“The Hunger Games”: A Glimpse at the Future?

By VC | April 5th, 2012

The hit movie “The Hunger Games” takes place in a dystopian future where the poor and wretched masses live under the high tech tyranny of a wealthy elite. Is the movie depicting the kind of society the elite is trying to establish for the New World Order? We’ll look at characteristics of the world presented in “The Hunger Games” and how they relate to plans for a New World Order.

Pushed by a gigantic marketing campaign, The Hunger Games did not take long to become a world-wide sensation, especially among teenagers and young adults. Sometimes referred to as the new Twilight, The Hunger Games has similar components to the previous book-to-movie craze (i.e. a young girl torn between two guys) but takes place in a very different context.

Set in a dystopian future (why is the future always “dystopian”?), The Hunger Games paints a rather grim picture of the world of tomorrow, whether it be from a social, economical or political point of view. In short, it is a big-brotherish nightmare where a rich elite thrives on the backs of a starving population. Meanwhile, the perversity and voyeurism of mass media is taken to absurd levels and is used by the government as a glue to keep its unjust social order intact. Is The Hunger Games giving teenagers a glimpse of a not-too-distant future? It doesn’t take a crystal ball to see the elite are trying to take the world in that direction. Is the author Suzanne Collins communicating a strong anti-NWO message to the youth by showing its dangers or is it getting the youth used to the idea? Let’s look at the fictional, yet possible, future world of The Hunger Games.

Note: This article is about the movie and not the book series. The movie has been formatted in a different way and conveys a slightly different message.

The NWO for Teenagers

The Hunger Games takes place in a context that is strikingly on-par with descriptions of the New World Order as planned by today’s global elite. One of the main characteristics of the New World Order is the dissolving of regular nation-states to form a single world government to be ruled by a central power. In The Hunger Games, this concept is fully represented as the action takes place in Panem, a totalitarian nation that encompasses the entire North-American territory. The United States and Canada have therefore merged into a single entity, a step that many predict that will happen before the full-on creation of the NWO.

The President of Panem addressing the Nation.

In Panem, the concepts of democracy and freedom have disappeared from America to be replaced by a high-tech dictatorship based on surveillance, monitoring, mass-media indoctrination, police oppression and a radical division of social classes. The vast majority of the citizens of Panem live in third-world country conditions and are constantly subjected poverty, famine and sickness. These difficult living conditions are apparently the result of a devastating event that engendered the complete economic collapse of North America. In District 12, home of the hero Katniss Everdeen, the locals live in conditions similar to the pre-industrial era where families of coal miners lived makeshift in shacks and eat rodents as meals.

While the masses look as if they are living in the 1800s, they are nevertheless subjugated to the high-tech rule of the Capitol, which uses technology to monitor, control and indoctrinate the masses. Surveillance cameras, RFID chips and 3D holograms are abundantly used by the government to manipulate the will of a weak and uneducated population (although there are signs of solidarity and rebelliousness among the peasants). To preserve the fragile social order, the Capitol relies on a massive police force that is always ready repress any kind of uprising. The workers are often rounded up in civilian camps where they are shown state-sponsored propaganda videos. Panem is therefore a high-tech police state ruled by a powerful elite that seeks to keep the masses in poverty and subjugation. As we’ve seen in previous articles on this site, all of these concepts are also thoroughly represented in other forms of media as there appears to be a conscious effort to normalize the ideas of a high-tech police state as the only normal evolution of the current political system.

Living in sharp contrast to the proletariat, the elite in The Hunger Games inhabits the glistening Capitol city and indulges in all sorts of extravagances and fashion trends. This upper-echelon of society perceives the rest of the population as an inferior race to be ridiculed, tamed and controlled. All valuable resources have been vacuumed from the people living in the districts to profit the Capitol, creating a clear and insurmountable divide between Regular People and The Elite. The concept of an opulent elite ruling over the dumbed-down and impoverished masses (thus making them easily manageable) is an important aspect of the New World Order and it is clearly depicted in The Hunger Games. The government’s reliance on high-tech surveillance and mass media to keep the population in check is something we are already seeing and, if we keep going in that direction, the world of The Hunger Games will soon become reality. There is another concept important to the occult elite that is at the heart of The Hunger Games, however: Blood sacrifices to strike fear and gain power.

Blood Sacrifices for the Elite

Katniss is selected as tribute of her district.

The government of Panem created the Hunger Games in order to remind the masses of the “great treason” they have committed by engaging in a rebellion. As punishment for their insubordination, the twelve districts of Panem must offer to the Capitol one boy and one girl between the ages of 12 and 18 to be part of The Hunger Games. The teenagers must fight to the death in an outdoor arena in a Roman Gladiator-like event that is televised across the nation. The rules of the Games reflect the elite’s contempt and total lack of respect for the masses. The name of the Games itself is a reminder of the state of perpetual starvation the lower class is purposely kept in by the rulers in order to better control it.

