Just_A_Guy

My FIL says he heard on Ted Cruz’s podcast that Cruz is accusing Mitt Romney of having talked an individual LDS church leader into going rogue and making the announcement on behalf of the entire church without authorization. Can anyone confirm if Cruz is actually saying this?

I have little to day about Disney other than 1). I recently saw some graphs of Disneyland/Disney World ride wait times and relative down times. The figures for the last two years—and the underlying trend—were not pretty. 2). Disney Cruise Line recently unveiled its fifth ship, and made much of the primarily-female design team. The result is a departure from much of the tradition and style of the earlier ships, and reviews have been . . . ambiguous. I did want to respond to this, though: I agree with the overall tenor, but remarks like this make me wonder how far we’ve already gone. What would Moses, or Nephi, or Brigham Young or Spencer Kimball think about a story of boozy potty-mouthed solders cockily practicing to kill others, where the hero is a serial fornicator who is caught in the act (yet again!) by the teenaged daughter of the object of his seduction? Is a ten-second cameo of the two mothers of an animated hero really THAT much worse than what we’ve already acclimated ourselves to? (I’m not saying this by way of excusing the rise of LGBTQ tolerance; I’m saying that a) we (myself included) probably haven’t locked our homes down nearly tightly enough; and b) we are already pretty well acclimated to what previously would have been considered a horrifying degree of sociological moral rot.)

It’s a day for surprises. You never thought you’d agree with @The Folk Prophet about being suspicious of corporations; and I never thought you’d agree with me about the desirability of a form of Christian nationalism gaining political hegemony in the USA. But on your first point: I think progressives and conservatives/libertarians actually agree that it’s right to be suspicious of corporations. Adam Smith even wrote: People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices…. The difference is, progressives tend to want to empower government to push back against this trend via regulation; whereas free-marketers generally believe such efforts are destined to be largely futile because corporate interests will simply hijack the regulatory apparatus in order to feather their own nests while squelching competition. Thus, Smith continued, But though the law cannot hinder people of the same trade from sometimes assembling together, it ought to do nothing to facilitate such assemblies, much less to render them necessary.

I hope that this spectacle buries the “sovereign citizen” defense once and for all. That said: “the judge outright told me I was evil after conviction, and she may well have been thinking that pre-conviction” is a heckuva grounds for an appeal.

It probably wouldn’t have become a “ward” in the first place. I believe there are certain benchmarks for the number of worthy priesthood holders in an area in order to get authorization to upgrade a “group” into a “branch”, or a “branch” into a “ward”, or to split a ward.

In general terms, “exercising the birthright” meant the same thing it meant in ancient times: one was shouldered with the primary responsibility to care for the temporal and spiritual welfare of the rest of the family; and one was granted the material resources necessary to do that work. Non-Ephraimites who convert and join the Church join in the covenant blessings and responsibilities of Ephraim by virtue of the covenants they make through baptism, priesthood ordination, and temple rites. That’s a huge part of the “gathering” process President Nelson is so fond of talking about. We’re all fundamentally doing the same work; though (and this is something I recently learned, and with contours that I’m still exploring) we may have differing tribal legacies that lead us to go about that work in subtly different ways. Regarding right of priesthood as outlined in the various sections of the D&C: no, a holder of the Aaronic priesthood is not necessarily a literal descendant or Aaron or a Levite. Now, there is an ideal that priesthood should be passed from father to son; and some of the scriptures you cite reiterate that idea. And a literal descendant of Aaron following the firstborn lineage could (subject to worthiness and the Lord’s will—see, eg, D&C 121:34-46) claim the right of head of the Aaronic Priesthood (ie, presiding bishop of the LDS Church), just as could be done anciently. Arguably they could also claim the priesthood office [as distinct from the ecclesiastical office] of bishop as well. But, the Aaronic Priesthood is always subject to the “higher” Melchizedek Priesthood (if you want to get super pedantic, all priesthood is technically Melchizedek; but the Aaronic Priesthood is a sort of subset of the Melchizedek Priesthood that concerns itself primarily with temporal matters and the lesser spiritual rituals). Someone holding the office of a high priest in the Melchizedek Priesthood acting under direction of the proper “keyholders” has all the priesthood prerogative and authority that someone holding the office of a bishop in the Aaronic priesthood has; that’s the point that 68:19 makes—one can be ordained to the priesthood and ecclesiastical offices of “bishop” without being a lineal descendant of Aaron (ie, a Levite) so long as one is also ordained as a high priest. D&C 107:76 suggests that a Levite who finds himself serving in the ecclesiastical office of a bishop could do so without the assistance of counselors, although—as someone once pointed out to me—it’s hard to imagine any bishop wanting to do that.

