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When reviewing Jesus Christ’s final week. I was amazed at how often Christ would make a statement and the apostles would totally mis-understand him. And, that Jesus would not correct their misassumptions. This is a pattern that occurs throughout the scriptures. Retrospectively, many of the best learned lessons are when we make a mistake, realize the harm caused and then go through the process of repentance and reconciliation. We are not intended to go through this life perfectly. Why would we expect our current Church leadership to act perfectly? Is it OK for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints to make mistakes? Do we have to understand the mind of God in order to follow him? I sure hope not.

@Phoenix_person, I'm sort of cutting up and splicing together elements of several of your recent posts in hopes that I can craft a more thematically-cohesive response. I hope you don't mind. When you talk about abolishing for-profit health insurance companies, I think it's helpful to pin down: What would you do about private non-profit health insurance companies (like IHC/Select Health, here in Utah)? If private non-profit health insurance companies are permitted to remain in business, then I really don't see the urgency in going after the for-profit ones. What's the harm in allowing for-profit insurers to compete with the nonprofits, if they can? If nothing else, it keep the non-profit players honest (their providers and administrators, after all, are still working for a salary and still have incentive to gouge their customers; and the fact that they don't have shareholders to placate doesn't make them saints). If the for-profits can provide a better product for cheaper--good for them. If they can't--then, assuming we can establish a truly free marketplace, in time they'll peter out of their own accord. But I continue to maintain that nationalized health care is a terrible alternative overall. You may get some advantages of scale using that method; and you certainly have the advantage of being able to use the contributions of the healthy--all of the healthy--to subsidize the costs of the sick. But there are a few things to bear in mind: So long as the medical professions continue to provide an improving product utilizing the services of more and more people and requiring more advanced equipment--to some degree, costs are inevitably going to go up. And as you point out, the medical professions already require an advanced degree of training. You want these people to be very good at their jobs, and they will expect to be compensated accordingly. Artificial price ceilings cause supply shortages. That's just basic economics. American surgeries are expensive, but--assuming you can fund them--you can usually get them within a month or two of when you need them. I still remember, by contrast, a special about a guy in the UK who had renovated his apartment to look like a Star Trek crew cabin (I watch weird stuff. Don't judge me) and he mentioned in passing that he hadn't bothered to create a bed because he had sciatica and his (presumably NHS) doctor had told him he needed to be sleeping on the floor to alleviate the symptoms. Meanwhile, my brother-in-law got diagnosed with sciatica around the same time and was cured by a surgery that took place three weeks after the diagnosis. One of the primary complaints about private-sector health insurance companies is that most clients pay far more into the system than they get out of it. The thing is--that's how health insurance (whether public or private) is supposed to work. The whole idea is that to be sustainable, you've got to keep exploiting 60-70-80% of your clients in order to subsidize the other 20-30-40%. That fundamental dynamic doesn't change just because you nationalize the system; all you're doing is making sure that the people getting exploited can't choose to remove themselves from the system. Government bureaucrats are going to tend to be less responsive generally to consumer preference and market shifts. At the same time, government bureaucrats do get, and respond to, pressure to lower costs/improve the financial health of their programs; just as the private sector does. Any sustainable health insurance cost-sharing system is going to have to disincentivize frivolous/unnecessary uses of medical services--there's got to be a bean counter, at some point, saying "no, we won't pay for that." But those bean counters are sometimes wrong, and there's got to be a way to get some form of care independently of the bean counters. Government agencies sometimes manage costs in brutal ways; particularly when they have some degree of legal immunity and/or they don't have to worry about some private-sector competitor that may be offering a better (or more humane or ethical) alternative that would highlight the bureaucrat's own incompetence. Witness, for example, the experiences of Alfie Evans and Charlie Gard in the UK; the not-insignificant amount of assisted suicides in the Netherlands by twenty-somethings whose ailments were primarily mental, not physical, in nature; and the mad rush for nationalized health services in much of the Anglosphere to approve euthanasia. It's kind of ironic that Sarah Palin was so roundly mocked by the left for raising the spectre of critical-care-denying "death panels" that, the left now concedes, do exist in the private sector but somehow magically won't exist in the public sector (at least, not the American public sector. Talk about American exceptionalism!). One of the perennial flaws of progressives is that they tend to assume that the "progressivism" stops with them. (Or maybe they realize that it won't, but they don't dare say it aloud.) Once we've embraced the fundamentals of collectivism--one individual can go hang for the sake of the "greater good"--why should we stop at being Denmark or the UK or France or Canada? Why shouldn't we go on to embrace the Venezuelan, Cuban, and/or Russo/Soviet models? As I note above: Many of these western systems you laud are already denying life-saving care (probably at least in part for financial reasons), already blocking people from getting it elsewhere, already nudging people into euthanasia. (Robert Bork's Slouching Towards Gomorrah is an interesting meditation on this--he argues that two fundamental, paradoxical values baked into the founding of the US are "radical egalitarianism" and "radical individualism"; and that the logical implications of those values cannot help but lead to collectivist tyranny and social destabilization, which then become cyclical--the tyranny increases to control the behaviors through which the moral rot manifests itself.) Another of the perennial flaws of progressives is that they seem to assume that their enemies will never obtain control of the state apparatus they themselves have built. Do you really want Donald Trump's administration making end-of-life care decisions for Latinos, or Marine LePen deciding which Algerian immigrants do or don't get treated at French emergency rooms? Are you sure national health care systems won't devolve into the sorts of regimens where these kinds of decisions are routinely nakedly politicized? Do you really want to make the State the only game in town when it comes to health care? The state, and the state alone, decides who is and isn't eligible to have their pains alleviated or their lives saved? Especially when there are still people living in those European countries you laud who once lived under--or were within a hair's breadth of living under--the regimens of