Video: Mitt Romney's Mormon Religious Belief: There will be "a war that's coming in to kill all the Jews"

See this video clip. As part of his Mormon faith, Mitt Romney believes that there will be "a war that's coming in to kill all the Jews" (at about 1:35 in the video) and that Jesus will come to "split" the Mount of Olives to stop it and then he will reign in Jerusalem and Missouri.



Mitt gets defensive, argumentative and testy in this interview. It makes me worried and uncomfortable to hear that this man believes Jesus will come back and protect "all the Jews". I'd rather have a mainstream Protestant president like Barack Obama who supplies real sophisticated armaments to Israel.

Vote for Obama - Biden.

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Billy Graham stops calling Mormonism a 'cult' on his website

Wow, Billy Graham stopped calling Mormonism a 'cult' on his website.

The citizen-times.com site reported, Article calling Mormonism 'cult' disappears from Graham website - Change on Graham page comes after Romney meeting.

Romney is still not a Christian - but at least he can sigh in relief that according to Billy he is not a member of a cult.

ABC: Romney's Dirty Religion Ad

Mitt Romney, who has served as an official of the Mormon church, which pothumously baptizes Jews, knows a thing or two about waging war using religion.

USA Today reported in March 2012 that in the past Romney was, "a Mormon bishop (equivalent to a pastor) and a stake president (presiding over several area congregations) in suburban Belmont, Mass."

In February 2012 Allison Yarrow wrote, "Mormons Still Baptizing Dead Jews Despite Agreements to End Practice":

The Church of Latter-day Saints apologized Tuesday for posthumously baptizing Nazi-hunter Simon Wiesenthal’s parents amidst much Jewish vitriol. But despite more than two decades of negotiations and agreements between the two groups to prevent such baptisms of dead Jews, the practice persists.

The charge that Romney's ad makes against Obama is false and inflammatory, as the ABC report describes. In America, those who use religion as a political weapon, often find that it blows up in their face. We think this ad will backfire and leave Romney's campaign damaged.

Romney ad accuses Obama of waging a ‘war on religion'

Mitt Romney is out with a new television ad that accuses President Barack Obama of declaring a war on religion.

The 30-second spot renews a fight Romney launched against Obama at the height of the GOP primary, when he trashed a provision under the Obama health care law that required religious institutions including schools and hospitals to offer its employees free access to contraception and the morning after pill even if its against their beliefs.

In February, Obama responded to the uproar by signing off on an "accommodation" that exempted religious institutions from the rule by allowing women to get free birth control directly from their insurance provider. But that's not mentioned in the Romney ad, which begins with a narrator asking, "Who shares your values?"

Romney in Jerusalem: Culture and Providence Led to Israel's Economic Success (Not Socialism)

In a speech in Jerusalem to rich donors, Mitt Romney disrespected the Palestinians and distorted the history of the State of Israel, according to our reading of a report from the AP. He insinuates that Israeli culture is superior to Palestinian culture, and that God loves Israel more than the Palestinians.

And he altogether forgets to mention that Israel began as an entirely socialist state and still runs its economy and society on strong socialist principles mixed together with vibrant free enterprise and capitalism.

It looks like Mitt perhaps was confused about the Israeli economy and the Palestinian people and might explain when he returns that he, "just had the greatest brainwashing that anybody can get" by the Israeli officials that he met with.

Here is the start of the story:

JERUSALEM (AP) — Having publicly pledged a "solemn duty and moral imperative" to protect Israel, Mitt Romney told Jewish donors Monday that their culture is part of what has allowed them to be more economically successful than the nearby Palestinians. 

"As you come here and you see the GDP per capita, for instance, in Israel which is about $21,000 dollars, and compare that with the GDP per capita just across the areas managed by the Palestinian Authority, which is more like $10,000 per capita, you notice such a dramatically stark difference in economic vitality," the Republican presidential candidate told about 40 wealthy donors who breakfasted around a U-shaped table at the luxurious King David Hotel. 

The economic disparity between the Israelis and the Palestinians is actually much greater. Israel had a per capita gross domestic product of about $31,000 in 2011, while the West Bank and Gaza had a per capita GDP of just over $1,500, according to the World Bank...

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Is Mitt Romney Jewish?

No Mitt Romney is not a Jew. He is a Mormon.

