Soul's Code

FROM THE ARCHIVES: The Republican front-runner low-bridges his faith in a party of Bible-thumpers

BY PAUL KAIHLA — The Democrats have their “minority” candidate in-waiting for president — Hillary — and a minority president, through the prism of the ‘race card.’

Religously-speaking, the Republicans have a minority candidate, too. Mitt Romney (translation: Mormon).

Mitt is a Boomer begat by a baronette of American politics: George Romney, three-term governor of Michigan, a former federal cabinet secretary and a runner-up to Nixon in the 1968 Republican primary for president. But did you know that Romney senior was born in Chihauhau, Mexico?

And did you know why? His parents had fled the U.S. because the LDS — Mormon shorthand for their official church — had disavowed polygamy. Although it was officially illegal in Mexico, who back-then-there would give an Eff about such a statute in an out-of-the-way place?

Was Mitt’s father a polygamist? Hardly. But he was a true believer, and actually worked as a Mormon missionary before his political career and turn as CEO of American Motors.

Back to the future: When Mitt launched his campaign for the 2008 presidential nomination, he worked overtime to dispell “misconceptions” about Mormonism in a big interview that the New York Times splashed on its front page:

He said he shared with many Americans the bafflement over obsolete Mormon practices like polygamy — he described it as “bizarre” — and disputed the argument that his faith would require him to be loyal to his church before his country.

Holy speaking in tongues — ”bafflement”?!

FROM THE ARCHIVES: Flying to Norway to start a new life, Mary Anderson got a helping hand from a stranger: Barack Obama. In her own words . . .

For Barack Obama’s inauguration we call your attention to a little-publicized event in 1988, after the future president left his gig as a community organizer in Chicago and enrolled in Harvard Law School. The unknown Obama delivered a random act of kindness to a complete stranger at a baggage check-in line at Miami’s international airport.

The recipient: a former California girl named Mary Menth Andersen (left, with her husband, holding a letter from Obama). This story first came to light a month before the 2008 U. S. presidential election in Norway’s national newspaper, VG.

It was verified to Soul’s Code by H. Dagfinn Kvale, a long-time Lutheran pastor who knows Andersen.

Click here to read the remarkable back-story of Mary Andersen’s encounter with Barack Obama. In this special to Soul’s Code, Mary celebrates the against-all-odds inauguration of her Good Samaritan from 21 years ago:

GUEST COLUMN: MARY ANDERSEN — On the eve of Barack Obama’s inauguration, as domino arrays of disasters sit on our doorstep, I find myself strangely confident. Can a small act of individual kindness, so long ago, still compel this spirited optimism I feel for everyone?

Confused morals: Is it wrong and barbaric to be glad someone – even Osama Bin Laden – is dead?

Murder could save top job: The US President receives praise, including from ex-presidents, for the death of the Al Qaeda leader.

In hindsight: Should the world have turned the other cheek?

Why rely on the administration of drugs — or the Obama administration — to cure diseases if you can avoid getting sick in the first place? The worst culprits, including heart disease and many forms of cancer, are preventable with some basic self-care.

BY VAISHALI — The largest generation in history, the post-WWII Baby Boomers (76 million people in the U.S., alone), are entering their peak need for care. And those of us affected by a U.S. health-care reform led by President Obama may end up (or not) at the government’s mercy to nurse what ails us. In the name of self-preservation, here are six highly-effective, do-it-yourself tips to keep the doctor away, and aging at bay.

Six ways to enhance your health and vitality

On this First Day of Advent, The Great Litany has a new ring under an Obama presidency

That it may please thee so to rule the hearts of thy servants, the President of the United States, and all others in authority, that they may do justice, and love mercy, and walk in the ways of truth.

BY PAUL KAIHLA — That line in the six-page petition, or poem of loving kindness, called The Great Litany had a plaintive ring during the two Bush terms. But as churches across America chant it in procession at the beginning of Advent, marking the official start to a liturgical new year, it feels like a prayer that actually connects under an Obama presidency.

When we feel powerless, we project “power” onto Obama. As much as we celebrate a savior — being one, or looking for one — is a delusion

BY DAVID RICKEY — For many of us, (I’ll admit myself into this group) our great hope was pinned on Barack Obama winning this presidential election.

The scale and depth of the victory points to what political strategists and CNN analysts, who are stuck in their heads and the obvious, are missing about elections: they’re driven by a chemistry between a leader and voters that runs far deeper than a linear series of tactics, the financial crisis or rational or wedge issues.

Where does the Hope about Obama come from? As with Jesus, we the people who look to Obama see him as the embodiment of a “solution,” to a “problem.” Obama is the Great (Black) Hope — or as the McCain campaign mockingly put it this summer, “The One.”

The question about Hope is another way of asking why we feel we know public figures, whom we rarely meet in person, so intimately.

On the first anniversary of Obama’s inauguration, we decode the rookie president’s Jesus myth. A top 10 list of the differences between the two saviors

SOUL’S CODE — Here, we come to the aid of all spell-bound Americans who, with the help of the media and Soul’s Code itself, once blurred the lines between Obama and Christ.

Thus, we name the Top 10 differences between the president and the real Jesus:

1. According to the Mormons, Jesus Christ lived in North America hundreds of years ago, and is due back for a “second coming.” Obama was born in Hawaii; everyone, possibly even Sarah Pallin, knows that Hawaii’s not in North America.

No Clowning Around With Mother Earth

If, in Kierkegaard’s parable, a theater clown’s warning of a backstage fire was met with laughs by the audience, then maybe a clown’s warning is better delivered from space.  Guy Laliberte, founder of Cirque de Soleil, will be the first clown in space to proclaim a heavenly warning to a planet in peril.  The message: preserve water resources on Earth.  Like a sacred Hopi clown yelling from a pueblo rooftop, Mr. Laliberte has made his ecological message known.

Obama lights up the White House for the Goddess of Wealth (and no, it’s not Oprah). In another first for Nobel Prize winner Barack Obama, he became the first  US President to honor Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs and Jains by lighting a symbolic diya/lamp in the White House and wishing everyone a “Happy Diwali and Saal Mubarak.”

The Secret’s Out for Oprah Guru: Police in Angel Valley are showing  no mercy in pursuing James Arthur Ray, as Oprah’s Self-help Guru sweats out  homicide charges in the Sedona sweat lodge murder investigation.