Mitt Romney just can’t win. The “Mormon” question has now come full circle, and over the weekend evangelical leader John Stemberger said, “The issue is not that he is a Mormon. The issue is that he wasn’t Mormon enough. If he had been consistent with traditional Mormon values his whole career, that would make me feel a lot more comfortable about where he’s coming from.”

Wow, now he’s not “Mormon” enough. But this debate launched a bunch of Twitter jokes over the weekend, about just how Mormon Mitt Romney really is. Here’s a compilation:

Mitt is so Mormon…
he’s related to the other Mormon presidential candidate as well as half of his own campaign volunteers.

Mitt is so Mormon…
he’d call 19-year-old boys to serve as US ambassadors.

Mitt is so Mormon…
his Israel policy will be centered on Jackson County, Missouri.

Mitt is so Mormon…
he’ll make the income tax a flat 10% and collect fast offerings to fund Medicaid.

Mitt is so Mormon…
he’ll ask the Senate to “sustain” his appointees by manifesting with an uplifted hand.

Mitt is so Mormon…
he doesn’t do regular Pilates, he does golden Pilates.

Mitt is so Mormon…
that his campaign “oppo” team has done all the other candidates’ genealogy.

Mitt is so Mormon…
he’s organizing his precinct walkers in pairs to knock on doors saying they have a very special message.

Mitt is so Mormon…
he’d make the Book of Mormon required reading at the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

Mitt is so Mormon…
that if elected, the “First Lady” will be known as the “First Wife.”

Mitt is so Mormon…
he’ll choke up during his inaugural address and then say, “I told myself I wasn’t going to cry.”

Mitt is so Mormon…
he will commission a presidential motorcade entirely of 10-passenger family vans.

Mitt is so Mormon…
he will actually hang the Constitution up by a thread, just so he can save it.

Mitt is so Mormon…
he’s concerned about alignment with the Tea Party because of Doctrine & Covenants 89.

Mitt is so Mormon…
he’ll start the State of the Union with the words: “I wasn’t going to run for this office, but the Spirit just carried me off of the bench.”

Mitt is so Mormon…
his campaign biography begins, “I, Willard, having been born of goodly parents.”

Mitt is so Mormon…
he’ll ask members of Congress to go home and pray about his economic plan.

Mitt is so Mormon…
he’d ask the Elders Quorum to help move him into the White House.

Mitt is so Mormon…
his first act will be to make July 24th a national holiday.

Mitt is so Mormon…
he asks donors to stack chairs after fundraising dinners.

Mitt is so Mormon…
he’ll award Ty Detmer, Steve Young, and Jimmer Fredette the Congressional Medal of Honor.

Mitt is so Mormon…
his campaign slogan is “What do you know about Mitt Romney? Would you like to know more?”

Mitt is so Mormon…
he’ll reroute the Freedom Trail through Palmyra, New York; Nauvoo, Illinois; and Winter Quarters, Iowa.

Mitt is so Mormon…
he’ll rename the “Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms” the “Word of Wisdom Squad”.

Mitt is so Mormon…
he’d do an ad for mormon.org stating: “I’m a husband, father, and leader of the free world. And I’m a Mormon.”

Mitt is so Mormon…
he isn’t as concerned about getting American youth jobs as he is about getting them married.

Mitt is so Mormon…
that he refers to Congress as “The Great and Spacious Building.”

Mitt is so Mormon…
he’ll end every address with “hope you’ll all get home safely, without any harm or accident.”

Mitt is so Mormon…
he’ll assign a friend to every new member of Congress.

Mitt is so Mormon…
he’s already picked out a room in the White House for his year’s supply of wheat and beans, and he’ll require the White House Chef to rotate the food storage.

Mitt is so Mormon…
he doesn’t do campaigning. Its “fellowshipping.”

Mitt is so Mormon…
he’s having two basketball hoops installed for the Inaugural Ball so there’s a place to hang decorations.

Mitt is so Mormon…
he’ll change the name of “Cabinet Meeting” to “Correlation Meeting”.

Mitt is so Mormon…
if he gets elected all of the White House 9×13 pans would have a piece of masking tape on them with the name “Romney” written in Sharpie.

Mitt is so Mormon…
he has four cats named 1st Nephi, 2nd Nephi, 3rd Nephi, and 4th Nephi (4th Nephi is the smallest).

Mitt is so Mormon…
late last night he snuck out to put 5000 plastic forks in the lawn of Jon Huntsman. And after that, he heart attacked Rick Perry.

