Why Mormons Love Multi-Level Marketing: The Celestial Kingdom

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It's a complicated place, this Mormon version of heaven, but what most non-Mormon's don't know about it is that men get to have more than one wife in the Celestial Kingdom. This is a pretty good deal for men who were cheated out of plural marriages by the pesky laws of the US Government not all that long ago.

Mitts Grandfather took the family to Mexico to escape those laws which is why you'll never hear Mitt tell heartwarming stories about his grandfather. It's as if Mitt has no ancestors at all. But he has his money to keep him warm (at least his money that isn't staying warm in the Cayman Islands where it's sheltered from taxes. as if taxes were much of a problem for Mitt, at 15% or less).  But he can still look forward to that big polygamous family in the sky, once he dies.

One of the strange things about that Multi-Level Celestial Kingdom Mormons believe in is it seems to breed a fondness for all kinds of multi-level marketing schemes. Some of them turn out to be semi-legit and some of them turn out to be as bogus as chain letters, but if you're a Mormon and a fellow Mormon is selling you some load of crap, you're likely to buy. Why? Because he has a Temple recommend, that's why.

Mitt's a Mormon and Mormonism Is a Great Business Plan: Food for Thought

Mormonism is a successful religion precisely because it's a business that requires total belief in a paternalistic dogma. Big Daddies are at the top. Mommies are in the kitchen popping out babies and children fall in line to do their share based on their gender. Chores are gender specific and so are rewards at home and in the Church. As it is on earth so it is in Heaven. Heaven is as hierarchical as the Church. There are in the Mormon version of heaven actual levels. And yes they do wear magic underwear and believe in Baptism for the dead. I'm fairly sure my atheist and rabidly anti-Mormon mother was, once dead, delivered unto the Lord to some inferior level of Heaven in one of the Temple back rooms by my friend's well-meaning doddering once polygamous mother in one of those mass baptisms for the dead by the good women of the Relief Society. It's confusing I know. I don't exactly know how to make it simpler. You die. They snatch your soul. That's about it. My feeling is, once I'm dead, I'm dead. I don't believe in any of that shit so I don't care what they do. But, oddly, my mother did. If you're Catholic and you die, your family probably cares a whole bunch. If souls represent gold, is this a Ponzi Scheme?

Another way to grow the tithing population of the congregation is to convert the heathens. Up until the 1970s Mormons didn't admit black folks to the Priesthood, so the darker skinned natives of the world's peoples were off limits. They loved them on the college football teams but not in the Church. That was becoming a bit of an embarrassment once the Civil Rights movement was on the front page of even the Deseret News and playing on KSL's nightly news. Even in Salt Lake you couldn't avoid seeing it, no matter how hard you tried. So finally the Big Daddy at the tippy top of the Church's hierarchy had a "Revelation" from God that the dark folk were no longer unworthy of Priesthood and should be gone after by missionaries all the lands of the earth where the dark folk live. I kid you not. It's a strange, strange, "Religion." Tithing is not optional. Neither is joblessness. Even kids tithe 10% of their allowance. Mormonism is a money maker. Money's colorblind. That was the real "revelation."

Every boy who comes of age in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints doesn't first serve his Country in the Military - not without a fight from his family and his Bishop. Oh no, he serves his Religion on a Mission first, then he goes to college. And a wealthy family like the Romneys sees this service to Church a final and fitting method of Service with a capital S (even if this service is done in France in a fancy-pants setting). It's odd to me how the men who are the biggest blood-thirsty fans of war and torture are the ones who never went to war and have sons who haven't enlisted.

I love my Mormon neighbors. They are kind neighborly people who, if I asked for the name of a good handyman would hook me up or offer to help me.  They are plugged in, in the know, and well organized. If we had an earthquake, they'd be the ones with the plan. the shelter, the supplies...  They'd probably even try to rescue me. They're that kind of people when you've lived next door to them forever even if you are a heathen and a recluse.

Happy Fiftieth Anniversary Tom

I know I'm late in writing this, but I've had to think about it. It's still incomplete.

We began our relationship fucking like bunnies. Glad I wasn't the fertile kind. We spent our fiftieth anniversary talking quietly about politics and family. I remember once in our on again/ off again relationship suggesting that if we were still together ten years later, we get married. Thank god we never did that. We probably wouldn't be half so happy to see each other now.