There are those who argue that Romney is not even a Christian because Mormons are not Christians. That is a question that the Mormon Church has cleverly blurred since the 1980s. (See the text that we bolded in the article below.)

Though he used the term only once in his 2007  "Faith in America" speech, an Indiana University professor argues that Romney's oration was a quintessential Mormon statement.

See the perceptive article in the CSM from 12/11/2007.

What made Romney's big speech so Mormon
His tent vision fits his church's bid to enter the religious mainstream.
By Jan Shipps

Bloomington, Ind. - When Mitt Romney gave his "Faith in America" address last Thursday, observers wondered how "Mormon" it would be. "Not very," is the understandable consensus. Mormonism 101 it was not, and he said very little about his personal religious beliefs, sticking to his announced topic.

Still, in the way he talked about religious diversity, the nation's symphony of faiths, the way religious liberty stands at the heart of the American constitutional system, and how religion belongs in the public square, this was a consummate Mormon speech. Moreover, despite its political agenda, it is possible to read what Mr. Romney said as being in harmony with a major effort his church has been making since the 1970s: to be included in the American religious mainstream.

Dowd in the Times: Mormons Baptized Anne Frank

Maureen Dowd expounds on Mormon beliefs in her Times column.

She has strong points that correctly characterize Mormon beliefs and practices as odd.

One of the oddest is the posthumous baptism of peoples of other faiths. Citing Christopher Hitchens, Dowd explains,

Aside from Joseph Smith, whom Hitchens calls “a fraud and conjurer well known to the authorities in upstate New York,” the writer also wonders about the Mormon practice of amassing archives of the dead and “praying them in” as a way to “retrospectively ‘baptize’ everybody as a convert.”

Hitchens noted that they “got hold of a list of those put to death by the Nazis’ Final Solution” and “began making these massacred Jews into honorary LDS members as well.” He called it “a crass attempt at mass identity theft from the deceased.”

The Mormons even baptized Anne Frank.

It took Ernest Michel, then chairman of the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors, three years to get Mormons to agree to stop proxy-baptizing Holocaust victims.

Mormons desisted in 1995 after Michel, as the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported, “discovered that his own mother, father, grandmother and best childhood friend, all from Mannheim, Germany, had been posthumously baptized.”

Michel told the news agency that “I was hurt that my parents, who were killed as Jews in Auschwitz, were being listed as members of the Mormon faith.”

Is Glenn Beck a Christian?

No, Glenn Beck is not a Christian. He is a Mormon.

Mormons, like commentator Glenn Beck and politician Mitt Romney, are not Christians.

For sources of varying authority on this question see: here, here, here and for the rest, here.

It is fair to clarify this black-and-white fact about Mr. Beck because he has been raising all sorts of antagonistic questions about President Obama's religion. He held a rally this weekend that was framed as a religious event, when in fact all it did was inject religion into our public political rhetoric as a means of fostering a sugar-coated patently white racist agenda.

After Washington rally, Beck assails Obama's religion
Conservative commentator Glenn Beck voiced sharper criticism of President Obama's religious beliefs Sunday than he and other speakers offered from the podium of the rally Beck organized at the Lincoln Memorial a day earlier.

By Felicia Sonmez

WASHINGTON — Conservative commentator Glenn Beck voiced sharper criticism of President Obama's religious beliefs Sunday than he and other speakers offered from the podium of the rally Beck organized at the Lincoln Memorial a day earlier.

During an interview on "Fox News Sunday," which was filmed after Saturday's rally, Beck claimed that Obama "is a guy who understands the world through liberation theology, which is oppressor and victim."

"People aren't recognizing his version of Christianity," Beck added...more...

... and see this rather scathing take down of Mr. Beck by Mr. Jon Stewart.

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Beck himself recognizes that most Christians do not accept him as a Christian. See the tough Chris Wallace interview of Beck on Fox.

Is Judge Jay Bybee Jewish?

No, Judge Jay Bybee is not a Jew. Bybee is a Mormon, a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Bybee graduated from Brigham Young University and earned his Juris Doctor from BYU's Law School.

On April 16, 2009, President Barack Obama released an internal memorandum signed by Bybee during his tenure at Office of Legal Counsel of the United States Justice Department addressed to CIA General Counsel John Rizzo and dated August 22, 2002, which concluded that waterboarding did not meet the legal definition of torture ["Bybee memo"].