Hitler, Stalin, or both? Do we really trust in our ability to recognize the monsters who would abuse this sort of power? Look at Assad--ten years ago, he and his wife were the darlings of the progressive media establishment. And now it turns out that one of his preferred methods for dealing with his enemies was sticking them underneath a hydraulically-powered slab, and crushing them to death. We spend fifty years freaking out about how every Republican presidential candidate is Literally Hitler--and then we get an honest-to-gosh Hitler in Syria, and we put his wife on the cover of Vogue. Liquidating the billionaire class and re-distributing the proceeds into a nationalized health care system might make us feel righteous and indulge our more sadistic aspects of our natures; but isn't going to sustainably improve the lot of any American health care consumer. As I noted recently in another thread, the federal government spent $1.8 trillion on PPACA last year alone (source). The US has approximately 800 billionaires with a collective net worth of about $6 trillion. Assuming you got the full value of their holdings when you confiscated them (which you won't, because liquidating their holdings turns them into penny stocks that will flood the market just as investors, wondering what fresh communist Hades might be coming for them next, would be fleeing both the market and the country): you can subsidize PPACA through 2029 at the latest; and then we're back to square one--but with no more golden geese left to kill. I don't see anything in the Hippocratic Oath that requires medical professionals to render services involuntarily or for a lower rate than they would prefer to charge. If a critical mass of doctors truly read the oath as you suggest they should/do, then we wouldn't be in the mess we're in. (Leaving aside for the notion that while [most] doctors take the oath, the folks who develop your vaccines and design and build your MRI machines and spin out your blood samples take no such oath.) Certainly there's an implicit generalized awareness that the profession is intended to provide a crucial, even sacred benefit to others--but then, my oath as an attorney (see p. 2) has a similar awareness; and we certainly don't expect lawyers to render services for free. Frankly, PPACA was a poison pill to begin with. The only way they were able to make the federal numbers look "revenue neutral" back in 2009-2010 was by comparing ten years of revenues against five or six years of outlays. The cost was always going to be net-negative in the long haul.* Forcing the HMOs to take clients who they knew were going to cost them money, was always going to force those HMOs to either inflate premiums (stoking the sort of Moral Panic we're now witnessing) or go bankrupt in the end. We all knew even then that Obama and his supporters wanted single-payer, and that PPACA was seen by them as a stepping-stone to get us there. Their hope was that the HMOs would mute their opposition if they got enormous payoffs in the very short term. *That said, conservatives should also acknowledge that Trump sort of accelerated things by unilaterally exempting Americans from the individual-mandate portion of PPACA and thus pulling a lot of potential revenue out of the system. And this sort of hints at another issue with the health care business. We've undergone something of a cultural shift in the last sixty years where we believe that we each have the right to the very best medical care that's out there, we have a right to be pain-free, and we have a right to have every potentially-relevant test from a smorgasboard of available serum panels run on us any time we feel "off" becuse "you can never be too careful". And money is no object when it comes to keeping us in tip-top physical condition; particularly when the money involved is other people's money. This creates a lot of tension in the American system, and needs to be checked in some ways. But it also has its merits. I don't know your full story--just snippets from posts you've made elsewhere. But--if I may tread softly--my understanding is that at some point you got into a really dark place, and you tried to end your own life; resulting in the injuries you mention above. I'm genuinely, sincerely glad that your attempted suicide was unsuccessful. I don't even mind that the American health care system likely poured fabulous amounts of resources into your treatment and recovery. I hope things never get that dark for you ever again. It sounds like you've put a lot of effort into being a contributing member of your own community, I personally value your thought-provoking contributions to this forum, and--while I know it's not really your thing--I strongly believe that you are a beloved child of God whom He views as having infinite worth and potential; and I hope the way I communicate with you consistently reflects that belief. But for the purposes of this discussion, I will say: I rather suspect the American system is probably one of very few systems in the US that would have put so much time and effort into preserving your life at a time when you yourself were thinking that it would be best ended. I hope you don't relocate to Germany; because if (heaven forbid) you have a relapse--I'm not convinced they'll do for you what America would do for you. And if you do relocate, and some NHS bureaucrat suggests euthanasia at some point--I hope you punch 'em square in the nose, and catch the first flight back to 'Murca. I would refer you to my point about billionaires above, and also suggest you watch this video--it's very dated now, but still does a very good job of showing that a) the amount of money our government spends is quite unrelated to how much tax revenue it actually raises or could raise; and b) while we may resent the existence of billionaires and even millionaires, eradicating all of them and redistributing their assets won't really improve the quality of our lives all that much. I defend the rights of billionaires to be billionaires because I understand that fundamentally, the folks who criticize billionaires most harshly aren't going to effect meaningful change and aren't really mad just at the uber-wealthy. They're mad at anyone who's doing better than they themselves are--and as a relatively solid, state-employed member of the middle class who owns a house and a sailboat that its manufacturer classifies as a "yacht", that probably includes me. This could be a really interesting collateral discussion; but suffice it to say: I absolutely endorse the right of employees to unionize; so long as they aren't infringing on a) the rights of would-be employees to work for cheaper or b) the rights of their employers to higher those would-be employees. I don't understand why efforts to unionize Amazon and Wal-Mart haven't borne more fruit. (Maybe they have and I haven't been paying attention; I don't know.) At any rate--this is a significant reason why I also support limiting the numbers of economic immigrants that we accept each year from the third world. I'm skeptical of the notion that all employers should be legally required to pay a "living wage"; simply because a lot of teenagers and part-time workers don't need a living wage and they should be able to sell their labor for whatever price they are willing to accept from their employers. In closing--because it's late and I'm tired, and because you said "Scandinavia", I will close with this joke: Did you hear that Norway has started putting bar codes on the side of all their warships? That way, when the ships get back to port, they can scan the Navy in.

