BRIEF HISTORY OF MORMONISM !

The principal issue that Mitt has avoided discussing is his wealth and one way that other wealthy candidate has dealt with this issue is by discussing their philanthropic contributions to charity. Mitt has been unable to do so because his principal contributions have been to the Mormon Church, and he has been reticent to talk about it because some Americans still do not accept Mormonism.

It has been difficult for journalist to write about Mitt’s Mormon religion for fear of coming across as a religious bigot, but it needs to be addressed.

If a candidate for the office of the presidency was a snake or serpent handler it would be very important to discuss this if only to insure that his choice for a vice president was exceptionally qualified.

Snake handling is a religion ritual in a small number of Pentecostal Churches in the U.S.  Usually characterized as rural and part of the holiness movement. Most snake handlers are found in the Appalachian Mountains and other parts of the Southeastern United States, especially in Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Tennessee, West Virginia and Ohio. In 2001 there were about 40 small churches that practiced snake handling, and in 2004 there were four snake handling congregations in the provinces of Alberta and British Columbia, Canada.

Practioners are encouraged to handle snakes as evidence of salvation. Worshipers quote the Books of Mark and Luke to support the practice. Behold I give onto you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy: and nothing shall by any mean hurt you. Another key scripture used to support their belief is Acts 28:1-6, which tells that Paul while in Malta was bitten by a venomous snake and suffered no harm.  The snake story about Paul is interesting because there is no evidence of the existence of poisonous snake son Malta in the past.

The founder of modern snake handling, George Went Hensley, died from a fatal snake bite in 1955. In 198 snake handling evangel list John Wayne Brown died after being bitten by a timber rattler at a holiness church in Alabama. Another snake handler died in 2006 in a church in Kentucky. In July 2008, 10 people were arrested and 125 venomous snakes were confiscated as part of an undercover sting operation. The practice is legal in West Virginia, but the states of Alabama, Kentucky and Tennessee have passed laws against the use of venomous snakes and other reptiles in a place that endangers the lives of others.

What if a candidate for the presidency was a Jehovah’s Witness, which is a Christian Denomination which like Mormonism has beliefs distinct from mainstream Christianity?  Their beliefs are based on their interpretation of the bible with a preference for their own translation, “The New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures.” The religion grew out of a bible study group which was formed in 1870 by Charles Taze Russell, who during the course of the study disputed many of the creeds, doctrines, and traditions of mainstream Christianity. They believe that the destruction of the present world system at Armageddon is imminent and that the establishment of God’s Kingdom on earth is the only solution for all of mankind’s problems.

They refuse military service,   do not celebrate birthdays, do not salute the flag, do not stand for the playing of the national anthem, and do not celebrate holidays like the fourth of July or religious holidays like Easter or Christmas which they consider to have pagan origins. They do not believe in blood transfusions for themselves or their children.

Another religion which would present some issues for a candidate for the presidency would be Christian Scientist which was founded in 1879 in Boston Massachusetts by Mary Baker Eddy, author of a book, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. The traditional bedrock of the church is healing through prayer without material means and their rejection of medicine. They deny the Deity of Jesus and teach that God is not the creator of the finite.

So a president who was a Christian Scientist would certainly would have no need for health care of any type for that matter any insurance companies since healing would be by prayer and medicine would be non essential.

By now you get the picture and I won’t have to discuss Scientology which would require volumes.

Mormonism

The Mormon Church states that in the early 1800’s, it’s first prophet Joseph Smith, had revelations that restored Christianity to it’s true path, a course correction necessary because previous Christian Churches had corrupted the faith ( so Matthew, Mark, Luke, Peter, Paul, Thomas, the Old and New Testament are incorrect, and therefore all other Christian Churches are incorrect). Smith bequeathed to the church volumes of revelations continued in scriptures   used only by Mormons: “The Book of Mormon, Another Testament of Jesus Christ,” ” The Doctrines and Covenants”, and “The Pearl of Great Price”.  Traditional Christians   do not recognize any of those as scriptures.

Smith taught that the Garden of Eden was on the American Continent, and near present Independence Missouri and that Adam built an alter there. The remains of the alter and a tower were allegedly found by Mormons in 1838. Smith prophesied that the Lord’s second coming would be in independence Missouri. The church teaches that Mormons existed in heaven with God, the Heavenly Father as spirits, before becoming human. Marriage is strongly encouraged as only married can reach the highest heaven, The Celestial Kingdom, the only heaven of the three heavens where one can live in the presence of God and live with their wives through eternity.

A New York Times article entitled, The Theological Differences behind Evangelical Unease with Romney, dated January 15, 2012, Stated that although Mormons consider themselves Christian, there are major theological differences between the Mormon faith and Christianity, with one of the most fundamental one being that traditional Christian believe in the trinity, that God is the father, the son and the holy spirit all rolled into one. Mormon’s reject this as a non biblical creed that emerged in the fourth or fifth centuries. Mormon’s believe that God,   the father and Jesus are separate physical beings, and that God has a wife whom they call Heavenly Mother. It is not just the Evangelical Christians that object to these ideas.

That’s just not Christian said the Rev. Serene Jones, President of Union Theological Seminary, a liberal Protestant Seminary in New York City, God Jesus are not separate  physical beings. That would be an anathema. At the end of the day, all the other stuff doesn’t matter except the divinity of Jesus!

Another major difference concerns the afterlife,  Early Mormon Apostles  gave talks asserting that human beings would  become like Gods and inherit their own Planets., language now regularly subject to ridicule by critics of Mormonism.  Kathleen Flake, a Mormon who is a professor of American Religious History at Vanderbilt Divinity School explained that the planet notion has been de-emphasized in modern times in favor of a less concrete explanation.  People who die embark on an” eternal progression” that allows them to partake in God’s glory. “Mormon’s think of God as a parent” she said, God makes the world in order to give that world to his children. It’s like sending your child to Harvard, (although they never have had much of a football team). God gives his children every possible opportunity to progress towards this higher life that God posse.  When Mormon’s say, “Heavenly Father,” they mean it. It is not a metaphor.  It is the blurring of the lines between God, Jesus and human beings that is hard for Christians to accept, Mormon Professor of Communications at BYU, Lane Williams explains, “It’s not that we’re right and they’re wrong kind of approach, but it’s as though we feel that we have a broader circle of truth.”

As part of having a broader circle of truth, Mormons believe that a person can be baptized after death and that a person can be converted to Mormonism after death without his or his relatives consent.

The Mormon Church announced recently that slain Jewish journalist Daniel Pearl was posthumously baptized last year by proxy in a Twin Falls Idaho, Temple. The practice of performing unauthorized posthumous baptisms of Jewish people led to a 1995 agreement between Jewish Leaders and the Mormon Church. But recently the church had to apologize after learning that the parents of the late Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal had been posthumously baptized. They also acknowledged that three dead relatives of holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel were almost baptized. President Obama’s mother, Stanley Ann Dunham was baptized after her death.  Posthumous baptisms are common among Mormons. The purpose is to ensure that ancestors can join church members in the afterlife, but church rules stipulate that only direct descendants of the dead can submit their names for the sacrament. The Mormon Church had previously announced that they had baptized Ann Frank, Elvis Presley and of all people Adolph Hitler. The Church also allows proxy marriages of deceased relatives so that they can be converted into the Mormon faith and be with the family in the afterlife. The Mormon Church has a well known collection of genealogical records for the purpose of tracing ancestroria l backgrounds which can be used to baptize and marry your ancestors, for a slight fee of course.

What puts this all into question is the fact that Joseph Smith was arrested in Norwich New York in 1826 and tried and convicted of being a disorderly person.  Joseph Smith was involved in a scheme where he would look into a stone and divine the presence of minerals or gold. Initially defenders of the church expressed plausible deniability because of the supposed lack of documentation. However arrest warrants, court transcripts, and legal bills from four separate charge filed against Smith have been produced showing his involvement in glass looking or treasure seeking. He was found guilty of parting a local farmer of his money in a less than honest scheme, commonly known as money digging or glass looking. In that hearing Smith admitted that his “peep-stoning” practice was all a fraud and he promised the judge that he would give it up and do honest work. The judge let him off based on his promise.

 It was reported that the activity brought rebuke from his soon to be father in law, Isaac Hale. It is also historically recorded that Joseph Smith was removed from membership in a local Methodist Church because of the activity and the trial results. Joseph Smith was a border in the home of Isaac Hale and he asked permission to marry Isaac’s daughter Emma but was refused permission because of Smith’s conviction and the type of work he was doing.