Mitt is so Mormon…
he’s going to rename the 101st Airborne as “The Stripling Warriors.”

Mitt is so Mormon…
he’ll rename FEMA the Federal Relief Society.

Mitt is so Mormon…
he’ll start his acceptance speech with “I never said it would be easy, I only said it would be worth it.”

Mitt is so Mormon…
the Marine Band will play “Praise to the Man” when he enters a room.

Mitt is so Mormon…
he’ll appoint Lavell Edwards as Secretary of Defense.

Mitt is so Mormon…
he won’t allow advisers wearing non-white dress shirts to participate in cabinet meetings.

Mitt is so Mormon…
he’ll rename the weekly presidential address “Politics and the Spoken Word.”

Mitt is so Mormon…
his cabinet would consist entirely of unqualified, yet enthusiastic, volunteers.

Mitt is so Mormon…
he’d convene a Munch-N-Mingle after cabinet meetings, with refreshments blessed “to nourish and strengthen our bodies”.

Mitt is so Mormon…
he’d hang a copy of the Proclamation on the Family and a picture of the Washington, D.C. LDS temple in the White House.

Mitt is so Mormon…
he has volunteers combing through old GOP voter rolls for less actives he can reactivate.

Mitt is so Mormon…
he’d put everyone in his stake on the inauguration invite list. Just because.

Mitt is so Mormon…
he will add the phrases “every fiber of my being” and “beyond a shadow of a doubt” to the presidential oath of office.

Mitt is so Mormon…
the Inagural Dinner will be Ham, Funeral Potatoes, green Jell-o, and red Kool-aid.

Great piece from the Heritage Foundation on America’s debt:

America’s $15 Trillion Nightmare

This week, the U.S. national debt clock hit a nightmarish milestone: a record $15 trillion. Words can’t even begin to describe the scope of borrowed federal spending, but it is no doubt a staggering figure that has risen dramatically in the last decade and is more than $4 trillion higher than when President Barack Obama took office less than three years ago. Unfortunately, Washington does not appear poised to take action to rectify the problem, and those with their hands on the wheel are ignoring the root of the problem: spending.

House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) on Wednesday said of the news, “Today marks an infamous day in American history. It is the day that the national debt has surpassed the $15 trillion mark. This debt is hurting not only our economy today, but will result in our children and our grandchildren experiencing a diminished future.” Ryan is right. Future generations will be shackled by today’s debt. And Heritage’s Alison Fraser explains how federal spending is headed toward a cliff of terrifying proportions:
Federal spending, at about 24 percent today, is significantly over the average of 20 percent of GDP, but in a decade it will top 26 percent. Within a generation it will reach nearly 35 percent of GDP. Before the end of the decade taxes will have recovered from their recession-driven levels and will continue to rise thereafter.

So what’s Washington doing about it? Fighting over how high to taxes instead of getting to the root of the problem. By Thanksgiving, the 12 members of the congressional “super committee” are required to reach agreement on a plan to achieve $1.2 trillion in deficit-reducing measures–a mere drop in the bucket when measured against America’s spending crisis. Yet even that task appears out of their grasp. Fraser writes that Democrats on the committee have said no to several actions that would alter America’s crushing spending path, such as increasing the Medicare retirement age or changing in the measure of inflation used to calculate entitlement benefits, including Social Security:
Sadly, there are few additional changes on the list for them even to react to — and their so-called boldchanges from several weeks ago have all but dried up. The Democrats’ intractable attitude on entitlement reform defies logic.

The facts are simple: Entitlements are going to generate European style debt levels unless they are reformed. Paying for it without bringing down their spending would require constant, crushing tax hikes on all taxpayers — not just the top 1 percent.

Fortunately, there are actions that Congress could take to rein in entitlement spending (which already comprises 40 percent of all federal spending), and those include bold reforms to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. But the same ineffective approaches to cutting costs–like cuts to doctors, hospitals, and other providers–will cause more harm than good and should be scrapped.

And there are some in the House and Senate who understand the problem and are advocating significant action. Seventy-two Members of the House and 33 Senators are standing against continued overspending, over-borrowing, and overtaxing. In a letter yesterday to the super committee, the House Members wrote, “It is evident that America has a fiscal crisis because Washington spends too much, not because it taxes too little,” and warned, “Increasing taxes on Americans would destroy jobs, erase all hope of an economic recovery, and simply serve to feed out-of-control spending in Washington.”

