Atheist Adam Savage, Speaker Nancy Pelosi constituent, Humanist of the Year and myth-maker, not very happy with the Republican US Senate's 11 Presbyterians, 9 Catholics, 9 Baptists, 7 Methodists, 6 Evangelicals, 3 Lutherans, 3 generic Protestants, 1 Church of Christ and 2 Mormons who voted against having to do the job the House wouldn't do

Libertarian Mike Lee of Utah, author of get out of jail crime bill, is also author of American job-stealer bill stalled in Senate

There was a reason Americans drove Mormons out to the west, but obviously Utah has proven to be a stop too short.

Time Magazine article rightly speaks up for American nationalism as modeled from The Bible

The upshot is that we need to get reaquainted with the Bible in our public schools, eject opponents of our common law from the judiciary, and speaka da English.

Nationalism Has Gotten a Bad Reputation. But It’s What America Needs Right Now:

Ancient Israel was, for generations of Bible-literate Americans, the prototype of a “nation.” ...

While biblical nations aren’t defined by race, they are also not merely “an idea.” Biblical Israel consists of a diversity of tribes, who are nonetheless bound to one another by language and law, and a mutual loyalty arising from facing adversity together in the past. ...

American nationalists used to think of their nation in just this way: Neither as a race, nor as an abstract “idea” — but rather as a diversity of tribes sharing a heritage and a mutual loyalty born of a joint history. The original American states, while internally diverse, nonetheless largely shared the English language, Protestant religion and the common law, and had fought Britain together. ... 

American nationalists sought to counterbalance increasing diversity with a carefully protected common cultural inheritance: New territories were admitted as American states only once they had an English-speaking majority and adopted the common law. The eradication of slavery in the South and polygamy among the Mormons was likewise the result of a common cultural inheritance, descended from English Puritanism, which Americans insisted on maintaining even at the price of coercion. It was not until after World War II that these core institutions at the heart of classical American nationalism — Biblical religion, the Anglo-American legal inheritance, and the English language — began to fade. 

Mormon Evan McMullin tries to spoil Utah for Trump and elect Hillary

Why does Glenn Beck still look like he could stand to fast like he's never fasted before?

I thought he was fasting every Tuesday for Ted Cruz.

And just how do you do that, fasting like you've never fasted before? If I'm not eating anything, I can't eat any less, can I?

Or is there some secret eatin' goin' on in Mormon fasting that I don't know about, which you can forego and then REALLY fast?

Oh boy, he really must mean it this time!

If I want to be lectured about my religion by Glenn Beck, I'll answer the doorbell

Cruz wins big in Mormon Utah, but Trump still gets more votes in AZ and UT combined than Cruz in UT and AZ combined

Trump: 246,543 + 23,984 = 270,527

Cruz: 118,904 + 129,429 = 248,333 (Cruz actually received more popular votes in Arizona than Utah)

Speaking of Ben Carson, it's odd that such a smart guy has a crackpot religion

It was Mormonism's turn in 2012, now it's on to Seventh Day Adventism.

Ben Carson's Seventh Day Adventism keeps the Sabbath on Saturdays, believes in the investigative judgment of professed Christians, ongoing somewhere in heaven since 1844, and considers the scores of revelations of the visionary Ellen G. White authoritative, placing the group outside the beliefs of the world's 600 million Evangelical Christians.

But hey, it's a free country, right?

Blame the libertarians for handing Romney his loss in 2012, not conservatives

Third parties bled away over 60% of the few votes Romney lost by in his failed eastern strategy in Election 2012.

Mitt Romney's bid to win the White House failed by 64 electoral college votes, all of which he narrowly lost in an eastern strategy in just four states by a total of only 429,522 popular votes:

Florida, lost by 74,309 votes, where third parties garnered an unbelievable 90,972 votes;

Virginia, lost by 149,298 votes, where third parties garnered 60,147 votes;

Ohio, lost by 166,272 votes, where third parties took a whopping 101,788 votes;

and New Hampshire, lost by 39,643 votes, where third parties took 11,493 votes.

