A Prediction: Geezers Take Notice of this Warning

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     Once the people between the ages of 18 and 35 figure out that Father Obamaham is going to saddle them with some bad choices, there are going to be problems for us Geezers.

     The whippersnappers are going to learn, with mouths agape, that they will have either "exchange insurance" which is fairly useless and qualifies a person for conveyor belt medical service, or private insurance that will cost around 500 dollars per month per person in family.

 

     This will be done while the Geezers maintain their old Medicare and whatever supplemental they are buying....still not cheap...about 100 to 300 dollars a month extra for the enhanced coverage...even after many years of contributing into the "Medicare Trust Fund".

 

     But. as we suggest, the low information, low intellectual power mass of "younger people"  have been trained to hate people who "have".  Once they see the premiums they will have to pay for their "free medical care", there will be a visceral, cave-man response by people who have been fed moral relativism for the past 50 years in public schools.

 

     So, it's just a thought.  All us Geezers might want to avoid 6th Street in Austin on Friday and Saturday nights....not just because of the "urban situation", but because of the groupings of 26 year-old sophomores at the  Peoples' University of Texas who are just learning that they are going to have to pay Obama 6,000/year as a matter of force, law, and fact....or they are going to go exchange or private and get to pay 18,000/year for a family of four (whatever a family is defined as in Austin by that time).   Quite a sticker-shocker for "free medical".

 

    So, maybe I can move back up to the real world and set up a saloon there by that auditorium....I can call it "Old Gringo's Soylent Green Saloon:   last stop on the happy trail" .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Sp-VFBbjpE

 

Soylent Greenly,

 

El Gringo Viejo

 

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If no income tax...then what?

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The central government in Washington, D.C. should be, for the moment, considered to be a legitimate government.  Although it has come to consider itself as  the sovereign, thereby displacing the individual citizen, it still requires certain legitimate access to the financial resources necessary to run its basic services and activities.

 

     After reviewing the Constitution of the United States of America, it was found that there were very few activities reserved and/or required of the central government.  The missions and duties of the central government were clear and understandable.

 

     The first, and perhaps greatest, was the requirement to provide for the common defence of all the members of the new federation of sovereign States.   This would require the establishment of an army, and even more especially, a strong navy, and a strong coast guard.

 

     Next, and critical to the binding of a Nation, as opposed to an assembly of neighbours, was the establishment of an effective system of post.   The orderly sending of messages and valuables great distances at reasonable cost and reasonable assumption of arrival from one end of the nation to the other came under the purvue of the Constitution's to-do list for the central government.

 

      Then, there were the implied activities.   If there were to be a judicial, a legislative, and an executive branch of the central government, such an assembly of unproductive people would have to have their stewards, butlers, snuff-box fillers and cleaners, spittoon emptiers, scribes, slave arbiters, coachmen, livery tenders, gardeners and room tenders, cooks,  etc.

      Within the executive, one must consider the establishment and defence of Embassies and counsels, couriers and secret briefcases with hidden compartments, and the cost of seductive hostesses for the visits from French and Russian diplomats. That is the Department of State. Then there is the Treasury and then the Secretary of Justice.

 

     To fund all of this?  Tariffs at the ports.   Liquor and certain other excise taxes.   This was Alexander Hamilton's first recourse when he saw the futility of trying to deal with an insurrection by some disgruntled veterans from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, with the deployment of disparate State militias.   That was in 1783....and when time came for the Constitution to be drawn, the Hamiltonian faction was careful to make certain that some form of independent income be provided for the Central Government.

     In those times, it was assumed that public projects would not only be deigned  by the governments of yon, but that those same-said governments would provide for the necessary financing.   Once a matter could be removed to the most affected jurisdiction, it would correctly fall to the People of that Locale to pay for it.   Made sense.

     Now, El Gringo Viejo is just as happy as he can be when California and New York and other States decide that they want to meddle in the purses, wallets, and check-book scribbles of their subjects.   But he prefers Texas, obviously, because Texas has no income tax.   Our motto as a member State in the American Union might be, "One psychotic, totalitarian income taxing madhouse is enough".

     So, the solution we present is simply to establish a 12.5% national sales tax which is imposed at the point of terminal use.   Hotel room, auto, lawnmower, everything save  for food, medicine, and medical service.

   This would accompany a law ordering an immediate initiation of an orderly disestablishment of the Departments (Secretariats) of Health and Human Refuse, Commerce, Agriculture, Energy, Transportation, Housing and Urban Destruction, Homeland Security, Education. most of the Department of the Interior, Veterans' Affairs, and various Bureaus, Commissions, and Agencies.

      We have always been quick to point out that the Department of Veterans' Affairs would be broken up and the issues pertaining each veteran would be assigned to his branch of service.   Brothers looking after brothers.

      The Bureau of Indian Affairs would be abolished.  The Coast Guard would be immediately sent back into free standing service...possibly attached to the Department of the Treasury.  The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives would be cancelled.  The Environmental Protection Agency and the Occupational Safety and Hazard Agency would be cancelled immediately.

 

      All of the above bureaucracies to be cancelled "do" absolutely nothing.  If the OROG had had the opportunity to have accompanied me during my walks through what was then called "Main Labour" the OROG would been stunned:   a huge, useless building in the Middle of Morass, D. C.  where office after office was peopled by young...local somewhat human looking types...let us say....literally laying on the desks, eating pizza, playing office basketball with wadded paper and trash-cans, cackling and giggling, involved with anything but anything pertinent to issues affecting the labouring man.  And I am not referring to  late Friday afternoon light-craziness waiting on the clock to run out.  And this was in 1973!!!   With certainty, it is worse now.     And think....a nationally applicable labour law and labour standard....really?   The minimum wage works so well, that is why the socialists return and return to accuse the Republicans...in left-think, "Ain't nobody c'ain't live nohow on no mimimim wage..." .   This while the white liberal, who glowers at the dumboe Republican who is working and minding his own business, and says "How could you let this happen!?   How can you live with yourself!?"

