Two top Romney fundraisers torture children

[Nowisnotthetime]

When Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney said he’d support doubling the size of the prison at Guantanamo Bay, he was trying to show voters that he’d be tough on terror. Two of his top fundraisers, however, have long supported using tactics that have been likened to torture for troubled teenagers.
As The Hill noted last week, 133 plaintiffs filed a civil suit against Romney’s Utah finance co-chair, Robert Lichfield, and his various business entities involved in residential treatment programs for adolescents. The umbrella group for his organization is the World Wide Association of Specialty Programs and Schools (WWASPS, sometimes known as WWASP) and Lichfield is its founder and is on its board of directors.
The suit alleges that teens were locked in outdoor dog cages, exercised to exhaustion, deprived of food and sleep, exposed to extreme temperatures without adequate clothing or water, severely beaten, emotionally brutalized, and sexually abused and humiliated. Some were even made to eat their own vomit.
But the link to teen abuse goes far higher up in the Romney campaign. Romney’s national finance co-chair is a man named Mel Sembler. A long time friend of the Bushes, Sembler was campaign finance chair for the Republican party during the first…

Read the rest of the article (http://www.reason.com/news/show/121088.html)

[open mind]

he's got my vote!!!









that's sarcasm.......the fact that he's stupid enough to be mormon was enough to turn me off.

[captainhampton]

he's got my vote!!!









that's sarcasm.......the fact that he's stupid enough to be mormon was enough to turn me off.

it's good when you have the user name "open mind" but show no respect to someone's religious beliefs.

[thejetstolehome]

well that's great.

[ides of march]

another reason not to vote for him huzzah

[EasySkankin]

What the fuck???

How do you get away with that? For however long they did?

jesus christ... And these guys are close to presidential candidates....

[open mind]

it's good when you have the user name "open mind" but show no respect to someone's religious beliefs.

anyone who believes that some dude had a dream in which he went into a cave and found a book he couldn't read, then an angel appeared and gave him magic eyeglasses that enabled him to read it, dude then read and memorized the whole book, woke up, wrote it down in it's entirety, showed it around, lost it, then found it, only the version which was supposedly the same had many altered passages is somehow the word of god, then overlooks the fact that until the 60's the religion thought all black people were demons and subhuman is a fucking retard in my eyes no matter how open a mind i have.

[Paul Tao]

Yeah I've heard about these "camps" for delinquent children in Mormon communities. A good friend of mine had her brother in one for about a week before he ran away.

[boykosaurus]

I find Romney to be a snide ass...but that's just me

[em0_stars]

anyone who believes that some dude had a dream in which he went into a cave and found a book he couldn't read, then an angel appeared and gave him magic eyeglasses that enabled him to read it, dude then read and memorized the whole book, woke up, wrote it down in it's entirety, showed it around, lost it, then found it, only the version which was supposedly the same had many altered passages is somehow the word of god, then overlooks the fact that until the 60's the religion thought all black people were demons and subhuman is a fucking retard in my eyes no matter how open a mind i have.

you couldn't be more wrong about my religion.

First of all get your facts straight:

-Joseph Smith didn't memorize anything, he read from the plates to scribes. He didn't show it around. After praying several times, he was compelled to allow Martin Harris to take the first 100 pages or so of the translated material to show his wife in hopes that she would believe that he wasn't crazy.
-The Mormon church never regarded blacks as demons or subhumans. We actually had blacks and whites meet in the same congregations in the 60's, while most religions had blacks and whites in separate places(i.e. black baptist and white baptist church's.) Keep in mind, everyone was racist, and I'm not saying the Mormons weren't, I'm sure some of them were, but most weren't, do you not remember that we were driven out of Missouri mainly because we were pro abolition!?!?

get your facts straight "open mind"

[anamericangod]

one more thing you probably won't hear about in the mainstream media...

[Siren Silently]

Not like Romney had a chance lol.

[trindaddy]

you couldn't be more wrong about my religion.