It seems worth noting that the question of whether the priesthood/temple ban originated with Joseph Smith, is quite distinct from the question of whether the ban reflected what God wanted the Church to be doing during the time that the ban was in force. A response of "no" to the first question (which seems to be the primary topic of this thread), does not preclude an answer of "yes" to the second. As to the first question: I tend to be an "institutionalist". I think that generally speaking, professional Church historians (and by this I mean, primarily, those employed by the Church) are acting in good faith. If they say there's no good evidence that JS originated the ban--I'm inclined to believe them. At the same time: I think @Maverick has raised some points that, frankly, I don't recall either Church historians or some of the acknowledged "experts" like Paul Reeve, et al, bring up. And frankly, whatever policies re ordination Joseph Smith did or didn't implement: He left us with a heck of a lot of scriptural evidence that God does sometimes consider certain lineal groups "cursed"--both in a general sense, and in a Gospel/sacerdotal-privileges context. And while we're generally quick to impute "racism" in Brigham Young while denying/excusing it in Joseph Smith: Smith seems to have genuinely thought that African Americans of his day were "cursed", at least in a very general sense. It doesn't take a dyed-in-the-wool racist to look at the breadcrumbs Joseph Smith left, and "connect the dots" in the way that Pratt, Young, Taylor, Smith, et al. subsequently did. I think historians, and even professional Church historians, do tend to lean a little bit leftwards. I don't think most of them are mentally/emotionally prepared to grapple with a God who would deliberately do something that most of them openly describe as "racist". (And a subset of them, frankly, see this as "battlespace prep" in trying to erode the credibility of the current crop of apostles on LGBTQ issues). And I think these professional historians' work on this particular issue can't help but reflect these biases. It's rather like secular historians who try to explain the origin of the Book of Mormon but start with the proposition that it just couldn't have been what Joseph Smith said it was--props to them for being true to themselves, I guess . . . but the simple fact is that they aren't truly willing to fearlessly go wherever the evidence takes them, and so the result of their work is somewhat compromised.

I feel on both sides of the increasingly zigzagging fence with this thread, so to be clear, let me state my understandings and opinions: The so-called Priesthood ban was instituted by the highest leadership in the Church, either Brigham Young or Joseph Smith. The Priesthood ban required a divine revelation to be removed. A simple "change in policy" was insufficient. In my opinion, God Himself was probably the Being with whom the Priesthood ban originated. I admit that it is possible that the Church's president (Smith or Young) made that decision on their own, but I disbelieve that. Assuming that God was the Author of the Priesthood ban, which is the default position and the one I tend to believe, I do not know why He instituted the ban. But the speculation as to "why" has some pretty evident answers, historically and scripturally. I am talking specifically about the now-disavowed* theories of why African blacks were excluded from holding the Priesthood and from post-baptismal temple blessings. The fact that those theories have been "disavowed" does not mean they have been proclaimed false. These answers may or may not have validity. They may be fundamentally right, or they may be totally wrong. The often-advanced claim that the theories have been disavowed by the Church, and therefore have been proclaimed to have been false, is itself false. In matters of scriptural interpretation, I tend to agree pretty closely with @Maverick. I have no problem owning the previous teachings of the Church. I feel not the least bit of shame or embarrassment over the Church's doctrines or actions, any more than I might somehow feel ashamed to own Jesus Christ. I am not ashamed. I stand with the prophets, even in my (and their) imperfections. In matters of current teachings, I fully accept the 1978 revelation (which, by the way, was received with great joy not only by my 15-year-old self, but by everyone in my family—and frankly by everyone in the Church that I knew). While I have no shame or guilt or any other foolish negativity toward the Church's previous teachings and practices, I rejoice that the long-promised day came in my lifetime, and even in my childhood/very young adulthood. I hold in contempt any opinions advanced by any party or "side" that suggest that Brigham Young or Joseph Smith or any other Church leaders were racist. When those opinions suggest that the racism of the leaders was the actual reason for the Priesthood ban, I consider that a disloyal and contemptible opinion, one for which I have zero respect. We really, actually, truly did live before this life. We lived for a very long time, much longer than the history of this earth. During that time we made decisions, and we progressed (or failed to progress) based on those decisions. We had our agency, and we exercised that agency. Exactly how this inarguable truth might interface with the Priesthood ban, I do not know, nor do I believe anyone else knows. But to think that our premortal life/lives and our decisions made in our premortal history can have no bearing on our station in this life beggars the imagination. I have no interest in arguing about the Priesthood ban. Rather, I have an intense interest in arguing for and defending the integrity of the prophets. To chalk the Priesthood ban up to prophetic ignorance or racism or stupidity or any other antiChrist motive is, in my view, dishonorable and disloyal. I will speak up against such heretical statements when I can. If people want to think that makes me a racist, I welcome the false accusation, and believe it will be heaped on the heads of the false accusers. If you think to damn me for "racism", you damn yourselves for your false witness. * "Today, the Church disavows the theories advanced in the past that black skin is a sign of divine disfavor or curse, or that it reflects unrighteous actions in a premortal life; that mixed-race marriages are a sin; or that blacks or people of any other race or ethnicity are inferior in any way to anyone else."

