Good Stuff!

I just finished the most important book on politics I’ve read in years.

Years.

In fact, I’ll go so far as to say it is the book for our current political times.

I say this because America isn’t facing the threat of Communism, Nazism, poverty, illiteracy, or disease. ISIS and the terrorists are on the run. We’re beginning to figure out a better way of treating our LGBT brother and sisters. And we’re not poisoning ourselves with the broad-based racism or sexism of the past. Yes, there are lots of areas where we can improve. But these are not the main problems of our current time.

In my opinion, the main problem of our current time is a burgeoning contempt between left and right.

Political scientists find our nation is more polarized than at any time since the Civil War. People in positions of power and influence on both sides of the spectrum, and everywhere in between, are setting us against each other. They tell us our neighbors who are on the other side are evil, corrupt, or stupid. And must be utterly vanquished. And many of us perpetuate the message, very frequently on social media.

By some measures the divide between right and left in America is beginning to approach the size and feeling of the one between the Israelis and Palestinians.

Is that really where we want to go?

I think most people will agree with me that it is not. So what do we do about it?

May I suggest we start by reading this terrific book by Arthur C. Brooks called Love Your Enemies: How Decent People Can Save America from the Culture of Contempt.

With that title you might think Brooks is suggesting that the solution to the divisions in our country is to start a national program for the singing of “Kum Ba Yah.” If so, you would be wrong.

Brooks doesn’t claim we need less disagreement. He thinks we need more disagreement. Yes, you read that right. More. He’s calling for more, strong disagreement. It’s just that we need to disagree in a better way. A different way.

At this point you might be wondering how it’s possible to disagree, and in greater amounts, and not run the nation off the cliff in flames.

I was wondering that too. And Brooks provides the research, the thinking, and a number of practical methods in his book. Brooks will make you think about how we interact in a totally different way. And he does it with his trademark good humor. You’ll laugh, you’ll think, and you’ll come away seeing a better path.

If a good portion of us disagree the way Brooks is suggesting, it will change our country. All we need is a core of us willing to try.

If you’re interested in politics, if you are getting tired of the insults on social media and the news, if you’re tired of the way the parties are not working with each other in Washington, I think you’ll love this book.

If you want a taste of what Brooks is talking about, watch his eleven-minute commencement speech at BYU this last April. Find it here. If you want another taste, watch his TED talk.

Habits are one of the most powerful forces in our lives. If we could consciously harness them, there’s no telling what we can do.

The problem is that we keep going about it all wrong.

We keep trying to motivate ourselves into behavior change. Sometimes motivation works, but motivation is fickle. And more often than not it leaves us hanging just when we need it the most.

So are we doomed?

No.

Because motivation is just one of four parts of creating habits. And it’s not even the most important one.

What are these other parts? How do you harness them?

Well, that’s the subject of Atomic Habits by James Clear.

And one of the neat things is that Clear reveals that tiny changes can lead to remarkable results. No Herculean efforts. No getting yourself amped up. Something else that’s much easier to do and much more effective.

The book’s been a New York Times bestseller.

An Amazon bestseller.

It’s been on the USA Today bestseller list for twenty-two weeks.

If you want to build some good habits, if you want to stop some bad ones, if you want to make any behavior in yourself or others more likely, let me recommend you find out what Clear has discovered in his research and give it a try. I think you’ll be happy you did.

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Chris Christie, the two-term governor of New Jersey, is an interesting figure.

He was a federal prosecutor who cleaned up a ton of government corruption in New Jersey.

And then he became governor. He might have come and gone like hundreds of governors, but a video went viral, showing his direct, in-your-face politics.

Many begged him to run in the 2012 presidential election, including a whole bunch of billionaires.

He turned them down. Said he wasn’t ready. You’ve got to admire someone who does that.

Then he did run in the 2016 election, but failed to get the attention and votes he might have because Trump was sucking all the media out of the room. And that might have ended it. But Christie dropped out of the race and was the first to endorse Trump, who’d been a long-time friend.

Trump almost picked him for vice president. The choice ended up being between Christie and Pence. Ultimately, he chose Pence and asked Christie to create the transition plan.

Christie spent six months with a whole team of people creating that plan. It was a plan that would have helped Trump avoid so many disasters in appointments and policy during his first two hundred days. But when it was finished, the Trump team decided to throw it away.

Why? What was going on?

Christie is unlike Trump in many, many ways. Why would he support him?

Christie reveals all and much more in Let Me Finish: Trump, the Kushners, Bannon, New Jersey, and the Power of In-Your-Face Politics.

