A REPOST - This is a repost from our adventure from a few days ago, back by popular demand.....

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(This is a repost from back in July.  Various people inquire, and I offer explanations.  Yesterday, at a reception for a Rio Grande Valley notable's  birthday celebration, her 100th, perhaps a score of people inquired about our place in Mexico and my thoughts about the situation.  Several hundred people attended the home reception.   Their questions are reasonable and I feel obliged to begin a complex of answers for them and for the OROGs as well. So, finally I began telling folks to check this blog on Monday or Tuesday.   And so, here we are)

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     The day before yesterday, this humble servant had to go through the rigours of any person, something that I, a true English aristocrat (that is a self-deprecating joke folks), tend to resent, at least a bit.   This rigour involved having to deliver a motorcar, that being a Jeep Cherokee with over 150, 000 miles, and 16 years of service.  It is a very presentable vehicle, a gift from my first son, who is a girl, who apparently had the mistaken notion that because we had given vehicles to them (also old and wasted) they had some obligation to unload their junk on us.

     The other thing is, this Jeep Cherokee Laredo....the super Deluxe model....actually provided incredible service with only the normal brake jobs, tire repairs, hood-support pistons, etc. being required to keep it running.  We have turned down the equivalent in dollars from people encountered on the road in Mexico of 6,000 USD because the noble old beast was still pretty, clean and kempt on the inside, no oil burner, a bit of a quirky transmission (but welcome to anything with a Chrysler transmission), and ever so comfortable.  For a 2002 model of anything automotive to have so many reasonable and passionate suitors should be a complement.

     We opted to sell.....yes, sell....the Grand Dame to our Mayordomo, the fabled Sargento Mayor Alvaro....the man who assists during the presence of clients and who stands the door and the properties of the Quinta in my absence.   He has 15 years with us.   I charged him to take the vehicle, and we did it all on the up and up, legal - legal, according to the Mexican, Tamaulipan, and Texian vehicular transfer laws that are presently pertinent.

    Why sell, instead of deign and grant?  Because Alvaro is not a peon.  He is a contract person, with professional blue-collar licenses and credentials, and a Paladin who rides alone through life. He sees himself as neither my subordinate nor superior.  He is not even an employee, but rather, a consultant and mechanical and tourism engineer.  And he does it all, along with pushing my old carcass around in a wheelbarrow when present, with aplomb.

     Alvaro and Don Rafael's Secretary made it to Ciudad Victoria and then to the Quinta right on time, no real delays.  They were stopped by a Federal Highway Police officer.  He was confused because Alvaro had all the correct paperwork and everything was in order. He complained a little because there was no "little error" for which he could collect at least a little bit for his daughter's dental braces.   My guys took pity on him and gave him 50 pesos, and they were "released" after about a three minute delay.  A big improvement since the old days when a freshly nationalised vehicle being driven by two Mexicans would have cost 2,000 to 5,000 pesos in bribes to the highway patrol.....but that was back when elections were held but did not matter.

All Mexicans look alike.  Except
for the ones who look different. 
this one is Arabic, a Maronite
Catholic, whose family came
from Lebanon.

His name? Carlos Slim Harp.

Member of secret Roman
Catholic societies, such as Opus
Dei, is fervent 

anti-communist,
pro-American but is a

Democrat sympathiser.

He owns the New York Times.

Go figure.

     He also has a Mexican Peso triad of Mexican Treasury Notes that have 30 day, another at 90 day, and another at 180 day terms that he renovates at the appropriate time.   He deposits what we pay 1,000 pesos to each account at each term when he "renovates".  He had a considerable sum before he came to be associated with us, over 15 years ago.   The Mexican interest rates are between 5% and 7.5% depending on the term.  He lost money during the slide about a year and a half ago, and he has made it back in spades during the peso's recuperation of the last three months.  Such is the nature of playing Mexican paper.  The true rule, truth be known, is that he who is stupid enough to invest money in Mexico begins to appear wiser and wiser the longer he leaves his money on bank and Banco de Mexico term-definite paper.  Over any seven year period, one normally has moderate to significant returns.  No Mexican paper has ever defaulted in peso terms.
            That rule was followed by a fellow by the name of Carlos Slim, whose dull, boring day-to-day investment in Mexican paper resulted, indirectly, in his becoming the richest and/or among the top 10 richest people in the world.
     Besides being an apparatchik of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) the old government ruling party, Carlos was also the son of his father, a Beirut native businessman who did not want his family subjected to the Ottoman rule of Turkey and the conscription of his sons into the Ottoman Army.  They moved to Mexico in 1902 to join a already large existing Christian Lebanese group in Mexico City as well as in various places in the north and west of Mexico (Torreon, Chihuahua, Monterrey, Reynosa, Matamoros, San Luis Potosi, Queretaro, and Guadalajara).