On April 19, 2009 an editorial in The New York Times ("The Torturers’ Manifesto") argued that Bybee is "unfit for a job that requires legal judgment and a respect for the Constitution" and called for Bybee's impeachment from the federal bench.

Times' Frank Rich Eulogizes Gay Bashing in America

In our opinion it's still a little premature to declare that same-sex marriage is a nationwide done deal. But Frank Rich thinks so - quite eloquently in his Times op-ed today. It's his judgment that a recent anti same-sex marriage TV ad marks the tipping point in the shift of public sentiment and legal momentum on the issue.

The u-turns by right wing religious leaders play a key role in his assessment:

More startling still was the abrupt about-face of the Rev. Rick Warren, the hugely popular megachurch leader whose endorsement last year of Proposition 8, California’s same-sex marriage ban, had roiled his appearance at the Obama inaugural. Warren also dropped in on Larry King to declare that he had “never” been and “never will be” an “anti-gay-marriage activist.” This was an unmistakable slap at the National Organization for Marriage, which lavished far more money on Proposition 8 than even James Dobson’s Focus on the Family.

While Rich may be too optimistic, I cannot recall any other issue on which prominent conservatives have flip flopped quite so dramatically.

US News Ranks Yeshiva U 9th Most Popular

With all the bad new lately for my alma mater Yeshiva University, it was nice to see the positive news that the school is ranked by US News the 9th most popular in the nation, ahead of (other) highly esteemed institutions like Brown and Columbia. The bigger story in this list is that the Mormon school BYU is ranked #2.

Most Popular Colleges: National Universities

So which colleges do students really want to go to? One way to find out is to look at a school’s yield, the percentage of applicants accepted by a university who end up enrolling at that institution in the fall. The figures in this table are from the fall 2007 entering class and show the admit yield and overall acceptance rate. If a school has a high yield (a large proportion of those admitted enroll), it means that the school is most likely very popular with a top reputation and that the students are highly motivated to go there. A very low yield means that the school could be a “safety” or second choice for many of those who apply. Colleges use yield as a key factor in determining how many students they need to admit each year.

	U.S. News Rank	Accep- tance Rate	Yield
Harvard University (MA)	1	9%	79%
Brigham Young University--Provo (UT)	113	74%	77%
University of Nebraska--Lincoln	89	62%	71%
Stanford University (CA)	4	10%	70%
Massachusetts Institute of Technology	4	12%	69%
Yale University (CT)	3	10%	69%
Princeton University (NJ)	2	10%	68%
University of Pennsylvania	6	16%	66%
Yeshiva University (NY)	50	69%	65%
University of Florida	49	42%	63%
Columbia University (NY)	8	11%	59%
Brown University (RI)	16	14%	56%

CNN: Mormon Polygamist Sentenced to 5 to Life for Rape

It is a sordid story that shows the dark side of religion - not in some primitive third world country - but right here in the USA. It's another chapter in the sacred book of immorality.

The CNN story reports that the main contention that the judge and jury accepted was this:

"Warren Jeffs told them to go forward and multiply and replenish the Earth, and that is why that man is an accomplice to rape," prosecutor Brock Belnap said during the trial.

Using the Good Book to do bad. Of course they'd throw the book at him. There was never a prayer that he would get away with this in court.

Mormon Polygamist Asks Judge to Throw Out His Rape Conviction

Comparing a religious leader to a football cheerleader is a creative legal argument, to say the least.

Jeffs' lawyers want his conviction tossed
By Brooke Adams The Salt Lake Tribune

Polygamous sect leader Warren S. Jeffs' attorneys want a judge to throw out his conviction, arguing the case against him was speculative and ''purely circumstantial.''

No evidence showed Jeffs was aware of or encouraged nonconsensual sex between Elissa Wall and her former husband, Allen Steed, the attorneys argue in a motion filed Tuesday.

They asked 5th District Judge James L. Shumate to dismiss the jury's Sept. 25 decision to convict Jeffs of two counts of being an accomplice to rape. Shumate is set to sentence Jeffs on Tuesday.
Jeffs, 51, conducted Wall's 2001 marriage to Steed and later counseled her to stay in the union. In 2001, Jeffs was first counselor in the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. The sect is based in the twin towns of Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Ariz. ...

The eight-word Old Testament phrase Jeffs recited during the ceremony - "Be fruitful, and multiply and replenish the Earth" - has been used for centuries and cannot be interpreted as a command to submit to unwanted sex, they argue. "Imagine the mischief if such symbolic or ceremonial terms could give rise to criminal liability," the document states....