In the book he sets the record straight about his tenure as a corruption-fighting prosecutor and a Republican running a Democratic state, as well as what really happened on the 2016 campaign trail and inside Trump Tower. It’s a fascinating book that gives insights into the Trump team, Trump himself, and Christ Christie who I think would have made a terrific president.

If you’re interested in politics, larger-than-life figures, and a view from the inside, I think you’ll love this book.

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In less than three minutes, you can amaze your friends, cut through a lot of political blather, and clearly assess what’s being proposed over the next eighteen months as the presidential campaign heats up.

How?

By understanding the simple taxonomy below. 

Every day folks in the media make accusations and claims about socialism, Sweden, Venezuela, capitalism, and the United States. Unfortunately, a lot of the time it’s clear they’re a bit muddled. So let’s cut through the confusion.  

Whether you’re an independent, Democrat, or Republican, you’ll want to know these three terms.

SOCIALISM

The state owns and directs huge portions of the economy. The government in these schemes is the old-fashioned Soviet, Mao, and Nazi style dictatorships.

These types of socialists did so much good in the 20th century. No other scheme was better at piling up dead bodies. Millions and millions of them.  

An interesting tidbit. Did you know that “Nazi” is the abbreviation in German of “Nationalsozialistische”? That word means “National Socialist”. It comes from the name of Hitler’s political party, the “National Socialist German Workers’ Party” or “Nationalsozialistische der Deutsche Arbeiters Partei.”

Nobody running for president today is advocating for this type of government.

DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISM

The state owns and directs huge portions of the economy. The government in these schemes is supposed to be democratic, which means you should be able to vote the bums out and put other bums in. Venezuela supposedly uses this model, although some wonder if it is a true democracy or a sham one.

For those who like socialism, this is supposed to be the good way of doing it as opposed to the bad way of the old fashioned authoritarians. I will let you determine whether the “good” scheme actually leads to any better economic outcomes than the “bad” one.

SOCIAL DEMOCRACY

You rely on lots and lots and lots of capitalism (private ownership and direction of companies in a free market) to fund government social programs. The funding is done via high tax rates. You have elections and can vote the bums out and put other bums in. This is Sweden.

A lot of people in the current presidential race are advocating for this type of government. Although, if they say that any system that allows billionaires to exist is immoral, you will need to scrutinize that candidate carefully because Sweden’s system allows billionaires. It may be that candidate actually wants some form of democratic socialism.

One last point. If you think about it, the United States and Sweden are similar types of governments. They’re on the same continuum. The difference is that the United States is simply much less of a welfare state than Sweden is.

There you have it. Three terms you are going to hear a million times over the next eighteen months.

Amaze your friends by actually knowing what they mean.

Be proud of your knowledge.

And use it to carefully consider the candidates.

I have cut my consumption of bread to almost nothing. And so when I want a slice, I’m not going to waste it on run-of-the-mill sandwich bread. I want something delicious. And the best bread we’ve found is the La Brea Bakery bread that’s sold at Smith’s and other Kroger food stores.

Our favorites are the cranberry walnut loaf, the toasted sunflower honey loaf, and the pecan raisin loaf. These breads are made the old-fashioned way with a substantial crumb and a crackly, chewy crust that’s a joy to eat. And unlike the bread from a chain bread company that will remain unnamed, these loaves are actually fully cooked.

We just got two loaves today on our trip to Logan. We came back home, cut a few slices, popped them in the toaster, buttered, and ate with some chicken noodle soup. Pure bread heaven.

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With that bread you might want some bratwurst. Not grocery store brats. Real brats. If so, I found the spot to get them (thank you, Larry Correia). There’s a gem of a butcher’s shop in Morgan, Utah called Bingham’s Custom Meats. It’s clean, well-lit, and nice-smelling. The people there are friendly. And they have over thirty different flavors of brats.

Bratwurst, by the way, comes from German. It’s made up of two words. “Brat,” which means finely chopped meat, and “wurst,” which means sausage. At Bingham’s they don’t add nitrates or any other preservatives. Their recipes are pork mixed with various sets of spices.

So far I’ve tried nine of their flavors, and they’ve all been delicious. They’re great for a low-carb diet. A Bingham’s brat and a bunch of cooked vegetables makes an awesome lunch. If you want, you can also just slit the casing and cook the sausage patty or stir fry style.

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I’ve also cut my consumption of sweets. Which means if I eat something, I want it to be worth it. And so it gives me great pleasure to report my discovery of a wonderful flavor of Aggie ice cream at the USU Creamery—it’s called lemon custard.