 

A 12.5% national sales tax would cripple the central government's ability to control the lives of the actual sovereigns.   The reduction and/or elimination of much of the discretionary and arbitrary regulation would unbridle the Republic in terms of solid, unrestrainable economic and spiritual uplift.

El Gringo Viejo

 

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Abolish the Fingers that Choke Us

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Yesterday we solved the problem with illegal immigration.

     Almost 90% of the problem is  one of allowing people who are here illegally,or who arrived legally and then remained here illegally, to be allowed to   glob onto the free money.  Those funds are provided by the Socialist Democrats and the money winds up in  Big Business and Big Bank Panhandling operations.  The large grocery chains and the banks tell us that "It's great for the local economy.  We need our fair share of the free money.  Our Congressman really brought home the bacon!!!"....and disregard the fact that they turn previously pleasant places into war zones and horrid, Detroit-like scenes from Dante's Inferno.

     Before, even legal aliens were prohibited from becoming "wards of the state" or the committing of any crime.   Doing such meant immediate deportation.

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      The next step is to simply abolish the Internal Revenue Service.   The Central Government in Washington, D.C. has no right, no need, and no justification to anything that pertains to something as private as our incomes and wealth situation.   It is simply none of the Central Government's business.

 

       If the Central Government knows a person's or a family's income, sources of income, methods of investment, it can destroy that person or family with the greatest of facility.   It does so frequently.

 

      Be aware, citizen, that the Internal Revenue Service is exempt from rules normally in place in terms of legal processes.   There is no presumption of innocence.  There is no recovery of items and/or money seized.   Seizures can and do occur without warrant or process.  When they wish to return your access to your accounts, or your property, they will do it, or not.

      There is no due process, no matter what they say, because if a person fights back, they immediately begin to harass family or friends near or next to the "accused".   They use the rules of the Democratic Courts of the French Revolution.   Rules change in the middle of the investigation.  It is one mouse and one hundred cats.

 

      The Internal Revenue Service will take all documents, and they will grill all family members incessantly.  They, like the FBI, will say that the wife has already confessed and so if you do not do the same we are going to go ahead and process her for prosecution and declare her a flight risk.
 

 

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     As we hang around in the saloons, coffee klatches, and beauty parlours, we can gently point out that once the Obama Socialised Medicine Initiative goes into full implementation, the enforcer of compliance with the "free medical programme" of EVERY AMERICAN CITIZEN, EXCEPT FOR HILLARY RODHAM AND NANCY PELOSI, will be the central government's Internal Revenue Service.

 

    The Obama Socialised Medicine Initiative provides for what will become over 40,000 NEW investigators, all employed with the Internal Revenue Service, all carrying badges... with access to SWAT Team enforcers.   They will be making absolutely certain that every single American has been forced into something much different than,".....and if you want to keep your doctor, you can keep him/her....and if you want to keep your insurance...you'll be able to keep it."

 

    Unfortunately, what we will receive in our Kwanzaa stocking, will be a Red Chinese lump-of-coal cookie, wrapped with a note that says,"....to find out what is in your Free Medical Policy, you will have to vote for it".

 

 

Please indulge these pleasant, humour-wrapped, grump-outs.  To-night, the solution for funding governmental operations.

 

El Gringo Viejo

 

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Radio and Television Announcements Concerning Covservative Immigration Reform

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(1)   Marco Rubio's insistence that the people to be refolded into the American social fabric will be prohibited from "receiving federal welfare" is a troubling parching of words.   Much of what we think of as "federal" welfare is actually substantially funded by the various States.   At times, States of the Union foolishly entered into a "partnership" with the central government in order to "feed or help or house or assist" the "children or the elderly or the handicapped or the abused women or the minorities" and once the leeches learned that there was free money available the trundling zombie digestive and reproductive systems went to the mainly State Offices of Human Refuse.

 

     In the Republic of Texas,  before the Congress of the Republic of Texas wised up in the barest nick of time,  we came very close to turning over the vast majority of the Republic of Texas's resources....the budget....to the support of "free medical care" to the trundling zomboes.   It is called "Medicaid" ...which is regarded by a distinct minority of the population as  "free (insert the word, body part, or stage of labour, or bullet/knife wound, or incidental trauma resulting from a DWI) care."

 

THE SOLUTION TO THE INVASION OF THE TRUNDLING CONSUMER ZOMBOES FROM HELL, SEVERAL COUNTRIES OUTSIDE OF THE TERRITORIAL LIMITS OF TEXAS, AND APPARENTLY EVERY ASTEROID IN ORBIT OF THE SUN....IS THE ELEMINATION OF MEDICAID AND EVERY OTHER PUBLIC ASSISTANCE PROGRAM.  ABSOLUTE ABOLITION!

 

 

 

(2)    Senator Rubio, Representative Ryan, Please do not try to convince me that the bill you all are crafting will not be a repeat of the cascading avalanche disaster of tag-team trundling digestive and reproductive systems extending out to the fourth degree of relationship.   It will be the same as the 9.0 Richter Scale demographic earthquake that attended the 1986 amnesty debacle. 

         This bill, now totalling over 1,000 pages of legalistic bilge, backed up by very faulty sociological conclusions and including data that is purposefully misconstrued so as to propose a cure that addresses a disease that is different from the one that is being suffered by the patient.

 

 

(3)     The patient is not the people you think.  The patient is us....the ones who pay the taxes.  The ones who do the work.   The ones who do not take because we provide for or have provided for ourselves...while also having carried the willingly unproductive along the way.   Those who are most greatly offended by your pitiable, noble, but uniformed impulse to "do the right thing" are the Latins who have either been here at the beginning or who have arrived and complied before the establishment of the Great Society's "War on Poverty".  And this observer is offended.   You know nothing of the origins of the "problem", and you have mis-identified the victim or the patient in this matter.

 

(4)     We have long since tired of waiting in line behind people who are obviously not in need of nutrition and who have four, six, nine children and three grocery carts....who make us wait while they debate whether they want to buy Hollywood Now or the Kardashian Baby Bump headliner page magazine.

