Mammon, Quetzalcoatl And Mitt Romney

Serpents of a feather flock together

Many people who have followed Romney's long-running thirst to make Mormon charlatan prophet Joseph Smith's dream of taking over the White House true may have thought Romney's only object of worship is Mammon. This whole brouhaha of him being the only serious presidential candidate in four decades to refuse to release his tax returns reinforces the idea that he's hiding something. His promise to craft a statement of his assets-- it's well-known that between his family wealth and what he made as a Bain vulture capitalist he's amassed something like a quarter-billion dollars-- is more subtle subterfuge for keeping the public from seeing his tax returns.

As he's explained, the bishop's been unemployed for years, plotting how to make Joseph Smith's dream come true, but he still manages to make huge amounts of money, money he pays almost no taxes on. I'm sure, or almost sure, that what he does is legal in the broadest sense of the word, but people with that kind of wealth find plenty of ways to avoid paying taxes. You think he wants Bachmann carping, Newt pontificating or Santorum whining during the primaries? And what do you think the Democrats will have to say about him paying a smaller percentage of taxes than schoolteachers, secretaries and average Americans? He says that if he's elected he'll consider releasing his returns. Like I said, people are wondering what's he hiding.

But back to Mammon. That isn't the only thing Romney worships. His family fled to Mexico in the 1800s in order to preserve their polygamist way of life and lived there for generations. I'm in the Yucatan now and have been visiting Mayan sacred sites all month. I've heard again and again from Mayans that Mormon missionaries-- they're everywhere in Mexico, thick as fleas-- tell them that the Mayan feathered-serpent god Quetzalcoatl was the resurrected Jesus Christ, who Mormons believe as a prime tenet of their "religion" visited the Americas after being crucified.

The chief Mormon after Brigham Young, John Taylor, who began the Mormon colonization of Mexico, wrote: "The story of the life of the Mexican divinity Quetzalcoatl closely resembles that of the Savior; so closely, indeed, that we can come to no other conclusion than that Quetzalcoatl and Christ are the same being." Does Mitt Romney worship Quetzalcoatl as the resurrected Jesus? He won't say. In fact, for a powerful Mormon bishop, he sure hates talking about his faith. The Huffington Post got him to open up a little about his Mormon life this week.

"I read scripture regularly, and seek the counsel of my creator on a daily basis."

"I pray every day. I don't read scriptures every day, probably should," he added.

Ann Romney, who sat on the couch in the Romney campaign bus next to her husband fiddling with an iPad, held up the device, prompting an exclamation from Mitt.

"There we go, just did. I got them on my iPad," he said. "I should probably read scriptures every day, but I read them frequently, but not every day."

"Sometimes I read to him. If we're on the phone, I will read him chapters," Ann Romney said with a smile.

"But I go to church every Sunday," Romney said brightly.

That was the same interview where he who worships the feathered-serpent God from Mexico, and sits on a quarter-billion barely taxed dollars, compared President Obama to Marie Antoinette.