Sausages, Chocolate Brownies, Immigration and Mozart

Saturday previously my boys and I cleaned the church building. I had my three Latino Deacons and my grandson J. As a reward for their service I promised them breakfast following our several hours of vacuuming, emptying the trash and cleaning the glass. They chose the Golden Corral in Layton. Austin is one of the brightest boys of the group. Without any adult controls, and the only rules are just don't waste any food, he loaded a plate with breakfast sausage. I watched him down a dozen links. Maybe they were out of eggs, so I was curious to see what would be on his second plate, maybe hash browns and scrambled eggs? The second plate came and was filled with chocolate brownies, at least six of them. Desert was next and he had two kinds of soft serve ice cream.

Last night we had a court of honor for the boys as I also serve as an assistant scoutmaster. Austin was the only boy who remembered to bring his assigned cookies. He brought 30 with him. A dozen he had purchased with his own money, but 18 he had baked himself. They were his favorite -- pumpkin cookies. They were good. I asked Austin, and he is only 12, how often he made cookies and baked them. He said he makes the cookies for he and his grandmother for their family activities. Austin's mother abandoned him at birth and he never knew his father, doesn't even know his name. In addition to Austin's cooking skills he keeps a 4.0 average at Centerville Jr. High and plays Mozart piano concertos. Austin is a bright fellow and one of those whom many would want to send back to where ever they came from. At least he was born in America. My life has been enriched because of my association with Austin and his peers.

Thankful for water heaters and immigrants

After playing with the dog Taja this morning, (she belongs to K, A , and kids), I went to the sink to wash my hands before starting breakfast. I generally am the breakfast cook at our house. Besides, RA has more important things to do, namely, apple, cherry, lemon meringue, peach, pumpkin pie, as well as the turkey and stuffing.

Just a simple turn of the valve and the hot water was coming from the faucet.

I am grateful for many things. I am grateful our friend Martha is battling and surviving her cancer. I am grateful for Kelly who taught me intellectual honesty, whose influence by and large has resulted in all of our kids having the same intellectual honesty, as well as being compassionate Arepublicans. I note with anticipation that it will be only a year and some weeks until ‘W’ exits the White House stage while the props are crashing around him. Truly, as Jimmy said he is the worst president we have ever had.

I am profoundly grateful for life, for my family, my grandsons and health, also I must include Gordon B. Hinckley, who aside from my father and Grandpa Henderson is the most admired man in my life. Soy agradecido tambien para la ceremonia del velo en Español and mis Latino amigos y hijos. Thanks for good friends, for freedom, for Bridge - who can exercise her agency on any Sunday even in Cache Valley. Add immigrants to my list, also George Harrison’s music. I too ‘don’t need no wah wah’. I am entranced with the Redwood forest, love my brother George who taught me to dive for abalone. W.P. Lyon - my grandfather is a personal hero. He survived an 1844 excommunication at the hands of a small man, William Marks, in Nauvoo. I require and appreciate hot peppers, Sweet Mayans, Walla Wallas, hunting, and most significantly the love and patience of an eternal partner and companion, but as I gazed out the window seeing the frost in the field and upon the grass in the yard, I am grateful for hot water and water heaters.

My gratitude for water heaters is both immediate and iconic for the contributions of so many who have gone before and how enriched my life is in so many ways. When great Uncle Parley built this house in 1890 it had no water heater, just a stove in the kitchen that might have been one of those ‘wet backs’, meaning some copper pipe that snaked its way through the stove back, that heated water when the fire was lit. It was not until 1889 that an immigrant fellow and mechanical engineer named Edwin Rudd in Pittsburg developed the first modern water heater. Thank you Edwin Rudd for my hot water on this day of gratitude.