First of all get your facts straight:

-Joseph Smith didn't memorize anything, he read from the plates to scribes. He didn't show it around. After praying several times, he was compelled to allow Martin Harris to take the first 100 pages or so of the translated material to show his wife in hopes that she would believe that he wasn't crazy.
-The Mormon church never regarded blacks as demons or subhumans. We actually had blacks and whites meet in the same congregations in the 60's, while most religions had blacks and whites in separate places(i.e. black baptist and white baptist church's.) Keep in mind, everyone was racist, and I'm not saying the Mormons weren't, I'm sure some of them were, but most weren't, do you not remember that we were driven out of Missouri mainly because we were pro abolition!?!?

get your facts straight "open mind"

what you say is true about smith and harris, but really you're only telling half the story. im sure others will think this is just as crazy as the dream story. i've read both stories (the dreams and the golden plates stories) just out of sheer curiosity. i do this with many religions. go ahead and read what i say here, and tell me where, if you find something at all, im wrong.

martin harris (a rich man who supported smith financially and who was fascinated with trying to see visions from god, even before he was mormon. this includes talking to god in the form of a deer, and thinking a flickering candle is the devil) showed his wife the pages, then "lost" them when his wife gave stillbirth. he was then almost discredited for doing anything in the first editions in the book of mormon.

also, they deciphered and wrote down "reformed egyptian" from the golden plates and showed an american scholar who "agreed" to what the rich men had to say and "wrote a letter of authentication". whats wrong with this? this happened in the 1820's. the rosetta stone wasn't deciphered into english until 1859. also what is wrong with this? (fact) the scholar wrote two separate letters stating that for one, many of the characters were greek, roman and hebrew letters just in various columns and turned sideways, and that there was a butchered aztec (mexican) calandar included with the papers he was told to look at. harris had supposedly "ripped up and destroyed" the letter of autentication already.

thats the beginning basis of this story.

so yeah, you are technically right about what you said, but its as if you left out all the crazy nonsensical information. i dont judge people by their religious affiliation (not even romney), so dont take what i wrote as a shot at you. i have mormon friends who are amazing people. i just think that if you're going to bring up half of the stories that the rest needs to be told as well, including the flaws in the story.

[open mind]

you couldn't be more wrong about my religion.

First of all get your facts straight:

-Joseph Smith didn't memorize anything, he read from the plates to scribes. He didn't show it around. After praying several times, he was compelled to allow Martin Harris to take the first 100 pages or so of the translated material to show his wife in hopes that she would believe that he wasn't crazy.
-The Mormon church never regarded blacks as demons or subhumans. We actually had blacks and whites meet in the same congregations in the 60's, while most religions had blacks and whites in separate places(i.e. black baptist and white baptist church's.) Keep in mind, everyone was racist, and I'm not saying the Mormons weren't, I'm sure some of them were, but most weren't, do you not remember that we were driven out of Missouri mainly because we were pro abolition!?!?

get your facts straight "open mind"

seems like your just changing the words to make it sound better to me.......but let me pick this apart here.......he read the plates to scribes in his dream or he had dreams in which he read aloud for others to write down.....either way it's stupid to believe........he obviously showed it around otherwise the mormon church wouldn't exist.
they didn't use my exact words........they did say people with black skin are cursed because they had to have screwed up in another life to be born with dark skin.

The various sects of Mormonism have varied in their official approach to civil rights, particularly regarding African Americans, and thus in their potential for receiving criticism over current policy. The fundamentalist branches of the church still do not allow the ordination of black priests, and their leaders have been criticized for their openly racist comments such as the following statements made by Warren Jeffs, President of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints:

"The black race is the people through which the devil has always been able to bring evil unto the earth."
"[Cain was] cursed with a black skin and he is the father of the Negro people. He has great power, can appear and disappear. He is used by the devil, as a mortal man, to do great evils."
"Today you can see a black man with a white woman, et cetera. A great evil has happened on this land because the devil knows that if all the people have Negro blood, there will be nobody worthy to have the priesthood."
"If you marry a person who has connections with a Negro, you would become cursed."[17]
The Strangites on the other hand have allowed the ordination of blacks since 1849.[18] The main LDS Church has allowed the ordination of blacks since 1979 (Official Declaration 2).

[trindaddy]

haha, wow, that just happened

[em0_stars]

seems like your just changing the words to make it sound better to me.......but let me pick this apart here.......he read the plates to scribes in his dream or he had dreams in which he read aloud for others to write down.....either way it's stupid to believe........he obviously showed it around otherwise the mormon church wouldn't exist.
they didn't use my exact words........they did say people with black skin are cursed because they had to have screwed up in another life to be born with dark skin.