    We are in an upper income group, so we cannot afford to buy a magazine to find out about what the new line-up of Jennifer Lopez's body parts looked like and where all they were strewn after the straight-down Lear Jet crash outside of Galeana.    WE ARE COVERED UP BY THESE PEOPLE...AND THEY ARE NOT GOING TO LEAVE AND THEN COME BACK AND PAY ANY FINE OR LEARN ENGLISH OR ANYTHING BESIDES EAT AND REPRODUCE.  They are not citizen material.   Not Mexican...not American....not Cuban....not Canadian.    Were they Anglos, they would be known as whitetrash. They sell their extra food stamp cards to buy hits and lottery tickets and 100 dollar fingernail jobs. 

 

 

(5)     Texas has begun a steady draw down from public assistance.  I would prefer to cancel all public assistance to-morrow.  But, if the United States Congress would worry more about  the productive and quit trying to feed the parasites we would begin to turn the corner on gangs, shootings, miracle babies, "health problems" of poverty, graffiti, and 90% of the social and cultural problems that are presently encountered in the United States.

 

PLEASE!   Stop trying to do things for us.  It is simply vote-buying with someone else's money.  If you are foolish enough to allow Schumer's Camel's nose to come inside the tent, you will be sleeping in the sand outside the tent, and his camels will be sleeping on your fine Persian rugs inside the tent within 18 months of the passage of the New Amnesty for Old Act.

 

I have spoken....again.

El Gringo Viejo

 

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MEMORIAL

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It has been 44 years since my time at war.  It is as warm a memory as if it were only yesterday.

 

Since then Memorial Day has had more meaning for me every year.  The spirit of this special dedication has become a part of every day. 

 

As a returning soldier when America did not welcome us home, this day was not a special day for many of us because of the hateful greetings received as we stepped back on our soil.  As time has changed that despicable period the pain has dissipated. Our soldiers are now respected by most Americans as a special class.  It has not been long since I was first told, “Thank you for your service” at which time I could not hold back a tear.  It was so therapeutic to hear those words after so long feeling unappreciated.  It is hoped that Americans will continue to show the returning vets the appreciation they deserve.

 

This year found me doing nothing but appreciating the quiet.  It is amazing how the stillness and quiet of doing nothing can be so refreshing.  There was a time there was no refuge from the noise and compulsion to keep moving.  There was no relief from the pain of seeing brothers lost and brothers forever disfigured not to mention the mental agony.  As a young man the rhetorical question was, “What could be worse than dying?”.  It did not take long to get the answer.

 

Now I am allowed, by the grace of God and the sacrifice of younger men and women, to do nothing more than remember.  There is some subliminal guilt that others did more and sacrificed more but we are told there is no measure for how much sacrifice is enough.  If one does as much as he or she is able there is no reason for guilt.  That, however, does not ameliorate the feeling “Why am I so fortunate?”.  Then there is this special day and the spirit that tells me why there should be no guilt and why there should be unconditional gratitude.

 

These Americans, from the time of the American Revolution until today, who left home to defend it knew what the cost could be but they go to fight because they know the objective is worth the risk and the loss is unacceptable.

 

Not to morally separate the veterans of wars from all other Americans, I have to say I feel a special kindred with them that can only be understood by those who have faced war in all its ugly gloriousness.  I am proud to have been one of all those through the history of this magnificent nation who offered to give all to protect us.  Not having given all, I can only rest now and savor the days I have left.

 

God bless our veterans and God bless America!
Zorro
veteran
United States Air Force
two tours
Republic of South Viet Nam
extra-territorial operations, electronics,
jet engines, and combat in recovery operations
decorated and honourably discharged
no pardon, no amnesty needed

curriculum vitae and present pursuits -
upper right corner of A Gringo in Rural Mexico Blog 
 

Memorial Day means that we must remember

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1a-SkzjOymo&feature=player_detailpage

Play for further understanding that your concern for  Memorial Day is well founded.

Allen West writes about his Memorial Day activities yesterday, and includes some thoughts about the value of the Day......

Got back late last night to South Florida after riding in Rolling Thunder XXVI yesterday, a perfect day. Hat tip to Ray, Ted, Walt, and Arnie for their efforts to bring veterans and bikers together sowe never forget those who have made the ultimate sacrifice and those who remain unaccounted for. On this Memorial Day, remember them, and know that as we head out about our enjoyment today, there is an empty chair for many American families. Today, the West family sat quietly and each of us discussed what Memorial Day meant to us -- including our exchange student from China, Lin. She told us about Soldier's Day where they remember World War II, especially the "Rape of Nanking." Finally, Austen read to us the words which I feel is the best address for a Memorial Day, Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. Let us all rededicate ourselves so that these honored dead have not died in vain, that the government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from the earth. God bless the memory of our fallen brothers and sisters and their ultimate sacrifice of their last full measure of devotion for our liberty.

 

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El Gringo Viejo

Making Contact: Brain beginning to function

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   The last few days have been a bit of a drag on the old carcass, but we are finally  beginning to hit on all three of the remaining cylinders.  There was a pleasant meeting with an old school chum of El Gringo Viejo's daughter.  He is a recently retired ranking sergeant who served both in Iraq and Afghanistan....multiple deployments, as it is stated. He was taken out of his beloved mobile artillery / armoured cavalry / Patton-tanker-man area of service and redeployed as a unit commander of a very forward base unit.....on multiple redeployments.

 

     He was and is a good and faithful soldier.   Patriotic and committed.   But.....politically correct mandates, orders, re-orientations became too much for this professional warrior.   Heavily decorated warrior.   The feminisation and homosexualisation  became, increasingly,  the mission, the tactic, the strategy, the existence, and the purpose of the United States Army.    Coupled with the notion that the Fort Hood Massacre is, to this day, classified as "workplace violence", it seems to me to be useless to risk further exposure in Afghanistan to a people who are inferior morally, emotionally, and in almost every other way except for a willingness to be proudly backwards and insane and filthy.