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     But I diverge.  The boss followed me to the border and she took up position in a pleasant enough dinette associated with a nice gasoline station.   There she was to wait until I would return in an hour and a half or so, all things being equal.  I ordered up an iced-tea with lime only, and then took off for the Reynosa Bus Terminal....which lies a little less than a half-mile from the main twin - bridges connecting the McAllen - Reynosa metropolis.   As I crossed over, it was noticed that the pedestrian inspection line was almost exactly one mile long, and it was not moving.   It could be seen that the vehicular lanes....about six of them....were also pretty much frozen in time.
     But, I as the true keeper of Excalibur and filled with the powers of Zobbozolom, knew that by the time I should return, the line would be evaporated, and the American customs and immigration officers would have processed everyone in the line with the efficiency and alacrity of the American administrative imperative.
     We proceeded to the Bus Terminal, found a fine parking space at the "estacionamiento" adjacent to the Terminal.  Clean, professional gate keeper, even pleasant.   I enter, saluting the Mexican Army Sergeant, who is in full flak-jacket, French automatic rifle, combat presentation.  There are two full platoons at the Bus Station.  The un-accustomed are turned off by this, but the deportment of the people at the Terminal is..."Thank the good Lord God Almighty that we have more and better fire-power than the Cockroaches, right here, right now.   People come and go without a second look at the soldiers....the whom of which will lay their lives down to protect the flag and the citizenry.
     I spoke with a lieutenant and a really ranking sergeant,  identifying myself by my number, rank,  and branch as a veteran and exchanging salutes with them.  They were more than compliant.   They indicated that they were at the Station as a mis-direction maneouver, because from this point, and due to the outlay of the really good streets leading away from the Terminal, they could respond to almost anywhere in Reynosa within seven minutes.
    There were hundreds of people coming and going every 15 minutes.   The best count of arrivals and departures of better 2nd Class, 1st Class, and DeLuxe busses arriving and leaving was 51 in the nearly 1.5 hours that I was stuck there.  Alvaro's bus coming up from Ciudad Victoria, the capital of the State of Tamaulipas would arrive about 25 minutes late, due to the intense inspection by the Army at a checkpoint about 90 miles south of Reynosa.  Dogs, federal police, but mainly Mexican Army personnel..(many having received American and / or Israeli and / or Egyptian/ or Brittanic training) check through luggage and personal effects at that point. The base also has a really fine "super clinic" with a couple of operating rooms and overnight facilities for ill or infermed people, and a large vaccination and general attention facility.  It is a marvel.  But it is also a pain in the neck when someone is waiting at the terminal, and he has  Brittanic blood. 
     On each of three occasions, El Gringo Viejo seeks information about the "new arrival terms" the boy (and yes, Virginia, I can say 'boy' because I am over 70 years of age) searches the position of the bus upon which Alvaro is mounted.  The last time, he makes contact with the driver and/or the relief driver on the closed circuit telephone and they say they are late because of this or that, they will be at the terminal at such and such minute.  And that is the way it was.
     About 27 minutes late....through no fault of their own....a still bright and shiny 1st class special bus comes into the TRANSPAIS bus company's parking area and empties its passengers.  To shorten the story, Alvaro and Don Rafael's secretary, a man whose name I still have not programmed into my brain, come up and we immediately go back out to the parking lot where the Jeep is.   Alvaro sets about attaching the plasti-carton (a real license, very solid construction, stronger than a metal plate) license plate on the rear of the Jeep.  He puts the required windshield sticker "at the point of the top of the head of the co-pilot" according to the instructions and it is placed on the inside so that it cannot "removed by pedestrian".     We exchange all of the documentation, titles, permits, and Alvaro's first payment, which is a fortune for the working man in Mexico.  And I drive the Jeep for the last time as owner (with my wife), over to the Mexican entry area.  That is where the pedestrian crossing is accessed.

     It is also where I learn that Alvaro will not be driving back, but rather Don Rafael's secretary, because he is very familiar with Reynosa, having many people there working in the Maquila, as it is said on the Frontier (the County/City of Reynosa has 40,000 people, mainly younger to middle-aged females, working in Reynosa...at 3 to 10 times the minimum wage - 16 to 60 dollars/day..., plus housing allotment aimed at ownership, plus Social Security - medical, and scholarships for minors in family, plus one really nice meal).

    I show them, to be sure, where they can turn and follow the way to Santa Engracia and / or Ciudad Victoria and then travel a few hundred yards to the place where I shall say good-bye to them and then return to Gringo-Land on foot.  They leave, I go, and it is a joyous moment because I am only about 20 minutes late now.   The exchange of documents, and the transfer to the Mexican port of entry....very few minutes.....Hi - Ho, Hi - Ho, It's off to work I go....and I trudge towards the official pathway for the pedestrians who are going into the Gringolandia.   And then, guess what.....?