The boys and girls that are selected to take part in The Hunger Games are called “tributes”, a term that usually describes a payment rendered by a vassal to his lord and thus even reflects the servitude of the mass to its rulers. Since time immemorial, blood sacrifices were considered to be the highest form of “tribute” to gods and, on an occult level, were said to wield the most potent power to be tapped by rulers and sorcerers. The same way ancient Carthaginians sacrificed infants to the god Moloch, inhabitants of Panem sacrifice their children to the Capitol. The Hunger Games are therefore a modern version of these ancient rituals that the masses had to participate in to avoid the wrath of their superiors. The entire nation of Panem is forced to watch the sacrificial ritual that takes place in the Capitol, stirring up fear, anger and blood lust within them, amplifying the power of the ritual. We’ve seen in previous articles that the deaths of specific people (Whitney Houston, Heath Ledger, Amy Winehouse) become such a media event that they are, in fact, mega-rituals that entire nations participate in. The Hunger Games reflect this concept of highly publicized mega-rituals.

"Tributes" for The Hunger Games become the property of the state and are revoked of all their rights.

In The Hunger Games, the ritualistic death of young people chosen from the mass is sold as a sporting event, a nation-wide celebration that is packaged as a reality show. Not only do the poor people participate in these demeaning events, they even cheer for their favorites. Why do they accept all of this? One of the reasons is that mass media can get people to accept anything … if it is entertaining.

Appealing to the Basest Instincts

The games are broadcast to the nation in the form of a reality-show, complete with TV hosts who analyze the action, interview the tributes and judge their performance. The tributes are so indoctrinated in this culture that they readily accept the rules of the game and turn are fully willing to start killing to win the Games. The masses also actively participate in the event, cheering for their district’s representatives, even though the entire event celebrates the sacrifice of their own. This reflects a sad but true fact concerning mass media: Any kind of message can reach people if it manages to capture their attention. There are two things that automatically, almost irresistibly, grab our attention: Blood and sex, the remnants of our primal instincts. The sheer violence of the event grabs the attention of the masses, who forget that the Games serve as a reminder of the people’s servitude to its elite. This concept is already well-known and fully exploited in today’s mass media, as elite-sponsored messages are constantly sold to consumers as being “entertainment”. The Hunger Games therefore aptly portray the role of media in the manipulation of public opinion. Will the movie help young people realize this fact?

At one point in The Hunger Games, the death of a little girl shocked the people to a point that it brought a brief moment of lucidity and solidarity as the kill highlighted the atrocity of the Games. The live broadcasting of the death lead to a violent uprising in her district as the locals realized that they were willing participants in something terrible. The uprising was quickly quelled however, by the ever-present police force of the state. Furthermore, in order to prevent further social trouble, the producers of the show introduced a new element to the show: Love between Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark, the girl and the boy from District 12. By introducing love (and, by extension, sex) into the show, the producers managed to quell the masses and brought them back to their usual state of silent stupor. This part of the movie reflects how mass media is used by the powers that be today. The worldwide reach of The Hunger Games series itself proves that stories that cleverly feature the ingredients of sex and violence are bound to get people hooked. And, even though The Hunger Games seems to be denouncing the perversity of violence in mass media, it sure brings more of it into movie theatres.

Desensitizing to a New Type of Violence

While there is no shortage of violence in Hollywood, The Hunger Games movie crosses a boundary that is rarely seen in movies: Violence by minors and towards minors. In this PG-13 movie we see kids aged between 12 and 18 violently stabbing, slashing, strangling, shooting and breaking the necks of other children – scenes that are seldom seen in Hollywood movies. While it is surely a way for the movie the grab the attention of the movie’s target audience (which happens to be teenagers aged 12 to 18) The Hunger Games brings to the forefront a new form of violence that was previously deemed too disturbing to portray in movies. But in the particular kill-or-be-killed scenario of The Hunger Games, the viewers easily go beyond this psychological barrier and find themselves yelling stuff at the movie like “Come on, Katniss, take your bow and shoot that vicious little f**cker in the head!”.

In Conclusion

The Hunger Games is set in world that is exactly what is described to be the New World Order: A rich and powerful elite, an exploited and dumbed-down mass of people, the dissolving of democracies into a police state entities, high-tech surveillance, mass media used for propaganda and a whole lot of blood rituals. There is indeed nothing optimistic in the dystopian future described in The Hunger Games. Even human dignity is revoked as the masses are forced to watch their own children killing each others as if they were caged animals. That being said, there is little to no difference between movie goers who watch the movie The Hunger Games and the masses in the movie that witness the cruelty of the Games. Both are willing participants in an event that portrays the sacrifice of their own under the amused eye of the elite. Furthermore, one can argue that the movie accomplishes the same functions as the Games in the movie: Distracting the masses with blood and sex while reminding it of the elite’s power.

