Simple Utah Mormon Politics

Although I consider myself a very active member of the LDS Church, some things about Mormon culture drive me bonkers.  For example, tell me if you've heard this inaccuracy during the baptismal service for a child.

Beyond the reality that it's not clear to the outside world just exactly who used chemical weapons in Syria, it's important to realize that a myriad of nuances exist that are not being much talked about.  In this article I will explain what those nuances are:

In 1999, Alan Greenspan (Chairman of the Federal Reserve), Robert Rubin (Treasury Secretary for the Clinton Administration) and Lawrence Summers (Rubin's deputy secretary) were dubbed on Time Magazine's front cover as "The Committee to Save the World". Ironically, just a year before that, the trio made a decision that should have earned them the moniker "The Committee to SCREW the World"

What's more fun than learning good stuff on a Saturday, especially when it comes to good economic principles? Not much.  ;-)  Here are some insights I've had today during my studies.

“We’ve said these are the big guys,” Harvey J. Goldschmid, a Securities and Exchange Commissioner said, provoking nervous laughter, “but that means if anything goes wrong, it’s going to be an awfully big mess.” It was a mess, but the government cleaned up the mess at the expense of you and me, by giving more favors to the same large banks very similar to the ones it gave them at that fateful meeting in the spring of 2004.

When I was 11 years old, I was asked to bear my testimony to my "Blazer" primary class of our Latter-day Saint ward.  I remember it vividly, because at that time I said "I can't say that I know  the Church is true, but I can say that I believe  that it is true."

The official version of Joseph Smith's " First Vision ", found in the Pearl of Great Price of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, says that God told Smith that "all [the] creeds [of the existing religions] were an abomination in his sight". Many non-Mormons take great offense at this characterization of their religions.  But I intend to show in this article that Smith used the   perfect  word to describe the situation, a word that, when properly understood, should not be offensive to anyone.