     The one mile line of the morning is no longer there, and so I smile and realise that my path is  bathed in fortunate indulgence.   Then, after turning the first big curve, a huge line...not the one mile line, but the one kilometre line.....not as much, but still a disaster.   The line moves very slowly.  My numbness of the forearms and calves and feet after about 30 minutes of very, very slow movements of the line, I had to "jump the line" and I approached the man about 200 yards up the line...who was controlling the line.   I told him the truth...that my electrolytes were diminishing, and yes I had bought some dry cookies and water, but a three or four hour wait would result either in my death or my incapacitation.
     I begged forgiveness and indulgence from the people I have passed up, and then I began the most arduous slide and half-stumble to the entry into the Customs and Immigration pedestrian inspection. The people left behind have a two to four hour wait....in the 104 degree heat, lined up like sheep for the slaughter....while the line moves ahead at ten or twelve people every 15 minutes.  Not very encouraging for a line of 750 yards.
     The problem is, that these people are legal.  Some are citizens, as is your humble servant.  Others have gone to great trouble and expense to obtain the border crossing permit that they use daily or weekly.  It costs about 250 dollars for the 10 year permit.  But one must render up the place where his grandmother is buried, and put his grandmother in a Dempster Dumpster.   (Almost, but not quite).  The "purification" is neither easy nor cheap.  And these people are left in to the heat, wind, old and very, very young....for hours never ending.
      The slobs and their supposed children coming from Central America to cross the Rio Grande as "refugees" last Summer and the Summer before last to cross over and are given everything and allowed to enter the country without even a birth certificate, while they go and glob onto an El Salvadoran barrio where the "immigrant" immediately also globs onto food stamps, section 8,  AFDC, Head Start, this free, that free, and never to report to their administrative hearing at the immigration hearing.  This is the case for 85% of the women who brought supposed children to "escape the violence" in their home countries.  They are aided by Catholic Charities and the Episcopal Church of America.....

     Frequently, these children are sold into sex-slavery or worse.  The Mara Salvatrucha are capable of things that normal people cannot even grasp, intellectually.  The Callejon 18 are the same.   It is nothing to them to sell a 12 year old girl to be skinned alive and butchered for the pleasure of one or several of these monsters to watch and video.   They laugh as it goes on.
      And we are lectured by the  Democrats about immigration.   The monsters do their stuff here, because we still have some semblance of due process unless the malcreants are dumbo 10th Amendment people.  In Honduras, if on rare occasion the Army happens upon these sub-humanoids, they simply machine-gun them into hamburger.  The Salvatruchas and allied types laugh as the bullets splatter their own brains.
       It is difficult for normal Americans.....people who know who Fred Flintstone and Lawrence Welk were and are.....to understand what kind of scum have entered into the United States since the last  Amnesty (1987).....and more especially during the Regime of Obama.   It is during that last episode that the negative impact was programmed and hoped for, in order to hasten that long desired fundamental "Transformation of America". It was necessary to induct as many unqualified people into the country as possible so as to convert the glistening city on the side of the mountain of Reagan into the Favelas of Slums where one is lucky to drink the blackish-yellowish-greyish effluent of the open sewers of Shariah and Socialism brought to us by Barry Soetoro and his minions.

    But, once again, I digress.  Finally I pass through the American Pedestrian Immigration Inspection, there are only two agents working six inspection positions.  The vehicular inspection is almost equally stationary. Your humble servant, after over an hour in the sun and standing around....nothing nearly as bad as the people he left behind....passes through without even a glance.  The officer does not even open my passport.
      I walk another 1/3 of a mile to the place where I left my boss at 10:00 am,  almost  literally stumbling away from the bridge compound during the latter part of the middle of the day.   By 14:00 hours, I make it to the Valero Station with its nice Stripes dinette, but the Boss has seen me and runs to our run-about and drives to pick me up.  She is apologizing!!!  I am the one who presided over holding everyone up, but she who has done all the real "blind waiting" is apologising to me.   Now all the OROGs know why I never "left home".   But I am exhausted.  

    With Alvaro's first payment and a few other shekels, and my pitiful old pre-corpse pretty much spent, we go back to our abode.  There I endure until being able to report all of the above to the OROG community and any others who feel the need to venture into absolute boredom.  The Boss just continues on her 14 - 20 hour daily circuit of Mom, profession, Old Gringo Geezer care, accounting for our businesses and our accounts and running the homestead.   I, of course, take care of Red China, Nicaragua, Venezuela, and the Democrats.  And other important stuff.