Is The Hunger Games attempting to warn an apathetic youth of the danger of allowing the current system to devolve into a totalitarian nightmare? Or is it simply programming it to perceive the coming of a New World Order as an inevitability? That question is up for debate. But reading what is being said in the mass media about The Hunger Games, it seems there is an even more important question up for debate: Are you Team Peeta or Team Gale?

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Dominican Republic: Church celebrates religious freedom on the island

Libna Stevens

May 2, 2012

A colorful festival-filled with music and drama-celebrated religious freedom as a gift from God and capped off a week of scholarly presentations and panels at the 7th World Congress for Religious Freedom.

image by Abel Marquez/IAD

The Third Festival for Religious Freedom in the Dominican Republic was held in the Aula Magna on the historic campus of Universidad Autónoma de Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, Apr. 28, 2012.

May 2, 2012 - Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic....Bettina Krause/IAD Staff

A colorful festival-filled with music and drama-celebrated religious freedom as a gift from God and capped off a week of scholarly presentations and panels at the 7th World Congress for Religious Freedom. The event was held at Aula Magna on the historic campus of Universidad Autónoma in the nation's capital, Santo Domingo, on Apr. 28, 2012, and drew some 3,000 people from across the Dominican Republic, as well as many international participants from the 7th World Congress.

Pastor Ted N.C. Wilson, president of the Seventh-day Adventist world church, spoke to those crowded into the venue, saying that every Adventist Church member is called to be a "champion of religious liberty and freedom of conscience."

"Religious liberty and freedom of conscience is important for everyone in the world," said Pastor Wilson. "If we wish to be proclaimers of religious liberty and reach the world, we must base this proclamation on a relationship with God including a clear, clean, pure lifestyle as did Daniel and his three friends."

Pastor Wilson concluded by emphasizing that justice, fairness, and goodness are God's character, and to be faithful to God and His Word until the second coming.

"As we carry the great banner of religious freedom not only in the Dominican Republic, but in the entire world, may we help the people to understand there is a God in heaven who gives freedom of choice. Where freedom is, there is freedom in His Law," Pastor Wilson said.

The festival event was the third held on the island, one which followed brought an opportunity to celebrate the religious freedom held in the Dominican Republic and to recognize authorities of the country who are ensuring equality and religious liberty issues, said Pastor Cesario Acevedo, president of the church in the Dominican Republic.

Pastor Wilson and John Graz, Secretary General of the International Religious Liberty Association, unveiled a bronze plaque that was cast in commemoration of the 7th World Congress-the first IRLA World Congress to be held in Inter-America and the largest and most diverse, with almost 900 attendees from some 65 countries.

Dr. Aquilina Alcequiez, advisor to the Dominican Republic president for Religious Affairs, read out the text on the plaque: "In remembering the 7th IRLA World Congress on Religious Liberty, held in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic, April 24 to 26, 2012. Religious Freedom is a gift of love from God to every human being...The IRLA delegates, coming from 60 countries to attend the World Congress, commend the Dominican Republic for its religious freedom. As million of believers are suffering discrimination, torture, and death in the world, the delegates encourage the Dominican people to join their voices with all people who love justice and freedom."

Representative of the president of the Senate of the Republic as well as the deputy leader of the city of La Romana were awarded a plaque for their efforts in recently approving a law on religious matrimonies and civil issues.

Festivals such as these are important and necessary to hold in countries where religious freedom is enjoyed, said Roberto Herrera, secretary general of IRLA for Inter-America, who has coordinated dozens of religious festivals throughout the Inter-American territory.

"We must continue to be grateful to local governments and taking the opportunity to speak more of religious freedom and what it means to every citizen," said Herrera.

A central feature of the program was a musical drama performed by young people, which told the story of religious freedom in song and drama.

Wally Amundson and Rene Gomez contributed to this report

For more on the Seventh-day Adventist Church in the Dominican Republic, visitwww.adventistas.org.do

To view photos of the event, click here

image by Abel Marquez/IAD

Dr. Aquilin Alcequiez, advisor to the Dominican Republic president for religious affairs, read a bronze plaque cast in commemoration of the 7th IRLA World Congress held last week.

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4 risky places to swipe your debit card

By Claes Bell • Bankrate.com

Debit cards are different

Would you give a thief direct access to your checking account?

No? Unfortunately, you may be doing just that by regularly using your debit card. Debit cards may look identical to credit cards, but there's one key difference. With credit cards, users who spot fraudulent charges on their bill can simply decline the charges and not pay the bill. On the other hand, debit cards draw money directly from your checking account, rather than from an intermediary such as a credit card company.

Because of that, even clear-cut cases of fraud where victims are protected from liability by consumer protection laws can cause significant hardship, says Frank Abagnale, a secure-document consultant in Washington, D.C.