I've been wondering how many times I left you. Was it fifty? I got so good at it when we lived up Emigration Canyon I could bag all my possessions in minutes and leave while you were reading the paper or playing the guitar. I imagined the only sign you had I was leaving was the screech of my tires as I peeled out of the driveway.  I hadn't been diagnosed bipolar then, but I certainly was. I did try to talk to you about the things missing from our relationship that made me so desperately unhappy, but you didn't really hear me. Or if you did, you didn't seem to care.

The best thing you did for me was give me the confidence to inhabit my body, to enjoy my sexuality.

The worst thing you did was not being receptive to reading what I wrote. You once read a letter I wrote to you and your only comment was, "nice handwriting." What a condescending fuck you were. It's only now, now that you're so far away and the words are printed for everyone else to read, you read me. And yet, I was your audience...  Of course you're talented.  Of course I loved hearing you play. You are the best.  But why couldn't you read me?  The lack of reciprocation was ...  still is ...  painful.

But of course I love you.  You are more my family than any member of my "real" family every was.  I will always love you.  I will always want to see you when you're near.  Happy Anniversary Tom.

It's Just Another Winter Day

No Black Friday Tasing or Pepper Spray was used in the making of my peaceful winter Sunday. It is merely the 25th of December to me.

I'm not a Christian so it makes no more sense for me to celebrate Christmas than it would for me to celebrate Hanukkah, not being Jewish. Do I wish everyone I meet on the street Happy Hanukkah? Do you? Does every greeter at Wall-Mart? The only significance to this particular day to me is an outworn convention I can't shake kinda like a tick. I get a call from an old friend and we trade holiday well wishes. I guess it's harmless. The best thing about the 25th of December is the lengthening of the days.

But I can't leave the subject of the birth of Jesus Christ without wondering what he'd think of the way Christians celebrate his birthday. What's up with the Pagan "Christmas Tree" and the Black Friday shopping stampedes that result in trampling of children, of guns and tasers and pepper spray being pulled and used by shoppers bent on being the first to get at that X, Y, Or X bargain worth sleeping out over night for, worth nearly dying for, worth nearly killing for? It all seems awfully far from the spirit of Christianity.

The best stories of the season have been the ones of people helping the homeless, feeding the hungry, sheltering others from the cold and sharing what little we have in times of scarcity. The Occupy movement has embodied this impulse to share. The riot police with their billy clubs and rubber bullets, their pepper spray and the relish with which they use it have represented the power of the one percent. It kind of looks like Christ in humble clothing on one side and the power of a hostile state with all its money and might on the other. "Dirty hippies" on one side and the Police and Wall Street and Mayor Bloomberg on the other. Who could imagine from this tiny band of dirty hippies a national movement would grow?

Walk Like a Model

I used to do these exercises when I was a kid to get in shape for ski season, so I never understood how hard they were for the teenaged girls I tried to teach to walk like a model. They were second nature for me. Stand against a wall with your back pressed from upper spine to tailbone into the wall.  Then slowly walk your feet out from the wall, keeping your spine pressed to the wall so that there is no space from shoulders to tailbone, as you make yourself the shape of a kitchen chair without the kitchen chair beneath you.  Then hold it until you feel the burn. Keep your spine pressed into the wall all the way down and your stomach flat. Keep your shoulders back and down. Hold it. Hold it. Hold it....

The easy version of this is to lie on the floor with your legs bent, roll your pelvis forward, press your spine into the floor from just below shoulder blades to tailbone, tighten your stomach muscles, then slowly lower your legs to a straight position while keeping your spine pressed into the floor and your stomach muscles tight. Hold it. Hold it. Hold it until you think you can't another second. Sounds so easy doesn't it.  Then repeat several times. And do it several times a day for days on end until it's second nature and you can do it standing against the wall and you can do it walking. Then that's the way you always walk.  Keep your neck long, shoulders back and down, back straight, pelvis rolled forward, stomach flat, lead with the hips...

If you do yoga it probably is easy. If you ski it probably is. If you model it probably is. It's why at fifteen modeling was so easy for me and was into my fifties.  But a couple of bad sports injuries and one backyard fall in my mid-fifties plus taking care of my mother put me out of my profession permanently and now my back is killing me.

I have Lumbar Stenosis. Now the exercises I have to do at physical therapy are some of the same exercises I used to give to teenagers who wanted to learn to walk like a model. And every muscle in my lower back, inner thighs, and stomach is screaming in pain. It never occurred to me that the poor little girls were in agony trying to roll their pelvises forward enough to get their spines flat against the floor to hold that posture long enough to strengthen their gut muscles enough to hold that posture in an upright position.  I have the advantage in that my body has the sense memory of this posture.  I know how to roll my pelvis forward, straighten my spine, hold my gut in, and walk like a model. I never realized before how hard it is. God it hurts.