This entry should be enough to bore almost everyone to death.  But I render it to my Consuegros (my daughter's in-laws) first, then to the OROGs, and then to the Facebook people who have grown to constitute the vast majority of our listenership.   Thank you all for your time and attention.

El Gringo Viejo

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Republican Failure? Or Failure of McCain, Murkowski, and Collins?

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       Perhaps you were one of many voices that spoke but could not be heard due to the deafening roar of back door political maneuvering. The notion that we are being pushed into a subsidised system speaks volumes. The dull-thinkers and those who want to be fair are following both the Pied Piper and the Tailors who made the Emperor's fine raiment. Slobs and dullards who are really glad to have "free medical" are truly slobs and dullards. "Let the Rich Pay!!!" is the battle cry.

      Such a practice has always and must aways wind up in bankruptcy. It is as simple as that. Right now there is no problem. The officials are herding the sheep-people into the log and frame barn. To-morrow the people will be waiting around for their "free medical, food, housing, schooling, transportation, and lottery tickets" and suddenly they will smell smoke. A third of them will be told to take an aspirin and come back in 90 days. When they are dying of starvation and lack of medical services, they will struggle up one more time to the Bastille and the guillotines to rally once more, "Tax the Rich and Off with their heads!!!!" We have painted ourselves into a desperate Box Canyon and there is no good outcome. Thanks a million, McCain....(I shall never refer to you again as Senator, nor Commander, nor "sir", nor shall I salute you).

     Why would El Gringo Veijo say such a dastardly thing?  After all, think of how McCain sacrificed, refusing to take liberty from the communist North Vietnamese and the Hanoi Hilton as a Prisoner of War unless his American and allied mates were likewise released.  His refusal of repatriation brought him several years more of torture and brutal treatment.   However, McCain was always a steel-wire bristle-brush.....having been a bit problematic during his youth,  and according to some, even during his early days as a flight-trainee and later as a fully qualified F - 4 Phantom driver.
     He performed heroically at the event of the fire on board the Carrier Forrestal when a missile dislodged and exploded on deck....when there were numerous warplanes "parked upstairs".  Some say that McCain performed only as he should have.....others say he performed heroically.   There was a lot of intense fire and munitions and kerosene in the wings, etc.   Losses for the boat itself came up to over 70,000,000 1967 yankee dollars.   The planes lost were a separate loss, some 16 totally destroyed.

     Then he comes home...makes friends with John Kerry, calls himself a Republican, marries Budweiser Beer West, and begins his not so slow drift to reasonable....the left....to the idiosyncratic.....and to the irrational.  Most recently he joined two other liberal Democrats who attend the Republican Convention every four years and talk about the need to protect a woman's right to choose, and blocked the will of 48 Republicans who had been dragged kicking and screaming into accord that would initiate a watered-down beginning of the dismantling of the Obama Socialised Medicine Initiative (OSMI).
     One could ask,"What difference would it have made to vote to approve?"  To begin,  the bill would have had to been passed over to Conference with the House of Representatives where further hammering, welding, and boiler-plating would be done.   Once everything could be worked out, something a little less bad than the OSMI would be put into place, and the governors in the rust belt would have their Medicaid with which to buy votes.   The governors and State congresses where deficit spending is prohibited will take what little improvement has been made and try to build on it....primarily by getting out of the way of the private, job-producing sector and the American way of innovation and community involvement (without the aid of a community organiser).
     And, once proving that we could actually turn the Ship of  State ever so slightly to the right, backed up by a Supreme Court that has a counterbalance to the "conservative" Chief Justice, we could have begun a return to some semblance of normalcy in terms of governance by the Central Government.

     Oddly, the two women who saved their States from the ruin of abandoning the OSMI, thereby relegating their States securely into the comfort zone of predictable disaster,  they are now proudly on the path to that Great Dust Bin of History.
    John McCain, in order to prove once and for all that he was a real live Maverick, assured the continuation of medical insurance collapse in the State of Arizona.   Rates for those who must subsidise the parasitical and slothful and Congressional members and staffs, have skyrocketed in Arizona....and in Maine and Alaska, quite frankly.
      So, the terrible trio has taught everyone a lesson.   That lesson is, "One must  beware of what he has or else he will receive something he wished for before he voted to find out what was in it, or not for the hardworking American people and those most in need when the rich finally manage to pay their fair share."   That last sentence might well soon replace "In God We Trust" on our currency, as we begin to understand Nancy Pelosisms more completely. 

     We are genuinely talking about worms who have no deductive reasoning and who are completely self-consumed.   It is time for at least three primary challenges.   To think, even Lindsey Graham and Rand Paul voted for this thing, knowing that once passed, it would go into Conference for further open-heart surgery and athlete's foot medicine.   Ted Cruz and Mike Lee voted for it, so as to keep the inning alive. Almost every liberal Republican, Conservative Republican, and Libertarian Republican voted  for this somewhat useless, somewhat interesting bill....except for three....three egotistical stumblebums.