That's a loss for Romney of 64 electoral college votes, enough to have taken him from 206 to 270 to take the presidency, losing 429,522 total popular votes in just four states where third parties all told took 264,400 votes, 61.5% of the total needed by Romney to win.

This isn't to say that those were all necessarily Republican votes which went third party, but fully 50.5% of the 264,400 were cast for the libertarian candidate, Gary Johnson of New Mexico, who had been a Republican candidate for president until late 2011 when he was excluded from the Republican debates. At that point he bolted to the Libertarian Party, and openly stated his intention to play a spoiler role:

“I hope that I would get labeled as a ‘spoiler’ from the standpoint of people actually focusing on what it is I am saying, and that this changes the way whoever wins governs,” Johnson told Sunshine State News in an exclusive interview Saturday at the 2012 Ron Paul Festival.

Combine the pique factor around that with the natural alienation felt by libertarians toward a Mormon candidate who was himself socially conservative in his habits and loathe to exercise himself on behalf of libertarians' usual limited government ideas and you can make a case that it was libertarians who cost Romney the election, by casting spoiler votes, staying away from the polls entirely, or even voting for Obama out of spite.

This is a better explanation for the Romney loss than some mythical 4 million conservatives staying away from the polls in 2012 as Rush Limbaugh keeps saying. The numbers themselves disprove that, as Romney garnered 1 million more votes in 2012 than McCain in 2008. It was a much closer election than the (mostly libertarian) punditocracy wants you to know.

Conservatives, most of whom are Christians, aren't put off by abstainers like Mitt Romney the way libertarians might be (many Christians are abstemious too), and Christians find it much more morally problematic to stay away from the polls, or to vote out of spite, in a way which libertarians would not. Christian voters are nothing if not preoccupied with their moral and social responsibility, but libertarians care little for that.

In fact, withdrawing from social responsibilities is elevated to the level of a moral principle by libertarians. Staying away from the polls is a John Galt tactic straight out of the playbook from Ayn Rand. It's an ongoing and adolescent fantasy of theirs. It's not a Christian tactic, which is to say it's not a conservative tactic. Conservatives love their country too much to let it go down the drain, and they actively admired Mitt Romney for his commitment to and long record of public service even if his religion and social policy positions bothered them.

It remains a question if Republicans can expect to succeed in future with a brood of vipers in their party such as the libertarians. Republicans should reconsider their tilt toward libertarianism and seriously ask themselves whether things might not go better for them if they more actively pursued the social conservative vote. From the Christians Republicans can expect forgiveness, but from the libertarians only vindictiveness. Isn't that how the Bushes got elected after turning their backs on the Reagan revolution? Isn't that the conceit of moderate Republican presidential aspirants still today?

Why isn't that an easy call? After all, the libertarian Ron Paul who bitterly lost to Romney in the Republican primaries never left the Republican Party, but he never endorsed Mitt Romney either: "I don’t fully endorse him for president,” he said, as late as August 2012, less than three months before the election. Message to libertarians: good ahead, stay home, see if I care.

Call it an ironic payback to Romney, whose moderate Republican father likewise wouldn't endorse the conservative Barry Goldwater after losing to him in 1964, but it's also another sign in a long list of signs that libertarians have more in common with liberals than with conservatives.

They're content if they too can defeat Republicans.

The 10 Idiot Senate Republicans who voted to confirm Loretta Lynch as Attorney General

The 10 Republicans who think being in the majority is a sin:

Ayotte (R-NH) oh yes she votes. just. like. a. woman.

Cochran (R-MS) senile old codger

Collins (R-ME) gender before party

Flake (R-AZ) aptly named

Graham (R-SC) McCain's errand boy

Hatch (R-UT) competing with Harry Reid for Mormon infamy

Johnson (R-WI) used to be the Tea Party's Senator! Go Feingold! Go Feingold! Go Feingold!