The Heritage Foundation, too, has called upon the super committee to “drive federal spending down — including by fixing ever-expanding entitlement programs — toward a balanced budget, while preserving our capability to protect America, and without raising taxes.” And Heritage vice president David Addington writes, “The super committee has a chance — one chance — to get it right. More taxes means more government and a worse economy. The super committee should recommend legislation that rests on three pillars: (1) cut non-security spending, (2) maintain defense capabilities, and (3) do not hike taxes.”

There are 15 trillion reasons that show how deeply America’s fiscal house is in disorder, and there are 12 members of the congressional super committee who can propose a solution that helps the country turn the corner without raising taxes, without weakening our defense, and without burdening future generations. But getting there will require serious leadership, action, and an understanding that doing business as usual will not bring this nightmare to an end.

You gotta love soldiers, who just tell it like it is:

This is great stuff. Attributed to Ghandi, but sent to me by a friend who probably doesn’t verify anything before sending, so take it for what it’s worth. But whether it was Ghandi, Scooby Doo or your mom who originally said it, this is a great list of dangers:

1. Wealth without Work
2. Pleasure without Conscience
3. Knowledge without Character
4. Business without Ethics
5. Science without Humanity
6. Religion without Sacrifice
7. Politics without Principle

I have to admit, the “wealth without work” may be questionable, but the rest are great

Being a die-hard Mac fan (some would say Mac nerd) I appreciated this article from the Heritage Foundation on Steve Jobs and his unique contributions to the world:

Steve Jobs, who died yesterday at the too-young age of 56, was a living refutation of all what liberals constantly tell us about our country — that we’re falling behind others and live now in a “post-American world,” as one of Barack Obama’s favorite books puts it in its title.

As anyone who’s ever handled an Apple product or had his life improved by the technological innovations our system has produced in just a decade (that means all of us) will tell you, Jobs and innovators like him epitomize that immeasurable quality the left somehow finds most abject — American exceptionalism.

The meme of the left is that drudgery and mediocrity is not just our future but probably also our just desserts–for being too imperialistic, consumerist, wasteful, patriarchal, or what have you. (For an inexhaustible list of all our ills and sins, please check with the mob gathered at the “Occupy Wall Street” protest.) One should compare this deadened vision with the wonders Jobs wrought.

Apple Computer, the company Jobs founded at the age of 21 along with his friend Steve Wozniak, was valued at the close of business yesterday at $350 billion and some change, more than $100 billion ahead of Microsoft. General Electric, another American giant, weighed in at less than half the price, $161 billion. Ford, GM and Volkswagen? Respectively, $40 billion, $35 billion and $42 billion. That should give some idea of where we are in the 21st century.

That beauty contest, how much a company is worth, is a result of decisions made by millions of investors voting with people’s savings (that is, for most of us, the sweat of our brow and our hedge against an uncertain future). Investors voted for Jobs’ company because consumers loved its products, and consumers bought Apple products not because they were ordered to do so by central planners but because they saw them as magic.

From computing to music to journalism, Jobs changed the way the world did its business and leisure. Very little of what we do today has not been impacted somehow by Jobs and his company. He certainly changed my life from my first Apple III with floppy discs almost 30 years ago, costing about $6000 and possessing a small fraction of the capabilities of my streamlined new iPad 2, all at less than 10 percent of the cost of that early dinosaur.

Macs, with their trademark coloring and sleek design, transformed the way people came to see computers, from gizmos only nerds understood or liked to things almost as organic as the partly bitten apples of the ever-present logos. Creative designing and thinking flowed naturally from a Mac, powering the creativity and productivity that have become the hallmark of the American economy, our present problems notwithstanding. In music, Jobs changed the industry by taking it digital.

As for journalism and reading in general, we have now gone back to where we started: the biblical tablet. The elegant slab we take with us wherever we go can do the same for us and take us, no matter where we are, anywhere in the universe our imagination wants to visit.

All this was the result of the happy coincidence of genius in an individual and a system. Jobs was an individual with special DNA, no question. But this half-Arab boy who was given up for adoption at birth and went on to drop out of college was able to transform the lives of individuals across the world because he lived and worked in this country.

The genius of the American system is comprised of the rule of law, respect for private property and the freedom of the individual to strive to be better than himself and his neighbor and reap the rewards that come from his innate abilities and effort. All of these and many other liberties are safeguarded in our Constitution. It is all part of what makes us an exceptional country.

