Romney and the Mormon Vote

Okay, I know that it isn't cool to kick a man when he's down, but fuck, you just gotta love it that Mittens got fewer votes from his fellow Morons Mormons than, of all people, George W. aka "Shrubby" aka "Baby Doc" aka '"War Criminal" Bush did in 2004.

I mean, what's up with that? Maybe that the rank and file members of the Moron Mormon church have gotten a little more liberal than those 13 Old Men (12 "apostles" plus one "prophet, seer and revelator") who are at the top of the church hierarchy? Or could it be that the True Believers in the church saw what they feared as the beginnings of the Apocalypse and the rise of the White Horse and they just weren't ready for it yet?

After all, if you are a Moron Mormon, and the End of Times comes before you've had a chance to amass all of the worldly wealth that you can scrape together, you might end up in one of the lesser levels of heaven, for example, the "Telestial" instead of the "Celestial". (Once again, no I am not making this up.)

At its core, the Mormon church is as Calvinist as any of them, with its belief that Success equals Piety. Evidentially, the more success you achieve, the more pious you have to be (because god has smiled on you in the "preexistence" or whatever...), so the higher you will go in the afterlife. Shit, you can even become a god yourself!

So, for whatever the reason, Romney lost a bunch of LDS votes. But maybe it's just because they know him, and one thing we've heard over and over in this campaign is that once you get to know Romney, the more you dislike him.

Monday Music Break

Dedicated to the memory of failed presidential candidate Willard Mittens Romney, here is the incomparable Bob Dylan and Like a Rolling Stone:

I can't imagine a more fitting set of lyrics to describe Romney on the morning of day after tomorrow:

Once upon a time you dressed so fine
You threw the bums a dime in your prime, didn't you?
People'd call, say, "Beware doll, you're bound to fall"
You thought they were all kiddin' you
You used to laugh about
Everybody that was hangin' out
Now you don't talk so loud
Now you don't seem so proud
About having to be scrounging for your next meal.
How does it feel
How does it feel
To be without a home
Like a complete unknown
Like a rolling stone? 

Go ahead and check out all the lyrics to this great song -- they are fittin'  Mittens all the way.

Rethug Extortion

Where I come from this is called "extortion". It's no different from some knuckle-dragging guido with a baseball bat strolling into your convenience store and saying, "Nice place ya got here. Be a damn shame if somethin' should happen to it, wooden it? Maybe somethin' like, I dunno, a baseball bat breakin' out ya front window? Tell ya what I'm gonna do. Gimme fifty a week and I'll make sure that don't happen."

Romney today issued his own version of this:

In what his campaign billed as his “closing argument,” Mitt Romney warned Americans that a second term for President Obama would have apocalyptic consequences for the economy in part because his own party would force a debt ceiling disaster.

See the whole story over at TPM and tell me where I'm wrong.

The Rat Faced Git Goes to Rat Mouth FL

I knew Mittens couldn't do it. He couldn't manage to get through one and a half hours of television time -- and only half of which was his -- without lying.

His "Apology Tour" snark probably wasn't the biggest one, but it's one of the most smarmy and repeated ones, and Obama called him right out on it. He also called him out on several others as well, at one point saying, "Governor, nothing you've said is true" after a typical Romney tirade.

According to FactCheck.com, both sides came out either with some blatant lying -- Romney -- or some minor misstatements -- Obama. [those are my interpretations, anyway...]

On balance, though, Romney came off as a lying rat faced git who lost the debate on points and content and style. RepubliCONs will likely disagree with that assessment, but fuck 'em, I can be as big a proponent of confirmation bias as they can.

BTW, speaking of "rat face gits", you did know that Boca Raton (the site of the debate) is Spanish for Rat Mouth, didn't you? Perfect venue for Governor Etch-A-Sketch to be all speechifyin'.

Okay, so this time I got to watch the debate at home on my own high-def television, not at a crowded and noisy Democratic Party debate-watching soiree in a restaurant like the last two, and so I got to see Romney's perspiring face and fake-ass smile up close and personal. Not so much of that unjustifiably-overconfident fratboy smirk this time -- you know what I'm talking about: That face that made you want to scream obscenities and throw a lamp through the television screen. No, the boy was actually sweating it out big time, and you could see the cords in his neck stand out as he clenched his jaw and gritted his teeth.

Too bad, Little Mittens. If you can't take the heat, you shouldn't play with the big boys.