Yeah, the US left has always been more supportive of violence to further their political goals. it's been brewing for quite some time amongst folks like your cube neighbor. Any guesses at what the last 4 years have done to these numbers? I doubt the conservatives and moderates have budged much.

Personally, I find this tremendously unconvincing. "I've got his arms, you can let go"? Not bloody likely (pardon the Brit vulgarity). I assume he had the guy in a rear naked choke, probably with his leg wrapped around the guy with one arm (probably the left) around his neck, inside of elbow to throat, forearm and biceps occluding the carotid arteries (or the jugular veins—same effect). In that situation, you can just ease up on the choke, allowing the guy to regain consciousness but able to put him right back to sleep should he pose a threat. That would be far more convincing to me as a possible juror that he didn't have to keep choking the guy than the fact that some random third guy said, "I got him! I have his arms pinned! You can just let go of him, because I got 'im! See? I'm pushing his arms into his side! I have his wrists! There's no possible way he could just easily push me off and twist out of my iron grip!" Uh, yeah, right, sure. People with no formal fight training or experience (thankfully, the vast majority of our population) are amazingly ignorant about very basic ideas of restraint. My son told me some funny stories about that topic, having to do with his wife and the effect of growing up in an all-girls family.

1. Being at ease with members believing different things on one topic or another is a matter of personal tolerance. The world or the Church isn't going to end just because members have differing views. In this topic, there are many more than just two "sides" also. 2. For this reason, I don't think it important that the covenant-keeping members unite on much more than the Lord and the choice to remain members of the Church on that basis.

https://apple.news/A9XDp0AmPRwegNBFlIDkmUw There is a bunch on $ in NCAA sports today. Football data: The biggest stars, guided by business mentors and school-provided financial advice, have cashed in. As of Aug. 29, On3 ranked Colorado quarterback Shedeur Sanders as the star of the current NIL market with a whopping $4.7 million valuation, including a sequel to his father's Nike deal. The site estimates that each of the 20 players at the top of its list are worth a minimum of $1 million. And by the same calculation, even the 100th-ranked athlete was worth $583,000. This will obviously bring some excitement to BYU basketball. I’ll be watching.

I've managed it a few times. In the '90's, I fought to learn how to forgive and love someone. I had to figure out how to do it while at the same time taking action that resulted in their excommunication and a 5 year prison sentence for their crimes. Dude hurt people close to me, in ways that land you in prison for 5-life. I honestly, without exaggeration or embellishment, figured out how to love him. It involved more than a little praying. Initially for the ability to love him, later specifically for him. It was sort of a 'climb mount everest' moment for me. Pretty easy to love all the other humans after that. No matter how they howl for my blood or the downfall of my nation or whatever. It's a thing that gets easier with practice. If you want another example of it being done, read what the Amish did to their serial killer: https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/liahona/2007/05/the-healing-power-of-forgiveness?lang=eng#p9

No, not all. Obviously, I cannot begin to know the hearts of other Latter-day Saints, let alone other Christians, but I believe that those who are active, believing Christians - those who actually study what the Lord taught - are, as I am, striving to have compassion for all - to love our enemies, bless them that curse us, do good to them that hate us, and pray for them which despitefully use us, and persecute us. Our success rates may vary, but I choose to believe that many Christians are trying. And I believe it because there is nothing unique in the universe, so if I'm trying, so is someone else - and there are people better at it than I am, and worse at it than I am. It's the way of things. Some of us really do believe in the virtue of compassion, not the superficial imitation of "allegiance with the like-minded". Speak for yourself. As above, I cannot be the only person who feels sorrow when even my "enemies" suffer. In part because, guess what - when they suffer, my Savior suffers.

Well, I just got done reading an article from The New Yorker. It started out decrying the violence Then she proceeds to go through a 2141 word article explaining why it was, I dunno... justified? Understandable? Reasonable? She never says. It wasn't enough to say, "This was the motive." She had to couch it in such a way as to make it all sympathetic. 2102 freaking words to garner sympathy for the shooter and even empathy for his motives. The only word of sympathy for the victim was in the quote above. 39 words for the man who left a wife and two children behind. I don't know the man. He could have just been a decent businessman who was doing his best to run the business and still offer the services needed. He may have been a Machiavellian villain who was doing everything he could to deny coverage so he could improve his bottom line. I don't know. But what I do know is that by the values that I've come to accept as a law-abiding citizen in the US, his death was cold-blooded murder. CNN gave a very forensic report of the killer's background. Not a word of sympathy for Thompson. Just a "hey, let's get to know the guy with the gun. He's from a rich family (hinting, hoping that he's a closet Republican). If it had been a schizophrenic homeless man just coming out of the subway, they would have been calling out racism. Oh, wait...