Medicare"Advantage" and the Insurance Companies

Once again I feel the need to repost to remind you that you do not need to listen to the insurance companies or their shill AARP when it comes to "Medicare Advantage Plans." Please listen to me. There is no "advantage" when it comes to "Advantage Plans."

Dear Insurance Companies,
There is no place for you in our well-functioning Medicare program. Medicare is the public option we want to give the rest of the populace, since you have so horribly abused them with your sky high monthly premiums and your policy of questioning every doctor visit, test, referral to a specialist, or procedure. And who makes these decisions to question every possible charge? Low-level phone-bank bean-counters make these decisions to get between the consumers and their doctors at your direction. How is this better than Medicare? Medicare has never questioned a single decision my doctors and I have made together to manage my healthcare needs. When I had private insurance every decision made by my doctors and me was at first denied, and then had to be negotiated by functionaries with no medical credentials or expertise at the big impersonal insurance company and my doctors office, driving up costs by requiring the hiring of new staff to deal with all the denials of coverage or medicine or referral or procedure or hospitalization. My doctors hate you bastards. So do I. We want you out of the only public option we have. And we are confused about how the hell you insinuated yourself into Medicare in the first place. You are now, once again, driving up costs for all of us. And we are, so far, just the low-income elderly and the disabled. You are everything that is wrong with our economy. Your greed knows no bounds. Your disregard for our well-being is nothing short of criminal negligence. You must be expelled from Medicare before you take it over completely and there isn't even a public option for the neediest and most at-risk disabled among us. You represent a cancer in the system. We need to cut you out before you turn this country into a poor third-world nation with no health care coverage for anyone but the wealthiest few.

I have had a long and detailed conversation with my medicare information personnel and I have been assured that there is no "advantage" in your "Medicare Advantage programs." We do not need you at all. But your dishonest advertising makes most of our citizens believe that they do need one of the "Medicare Advantage" programs being so aggressively pushed on us from every source. You have the money to push this program. The government run medicare program does not advertise. That would raise costs to all of us. The government run medicare program does not solicit over the phone or in mailings. That would raise costs to all of us. Why do you have the money to push your "Medicare Advantage" plans? Because you, in the private sector, have raised rates every few months just because you can. Because you have denied coverage for "pre-existing conditions." Because you have doubled premiums in a single month once a diagnosis has been made that will require surgery and ongoing treatment. You are bloodsuckers at best. Get out of Medicare. You offer no "Advantage" and cost all of us a great deal more than our modest public option does.

Happy Holidays!

This was last years Thanksgiving post: How prescient am I!? I didn't know we had the 99 percent then as a movement but we all should have. So, eat your turkey and have your little dinner time squabbles because it seems nothing much changes as long as the same old turkeys stay in power at the top.

There is this story

And this story

Then there was this story

It's not exactly a poem, but it is some of what's happening in our country during this holiday season.  I have ignored the stories of frantic holiday shoppers trampling other frantic holiday shoppers on the aptly named Black Friday.  Extraordinarily sickening this year.  Somehow more so this year than any I remember.  The dark freakshow of materialism in a down economy.  I might be one of those crazed shoppers if I had a family counting on me to provide it with all the American Christmas creature comforts (like a bigger flat screen TV than last years version).  And I might be the provider who finds death preferable to the alternative since the future doesn't look rosy unless you're one of the top 2%.  If Thanksgiving was a disappointment to children of the 99ers, imagine what Christmas will be...  Don't know what the 99ers are?  You must be a member of the TeaParty or one of the 2% at the top.

Newt Gingrich Is A Big Fat DooDoo Head

I have reposted this because... Well...  Newt is a still a big fat doodoo head. At the time I first posted this, I was letting google ads, advertise on my blog, and every time I said something nasty about Newt, which was often, low and behold, there was Newt, hawking some shit of his on my site. It was almost enough to keep me using google ads, but not quite.

Thanks to The Lazy Iguana for this wonderful art work. Now I have photoshop envy.

So, just tell me Newt is not a Media Whore! Last time I posted a piece about Newt being a media whore, I got a google ad suggesting that you could get actual messages from Newt if you just push this button. Now I'm creeping myself out. But I needed the money. So I guess that makes me a whore too. And don't forget to check the sidebar. I do not agree with the statement that the NYTimes is a liberal newspaper. (I'm guessing google ads has not figured out that I'm a liberal). Newt is spreading the love, and probably herpes as well. So when you come a callin, bring a condom.