He cites the example of the The TJX Companies Inc.'s T.J. Maxx data breach that exposed the payment information of thousands of customers in 2007. The incident resulted in $150 million in fraud losses, and much of it was pulled directly from customers' bank accounts. While credit card users got their accounts straightened out and new cards in the mail within a few days, the case created major problems for debit card holders who waited an average of two to three months to get reimbursed, Abagnale says.

While debit card fraud is always a possibility, being careful where you use it can help keep your checking account balance out of the hands of criminals.


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Secularism in America: Growing American movement raises concerns

Posted By The Catholic Free PressApril 20, 2012 | 6:34 pm | Spiritual

By Chaz Muth
Catholic News Service
WASHINGTON (CNS) — Arianne Gasser of Canton, Ohio, is proud to call herself a graduate student at a prestigious Catholic university, and she also is proud to call herself an atheist.
The pride she has in her atheist status is part of what inspired her to travel from the Philadelphia area, where she is enrolled at Villanova University, to Washington in March to join thousands of other atheists, agnostics and other nonbelievers for the “Reason Rally,” an event that was billed as an assembly to unify secular people nationwide.
Carrying a sign that reads, “This is what an atheist looks like,” Gasser is part of a growing segment of Americans under the age of 30 who identify themselves as atheists or agnostics.
It’s a movement that concerns Catholic leaders worldwide, including Pope Benedict XVI.
“We have morals and we have beliefs and we have these values,” said Gasser, as she walked along the National Mall and marveled at how many people turned out for the rally. “People just think that we’re evil, God-hating. We’re just people. We just don’t believe that something happens to us after we die.”
A survey released in 2009 by the Pew Research Center found that a quarter of Americans between the ages of 18 and 29 surveyed said they were atheists, agnostics or had no religion.
“Radical secularism” threatens the core values of American culture, the pope warned a group of U.S. bishops visiting the Vatican in January. He called on the church in the U.S., as well as politicians and other laypeople, to render “public moral witness” on crucial social issues.
“The larger concern with secularism is that it damages people, and that it actually keeps people from being reasonable with one another,” said Chad C. Pecknold, assistant professor of systematic theology in the School of Theology and Religious Studies at The Catholic University of America in Washington.
“It creates a great level of intolerance for people of faith. I think secularism for Pope Benedict is a feature of this growing bifurcation between faith and reason,” he told Catholic News Service.
Pecknold, who also is the author of the 2010 book “Christianity and Politics: A Brief Guide to the History,” said secularism is a greater threat to humanity than to the Catholic Church because it could lead to great social unrest and fragmentation.
Vilification of Muslims in the United States following the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania can be viewed as an example of secularists’ intolerance.
Richard Dawkins, vice president of the British Humanist Association and author of the 2006 book “The God Delusion,” was quoted as saying religion is dangerous “because it gives people unshakeable confidence in their own righteousness. Dangerous because it gives them false courage to kill themselves, which automatically removes normal barriers to killing others.”
His remarks are an illustration of hostilities toward people of faith, Pecknold said.
“These are all examples of an attempt to cause civil unrest, which I don’t think are sustainable,” he said. “It could actually lead to greater and greater social unrest, and could potentially give so much power to culture wars that we become an increasingly fragmented society.”
The greatest threat to civil society comes from militant atheists, Pecknold told CNS.
Gasser and many of the atheists and agnostics who gathered at the “Reason Rally” said they don’t see the secular movement as a threat to society. They just want people to respect their right to shun organized religion and to have their voices heard by politicians and policymakers.
They carried signs that read “Good without a God,” “Proud to be an atheist,” and “It’s OK to be an atheist.”
Others carried signs or wore shirts that had more provocative messages, such as “If you really believe prayer worked, you’d stop voting,” “Freedom is the distance between church and state,” and “No God, No Devil, Just Us.”
Gasser said she just wants her voice to be heard with the same volume as Christians, Muslims and Jews.
“I’m not really into politics, but I do think that secular beliefs need to be treated equally with people who are believers,” she told CNS. “I don’t think we’re recognized in the government policies and the way people cover campaigns. It’s just all appealing to religious people, but there are so many of us who want to have a say in how our country is run.”
The poll numbers revealing growing atheist numbers and events like the “Reason Rally” have theology scholars focusing on what they believe is driving the secularism movement.
“The cultural conditions have become more conducive to atheism. We can see that in economic ways in that we are encouraged to think of ourselves as economic individuals,” Pecknold said.
“We see that in the Tea Party, a libertarian approach to economic good in which economics is something that is merely representing my own self-interests,” he said. “That kind of radical individualism in economic terms or philosophical terms is itself kind of a practical atheism, in which you detach yourself from any sort of transcendent notion of the good, any sort of sense of a common good that you would participate in.
“A kind of view in which I can participate in something bigger than myself is kind of eroded from our economic practice as human beings.”