On January 18, 1827 Smith and Emma Hale eloped against her father’s wishes and when they returned Isaac Hale allowed them to live in an old cabin on his property. A few months thereafter, Smith began to tell tales of a vision in which an angel directed him to a buried book of golden plates, inscribed with characters which he called reformed Egyptian.  He claimed that he could translate them, according to his father in law by reading reflections in a seer stone at the bottom of his hat.  The manner in which he pretended to read and interpret the plate which at the time were hidden in the woods, was the same manner as when he looked for the money-diggers with the stone in his hat, according to an affidavit given by Isaac Hale.

On March 26, 1830, four years after his conviction he published the Book of Mormon and established the Church of Christ on April 6, 183o and in 1831 he and his wife moved to Jackson County, Missouri, where he planned to eventually build the city of Zion. In 1833 alarmed by the life style of the church, non Mormon settlers expelled them from Jackson County.  Smith then moved to Kirkland Ohio, where he began building a temple. The Kirkland era ended in 1838 after the failure of a church sponsored bank caused wide spread defections. Smith who was the treasurer of the Kirkland Anti-Bank                                                         was tried and convicted in October 1837 by an Ohio Jury for violating the 1816 Ohio Banking law.  He was fined $1000 (the equivalent of about $90,000 in today’s dollars.

During the fall of 1838 tensions escalated into what is known as the 1838 Mormon War. A Mormon Church council had expelled many of the oldest and most prominent leaders of the church, who were excommunicated for various reasons due to land purchases.  Smith believed that his faith’s survival required greater militancy against anti Mormons and Mormon traitors; a covert operation called the Danites was formed to intimidate Mormon dissenters and oppose anti Mormon Militias units.  Speeches were made and printed in pamphlets, promising a war of extermination if Mormons were attacked. This produced a flood of anti Mormon rhetoric in Missouri newspapers. Violence erupted on August 6, 1838 when non Mormons tried to prevent Mormons from voting. This was the start of the 1838 war.  Non Mormon vigilantes raided and burned Mormon farms.                                                                                                                                 

Meanwhile under Smith’s general oversight and command, the Danites and other Mormon forces pillaged non-Mormon towns. Mormons attacked the Missouri state militia in an attempt to rescue some captured Mormons. The governor of Missouri ordered that the Mormons be exterminated or driven from the state. Non Mormon vigilantes surprised and killed 18 Mormons in the Haun’s Mill massacre, effectively ending the war. On November 1, 1838 the Mormon's surrendered and agreed to forfeit their property and leave the state. Smith was court marshaled for treason and nearly executed but for the fact that it was argued that he was a civilian. He was transferred to a jail in Liberty, Missouri to await trial, escaping on April 6, 1839.

 Between November and April some eight thousand  displaced  Mormons migrated east into Illinois establishing a new city, Nauvoo(Hebrew meaning “to be beautiful”) in a swampland on the banks of the Mississippi River  Smith introduced Temple ceremonies meant to seal families together for eternity, as well as the doctrines of eternal Progression or exaltation . He created a council of fifty, which had the authority to decide which national or state laws Mormons should obey. They represented a future theodemocratic “Kingdom of God” on earth. He began revealing the doctrine of plural marriage to a few of his closest friends, including a benefactor, Dr. John C. Bennett, who began using it as a license for free love. When embarrassing rumors of “spiritual wifely” arose, Joseph Smith forced Dr. Bennett to resign his position as Mayor of Nauvoo.  In return Bennett wrote lurid exposes of life in Nauvoo.

By mid-1842 opinion had turned against the Mormons, with the editor of the Warsaw Signal, Thomas C. Sharp criticizing them for political and military aspirations. The City of Nauvoo had an autonomous Militia with actions limited only by state and federal constitutions, with Joseph Smith being the Lieutenant General and Dr. John Bennett being the Major General. After an unknown assailant shot at the Missouri Governor on May 6, 1842, anti Mormons in Illinois reported that Joseph Smith had predicted the Governors death.  Smith’s body guard, Porter Rockwell was suspected. He was arrested, tried and acquitted.

 The governor of Missouri ordered Joseph Smith extradited and Smith went into hiding believing that he would be murdered if he was taken to Missouri.  Smith avoided extradition when a U.S. Attorney for Illinois gave his opinion that the extradition was unconstitutional.  Another extradition attempt was made in June 1843 when the Illinois Governor, Thomas Ford agreed to turn Joseph Smith over to Missouri on the old charge of treason.  Smith was arrested by Missouri officers but released on a writ of Habeas Corpus. While this ended Missouri’s attempt to extradite Joseph Smith, it cause significant political fallout in Illinois.

In December 1843, Smith petitioned congress under the authority of the Anointed Quorum to make Nauvoo an independent territory with the right to call out federal troops in its   defense.  Smith then wrote the leading   presidential candidates and asked what they would do to protect the Mormons. When he failed to receive a response Joseph Smith decided to run for president as a third party candidate.  Joseph Smith asked the Council of Fifty to select a site for a large Mormon settlement where Mormons could live under theocratic law beyond government control, in effect establishing a global theodemocracy.  One of the council’s first acts was to elect Joseph Smith as prophet, priest and king of the millennial monarchy.

By the spring of 1844 a crisis developed between Joseph Smith and a half a dozen of his closest Mormon associates, including William Law, Smith’s trusted counselor and Robert Foster, a general of the Nauvoo Militia who said that Smith had proposes marriage to their wives. About eight of Smith’s wives were also   married to other men (four were Mormon Men in good standing, who in a few cases acted as a witness in Smith’s marriage to their wives).  Typically these women continued to live with their first husband, not Smith.  Some accounts say Smith may have had sexual relations with some of his other wives and fathered children by one or two of them.  These   dissidents published a newspaper called the Nauvoo Expositor on June 7, 1844 which criticized Smith and called for reforms within the church. The newspaper   decried Polygamy and Smith’s doctrine of exaltation and other controversial doctrines such as his new doctrine of many Gods. The newspaper gave   the opinion that Smith, as both mayor and president of the church held too much power and that Smith had corrupted women by forcing, coercing or introducing them into plural marriage. The newspaper   promised to present evidence of its allegations in succeeding issues.  Fearing exposure Smith and the city council declared the newspaper a public nuisance and ordered the Nauvoo militia to destroy the printing press.

Destruction of the printing press provoked a call to arms by Thomas C. Sharp, Editor of the Warsaw Signal, who stated the Smith had violated freedom of the press, and raised issues of inciting riot and treason.  Smith fearing an uprising called out the militia, an organization of 500 men  on  June 18^th and declared martial law. THe City of Carthage mobilized it’s small detachment of state militia. Illinois Governor Thomas Ford threatened to call a larger militia unless Smith and the city council surrendered. Smith initially fled across the Mississippi River but then returned and surrendered to the Governor, along with his brother Hyrum and fifteen city council members and some friends and were  charged with  inciting a riot.

Subsequently Smith and his brother were charged with treason. The members of the city council were each released on $500 bail, but Smith and his brother remained in custody since treason was a capital offense.

On June 27, 1844 a mob of some 200 men, their faces painted black with wet gun powder rushed the jail and killed Smith and his brother.  Five men, Thomas C. Sharp, Mark Aldrich, William N. Grover, Jacob C Davis and Levi Williams were tried for the murders.  All five were found not guilty by a jury. The defense was led by Orville Hickman Browning, who later served in the U.S. Senate and was one of the founders of the Republican Party.

After the death of Joseph Smith, a succession crisis occurred, Hyrum Smith would have been the logical successor but for his death.  Some members considered that Joseph Smith III should have been the successor. Brigham Young, president of the Quorum of twelve, claimed authority had been handed to him by Smith to the quorum of the twelve. Sidney Rigdon was the senior surviving member of the first presidency, a body which had led the church since 1832. At the time of Smith’s death, Rigdon had been estranged from Smith due to differences in doctrinal beliefs. James Strang claimed that Smith had designated him as the successor in a letter he had received a week before Smith’s death.

A schism resulted with each claimant attracting followers. The majority followed Brigham Young  and they migrated to the Utah territory after spending two years in Nebraska. Rigdon’s  followers  became  known as the Rigdonites  and some of them later established The Church of Jesus Christ . Strang’s followers established the church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Joseph Smith III followers established the Reorganized Church of Latter Day Saints, which later changed its name to Community of Christ.

Brigham Young and his band of followers  spent 2 years in Nebraska, before migrating  to the Utah territory where a territorial government was formed in 1850 with Young becoming its first governor.  The Principle of “separation of church and state” carried little weight. The laws of the territory reflected the views of only one person, Brigham Young.  He publicized polygamy the previously secret practice in 1852; he supported a theocracy and advocated the violent doctrine of blood atonement.

