We Coulda Been Talking about Tax Returns

A couple of weeks ago, you may recall Ann Romney said that she and her husband wouldn't be releasing any more of his tax returns;

"You know, you should really look at where Mitt has led his life, and where he’s been financially," she said in her interview with Robin Roberts. "He’s a very generous person. We give 10 percent of our income to our church every year. Do you think that is the kind of person that is trying to hide things, or do things?"
-- ABC News

Of course, this led me to ponder other things, since there weren't decades of financial disclosures to analyze.  And I mused about the secret goings-on of his religion, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

When the South Florida Daily Blog linked the story, some anonymous commenter tried to paint me as some kind of latter-day Nazi.

Anonymous said...

Man or maniac sounds just like the nazis did in the twenties and thirties. I'll bet he won't attack Islam like he attacks the LDS.

July 23, 2012 11:15 AM

And I replied to that remark, and in that reply I made an offer;

C.L.J said...

...I'll be glad to post more information regarding their activities that they don't want the general public worrying about. Like why they're so interested in Genealogy.

July 23, 2012 7:30 PM

But by pro-active use of procrastination (put off a task long enough, and it will finish itself), I find that other outlets have picked up the story.

Romney Keeps Mum on Mormon Baptism of Jews
Pressure builds to respond to baptism of Nazi-hunter's parents
A researcher discovered that the late parents of famed Nazi-hunter Simon Wiesenthal were baptized in Mormon ceremonies in Utah and Arizona last month. "Can you believe it?" a stunned Wiesel asked on MSNBC yesterday. Wiesel was also placed on the Mormon to-be-baptized list.

That's right; the Mormons are baptizing dead people into their faith.  The story continues:

The Mormons believe people can be baptized after death, and baptized hundreds of thousands of Holocaust victims until they agreed to stop the practice in 1995. They have also baptized Anne Frank, Josef Stalin, and Adolph Hitler, notes MSNBC.

Technically, Mormons are only supposed to baptize ancestors, but obviously that has been loosely interpreted.

This is why they are so interested in Genealogy; once someone has been accepted into the faith, they trace that person's entire lineage so they can baptize every single one of their ancestors to make everyone in the family a member of their religion.

From  Mormon.org:

We learn in the New Testament that baptisms for the dead were done during the Apostle Paul’s time (see 1Corinthians 15:29). This practice has been restored with the establishment of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Because all who have lived on the earth have not had the opportunity to be baptized by proper authority during life on earth, baptisms may be performed by proxy...

Baptisms for the dead are performed by Church members in temples throughout the world.

Now, if you don't have any religious convictions, this probable sounds like much ado about nothing.  It's not like they're digging up graves, or desecrating tombs.

But if you take your religion seriously, then this is an inexcusable attack on the sacred dead.  It's nothing less than spiritual abduction; the dead are not consulted, they are simply taken.  It's kidnapping.  It's rape.

The church insists the deceased have "the right to choose" whether to accept Jesus Christ as their savior.
-- The Huffington post

Do they really?  I can't recall the last time a dead person actually made any informed decision outside of their Last Will and Testament. 

Tell you what, let's ask Harry Houdini, the great magician and close friend of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.  Doyle, as you may know, was an avid spiritualist, while Houdini was a skeptic who spent the last years of his life debunking Spiritualism and exposing the trickery used by mediums and mentalists to con their patrons.

"I've said everything I intended to say from beyond the grave to Arthur Conan Doyle."

"But Harry - you didn't say anything!"

"EXACTLY!"

Dead men tell no tales, and they certainly can't ask to be baptized into the secretive Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.  Nor can the dead tell the Mormons to stop what they're doing.  That's part of the whole "being dead" thing. But that won't stop Mormons from doing it anyway.  After all, the dead are also very poor at holding public demonstrations.

Until the zombie apocalypse, that is.  
At which point, feel free to baptize as many as you can.

Right about now, I'll bet the Romneys are wishing they'd distracted us with two decades of tax documents instead of leaving us all this time to wonder about other stuff.

"All" that "You People Need To Know"

During a recent interview on ABC News, Mitt Romney's wife, Ann, had heard enough questions about her family's tax returns.

"You know, you should really look at where Mitt has led his life, and where he’s been financially," she said in her interview with Robin Roberts. "He’s a very generous person. We give 10 percent of our income to our church every year. Do you think that is the kind of person that is trying to hide things, or do things?"

"We've given you people all you need to know" she concluded. 

It seems that the Romneys are afraid that if we saw more tax returns, we'd come up with things that we could attack them on.  Of course, we already have reasons to question this.  She just told us something in this interview.

Ann wants us to remember that Mitt gives ten percent of his income - whatever it is - to his church. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. The Mormon church. 

"He’s a very generous person. We give 10 percent of our income to our church every year."

That sounds impressive, doesn't it?  So much more than the handful of bills that most members of the real ^those other^ Christian denominations throw into the collection basket when it's passed around the church; I doubt it's anywhere near 10%. 

it's still cheaper than a movie ticket.

But she's kind of glossing over the fact that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints requires its members to tithe 10% of their income to the church. So that 10% isn't, as Mrs. Romney would have us believe, due to his charitable nature.  It's a commandment of his religion, not a philanthropic act.  This isn't a demonstration of his generous nature, it's adherence to the dictates of his religion.