"In a different context, woe be the cheerleaders who just yelled, 'Hit 'em again, Hit 'em again, harder, harder,' if one football player then violently assaults an opposing player between plays." ...

Mormon Polygamist Guilty of Rape

Yet another religion that promotes violent crimes.

Sect leader found guilty of aiding rape of 14-year-old

Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington
Wednesday September 26, 2007
The Guardian

The leader of a breakaway polygamous sect of Mormons was yesterday convicted of abetting in the rape of a 14-year-old girl who was forcibly married off to a cousin.

Warren Jeffs, 51, is the leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, and revered by his followers as God's prophet.

He was convicted by an eight-member jury in St George, Utah, on two charges of being an accomplice to the rape of the girl, who was one of the followers of his church. She was married despite her objections to a cousin who was 19 years old.

In testimony, the forced bride, now 21, told the court she had wept in despair as Jeffs presided over her "celestial marriage" at a Nevada hotel. She had told Jeffs and her mother that she did not want to be married.

She said she had been raised in such isolation that she knew nothing of sex, and had to be coaxed to kiss her husband. A month after they were married, her husband told her it was her duty to have sex with him.

"My entire body was shaking. I was so scared," she testified. "He just laid me on the bed and had sex."

Immediately afterward, she retreated into the bathroom and took two bottles of pain reliever. The woman's husband, Allan Steed, has not been charged with any crime.

Yesterday's verdict brought a rare spotlight on the continued practice of polygamy by a community of 10,000 which appeared to live under Jeffs's complete control. The splinter group has been disavowed by the mainstream Mormon church, which renounced polygamy more than a century ago.

Testimony revealed a society that operated like a cult, where Jeffs wielded all power, and routinely assigned young girls to marriages against their will, or ripped families asunder when he believed the unions should come to an end.

In the communities governed by the church, in border areas of Utah, Colorado and Arizona, the word of Jeffs was law. "Everyone should now know that no one is above the law, religion is not an excuse for abuse and every victim has a right to be heard," Utah's attorney general, Mark Shurtleff, who had supported Jeffs's prosecution, told the court.

Lawyers for Jeffs claim that he is a victim of religious persecution.

Yesterday's verdict arrived after more than 17 hours of deliberation, and only after one juror was replaced by an alternate for reasons that were not disclosed.

It brings to an end Jeffs's domination of the church he has led since 2002, dictating even the most minor details in the lives of his followers.

The charismatic church leader is also charged in Arizona with being an accomplice to incest. He was captured at a routine traffic stop in Las Vegas after more than 18 months on the run.

But Richard Holm, a former member of the sect, said he did not believe the conviction would have much impact on the sect or polygamy in Utah.

"He will be regarded as a martyr. There is a power base and system in place to carry on," Holm said.

But Holm was relieved with the guilty verdict. "I think he [Jeffs] saw an opportunity to take glory, credit and power for himself ... In doing so, he abused and hurt a lot of people," he said.

Romney at Yeshiva U

Candidate for president Mitt Romney spoke last week at Yeshiva U. His speech is reproduced here.

It's a weak speech with no specific statement of how he would support Israel. It's heavy on rhetoric and scare tactics - as if he is the first person to discover threats like these -

"Jihadism - violent, radical, fundamental Jihadism - is this century's nightmare. It follows the same dark path as last century's nightmares: fascism and Soviet communism.

"The September 11th Commission reported that al-Qaeda had been trying to acquire or build nuclear weapons for well over a decade. Former CIA Director George Tenet said that Osama bin Laden sees the acquisition of WMD as a 'religious obligation.' Jihadist clerics have issued fatwas authorizing the use of nuclear weapons to... 'defeat the infidels.'

"We are faced with the horrific proposition that those who speak of genocide are developing the capability to carry it out.

"Radical, nuclear Jihad is the greatest threat that faces humanity. It cannot be appeased. It can only be defeated.

We all know this and agree on it. We've seen the videos of 9/11. This kind of politics, implying that he is tough on terrorism - "I am your best hope against evil" - it's dumb. I'd expect more from a man who is supposed to be so smart.

And what about speaking to the issue of religion when at Yeshiva University? Not a whisper of the fact that Romney is a member of a minority religion - something he shares with Orthodox Jews.