Mormon Mitt in Bed With Big Tobacco

Mormon scruples? Mitt Romney? It is to laugh. Here's an exposé from Truthout that shows Mittens' rank hypocrisy when it comes to the tenets of his church: Mormon Mitt in Bed With Big Tobacco shows Bain Capital's intimate involvement with Big Tobacco. Tobacco, you might recall, is one of the major no-no's in the Mormon church, right up there with alcohol and coffee as substances that the faithful are not to indulge in under penalty of ... of something or other...

Okay, it turns out that this isn't such a big revelation of Mormon hypocrisy after all. In the mid-1800s Mormon trading posts along the Oregon Trail made huge profits from selling whiskey to emigrants bound for the Oregon Country. As long as they weren't "saints" and kept on heading west.

It seems that in Mormon World, the only time that tobacco and alcohol and caffeine are sins is if Mormons use them. They are more than happy to sell that shit to what they refer to as "Gentiles" -- which means anyone not of the Mormon faith.

And that means that Benjamin "Bibi" Netanhyahu, in Mormon Land, is a Gentile... WTF???

And no, I am totally not making this up!

The Mendacity of Mitt

Poor Mittens. The guy can't, it seems, even open his fucking mouth without the lies pouring forth.

Over at The Maddow Blog, Steve Benen keeps a running total of the Romney Lies, entitled Chronicling Mitt's Mendacity.

It's worth the read, even though it seems like it goes on forever. As do the Lies of Mitt...

Obama, Romney and Science

The prestigious journal Scientific American has just published Obama and Romney Tackle 14 Top Science Questions, and it's well worth the read to find out where the candidates stand on top science issues in this campaign.

But if you don't want to read the whole thing, let me summarize it for you:

OBAMA: [Really smart stuff about hard science and its answers to the issues we face].

ROMNEY: [Blah blah blah GOP Talking Points Blame Obama blah blah blah].

And there you have it.

I Voted!

Here in Washington state we've had mail-in-only ballots for years. I kind of miss the old days, though, when you showed up in the morning before work at the nearby grade school, chatted with poll workers and flirted with the old ladies, signed in, and went into a little curtained booth to try to punch out your hanging chads. Then they gave you a little oval sticker that said "I Voted!" that you could wear to work and be all smug with your fellow employees who didn't have one.

As much as I like the convenience of mail-in voting, I think we've lost some of our civic pride when we left the old system behind. So, after we went to pure mail in, I used to hang on to my ballot until election day and then drop it at one of the many drop boxes around town. That way if an election were close I could have the feeling that my vote actually made a difference.

However, after several elections' worth of showing up at phone banks and calling people to vote for my candidates, I learned that if you get your ballot in early, you drop off the phone lists. So I filled mine out on Saturday and dropped it in the mailbox with a stamp. They will get it tomorrow, record that I sent it in, and the phone calls will magically cease.

And that will free up time for the phone bank volunteers to call other people who haven't voted yet.

Obama is way ahead in Washington State, so far ahead that my presidential vote won't really count, and I was tempted to cast a protest vote for one of the minor candidates. I haven't been above that in the past. In 1980, when I knew that Reagan was going to win, I voted for John Anderson (Independent). In 1984, when I knew he was going to win again, I voted for Gus Hall and Angela Davis (Communist).

But this year I just couldn't do it. I had to vote for Obama anyway, even though he's done a bunch of shit that I don't really like. But here's a piece from Daniel Ellsberg that pretty much sums up my feelings about it: Defeat Romney, Without Illusions about Obama.

Read it, suck it up, bite the bullet and vote for Obama. Romney would be so much worse that it is beyond comparison, almost beyond comprehension.

I even finally put up my "Veterans for Obama" yard sign left over from four years ago. I'm in!

Even Your "Hometown" Newspaper? Really?

For Mormons, wherever they might physically live, Utah is the Holy Land, the Mormon Homeland.

And that is why it is even more interesting when your "hometown newspaper", in this case the Salt Lake City Tribune, comes right out and endorses your opponent.

Tribune Endorsement: Too Many Mitts is the news out of SLC today. And boy does it ever push the slams against Mittens:

...it is not the only Romney, as his campaign for the White House has made abundantly clear, first in his servile courtship of the tea party in order to win the nomination, and now as the party’s shape-shifting nominee. From his embrace of the party’s radical right wing, to subsequent portrayals of himself as a moderate champion of the middle class, Romney has raised the most frequently asked question of the campaign: "Who is this guy, really, and what in the world does he truly believe?"