His is a secretive religion, doing secretive things with the 10% of whatever Romney earns in a year.  They build huge temples that look like Disney had a hand in designing, fairy-tale palaces forbidden to the likes of you and I. 

"Someday My Prince Will Come - and I will be one of his brides!"

They are forbidden to unclean outsiders like us because of the secrets they house.  Secret rooms, holding the secret golden tablets that Joseph Smith says he plowed up out of the ground, written in a secret language.  A secret language that issues secret commandments.

They even have secret underwear.  I am not making this up; the Mormons have secret underwear they put on while performing their secret rituals in secret places you and I will never get to see.

Even the pope doesn't have secret underwear.

He wears tighty-whiteys, of course.
No, really, that's what he wears.

Of course, if you go to the LDS website, they have this on their FAQ.  "It's not secret," the website reports.  "It's just sacred.  Not secret.  Sacred.  Like a yarmulke.  It's just a sacred garment worn during certain rituals"

Of course, they don't explain or describe the garments, or where to get them. They don't even allow pictures of the garments.

...unlike Yarmulkes, the totally not-secret sacred head-wear of the Jews.
And Muslims.  And some Catholics.

Thanks, Mrs. Romney, I'm glad you called our attention to your husband's ongoing financial contributions to underwrite the secret goings-on of your strange church that is so full of so many secrets.  I'm sure my fellow Americans will rest easy now that they understand that just because you're keeping some things secret, it doesn't mean there aren't a lot more creepy secrets about you that we didn't even think about before.

Republicans Were Wrong Again

One of the campaign planks the Republican Party has been standing on is that President Obama's economic polices are a disaster, that he doesn't understand business, and that he's doing more harm than good.

An example of this is the bailout of the US automotive industry.  Key Republicans told us that this was a terrible plan, one that might well end capitalism as we know it.

In case you've forgotten their opinions at the time,  ThinkProgress gathered a number of quotes from GOP leaders on the issue; here's a sample:

• Rep. John Boehner (R-OH): “Does anyone really believe that politicians and bureaucrats in Washington can successfully steer a multi-national corporation to economic viability?”
• Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC): “Now the government has forced taxpayers to buy these failing companies without any plausible plan for profitability. Does anyone think the same government that plans to double the national debt in five years will turn GM around in the same time?”
• Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ): When government gets involved in a company, “the disaster that follows is predictable.”

And who can forget this declaration from Mitt Romney, the presumptive Republican candidate for President?:

"If General Motors, Ford and Chrysler get the bailout that their chief executives asked for yesterday, you can kiss the American automotive industry goodbye. It won't go overnight, but its demise will be virtually guaranteed."

-- Mitt Romney, New York Times, November 18, 2008

Read that bit again: "its demise will be virtually guaranteed."  Strong words.  But as the GOP will tell you, Romney is an expert in business.  So he should know, right?

And lo, four years later, his prophecy is born out...

GM adds third shift at Texas plant, 800 jobs

General Motors announced plans Friday to add a third shift at its SUV plant in Arlington, Texas, as the company continues to ramp up production after deep cuts during the financial crisis.

The additional shift will keep the facility running around the clock, and will generate roughly 800 additional jobs...

Now, with auto demand coming back, "lots of companies across the board are adding shifts and adding third shifts," Dziczek said.
-- CNN Money, June 22, 2012

Hey, wait a minute.  That's exactly the opposite of what Mr. Romney said would happen.  In fact, General Motors, whose demise was "virtually guaranteed," has added a third shift because they need to meet the demand for new cars.

I wonder what could be driving demand?  Maybe that's in the headlines, too -

Gas prices drop 14 cents in two weeks

Gasoline prices have fallen rapidly, dropping 48.9 cents from a high of $3.967 on April 6, survey editor Trilby Lundberg said on Sunday.

-- Chicago Tribune, June 24, 2012

Gas prices are down.  But according to "experienced businessman" Mitt Romney, Obama's been dead set on making gasoline more expensive:

Last week Mitt Romney told Fox News that Obama "has done everything in his power to make it harder for us to get oil and natural gas in this country, driving up the price of those commodities in the case of gasoline."

-- TIME, March 20, 2012

That's two strikes for Mitt.  I guess that magic underwear doesn't make him a prophet.

Of course, he's not as wrong as Newt Gingrich was:

"...the American people will know the President is still committed to his radical ideology, which wants to artificially raise the cost of energy."

-- TIME, March 20, 2012

Of course, the truth is that the President of the United States has very little ability to affect the price of gasoline, as reported by Fox News in 2008. 

The GOP has a history of being wrong about gasoline prices and the automotive industry.  While it's important to recognize that the GOP was wrong on this issue, we must also realize that had we followed their advice, it would have cost this country tens of thousands of jobs.

According to the Center for Automotive Research, “if the government had not invested in the automotive industry, up to 80,000 automotive jobs would have been lost, and General Motors alone would have lost one million units of sales in 2009. Once Chrysler and GM emerged from their ‘orderly’ bankruptcies, the growth of automotive sector employment has been strong, with 52,900 workers added since July 2009. Had GM and Chrysler not successfully emerged, those jobs would have been permanently lost.”

-- thinkprogress.org

Had the GOP had its way, we'd have lost all those jobs, the sales, and manufacturing capacity. Again and again, the GOP keeps claiming that it knows better than everyone else, and and time and time again, events prove that they are decisively wrong.