 

    Perhaps this story is being told throughout small, medium, and large town America, on an hourly and daily and weekly basis.   This particular soldier gave up his interest in serving further after suffering the torture of one thousand small cuts.   These little slits and small slashes were not caused by the enemies of our flag.   They were administered daily by the hierarchy's insistence in fighting, what to them, are the more important wars than the one composed of the various stated military missions called THE WAR ON TERROR.

 

 

 

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     Rightwing and Leftwing crazies....and as you all know El Gringo Viejo might be slightly lumped into one of those categories....howl and point at the sky, clutching their chests....that the War on Terror is a Bilderberger / Prescott / Council on Foreign Relations / Communist / World Bank plot to re-order free or nearly free societies into human anthills carrying wealth to the 1% control group.

 

     Steel Buildings Don't Burn!!   Bush Did It!!  Putin and the Mountbattens and the Japanese Royal Family Did It!!  The American Big Bankers allied with the Red Chinese Did It!!

 

     The problem with the logic of all these labyrinthine constructs is that the speakers pre-suppose that there is an established Control Group with an agenda that marches along, completely as planned, and it is an irresistible force.  That is why everything is hopeless.  So remember to write your Congressman so that we can stop "them"

     The illogic is palpable.   It states as fact that there are large conspiracies that have total control of everything.  And further, they are trying to establish control of everything.   Which of course begs the question:   If they control everything then why do they have to establish control over anything?

 

     It is like the fellow who spoke very convincingly on overnight radio back in the 1980s about how George Herbert Walker Bush flew over to Paris to meet with the ayatollahs ruling Persia at the time to make certain that they would keep the American hostages they had illegally detained until after the 1980 elections.   This would be done to help guarantee the election victory for Ronald Reagan against James Earl Carter.  George H.W. Bush even flew the SR-71 himself, with the help of a co-pilot, because Bush had been a combat pilot "ace" during WWII.

 

    Of course, a pilot of a lumbering Avenger torpedoe bomber could never achieve the title "ace", but who cares about facts?  Bush was, at one point, the youngest combat aviator in the Navy's service and he was awarded the Navy's Distinguished  Flying Cross.   He flew 58 combat missions, almost all against moderate to heavy resistance.

     And, of course, why did the ayatollahs wait until Reagan was sworn in to release the American hostages.   Why did they not just let them go after the election?   They were thinking, perhaps with Reagan, once in charge of the little red button, that Teheran would look like the "new Nagasaki" in the next twenty minutes.

 

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ALL OF MY POINTLESS COMMENTARY IS NEITHER HERE NOR THERE.   The fact is, if "they" have complete control, they would not have to lie at every turn. Think of the number of lies that were told during the establishment of the Obama National Socialised Medicine Initiative.  They called it "The Affordable Care Act"....and awarded exemptions by the barrelful to their friends in low places.   All we would have to do to find out what is in the Act is to pass the Act first.

 

     Think of Hillary Rodham's stunningly phony testimony and her arrogant statement, "What difference does it make?" As if she had been forced to condescend to the point of condescension in order to condescend to respond in a reasonable way to a reasonable question, asked to her by a nobody....a little person....Sheeeesh and oy veh!

 

 

    The massive and stunning voter fraud pulled off by the IRS against the dull, common, regular work-a-day people who carry their own load and a little more....the Tea Party People....is essentially an Act of War against the common citizen.  The failure to account in any way for the heavy-handed, illegal excesses of the Fast and Furious debacle, the useless flying of Hillary Rodham around the world are offensive enough......Arab Spring indeed.    One of the characteristics of the totalitarian tactic is to be doing what you are accusing your  opponent of being "up to".    We remember well the incessant drumbeat of the Democrats....'voter suppression against minorities'...and the  absurd assertion that the presentation of a photo/thumbprint ID would somehow "intimidate" any or some significant grouping of people into not voting.

 

    The notion that the Democrat establishment, the Obsolete Press, the Peoples' Republic of Massachusetts, and the President...and the entire reality show that is the Democrat National Socialist Labour Party can foist off Aunt Zietuni and Uncle Omar  on the taxpayer is nothing less than an Act of War against the common man.   It is aggravated by a War Crime which now includes the IRS approving a non-profit classification for Barry Soetoro's brother...who is an imam....of a mosque in Kenya.   And the approval was retroactive...almost three years....and approved in less than two months.  And the mosque is not built, nor is it in operation as a mosque, and it is primarily staffed by Barry Soetoro's sisters-in-law....all 16 of them.

 

       I mean, why don't we whip-up a television situation-comedy, soap-opera, reality-game-show about an American president with no academic record except for diplomas, no publications, no classmates, no professors running to the microphones to say, "....I knew Barry when"....and see if we could sell it.  I guess if we could throw in the President's brother being a Kenyan imam, with a non-existent mosque in Kenya, doing non-existent religious/charitable work in Kenya, and that imam has 10 or 15 wives in Kenya, it would be more believable.    It would be more believable if the first pilot showed the imam in the IRS office, sweatin' to the kweshtuns, like any good Kenyan.  And then have a half-naked Beth Midler, playing the part of Beyoncé, come out and declare, "Your IRS application has been reviewed and approved, and we have also approved your request for three years of retroactive effectivity of your mosque in Kenya, and the employment of your 'more than ten but fewer than fifty' wives as outreach workers and Sunday School teachers.  Your refund has been sent electronically to your account in Nairobi, the little bank, by your mosque.  You're good to go!  Good luck!"  (fade to tattered Che' Guevara t-shirt)

 

     What could the reviews be?   Pressure-cooker blowingly hilarious?   Throat-slittingly outrageous?   Work-place violently brilliant?  Suicide-vestingly intriquing?   Where did the real world go?  Why doesn't the Kenyan imam brother take Auntie Zietuni and Uncle Omar back to Kenya and "help" them?