Their compassion is only for the people they deem worthy. In other words, they don't believe in the virtue of compassion, they believe in supporting those who share their values. And from my limited observations, they believe that anyone who opposes their values deserves brutal, violent destruction - sure not all of them are willing to be the one doing the destroying, but they wholeheartedly support someone doing it. I find it both disturbing and disappointing that they really don't see the hypocrisy of their attitudes. It does not bode well for the future, as such things usually spread and destroy before they collapse.

The Lord’s coming to earth was essential to the Father’s plan. There had to be a Savior, a Redeemer, a Great Mediator. Jesus told the Father, “Send me” because He loved God our Eternal Father and because He loved us.... The Lord Omnipotent, who reigneth, who was and is from all eternity to all eternity, descends from His most lofty position to the very lowliest—raising the poor out of the dust and the needy out of the dunghill. He descended below all, that all might be raised with Him and the Father. - David L. Frischknecht Thy mercy, O Lord, is in the heavens; and thy faithfulness reacheth unto the clouds. Thy righteousness is like the great mountains; thy judgments are a great deep: O Lord, thou preservest man and beast. How excellent is thy lovingkindness, O God! therefore the children of men put their trust under the shadow of thy wings. - Psalm 36:5-7

So why should the essay use what the scholars considered unreliable evidence or make an unsubstantiated declaration about Joseph Smith based on absence of proof? The essay is built on better scholarship than what you are proposing. But most significantly, you haven't provided the reliable evidence that Joseph denied black men the priesthood in practice (the ban), or that he started the practice.

There are supposed to be two or three years of them preaching before they're killed, right? Okay, I did a quick check. According to Gramps, Parley P. Pratt said, "John, in his 11th chapter of Revelations, gives us many more particulars concerning this same event. He informs us that, after the city and temple are rebuilt by the Jews, the Gentiles will tread it under foot forty and two months, during which time there will be two prophets continually prophesying and working mighty miracles. And it seems that the Gentile army shall be hindered from utterly destroying and overthrowing the city, while these two prophets continue. But, after a struggle of three years and a half, they at length succeed in destroying these two prophets, and then overrunning much of the city" We've got a little time still.

It's unfortunate that you have never experienced anyone (yourself included?) who showed compassion even for those who were their "enemies". (I keep putting "enemies" in quotes because some of us don't have daily interactions with people we would call enemies - people who aren't friends, people who dislike us, perhaps, but not really enemies. If we have those, they tend to be people far away, who don't know us personally - like terrorists or President Biden...)

Maybe they've caught up since 2008, but this has always stuck with me Hillsdale College's Imprimis, January 2008: There you have Canadian health care in a nutshell. After all, you can’t expect a G-7 economy of only 30 million people to be able to offer the same level of neonatal intensive care coverage as a town of 50,000 in remote, rural Montana. And let’s face it, there’s nothing an expectant mom likes more on the day of delivery than 300 miles in a bumpy twin prop over the Rockies. Everyone knows that socialized health care means you wait and wait and wait—six months for an MRI, a year for a hip replacement, and so on. But here is the absolute logical reductio of a government monopoly in health care: the ten month waiting list for the maternity ward.

This is all the nations from the north gathering in Syria. If two apostles take a trip to Israel soon, I'm bugging out, man!

Same. Best I can think of is this, which didn't involve too much nation-fighting-nation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Spring#Outcomes

I haven't seen anyone else posting about the pending war of Armageddon forming. I've only got bits and pieces. I'll try to write what I can. But it's all jumbled. Biden just gave money and supplies to Ukraine to build weapons of their own??? Russia is threatening nukes as a reaction. Russia received Assad. New Syrian Regime incursion into Russia Israel has been attacking Syria US attacks Syria Russia is attacking Syria Russia and Israel fighting each other over Syria. Iran??? I'm struggling to figure out how all this happened so suddenly and what precipitated everything. I'm also struggling to think of a time when there was so much international fighting in that region involving so many countries.

The Guardian (the who?) disagrees. Their sources say the numbers who justify violence are larger and they are on the other foot. There's no honest debate anymore. No one can be trusted for truth anymore. It's all ideological, not fact based. We only trust our own facts. We're now where we cannot trust each other anymore. We believe the other side to be evil and inhuman. Even the large majority who are still sane, they will easily be caught up in mob-mentality that pushes people to do great evils that they would never do on their own. It's happening. I'm glad I live where I do with a large ammo supply.

So, perhaps I could just take a moment and point out that even Mr. lets-get-rid-of-for-profit healthcare himself, when he has a choice between socialized and for-profit, choses the latter. I was discussing this stuff with my wife, who identifies as politically homeless. She had a suggestion which I find worthy of passing on to @Phoenix_person. You want socialized healthcare so much, pick a state and have them do it. Zero federal involvement/rules/money. All run completely by the state. If it's going to be so popular, surely it'll win over the residents of that state. I mean, we hear so much about the UK and Denmark, well, Cali's economy is larger than both I believe. It should be easy for them. Let's run the test and see how many CA house seats are lost after the next census.

It is my opinion that the real problem and threat in our society is that we do not know what to do with the mentally ill that are a danger to themselves and others. I sometimes (this as an example) think that we are unwilling to even attempt to deal with the mentally ill that are a danger to themselves and others. This unwillingness is demonstrated with the HIPAA laws and the obvious link between mental illness and self-medicating on top of both prescribed and unprescribed psychotropic drugs. And who knows what else is contributing to our youth (under age 25 that are still developing executive brain functions) turning into homicidal maniacs. In one day, our news sources are overwhelmed when we capture one and finally acquit someone that put himself at risk to stop one. And I wonder if some of our elected officials are among the self-medicating. The Traveler

BYU has a longer richer history of basketball. But we need to remember that during most of BYU’s history the Church membership was less than 2 million. Not until recently, beginning with Lavel Edwards (my lifetime), did BYU even have two consecutive winning seasons in football. The Traveler

Well, the reason why subways are not safe for her core constituency, maybe . . .