More later,
El Gringo Viejo

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Mr. President, Mr. President....Just one question....!

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Mr. President:

     You speak and twitter almost continuously about loyalty.  Two quick questions.  Why do you demand loyalty of staff and cabinet heads so frequently?    Also, even as you demand loyalty, you exhibit little or none to Attorney General Jefferson Sessions, who put all his chips on the table for you during the campaign for the Republican nomination.   He has also demonstrated during his service to the Nation, to have been a loyal, able, and noble servant to both you and the Nation.   Can you advise us of any other heads that must roll in the near future?

     Your behaviour and posturing bespeak of some strange and spurious impulses.  It would be wise to remember that many people supported you, not because of your bluster and overly spontaneous adolescent personality, but because of the fact that your main opponent wreaked and still wreaks of the rot of corruption and all nature of evil and illegal activity.  In short, many of us determined that you were not as bad as she was/is bad.

Thank you for your kind attention,

David Christian Newton

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A Call to Man the Parapets

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(A short note sent to the office of the Director of the Texas Nationalist Movement.   We might urge friends and even foes of similar mind advise the TNM and your favourite elected officials to consider these measures)

Over the last few days a notion keeps recurring to me about this Texas Nationalist matter.

     As you know I am a minor but loyal contributor, and have been for some time.   We have dedicated a significant position on our blog face-page  to promoting the Texas Nationalist Movement as well.   My bona fides speak for themselves as well as having a long history of very moderate, reasoned pro-Texas independence and defence of Confederate positions.  I end this preamble with the reassurance that one of my main enemies in this life is the existence of the Ku Klux Klan.

     My thought is that it might serve us well to attempt a steady push from the side...the flank.... of the argument.  We try organisation, legislator persuasion, confronting an intransigent and timid Texas Republican Party....all with some success, but never quite enough.   Therefore, I would propose this attack against the flank.   What about pushing for changing the name of a few things.

    To this day, the formal title of Virgina is "The Commonwealth of Virginia".   An entire Commonwealth named for just one Virgin Queen, (or perhaps a little girl).

   

   To this day, the formal title of Pennsylvania is "The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania".....an entire Commonwealth named for just one man.

    Still, the formal title of Massachusetts is "The Commonwealth of Massachusetts".

     And, of course, the Bluegrass "State"  is formally announced as "The Commonwealth of Kentucky".

     We, as Texians, have no problem with this,  because as 10th Amendment people and as instinctive Separatists, we believe that the term "sovereign State of....." should have some legal, moral, and very concrete meaning.

     Moving to conclusion, my suggestion to you and yours....(of whom,  I am one)....is that you begin a steady, passive attack, to be increased in intensity and velocity over the months, of urging that the Poobahs and mamby-pamby Texian "believers"  who just can't quite make it over that line in the sand....to change the formal title of our grand entity to "The Republic of Texas".   When I use that term in Mexico, at our place and precincts there, the Mexicans of any organised class....lower and higher....never bat an eye.   Various even use the term now in conversation with me....."....la Republica Texana"......   It does well in French, as well, with "Le Republique Texian" rolling off the tongue as would a speech delivered by Marie-Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier de La Fayette, Marquis de La Fayette.

     We could approach the timid legislators and senators with the truth and the ploy that "It's just a simple name change, like Commonwealth."   I would urge that we further the "just a name change" Trojan Horse with the idea that the elected head of the Republic should certainly be called......"ladies and gentlemen, the President of the Republic of Texas, the Honourable Gregg Abbott." 

     Of course, the Lieutenant Governor would have to sacrifice his title become the Vice-President and President of the Senate.    Titles could be recommended on down the food chain.  Instead of Land Commissioner, something like Chancellor of Public Lands of the Republic.   Etc.

     The point of any and all of this is to accustom especially the broad moderate mass of reasonable Texians to "take this small step" to further define and project Texas as something 'a little different'.

     We are being inundated by people from lesser districts who have become dependent upon the idea that "The Government should do something about (such and such)...like we did in California - New York - Michigan - Illinois - Oregon - Wherever".   It is necessary to take active measures to ensure our strange culture made of attitudes of Jews and Christians, all nature of Angloids, all nature of Mexican / Spanish,  and all nature of Black Africans, and Czechs, and Polish, and Germans, and Swedes, etc. etc. be respected and prolonged.

    We truly are a people apart, and we need to establish certain sociological markers or we shall lose it all forever.   You have heard this all before.  You have probably also said all these things before.   But, I think, the effort to define Texas as a Republic and our officials, for better or worse, as Presidents,  etc. would change the inertia from sedentary / inert....to active / and pro-Independence.