I give this speech a C-. C'mon Mitt, surely you can do better.

Heroic American Atheist politician

Apparently in California religion is optional.

Non-believing congressman becomes a hero for atheists
Friday, March 16, 2007

By CARLA MARINUCCI
SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE

SAN FRANCISCO -- Rep. Pete Stark, D-Calif., might have crossed what some are calling "one of the last frontiers" in politics when he delighted atheists this week by acknowledging that he does not believe in a supreme being.

Just a generation ago, says Democratic political strategist Dan Newman, "you couldn't go anywhere near" such a statement, which "would have been political suicide."

Stark's frank declaration that he is "a Unitarian who does not believe in a supreme being" indicates, Newman says, that a significant page has been turned -- and maybe it's not such a political liability anymore.

But he adds that "time will tell whether this is a case of the Bay Area being far out front -- or merely far out."

Stark's spiritual inclinations were sought by the Secular Coalition for America, an association of eight atheist and humanist groups, which offered a $1,000 prize to the person who could identify the "highest-level atheist, agnostic, humanist or any other kind of non-theist currently holding elected public office in the United States."

The 18-term Democratic congressman, who chairs the health subcommittee of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, agreed to fill out the coalition's survey on his religious beliefs. The 75-year-old Stark added that, "like our nation's founders, I strongly support the separation of church and state. I look forward to working with the Secular Coalition to stop the promotion of narrow religious beliefs in science, marriage contracts, the military and the provision of social services."

A spokesman for Stark said that he would have nothing further to say on the matter.

The declaration made Stark a hero to atheist groups around the nation, which have had little visibility in debates on issues surrounding religion and values in Washington.

Stark isn't the first California politician to say he is a non-believer: Gov. Culbert Olson, a Democrat who served from 1939 to 1943 -- and though born of Mormon parents -- said he was an atheist.

But such a declaration carries plenty of political risk. Last month, a USA Today/Gallup poll found that fewer than half of Americans said they would vote for an atheist candidate for president even if he were "well-qualified."

Maher Mormon Video and Mitt Romney converting to Judaism?

Mitt Romney, you old Mormon son of a gun, are you leaving Mormonism because of Bill Maher?

Are you converting to Judaism, Mitt? No? Why not? Joe Lieberman has already cleared the path for you to be a Jewish presidential candidate.

Mitt. You might try Haredi Orthodoxy. You already have most of the political views you need for that.

You gotta have faith, Mitt
By Scot Lehigh, Boston Globe Staff | March 7, 2007

It was a conversion experience on the road to Des Moines..

''We were driving along in a blizzard and there came a bright beam out of the swirling snow, and then this booming voice,'' Mitt Romney says in an imaginary - ah, extraordinary - webcast describing the event. Then, as the former Massachusetts governor recounts things, an authoritative voice intoned: ''You've lost your way. You'd better turn back before it's too late. Follow my light and I'll lead you to the right road''.

And so, in that webcast, entitled ''Mitt's First Video Letter to the South Carolinians,'' Romney, a Mormon, announces that he is leaving his longtime religion in search of a new faith.

''Given the clear message I received, I feel compelled to embrace a new religious commitment, one that will help me gather the strength I need for the challenges that lie ahead,'' Romney says. ''To everything, there is a primary season, a time to be reborn. And this is mine.''

Some skeptical witnesses offered a secular explanation for the occurrence, saying that Romney's campaign caravan had merely been pulled over by the Iowa State Patrol after mistaking a small farm lane for a secondary highway as it drove to a remote VFW post.

But in his webcast, the governor insists something much more profound was afoot.

''I looked over at Beth Myers, my former chief of staff, and said, 'Did you hear that? This is big.' We both agreed we hadn't experienced anything as awe-inspiring since the closing ceremonies of the Winter Olympics I put on.''

As to what denomination he intended to join, Romney says he is still unsure.

''I need to pray on that,'' he solemnly declares.

A political adviser said the campaign was actually exploring whether Romney could become an honorary member of a dozen different denominations. If that proves impossible, the campaign plans to conduct a poll on its website to let Romney supporters in South Carolina decide the former governor's new religious affiliation.

''Just as long as it's popular in South Carolina, it's okay with Mitt,'' this person said. ''His only stipulation is that he won't join any church that makes you grow a beard. He's so clean-cut and handsome, and Ann just wouldn't like it.'' More of You gotta have faith, Mitt