Fortunately, it’s only the other guys who are political. Our side is just telling the truth, which some cretins are too unenlightened to accept.

I had half-wondered since 2008 whether the church’s political involvement on the issue was less about making a difference socially/politically and more about making our stance crystal clear. Amish folks don’t have to register for the draft, because their faith’s stance on non-violence is well-known. Maybe in time we will need a similar accommodation, both individually and for the church as an institution. There are a lot of folks out there greedily rubbing their hands together and fantasizing about what they could do with the Church’s (formerly) $100+ billion war chest if only the Church’s tax-exempt status could be revoked . . . That said, the proggies generally and LGBTQ advocates in particular have a very long tradition of promising us that they would never do something—and then doing it anyways. (The “law of merited impossibility”, as I believe Rod Dreher has called it.) Like Vort, I am fundamentally left only with the faith that the Church’s leaders are being divinely guided and that the Lord (if not the leaders themselves) know what they’re doing.

Ugh. As I think I’ve mentioned a few times, I work as legal counsel to DCFS/CPS in my state. This was very much over-the-line, even by my standards.

One other approach to the problem in the OP would be to tell the relative: “If you find another apartment, I’ll front the deposit for you—just give me the landlord’s contact info and I’ll send them a check.” It’s a bigger up-front investment, but has a clearly defined cutoff; and it leaves the risk/cost of eviction (which is messier and slower than ever these days) in the hands of someone else).

In the olden days of the internet, probably not; because the internet was likened to a public forum. Twitter pre-Musk had been censoring—err, curating—its content so heavily (especially in the last five years) that it could be argued Twitter has created an expectation among users that tweets that make it through their censors are accurate (blech!). But then again, pretty much everyone knows that Musk is basically trying to turn back the clock on Twitter and restore it to “public forum” status. So . . . yeah. Frankly, given all these reports about how overvalued Twitter is—when all is said and done, even if someone sued them and won, Twitter may well turn out to be judgment-proof.

I met an Issachar once.

My speculation is that there’s been so much tribal intermarriage that at this point ethnicity no longer really correlated with tribal affiliation—everyone has some of everything. This may be less the case with Ephraim and Manasseh, as mentioned above; but even then—me, my wife, and my second kid are all Ephraimite, but my oldest is from Manasseh. So here again, tribal affiliation seems to be less an issue of ethnicity/ descent/ bloodline than of covenant and/or adoption.

I’ve seen it done in times of emergency. But generally speaking . . . Contrary to what many folks will tell you, homelessness (at least in the US) is not merely an inevitable product of poverty. It is usually (not always, but usually) a product of poverty in conjunction with deeply antisocial behaviors (generally a result of untreated mental illness, drug use, or some combination of the two). I’ve worked with people who had stayed at The Road Home or other shelters in the Wasatch Front. The things they encountered at those shelters were horrifying. Drugs were rampant, physical violence and sexual assault were not uncommon, and filth was uncontrollable. On the whole, I’d rather take my kids to church at a maximum security prison than a homeless shelter—the security is better, prison inmates are held to a higher behavioral standard, and they face more rigorous displinary procedures.

Random tangent: Is it just me, or do D. Todd Christofferson and Merrick Garland look an awful lot alike?