The various sects of Mormonism have varied in their official approach to civil rights, particularly regarding African Americans, and thus in their potential for receiving criticism over current policy. The fundamentalist branches of the church still do not allow the ordination of black priests, and their leaders have been criticized for their openly racist comments such as the following statements made by Warren Jeffs, President of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints:

"The black race is the people through which the devil has always been able to bring evil unto the earth."
"[Cain was] cursed with a black skin and he is the father of the Negro people. He has great power, can appear and disappear. He is used by the devil, as a mortal man, to do great evils."
"Today you can see a black man with a white woman, et cetera. A great evil has happened on this land because the devil knows that if all the people have Negro blood, there will be nobody worthy to have the priesthood."
"If you marry a person who has connections with a Negro, you would become cursed."[17]
The Strangites on the other hand have allowed the ordination of blacks since 1849.[18] The main LDS Church has allowed the ordination of blacks since 1979 (Official Declaration 2).


There is only one sect of the church, and it in no way promotes racism and blacks have had the right to hold the priesthood for a while. The Mormons were racist too, during that time period, I didn't say they weren't. A lot of them weren't though. Ok so we weren't the first church to allow blacks, I was wrong on that one. I'm not saying we were better than anyone else.

Oh and by the way, you are quoting Warren Jeffs, who is NO WAY affiliated with the Mormon church. He broke off from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, and anyone who tries to tell you otherwise is 100% wrong. If you want to know anything about the Mormons, try lds.org. I'm not trying to start a fight, I just don't want you to go around saying things that aren't true about what we believe in. I belong to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Many have broken away from the original church, claiming that we have lost oour way and need to revert back to older ways. Older ways that are sadly filled with racist hatred, polygamy, and various other things. In no way is the church affiliated with that, and if you believe otherwise, then I can't stop you from doing that.

[em0_stars]

what you say is true about smith and harris, but really you're only telling half the story. im sure others will think this is just as crazy as the dream story. i've read both stories (the dreams and the golden plates stories) just out of sheer curiosity. i do this with many religions. go ahead and read what i say here, and tell me where, if you find something at all, im wrong.

martin harris (a rich man who supported smith financially and who was fascinated with trying to see visions from god, even before he was mormon. this includes talking to god in the form of a deer, and thinking a flickering candle is the devil) showed his wife the pages, then "lost" them when his wife gave stillbirth. he was then almost discredited for doing anything in the first editions in the book of mormon.

also, they deciphered and wrote down "reformed egyptian" from the golden plates and showed an american scholar who "agreed" to what the rich men had to say and "wrote a letter of authentication". whats wrong with this? this happened in the 1820's. the rosetta stone wasn't deciphered into english until 1859. also what is wrong with this? (fact) the scholar wrote two separate letters stating that for one, many of the characters were greek, roman and hebrew letters just in various columns and turned sideways, and that there was a butchered aztec (mexican) calandar included with the papers he was told to look at. harris had supposedly "ripped up and destroyed" the letter of autentication already.

thats the beginning basis of this story.

so yeah, you are technically right about what you said, but its as if you left out all the crazy nonsensical information. i dont judge people by their religious affiliation (not even romney), so dont take what i wrote as a shot at you. i have mormon friends who are amazing people. i just think that if you're going to bring up half of the stories that the rest needs to be told as well, including the flaws in the story.


Hey, I'm not saying everyone is perfect, all I'm trying to do is defend what I believe in, I know the flaws, the Mormons have done some bad things too, nobody is perfect. I'm just trying to say open mind to not confuse my beliefs, with the beliefs of the "fundamentalist Mormons" or various other so-called "Mormon" sects who are in no way affiliated with the church of Jesus Christ of latter day saints. You are correct in what you know, and you actually know a lot more than I expected.

[trindaddy]

Hey, I'm not saying everyone is perfect, all I'm trying to do is defend what I believe in, I know the flaws, the Mormons have done some bad things too, nobody is perfect. I'm just trying to say open mind to not confuse my beliefs, with the beliefs of the "fundamentalist Mormons" or various other so-called "Mormon" sects who are in no way affiliated with the church of Jesus Christ of latter day saints. You are correct in what you know, and you actually know a lot more than I expected.

oh i know what you mean. i myself am christian, but do not identify with many of the different beliefs or sects of christianity. i myself have to pick through a lot of things in which i do, and dont believe, so by all means, like i said, im not trying to attack you or your beliefs. i understand to an extent with what you may go through, having people assume they know exactly what you do, or dont believe. if being mormon makes you happier and a better person overall, then keep on keeping on.