We'll see if it actually happens. If it does, I dearly hope AJ finds the BYU environment a good fit. I love BYU, flat out love it, but not everyone belongs there.

I had honestly felt that all the extremist (violent) antics were simply the fringe element of the Democratic Party. We all have them. Republicans also have volent fringe elements. I thought they were only a small percentage of the whole. The everyday people who have families, hold jobs, have a future don't actually participate in that activity. They're not going to think this is in any way justifiable. My cube-neighbor and this Ivy League kid just disabused me of that notion. My neighbor is an engineer like me. He is quite a bit older than I am. He is very level minded most of the time. And he is soft spoken. He seems perfectly harmless. He's even helped me with a few difficult problems over the past year. He doesn't seem hot-headed in any way. He's just an average Joe. He isn't an activist. He's never been to a political rally in his life. He's a family man. But he has completely filled his head with all the Democrat rhetoric that has piled up for the past 30 years. He flat out told me that if he met the UHC CEO, he might have done the deed, himself. And no jury would convict him of anything. Once someone buys into the idea that "rich = corrupt" they will inevitably support the ideas that my cube neighbor and Mangione subscribe to. And once they believe that murder is justifiable, they will be ok with murdering someone for themselves. I used to think otherwise. I used to think that people had to be in dire straits and unusual circumstances to be so brainwashed. I thought they were just the fringe elements. But I just don't see enough people from the left decrying this cold-blooded murder for what it is. A few have admitted it was a crime ... "but..." No. No "but". These things were not just "online rhetoric". These things were in real life in casual conversation. He made these statements of justification as if they were already agreed upon facts. It was a cold-blooded murder. And the fact that the left is (quietly) cheering this behavior disgusts me.

Unlike certain other individuals in the public eye, I don't try to hide my flaws or blame scapegoats. I admit issues I have, and recognize that while certain things hindered my decision-making at times I still made certain decisions and engaged in certain actions. I'm trying to slowly nudge my audience - which often includes the local schools via the Newspapers in Education program - to be better and not make my mistakes.

I wasn't planning to use this song, but I woke up with it in my head and it fits, so:

So, here is the first symptom of what I was talking about. So, we won the Senate. But did we, though?

If you look for evil, you'll find it... even with God. Let me give two parts to this specific situation. Part 1: Stoning Under Roman law, it was illegal to exercise capital punishment except for the capital crimes that the Romans deemed worthy of death. Adultery was not one of those laws. So, no Jew was allowed to stone a person for adultery under Roman rule. These "lawyers" wanted to trap Jesus into either denying the Law of Moses or breaking the Roman law. Jesus saw through their ruse and found a third path that did not deny the Law of Moses (which was still in force under Jewish tradition) while avoiding the penalty of the Roman law (it was not His time to die just yet). Part 2: The Gospel of Repentance Even after Moses led them across the Red Sea, the children of Israel were still of the mindset of being slaves in Egypt. Just as abuse victims somehow want to be with the abuser again (the details of which I won't go into) the Israelites wanted to return to being slaves. "At least with Pharoah we had food." They were so used to being slaves that they didn't even think about growing food themselves as free people. Their mentality was messed up. The old Soviet Union died. Yet many of the elderly who knew nothing else felt like they had lost something. They yearned for their masters to return. I recall interviews where they said, "We used to have food every day. But then these capitalists came to power and we have to work a full day to eat." Yes, welcome to freedom. You are responsible for you. But the slave mindset is strong in ancient times as it is today. **************************************** The Law of Moses was not just a spiritual law. It contained secular laws. It contained liturgical directives (like the two cloths thing). It contained guidance on social order. It was couched as an all-or-nothing mindset because that is what slaves would understand. The hope was that through practice, many of them would actually pick up on the Spirit of those laws. Some few did. Most did not. Each apostasy of the OT (and there were many that were not of the typical "dispensations" that we think of) began with the idea that we should forgive and show mercy. But they fell into apostasy. It was not just "a few people who went inactive". It was the bulk of the people who fully apostatized into idolatry. When the Prophets applied the law more strictly, they fell in line. But when there was more mercy, they tended to fall away again. When Christ was born, they still had people who had that slave mindset. They complained, but were content with their Roman masters. They were an enslaved people who would want to crucify a man for saying, "Hey, it would be really great if we were all nice to each other." But even so, there was a large minority of the chosen people who were looking for the Lord's promises to be fulfilled. It was these people that the Lord was speaking to. To these people who were ready, these happy, longing, few... He taught the gospel of repentance, forgiveness, judgment, mercy, & faith. They were ready. They received it with full hearts. They were of a critical mass that could preserve Christianity into the next era and even continue a diminished form of it throughout the great apostasy. And it barely survived as it was. Then there was the great restoration. And it barely survived as it was. After multiple attempts to exterminate the Mormons (both officially and unofficially) we survived by the Grace of God. Here were a bunch of people who were peaceful, law-abiding, family oriented, industrious, G-d-fearing people who improved every settlement that they lived in. Yet people wanted to exterminate them just as they wanted to crucify Christ. That is still the kind of world we live in still today. Yes, there are times to be strict and even harsh. Other times, we want to be merciful. Wouldn't it be great if we always knew which to apply at any given time? While we may or may not do our best to figure out which to apply at the appropriate times, the Lord knows the end from the beginning. And He always knows which way is best. For us to sit here and Monday morning quarterback and second guess every play of the game is highly disrespectful to the Lord. It shows a complete lack of faith. And we display tremendous ignorance and pride to think that we know better than G-d.