Kirk (R-IL) soon to be replaced by another disabled person of the same political party

McConnell (R-KY) recently had unsuccessful testicle transplant surgery

Portman (R-OH) has never had any testicles according to anonymous sources 

The roll call vote is here.  

Hey Rush Limbaugh, Maybe Mormons Stayed Home In 2012!

Alex Beam in "Did Mormons Want Romney To Win?" for The Boston Globe suggests Mormons weren't ready for a Mormon presidency, here:

“No one would ever come out and say it, but I suspect what you are thinking is probably true,” says Matthew Bowman, a Mormon professor of religion and author of “The Mormon People.” “The whole Romney campaign was a shock to the system for a church that generally wants to move very slowly and is used to hashing out things out [sic] internally over a long period of time.”

------------------------------------------------------------

Mormons in the US number about 6 million, but Kimberley Strassel has pointed out that Romney lost the election by fewer than 350,000 total votes in just four states: Florida, Virginia, Ohio and New Hampshire. 

Buchanan's "The American Conservative" Isn't Conservative

Pat Buchanan's "The American Conservative" isn't a conservative magazine. It never has been, and isn't now. It's editor has endorsed Obama in 2008 and voted for him. That's when I stopped reading. For all I know, he voted for him in 2012.

Now the magazine publishes an article by Mormon Jon Huntsman, former governor of Utah and one time presidential candidate, advocating gay marriage. That makes perfect sense, since Mormons have never subscribed to Christian monogamy except by force of federal intervention. Yes, federal intervention. Utah statehood depended on Mormon renunciation of plural marriage at the dawn of the 20th century. Now here comes a Mormon telling us to redefine marriage once again.

Pat Buchanan should be ashamed of himself.

As Governor Romney Relentlessly Scoured Tax Code To Close Loopholes

The most powerful gun in the world may be going to blow your tax deductions clean off, if elected.

The Mormon Romney is a tax enforcer, loaded with rectitude, if a long article in The New York Times, here, last October has it right:

For the next three years, the Romney administration relentlessly scoured the tax code for more loopholes, extracting hundreds of millions of corporate dollars to help close budget gaps in a state with a struggling economy. It was only after Mr. Romney was gearing up in 2005 for a possible White House bid that he backed away from some of his most assertive tax enforcement proposals amid intensifying complaints from local companies and conservative antitax groups in Washington. ...

The Democratic-controlled Legislature, which had assumed that Mr. Romney was cozy with the state’s corporate executives, was both taken aback and thrilled by the onslaught. ...

Several experts on the state’s economy said that by increasing tax enforcement, Mr. Romney staved off wider cuts to essential services.

Election 2012: CULT Follower Or CULT Object? Some Choice!

Bob Brinker Of "Money Talk" Is Wrong: GDP Isn't Growing At An Average Of 1.75 Percent

On his radio program "Money Talk" yesterday Bob Brinker sought to defend recent economic performance as better than the Q2 report of 1.5 percent makes it appear. He accomplished this feat by averaging that number 1.5 with the 2.0 percent reported in Q1, coming up with a little better number, 1.75 percent.

This is wrong and I stated so in a post I have since removed.

I thought Bob Brinker said this for political reasons in the context of the remarks, and in a fit of pique I posted that Bob Brinker is a shill for the Obama regime in doing this, remembering as I am wont that Bob Brinker has stated on the program, among other things that hint of leaning to the Democrats despite calling himself an independent, that Obama's man in the US Senate, Dirty Harry Reid, is "a good man, a good man." Harry Reid is manifestly not a good man, recently using the well of the Senate to innoculate himself for potentially libelous remarks he has made from there against Mitt Romney, a fellow Mormon to Reid no less. Harry Reid has also been the chief instrument of gridlock on Capitol Hill, both now and when Pelosi was Speaker of the House. Just ask her how many bills she sent to him which never received action.