When drought and grasshopper infestation produced desperate economic conditions in Utah, Brigham Young concluded that the problem stemmed from the loss of righteousness   among his people. In early 1856 he launched the Reformation, a campaign to arouse religious consciousness.  Mormon leadership urged spiritual repentance and rebaptisms.  All those not willing to make the necessary religious sacrifices were invited to leave the Utah Territory.  The most troubling aspect of the Reformation was the doctrine of blood atonement.   Brigham Young asked his followers to kill Mormons who committed unpardonable sins. “If our neighbor…wishes salvation, and it is necessary to spill his blood upon the ground in order that he be saved, spill it.”  It is not surprising that practitioners of such a religion grow suspicious of persons outside of their religious community. The fanaticism led to violence and the infamous Mountain Meadow Massacre, one of the four largest mass killings of civilians in the United States. 

 By 1857, tensions again escalated between Mormons leadership and Utah and the federal government reached the boiling point, largely as a result of accusations involving polygamy and the theocratic rule of the Utah Territory by Brigham Young.  Worried that a federal army might be sent their way, the Mormon dominated Utah legislature enacted legislation reactivating the territorial militia, calling it the Nauvoo Legion. Federal officials in Utah complained of harassment and destruction of records by Mormon citizens. On April 15, 1857, a federal judge, the U.S. Marshall and the territorial surveyor fled the state, convinced that they were about to be killed.  

In 1857 President James Buchanan sent an army to Utah, which Mormons interpreted as open aggression against them and fearing a repeat of Missouri and Illinois, they prepared to defend themselves. Brigham Young embarked on an effort to rally Indian support for the Mormon cause, support that he saw as critical in the battle to come.
 On September 1, 1857, Brigham Young met with southern Indian Chiefs, encouraging the Indians to seize “all the cattle” of emigrants that traveled on the south route (through southern Utah to California). The meeting increased the likelihood of a violent encounter between Indians and emigrants. Young had been working on such a plan even before September 1, having sent George  A. Smith, south with instructions to let the Indians know that Young considered emigration through Utah a threat to the well-being of both Mormon and Indian residents of the territory.

In this period of paranoia, anger and hostility, a wagon train later known as the Fancher party  left Arkansas on what they planned would be a long migration to California. Two weeks before the wagon train left Arkansas , a Mormon Apostle, Parley Pratt,  (the great ,great grandfather of Mitt Romney),  was murdered  by a non Mormon angered over Pratt’s taking of his wife.  When this information reached the Utah Territory,  it inflamed  the hostility all ready existing against non Mormons  and some even accused the  Fancher  Party  not only of involvement in the murder but also in the killing of Joseph Smith and his brother.

On the same day that Brigham Young spoke with the Paiute leaders, the  Fancher Party consisting of 140, men women and children camped about seventy miles north of Mountain Meadows. Rumors spread that the Fancher Party had committed all sorts of manufactured sins and depredations: tormenting women, swearing, insulting the Mormon Church, brandishing pistols and even poisoning cattle.  Isaac Haight, second in command of the Nauvoo legion and President of the Cedar City Stake called a meeting,  where he stated that it was the ”the will of authority to arm Paiute Indians and incite them to “kill all or part of the party.

On the evening of September 6, 1857, the Wagon Train crossed over the rim of the great basin and encamped at mountain meadow.  The following morning, there was gun fire with the first victim being a child who was shot by a group of 40 to 50 Indians and Mormons disguised as Indians.  Gun fire was returned and and soon the gun fire turned into a siege which lasted three days.   Over the next three days Mormon reinforcements arrived on horseback and reported to Haight and his immediate superior, William Dame, the head of southern Utah forces. Dane reportedly reiterated his determination not to let the immigrants pass:  “My orders are that all the immigrants (except the youngest children) must be done away with.”

On September 11, Legion officers devised a plan to end the siege. Most of the Paiutes had grown tired of waiting and had left except for a handful.  Major John Higbee told John D. Lee and William Bateman to act as decoys to draw out the immigrants from the protection of their wagons. Carrying a white flag they marched across the meadow and spoke to the entrenched members of the Fancher party who by this time were exhausted from fatigue and thirst.  The desperate emigrants agree to the terms that they would not be harmed if they gave up their arms, wagons and cattle.

A member of the Nauvoo Legion took the reins of one of the wagons that was loaded with some of the youngest children.  Women and some of the most seriously wounded emigrant men were loaded into the second wagon.  John D. Lee positioned himself between the two wagons as they pulled out. Following the two wagons,  the women and the oldest children walked behind.  After the wagons had moved on, Higbee ordered the emigrant men to begin walking in single file.   An armed Mormon guard escorted each emigrant man.  When the escorted men had fallen behind the wagons and women and older children about a quarter mile, Higbee gave the order, “Halt, do your duty!” Each of the Mormon guards shot and killed the defenseless men at their side.  Meanwhile on the other side of the hill that the wagons had crested, Nelphi  shouted the order  to begin the slaughter of the women and older children.  Men rushed at the defenseless  emigrants from both sides . It was over in just a few minutes  and 120 members of the Fancher party were dead. The youngest children seventeen or eighteen in all with the oldest one being 6 years and 11 months  were gathered up, to later be placed in Mormon homes.  All but one were  later gathered up by federal authorities and returned to relatives.

 The next day Colonel Dame, and Lt Colonel Higbee visited the site  with John Lee and  Phillip Klingsmith. Lee in his confession described the field on that day. “The bodies of  men, women and children had been stripped entirely naked, making the scene one of the most loathsome and ghastly that can be imagined. The men agreed that Mormon participation in the massacre had to be secret.

The bodies were left  unattended and at the mercy of wild animals. In May 1859 the U.S. Army buried the remains of 34 bodies  in a rifle pit , and erected  a cairn at the site.

Aware of the sensitivity of the events at Mountain Meadow, Mormon officials  from Brigham Young  on down worked to shift the blame for the massacre to the Paiutes or the emigrants themselves. By November John D. Lee had completed  an account  of the massacre  attributing all the killings to the Paiutes and sent the report to Brigham Young . Young as Superintendent of the Indians along with his other duties  prepared a report.  

                                                                                                  
Federal troops  who were unable to control the Utah Territory without engaging the Utah Militia until June 26, 1858,  marched into Salt Lake under a deal brokered by Brigham Young which included a pardon for those acts considered part of the rebellion. However a U.S. District Judge, John Cradlebaugh ignored the former governor's report and pursued an aggressive investigation. After several months of the investigation the judge issued arrest warrants for John D. Lee, Isaac Haight, and John Higbee for the murders at Mountain Medows. Angered by his discovery that the massacre was ordered by order of council, the judge wrote a letter to President Buchanan seeking his commitment to secure convictions for the guilty.

The federal case was dropped when the U.S. Marshall was unable to serve the warrants without protection of federal troops which were not available.

On the eve of the civil war, the federal government had major issues to contend with and the prosecution of the Mountain Meadow massacre was placed on a back burner. In 1871 as a result of a series of newspaper articles on the subject, Phillip Klingensmith, a former Mormon Bishop appearing in a Nevada court, confessed about his role, swearing out a complete account of the massacre. Mormon control of Utah justice system however prevented any prosecution there.

It was only when the jurisdiction in the Utah Courts was redefined in 1874,  was it possible to proceed with the prosecution of those responsible. Arrest warrants were issued for nine men, Lee, Higbee, Haight, Dame, Klingensmith, a Stewart, Wilden and Jukes, however only John D. Lee was arrested on November 7, 1874. Dame was arrested shortly thereafter however, it was decided to try John D. Lee first since he was considered the most likely to be convicted.

The trial of John D. Lee commenced on July 23, 1875 in federal district court . Brigham Young provided four attorneys for Lee's defense team. These attorneys quickly became involved in internal conflict, with two of them wanting to provide the strongest defense possible even if it meant implicating higher Mormon officials while the two other attorneys wanted to protect all higher officials.
After a description of the massacre, witnesses described various aspects of a plan by Mormon Officials to make life difficult for emigrants travelling through Utah. Several witnesses testified that they had been ordered not to sell grain or provisions to the Fancher Party. Another witness testified that he had been excommunicated for trading cheese for a bed quilt. Other witnesses testified about the fiery sermons of George A. Smith and other church leaders, warning of threats posed by emigration through the state.The star prosecution witness was Phillip Klingsmith who described the entire scenario leading up to the massacre including the actual killing, with Lee and the other men acting on orders from Higbee. The Lee jury was unable to reach a verdict with eight Mormons and
one former Mormon voting to acquit and three non Mormons voting to convict.