We wish to thank you for your time and interest.  Please forgive our invasion upon your few minutes that might be left over from your busy schedule that each day presents.

David Christian Newton

QUINTA TESORO de la SIERRA MADRE

Adrift, at a Loss, a Sad Commentary

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    As we bear witness to the melodrama unfolding in the political arena, our hope for the American Experiment's continuation dims by the second.   The Democrats do not concern me.   They are degenerate, predictable, arrogant, and essentially pointless in the matter of any significant discussion or debate.

     Wishing not to belabour reasons why the Democrat Party as a political - electoral entity is not an issue, it is well to point out that the institution is the greatest collection of grifters, cheats, criminals, race-baiters, national socialists, bolshevik socialists, nihilists, charlatans, bigots, hypocrites, rioters, social parasites, and just generally the types of people who leave a rally littered with trash, marijuana butts, and used pampers.
     If a person says that he / she is a Democrat, then he / she must consider that he / she is an ally of the Ferguson Rioters and Looters and the Occupy Wall Street indolent delinquents.   It must also fold into the mix all the dead bodies associated within the political and social class of people who come into contact with the Clintons.
     It must also be considered that their greatest star is a black man of no American Negro tradition, suffering, or accomplishment.  His greatest "accomplishment", the Obama Socialised Medicine Initiative (OSMI) was a disaster that fulfilled the warning of "....beware of voting to find out what is inside a bill authorising the OSMI....".    Enough.

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     Verily, my greatest lament is the general condition of the Republican Party.   We elect so many men who have such low testosterone, and so many women who wish to be "reasonable" instead of right, correct, certain in philosophy, and guardians of the precepts of liberty.   Instead of defending  free enterprise, tradition, good order, they choose to abuse the exchequer with vote-buying, re-election-insurance schemes.  Said insurance, of course, being  purchased with yankee dollars, freshly printed.

     We are also hung around the neck with the millstone of a President who twitters.  And, no offense to 12 year old girls, but great moments in history and literature are not made up by 140 letters.   We have an occupant of the Oval Office who calls members of his own  party by course names, especially like "Lying Ted".....when the name-caller himself declares that everyone knows that "Lying Ted's" father was one of the Kennedy assassins.  

     Then....he wants solidarity and full backing for his proposals.  True enough, he has done some correct things.  The appointment of a Scalia - Thomas style Constructionist to the Supreme Court was encouraging.   But the senselessness of wasting time about a "Border Wall" paid for by Mexico and other such madness is also foolishness.   It is akin t0 the idea of imposing an "import tax" as a method of making Mexico pay....(??).   Just who does that hurt?
     It hurts people, who play by the rules, by uselessly increasing the cost of the legal movement of people and goods both directions.  Really smart Keynesian thinking (snarky sarcasm switch 'on').  Or call it, "How to replace savings with expenditures so as to forever keep the budget, as well as the citizenry, out of balance".

     The supposedly-Republican controlled Congress is made up of substantially conservative people, but a significant number are "reasonable'' people who like to think in terms of "public-private partnerships",  "reaching across the aisle", "building working relationships", and above all else, "working on behalf of the hard-working American people".   Such is the stuff of all mammy-pamby moderates who believe in seeking the "middle-ground".    In Texas we say that the o'possum in the middle of the highway is the one most likely to be splattered.

     These reasonable and moderate Republicans have no interest in philosophy or principle or purpose beyond their notions of doing what is necessary to maintain their place in the Senate or the House of Representatives.  Just the other day, twenty-four of the GOP's finest sided with the Democrats to help pass an amendment to a funding authorisation for the War Department to pay for "gender re-assignment services for members of the armed forces".

     Various Senators on the Republican side are posturing about how they want to "save" medicaid for the most needy, while a couple are concerned about the negative effect un-funding Planned Parenthood will have on the women of their States.   Of all the recalcitrant Senators, there is only one who has a reasoned reason.  That one is Rand Paul.   His position is to pass a clean law of abolition of the previous law down to the letter.   That is the way it is done.
    He further believes that more of the burden of public health should be placed upon the shoulders of the various States, who know where the weak spots in their respective States are.   This business about "funding health care" is exactly the same as Government backing for the student loan programme.....that follows the rule of...."The more money the Central Government shovels into the funding of student tuition loans, the more the universities will charge in tuition."   The by-product of this phenomena is that incompetent, leftist "professors" can sit back and spill non-academic, purely personal marxist opinion bilge, and be paid 90,000 yankee dollars per year for working part-time while doing nothing.