I've removed that post because I think it's possible Bob Brinker made the comments entirely out of ignorance, not from political bias. The reason is that I've realized that I've made the exact same mistake about GDP myself on this very blog, and my bias against Obama didn't keep me from making it. I actually forgot about those errors long after I had improved my understanding of GDP. So even if Bob Brinker did make the statements in order to put Obama's performance in the best possible light, it's also possible Bob Brinker just isn't as smart about GDP as he thinks he is. After all, it is a complicated subject about which very few people really are expert, and if I can make an honest mistake about it, so can he.

So the politics aside, it is impermissible to take the sum of quarterly headline GDP and divide by 2 or 3 or 4 to get an average rate. Each quarterly statement of GDP is already stating the annual rate, that is, the annual rate prevailing during the quarter. That's what the meaning of annualized is. As the quarters roll and the data become more full and complete, the numbers are routinely refined, even many years after we learn of the third and final estimate of quarterly GDP for month x, y or z. GDP is always a work in progress, and even somewhat controversial among the truly expert.

So in the second quarter, the annualized rate of GDP growth is 1.5 percent, not 2 percent, and not 1.75 percent. And that is terrible for everyone, Democrat, Republican and independent alike, because we are all in this together.

At least that is what we would like to think.

The Trumpet That Gives An Uncertain Sound

Avoid the "O" symbolism, will ya buddy?

Al Hunt Blames Christian Anti-Mormon Bigotry For Romney's Troubles

Al Hunt for Bloomberg blames evangelical Christians for Romney's problems in this article:

Mitt Romney has a persisting Mormon problem. Less certain is whether this is limited to the Republican primaries or it’s a general-election worry, too.

“This nomination would be in the bag if it weren’t for the Mormon factor,” says John Geer, a professor of political science at Vanderbilt University who works on the intersection of religion and politics.

The exit polls from a plethora of primaries confirm that. Romney, a deeply devout leader in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, gets clobbered among white evangelicals and those who believe the religious views of a would-be president matter a great deal. This has caused him to lose a few primaries and denied him decisive wins in others.

The trouble with this argument is that it is wrong and ignores the fact that Mormonism is a bigger impediment in a candidate for Democrats than it is for Republicans, who might well realize this and instead want someone without this baggage who can also garner Democrat votes in the general election.

Last June's Gallup poll is a case in point: 27 percent of Democrats are unwilling to vote for a Mormon, compared with 18 or 19 percent for Republicans and Independents.

But there is another reason for Romney's woes, a candidate with far superior organization and much more money than any of the rest: proportional primaries.

Joseph Curl discusses the advent of proportional primaries in the Republican Party here, in the wake of the 2008 candidacy of John McCain:

[T]his is ... the scenario Republicans set up in 2010. Party leaders felt the process was too front-loaded, tilted too far to establishment leaders. So, to extend and open up the nomination, the leaders moved from mostly winner-take-all primaries and caucuses to proportionate distribution of delegates based on popular vote.

“There were a lot of people on the [Republican National Committee] and other places who were not very happy after ‘08,” David Norcross, chairman of the party’s Rules Committee when the changes were made, told the Daily Beast. “We didn’t think it was right that four or five states got to pick the nominee. It was slam, bam, thank you, done - and I think we were not helped by that. In fact, some of us think [Sen. John] McCain was not helped by that because he was not forced to sharpen his candidate skills. It was over and he went on to wait for the Democrats to produce a candidate. Just sitting around waiting.”

The new system established hefty penalties for any state that sought to move up on the calendar, in essence halving the number of delegates a state could award if it were so brash. It didn’t work; Florida moved its primary up anyway, with disastrous results.

But the new system also suggested the stakes be ramped up after April 1. The idea was for states holding primaries and caucuses after that date to be winner-take-all. But many of the late-date states wanted the nomination battle to still be alive when their date came up, so they stuck with the proportional setup.

That is why, almost into April and just halfway through the primary calendar, front-runner Mitt Romney has less than half the 1,144 delegates needed to secure the nomination. And while everyone’s math differs, it looks as if he has to win about half of all delegates from now until the final primary in Utah on June 26.