Lee's second trial did not resemble his first trial with new witness with enhanced memories putting Lee in the middle of the killing. The prosecution no longer attempted to raise the issue that Lee was one of many, following the orders of higher ups.

The change in the strategy was that a deal had been brokered between a new U.S. Attorney with the understanding that someone had to be convicted of the massacre and that since a unanimous jury verdict could never be reached in the case without Brigham Young's cooperation.. The deal was that an all Mormon jury was to be empanelled , Brigham Young's deposition would be placed into evidence, present evidence that would tend to exonerate higher Mormon officials and after trying Lee, promised that no one else would be prosecuted.

Lee was found guilty after witness testified to what they had seen him do, but those same witnesses had no memories when asked to name other Mormons that had participated in the massacre.

On March 23, 1877, John D. Lee was executed by a firing squad at the site where the Mountain Meadow massacre had occurred. Lee wrote a confession and gave it to his attorney who had it published it and it became an immediate best seller.

Brigham Young  in 1877, died two months after Lee's execution from appendicitis  and thereafter he was followed by a succession of LDS presidents who resisted efforts by congress to outlaw polygamony or as the Mormons referred to it, plural marriages.  In 1878 in the case of Reynolds v United States, the Supreme Court held that religious duty was not a defense for practicing polygamy. In September 1890, Church presidentWilford  Woodruff issued a manefesto that officially suspended the practice of polygamy but did not dissolve existing plural marriages.  The practice continued after the manefesto and did not cease until Utah requested statehood and was required  to prohibit polygamy to gain admission. The church today seeks to distance itself from fundamintalists groups that continue the practice.

In 1999, a backhoe operator unearthed a mass grave , but before forensic anthropologists had an opportunity to study them the governor (one of the murders decendants) ordered the bones reburied.

In 1998, Gordon B. Hinckley, President of the LDS Church, decided to buld a monument at the location of the original cairn . On September 11, 1999, the monument which has the names of all the people who are known to have been killed there, was dedicated. President Hinckley told the assembled crowd, "The past cannot be recalled . It cannot be changed. It is time to leave the entire matter in the hands of God." That's as close an admission or an apology that has ever been given.

In 2011 the Site of the Mountain Meadow Massacre became a National Historical
Monument,as a result of request by decendents of the victims and members of the LDS Church.

So how does Mitt Romney fit into this? Well for starters:
Many Mormon  practitioners migrated to Mexico in order to continue
to practice polygamy including Mitt Romney's  grandfater, Miles Park Romney who had five wives.

Mitt's father, George was born in Mexico (when he ran for president in 1968, there was some concerns about his birth place but since his parents were U.S. citizens, the issues were resolved, however the birthers continue to raise the issue about President Obama even though he was born in Hawaii).

The story about Romney's relatives who continue to reside in Mexico was aired on Rock Center with Briam Williams on January 9, 20012.  Some 40 members of  the Romney family continue to reside in Chihuahua, Mexico. The question that was not asked is whether the clan continues to practice polygamy. Maybe that was a condition for granting the interview.
 Mitt has said that his family members had fled the United States for Mexico to escape persecution, when in fact they fled not because of persecution but prosecution for continuing to practice polygamy.

Fist Bump !

U DA MAN?

You would have thought that since Mitt has been running for the presidency since 2008 that he would have learned from his past mistakes and deficiencies and made efforts to avoid repeating them, such as the need to release his income tax reports without prompting by his rivals. When Mitt’s father, George ran for president in 1968 he released ten years of income tax statements. When Mitt was asked if he planned to do the same he was non committal. Mitt has released some income information however which indicated that he had income of 26 million in 2011 and would pay 14% tax, because the income was not wages but capital gains. However Mitt did not file his income tax by the April 15^th deadline, requesting a 6 month extension. What is he hiding and won’t release until just before the election?  Does this sound like a person you can trust in the oval office?

As further evidence of his craftiness is his failure to specifically state his plans if elected, except of course that he has repeatedly said he plans to repeal the health care reform bill which he calls Obamacare.   This will prove difficult for him to argue in the campaign ahead because the health care reform bill was modeled after his own Romneycare which also had a mandate that people buy their own insurance. This is an interesting predicament for the U.S. Supreme Court which will issue their decision on the health care reform mandate in June, since if it rules the mandate unconstitutional they might in fact also be ruling against the Massachusetts health care bill.

Although Mitt has kept his own plans secret, being content to criticize the president while touting his own public sector experience, a clue to Romney’s future plans was accidently revealed to reporters from the Wall Street Journal and NBC News on Sunday April 15, 20012, when in a closed door fundraiser Mitt was overheard telling a group of wealthy donors that he was going to get rid of some tax deductions and eliminate some cabinet departments such as Housing and Urban Development. He said that he would eliminate or combine many government departments including the Department of Education to help offset his proposal to slash all U.S. tax rates by 20%.

By the following Monday Mitt was busy scrambling to distance himself from the comments overheard y the reporters. While not specific the comments that he had made did not go much further in describing his plans on what he outlined in previous public appearances. He said he would line out state property tax deductions now taken by millions of Americans, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The additional issues that Mitt has not addressed are his bank accounts in the Cayman Islands. It may have been necessary for Mitt to have these accounts when he was with Bain Capital, but he has not worked with Bain, since he became governor of Massachusetts. If the taxes he pays there would be the same if that money was in U.S. Banks, what is the real purpose of having his money there.

The New York Times on May 6, 20012, reported that the Senate permanent subcommittee on Investigation in 2008 estimated that at least $5 trillion to $7 trillion was sheltered in offshore jurisdictions like the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, Gibraltar, Bermuda and the Bahamas. These jurisdictions have little or no tax.  The favorable tax rates encourage corporation to avoid paying American taxes by structuring complicated international transactions.  But it is not just lower tax rates that make these jurisdictions attractive to those following the rules.  The secrecy of offshore jurisdictions   allows some individuals and corporations to engage in outright tax fraud, costing America at least $40 billion each year. And that secrecy makes offshore tax fraud almost impossible for law enforcement to detect. The secrecy laws in those tax havens are at the root of serious crimes: fraud, money laundering and international terrorism. Legislation shaped by Senators Carl Levin, Kent Conrad and Sheldon Whitehouse that would curb some of these tax abuses by giving the Treasury Department the muscle to respond when foreign governments hamper our tax enforcement was recently passed by the Senate, but awaits House action. Don’t hold your breath.  

Double Fist Bump for now!

IN DEEP MITT !

Mitt Romney has been the front runner from the onset of the campaign and although he has had some setbacks and there were some questions about his sustainability, his huge advantage in organization and fund raising more than his Republican rivals left little doubt that eventually he would garner the nomination although it took longer then expected and he definitely has a major issue in not being able to connect with the average voter.
Now that Santorum's exit,  has left Romney free to concentrate his negative ads against President Obama, he has begun in his expected etch a sketch mode to move to the center. He has given us a preview of  his expected attack strategy by endorsing the childish game of "I'm rubber, you're glue" in that he is attempting to be the first to bring up the issues, which he knows will be used against him, such as his war against women and his health care reform, Romneycare.  Mitt will use his organization's skills in prompting up a straw candidate that they can attack so that his weak flip flopping past image can be lost in the process. The war on women issue has to do with Romney's
anti-Planned Parenthood stance. Initially he endorsed Planned Parenthood and a women's right to choose but now that he is seeking the vote of the more conservative white Evangelicals  he has to become anti- abortion and anti- contraception. This puts him in an awkward position where he has to appear that he is not conducting a war against women, while at the same time he is. If anyone can pull this off Mitt can.
He is very experienced in this sort of thing, after all he is the undisputed king of the flip floppers. Another prime example of Mitt's flip flopping is his positions on gun control.