PHOTO:Alberto Valdez from Del Rio, Texas, joins others March 24 for the Reason Rally, a gathering of atheists and nonbelievers held on the National Mall in Washington. Research shows a growing number of young adults who say they are atheists, agnostics or have no religion. (CNS photo/Tyrone Turner courtesy of Religion News Service)

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The Moon was 14% bigger? Pseudofactotechnicalisis

Last night the Moon was the closest to Earth it will be until next year.

They claimed that it would appear 14% bigger than usual.

Who measures these sizes? Who predicts these statistics? Rocket scientists?

Isn't this similar to Ivory Soap's claim that their soap is 99.9% pure?

So much frivolous information is passed off as NEWS by the Wi-Fi Media.

I have coined a word to describe this symptom: pseudofactotechnicalisis.

Arsenio.

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Race and Religion in the US Presidential Election

Published May 05, 2012

Fox News Latino

FILE - This combination of 2012 file photos shows U.S. President Barack Obama, left, and Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney in Boulder, Colo. and Cape Canaveral, Fla. How unthinkable it was, not so long ago, that a presidential election would pit a candidate fathered by an African against another condemned as un-Christian. And yet, here it is: Barack Obama vs. Mitt Romney, an African-American and a white Mormon, representatives of two groups and that have endured oppression to carve out a place in the United States. How much progress has America made against bigotry? (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster, Charles Dharapak)

Only a few years ago it would seem strange that the United States presidential election would pair off a candidate fathered by an African against another condemned as un-Christian.

Yet here it is: Barack Obama versus Mitt Romney, an African-American and a white Mormon, representatives of two groups and that have endured oppression to carve out a place in the United States.

How much progress has America made against bigotry? By November, we should have some idea.

Perhaps mindful of the lingering power of prejudice, both men soft-pedal their status as racial or religious pioneers. But these things "will be factors whether they're explicitly stated or not, because both Obama and Romney are minorities," said Nancy Wadsworth, co-editor of the anthology "Faith and Race in American Political Life."

Mormons are 1.7 percent of the U.S. population, according to the Pew Research Center. African-Americans are 12.6 percent

"Americans like to obsess about ways that people are different," said Wadsworth, a political science professor at the University of Denver. Voters of all types say that a candidate's race or religious beliefs should not be cause for bias, "but Americans are really conflicted about this, and they talk out of both sides of their mouth."

In an October 2011 Associated Press-GfK poll, 21 percent of respondents said they would be less likely to cast a presidential vote for a Mormon. Four percent said they would be less likely to vote for a black person. An AP poll during the 2008 campaign found that nearly 40 percent of white Americans had at least a partly negative view of black people.

The gap between America's high-minded ideals and narrow-minded practice is not new.

In 1620, the Puritans landed on Plymouth Rock searching for religious freedom. The Constitution forbade a religious test for president. Still, the religion of presidential candidates historically has been a major issue, though nearly all have been Protestant.

Thomas Jefferson, who coined the phrase "separation between church and state," was decried as godless. Nearly 160 years later, John F. Kennedy was tarred as a Roman Catholic who would answer to the pope instead of the American people.

In 1787, the same colonists who had demanded equal rights in their dealings with England wrote a Constitution that reduced blacks to three-fifths of a person. Nearly 80 years would pass before that changed and another century before blacks would be assured the vote.

Obama remains the sole member of the most exclusive club in the world, racial minorities who were nominated for president by a major party.

In 2012, it's unlikely that more than a smattering of die-hard bigots will be repelled by both presidential choices. But even well-intentioned people can be influenced by the powerful emotional pull of these issues.

Obama has been assailed by racially charged accusations since he became the first black president: Obama isn't a citizen; he refused to punish New Black Panthers who intimidated white voters; he's seeking payback for past white racism by redistributing tax money to poor minorities; he's using the Trayvon Martin killing for political gain.

Wes Anderson, a Republican consultant and pollster, said many white swing voters who chose Obama in 2008 think he has governed further to the left than they expected, which has fed ideas that Obama is a typical "black liberal politician" who is "pandering to minorities."

"From their perspective, I think race will be a convenient excuse for why he has not met their expectations," Anderson said.

Wadsworth said that even after three-plus years of a black president, racial bias remains "super-loaded and super-coded."

"It's coded into political 'otherness' — he's a socialist, he's dangerous, maybe a Muslim," she said. "I think down underneath there's a lot of race bias, it's just that they've figured out ways to channel that into seemingly race-neutral codes."

Then there's bald racism.

This April, bar owner Patrick Lanzo in Paulding County, Ga., posted a roadside sign outside his establishment that used the n-word to convey his disdain for the president. "I don't feel bad about (the sign) whatsoever," Lanzo told Fox 5 News in Atlanta.

Obviously, Obama's victory in 2008 did not put racial issues to rest. "He is never on stable ground, racially," Wadsworth observed.

Romney has tried to push past anti-Mormonism, with mixed success. His membership in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has been an issue his entire political career.