With 1099 delegates still to be apportioned as of today in the rest of the primary contests, Romney needs 576 more to capture the nomination. Santorum needs 871.

But under a winner-take-all scenario, Romney would possess 625 delegates already and could theoretically clinch the nomination by winning the next thirteen states through May 15th. It would take Santorum through May 29, winning all sixteen of the next contests to add to his would-be current total of  461 under winner-take-all, including such places as Maryland, DC, New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Delaware, Oregon and Texas. A dubious proposition.

Presumably the dynamic of the race under those conditions would look far worse for Santorum because of Romney's natural advantages in boots on the ground and money. What is keeping Santorum viable today, however, has little to do with what Christians believe about Mormonism. What keeps Santorum alive is proportional voting.

Santorum needs to capture 79 percent of the still available delegates to win it, which is crazy. And if he thinks he's got a snowball's chance in hell of carving out a role in any future administration after the things he's said this season, he's even crazier than I think.

Let's hope he puts us out of our misery and gets out before Pennsylvania humiliates him on April 24th.

Santorum The Weasel On Display Again

When confronted recently about things he wrote in his book about radical feminists, Sen. Santorum blamed them on his wife, even though nowhere in the book does she get credit as a co-author.

Now he's protesting, as reported here, that his words suggesting we will end up voting for the real deal, Obama, instead of a paler version, in Romney, have been misunderstood as self-referential:

Santorum's original comment came Thursday in a San Antonio speech, in which the candidate said Obama and Romney had so few differences that "we may as well stay with what we have instead of taking a risk" with Romney.

Santorum argued that when he used the word "we" in his comment, he was referring to the general public. But he said people mistook his remark to mean that he personally would vote for Obama over Romney.

"No, I was saying the people may not vote for someone they don't see as different," Santorum said.

What Republicans should and do find objectionable about this, contrary to Santorum's explanation, is that a high profile Republican such as Santorum seems to be campaigning for the Democrat opposition.

Indeed, he's given evidence that he's more interested in crossover votes from the Democrat Party, e.g. in the Michigan primary, than he is in Republican votes. Moreover his bashing of Protestants unfortunately legitimizes bashing Mormonism, which will come back to haunt, and hurt, Romney in the general election when PACs unleash a torrent of criticism on Romney's strange beliefs.

It's disloyal and dispiriting for Santorum to speak this way in public. Independent voters will lose, not gain, respect for Santorum as a result, not that it matters much. His is a negative campaign anyway, lock, stock and barrel. We all know the many things Santorum is against. The trouble is, we don't know what he's for.

Santorum should withdraw from the presidential contest.

Can't Criticize Mormonism? Sen. Santorum Opens Door By Trashing Protestants

If Santorum is free to say the following about Protestants, Democrats will feel free not only to attack Santorum over his religion if he's the candidate, but also Romney over his:

"[L]ook at the shape of mainline Protestantism in this country and it is in shambles, it is gone from the world of Christianity as I see it."

There is nothing qualitatively different about that statement from Christian Evangelicals' charge that Mormonism is a cult, not Christian, or some leftists' view that Mormonism is too weird to abide. At least Obama ditched Rev. Wright. But Romney is proud of his heritage, and so is Santorum pledged to defend all his beliefs in the public square.

Santorum has just played into the hands of the left and handed them a huge opening.

Thanks a lot, pal.

Mormons Still Practice Polygamy in the Form of "Sealing"

So says Tresa Edmunds here:

Today polygamy still echoes in our doctrine as men can be "sealed", or united for eternity in a religious ordinance, to more than one woman. ... 

[M]y co-blogger, Lindsay Hansen Park, . . . writes . . . "[H]istory forces us to reflect on current practices and policies and we begin to question the reasoning of it all. Mormons still practice polygamy posthumously in the temple? Is polygamy the law we're to expect in the afterlife? And better yet, who are we to tell the world what a traditional family looks like, when our past is far from traditional?"