As governor of Massachusetts he supported stiff gun restrictions, an assault weapons ban and the federal Brady Gun Control law. He has endorsed Florida's Stand Alone law and is now under pressure to calm uneasiness in the gun community otherwise known as the NRA, he will assure them that he will not entertain additional gun restrictions. His latest challenge against President Obama is to paint him as un-American using what has been termed as the American Exceptionalism concept. As usual Mitt is behind the times and out of touch, since President Obama stated in a speech in 2004 that his entire career has been a testimony to American Exceptionalism.
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 In his campaign during the primaries beginning in Iowa, Mitt's organization gathered reams of voter data that allowed them to precisely target supporters. His organization has a sophisticated and relentless voter contact program that early locked in supporters, turning them out to rallies, to caucuses, to vote early with absentee ballots and  finally to get them to the voting booths. With a surplus in donations, the Romney team poured resources into data,  mining reams of consumer information from the number of purchases made at a home goods store, William Sonoma to their range of financial investments, to build a model that would allow them to find and identify potential supporters. This micro-targeting program has been used in most of the primaries.
His organization pared this voter data with several hundred thousand paid and volunteer calls. They know that his sweet spot is among older, higher income, voters, those with incomes  of between $75,000 and $150,000 and with upscale interests, such as gourmet cooking. He was particularly appealing to older women and did best with self identified Republicans. They also knew that Romney, the father of five sons, held particular appeal for voters whose consumer preferences  showed a focus on children and family-centered activities. This knowledge guided the millions of dollars that Romney has spent on the primaries, outspending his opponents five to one, including of course the negative ads, aimed at what he termed desperate rivals, which he used to paint them into corners where they were unable to respond because of their limited funding.

Romney's Super PAC "Restore Our Future" has out spent the official Romney campaign. The new guide lines as per the Citizens United Decision, permit donations only to political committees that do not coordinate their activities with a candidates official political campaign, but in the presidential race the candidates and the Super PAC's are intertwined by personnel if not legally. Carl Forti was the political director of Romney's first presidential bid in 2008 and now run the pro-Romney group, Restore Our Future, along with other former Romney Aides

Charles Spies is the treasurer and former general counsel for Romney's 2008 campaign. The group reported raising over 12 million in the first half of 2011 in the form of large donations from approximately 90 wealthy individuals and corporations. Spies declined to discuss specific contributors to the PAC.
 As of August 2011, the largest individual contributor to restore Our Future was John Paulson, a billionaire and hedge fund manager who is  according to Politico, "famous for having enriched himself  by betting on the collapse of the housing industry".  An additional million dollars came from W. Spann LLC, a corporation with no record of actual business activities, which was incorporated, donated to the PAC, and then dissolved in a matter of months.

Several watchdog groups requested that the justice department and Federal Election Commission investigate donations from W. Spann LLC as possible violations of campaign finance law. Restore our Future refused to provide additional details about the donation and asserted that it had complied with existing laws. In response to rumors a spokesman for Romney's prior company, Bain Capital, stated that W. Spann LLC was not affiliated with with Bain Capital or any of their employees.
Shortly thereafter, Edward Conard, a former top executive of Bain Capital and long time Romney supporter came forward to state that he had formed W. Spann LLC and funded and authorized the $1 million donation.

In December 2011, Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post found that a Restore Our Future ad attacking Newt Gingrich in Iowa had a number of "egregious fouls" and "underhanded" treatment of Freddie Mac and abortion issues. The PAC had $3 million budgeted for the Iowa television campaign. Brittany Gross, a Restore spokesperson, declined to answer questions from Kessler about the ad.

Romney was aided by 29 million dollars in ads paid for by Restore Our Future in the defeat of Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich in the Illinois primary.
Although Romney has lost several southern primaries, including Georgia, South Carolina, Missouri, Mississippi and Alabama,his campaign  raised more then 11 million in February.

Karl Rove is the founder of the Super PAC American Crossroads, a Romney supporter is likely to become the pre-eminent GOP group airing negative ads against President Obama this year.
Mitt Romney's rhetoric during this grueling campaign has been that he started at the bottom, has earned his money and has experience in the private sector and this qualifies him to deal with this nations economic issues. Recently Fox News has started the mantra, "Romney started with nothing".
Not so fast! It is well known that Mitt is the son of three time Governor of Michigan, George Romney, former president of American Motors and was raised in an exclusive sprawling residential area,  Bloomfield Hills, far from the dregs of Detroit, where he attended and exclusive boys school, where his father who was governor of Michigan at the time gave a commencement speech at his high school graduation. It was recently revealed that it was at this exclusive boy's school that Mitt  bullied a young man who he believed was gay. He and some friends held the boy down and cut his hair. While his friends remember the incident, Mitt does not recall it, but still apologized.

In the book, "The Real Romney",  Michael Kranish and Scott Helman write that Romney's religion pulls a curtain over parts of his life story because some important moments for Mormons are restricted to Mormons.  After Mitt and Ann were married in Michigan in 1969, they flew to the Mormon Temple in Salt Lake Utah for a ceremony where Mitt wore white robes and they were "sealed" for eternity. But Ann's parents were not Mormon so they were not allowed inside to see it.

As a Mormon Romney went to Paris as a missionary and received two deferments from the Vietnam war,  (Wouldn't it have been grand to spend two years in France and Paris, instead of two years in the hot jungles of Vietnam)?
 Mitt attended Stanford University not on a scholarship but on an allowance from his father.
When his allowance was cut back by his father to make him study. Mitt did not have the money necessary to pay his way back to Michigan to see Ann. He missed her so much that he auctioned off his camel's hair overcoat to pay for the trip home to see her. Does his father supporting him after his marriage, paying his way through University and Harvard law school while he was married, and graduating without having to worry about an $80,000 student loan, cause you to believe that he started with nothing?
Michael Kranish and Scott Helman in an adaption of their book, the Real Romney wrote in the
February edition of Vanity Fair, that in 1983 at the age of 36, Mitt Romney was approached by Bill Bain founder of Bain and Company a consulting firm which worked with one business at a time, providing analysis and attention to what made the companies work, scoped out the competition and then submitted a plan to the company. Bain would be able to watch it's clients prosper only from a distance, taking handsome fees  but not directly sharing in the profits.

The new work model was that Bain would invest in companies and share in their growth, rather then just advise them. Bain Capital would raise tens of millions of dollars, invest in start-ups and troubled businesses, apply,  Bain's brand of management advise, and then resell the revitalized companies or sell their shares to the public at a profit. Romney did not immediately accept  the offer working with this new concept. He worried that if it was a failure that he would lose his reputation, earnings and position with Bain. The pot was sweetened and Romney was promised that if the business plan was not successful that he would be able to return to his prior position with Bain and a story would be floated that he was leaving Bain Capital to return to his prior position  due to his value as a consultant. He was in essence covering his rear end before gambling on an untried business plan.

For the next 15 years Romney worked at Bain Capital and now boast about those years, how he helped create jobs, at new or under performing companies  and knows how jobs and businesses come and go. He was involved in over a hundred deals, many of which have received little notice because  the companies  involved were privately held and not household names.
The most thorough analysis of Romney's performance during this period comes from a private solicitation for investment in Bain Capital's funds written by the wall street firm, Deutsche Bank. The company examined 68 major deals that had taken place on Romney's watch. Of those Bain lost or broke even on 33.
Overall though, the numbers were stunning. Bain was nearly doubling it's investors money annually, giving it one of the best track records in the business. Bain names Staples as one of his success stories.

A former super market executive was trying to sell venture capitalist on the idea of a cheaper way to sell office supplies.  Romney did not stumble on the idea on his own. He was invited by a venture capitalist from another company to sit in on a meeting with the super market executive and after that Romney took the lead. Bain Capital invested $650,000 to help staples open it's first store in May 1986. In all it invested 2.5 million in the company. Three years later Staples sold shares to the public when it was barely turning a profit and Bain Capital reaped more then $13 million. Since then Romney has boasted that he helped create tens of thousands of jobs. But neither Romney nor Bain directly ran the business.
When the IPO was issued, Staples was a firm of 24 stores and 1,100 full and part-time employees. Romney resigned his seat on the Staples Board in 2001 in preparation for his run for governor.
A decade later, the company had more then 12,200 stores and 89,000 employees. The Staples gain in employment were offset by losses elsewhere,  smaller mom and pop stationary stores and suppliers were  being squeezed and some went out of business entirely. Staples steamrolled the competition, under-cutting prices and selling in large quantities.

Leverage buyouts or LBO's  were the main investments for Bain Capital. . Whereas a venture capital deal bet on a new business, pursuing an LOB meant borrowing huge sums of money to buy an established company,  typically saddling the target with big debts, with the goal being to mine the value that others had missed,  to quickly improve profitability by cutting costs and then selling.

Not every deal turned out well for Romney and his investors. Bain invested 4 Million in a company called Handbag Holdings, which sold pocketbooks and other accessories. When a major customer stopped buying,  the company failed and 200 jobs were lost.