El Gringo Viejo

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Back in Town, Catching my Breath

  A few of the Flamboyan trees around our little place.   While there were numerous of these varieties of the class of trees known as jacarandas in really full bloom throughout the region, ours had only begun to bloom in earnest about three days ago. 
     The name for this tree in the English is Royal Ponciana, and there is a smaller type with the name Texas Poniciana or Pride of Barbados.   At one time, long ago, we thought that this particular type of tree was found only in the tropical lowlands and wetter mountainous settings  of the Mexican north and east.  But,  in fact, it is found far and wide, in Brazil, throughout the Caribbean, and almost anywhere in Central America, and the northern, and lower elevations of northern South America.

     The "regular" jacarandas come out earlier in the year, usually with an effusion of blue or lavender  blossoms that can cover the entire tree.   In the west of Mexico, jacarandas can be found with white flowers.  All of them, the flamboyan included, are famous for having the long sword-like, seed-pod.



here at our gate, one
can note a "reluctant"
Flamboyan that has just
begun its bloom, while
the one across  the street
is well on the was to
full bloom

     To the left,  is just another nice example of the famous old standby, the bouganivilla, which has been well established at the Quinta, with seven different colours being present on our grounds.

    To-morrow we can talk a little more about things that are going on in Mexico, in Washington, D.C.  and elsewhere.   My reaction to most of what is going on moves my inclination ever closer to dedicating my efforts more towards the benevolent withdrawal of Texas from the American Union.

More Later.
El Gringo Viejo

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Heading South

   The hour cometh and now is, that El Gringo Viejo will be heading down to our little adobe hideaway.   It is a pleasant thing to have rain, and the folks who are our neighbours here in Texas, coming to tell me that their ranch near Cerralvo, Nuevo Leon...somewhat mid-way between McAllen and Monterrey, received over 7 inches of rain during the past few days.

     Cerralvo is a city that during the colonial period of Spain in the Americas, was a capital of an area including most if not all of what is the Republic of Texas.   It is in a spring-fed pocket of good soil, near mountains that were store houses of lead and silver, and blessed with good ranching land for cattle, sheep, and goats.  Our neighbour, however, also wanted to confess to me that he did not believe me when I told him that in a contest of violence, the one who is controlled and knows how to use his weapons will almost always win the encounter. 

     I told our neighbour that during dark moments in the early days of what would finally become a war that good would beat bad.   It was my certain belief that the conflict between, good and bad, some kind of law against no kind of law, and against the cancer of quick riches as opposed to the development of merited wealth, the Mexican military would win.

 

     He declared that it had been months since they had had to shudder when the swaggering trash would drive by their ranch in their stolen, late model vehicles...sometimes Escalades, Grand Cherokees, and other types of SUVs.   They had not had to walk past them in Cerralvo  when doing basic shopping for the rancho.   The cockroaches had all but taken over the little hotel on the main plaza....as sort of an office for a couple of months....leaving it all but a ruin when they finally took flight at hearing from their "falcons" that the Army was approaching in force to occupy the city.

     What broke the back of the cartel people was that the Army and Naval Infantry came and, in a strategic sense, stayed.  Always hunkered down here, and on patrol there, always collecting information, and always choosing the place for armed encounter.    But my neighbour made an unfortunate mistake, thanking me for giving him the optimism to stay the course.  The fact is, of course, that I should thank him...because it is this nature of person who makes the quality of the populace worth defending.

 

     He was also advised by El Gringo Viejo that the War is in no wise over.   It never will be, actually.   But the excesses, the wantonness  and depravity, the making of so much money that causes so much death and destruction....by people who will never live to see their grandchildren or perhaps even produce them.....has been reduced very, very markedly.   Like the fellow said, when asked by a Gringo, "How come Ciudad Juarez became so peaceful all of a sudden?"

     The Mexican fellow, who lived in Chihuahua and had to travel frequently to the border city of Juarez, thought for a moment, then answered," Well, Sen~or, eet ees thees way,  They jus' ran out of pipples to keel."  Sometimes the best answer is the simplest one.

 

In any regard, we are going down to relieve Alvaro and to do a bit of engineering an re-engineering of the gardens.   Plus we shall be having clients in....another sign of the improving times....and we understand that it has rained a little to quite a bit almost every day for the last week and a half.   Lots of Birds.

 

We shall return sometime before the end of the month, but only for a week or so.   We are taking a client down to Mexico City and this should be interesting...in that I haven't been there for a few years....on purpose...but it is wondrous place to visit for a few days.

 

More later, perhaps before we leave in the morning

El Gringo Viejo

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While We Are At It

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    Would it be at all possible, now that there seems to be a few cracks in the wall, to have the Border Patrol, or BFI, or somebody go and pick up Auntie Zietuni and Uncle Omar Onyango to be removed to the detention and await their deportation.....tomorrow?

 

    Their possessions should be removed because they have lived, supported to a level they could never have comprehended in their homeland, by invading the systems of public welfare and assistance that is provided to slugs, dregs, and bums who want somebody to buy their lottery tickets, food, medical,  shelter, electricity, and manicures and hair extenders for them.

 

     Auntie Zietuni and Uncle Omar are illegal aliens and orders of deportation have been issued twice for each of them.  Highly paid attorneys from powerful and well connected firms have managed to obtain delays and/or appeals....while these two....who are actually furious that welfare and other public support has been insufficient for their liking....continue to rack up payments that are well on their way to 2,000,000 USD since their combined arrival in this horrid country that does not give enough to the immigrants who are the onliest ones who make this country great. 

    Please do your own research on this.   Zietuni Obama and Omar Onyango Obama.  Google them up....it is much worse than your humble servant states it here.

 

Thanks for your time and attention.

El Gringo Viejo

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Sorry about the sudden changes!

    We ask your indulgence.   The OROG will of course have noticed that our format has taken on the appearance of  an early Soviet government publication.  This is because we were trying to make a couple of small adjustments, and learned fairly quickly that google systems that worked at one time, now do not function.  The service that makes homespun blogger site so easy to set up have made other changes that do not permit a person to return to from whence he has arrived.

