Thanksgiving. I have been reading about Joseph Smith and the history of The Book of Mormon. I stumbled (via Google) onto a fascinating site with lots of documentation at the "Institute for Religious Research. I’ve read all I need to confirm my original gut feeling that Joseph Smith was one hell of a con man. I think I was about 14 years old when my young inquiring mind picked up and tried to read The Book of Mormon. At that age I could wade through The Bible, Jules Verne, When Worlds Collide, and the novelized version of Forbidden Planet. I read some Churchill, William L. Shirer’s Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, and even gave Plato and Gibbon a shot, but my BS filter saw The Book of Mormon as badly written fiction. It amazes me that so many people take it seriously, and I have recently gotten concerned because one of that cult’s members, Mitt Romney (an attractive candidate, who is currently the Governor of Massachusetts), is pursuing a run for President of the United States as a Conservative Republican. And, as much as I have come to admire Glenn Beck I have to question the sanity of anyone claiming to believe that crap. It is a cult as far as I am concerned. I've always felt that way, but one afternoon’s research has me convinced. What is it? A tool for career advancement as people always say about secret societies like the Masons?

Truly it is nice to feel belonging with a group of like minded individuals, but to profess belief in a Joseph Smith, for crying out loud--the guy was in arrested, tried and found guilty of fraud for using his "seer stone" to help people find buried treasure in Bainbridge, New York (1826)...give me a break! This is the same "seer stone" he put in his hat to "read" the interpretation of his golden "plates"--which no one but him ever saw!

I can understand taking things on faith. I, myself, am a Christian. But I trust Christ's diciples over Joseph Smith's any day. The latter were not really witnesses. They served as stenographers and "witnessed" his creative writing, which I am sure was done in the most solemn of settings. One of those "Witnesses" David Whitmer eventually left the church. I could go on, but I've made my point. At any rate, I hope the links point the way.

I must say it has been nice having a topic to center on for a change. I wish I could dicipline myself to do this sort of thing on a regular basis. Who knows? If I could, I might have the makings of a hack writer.

In the interest of "full disclosure" let me say I'm not a Democrat. I am more closely aligned with Republicans, though I prefer to call myself a Libertarian. I'm certainly more conservative than I am Republican. I suppose that puts me more in the camp of Robert Novak than George W. Bush, but I'm certainly to the left of William Kristol and think of myself as being somewhere between him and William F. Buckley. I'm a Reaganite, for sure. I'm also a ditto-head. With regards to the recent election, I accept the results as being a referendum on the Iraq situation and on the way the Republicans have screwed up their opportunity to govern. They, and GW, shouldn't have been so squishy on the immigration issue. There is plenty of blame to go around, but on the plus side (as Rush said), it was a defeat for Republicans, but a win for Conservatives. I'm happy to see some of the RINOs go (Republican in name only), Chafee in particular. The results were not a tilt towards Liberalism. Leiberman's win is the proof there. I'd love to see him cross the aisle. That would be justice!

It took all night and a much needed sleep period, but I woke this morning to find my blog intact and reincarnated. My login and password have changed, but I am again in control and I can take it from here. So far it seems the changes are minor. When I first logged on, a few minutes ago, I found that my experimental entry from last night had been posted 3 times in succession. Back then, I was thinking I'd totally failed and went to bed bummed out. So these things take time. A "growing pain," I guess you could call it. I will now post this and if the test is successful, I'll soon get to talking about what I was going to say last night, which had something to do with the recent election.

Well, I've just had a re-awakening. I came to log in and found that everything about my long comfortable blog had changed. Google has taken over. I had to reestablish my account and was momentarily freaked out, thinking that I'd lost my access. It seems, so far, that everything is as it should be. Some things about the "dashboard" have changed, but it is supposed to be improved. We'll see. I mean, I established this blog back in 2002 and though I don't make entries that often (and went a whole year without a single entry) I've come to think of this as a sort of stable state. It serves as it should as a sort of log...a Web log, or Blog as intended. Truly it's taken me a long time to learn how to manage this space, and I'm no where near where I'd like to be with regards to utilizing this territory, I had to start somewhere, and this was it. Now, before I start philosophizing about the recent election results I should see if this post appears as it should.