Bain invested 2.1 million in a bathroom fixture company called PPM and lost nearly all of it. An investment in a company called Mothercare Stores also didn't pan out; by that time Bain dumped it, fellow Bain Partner Robert White said Bain lost its $1 million and blamed a difficult retail environment.
 In some cases, Bain Capital's alternative strategy of buying into companies also ended in trouble.  In 1993, Bain bought GST Steel, a maker of rod iron rods, and later more than doubled it's $24 million investment. The company borrowed heavily to modernize plants in Kansas City and North Carolina and to pay out dividends to Bain. But foreign competition increased and steel prices fell. GST Steel filed for bankruptcy and shut down it's money losing the Kansas City plant, throwing some 750 employees out of work. Union workers there blamed Bain, then and now, for ruining the company, upending their lives and devastating the community. (This is the subject of the Ads now running about Romney and his success in the private sector).

In 1994 Bain invested 27 million as part of a deal to acquire Dade International, a medical diagnostics equipment firm from its parent company, Baxter International. Bain Ultimately made nearly 10 times its money, getting back 230 million, but Dade ended up laying off more than 1,600 employees and filed for bankruptcy protection in 2002, amid crushing debt and raising interest rates. The company with Bain in charge had borrowed heavily to do acquisitions accumulating $1.6 billion in debt by 2000. The company cut benefits to some of its workers at its acquired firms and laid off others. When it merged with Behring Diagnostics, a German company, Dade shut down three U.S.
plants . At the same time Bain paid out $421 million to Bain Capital investors and investing partners.

In one of his Leverage Buyout Mitt sought the services of junk bond king, Michael Milken and his company Drexel Burnham Lambert to solicit scarce cash. During this time it was well known that Drexel and Milken were under investigation by the SEC, but Drexel was still the big player in the junk bond business and Romney needed the financing, ( for the $300 million purchase of two Texas Department Store chains, Bealls and Palais Royal to form Speciality Retailers Inc).

On September 7, 1988, two months after Bain hired Drexel to issue junk bonds to finance the deal, the SEC filed a complaint against Drexel and Milken for insider trading. Instead of backing out of the deal Romney went forward with the transaction. Mitt's deal with Drexel went well for him and Bain Capital which put $10 million into the retailer and financed most of the rest of the $300 million deal with junk bonds. The new company later known as Stage Stores, refocused on its small store, small town roots. Seven years later in October 1996 the company issued an IPO, selling shares at $16.

By the following year the stock  rose to $53 a share and Bain Capitol and a number of it's officers and directors sold a large part of its holdings. Bain made a $175 million gain by 1997. It was one of the most profitable leverage buyout in that era.
Romney and Bain Capitol officers and directors sold at just the right time. Shares plunged in value the next year amid declining sales. The department store company filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy protection in 2000, struggling with $600 million  in debt, and a reorganized company emerged the following year. So ended the story that Romney would definitely not be telling on the campaign trail, the highly leveraged purchase, financed with junk bonds from a firm that became infamous for it's financial practices, of a department store company that had subsequently gone into bankruptcy.
For Romney and Bain Capital, however, it was a huge win, a 175 million gain!

During those 15 years, that Romney had been in the business of "creative destruction" (as he coined the term in his autobiography, Turnaround), and wealth creation, he has made claims of job creation? Though the Bain Company surely helped expand some companies that had created jobs, the layoffs and closures at other firms would lead Romney's political opponents to say that he had amassed a fortune in part by putting people out of work and called him a vulture capitalists. To avoid the use of the name venture capitalists the term equity funding was utilized. The lucrative deals that made Romney wealthy could exact  a cost.
Maximizing financial return to investors  could mean slashing jobs , closing plants, and moving production overseas. It could also mean clashing with unions  workers,serving on the board of a company that ran afoul of federal laws and loading up already struggling companies with debt.

In response to Romney's claim that he helped create tens of thousands of jobs, Howard Anderson, a professor at MIT Sloan School of Management and a former investor of Bain Capital said, "what you really cannot do is claim every job was because of your good judgement, You're not really running those organizations. Your financing them, your offering your judgement and your advise . I think you can only claim credit for the jobs of the companies you ran".
In his 2004 autobiography, Turnaround, Romney admitted,"I never actually ran any of our investments, that was left to management"
When it comes to buyout firms the objective is to make money for investors . It is not to maximize jobs . Romney had a fiduciary duty to investors to make as much money as possible . Marc Wolpow , a former Bain Partner who worked with Romney on many deals  said the discussion at buyout companies typically does not focus on whether jobs will be created. "It's the opposite, What jobs can we cut".

Mitt explained it by saying if we didn't buy these companies  and impose efficiencies on them, the market would have done it with disastrous consequences. This was his point of view when he wrote a 2008 op-ed piece in the New York Times opposing a federal bail out for automakers that the newspaper headlined, "Let Detroit Go Bankrupt". It was good that his his advice went unheeded and his prediction that "you can kiss the American automobile industry goodbye  if it got a bailout has not come to pass. Mitt now claims sucess for the General Motors revival.  Somehow in his convoluted thinking, he surmises that if GM had followed his advice and gone bankrupt they would have also been successful.

Mitt's present net worth is estimated at $ 250 million dollars and he has millions of these dollars in investment funds in the Cayman Islands. A spokesman for Romney said that Romney follows all tax laws  and he would pay the same in taxes  regardless of where the funds are based.

On or about January 18, 2012, Romney disclosed that he has been paying a far lower percentage  in taxes then most Americans, around 15 percent of his annual earnings, because his earnings are from capital gains and not wages. It was only until his Republican rivals forced him to release his income tax returns that he shared his returns. "I can tell you, we follow the tax laws ", Romney said, "And if there is an opportunity to to save on taxes, we like anybody else in this country will follow that opportunity."

Tax experts at ABC News said there maybe other reasons why Romney may not want the public viewing his returns. As one of the wealthiest candidates to run for president in recent times,, Romney has used a variety of techniques to minimize the taxes on his estimated $250 million fortune. In addition to paying a reduced tax rate on his investment income, Romney has $8 million invested in at least 12 funds listed on a Cayman Island registry. Another investment which Romney reports as being worth between $5 million and $25 million, shows up on security records as having been domiciled in the Caymans. Official documents reviewed by ABC News show that equity partnership that Romney once ran, has set up 138 secretive offshore funds in the Caymans. Romney campaign officials and those at Bain Capital Tell ABC News that the purpose of setting up those accounts in the Cayman Islands a is to help attract money from foreign investors.and that the accounts provide no tax advantage to  American investors. The decision to locate some funds in the Caymans is routine and a benefit only to foreign investors. who do not want to be subjected to U.S. Taxes. Tax experts agree that the offshore accounts have provided Romney and Bain with other potential financial benefits , such as higher management fees  and greater foreign interest, all at the expense of the U.S. Treasury. Rebecca J. Wilkins, a tax policy expert with Citizens for Tax Justice, said the federal government loses an estimated $100 billion a year because of tax havens.

FIST BUMP FOR NOW!

IS THAT ALL YOU'VE GOT!

The great thing about our country is that anyone has the opportunity to be president, at least that's what teachers tell their students to motivate them. The only problem with that is that not everyone is actually qualified IQ and ethically wise, although one slipped in from 2000 to 2008, which resulted in two unwarranted wars and a collapsed economy as a result of deregulation in the banking and investment industries.

This election year's Republican crop for the nomination has it's share of unqualified, unethical, not dealing with a full deck candidates . Starting with Herman Cain who wasn't even able to see the flaws in his 999 plan. Michele Bachmann complained about federal spending while at the same time receiving $260,000 in federal farm subsidies on the family plot in Wisconsin and also receiving $30,000 from the state of Minnesota for her husband's counseling clinic, where he was working on turning gay people straight. While complaining about President Obama's stimulus programs she requested stimulus funds to support projects in her district, arguing that transportation projects should not be considered pork.
It's a waste of space to comment on Texas Governor Rick Perry who self destructed during the debates.
John Huntsman, former ambassador to China,who speaks Mandarin was more then acceptable but he was the extra Mormon in the crowded field and his primary contributor was his multimillionaire father.
Congressman Ron Paul had some strong points but he was not taken seriously by the Republican mainstream primarily because he was his own man and could not be controlled.