[Nowisnotthetime]

Say the Nazi Party came back in Germany and said they had washed their hands of the whole Jew hating business but still had many of the same members and essentially the same beliefs politically. Would you really vote for them and forget all the old stuff?

It's a bit of stretch to compare the two, but the point aside of that is a really good one.

[trindaddy]

They aren't the same organisatiohn or anything but referring to Black people as "the people through which the devil has always been able to bring evil unto the earth," has Nazi rhetoric all over it. This was only thirty years ago. Fuck knows what Mormons would of done to black people had they been powerful enough to get the chance.

well, that may be true, but civil rights weren't even granted by the states until just before then. at about the same general timeframe was when the catholic church finally stated that they no longer held anything against the jews for "betraying" jesus, and they removed the words "the treacherous and unfaithful Jews" from their good friday prayers. that to me is by far more extreme than the mormons disliking blacks and calling them demons. sure neither of them are proud moments of their pasts, and both are awful, but the influence the church has by far outweighs that of the mormon church.

do you like wu tang?

[concernedparent]

seems like your just changing the words to make it sound better to me.......but let me pick this apart here.......he read the plates to scribes in his dream or he had dreams in which he read aloud for others to write down.....either way it's stupid to believe........he obviously showed it around otherwise the mormon church wouldn't exist.
they didn't use my exact words........they did say people with black skin are cursed because they had to have screwed up in another life to be born with dark skin.

The various sects of Mormonism have varied in their official approach to civil rights, particularly regarding African Americans, and thus in their potential for receiving criticism over current policy. The fundamentalist branches of the church still do not allow the ordination of black priests, and their leaders have been criticized for their openly racist comments such as the following statements made by Warren Jeffs, President of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints:

"The black race is the people through which the devil has always been able to bring evil unto the earth."
"[Cain was] cursed with a black skin and he is the father of the Negro people. He has great power, can appear and disappear. He is used by the devil, as a mortal man, to do great evils."
"Today you can see a black man with a white woman, et cetera. A great evil has happened on this land because the devil knows that if all the people have Negro blood, there will be nobody worthy to have the priesthood."
"If you marry a person who has connections with a Negro, you would become cursed."[17]
The Strangites on the other hand have allowed the ordination of blacks since 1849.[18] The main LDS Church has allowed the ordination of blacks since 1979 (Official Declaration 2).
All religion sounds stupid if you pick it apart.

[em0_stars]

They aren't the same organisatiohn or anything but referring to Black people as "the people through which the devil has always been able to bring evil unto the earth," has Nazi rhetoric all over it. This was only thirty years ago. Fuck knows what Mormons would of done to black people had they been powerful enough to get the chance.

you have to understand that warren jeffs views and his religion are in no way affiliated with what the church believes to be true, we accept everyone, and we do not racially discriminate. I'm sorry I can't make you see my point.

[ghostyouare]

Say the Nazi Party came back in Germany and said they had washed their hands of the whole Jew hating business but still had many of the same members and essentially the same beliefs politically. Would you really vote for them and forget all the old stuff?
Some times you make me laugh uncontrollably.

[open mind]

There is only one sect of the church, and it in no way promotes racism and blacks have had the right to hold the priesthood for a while. The Mormons were racist too, during that time period, I didn't say they weren't. A lot of them weren't though. Ok so we weren't the first church to allow blacks, I was wrong on that one. I'm not saying we were better than anyone else.

Oh and by the way, you are quoting Warren Jeffs, who is NO WAY affiliated with the Mormon church. He broke off from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, and anyone who tries to tell you otherwise is 100% wrong. If you want to know anything about the Mormons, try lds.org. I'm not trying to start a fight, I just don't want you to go around saying things that aren't true about what we believe in. I belong to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Many have broken away from the original church, claiming that we have lost oour way and need to revert back to older ways. Older ways that are sadly filled with racist hatred, polygamy, and various other things. In no way is the church affiliated with that, and if you believe otherwise, then I can't stop you from doing that.

there are more then one crazy ass cults that have spawned directly from the (not a whole lot less nuttier) mormon church. i didn't say it was current racism, only that your church's official line was nutty in the past (i won't get into the racist passages in the book of mormon itself concerning black people)

he's mormon, just not your brand of mormon.
i think i'll pass on trusting the approved propaganda homepage of the mormon church.