My animal is not going to BYU

I did my part in preserving wildlife by shooting a deer today. We had permits on land held by the owner as a Cooperative Wildlife Management Unit, (CWMU). He is allowed to sell buck tags to high rollers, mostly from out of state, and then he has to allow a few cheap guys like me to draw out on a lottery basis to hunt does. The number of doe tags issued is based upon the previous year's deer census. The game biologists determine how many deer the land can support and in that way the herds are maintained with adequate food and range. Our license fees are used to support the Division of Wildlife Resources who look after the animals and try to restrain and control the crazies out there. The hunting area is near East Canyon Reservoir.

I use a .338 Lapua. It is favored by a number of countries in the European Union as the sniper rifle of choice. It propels a 250 grain slug at 3200 FPS. It has an effective range of 1000 yards. The gun was developed for the Navy Seals in the '90's and was designed in Finland. Currently the ammunition is hard to find and not available at the local outlets. I would imagine like a lot of other things it is being used up in Iraq and Afghanistan.

My animal is at the butcher and will be processed into little white packages. The hide will be tanned for the advent of some mission style furniture making in the future. Chairs and a couch are scheduled when we have enough of them. My Peruvian friends will be cooking the heart as they have an incredible recipe for this called Antecuchos de Corazon.

Que bueno!

Nixon and Kissinger on Reagan

Many of us have known this all along, no seceret, the emperor was naked, at least mentally. I am happy to see someone on the right, including Henry Kissinger, aptly characterize Reagan's "negligible" mental abilities. From Mother Jones News:

"Nixon on Tape: Reagan Was "Shallow" and of "Limited Mental Capacity"

Richard Nixon, say what you will of this criminally minded president, was a keen observer of politics. But he seems to have underestimated fellow Republican Ronald Reagan (or the American public). On the morning of November 17, 1971, Nixon, while meeting with National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger in the Oval Office, shared a few sharp--and negative--comments about California Governor Ronald Reagan, who had recently told Kissinger that Nixon had a "real problem" with conservatives who believed Nixon was not sufficiently hawkish on foreign policy matters.

For years, the Presidential Recordings Program of the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia has been transcribing and analyzing the tape recordings Nixon secretly made in the White House. Even though it's been 33 years since a disgraced Nixon left office, his tapes are still being processed by the National Archives, and the Miller Center has only recently gotten to the tape of this particular conversation. According to the newly created transcript of the meeting, both Nixon and Kissinger believed Reagan was not the brightest bulb in the GOP. Here are some key excerpts:

President Nixon: What's your evaluation or Reagan after meeting him several times now.

Kissinger: Well, I think he's a--actually I think he's a pretty decent guy.

President Nixon: Oh, decent, no question, but his brains

Kissinger: Well, his brains, are negligible. I--

President Nixon: He's really pretty shallow, Henry.

Kissinger: He's shallow. He’s got no...he's an actor. He--When he gets a line he does it very well. He said, "Hell, people are remembered not for what they do, but for what they say. Can't you find a few good lines?" [Chuckles.] That's really an actor's approach to foreign policy--to substantive....

President Nixon: I've said a lot of good things, too, you know damn well.

Kissinger: Well, that too.

Later in the 24-minute-long discussion, the two discussed the possibility of Reagan running for president:

President Nixon: Can you think though, Henry, can you think, though, that Reagan with certain forces running in the direction could be sitting right here?

Kissinger: Inconceivable.

So much for Kissinger's powers of prognostication. As they were finishing up--after discussing other matters--Nixon slammed Reagan again:

President Nixon: Back to Reagan though. It shows you how a man of limited mental capacity simply doesn't know what the Christ is going on in the foreign area. He’s got to know that on defense--doesn't he know these battles we fight and fight and fight? Goddamn it, Henry, we've been at--

Kissinger: And I told him--he said, “Why don't you fire the bureaucracy?” I said, “Because there are only so many battles we can fight. We take on the bureaucracy now, they're going to leak us to death. Name me one thing that we have done that the bureaucracy made us do.”

President Nixon: The bureaucracy has had nothing to do with anything.

Kissinger: No, no. They've made our lives harder. They've driven us crazy. But that doesn't affect him.