Newt Gingrich, former speaker of the house was forced out of office and fined $300,000 for ethics violations and then went to work for Freddie Mac, the federally backed mortgage guarantor, a GOP villain in the housing meltdown as a historian (while Mitt refers to him as a lobbyist) earning $1.6 million dollars during the housing crisis. The Thrice married, former speaker has been married for almost 50 years,  just not to the same person, with his three marriages overlapping, having a history of starting a new relationship while still in his old relationship. He started young, he said when he was 18, dating his high school geometry teacher who was 26 at the time. His second wife in an Esquire Magazine article, said that he was actually 16 when he started the relationship. The second wife, who he divorced, after she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, went public with new details about his request for an open marriage while in his 6 year affair with a former congressional staffer who is now his third wife. This explains a great deal about Newt. He was actually a victim and his first wife can be classified as a predator and this may be why he had no qualms about divorcing her when she was battling cancer. This is common news but the media has not raised this issue. Gail Sheehy stated in a 1995 Vanity Fair article that his first marriage was an" independent act to escape the totalitarian regime of his stepfather's home. "He chose a path that women have used for generations: he made a jailbreak marriage attaching himself at the tender age of 19 to his high school geometry teacher,a buxom blond, seven years his senior."

Newt Gingrich who was carpet bombed by Governor Romney in Iowa and Florida, in a series of blistering and unrelenting attacks after winning the South Carolina primary has been painted as an erratic, unreliable Washington insider.
Gingrich's Super PAC, "Winning Our Future" is funded by Sheldon Adelson, a  Las Vegas casino billionaire, (The Venetian and Sanda Expo and Convention Center) with a personal fortune estimated at more than 20 billion, who along along with his wife, Miriam has already given $16.1 million dollars, based on Gingrich's support for Israel. Adelson is the eighth richest man in the world. In 2001 he went into the casino business with the Chinese Government, building the Macao at a cost of 4.4 billion dollars, whose revenue generates more than all the casinos in Las Vegas. His interest is that Israel retains all the land west of the Jordan River and is adamant that there be no compromise with the Palestinians and is a big proponent of going to war with Iran.
 Adelson stated that as of April 1, 20012, after the Wisconsin primary that he will no longer contribute to the Gingrich Campaign and will be supporting Romney.

Gingrich describes Romney's venture capital occupation as a flawed system where a hand full of rich people can manipulate the lives of thousands of other people and walk off with the money by looting a company and leaving behind broken families and fallen neighborhoods

Gingrich has based his campaign on fear mongering, stating the President Obama is one of the most dangerous men ever.  Grandiosity and being flamboyant are part of Newt' s persona. He has promised to  reduce the price of gas to $2.50 a gallon.  One of his future plans for the country if he was elected president, is to colonize the moon. he called himself the "Regan conservative"and proposed an immigration plan which included an allowance for legal residency for illegal residents who have been in the nation for a long time and have ties to their communities. It also included securing the boarder, an enhanced guest worker  and visa program , and steeper penalties  for employers who hire those in the country illegally. He was not being altruistic and was primarily seeking the Latino votes. He took heat from conservatives for refusing to support proposals to kick out all illegal immigrants out of the country.


Rick Santorum

Santorum
Santorum,  however has always been middle class, his parents went to college and he was raised on a federal payroll. His father was a psychologist and his mother was an RN, both worked for the Veteran's Administration living on hospital grounds in federal housing. He owes his initial upbringing, housing and education to the federal government, but to hear him say it government should stay out of everyone life..

Santorum believes that he can make any statement he wants when he is speaking in the hinterlands such as in Fargo, North Dakota when he said that Federal and for that matter state money should not be used  to support public education . It should be left up to small villages and townships to do so. Parents should be responsible to home school their children. He also said that President Obama has a
phony theology and not one found in any bible. When questioned by Bob Schieffer, on Face the Nation, he back down and explained that he was talking about global warming and whether it was caused by man and questioned man's responsibility to protect the earth and it's environment.

He recently criticized President John F. Kennedy for his 1960 Separation of Church and State Speech saying it made him want to throw up, because the government has pushed the separation of church and state too far. Kennedy had given the speech in Houston to a group of Baptist ministers to reassure them that his Catholic faith would not mean that he would be influenced by the Vatican. Kennedy stated "I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute" and goes on to state that he believes in an America where no religious body seeks to impose it's will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of it's officials.

This is basic First Amendment law. It's what the founding fathers considered as necessary to prevent a state religion being forced on a new country to the exclusion of other religions. Santorum back tracked about his statement regarding J.F. Kennedy and his statement could be considered an off the cuff slip of the tongue, but for the fact that he first made these statements in 2002. Santorum believes that a man of faith should not leave his religion if he is elected president, which certainly not a prerequisite in assuming office..
This is what the Taliban does in Afghanistan forcing their laws, customs, traditions on all others, regardless of their personal beliefs.
So women are not allowed to get an education, they can not go out into the streets without a male relative as a chaperon, they cannot drive a vehicle,they must wear a burka and must cover their arms and legs at all times.

Although Santorum may not realize what he is saying this in fact is what he is advocating. He is against birth control and considers the health care bills insistence that health insurance cover birth control as an attack on religion.
The founding fathers were not hostile towards religion, many of them were deeply religious and many of the colonies were founded to escape religious persecution in their prior countries. The goal of the founding fathers was to protect individual religious liberty, especially the liberty of those in the religious minority
Santorum is so engrossed in his own importance and his own religious concepts that he is unable to see this. He complains of government interference and the need for freedom, and yet he feels that it is his right to interfere in a woman's health care decisions. If he does not have the cognitive reasoning ability to analyze this, he certainly is not fit to hold any elective office much less the Presidency. His political philosophy is infused with his own brand of uber-Catholicism which lacks humanity.

The Los Angeles Times Nation Edition, Sunday March 25, 2012, reported that Santorum, last fall, before he became a front runner, told a Conservative Christian blogger in Iowa, that he would use the White House bully pulpit to promote his concerns about something most people considered settled, birth control. "One of the things I will talk about, that no president has talked about is, I think  the dangers of contraceptives in this country". The whole  sexual libertine idea".
"Many of the Christian faith have said , contraception is OK, It is not OK., it's a license  to do things in the sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be".
 Isn't that what the separation of church and state is about? One should not force his religious beliefs on others .
This country has gone through social experiments in the past, where the beliefs of the so called righteous were forced on others, such as involuntary sterilization to combat crime and poverty in the 1920's and of course the well meaning Volstead Act, the 18th amendment, commonly known as Prohibition enacted on January 16, 1920 and not repealed for 13 years until December 5,1933, which denied citizens the right to buy or sell alcoholic beverages, in the belief that this would curtail alcoholism, and crime.

Santorum has become infamous for his gaffes and his back tracking. His foot in the mouth incidents have come so frequently that they are almost a daily occurrence. Beginning with his statement while in Puerto Rico that it would never become a state unless English was it's first language. Talk about attacking someones culture. His next gaffe was in Illinois on the eve of their primary, saying I don't care how high unemployment gets, it doesn't matter to me. Mitt of course immediately answered eloquently, "I do care about unemployment, it does matter to me!" That Mitt is really quick on the repartee. You can't put anything over on him.

Santorum followed that gaffe with, the statement that there was no difference between Romney and Obama and if Romney was the nominee, we might as well stay with what we have. Of course when questioned he at first denied saying that and when the video was played for him as proof of his statement he once again back tracked saying, I said "we" as in the people," I didn't mean that we should vote for Obama". "I will support the Republican nominee". Someone should point out to him that "We" includes the person using the term.

His latest gaff if you want to call it a gaffe is a yelling rant  on March 25, repeating over and over that Romney is the worst Republican candidate ever, and of course when questioned by a New York Times reporter, he turned it around, angrily stating that the reporter was distorting what he had said, what speech are you listening to, he questioned. He said "that's bullshit" much to the chagrin of one of his daughters who was standing nearby.He said he was talking about health care reform and Romney being unable to raise this issue in the campaign.

If elected, Rick Santorum would not be able to back track on statements made about foreign policy and definitely would be a very dangerous and unpredictable person to have in charge.

Rick Santorum has carried this flawed thinking into other aspects of his personal prejudices. In 2003 when questioned about gay marriage he equated it with bestiality and pedophilia and during the New Hampshire primary he also equated it with polygamy for good measure. When questioned as to how he could believe that all men are created equal and still object to two men in love marrying, he began to ramble "so if everyone has the right to be happy, so if you're not happy unless your married to five other people is that O.K.? Well what about three men?" He was asked if he would protect gay rights since gays are also children of God and he responded. " Serving in the military is not an unalienable right, it's a privilege, you're selected", said Santorum, who wants to restore "don't ask, don't tell" He also called marriage a "privilege not a right", for the purpose of procreation.