In 2007, during his presidential primary battle against Arizona Sen. John McCain, he gave a speech to quiet concerns about his faith. "I do not define my candidacy by my religion. A person should not be elected because of his faith nor should he be rejected because of his faith," Romney said in the address, which used the word "Mormon" only once.

There continue to be blatant expressions of hostility toward Mormons. For example, there is an "I Hate Mormons" page on Facebook.

But J.B. Haws, a historian at Brigham Young University who researches public perception of the Mormon church, said most common suspicions about Mormons were rehashed in the 2008 election and this year's GOP primary, so moving forward the discussion is likely to be more substantive and informed.

"But that doesn't change the fact that the questions will still be tough and pointed," Haws said.

The Mormon church was founded in 1830 by Joseph Smith, who said God directed him to restore the true Christian church by revising parts of the Bible and adding the Book of Mormon as a sacred text. Smith said an angel directed him to a buried holy book in upstate New York, written on golden plates, which he translated from "reformed Egyptian" into the Book of Mormon. Theological differences have led many Christians to conclude that Mormons are not part of historic Christianity.

There's the issue of polygamy, though the Mormon church renounced the practice in 1890.

Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer, a Democrat, recently took the opportunity of a Daily Beast interview to say that Romney's father, George, was "born into (a) polygamy commune in Mexico." (Mitt Romney's grandfather, Gaskell, had one wife, but his great-grandfather, Miles Park Romney, had four and fled to Mexico in 1885 to escape U.S. anti-polygamy laws.)

One of the toughest questions probably will focus on the Mormons' former ban on men of African descent in the priesthood. When the church lifted the prohibition in 1978, leaders didn't explain the theology behind it. That left questions about church doctrine on race, even though Mormon leaders repeatedly denounce racism.

It's an issue that Mormons discuss among themselves. But when it's brought up in a campaign setting, many Mormons say it's just an attempt to embarrass Romney.

Several conservatives have recently predicted that liberals, rankled by Mormon opposition to gay marriage and emphasis on stay-at-home motherhood, would use religion to "smear" Romney. "It's way out of bounds, but that's what's going to happen," said a prominent Mormon, Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah.

But liberals are not the only ones who are suspicious of the Mormons. Vice President Joe Biden told Esquire magazine that faith shouldn't be a factor in elections, so "that's why I'm so angry about the way they're treating Romney." By "they," Biden probably was focusing on evangelicals, who make up a big part of the GOP base.

When Liberty University, the school founded by the late Rev. Jerry Falwell, announced Romney as commencement speaker on May 12, hundreds of angry comments were posted on Liberty's Facebook page by people who said they were students or alumni, objecting to giving a Mormon a platform. The school responded by affirming its welcome to Romney.

But evangelicals are among the country's most politically conservative voters, and "they're going to hold their nose and vote for Romney. They're certainly not going to join the Obama campaign," said Patrick Mason, author of "The Mormon Menace: Violence and Anti-Mormonism in the Postbellum South."

Anderson, the pollster, said his research has found that evangelicals know more than other groups about what Mormons actually believe, and despite their religious differences tend to view Mormon values as positive.

"Is the bigger problem for Romney not evangelical Christians, but more secular voters who are skeptical of what Mormonism is, or just ignorant?" Anderson asked.

Perhaps it is just their growing hostility to religion in general, Mason said. "Mormonism becomes the lens through which they can paint their critique."

Regardless, the Romney campaign "would be crazy if they didn't have a plan in place already" to deal with Mormon bias, said Mark Noll, a University of Notre Dame historian who wrote "God and Race in American Politics," ''just like Obama's people are just dusting off whatever they had ready in 2008."

In 2008, racial issues threatened to torpedo Obama after the emergence of militant pro-black sermons by his former pastor, Jeremiah Wright. Obama defused the issue with a major speech on race, but the Wright connection fed a GOP narrative that Obama was not "one of us." Democrats labeled such statements coded language that appealed to racial prejudices.

In the final stages of his losing campaign, McCain declined entreaties from some advisers to use Wright's sermons to attack Obama.

"John McCain, whatever else you want to say about him, did not use all the racial weapons he could have used," said Randall Kennedy, a Harvard Law School professor and author of "The Persistence of the Color Line: Racial Politics and the Obama Presidency."

"Well, McCain lost," Kennedy continued. "I can't help but think that this time around, if there is anything that could plausibly be used, no matter how ugly, it will be used. So I anticipate a very messy, ugly campaign."

"I hope I'm wrong," Kennedy said, "but I expect it to be worse."

Based on reporting by Jesse Washington and Rachel Zoll of The Associated Press.

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Discretion shall preserve thee, understanding shall keep thee

Proverbs 2

King James Version (KJV)

1My son, if thou wilt receive my words, and hide my commandments with thee;

² So that thou incline thine ear unto wisdom, and apply thine heart to understanding;

³ Yea, if thou criest after knowledge, and liftest up thy voice for understanding;

⁴ If thou seekest her as silver, and searchest for her as for hid treasures;

⁵ Then shalt thou understand the fear of the Lord, and find the knowledge of God.

