Posted on 11/25/2007 6:19:11 AM PST by fallingwater
FC:In fact, I’ve been shunned a couple times (yes imagine that with my pleasant disposition! ). Actually it was for pointing out nepotism in a government job, and a few other times as well now that I think of it.
DU:LOL! so, the Church shunned you for your dealings with the Government? (George, we need more tin foil over here.
No, I was shunned by Mormons within a government/university organization because I pointed out that one of the Mormon accountants that governed this agency had hired his son-in-law to do the organization website even though:
1) there was no Request For Proposal
2) an organization website was already being done in-house for free
3) the son-in-law was legally blind
4) all of which I might have lived with but the son-in-law ran through his first allotment of money and I asked in a meeting how far he’d progressed and was told 30%
That’s when I let it be known that that kind of crap had to end because it was my tax dollars as much as anyone’s that were being wasted. That’s when the shunning began, but it didn’t stop there, I really don’t want to go into other nasty details. But it was typical Mormon nepotism at its best.
But let me beat you to the punch - “Mormons are to pure to do that kind of thing”.
Then I shouldn’t mention how Mr. Walker, the Mormon at McCarran Airport, drove a blind businessman operating a bookstore out of the airport.
“Shunning does no good unless the person knows they are being shunned, so they would tell you if you didn’t get it. As for looking it up and “Figuring it out, I have a logical questions for you. If everyone is out to get you, are you still paranoid, or realistic?”
I’m paranoid for pretty damn realistic reasons. I’m in Vegas, I am around rather big business deals so I have to on occasion deal with the quasi mafia (those once removed from the old time mafia here, like Oscar Goodman), and the Mormon mafia (Harry Reid on down), as well as various rich SOBs who’d mess you up good. I spend a good deal of prep work in business feeling people out before I move forward. So, under those circumstances, I’d be nuts not to have a realistic view of who the nasties are, and who I can trust (because yes I do conduct successful business which requires dealing with people who won’t backstab me or my clients).
So, my world is different than someone just dealing with the Mormon next door, it is closer to Romney’s world (and getting closer all the time). That’s why my perspective is colorful, but hardly irrational.
“The quote I posted was from an affidavit of someone who actually knew Joseph Smith before he started the Mormon church. I think it may be indicative of the character of Joseph Smith.”
There’s lot’s of absolutely eye opener stuff about Lt. General Joseph Smith/king/polygamist/peep stone seer. If you want links, I’ll send you some time permitting.
Sorry. Since you referred to Joseph Smith in an earlier post as a "con artist", I thought you might be interested in an example of his con artistry. I'll try to avoid including you in any future posts.
He was charged as such.
A good account of the bank scam at Kirtland (they also brought down the Monroe Bank as well after buying it out), is contained here:
http://www.sidneyrigdon.com/dbroadhu/OH/painerep.htm
Smith had his “tithing” revelation after he hightailed it from Kirtland to Far West to avoid being tarred and feathered. A lot of the faithful at Far West apostasized because they realized Smith had run a banking scam. After the congregation wouldn’t give Smith and Rigdon fixed salaries, Smith solved the problem by having a revelation about tithing and apparently paid some of the bank litigation off with those funds.
He was charged as such.
“JS was “charged” numerous times as a form of harassment. The cases were usually thrown out without even a trial.”
I guess you could call it harassment when they sent him to jail at Liberty for inciting the distruction of a County, running the Danite militia and nearly allowing a thousand of his men to be killed. I guess it was harassment to fine him $1000 for running a bank without a charter (and apparently no assets) which went belly up and ruined numerous lives. And I guess when he had a Free Press destroyed, the free press was harassing Saint Smith.
But I always forget, it was always someone else’s fault.
He was charged as a con artist too.
JS was “charged” numerous times for numerous things as a form of harassment. The cases were usually thrown out without even a trial.
“JS gave all of his assets to try to save others financially.”
And where pray tell did he get those assets? An inheritance? The vast acres of land he owned? Oh wait, he got it from his followers! From the history of Ebenezer Robinson, Smith needed the bank scam to pay off an earlier failed mercantile scam (and Ebenezer was a stalwart Mormon saying this, the printer of the third edition of the BOM!). Also, an attempt to find treasure hidden in a house had come a cropper.
“The Kirtland bank failure was part of a general banking failure all over the country in the panic of 1837.”
Except the Kirtland bank never was backed with sufficient assets. It’s like saying Enron wouldn’t have failed if only there had never been an energy crisis.
