My rant about the fishing buddies is in here because Pres. Thomas Monson never calls me to go fishing with him. . . sniffle. . . sniffle. . . . lol.
Actually, Jon Huntsman Sr. succeeded wildly in the petrochemical industry without hiring me as his chief chemist. . . . sniffle . . . . sniffle. . . .lol.
Pres. Goodson, once a mission president in the Philippine Mission, once worked for him. I remember when filipinos visiting Salt Lake for conference were regularly invited to stay in his home in the Cottonwood area of SLC, and I'd be going over there to see them too. . . .
The reason Jon Sr. succeeded is because he made a reputation for himself on honesty with folks like Armand Hammer, the Baking Soda genius. . . ha ha . . . toothpaste inventor. . . ha ha. . . . now laundry detergent competitor . . . hhh.....owner of a major oil company. . . and it is rumored, the "contact man" for the British Empire to Soviet Russia. As some conservatives would paint it, he was the courier boy passing orders from the Queen to Stalin and Khruschev from the Thirties to the Sixties. . .. that would make Jon Sr. a suspect "contact man" to Putin today, right?????? Or, well, maybe Armand Hammer was just lucky to get the contract to supply pencils to the Soviet School System for fifty years. . . .
At any rate, the Huntsmans once tried to get into the "Inner Circle" of the Russian oil business after the cold war, and found out they just weren't crooked enough to make it.
Today, Putin gets high marks with the rumored socialist FDR-democrat Lyndon LaRouche and his little cult of howling critics of the Brits, the Bankers, and the Fascists, because he reportedly listens to them and understands what evils lurk beneath the Crown.
But the fact is, these "demonstrators" in Russia are not Putin critics, just Putin patsies. Seeing them take up the cause of exposing LDS missionaries as spies is more of demonstration of how ruthless Putin is. Putin is a match for any fascist in my book. uhhhmmmm. . . . speaking of the spy center and it's chilling effects on free speech. . . . our version of it still doesn't chill me the way the Russian version does. The Russian goons don't need computer data to base any of their suspicions on. . . .
uninhibited imagination has always done the job in Russia. . . . and yes that's a factor in my day to day decision-making. I studied Russian language and literature and have always had a hankering to go see Russia on a grand tour, but I've always been too much of free spirit to believe they want me just wandering around in their woods. . . . . having a Gulag really does put a damper on having a tourist industry. . . .
No 18 to 21 year-old LDS missionary in Russia is an "agent" for our spy agencies. To make that claim is irresponsible to the extent of being reprehensible and a direct threat against freedom of religion, free speech, and every other human "right" there could be in Russia today. And yes, some returning LDS missionaries do go home and look for jobs where speaking Russian is a job qualification. But my niece came home and became a nurse. There's just no way an "Elder" or Sister missionary could fit any spy activity in the tracting and teaching schedule under mission rules. . . . . reporting to the mission pres in weekly reports detailing every hour of every day drives them all crazy as it is. . . .including bearing testimonies to the mission president about "golden" contacts. . . . I tell ya, the lies you have to tell in missionary reports will damn the Mormons all to hell. . . . lol. . . . if any spy agency was relying on prevaricators like that it's gonna foul their whole system in a week . . . . hmmmm. . . . . that's it, that's the answer!!!!!!
Hatch is a genius after all, a fox-like politician who knows how to defeat the plans of Satan to enslave mankind while pretending to be the great "Statesman" tool of the the Devil Himself. . . . Just build the spy center in Utah, where seven out of ten Utahns are Mormons who have been totally co-opted by the LDS Church as Visiting Relief Society "Sisters" and "Home Teachers", and a cult of covert neighborliness has developed in the ranks that makes intelligence-gathering a "way of life" that has become totally harmless because, in the last analysis, we all have nothing better to do than actually be friends and help one another, no matter what the organizational directives may be. . . .
And my wife is grateful for the Huntsman Cancer Center too. I've spent a lot of time there in the past several months.