 

    It is improbable that the repairs can be made before our departure to-morrow for our little mud hut on the side of the Sierra Madre Oriental.   We shall continue to work during the day on this, as time allows, but my technical ability is not such that I feel willing to open up the HTML code and perform surgery.   So this will probably take time....or we possibly will construct our own, made-from-scratch blog platform.

 

El Gringo Viejo 

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Drifting in the Land of Memory and Adventure

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Suddenly....after dozing off, listening to the rain...finally....my favourite messenger can be heard.  His mount is striking hard ground still, in spite of the bit of rain. It has been almost four months since any significant water has been squeezed out of the skies.



    El Gringo Viejo bolts up and strides, fairly quickly for a geezer, to the gallery outside the front door. It is, to be sure, El Zorro but he is on a different mission....riding up briefly and reining Diablo to a tippy-toe stop.  He hands me his letter of commentary, declaring, "This is to set the record straighter!" He smiled, saluted, and whirled off, shouting, "....the tax people are shaking down the hacendados and even some of the vaqueros.   El Capitan says that they must pay another 25% because of the new medical coverage!  And he told everyone it would be cheaper in the long run.....!!  Wish me luck!!"

     In just a few seconds it was as always...as if he had just disappeared into the darkening dusk and the oak motts at the base of the hills. I unfolded the letter and saved the envelope back inside, turn up the lantern to fight the darkness a bit, and commenced to read.  It was an order of revision and extension of El Gringo Viejo's previous post concerning having been the lowest ranking  White House Staffer in history....lower than an intern.   But,  as usual, there are things said in this fleshing out of those days that should be said.

     It is well that two curmudgeons allow folks to know that each of us has seen it all...or almost all....and we have even made some of it happen to folks....and some folks made it  happened at us.   But, there is not a lot of fiction involved in these recountings, if any.

 

TO WIT:

 

                    

As to the first part, El Gringo Viejo is pseudo correct.

 

     As the lowest ranking White House Staffer, or technically shortly thereafter, he was assigned to the Office of Economic Opportunity’s (OEO) field office in Edinburg, Texas called the “Associated City County Economic Development Corporation (a non-profit)” of the Lower Rio Grande Valley (easier said the “ACCEDC”).  In the summer of 1971 El Zorro (pseudonym) was discharged from active duty and returned to civilian life to pursue his BA degree in the Government curriculum offered at Pan American University, now University of Texas at Pan American.

     While working at the community centre at PAU and as an intern working at the Hidalgo County Judge’s office to supplement the GI Bill for education he was approached by El Gringo regarding a not-so-minor position at the ACCEDC to participate in a “low cost housing project” study.  The actual purpose of the study was not to justify and deploy low cost housing for the below-the-poverty-line families but rather to justify massive funding.  Here is where El Gringo Viejo would arbitrarily be the second lowest ranking White House Staffer.  To be perfectly honest, El Zorro is not sure El Gringo was at that time still a White House Staffer, but he was the Republican plant at the ACCEDC with token credibility.  His position was third in command behind the Executive Director, Eliseo Sandoval and the Vice Executive Director, Luis Ramirez.

     So he did have considerable influence but, being inserted into the agency by a higher power against the will of the directors, he had to fight for every smidgeon of respectability.  That being said he made an mid-level position for a low-income housing-study technician.  The irony is that El Gringo and El Zorro very diligently prepared a study and justified actual low cost housing which, if implemented, would have actually been a worthwhile project that was affordable and practical.  The problem with the study is that it was too good and would not bring in the massive amount of federal funding that the agency had anticipated.  The Director and his sidekick thought that by hiring a "low level" employee with no background or expertise in the area of low cost housing they could just throw numbers on the wall with the uneducated and impertinent documentation and the money would come down.  Ultimately, at a final conference where El Gringo and El Zorro presented and argued for  the results of their study, El Zorro was interrupted by Luis Ramirez with, “Don’t you ever shut up?”.  With that El Zorro walked out of the conference room and the ACCEDC never to return.   El Gringo Viejo has much more insight into the workings and purposes of the OEO and the ACCEDC but this is an example of the attitudes and ideology of the elites.  They have all the money but dish out small amounts to the recipients.  When the projects fail the reasons given are “not enough funding” while the administrators still wear their sharkskin suits, Italian shoes, drive expensive luxury cars, live in the finest neighborhoods and look down their noses at the “proles”.

 

      El Zorro has been on the fringes of this inbred socialist system from the President’s staff on down to the lowest local level.  El Gringo Viejo and El Zorro (before they were El Gringo and El Zorro respectively) were conversationally acquainted to John Tower, Lloyd Bentsen,  locally in the Rio Grande Valley.   Later supporting George Bush the first, El Zorro offering insight to Marlin Fitzwater * (Vice-President George H. W. Bush's campaign in 1988) as El Gringo advised George H. W. Bush.  As El Zorro made a personal and professional change, El Gringo has kept his right index finger on the button and his right ear on the ground (having been slammed on the left side of his head with a water sprinkler by a low life… sorry for the divergence…) but he is and has been a great inspiration for me.  His journal is worth every word, whether you agree or not, you cannot refute the logic and truths.

 

Z

 

 

*minor addenda:
 

    El Zorro was an "on-call"  security-cleared "point-man" who could be used with confidence both as a partisan and as a secure contact in terms of moral, criminal, and psychological examinations to handle events such as a formal round of meetings, public and private, which in this event cited by El Zorro, included the Vice-President of the United States (soon to be President of same).   In truth, El Zorro's security clearance was higher than El Gringo Viejo's.

    My task was to make sure that the people to be closest both physically and in terms of socio-political situations...would be the most adept intellectually.  I had to turn in a list of names, and none could know the other, and I had to name the "lead-dog" of the group of names.   Modesty, perhaps keeps El Zorro from pointing out that in this particular case he was the chauffeur of Marlin Fitzwater, the Vice-President's press co-ordinator, spokesman, and closest advisor in those days.  He had the most "face time".