I was a reservist, so I was never eligible for Tricare without paying in. Currently, my UHC-administered VA coverage is my only health insurance. It's not ideal. But insurance-related headaches aren't exactly unique to military plans. It's just a different flavor of headaches for us.

"I’m sure it comes as no surprise, but the differences between men and women can often be quite striking—physically and mentally, as well as emotionally. One of the best ways I can think of to illustrate this is in the way my wife and I cook a meal. "When Harriet prepares a meal, it’s a masterpiece. Her cuisine is as wide-ranging as the world, and she frequently prepares dishes from countries we have visited. The presentation of the food is awe inspiring. In fact, it often looks so beautiful that it seems a crime to eat it. It’s as much a feast for the eyes as it is for the sense of taste. "But sure enough, no matter how perfect everything is, looks, and tastes, Harriet will apologize for something she thinks is imperfect. 'I’m afraid I used a touch too much ginger, she will say, or, 'Next time, I think it would be better if I used a little more curry and one additional bay leaf.' "Let me contrast that with the way I cook. For the purpose of this talk, I asked Harriet to tell me what I cook best. "Her answer: fried eggs. "Sunny-side up. "But that isn’t all. I have a specialty dish called Knusperchen. The name may sound like a delicacy you might find at an exclusive restaurant. Let me share with you how to make it. You cut French bread into small slices and toast them twice. "That is the recipe! "So, between fried eggs, even when they are greasy, and Knusperchen, even when they are burned, when I cook, I feel pretty heroic. "Perhaps this contrast between my wife and me is a slight exaggeration, but it illustrates something that may extend beyond preparing meals." Dieter F. Uchtdorf, Happiness, Your Heritage

I see what drinking alcohol does to people. Someone said paraphrased: It has everything against it and nothing for it. We do not know why do not drink coffee, but I believe the Word of Wisdom revelation. I believe I will be blessed for following these commandments. Millions who followed the Word of Wisdom have also been saved from the plague of Fentanyl, that has killed over 150,000 people in America in recent years from what I read. Fentanyl has been laced into many recreational drugs and it kills people.

I’m so sorry bro.

That makes sense if he were truly neutralized. But if he's faking it and using it as a ruse to get Penny to let go... That is where it gets murky to me. How would Penny know if he was faking it or if he was truly neutralized. Keep in mind that the hold he was using was meant to incapacitate, not kill. But it appeared taht through the struggle and by way of adrenaline, his hold was just a bit off and may have been more deadly than he intended. And we still don't know if that was the cause of death. The drugs and other medical conditions were contributory -- conditions that Penny would not have had knowledge of. If we're supposed to allow for the presumption of innocence, we have to allow that Penny did his best to subdue a person who (as far as he knew) was perfectly healthy, strong, and willing and able to impose violence on others. What I can say as a layperson (which is what the jurors should be) based on all that I've seen, aside from the racial hoopla from Bragg's team, this case had no merit. And the jury apparently agreed with me in the end.

Deadly force was certainly justified as long as he posed an immediate threat. But if you neutralize the threat *without* deadly force, and he remains neutralized . . . You don’t get to (for example) wait 5 minutes and then say “you know what? I want a Mulligan. He might wake up, so I’m just gonna shoot him now.” I want to tread softly, because I don’t know whether (or how many times) Neely regained consciousness after first being knocked out and I’ve never been in an altercation like that and I’m sure the decision-making process starts looking very different when the adrenaline is flowing. But if it’s true that someone was saying “I’ve got his arms, you can let go”, and if it’s true that they made it to the next station and had every opportunity to evacuate the train car . . . It’s just hard for me to justify a continued chokehold after that point.

Funny, my VA plan is administered by UHC...

Ahh, thank you. I didn’t think about that

The other day I had a brief encounter with a guy and his four year old son. In that brief encounter I witnessed how absolutely terrible of a parent he must be in how he treated his son. I knew it wasn't a unique experience because it didn't faze the child at all. Afterwards I got to thinking how likely it was that that child would grow up to be just like his father and how his father likely grew up in a similar situation. And I wondered about how could this life be a fair test for them. It's true they still have their agency but so much of who we are is shaped by people and external forces that we have zero control over. The only answer I could come up with is twofold. First that we only see an extremely small snippet of a person's existence and second how infinite and eternal the atonement of Jesus Christ truly is. Somehow everything will turn out more than fair and we will all acknowledge that God is perfectly just and merciful. I know that explanation doesn't tie everything up in a nice bow but if it did faith would not be as important as it is. There is a reason why Joseph Smith taught one of the three things necessary to have faith in God is "A correct idea of his character, perfections and attributes." So much rides on that knowledge.