     Stunning Republican stalwarts manning of the parapets to defend the concept of limited central government and the limiting of central government?  Not so much.
     It brings to mind Bob Dole, whom I had the pleasure of driving around during the 1980 campaign here in South Texas when he served as a surrogate campaigner for the Ronald Reagan / George H.W. Bush presidential ticket.  Senator Dole carried at all times a card in his pocket that had the 10th Amendment printed on it.  It is the Amendment that declares that all those things not specified as pertaining to the authority of the central government are reserved to the authority of the people and the various States.
     But it was Bob Dole who spoke proudly of having imposed on every State the need to put handicapped bird-cage cleaners within reach of every granny from Alaska  to Florida.   The ADA....solved all the problems for the lame and the halt.
   It was obviously an issue to be handled locally, either well or clumsily or not at all, depending on the will of the people in the area affected.   So now we have people in huge electric carts blocking the aisles in the grocery stores and "free space ecological areas" in the closest spots of convenience at every parking lot from here to Jupiter.  And they remain unused 91% of the available time.

Elephant Stampede

    (Please be aware that El Gringo Viejo essentially has no left knee and a permanent labyrinthine disfunction of the left ear, qualifying for the last 50 years for this or that disability consideration.  But because of closest friends being exposed to combat mortality (El Zorro), and because of losing a relatively close friend in such combat, and because of the many who many went willingly into the battle and returned in flag-draped coffins, I determined never to use any convenience for the handicapped.  And, yes Virginia, I do have an Honourable  Discharge from the United States Army.)

     If ever there were a time for compromise, it would be this time, but only within the corral of the Elephants.  If we could truly argue among ourselves, as Sincere Elephants, and arrive at a "medium-term" compromise while we worked towards full and total privatization of the practice of the medical arts and sciences, then we would be men and women of virtue en lieu of serfs begging from Lois Lerner and Donna Brazeale and Nancy Pelosi for the few crumbs that might fall from their table of plenty.

     Why, Oh! Why can we not be required to go trudging up to the Council of Vipers that is the United States Civil Service of the GS - 9 through GS - 14 civil service to beg for our daily bread?
      Why was there a War fought, ostensibly to bring the Grapes of Wrath, and the Fight to Make Men Holy, and to Make Men Free with so many killed and destroyed.....when now we are all slaves to the whims of unelected bureaucrats and elected people who are afraid of losing their seats in Congress and unwilling to slap the hands of the nincompoops who control the bureaucracy??   Why?

    I have come to  agree with the conclusion of Senator Ted Cruz.  I concur with Rand Paul, and vigorously urge, suggest, yea! even demand that Rand join with the vote of approval with the proviso that we shall continue to push from the Right to further unchain the people from the efforts of the Left to establish Utopia on Earth.
   We recognise that Utopia as defined by the Left is akin to approving the knee-jerk hatred of Jews and traditional and faithful Christians, the hatred of liberty, the hatred of a happy disorder of people following their faith when it does not involve Sharia or atheism.

      We leave this matter to the hands of Higher Powers.

     The Abraham Lincoln types and  the yankees solved the Negro problem and that is why everything is perfect among that category of Americans to-day.  
The Nation was wasted and the North had to import several hundred thousand Irish to catch Confederate bullets and shrapnel, but...you know...social perfection has a cost.

      Carrie Nations also solved the problem of people drinking too much and disregarding their wives and chillun's by axing and hammering fine cherrywood bars into kindling.....Margaret Sanger almost managed to feed the Negro race in America and elsewhere into a wood-chipper....and everything would have been made better. She applauded the Ku Klux Klan and the Nazi efforts at "racial improvement".
    At every turn, great social movements have had even greater unintended results.    Remember....1950 the illegitimate baby production of the Negro Race in America was 7% and their crime rate was roughly per capita equivalent to that of the general population.   After years and years of "civil rights" and "social democracy" and "Black Lives Matter" and AFDC and Section 8 and food stamps and medicaid, and free school lunch, and etc. bilge, we now have 78% illegitimate births.   How did that happen?

     Deranged Democrat National Socialist social engineers calling for more, and eunuch Republicans afraid to vote in the House and Senate for the hard stuff that will solve the problem.  Testosterone and Estrogen deficiency.  That is how the sociological Titanic disasters have occurred.

When and where will it all end?   The answer my friend, is certainly not blowing in the wind....it is obvious and before us.   It lies in the removal of government from the chores of the average man and woman who have a catechism.

Thank each and every, as usual, for your time and attention.
El Gringo Viejo

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A Revealing Note - Inside the mind, heart, and soul of Texans

(a special note:  the acronym OROG will be used in this submission.  It means, "Order of the Readers of the Old Gringo")

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   Your last three comments have been on the mark --- again. I don't think that we will ever get out of the mess that "The Great Society" foisted on us. If you give someone anything, it becomes an "entitlement".   For me or anyone else.