The evidence suggests no clear answer, or at least one that would survive Romney’s next speech or sound bite. Politicians routinely tailor their words to suit an audience. Romney, though, is shameless, lavishing vastly diverse audiences with words, any words, they would trade their votes to hear.

Yeah, eat that, Mittens! If you can't even gain the endorsement of the newspaper of record for the Mormon Homeland, then why should we vote for you?

Governor, You're No Jack Kennedy

In a now-famous speech he gave in the 1960 presidential campaign, JFK said he believed in the absolute separation of church and state. Watch it.

Mittens Romney has tried mightily to cover himself with that JFK cloak, but it really hasn't worked. Vanity Fair has a terrific article entitled When Mormons Go to Washington, giving a history lesson on what happens when members of the Mormon church go to Washington. It isn't a pretty sight.

For not yielding to the wishes of the L.D.S. Church, in 1965, Mormon Congressman Kenneth W. Dyal said he received “abuse, threats, blackmail and vicious attacks on my integrity from corporations, church members and their leaders.” It was perhaps for this reason that resisting the Church was not common.
. . .
From 1851 to 1869, more than 99 percent of Mormon voters supported Church-approved candidates in all but one election. In that year, nearly 96 percent voted for the candidates selected by the L.D.S. president. From 1851 to 1877, there were only three non-unanimous votes in Utah’s House of Representatives, occurring once in 1851, once in 1855, and once in 1861. During the same 26 years, the Utah Legislature’s upper chamber voted unanimously on every motion and bill except for three dissenting votes on different days in 1852.
... the First Presidency consistently favored the Republican Party after 1890 and tried to restrain devout Mormons who were Democrats. The Mormon rank and file obediently fell in line, and today 70 percent of Mormons identify themselves as Republican or Republican-leaning, while only 19 percent say they are Democrats.

There's plenty more and it's all interesting reading. Can we really believe that the so-called General Authorities of the church will take a totally hands-off approach to a president who also a member of their church? I don't think so.

Brain Damage? An Epiphany

You know how you can't figure something out no matter how you look at it, and then you get one little piece of information and everything clicks into place?

Well, that just happened to me. I was reading this story about Romney's despicable politicizing of a dead Navy Seal, claiming that they were buddies when the guy's mother and friends tell a very different story, that Romney introduced himself to the Seal a bunch of times at the same event, when I came across this little gem:

On June 16, 1968, Mitt Romney, while a Mormon Missionary in Paris, France, was driving a car and was involved in an auto accident that resulted in one death. By all reports, Romney was seriously injured. Via The New York Times:
“Mitt was just coming out of his coma, but his face was all swollen, his eye was almost shut, and one arm was fractured,” Robinson said. “We didn’t have CT scans or MRIs in those days, but we got what tests we could to show that he was OK, and that he was certainly going to survive, although he probably came within a hair of not surviving.” But Robinson said Romney recovered quickly without surgery, benefiting in part from his youth and general good health.

In a coma? Swollen face? Eye almost shut? Wait, here's the epiphany: Mitt Romney had traumatic brain injury as the result of that accident, and he has the lingering effects of that brain damage today!

If this is true, it goes a long way to explain his many flip-flops, his shifting stance on so many major issues. He's not really lying about this shit -- he really believes, at the time he says it, that it is the gods' truth!

I don't think brain damage is anything to be embarrassed about. I don't think it's anything to make light of. And I don't think it's necessary to publicize that you have it -- unless you are running for the presidency of the United States!

Is Romney This Stupid?

According to Mittens Romney, we do not have people who die because they don't have insurance:

“We don’t have a setting across this country where if you don’t have insurance, we just say to you, ‘Tough luck, you’re going to die when you have your heart attack,’” he said as he offered more hints as to what he would put in place of “Obamacare,” which he has pledged to repeal.
“No, you go to the hospital, you get treated, you get care, and it’s paid for, either by charity, the government or by the hospital. We don’t have people that become ill, who die in their apartment because they don’t have insurance.”

Okay, Mitt. How about you spend a couple of hours at any urban hospital emergency room some Friday night and then come back and tell us with a straight face this story again. The sad thing is that even if he did take my advice, he'd still tell the same story. It fits his narrative and the truth be damned. Facts have a liberal bias you know.

No, he isn't stupid enough to believe that. It's another one of his out-and-out lies. He wants to do to human beings what he did to various companies that Bain Capital took over. Harvest their organs and toss out the shell onto the scrap heap.