Your thought reminds me of this verse that I have pondered a lot. It goes against the grain of the idea that using "fear" is a bad thing. Mormon 9: 27, "O then despise not, and wonder not, but hearken unto the words of the Lord, and ask the Father in the name of Jesus for what things soever ye shall stand in need. Doubt not, but be believing, and begin as in times of old, and come unto the Lord with all your heart, and work out your own salvation with fear and trembling before him." (emphasis mine) Not just fear, but with trembling. I, personally, think the verse is correlated with the following passage of scripture as specified by Jesus, Matthew 10: 28, "And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell." (emphasis mine). God is a God of his word, and no amount of whaling and gnashing of teeth is going to change the firm decree of a just and loving God.

This is a fiction. The Old Testament's Jehovah is not cruel. Unlike basically all of the pagan gods, Jehovah expected His people to be like Him—kind, patient, loving, generous.

This is cherry picking. Or it shows you haven't actually read the OT. A parent loves his children (as a desire and sentiment for good to be in their lives and for them to gain Eternal Life) whether they are behaving well or not. A parent loves his children when he needs to punish them and correct them. Yet there were many instances of God's mercy being abundant in the OT. Adam and Eve were cast out of the Garden. But He gave them coats of skins. He gave them the Law of Sacrifice. He gave them a plan to work out their repentance. While the flood took most of the earth, He showed mercy to Noah and his family because they were righteous. When the Israelites were enslaved by an unfamiliar Pharoah, He gave them a deliverer who provided manna in the wilderness and water from a rock. When cursed with serpents, He provided them a miraculous way to be healed. He gave Hannah a son who was faithful to her and to the Lord. He gave Abraham blessings and an everlasting covenant for his faithfulness. Ruth and Boaz were united in a fairy tale romance. Daniel and his friends were preserved in the midst of a hostile takeover of the nation. They were even raised in the King's court because of the Lord's blessings. He gave them a promise of a Messiah. The Widow of Zarapeth was blessed twice by a Prophet of God. As Israel returned to their homeland, they were given a king (Cyrus) who freed them from slavery and would allow them to openly practice their religion in peace. He saved entire groups of people to live the gospel in its fulness (Lehites, Mulekites, Jaredites). It's easy to say that He was always fire and brimstone. But that is because you haven't actually read the OT. And if you compare (supposedly) 4000 years of OT history with 100 yrs of NT history, you're getting a skewed view. Because of wickedness, the power of the Priesthood was taken away from the earth. And the world endured over 1000 years of darkness. And then we also have the Book of Revelation.

We have a little description mentioned in the Book of Mormon (1 Nephi 11). ... she was exceedingly fair and white. ... most beautiful and fair above all other virgins.

Oh of course, I obviously include myself. it’s the human condition, and last time I checked, my transformation to Kryptonian is still in process. 😜

I think the days of the church taking a hardline stance on controversial or sensitive issues, like insisting that the origin of the priesthood ban came from God and expecting the members to all accept that, are over. Today the idea seems to be to allow for diversity of thought and for people to pretty much believe whatever they want to if it keeps them in the boat. The church is in a tough spot on this issue because anything that can be construed as racial prejudice is completely taboo in our society today. There's little to be gained for the church in trying to provide a doctrinal defense for the legitimacy of the ban, now that it has been lifted for over 40 years. It's much easier to just say that none of the previous explanations are considered doctrine today, that church doesn't consider dark skin to be a sign of divine disfavor today, or that interracial marriage is wrong today and leave it at that. I don't think the intent of the essay was to provide good scholarship and fully address the issue at all. I think the original intended purpose was to provide an answer for people who are deeply troubled by the ban and having a faith crisis over it. The essay made no attempt to provide all of the relevant information about the ban and to thoroughly address it. The goal appears to have been to give those who find the ban deeply disturbing the ability to write it off as mistaken policy that was the result of unjustified cultural prejudice in society at large, while also leaving room for those who believe that the ban was from God to continue to believe that as well. I don't know why you keep pressing me for this. I said I will provide it in a separate post soon, and I will. I just need a little bit of time to track down links for the original sources so people can verify the information for themselves. I want to do my due diligence. Please be patient. I'll provide the information soon.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wouldn't_It_Be_Good This song is basically my life. People forget that even on a "good" day I'm in constant dull pain due to all of the injuries I've racked up, and that I lost over half my life to undiagnosed mental health issues. A big part of what I do write is me explaining to people that my life isn't always something to be emulated, and that sometimes I'm a warning rather than an example.

1. The United States Military's health care system. 2. The United States Veterans Administration's health care system. Both are *synonymous* with malpractice, malfeasance, and bad faith. In the case of the former, I'm one of the untold number of people who experienced gross malpractice at the hands of the military health care system, the result of abysmal treatment I received at the tender age of 8. I was left with life-altering injuries as a result of what happened, but at the time we were *openly lied to* by officials who told us that since the military = the US government it was *literally illegal for us to try and sue*. Between the medical episode in question and the aftermath, I stopped being a child within a single week. In the case of the latter, people actually died because the VA kept playing ping-pong with their appointments in order to meet arbitrary numbers for clearances. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Veterans_Health_Administration_controversy . I'm in a military town, and you can still see the occasional person noting how the VA gives veterans a second chance to die for their country.

My wife made that same point once. I replied by telling her that she was being irrational and that she needed to calm down.

I can't find it, which suggests it wasn't a GC talk, but I remember someone talking about Jeremiah 16:16 and saying that as the second coming approaches, our missionary work will change from fishing (which back then consisted of casting in a net and pulling out lots of fish at once) to hunting (going after people one at a time). IMO, this is the reason for slow growth - we're having to hunt for the lost sheep, one by one, rather than casting in a net and bringing back many.