  During this particular episode El Zorro had to advise Marlin very closely, and very frankly, about the  stupid Elephant Cannibalism that the Hidalgo County and much of South Texas Republican Ranch was practicing.  El Gringo Viejo's problem was that he was a well-known rightwing crazy and El Zorro, although the same rightwinger, was/is more controlled and understated.    Far better he than I to orient Marlin, and to show him the various land mines to negotiate.  I had little or no contact with anyone except at the hotel....Mr. Fitzwater and the Vice-President were very complementary.   Fitzwater stayed up, we talked at the bar for a bit, both of us drinking tonic and lemon juice, and after 16 or 18 minutes we parted company.  That was the entirety of my time with the XO...and I had spent less time with the CO.   

    El Zorro did three calendar days of work...all of this stuff is unpaid, and worked magic without detracting from the Star.   In those moments, the governor of Texas was a Country Club Republican like GWH Bush, but had booked an event in a very large venue to purposefully interfere with the Vice-President's Campaign....and the VP (soon to be President) was a member of the same Texas  Country Club Republican faction!!!

     We had to really watch out because LLoyd Bentsen was from McAllen - Mission.  He was also fluent in Spanish and was a powerful, adored, and despised political personality throughout South Texas and the Houston Big Business arena. He had been put on the ballot by the Democrats as the Vice-Presidential nominee.  When all was said and done, Bush duplicated, almost, Reagan's 44% of the Latino vote...and much of that was due to holding the skilled, blue-collar, professionals,  and small business Latins in where they were supposed to be anyway.  Texas went heavily Republican   King George the First was actually unaware that we could do that well simply by being accessible.   El Zorro was a very successful cog in that wheel of success.   Among other successes.

 

     The matter of the housing thing was understated.   Luis Ramirez always felt threatened by anyone who was competent.   Neither he nor the Executive Director would have known what to do with our neighbours-building-neighbour's houses with a very simple construction format, relying on Master-level blue collar tradesmen and pre-prepared plans instead of contractors and architects.   Frightening...to jerks who want to "help the poor" by paying themselves tonnes of shekels while "helping the poor".  Later, the Executive Director Eliseo Sandoval, was convicted of fraud and misappropriation and made license plate for a couple of years.   He and another "Executive Director" of the County's employment training program (millions and millions flushed) set up a janitorial service for the night-cleaning of various public buildings, using totally subsidised "trainees" to keep their costs down.  El Gringo Viejo had people ask me to drop a dime on them, but someone else did it before I had chewed the cud on it.
 

A laugh...and a waste of part of my life for the Republican Party.  But it was all worth it!

El Gringo Viejo

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______________________________________________

The Lowest Ranking White House Staffer in 1970

    El Gringo Viejo was probably the holder of the honorific title of being the lowest ranking member of the "White House Staff" during Richard Nixon's first term.   The ridiculous agency known as the Office of Economic Opportunity ( OEO ) had been set up during Lyndon Baines Johnson's only elected term.  It was a payola, vote-buying scheme, primarily aimed at Democrat vote-buying schemes.  Emergency Food and Medical Services, the grandmother of the modern day Food Stamp program, and scores of other dysfunctional programs aimed at the chronically lethargic.

    The Nixon people were an eclectic group of Republican Conservative "progressives" and hard nosed conservatives who believed  that the poor only needed stronger bootstraps and less beer.   There were literally already several thousand incredibly ridiculous stories about mega-corruption, program abuse, programs that had practiced no...absolutely no...accounting procedures of any kind since the inception of their "community action" organisations.  Please believe...there were thousands of programming "defects' that Ripley's Believe It or Not would have had a hard time believing.

     El Gringo Viejo came in while returning from active duty in the Army in 1969.   He tried, frankly, to impulse a bit of favouritism through a brother who was Executive Director of the Texas Republican Party...and went through the debriefing and security analysis and other such research that is presently called "vetting" through the established Republican patronage apparatus.

     Oddly enough, when we were informed to report to a cross between an interview and a briefing, we received another call from another central government office...the Regional Office of Economic Opportunity - Executive Office of the President.  I had made that contact on my own....since I was a great social scientist with my Sociology BA, and all!!  Ah! the audacity of ignorance and conceit!!

        In those days, the Southwest Region's headquarters for the five State region was in Austin, Texas....kind of a holdover from the original glory days of the Johnson Administration.   It was in an old WPA building a couple of blocks from the huge, pink marble,  State Capitol building to the east.

     It was a strange place.  Between the going in and coming out that day, I was tested, assigned a GS - 7, management trainee, project analyst and evaluator title.   "When do I report?"   Emmanuel Lupo told me,"You already have.  See you to-morrow".   As an afterthought, he added, "You Republicans aren't going to like it here. No friends, all enemies, and we're watching everything you do and everything you say.   You will never be in the rest room alone."

     On Friday, the Regional Executive Director told me to be ready to fly to Washington D.C. for a 2 day meeting with a fellow named Donald Rumsfield.   He would give us our "trajectory" which would be essentially a privatisation of the anti-poverty programs.  The ultimate objective would be to close the OEO down before it became a program that provoked dependency.   There were 30 "recruits" drawn from all over the United States who would meet with the former United States Representative, now Director of the OEO - EOP, and the meeting would be at the OEOB (Old Excutive Office Building), on the left side of the White House, as the White House looks out on a street named Pennsylvania.

      The first days at the third floor of the building in Austin were, in fact, not pleasant.   A Mr.  Xxxxxxxx, a highly placed bureaucrat in the regional office's pecking order, in charge of "field operations", was more than a little pointed, when I edged into his office to introduce myself.
       "Mr. Haney, I am...." I began.