[open mind]

well, that may be true, but civil rights weren't even granted by the states until just before then. at about the same general timeframe was when the catholic church finally stated that they no longer held anything against the jews for "betraying" jesus, and they removed the words "the treacherous and unfaithful Jews" from their good friday prayers. that to me is by far more extreme than the mormons disliking blacks and calling them demons. sure neither of them are proud moments of their pasts, and both are awful, but the influence the church has by far outweighs that of the mormon church.

do you like wu tang?

the mormons did massacre various tribes of utah and did a much better job (if it can be put that way) of achieving total ethnic cleansing then the nazis did.

[atticus1492]

well, that may be true, but civil rights weren't even granted by the states until just before then. at about the same general timeframe was when the catholic church finally stated that they no longer held anything against the jews for "betraying" jesus, and they removed the words "the treacherous and unfaithful Jews" from their good friday prayers. that to me is by far more extreme than the mormons disliking blacks and calling them demons. sure neither of them are proud moments of their pasts, and both are awful, but the influence the church has by far outweighs that of the mormon church.

do you like wu tang?

Yes, I like Wu Tang.

[trindaddy]

the mormons did massacre various tribes of utah and did a much better job (if it can be put that way) of achieving total ethnic cleansing then the nazis did.


the mountain meadows massacre. they tried and killed only one man for 100 something deaths.


maybe in a local sense. i like to think the nazi's cleansing was more globally oriented.

[em0_stars]

And you have to realise that just because the figure head leaves it doesn't mean that everyone else totally forgets what he said or that they used to think just like that. That kind of thing does not ever go away until everyone has died and even then it is passed on through generations. To continue the previous analogy, when Hitler lossed the war do you really think all the millions and millions of Germans who supported him just anadoned Nazism just like that? No they didn't. You don't just forget something that has been so ingrained into your beliefs, something that you have been brought up to think throughout your whole education. Why do you think so many more old people are racists and homophobes than young people? Because it is how they were raised. You might claim there ar eno racist sentiments in the Mormon religion but considering nearly every leader of the church was raised in a time when it is was rampant, I find that extremely hard to believe.

The beliefs of Warren Jeffs do not reflect the beliefs of the church of jesus christ of latter day saints, plain and simple.

[em0_stars]

there are more then one crazy ass cults that have spawned directly from the (not a whole lot less nuttier) mormon church. i didn't say it was current racism, only that your church's official line was nutty in the past (i won't get into the racist passages in the book of mormon itself concerning black people)

he's mormon, just not your brand of mormon.
i think i'll pass on trusting the approved propaganda homepage of the mormon church.

fair enough.

[em0_stars]

the mountain meadows massacre. they tried and killed only one man for 100 something deaths.


maybe in a local sense. i like to think the nazi's cleansing was more globally oriented.



Yeah, truly a sad event.

[kshtoinks12]

Mormon Fightttttt

[thatwasamoment]

I'm going to a higher celestial kingdom than you are! Bitch.

[open mind]

I'm going to a higher celestial kingdom than you are! Bitch.

yeah, it's great to believe if your a good enough person (by mormon standards anyways) you get to become a god.

[trindaddy]

and purgatory is a better belief?

[open mind]

and purgatory is a better belief?

no.......who said it was?

[trindaddy]

no.......who said it was?

nobody. im just making sure that nobody is busting someones balls on one belief who may hold another belief which can be viewed as equally ridiculous. many forms of Christianity have different beliefs on who goes where and why. catholics, mormons, Jehovah's witnesses...

[open mind]

nobody. im just making sure that nobody is busting someones balls on one belief who may hold another belief which can be viewed as equally ridiculous. many forms of Christianity have different beliefs on who goes where and why. catholics, mormons, Jehovah's witnesses...

i think we all go the same route after death and that it's just some people will like it more then others, instead of believing that god has set up some elaborate multi-tiered afterlife.