I hope you won't mind my posting here, the same thoughts I posted in reply to your PM: Yeah, I have mixed feelings. One doesn't want to be unnecessarily doom-and-gloom--you've frequently (and rightly) pointed out that materially, humankind is better off now than at any point in history and that certain key indicators of (for lack of a human term) "human misery" are on the long-term decline. It's easy to poke fun at the doomsayers; particularly the mainline Christians who have literally been anticipating the Second Coming (and all the horrors that precede it) for the last two thousand years. And I don't have a lot of patience for people who try to associate Biblical prophecies/the antiChrist/etc with any particular modern individual, institution, or event--from a mainline Christian point of view, I see no compelling evidence as to why the "End Times" might not be another thousand years away. On the other hand--I'm not a mainline Christian, I'm a Latter-day Saint; and we have some unique scriptures and prophesies that do suggest that tough times are ahead and that they will probably find us sooner rather than later. And frankly, I feel like there are some cultural foundation stones that are necessary for a democratic republic to survive and thrive in the long term (e.g. civility, honesty, commitment, rule of law, work ethic/discipline, sexual probity, tolerance for and a modicum of trust towards people who think differently than ourselves, free exchange of ideas, rationalism/the scientific method, willingness to sacrifice, thinking and planning for the long term, trustworthy institutions and a populace willing to trust those institutions, et cetera). And I do think that most of those foundation stones are rapidly eroding away. I see the pre-Trump Republican Party as one of the last institutional bastions pushing back against that trend; and Trump pretty much eviscerated all of the GOP's credibility on those issues. I don't see the GOP getting that credibility back even if they wanted to--and many of Trump's supporters frankly don't seem to care if they get it back or not. What does it matter if the modern GOP happens to be "right" on the economy, if a) by the time they're back in power a full-blown economic catastrophe is under way and b) they're wrong about everything else?

Agreed.

Well, let's not get over-dramatic . . .

I (perhaps erroneously) understood Backroads as talking about a type of Facebook group where “needy” parents are soliciting others to buy gifts for their kids and get really persnickety about what kinds of gifts are or aren’t acceptable (“Oh nooo, darling; the base model AirPods aren’t enough for my little Tommy; he needs the AirPods Pros.”)

Being a “giving” person is not, in and of itself, a virtue. Being a helping person is a virtue. Giving in a way that does not help is not virtuous. It just makes one a schmuck, or a poser. IMHO you are 100% right to want to ensure that your giving is actually helpful.

As I understand it, the “blacks are the REAL Hebrews” bit is part and parcel of black supremacy. I don’t know anything about this particular player, and don’t have a huge amount of knowledge about the book he linked to. But I have no problem, in principle, with a private association/employer setting terms of behavior/participation on its members/employees, including terms that are intended solely to preserve the “good name” of the association/employer (however the organization chooses to define “good name”). And if the book is as odious as most other black supremacist stuff I’ve read, I have no problem with NBA players being sanctioned for using their influence to help give it legs.

Agreed. My overall synthesis of President Kimball’s teachings on marriage is: “Marriage is hard. Any two good, committed people with similar values can make a marriage work. But, some things tend to make marriage harder than it needs to be. You will probably find yourself in a more successful marriage if you select a mate in such a way as will minimize potential misunderstandings, conflicts, and trials down the road—particularly when you are vetting a potential mate with whom misunderstandings, conflicts, and trials are not only foreseeable but likely.”

Surprising exactly no one, Archuleta has now told People Magazine that he is “stepping away” from his religion. I’m disinclined to link; but Google and ye shall find.

Oh, good gravy, no. 🙂

I wonder if the distinction between the gift of the Holy Ghost and the power of the Holy Ghost is apposite here. I’ve had times in my life where I felt I had an inspired warning, even though I was quite sure I wasn’t living up to my covenants in one way or another (occasionally, a rather grievous way). And take non-members, who can have the power but not the gift of the Holy Ghost. General Eisenhower made some tactical decisions during WW2 that may well have been “inspired”; but he was also carrying on an extramarital affair at the time. So was he truly inspired (in spite of his sins) by a divine Being who was interested in the outcome of the war? Or was he just lucky? Isaiah seems to suggest that Nebuchadnezzar, for all his personal sins, was still acting at the Lord’s behest . . . Our doctrine is clear that unrepented sin nullifies the gift of the Holy Ghost. But I’m not so sure that it builds an impenetrable wall between the sinner and the power of the Holy Ghost (though, naturally, I fully agree that a sinful lifestyle makes it far more likely that we will be deceived into accepting spurious “revelations” as legitimate).