This is not to say that we don’t have problems. We are indeed falling behind — not behind other countries but behind our promise and potential. Our government spends too much, tries to tell us how to run our private lives, and ties down in red tape the genius that brought you Apple. The great and sometimes cacophonous debate we are having in our country at the moment results from the fact that Americans have finally woken up to the threat our system confronts and are doing something about it.

This is not what you hear. Daily we are told by our government leaders, the media, and academia that we are as exceptional only in the way that is every other country on the U.N. roll, from Albania to Zimbabwe, is exceptional. We are told that we have to manage our decline as a power and that the great debate over ideas that we’re having is evidence that “our politics is broken.” Typically, a columnist from a Manhattan paper has titled his most recent book That Used to Be Us, a line, we’re sad to say, that came straight from a speech by Barack Obama.

This is nonsense. Steve Jobs may have given to liberal causes and politicians throughout his life, but his life proved the existence of the American Dream. As anyone who’s Googled something in her iPad and then Tweeted about it will tell you, Steve Jobs and those like him symbolize American Exceptionalism every day.

Edwin J. Feulner
President, The Heritage Foundation

Golf Magazine’s latest “Number One’s” issue includes this list of the top 8 worst golf course names:

1. Cape Schanck Resort Golf Course (Australia) Would make a great “how to speak Australian” commercial.

2. Barren View Golf Course (Jonesboro, Me.) Enough said.

3. Rat River Golf Course (Manitoba)

4. Useless Bay Golf and Country Club (Washington)

5. Bayonet at Puppy Creek (North Carolina) Now that’s funny!

6. Dead Horse Lake State Park Golf Course (Tennessee)

7. Murder Rock Golf & Country Club (Hollister, Mo.)

8. Cwmrhydneuadd Golf Club (Wales- of course!)

I can’t believe I’ve been doing triathlons for 5 years and never ridden the Alpine loop before- one of the best and “famousest” rides in Utah. With 3,880 feet of elevation gain, it’s a tough climb, but coming down the other side at 50 MPH is a riot!

This is almost unbelievable, but it is an exact quote:

Well, it's official. The nations experiment with liberalism has netted
us 2 TRILLION dollars in additional debt, while getting our credit
dinged for the first time in US history! 

Ouch! Dr. Seuss would say it something like this:

I do not like this Uncle Sam,
I do not like his health care scam..
I do not like these dirty crooks,
or how they lie and cook the books…
I do not like when Congress steals,
I do not like their secret deals..
I do not like ex-speaker Nan,
I do not like this ‘YES WE CAN’..
I do not like this spending spree,
I’m smart, I know that nothing’s free..
I do not like their smug replies,
when I complain about their lies…
I do not like this kind of hope.
I do not like it. Nope, nope, nope!!!

And no, I didn't create this, but don't know who did. All I know
is a lot of people voted on the promise of "Hope And Change,"
but next time hopefully they will prefer substance over slogans,
and positive change over the worlds most outlandish spending spree!

California:
The  Governor of California is jogging with his dog along a nature trail.

    A coyote jumps out and attacks the Governor’s dog, then bites the Governor.

    1.  The Governor starts to intervene, but reflects upon the movie “Bambi” and then realizes he should stop because the coyote is only doing what is natural.

    2.  He calls  animal control .  Animal Control captures the coyote and bills the State $200 testing it for diseases and $500 for relocating it.

    3.  He calls a veterinarian.  The vet collects the dead dog and bills the State $200 testing it for diseases.

    4.  The Governor goes to hospital and spends $3,500 getting checked for diseases from the coyote and on getting his bite wound bandaged.

    5.  The running trail gets shut down for 6 months while Fish & Game conducts a $100,000 survey to make sure the area is now free of
dangerous animals.

    6.  The Governor spends $50,000 in state funds implementing a “coyote awareness program” for residents of the area.

    7.  The State Legislature spends $2 million to study how to better treat rabies and how to permanently eradicate the disease throughout the world.

    8.  The Governor’s security agent is fired for not stopping the attack.  The State spends $150,000 to hire and train a new agent with additional special training regarding the nature of coyotes.

    9. PETA protests the coyote’s relocation and files a $5 million suit against the State.

TEXAS:

    The Governor of Texas is jogging with his dog along a nature trail.  A Coyote jumps out and attacks his dog.

    1. The Governor shoots the coyote with his State-issued pistol and keeps  jogging. The Governor has spent $0.25 on a .45 ACP hollow point cartridge.

    2. The Buzzards eat the dead coyote.

And that, my friends, is why California is broke and Texas is not.

 
GOD BLESS TEXAS, AMEN.