Who needs "death panels" when we can have someone like Romney at the helm?

Romney is a Dirty Lousy Stinky Cheaty Rat

Get a load of this visual proof that Romney cheated his fucking ass off during the debate last week.

Like a lounge-show stage magician, Mittens prestidigitated a small notebook out of his jacket pocket and  slipped it into the well of his podium. Later he wasn't so slick about retrieving it, but he still got away with it.

Take a look at the photos and the video on the Cannonfire blog and tell me that you don't think that's what happened.

Remember in the Bush-Kerry debate eight years ago when the Shrub was in mid-speech and suddenly said, "wait, let me finish"? When it seemed that no one was interrupting him? Speculation was rife at the time that he was wearing some kind of Star Trekky in-the-ear communicator and was being fed lines by an off-camera coach. Nothing was ever proved in that instance, but he did have that odd-looking boxy hump on the back of his suit jacket -- which of course got blamed on faulty fitting by the White House tailor... Yeah. Uh-huh.

I don't know that anything can be done at this point about Romney cheating, but sadly it comes as no surprise that he would do it. That fucker will say anything, do anything, to get elected.

[Thanks to Jules Feiffer for the "dirty lousy stinky cheaty rat" phrase, which appeared in one of his cartoons in the late fifties and has been one of my favorite insults ever since. Update: The cartoon appeared in New York's Village Voice on Feb 10, 1957 -- what can I say? I was a precocious kid...]

The Cartoon Romney Should See

Here from 1943 is a blatantly propagandizing cartoon created by Disney to aid the war effort:

That was back during WWII, when everyone had a stake in the fight and nobody knew a family who hadn't lost a loved one. It was patriotic to pay your taxes and near treason to try to find ways to weasel out of it (are you listening, Mittny?)

In fact, this was one of the very last times this country was truly united... Sadly.

[HT to Listverse, one of the most informative sites on the Internet, for this clip.]

Is Romney the "White Horse" of Mormon Prophecy?

This one has a long pedigree. Way back in 1843 Joseph Smith, the original "Prophet, Seer and Revelator" of the Mormon Church, may have given a prophecy that someday the Mormons "will go to the Rocky Mountains and will be a great and mighty people established there, which I will call the White Horse of peace and safety." Adding that "I shall never go there" and predicting continued persecution by enemies of the church, Smith reportedly said that "You will see the Constitution of the United States almost destroyed. It will hang like a thread as fine as a silk fiber.... I love the Constitution; it was made by the inspiration of God; and it will be preserved and saved by the efforts of the White Horse, and by the Red Horse who will combine in its defense." BTW, the identity of that Red Horse is not stated in the prophecy, but it's a small stretch to see it as a reference to the "Lamanites" -- Native Americans who are left over remnants of a great Jewish(!) civilization in North America whose skin was cursed to darkness at some point.

I say "may have given" because the person to whom he spoke it, John Roberts of Utah, didn't bother to write it down until 1902. For those of you who were home schooled, that is a full 59 years after the fact. That's kind of a long time to keep the words of the Prophet to yourself.

Nevertheless, the prophecy itself has clung on stubbornly in Mormon thought, even though various authority figures in the church have never really adopted it as doctrine, never as being fully the word of the Prophet. Whenever a Mormon politician comes onto the national stage, though, the faithful among the Saints -- most of whom still believe in it despite the lack of support by the church -- try to adapt the prophecy to the politician. The George Romney of 1968 had been the White Horse candidate until he crashed and burned, and now  his son Willard Mitt is the one who carries the burden of the White Horse. Now that it's Mitt's, he's shrugging it off as "not church doctrine". But since he and the Mormons want nothing more than to establish a Mormon theocracy in this country, it has to be on his mind. What better way to do it than over some sham "constitutional crisis" wherein the constitution is "hanging by a thread"? After all, Glenn Beck (Mormon) says that it is already.

Well, let's keep Romney and Beck and their co-religionists guessing whether he's the White Horse or not for another four years. Defeat Romney, re-elect Obama, and let the prophecy swim snugly in the stew of Mormonism a little while longer.

(See White Horse Prophecy on Wikipedia for more details.)

27 Lies in 38 Minutes

Twenty-seven lies. Thirty-eight minutes. That's the score for Mitt Romney, the King of Smirk, in last night's debate. That comes out to about one lie every 90 seconds. That's gotta be some kind of record.