Media Whore Newt Gingrich

I'm reprising my old Newt posts. I've loathed Newt for a long time. Honest whores deserve some respect but politicians who are nothing BUT whores do not. Newt is the worst of the worst and I've written a few posts about this particular whore.  Now that the old whore is running for President again, it's time to replay the old posts, so here we go:  6/7/09

"Whores and politicians become respectable if they stick around long enough, as someone once observed, and the same is plainly true of media personalities – especially in a culture that never pauses long enough to remember anything. Where amnesia is the rule, there can be no accountability for the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Patrick Buchanan and the rest of the broadcast mob denouncing the "racism" of Sonia Sotomayor. If anyone remembers who they are and what they have said over the years, their complaints about the Latina Supreme Court nominee will only elicit raucous laughter." Joe Coneson, from an Opionion piece in Salon June 5th

Then on Face the Nation this morning we have half the program devoted to the outrageous bullshit of Newt Gingrich. My question is WHY? There are so many skeletons in Gingrich's closet I can't list them all, but another resoursful blogger has and you can see them here.

When Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich blasted Obama’s Supreme Court nominee Judge Sonia Sotomayor for being a racist on Twitter, he ignited a debate over her objectivity. Both sides of the argument had a chance to respond on "Face the Nation" Sunday.

Senior White House advisor David Axelrod defended his administration’s Supreme Court nominee Judge Sonia Sotomayor against attacks that she is a racist.

"I think what she believes, harry, is that everyone is the product of their experiences. She's the product of hers," he told guest moderator Harry Smith.

"Have there been patterns of discrimination? Of course there have been. We all know that," he admitted, referencing the numerous occasions where Sotomayor said a “wise Latina woman” would make "better" decisions than a white male.

Axelrod called Gingrich’s comment “unfortunate” and said, "I think that it is so unfair and so unreflective of who she is."

Later in the program, Mr. Gingrich had a chance to respond.

He explained that he rescinded his initial comment because he called Sotomayor a racist, when really he does not know the nominee and meant that her comments were racist.

"One of the challenges for the administration is having first chided me for language, then having said she didn't mean it, and then having said she ought to restate it. Now they face the fact that she has said this, written about it four or five time," he argued.

He argued that, "if you say people of this ethnic background are superior to people of this ethnic background, take out her language and put in the word white. Put in white male where she had Latina, that person would be disqualified from the court. Also would be disqualified as a juror."

Gingrich admitted that it is "very doubtful" she will be disqualified as a high court pick because of her earlier remarks.

"She said the court should be radical. The court should rewrite law. The court is where policy is made. That's a direct quote. I'm not very comfortable having somebody at that level with that level of power," Gingrich said.

This is the first time I know of that anyone's asserted that Sotomayor said she was "superior" to a white man. And Harry Smith just let it stand, no challenge to that outrageous lie, no question about how Newt jumped from calling her a racist, retracting the term "racist", but then saying she has stated that she is superior to white men. Jesus, why is this idiot allowed to go on a Sunday morning news show and lie without even a challenge? Harry Smith, you are a disgrace for letting that one stand. Since Newt is not an elected official of any kind, just an over-the-hill has-been, why are he and Buchanan, Rush and Glen Beck getting so much play in the mainstream media?

Old Sports Injuries

I was always athletic. Sure, some of it was forced. I was taken on ski trips before I could walk. We rode horses, went swimming. I remember none of this but there are photos to prove that baby Peggy was the game little sport.   And some of that love of sports stayed with me.

I loved softball until breasts got in the way. I loved skiing but not the same way my hyper-competitive friends in Jr High and High School did--like it was a game of chicken and if you weren't willing to actually risk killing yourself every run you weren't really skiing.  I always liked the wide open bowls more than the narrow rutted chutes. I liked the beauty of the carved turns, the gentle spray of snow on a sudden perfect stop. I liked the clothes. When I was skiing, skis were long, children.  It was harder then.

Last time I went skiing was early in the incarnation of Deer Valley.  My last ski injury was there. It was a torn anterior cruciate. I was skiing with Tom.  I couldn't keep up with him, so he was riding up on the lift as I was going down. He saw it happen beneath him. I think that's how it happened.  I was trying to keep up with him.  Bastard!  It's so embarrassing to be taken off a mountain in a basket by the Ski Patrol. But thank god for them. I was in agony. It's a very painful injury.  You can hear it happen.

Good thing skiing wasn't my favorite sport.