Shallow, negligible brains, limited mental capacity? Well, Reagan did manage to get elected twice, and he served out his two terms--a feat Nixon did not accomplish. And Kissinger happily served on Reagan's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board."

Scouting for Dollars

This guy makes $214,000.00 a year. Unless something changes I am no longer contributing to FOS, (Friends of Scouting).
The Morning News ran an article today about this leader of the Great Salt Lake Council. Take the pledge and do not give any more $$ to the BSA until there is full disclosure of salaries and steps are taken to rein this excess in.

Thanks to others who have posted on it or I would have missed it since I only read the Trib. This is the story in the News.

BTW, I am serving in my fourth Scout Troop as Scoutmaster or Assistant. I will continue because I care about boys and not scouting. It has been slowly dying for years as an organization.

No Somos Todos Mendigos?

To my Mormon friends and relatives -- This daily scene plays out in nearly every metropolitan area in these Estados Unidos of laborers crowding to get a day's work. Like the postmen, neither wind, nor rain, nor sleet, nor hail keeps these men from their every day task. The economics are brutal, either you work or you do not eat. Juxtapose, if you will, the words of King Benjamin over this image:

"19 For behold, are we not all beggars? Do we not all depend upon the same Being, even God, for all the substance which we have, for both food and raiment, and for gold, and for silver, and for all the riches which we have of every kind?
20 And behold, even at this time, ye have been calling on his name, and begging for a remission of your sins. And has he suffered that ye have begged in vain? Nay; he has poured out his Spirit upon you, and has caused that your hearts should be filled with joy, and has caused that your mouths should be stopped that ye could not find utterance, so exceedingly great was your joy.
21 And now, if God, who has created you, on whom you are dependent for your lives and for all that ye have and are, doth grant unto you whatsoever ye ask that is right, in faith, believing that ye shall receive, O then, how ye ought to impart of the substance that ye have one to another.
22 And if ye judge the man who putteth up his petition to you for your substance that he perish not, and condemn him, how much more just will be your condemnation for withholding your substance, which doth not belong to you but to God, to whom also your life belongeth; and yet ye put up no petition, nor repent of the thing which thou hast done.
23 I say unto you, wo be unto that man, for his substance shall perish with him; and now, I say these things unto those who are arich as pertaining to the things of this world."

Mosiah 4:19-23

Swords, plowshares, and sawdust...

About ready to start the staining and hand rubbed tung oil urethane finish.

Utah made guns and Hillary Clinton

This week we visited a local factory here in Utah that manufactures assault rifles. Business is very good and it may be for another couple years. Our guide said if Hillary was elected in '08 they likely would be closing. Estimates based on availability are two to four hundred weapons manufactured per week. Their latest shipment of assault rifles came to them from the Malaysian Army. The weapons come in pieces, sawed in half, and then they are stripped of useable parts such as barrels, clips and furniture. For the non familiar -- furniture means the stock and forearm rest. These stocks can be wood, metal or some high impact plastic. They can be rigid, telescoping or folding. Some weapons even come with built in wire cutters in their furniture, such as one one of these Galils pictured. That's something every homeowner needs for self defense -- the ability to cut through the barb wire of your neighbors compound before you assault his house.

Based on the comments of our guide there is great demand for these kinds of weapons and waiting lists grow longer daily. Particularly in demand are the Heckler and Koch .308 assault rife and the 9 mm Uzzis. In addition, Kalishnikov variants, Galils and Valmets are re-manufactured and highly prized.

If this is Utah and this is only one of several manufacturers here one has to wonder how many thousands of these guns are being sold each week to homeowners, sportsmen, Republicans, and Second Ammendment supporters. The recent tragic shootings in Finland underscores the high price of gun ownership. The US rates number one in the world for gun ownership, 90 weapons for every 100 citizens. Yemen is second at 61 guns per one hundred civilians. Iraq's populace ranks only 5th in the world, but they have neater stuff like RPG's and shoulder launched SAM's. Think what an RPG could mean for home defense and for sporting men everywhere.

Go Hillary!