I know. Lemon ice cream?

And when I say ice cream, I mean ice cream. This is not a sherbet. And let me tell you right now, this ice cream is amazing. It’s amazing all by itself. It’s amazing with a banana, which they sell at the creamery. Furthermore, for a little fun, if you combine it with the regular Aggie chocolate, the two together taste like a Tootsie Roll. No lie.

I had it last month, and the month before, and I can’t wait for another date with the wife to go enjoy another scoop.

I love the sunny winters we get up at Bear Lake. I hate the snow that my car brings into the garage. Because the snow melts, and the water runs to the bottom corners of the garage and pools there, creating a huge mess until I get out there with my cement squeegee.

Who wants to continually be moving crap in and out of the garage so you can squeegee it? And in the winter when it’s freezing?

Not me.  

For years I’ve wanted to do something about it, but what can you do after the concrete of your garage is poured?

Well, this year, after the first big storm, I got sick and tired of traipsing through the water and mud and cleaning all that crap up. So I put my massive Google-fu skills to work. And, lo and behold, I discovered a product called TruContain.

It’s a car mat for your garage. It’s made of thick vinyl and has raised edges.

I bought one.

The UPS man delivered it not many days later.

The installation instructions were simple. Two steps. The perfect number for me to manage. Step one was to let it warm up in the house for twenty-four hours so it was easier to unroll. I did that. Step two was to unroll and position it in the garage where we park our car. That took about a minute. So far so good.

No soon after the mat was deployed, we had another snow storm. The van went out for daily driving and came back with an undercarriage covered in ice and snow. We parked the van on the mat. The ice and snow melted. And the mat caught it and contained it.

I was delighted.

The next day the van went out for another day’s use and came back all covered in snow and ice again. The snow and ice melted, along with a bunch of dirt. And the mat caught it again!

I was whooping for joy.

I’m still whooping for joy because my garage is dry!

If we get a lot of water on the mat, I’ll use the shop vac to suck it up. I took out five gallon of dirty, cold water the first time. Five gallons that would have flooded my garage! If there’s not too much water on the mat, I’ll drag the mat out with a helper and dump the water on the lawn.  

I love my TruContain garage mat.

If you have winter water mess in your garage, you’ll want to consider it. I got mine from the manufacturer garageflooringllc.com.  

One word of advice. If you get one, don’t get one bigger than you need. If it’s too big, then the mat will stick out from the sides of the car, and when you go to step out, you’ll be stepping out into your mini garage lake.

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I enjoy books about Army Rangers, Navy SEALS, Special Forces soldiers, etc.  Almost all of them are written from the point of view of the operators. But I just found and enjoyed one, not about the operators, but about a guy who helped them in Iraq.

The book is called Code Name: Johnny Walker and was written by the guy the SEALs called Johnny Walker with the help of Jim DeFelice.

Who is Johnny Walker?

He was a resident of Mosul and was what they called a “terp”, an interpreter who went with the SEALs on their missions. He went on hundreds and hundreds of missions with them. And he offers a fascinating glimpse into what life was like in Iraq during the Iraq War for those Iraqis who helped the coalition forces.

The SEALs appreciated his service. I know this because a host of them have blurbed his book. Furthermore, they helped him eventually immigrate to America. That’s how grateful they were for his service.

If you like these types of books and would enjoy new insights, I think you’ll really enjoy the book. Johnny Walker does swear a bit. But I tend to take people as they are. And it was well worth time I spent listening to him.

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For Christmas my daughter received a number of seasons of The Great British Baking Show. It’s a competition baking show. I’d heard about it before, but I’d seen episodes of American competition cooking shows and didn’t enjoy them at all.

However, my daughter said this was nothing like the American shows, that it was awesome, and it was so awesome she wanted to the DVDs for Christmas so she could watch the episodes again. I needed to give it a try, she said. So I gave it a try.

I’m happy to report that I and my family have are enjoying the heck out of her DVDs.

The British folks that are competing in the challenges are down-to-earth and interesting. Some of them are funny. The tips about baking are interesting. And, best of all, the British show makers know how to create suspense.

They start each season with a group of twelve amateur bakers. Two professional bakers give them a baking challenge with a time limit and then judge the bakes. After a series of three challenges, the pros name a star baker for that series and then also announce who was at the bottom of the pack and will be leaving the show. If you like cooking or have ever found yourself watching a cooking program all the way through, I think you’ll really enjoy these fun, British bakers.