⁶ For the Lord giveth wisdom: out of his mouth cometh knowledge and understanding.

⁷ He layeth up sound wisdom for the righteous: he is a buckler to them that walk uprightly.

⁸ He keepeth the paths of judgment, and preserveth the way of his saints.

⁹ Then shalt thou understand righteousness, and judgment, and equity; yea, every good path.

¹⁰ When wisdom entereth into thine heart, and knowledge is pleasant unto thy soul;

¹¹ Discretion shall preserve thee, understanding shall keep thee:

¹² To deliver thee from the way of the evil man, from the man that speaketh froward things;

¹³ Who leave the paths of uprightness, to walk in the ways of darkness;

¹⁴ Who rejoice to do evil, and delight in the frowardness of the wicked;

¹⁵ Whose ways are crooked, and they froward in their paths:

¹⁶ To deliver thee from the strange woman, even from the stranger which flattereth with her words;

¹⁷ Which forsaketh the guide of her youth, and forgetteth the covenant of her God.

¹⁸ For her house inclineth unto death, and her paths unto the dead.

¹⁹ None that go unto her return again, neither take they hold of the paths of life.

²⁰ That thou mayest walk in the way of good men, and keep the paths of the righteous.

²¹ For the upright shall dwell in the land, and the perfect shall remain in it.

²² But the wicked shall be cut off from the earth, and the transgressors shall be rooted out of it.

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ALEPH - Psalm 119

Blessed are they that keep his testimonies, and that seek him with the whole heart.

They also do no iniquity: they walk in his ways.

Psalm 119:2,3.

1 Blessed are the undefiled in the way, who walk in the law of the Lord.
2 Blessed are they that keep his testimonies, and that seek him with the whole heart.
3 They also do no iniquity: they walk in his ways.
4 Thou hast commanded us to keep thy precepts diligently.
5 O that my ways were directed to keep thy statutes!
6 Then shall I not be ashamed, when I have respect unto all thy commandments.
7 I will praise thee with uprightness of heart, when I shall have learned thy righteous judgments.
8 I will keep thy statutes: O forsake me not utterly.

Psalm 119

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Supermoon Coming Saturday—Not a Threat to Earth

But year's closest full moon will be a beautiful sky show, astronomers say.

A supermoon rises over West Yorkshire in the U.K. last year.

Photograph from Back Page Images/Rex Features/AP

Andrew Fazekas

for National Geographic News

Published May 3, 2012

On Saturday night, the full moon will be closer to Earth than at any other time this year, an occurrence that's been labeled a supermoon.

Due to the moon's egg-shaped orbit, there are times when our natural satellite is at perigee—its closest to Earth—and at apogee, its farthest.

The term "supermoon" was coined in 1979 to describe a full moon that coincides with perigee—something that happens about once a year, on average.

(See pictures of last year's supermoon.)

During this week's perigee, the moon will be 221,801 miles (356,955 kilometers) from our planet, and that close approach will happen within minutes of the official full moon phase, which occurs at 11:35 p.m. ET.

"As a consequence, this translates into it appearing as much as 16 percent bigger and 30 percent brighter than other full moons of 2012—not a huge amount, but definitely noticeable," said Geza Gyuk, an astronomer at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago.

The moon's proximity won't have any major effects on our planet, according to astronomers, who hope to dispel fears that the looming lunar orb causes natural disasters.

"While we know that during new and full moons the tides are greatest—and if it's in concert with a storm surge it might produce unusual flooding—there is no scientific evidence that earthquakes and other natural disasters are connected," Gyuk said.

(Related: "Titanic Sunk by 'Supermoon' and Celestial Alignment?")

"Supermoons have been happening for billions of years, and nothing particularly special occurs on these dates—except, of course, for a beautiful full moon."

Another Supermoon on the Horizon

For photo hounds, the most picturesque moments during Saturday's supermoon will occur in the minutes after local sunset, as the full moon hovers above the horizon.

"What you should see is the moon rising, deeply colored and looming over the foreground objects," Gyuk said. (Related pictures: See how a lunar eclipse turns the full moon red.)

Because the size of the moon's orbit varies slightly, each monthly perigee is not always the same distance from Earth.

In March 2011, for example, sky-watchers were treated to the closest supermoon in two decades, when the moon was a mere 221,565 miles (356,575 kilometers) from Earth.

(Also see "'Dark' Supermoon Tomorrow: New Moon Gets Closest to Earth.")

And next month the full moon will again roughly coincide with perigee, albeit one that puts the moon a bit farther away, at 222,750 miles (358,482 kilometers), Gyuk said.

