Mitt Romney’s thinking of running for president again. That means it’s time for the mainstream media to sweep the truth about how zingy Mormonism is under the rug.
Here’s how you know “legitimate journalists” are talking about Mormons.
Apparently we have a better chance of seeing Mitt Romney’s tax returns than we do of knowing his plans for balancing the budget through changes in the tax code, which is how he says he would do it. You know that when even FOX News (although I don’t think Gregg Jarrett is one of the most egregious Republican tools who anchor shows on the network) is trying to pin down Romney and his policy wonks, there is some serious evasion going on.
Romney’s platform up to now has been for us to trust him, but he keeps too many secrets to allow it. For example, along with those tax returns, there are the records he sealed as he left the office of governor of Massachusetts. Good luck glimpsing those.
We’ve been stupefied at the public relations disaster that has been Mitt Romney’s European vacation.
Especially amazing is that the candidate would want to draw attention to his role in the 2002 Winter Olympics, particularly in light of his effort to disavow the impact of infrastructure and public works in American business success (and if you don’t think it makes a difference, just ask a Somalian).
Romney used his role as CEO of the 2002 games, held in Mormon world headquarters, aka Salt Lake City, Utah, to jump-start his successful bid for governor of Massachusetts. But as this article in the Washington Examiner notes, the event wasn’t exactly a one-man show.
In Romney’s book “Turnaround: Crisis, Leadership and the Olympic Games,” Romney describes in a chapter entitled “Funds from the Feds” how he lobbied Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., for funding, saying he “would need hundreds of millions of dollars worth of federal support from a long list of departments.”
“No matter how well we did cutting costs and raising revenue, we couldn’t have games without the support of the federal government,” Romney wrote.
From the series “Republicans on the Couch” by Justin Frank, M.D., at Time Magazine:
I found myself discussing this situation [Romney’s ability to lie with ease] with several colleagues, and we agreed that Romney doesn’t lie. Let me repeat: Mitt Romney doesn’t lie. He is telling the truth as he sees it — and truth it is, the facts notwithstanding. This is not simply a case of Hamlet arguing about point of view, saying, “For there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”
This is about a conflict between evidence and faith. There is a long tradition in the Mormon belief system in which evidence takes second place to faith. Examples abound, as when two Mormon elders who were questioned about the inconsistency in passages from the Book of Mormon said, “We know the Book of Mormon is true and that it contains the Word of God even in the face of evidence that appears contradictory,” according to The Mormon Missionaries by former Mormon Janice Hutchison. Thus there are no lies, only faith-based certainty that translates as truth for which no apology is needed, since what was said was not a lie.
The courage recently shown by 150 ordinary Americans whose action could, and likely will, cause them to lose everything and everyone they held dear in their lives, is awe-inspiring.
What bold and risky move did these people take? They left the Mormon sect.
A group of about 150 Mormons quit their church in a mass resignation ceremony in Salt Lake City on Saturday in a rare display of defiance ending decades of disagreement for some over issues ranging from polygamy to gay marriage.
Participants from Utah, Arizona, Idaho and elsewhere gathered in a public park to sign a “Declaration of Independence from Mormonism.”
…The Utah-based Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is known for its culture of obedience, and the mass ceremony was a seldom-seen act of collective revolt.
Author Martha Beck has written extensively about her own decision to become an “apostate,” as Mormons call the people who leave the cult. She described the threats toward her family in her book, Leaving the Saints: How I Lost the Mormons and Found My Faith. These included promises to make her husband unemployable, ostracize her children, and more darkly, alert the “Danites,” a type of Mormon assassins whose existence, like polygamy, the church denies.
If you’ve read the book — and if you want to know more about the Latter Day Saints I highly recommend it, along with Jon Krakauer’s Under the Banner of Heaven — you realize how extraordinary was the move by these 150 people who could no longer go along with Mormonism’s bizarre teachings.
Since everyone knows that Mormons no longer practice polygamy (in this life) and they also don’t consume alcohol, how could they be offended by a vodka named “Fives Wives?” Uh, you got us there.
But the Idaho State Liquor Division has banned the new libation from being sold in the state, based on the idea that the 23 percent of Idahoans who are Mormon might take it personally.