       "Shut to the **** up and get your *** out of my office, ****ing Scab," were the first and last words that he spoke to me.   He had the official pictures of Martin L. King, Bobby Kennedy, Teddy Kennedy, Cesar Chavez, Lyndon Johnson, Jake Pickle, Ralph Yarborough, and Lloyd Bentsen.....but no picture of Richard Milhouse Nixon.   One other odd picture was of him with Fidel Castro and some other Cuban Revolutionary notables in front of the United Nations building in New York City.

        I was later informed that he was also highly placed in the American Federal Government Employees Union.   He was miffed because I had elected to not join the union at the time of my employment.    Very few people in the Regional OEO offices would respond when I spoke with them. So the Republicans, about 9 persons, were essentially surrounded by 153 career leeches...who like almost all central government employees in those days and these, spent about one third of their time in union meetings and personnel disputes.  Now, there is additional time spent on lecturing people how bad they are for hating lesbian, Eskimo Moslem, fishingboat captains, who are left-handed, and who have learning disabilities, and ABdDooaEE.   

      The flight to Washington, D.C. was still a direct flight as a holdover from the LBJ presidency, and it landed...bouncingly....at Dulles, and I transferred via something called "Hotel Courtesy Van"....to a hotel at Lafayette Circle.   The next couple of days were essentially the opposite of the OEO office back in Texas.   Everyone was civilised, pleasant, and a lot more concerned about the poor folks that than the Democrat, leftist "poverty warriors".   We were told to try to insert ourselves into the local community action agencies, especially the largest ones, where there was a lot of money moving around.  "Take your training and your temporary appointments and go out into the belly of the beast and preach the wisdom of free enterprise".   That was our "subversive order".   We even had a three minute wave off from the President, where he said the famous line from Benjamin Franklin about the best way to make war on poverty is to make a man uncomfortable in his poverty.  Nixon even brought on board a famous old liberal warrior...into the White House inner sanctum....a fellow named Daniel Moynihan who was famous for having said that the Black population would benefit from a period of "benign neglect".  Moynihan thought that if they were "taken care of", they would eventually wind up being the same Ping-Pong balls that the Indians had become...toys for White liberal social science experiments, none of which would ever produce positive results.

     As an aside, upon departing the meeting, El Gringo Viejo (aged 22, then) noticed that his real, live official government travel voucher was not made out to anyone except the traveller.

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This is a picture of the last long distance, coach and Pullman Southern
Crescent train, edging into Birmingham, Alabama.  It had an excellent
diner, a saloon car, and an observatory.  Very nice ride.  Lost money
even when full, which was most of the time.  We rode it a few times in
the early 1970s, and it died in 1978, and its bones were eaten by AMTRAK.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  It was just a voucher with travel authority, dates, and the equivalent of coach fare on any airline or common passenger conveyance. After asking, I was informed that it was valid for a train if anyone had the time for such idiocy.  The day was done, it was Thursday...Friday was supposed to be a travel day, and then there was the weekend....so I chased over to the train station and enquired at the AMTRAK if there were a train that could make the trip to Austin or San Antonio.   Oddly, there was not an AMTRAK...but, there was the last long distance service being operated by a fully private carrier, the Southern Railway System, and they had their famous Southern Crescent that would come through later to-night from New York City, heading for New Orleans.  A cumbersome connection with the old Sunset Limited (previously of the Southern Pacific, but by then the AMTRAK) would leave and go through Houston and then to San Antonio arriving late  Saturday morning.   I called a buddy in Austin and asked if he could pick me up....and he said, "You won't believe this but I have to be somewhere on Saturday"..."Oh, Phooey!, Where do you have to be, anyway?"   and then he responded, "I have a meeting in some place called the Frost Bank, in downtown San Antonio."  hahahaa.

Very propitious.

     And that was the first of two different "rides"...all Pullman... that El Gringo Viejo took by rail on the taxpayers' dime.  One other time I went and came, round trip, on another mission of "great importance" involving something like an extension of fulfilling the orders that had been given during that two-day "mission orientation" by the Nixon Administration.

     All of this is preambulatory to the fact that, mixing with conversations with political people and government people, and social people....it was quickly surmised by even the most intellectually  limited that Nixon was in a mess shortly after the 1972 elections.  He had carried every State in the Union, except for Massachusetts.   George McGovern's collapse at the polls had been total.   But the rum0urs about something called "Water Gate" were already bubbling in the cauldron.

     The one thing that I remembered and shall remember until the hearse drives into the Shady Rest Memorial Gardens and Skating Rink....is the "old guys"  (those who were 35 to 60 years old) at the bar in Georgetown (name unremembered but they did have a very good, AAA minor league bluegrass group)...talking about how John Dean was the actual author of the famous "Nixon Enemy List" and that Chuck Colson had warned Nixon not to leave Dean out of line of sight....that he was "out to get people who had been "mean to him" and let Nixon take the blame.  Dean was known to have prepared a list of over 500 people who had offended him on his way up the ranks....some were just local people with small businesses who did not like self-consumed drips.   Colson said he knew because he worked with Dean on the list until he realised that Dean was tech'd and fixated with vengeance.

     It is worth noting these things because the charge stuck, although it was never actually made.  Nixon used the IRS to get at people on his "enemies list".....It was one of the three charges out of 20 that were finally approved by the House Judiciary Committee, but on the way to the floor, it was apparent that there was no substance to the charge and it had not been included in any drafting of the formal Impeachment charges.   But the press took care of that...just like they took care of Joe McCarthy....and Lincoln Freed the Slaves....and Social Security will take care of the geezers....and the income tax will never exceed 1% of anyone's income.

(El Gringo Viejo felt somewhat vindicated when FOX News reporter Al Rosen [White House and special assignments] declared that he needed to correct and clarify a point about associating Richard Nixon with having utilised the IRS as a political retribution weapon.  He essentially pointed out that he had been correctly informed, almost precisely, of what El Gringo Viejo included in the above passages, even naming John Dean (jerk), and Chuck Colson (actually a good guy) as having been the culprits, and that Colson had always said that Nixon never knew anything about it. John Dean also confessed that truth some years back, in public.)

That's all.   Just the facts, ma'am.  714

El Gringo Viejo