The Kirland Bank was technically not a bank. It was the Kirtland Safety Society, more like a credit union. Banks were very controversial in Ohio at that time. There wasn’t a national treasury, so local banks issued specie. The hard money democrats were denying bank charters at the time. Whigs were promoting them. A source of specie was needed to conduct commerce, so various organizations formed institutions like credit unions to take the place of banks. The Kirland Safety Society was one of those. It failed along with many others across the nation in the Panic of 1837. The country at the time was still trying to work out its banking policies.
We have a free press, but it is still illegal to incite a riot in a tinderbox situation. The Mormon Press was destroyed in Missouri. That was alright, guess. The Press in Nauvoo was destroyed for the same reason. That was bad, because it was Mormons who did it.
“From this, I picked up a phrase, sometimes what you find on the table is what you brought to it.”
I don’t have a problem with that philosophy, I take pains to give people the rope they need to hang themselves (else I could never find anyone to do business with, could I?).
“If you come at Mormonism with bitterness, suspicion expecting to find fault, that is what you will find there, flaws, bitterness, and ugliness, if you come with Joy and love in your heart, that is what you will find there, it’s up to you what you’ll see. Some times it really is what you bring to the table that matters.”
On the other hand, if you’ve been burned repeatedly putting your hand in a pot of hot water, I suspect you at least test water first before you stick your hand in it, no matter how inviting it might be. Perhaps you would research the cause of why you get burned (as I have), and find that a systemic fault prevents you from trusting the water to always be cold.
As I’ve said repeatedly, I don’t have a problem with Joe Mormon, it is when confronting those in positions of power I have little trust in the outcome.
Except the Kirtland bank never was backed with sufficient assets.
BB: No bank does. You get a large enough run, and it folds. They didn’t have a national deposit insurance in those days.
You guys are pathetic, and I have work to do. You are grasping at straws in the dark.
Goodbye for now.
No doubt the early Mormons were harassed a great deal without cause. But I find the affidavits in Mormonism Unvailed convincing because they were gathered very soon after the events in question from people in a position to know the Smiths very well, and my judgment is that they sound believable and not made up.
“The law instituted in Missouri at that time of killing Mormons for just being in the state, has recently been rescinded and apologized for.”
Could you point me to the apology from Mormons for the Salt Sermon extermination order, the razing of Davies county and the attack at Crooked Creek that led Gov. Boggs to issue the extermination order? I seem to have missed that bit of contrition.
[The Kirland Bank was technically not a bank. It was the Kirtland Safety Society, more like a credit union.]
That issued it’s own notes?? Bwahahaha!
“Banks were very controversial in Ohio at that time. There wasn’t a national treasury, so local banks issued specie. The hard money democrats were denying bank charters at the time. Whigs were promoting them. A source of specie was needed to conduct commerce, so various organizations formed institutions like credit unions to take the place of banks. The Kirland Safety Society was one of those. It failed along with many others across the nation in the Panic of 1837. The country at the time was still trying to work out its banking policies.”
Except, they bought out the Monroe Bank too and caused it to fail. This had nothing to do with the panic, it’s like saying sub-prime loan defaults wouldn’t occur if there were no panic. The Kirtland Bank had no value because there were no land titles backing the asset valuation.
[We have a free press, but it is still illegal to incite a riot in a tinderbox situation.]
So it was okay for Smith to incite a riot by having the press destroyed (not just shut down) because they were exposing him for land speculation and wife stealing? Smith controlled the land, he was the mayor, he ran a kangaroo court, he was Lt. General of the Nauvoo Legion and had just been ordained king. Sounds more like a tinpot dictator than someone interested in justice.
[The Mormon Press was destroyed in Missouri. That was alright, guess. The Press in Nauvoo was destroyed for the same reason. That was bad, because it was Mormons who did it.]
It was bad either place. But you are arguing through blinders because you believe Smith was a God, instead of just an early Hugo Chavez.
Would you like to address this specious defense of a fraudulent peepstone prophet?... I think your files are larger than mine.
The Mormon writer Francis W. Kirkham just could not allow himself to believe that the 1826 court record was authentic. He, in fact, felt that if the transcript were authentic it would disprove Mormonism:
“A careful study of all facts regarding this alleged confession of Joseph Smith in a court of law that he had used a seer stone to find hidden treasure for purposes of fraud, must come to the conclusion that no such record was ever made, and therefore, is not in existence.... had he [Joseph Smith] made this confession in a court of law as early as 1826, or four years before the Book of Mormon was printed, and this confession was in a court record, it would have been impossible for him to have organize the restored Church. (A New Witness For Christ In America, vol. 1, pages 385-387)
“If a court record could be identified, and if it contained a confession by Joseph Smith which revealed him to be a poor, ignorant, deluded, and superstitious person unable himself to write a book of any consequence, and whose church could not endure because it attracted only similar persons of low mentality—if such a court record confession could be identified and proved, then it follows that his believers must deny his claimed divine guidance which led them to follow him.... How could he be a prophet of God, the leader of the Restored Church to these tens of thousands, if he had been the superstitious fraud which ‘the pages from a book’ declared he confessed to be?” (Ibid., pp.486-487)
The noted Mormon apologist Hugh Nibley published a book in which this statement appeared: “...if this court record is authentic it is the most damning evidence in existence against Joseph Smith.” (The Myth Makers, 1961, page 142) On the same page we read that such a court record would be “the most devastating blow to Smith ever delivered.” Because he could see the serious implications of the matter, Dr. Nibley tried in every way possible to destroy the idea that the court record was an authentic document.