Dan Savage, a sex columnist and gay rights activist as a response to Rick Santorum's anti gay remarks held a contest among his readers to create a new definition for Santorum. The results of the contest can be found when you google Santorum's name. Rick Santorum has tried to get google to remove this from the web site but has not been successful.
Rick Santorum's super PAC, Red, White and Blue, is supported by conservative Christian Millionaire, Foster Friess who made the statement that the only birth control pill that women should need is an aspirin that they would keep between their knees.

Santorum started his political career with an upset win unseating a 7 term Democrat, Doug Walgren by a 2 point margin, criticizing him for living in the wealthiest area of Virginia. He made absolute promises that he would never live in Virginia, that his residence has always been in Pittsburgh. However 4 years later when he was elected to the senate Santorum and his family settled into a home in Herndon Virginia, and later moved to a larger home purchased for $643,000 in affluent Leesburg Virginia. He explained to a reporter that his pledge never to live in Virginia only applied while he served in the house. He enrolled his 5 children in an online Pennsylvania charter school at an estimated cost of $100,000, to the Pennsylvania tax payers, but they were not living in Pennsylvania. He defended his actions saying that although they were not living in Pennsylvania that he was still a tax payer there, paying property taxes etc.

He is criticized by Romney as being a Washington insider. He was part of the pay as you play group, meeting with top lobbyists every two weeks. When he left office in 2007 his net worth was estimated at between  $550,000 and  $1.9 million and as a result of his K Street connections in 2011 his net worth was estimated at $1.2 million to $4 million. He was a contributor for Fox News earning $239,153 for his 2012 cable appearances. He calls President Obama a socialist and preaches fiscal conservatism and yet he did not hesitate, while in the senate to make sure that money from the Medicare program went to Puerto Rico on behalf of a home town firm, Universal Health Care Services,serving as a board member, receiving $400,000, in director's fees and stock options. This hospital was accused by the Justice Department in 2010 of submitting fraudulent claims for medicaid reimbursements.

Rick Santorum on the issue of abortion has said that there is only one place to be from the stand point of  science and faith. He calls his wife Karen, a neonatal nurse and an attorney, "the rock which I stand upon" Before their marriage they made a re commitment to their Catholic faith, which was a reversal for his wife who had lived  with a well know abortion provider 40 years her senior and had openly supported abortion. The New York Times reported in an article on March 4, 2012, that Karen Santorum nee Garver in 1982, became a couple with Dr. Tom Allen an obstetrician- gynecologist who founded Pittsburgh's first abortion clinic. The two became romantically involved after Karen, a nursing student in her 20's rented the basement apartment in the building where Dr. Allen, in his 60's, lived and worked. Dr. Allen knew Karen's father, also a doctor and had delivered her when she was born.

The two hosted fundraisers for liberal groups like the American Civil Liberties Union as well as his clinic, expressing strong support for abortion rights. The couple spent 6 years together. Karen left the relationship when she met Santorum, making a 180 degree change in  her political orientation.
In a recent television interview Karen Santorum indicated that she was just going through a phase at that time.
The relationship was originally reported in the Philadelphia City Newspaper in 2005.

This aspect of Senator Santorum life is not meant to denigrate him in any way since he did not know his future wife at that time. However if Santorum was able to accept and forgive Karen for what he would consider,  her past digressions, then he should have a more realistic view of society, a knowledge that people have their own judgement, can live their own lives and contribute to society in their own way.  He should be able to accept that not everyone is made in the same mold and it should be clear to him, that individuals can still be upstanding individuals..

Instead he is living a very rigid, almost monastic philosophy, eschewing birth control, home schooling his children,and believing that women should leave their careers behind to raise their children. I'll leave it to the reader to determine if Rick Santorum has the right philosophy or cognitive reasoning to become a leader of the free world.

On Tuesday, April 9th, Rick Santorum without giving a complete explanation held a press conference in which he declared that he would be suspending his campaign . Rick announced that he was pulling out and that was unusual in that he was always steadfast about birth control!
 Santorum was successful in defeating Romney and winning 11 states . There was a question as to whether he would be able to win the primary in his home state of Pennsylvania on April 24th, and a defeat there would be a death knell for his ongoing campaign. Santorum raised a total of  $15,621,893 for his campaign as of February 29, 2012, according to the Los Angeles Times. He has spent $13,033,588 and has $2,598,305 cash on hand. The  campaign's present debt is $922,448 and it is expected that this debt will be repaid from any available super pack as part of Santorum's eventual endorsement of Romney.

His 3 year old daughter Bella suffers from a genetic disorder, known as trisomy 18, the majority of those with this illness die before their first birthday. She had been hospitalized with pneumonia this past weekend and this may have contributed to Santorum decision to suspend his campaign. There is no doubt that Santorum will play a prominent role in the Republican Party's future and possibly another presidential run in 2016.

HE WON, GET OVER IT!

It's surprising that there are so many people who have no interest in the political arena, yet they are the first to complain about government action or inaction. Recently I 've run into people who say they are independents (which means that they have not taken the time to evaluate the party platforms), and astonishing enough, some people who say that in their estimation both parties are to blame for the poor state of the economy and that is the reason they refuse to vote.
Meanwhile the hate goes on. The sheriff of Arizona's Maricopa County, 79 year old, Joe Arpiao, who is under investigation as a result of a federal grand jury finding of abuse of power for racial profiling, last week held a press conference with a copy of President Obama's birth certificate, questioning it's authenticity, stating that in his opinion it is a computer-generated forgery.
Imagine all this time and the birthers keep up their claims about the President's birth place and citizenship. It's the old gamesmanship of using an offense for his defense of the federal charges. They believe that if you repeat a lie enough times it will be accepted as gospel.

Another act of hate and racism, this time in an unlikely place, a federal court in Montana by an unlikely individual, a Federal Court Judge ,Richard Cebull, Montana's chief federal judge on Wednesday, February 29,2012 acknowledged forwarding an email to friends about President Obama that appears to equate African Americans with dogs and raises questions about the president's mixed ancestry, saying "normally I don't send or forward a lot of these, hope it touches your heart like it did mine.
The Montana Human Rights Network's Travis McAdams said the email, "flies in the face of honor and dignity." The judge, when interviewed by The Great Falls Tribune which obtained the email, conceded that it was racist but not that he was racist. Say what!

Rush Limbaugh was recently the big winner of  the spew hatred and venom contest,  by calling a 30 year old, Georgetown Law student, Sandra Fluke,  one of a group of "feminnazis"who effectively wanted government to subsidize their sexual activity. He addressed her as a slut and prostitute after she testified before congress about the need for health care insurance to provide birth control medication and contraception information.  If he disagreed with her position and statements he could have certainly have said so but this would not have caught the attention of his loyal following.. She did not say that she personally needed this to prevent  pregnancies, instead she was testifying in behalf of a friend who as a result of cancer had lost an ovary and needed the birth control pills to help stabilize her menstrual cycle. She never mentioned that she needed to be paid  to have sex or that she had so much sex that she couldn't;t afford to buy her own pills. Yet this is the tact that Limbaugh took when he called her a slut and a prostitute and to add insult to injury then added, that if she wanted to get paid to have sex,that she should post the videos on the Internet so he and other voyeurs could watch . When his sponsors started to withdraw advertising from his syndicated  programs, Rush quickly apologized, actually 3 times within an hour saying that his choice of words were not appropriate. Soon there after  however he and his cohorts began to back tract, saying that the liberal left and NPR had previously used language equally provocative against right wing personalities. That it was the leftist who had instigated the ugly tone on the contraception debate.

This is a childish response, admit your inartful use of the English language, (if  that's what you want to call it ) and leave it at that. It's like saying "they started it".   Rush therefore feels vindicated, and has no guilt about targeting a virtually private citizen with sexual slander  and will continue with his trash talk and his millions of listeners will cling to every word and idea he espouses.

This would have been a great opportunity for the  Republican presidential  contenders to step  forward in the defense of the law student because certainly they would agree that Limbaugh's statements were indefensible however none of the candidates wanted to alienate "El Rushbo" as he calls himself and of course his conservative supporters and chose to tread lightly.
Mitt Romney said it was not the language that he would have used.
Rick Santorum alibied for Limbaugh by saying "he's an entertainer who should be given some latitude to be absurd.
Newt Gingrich's Super PAC, "Winning our Future: demonstrated whose side they were on when they increased their ads on the Limbaugh show.
Only John McCain had the cajones to speak up, stating "Those statements were unacceptable in every way and should be condemned by everyone, no matter what their political leanings are".

A close friend described Limbaugh as a, "closet Democrat", because he may have caused more damage to the brand of the Republican party than any Democrat has done so far this election year.
Let's hope that El Rushbo can keep it up.

Fist Bump Time!