And where the fuck was Obama during all this? Standing there with his head down like a chastised child for most of it. Even when Romney basically called him "boy"...

Mr. President, this is not the way to do it.

I've read some analyses today that say that this was all part of some grand give-him-enough-rope-to-hang-himself strategy, a neo-Muhammed Ali political rope-a-dope, but I think if that's true it's a dangerous tactic. It's political Russian roulette.

Eight years ago in the debate between Darth Shoot-An-Old-Man-In-The-Face Cheney and John I-Can't-Keep-It-In-My-Pants Edwards, Cheney said something to the effect that he presided over the US Senate for four years and this was the first time he'd ever met Edwards. That was a lie. The debate wasn't even over before someone put up a photo of the two of them together.

Edwards had to have known it was a lie. Why didn't Edwards call him out on it? I never got an answer to that, and I don't suspect that I will. But that's all kind academic now.

Now we are dealing with the question as to why didn't Obama call Romney out on those lies?

Proselytizing at the Point of a Gun

In 1966, at the beginning of the huge buildup of American forces in South Vietnam, a group of Mormon so-called General Authorities (LDS bigwigs, including the recently deceased "Prophet, Seer and Revelator" Gordon Hinckley, then only a member of The Quorum of the Twelve Apostles),  made an official trip to Vietnam for the Dedication of the Land of Vietnam for the Preaching of the Restored Gospel. In Mormon land, this dedication is a Very Big Deal.

I would guess that it was also considered by the average Vietnamese -- those who were even aware of it -- to be just one more step in Yankee imperialism, since the ceremony took place on the rooftop garden of the Caravelle Hotel, then and now one of the most luxurious and exclusive hotels in Saigon. I couldn't drink there, none of my friends could drink there, and no one under the rank of bird colonel could drink there. Totally off limits to all but the top echelon.

I was in Vietnam later than this, in 1968-69, and one of the Group chaplains where I was stationed was a Mormon (despite the fact that there were probably only two or three Mormons in each of the two battalions in the Group -- go figure). I heard with my own ears his incredible statement that, since Vietnam was so dedicated, it took a war to make sure that God's promise was kept to the poor savages who inhabited that benighted land.

I don't know how much of that was official Mormon Doctrine, but I assume that it was pretty much right on, since this particular chaplain was a scion of Mormon Royalty: His father was one of the General Authorities of the church and the official guru of Mormon Doctrine (he even wrote a book on it). The opinions of those General Authorities on various matters have a similar weight and authority to pronouncements from the College of Cardinals in the Catholic Church.

I assume that since the Communist victory in Vietnam and their takeover of the country, the Mormon missionaries haven't been welcomed back in any number. So much for that whole god-wants-the-Vietnamese-saved thing, I guess.

Which brings me to Mitt Romney (you knew it was coming). His Mormon faith is not just a facet of his existence, it is all of it. There's no way to separate it from him as a person. Or him as a President. Which scares the living shit out people who are aware of the violent history of The One True Church. If he buys into the whole proselytizing at the point of gun thing -- and why shouldn't he? -- then what's to stop him from pulling some weak-ass excuse out of his ass (are you listening, George W?) and invading some other poor benighted land that needs to have The Restored Gospel brought to its savage denizens?

Dog Whistle Politics and the Age of Angry White Men

Way back in 1980, right after his successful anointment at the Republican convention, Ronald Reagan chose to give the first kickoff speech of his campaign in Philadelphia. Okay, sure, makes sense – large seaport city steeped in history, birthplace of the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution, and home to Star-Spangled Banner seamstress Betsy Ross. Yeah, Philly's a great idea.

Wait, what? Wrong Philadelphia?

It was Philadelphia, Mississippi??!!

Philadelphia is a small town in central Mississippi that had fewer than 7,000 citizens in 1980. What would possess Reagan and his campaign handlers to give his first speech there, of all places?

Well, let's turn the clock back again, just an additional 16 years, to June of 1964, when three young civil rights activists, Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner and James Cheney, were brutally murdered by white supremacists. In Philadelphia, Mississippi. Does that ring a bell? It might. The story was made into a gripping 1988 film called Mississippi Burning.

[click here to see a larger version]

In that speech Reagan went out of his way to state that he was a supporter of "states rights". States Rights means that the Federal government has no right to interfere in the running of the government of a state; in case you've were home-schooled, that was the reason the South cited as their justification to erupt from the Union, try to form their own nation, and start the Civil War.