As we indicated earlier, in 1971 Wesley P. Walters made an astounding discovery which destroyed many of the arguments Mormon writers had used to discredit the 1826 Court record. While searching through some old records stored in the basement of the county jail in Norwich, New York, Wesley Walters and Fred Poffarl discovered two documents from Bainbridge which confirmed the authenticity of the printed court record. The most important was Justice Albert Neely’s bill to the county for his fees in several legal matters he was involved with in 1826. The fifth item from the top mentioned the case of “Joseph Smith The Glass looker.”
The fact that Justice Neely said Joseph Smith was a "Glass looker" fits very well with the published version of the legal proceedings. Hugh Nibley and other Mormon apologists became strangely silent after these documents were discovered.
While most Mormon scholars accepted the evidence which Wesley Walters discovered, an overzealous supporter of Joseph Smith decided to resort to forgery in an attempt to discredit the documents. In 1986 Ronald Vern Jackson, a Mormon researcher who wrote the book The Seer, Joseph Smith, appeared on the Mormon Church’s television Station, KSL-TV with the startling claim that Justice Neely’s bill had been altered. He claimed that the name “Josiah Stowell” originally appeared on the document, but that these words had been changed to “Joseph Smith.” Although Mr. Jackson did not directly state it, the implications were clear-Walters had found a genuine bill referring to Josiah Stowell and that he had deliberately altered it to discredit the prophet Joseph Smith! Jackson professes to believe that Mark Hofmann was not alone in creating forgeries. In an introduction to his publication of the Mark Hofmann Interviews, Jackson wrote that he had “very incriminating evidence that others were involved!” He also declared that “It was a conspiracy to rewrite L.D.S church history and Mark Hofmann was but a pawn that was sacrificed to save the King. There are those who would love to disgrace the L.D.S. church by proving it’s history to be a sham. And Mark Hofmann was the tool through which they were going to do it.” He also stated that “Mark Hofmann was just the tip of the iceberg,...” In an advertisement for his publications, we find the following:
“So incriminating is his [Jackson’s] evidence, information and documentation in this case, not only of Hofmann, and his Associates, but of the ‘Wider’ Co-conspiratorial Ring, that several attempts have been made on his life!” We understand that Mr. Jackson has hinted that the King of Mormon document forgery is a minister who lives in the Midwest. Since Wesley P. Walters pastors a church in Illinois and is deeply involved in research on Mormon history, it seems reasonable to believe that Jackson is hinting that he is the “King.”
In any case, Wesley P. Walters made these observations about Ronald Jackson’s charges:
“Recently, Ron Jackson, a pro-Mormon historian from Bountiful, Utah, appeared on KSL-TV in Salt Lake City and claimed that the 1826 justice of the peace bill had been altered. He claimed that when this writer was lecturing in Salt Lake City in 1976, a friend had inadvertently picked up some of this writer’s notes and kept them. Accompanying the notes, he claimed, was a reproduction of the trial bill as it originally read. Jackson said that instead of reading the people ‘vs. Joseph Smith the glass looker,’ it originally read, ‘vs. Josiah Stowell the glass looker.’
“The reproduction bearing the name Josiah Stowell and purportedly obtained from this writer’s notes shows signs of forgery. Someone has obliterated parts of ‘Joseph’ and in a sloppy hand tried to change this to read ‘Josiah.’ He has left the ‘S’ of ‘Smith’ but obliterated the remainder and placed the name ‘Stowell’ into that space. The final ‘ell’ in Stowell appears to have been taken from the name Darnell, which appears further down in the same manuscript, and inserted as the final letters of Stowell. Moreover, the letter ‘a’ in Josiah and the ‘o’ in Stowell do not match the way these letters are formed in the rest of the document, and the crossing of the ‘t’ is quite different.” (Personal Freedom Outreach Newsletter, April-June 1986, p. 2)
[Calpernia at FR]
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