t require perfect people to execute his perfect plan,” Perry said before an estimated 13,000 students and faculty who were rapt as they filled the basketball arena here for their thrice-weekly convocation.

As a woman of faith, I would just like to say that having faith does not require you to be stoopid.

Calling Perry’s speech at Liberty University “a celebration of ignorance,” conservative blogger Jennifer Rubin kneecapped Perry by saying …

Yes, he was trying to be self-deprecating, but it’s disturbing to see that he thinks being a rotten student and a know-nothing gives one street cred in the GOP. Is it so important to defy the MSM by flaunting affection for anti-intellectualism?

Uh, Jennifer, have you been listening lately?  The GOP field is not likely to hold a spelling bee, but if they do, they will stumble all over each other to be the first proud dunce to sit down.  They would rather test bullet proof vests than admit they’ve read a book.

Thanks to Alfredo for the heads up.

Okay, we here at the World’s Most Dangerous Beauty Salon, Inc. are pretty darn smug that we would never, ever, for any reason read the National Enquirer.  We would not even read People Magazine or watch TMZ.  We even had to ask someone what a Kardashian was.

But there ain’t no tacky that will ever in our entire lifetimes match this tacky, so we cannot wait to read this book.

Joe McGinniss’s book on Sarah Palin is finally here. After years of hype, The Rogue: Searching for the Real Sarah Palin does not disappoint, offering the kind of salacious allegations you’d expect from a guy who’d move next door to Palin to write a book about her. What’s in it? Cocaine, a one-night stand with a basketball hero, a love triangle.

I hope it doesn’t burn a hole in my new iPad.

Click the little one to see the big one.