"The full moon will appear to be just half of one percent different in size," Gyuk said. "So if you miss this month's supermoon, don't worry, you can see it again when it is only one percent less bright."

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National Day of Prayer, A Largely Christian Event, Grows In Popularity As It Stirs Debate

Posted: 05/ 3/2012 11:12 am

Selena Lockwood of Byram, Miss., holds her hand up in a prayerful salute during the National Day of Prayer at the Capitol in Jackson, Miss., last year.

Hundreds of Texans are expected to come to downtown Dallas Thursday for an eight-hour string of faith-based celebrations that will include Sikh drummers, Islamic prayers, Hindu singers, a Jewish cantor and Methodist and Baptist congregations.

It may sound like a standard interfaith event, another of the many that have become popular in increasingly diverse American cities, but the revelry at the the city's Thanks-Giving Square in observance of the National Day of Prayer is unique in how far it's departed from its Protestant roots.

The National Day of Prayer, which has been observed on the first Thursday in May for 24 years, is still a largely Christian event, in which millions of Americans from thousands of churches across the country will participate, bowing their heads to God in prayer on the day that traces its history to the nation's earliest years. There will beBible read-a-thons in front of city halls, police officers will pay tribute to the nation's first-responders at churches, and the devout will descend upon courthouse steps across American cities to grace the buildings with prayer.

But the event, designated via presidential proclamation, has increasingly faced accusations of encouraging an uncomfortable mingling of church and state and being too narrowly focused in practice on Christianity.

On one side, secular humanists and atheists have responded by promoting their own event, Thursday's National Day of Reason. Now in its ninth year, the nonreligious celebration has expanded to more than a dozen cities, where it's observed with blood drives, training on pro-secular policy lobbying and voter registration drives, as well as social events.

On the other hand, believers such as those in Dallas have tried to change the day's legacy by broadening its appeal. The Thanks-Giving Foundation, which typically observes the National Day of Prayer with an interfaith breakfast or luncheon, has made this year's event into a day-long festival, where more than half the events are purposefully devoted to non-Christians.

"We believe in the idea that gratitude is something that all faith traditions and all cultures value," said Chris Slaughter, a Christian Scientist who is president of the Thanks-Giving Foundation, which will be celebrating its 30th National Day of Prayer. "It can be used as a beginning point of conversation to learn about each other to gain respect and understanding."

That's a stark contrast to the theme of the Colorado Springs-based National Day of Prayer Task Force, one of the largest prayer event organizations. The group, which is chaired by Shirley Dobson, wife of evangelical group Focus on the Family's founder James Dobson, aims to "preserve America's Christian heritage," according a statement on its website.

A representative from the National Day of Prayer Task Force did not reply to a request for comment, but thewebsite includes listings for thousands of events across the nation on Thursday. Representatives for the organization have said in interviews that interest in hosting Christian prayer events has increased by 35 percent this year.

John Inazu, a law professor who specializes in the First Amendment at Washington University in St. Louis, said the increasing popularity of Christian and interfaith National Day of Prayer events and the National Day of Reason reflects a growing conflict over the role of religion in public life.

Inazu pointed out that it's been 50 years since organized prayer in public schools was declared unconstitutional in Engel v. Vitale, a landmark Supreme Court case, but that laws that allow for voluntary prayer or moments of silence in schools and initiatives to have prayers in government buildings and in public spaces have gotten more popular.

"Some religious believers will likely use the Day of Prayer to call attention to what they view as a regrettable and consequential court decision," Inazu said. "But there's an important distinction between official school or government prayer or a public school or public space that allows prayer. The key is that it's voluntary and the guidance is made as non-sectarian and as general as possible."

The National Day of Prayer has met few legal challenges since it was made official in 1952 by President Harry Truman, who left it to subsequent presidents to decide its date each year. In 1988, President Ronald Reagan signed a proclamation that set its observation to the first Thursday in May.

Two years ago, a federal judge in Wisconsin ruled that the government-sponsored National Day of Prayer violated the First Amendment, which prohibits the government from establishing religion. After an appeal from President Barack Obama's administration, a higher court reversed the decision last year and ruled that the government proclamation did not require anyone's participation.

As is customary, Obama issued a proclamation this week on the Day of Prayer in which he asked "all citizens of our Nation, as their own faith directs them, to join me in giving thanks for the many blessings we enjoy" and called for "individuals of all faiths to pray for guidance, grace, and protection for our great Nation."

But while President George W. Bush hosted interfaith events at the White House to observe the day, Obama has not publicly observed the day and has no such events scheduled Thursday.

Shin Inouye, a White House spokesman, said in an email that Obama "has been honored to celebrate prayer and faith through events like his recent Easter Prayer Breakfast, an annual event for Christian leaders begun in the Obama Administration, and speaking at the National Prayer Breakfast ... As a devoted Christian, the President prays daily and deeply appreciates the important role that prayer plays in the lives of millions of Americans."

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