“We feel Five Wives Vodka concept is offensive to a prominent segment of our population and will not be carried,” according to a letter from the Idaho State Liquor Division to an Idaho distributor wishing to carry it…
The head of Idaho’s liquor division acknowledged that Mormons don’t drink, or at least that they don’t admit it if they do.
“Presumably, people of the LDS faith would not be shopping in our [liquor] stores, but that does not mean that we are not sensitive to them.” But [Jeff Anderson] said Five Wives was rejected for other reasons, too, including the fact that vodka is a “crowded and competitive category” and that “there was nothing that really differentiated [Five Wives] other than its name and its label that had five women with cats in their crotches covering their genitals.
How anything differentiates a clear liquor with no taste is debatable. One wonders where Anderson worships, but that’s beside the point. Or is it?
While [Steve Conlin, director of marketing and a partner at Ogden’s Own, the Utah micro-distiller which makes the product] concedes the name could be seen as referencing polygamy (especially since it’s made in Utah), he said it carries many meanings. “The person who came up with name, she really liked the idea of five wives sitting around having a drink. There really is no pointed meaning to it and everyone can bring what they want to it … it’s not about making fun of Mormons at all. Quite simply it’s a name that seemed to fit.”
We’ll take his word, not having tried his vodka, that the name “fits” but I see no reason to protect the sensibilities of people who practice polygamy. Which of course, Mormons don’t. Anymore.
(Willard) Mitt Romney—2012 Republican presidential candidate, a lifelong Mormon who boasts of having one wife, defines marriage as between “one man and one woman.”
Mitt Romney has publicly stated he follows the faith of his fathers—but he distances himself from the polygamous lifestyle that was freely chosen on an eternal note by many of his Mormon forefathers. According to Mormon records, polygamous unions galore can be found on the paternal lines—and one maternal line—of Romney’s direct ancestry.
Mitt Romney has openly condemned polygamy. During a “Sixty Minutes” interview with Mike Wallace in 2007, Romney said he couldn’t imagine anything more “awful” than polygamy, and was quick to insist The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) outlawed the practice over a century ago. As a devout Mormon, Romney must accept Mormon founder, Joseph Smith, as a prophet of God. It should be questioned why Mitt Romney is so critical of a foundational Mormon practice that was introduced by Smith.
RICK WARREN: Well, the key sticking point for evangelicals and actually for many is the issue of the Trinity,” the evangelical pastor explained. “Orthodox Christians, Catholic Christians, Protestant Christians, evangelical Christians and Pentecostal Christians all believe in the Trinity; that’s the historic doctrine of the church, that God is three-in-one. Not three gods; one God in Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Mormonism denies that. That’s a sticking point for a lot of Catholic Christians, evangelical Christians, Pentecostal Christians, because they don’t — they don’t believe that. Now they’ll use the same terminology, but they don’t believe in the historic doctrine of the Trinity,” Warren added. “And people have tried to make it other issues. But that’s really one of the fundamental differences.
Not since Justin Bieber’s biopic, “Never Say Never” has an autobiography been so premature. But first-term Sen. Marco Rubio isn’t letting lack of material keep him from writing a full-length, in-depth look back at his life: all 41 short years of it.
Rubio’s main accomplishment so far has been being born at the right time with genes for attractiveness steeped in his parents’ ideology as Cuban emigrant, right-wing anti-Communists.
The book, reportedly titled, “An American Son,” will acknowledge Rubio’s personal story line deficit of triumph over adversity by drawing heavily on his parents’ lives. That includes their decision to leave Cuba after the Vegas-style excesses of the Batista regime began to fade, and before Castro came to power.
It also reveals his father’s role in a plot to overthrow the Dominican Republic’s dictator, Rafael Trujillo, when the elder Rubio was 18.
But perhaps one of the most interesting tidbits to surface will be Rubio’s admission that when he was 8-years-old, his parents began practicing Mormonism.
Trump’s cheated multiple times on multiple wives, it’s true.
He’s cheated the Tax Man out of millions, not just a few.
But just when you thought
There was something that couldn’t be bought,
Turns out he cheats at golf (only at his own courses), too.
