Founders of a defunct Provo credit services company defrauded a California man out of hundreds of thousands of dollars by persuading him to take out a home loan, promising a 30 percent profit and lying about their business acumen, according to the Utah Department of Commerce. But Mike Hale's willingness to part with his money also was a test of faith. According to the state, Mascot Financial LLC owner Samuel Duane Aston earned Hale's trust by emphasizing his membership in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and that he was a priesthood holder with a temple recommend, a benchmark of worthiness that requires members to assert, among other things, that they are "honest in their dealings with their fellow man."
[Article continues at link. What would it be like if the President of the United States came to power through fraud including a claim to supernatural-inspired integrity?]
"America was never innocent. We popped our cherry on the boat over and looked back with no regrets. You can't ascribe our fall from grace to any single event or set of circumstances. You can't lose what you lacked at conception.
"Mass-market nostalgia gets you hopped up for a past that never existed. Hagiography sanctifies shuck-and-jive politicians and reinvents their expedient gestures as moments of great moral weight. Our continuing narrative line is blurred past truth and hindsight. Only a reckless verisimilitude can set that line straight."
--James Ellroy, American Tabloid
Ensure a Free and Fair Election (Ban Paperless Voting Machines
"The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use the words."
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