To the neo-Confederates in the South and Racist Republicans everywhere it could not have been clearer that Reagan used this opportunity to let white citizens know that he was on their side and wouldn't tolerate any "uppity Negroes" demanding things like, I don't know, being able to vote, for example.

States Rights was regularly trotted out over the 20^th Century whenever those black people wanted to go to integrated schools, wanted to get paid a decent wage at a job with safe working conditions, wanted to walk down the street without fear, wanted to vote. The good ole boys in the South would get outraged and scream that supporting and encouraging those actions violated their sacrosanct concept of States Rights.

This speaking in code is called "Dog Whistle Politics", and the Republicans have elevated it an art form. You know how dog whistles operate: You blow in it and only dogs can hear it. The science of psycholinguistics can identify phrases and words that are used as a kind of secret code to let the inner circle know that what you are saying perfectly feeds into the world view that you are trying to create. That's how their use of coded words and phrases work.

Remember the Chicago Welfare Queen? She was routinely trotted out by Reagan, her with her numerous children (all of them "illegitimate", of course) which she popped out regularly in order to cash in on generous AFDC payments and increased Food Stamps, cruising around in her brand new Cadillac, all paid for out of the hard-earned taxes of "real" Americans. It didn't matter that she never really existed – all that was necessary was for the racist portion of the American public to picture her, an overweight black woman with a dozen kids, a new El Dorado, and an overinflated sense of personal entitlement.

It's older than Reagan. Richard Nixon's call for Law and Order came on the heels of the media's sensationalistic coverage of rioting blacks in America's inner cities. It's newer than Reagan. The 1988 campaign of George HW Bush against liberal Democrat Michael Dukakis was epitomized in the infamous Willie Horton ad, which according to Lee Atwater, its architect, put a murderous black prison escapee into America's living rooms and frightened people into voting for Bush. And it worked. Sadly, these things generally do work, which is why they keep doing them.

At the Republican convention, Mitt Romney said "…when the world needs someone to do the really big stuff, you need an American", was that a not-so-subtle dig at Obama for being somehow "foreign", not one of us, someone not even born in the USA, someone who was – gasp –  black? You be the judge.

Romney Dumber Than Dubya?

Yes, it might appear so:

And, yes, he really did say it. But hold on, today it comes out that he was "joking" when he said it.

Okay, I'm not a harsh judge. Well, not all that harsh, anyway. I'm willing to accept that he was joking, but this just goes to show that Mittens would be better off leaving the jokes to someone else. Like a comedian. Or maybe even just someone with a sense of humor.

Otherwise you just come off as stupid. And Mittens, with all the other shit you've been talking, you don't need any more help looking stupid.

Harry Reid is SO Fucked

One of the many secrets of the Mormons is the knowledge, common amongst the "Saints", that everything that is written (or spoken as well, I presume) against the Mormon Church has been taken up to an "enemies list" archive in the Wasatch Mountains outside Salt Lake City where it will be used against the transgressor at some future time when The End Of Times has come, the Mormons are in control of everything, and "just retribution" can be exacted against the guilty. They don't like to talk about this, for obvious reasons, but just get one of them alone, ply him with enough alcohol, and you can pry out it out of him. He'll eventually admit it. And revenge is such a hallmark of Christian charity...

Which brings us to a guy named David Twede, who runs a website called (oxymoronically at first glance) MormonThink.com, which is a website, run by Mormons(!), devoted to answering some historical questions about the Mormon Church. Hint: They don't answer them to the betterment of the church; quite the contrary -- check them out.

Twede has evidently run afoul of the Mormon Powers by running a piece that is critical of Mitt Romney. Check it out, both on the news site linked above as well as other sites that are carrying the story.

If they are going to excommunicate (the worst "official" punishment the church can mete out, BTW) Twede for being critical of Romney, then what chance does Harry Reid have? The wheels of Mormon justice must be still grinding away on Harry for his transgressions, but I'm guessing that he's got too high a profile for them to make a Federal case out of it. No, all of Harry's criticisms of Romney are being filed away in that Wasatch Enemies List archive, ready to be hauled out on Judgment Day when Jesus returns to earth (in Jackson County, Missouri, the actual site of the Garden of Eden -- no, I am totally NOT making this up...).

I would guess that my rantings over the years about the Mormons has secured me a place in the archives as well. In fact, I'd be kind of disappointed to learn that I was not there...