Concerning Mexico:

     Jose, the man who has worked on our yard, done sprinklers, built walls, odd jobs, etc., since 2008 stopped by to say good-bye.   He has returned to Mexico each year, for at least a month but now that he can make a living working in Mexico, he will stay this time.  He has also saved a great deal of $ over the years. 

    He can speak English but prefers not to. For years most people (Texans) would, at least, try to speak Spanish with him but now there are so many new people, Californians and Northerners that won't even try, it's just not worth it.

Oh Well!

Such is life.

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    This passage above speaks a great deal to the nature of the mind, heart, and soul of the vast majority of Texians.  It is why we do a not-so-slow boil when liberal commentators quickly and blithely lump us into the group they picture to be hooded klanners and dull Bubbas who are too stupid and ignorant to even read the pictures in the comic strips.

    The introductory passage is written by my "consuegro".  That word is now archaic, and I am trying to resuscitate it into this generation.   In that I am now 70, I reflect that it is a word used by a very influential man in terms of my upbringing.  He was in his late 70s, and served as my father's majordomo (overseer or manager) for the grove care business.  He also served as my governor, guide, and disciplinarian during my ages of 0 - 9.  He was a colonial (descended from Spanish colonists....in this case who settled along the Rio Bravo {Grande} during the 1750s) born in Mier, Tamaulipas (1871) and educated up through 9 grades (primary, secondary, and preparatory) in a prestigious school run by French nuns in Monterrey, Nuevo Leon.

     His name was Agustin Salinas.  He was ruddy faced, skin whiter than milk, and green-eyed.   He had blondish-auburn hair.  He wore khaki work shirts and pants, along with alway clean, sometimes polished Wellington boots.

A Good Cluster of old fashioned Red Grapefruit

     He required of my father that he should have a veto on any man hired, "...because Mexicans are either very untrustworthy or very trustworthy, and you are too trusting."   My father was humoured to a point by Don Agustin, but he also had faith in his honesty and understanding of the work at hand.

Higher quality Valencia Oranges

 There is little as unforgiving as a citrus orchard.   And my father had 74 clients who had  many hundreds of acres of Valencia and Red Grapefruit.
Agustin would, to make a long story at least a bit more tolerably short, speak in his archaic way, very correctly, in his literary form of perfect Andalusian Spanish.  He would refer to the man and wife who were the parents of the girl who married Agustin's son as "consuegros" which literally means "inter-father/mother-in-law" .
     For instance, the man who wrote the note to me this morning about his friend going back to Mexico is the father-in-law of my daughter.  I am the father-in-law of his son.  We are "consuegros", and the OROG certainly knows by now that the Spanish word "suegro" means father-in-law.
     Over the years and generations, in English and Spanish, certain words and phrases fall out of use or favour.  The word "consuegro" although more precise and easier to use, seemed cumbersome.  So, the concept of "inter-in-law" gradually was fused into the other convenient word, "compadre" and "comadre"....or "co-parents", perhaps in English.  But, in reality, these two words were actually more closely related to what one would call, after the religious services have finished, a "padrino" or "madrina", which means Godfather and Godmother.
     After a wedding, baptism, or confirmation those who had been chosen to be Godparents or sponsors would from thence be hailed down the street, or at the saloon, or in the grocer's store as "Hola! Compadre!" and "Como seta's?, Comadre?" meaning "Hello fellow-father and How are you, fellow-mother?"  and that maintains the bond of spirituality.
     That spirituality has since been sacrificed to overuse, so that now the word "compadre" can be used sarcastically, in good humour, with no particular meaning, with the old-fashioned meaning, as a prelude to a warning, etc.  It can be something in English like,"Look, friend, if you came into this saloon looking for a fight, you're gonna find it!"

     In any regard, the man who wrote the words above about "Jose'" is my "consuegro".  In a way, he is rather much like Agustin.  Independent, opinionated, honest, generous, suspicious, and convivial among people whom he knows and trusts.  He is a doer and a veteran, and professionally self-trained due to, frankly, powerful intellectual ability.
     He, as I, spent much of his professional life working in Mexico, rubbing shoulders with people who could buy two or three counties in any State in Mexico.  He was...and is....a consulting engineer, specialising in gas and oil transmission and storage matters.
      He also worked (and still does in his "retirement")  closely with engineers and administrators of the company Petroleos Mexicanos and many of their subcontractors.   That company is better known as PEMEX, or the fourth largest oil company in the world.
    My "consuegro" went into the furthest corners of Mexico, into the charming and mystical cities of the Central Highlands, throughout the trans-Yucatan, the capital, Mexico, D.F. ....one of the top 10 most interesting cities on planet Earth....and  thousands of other off-the-beaten-trail and palatial places in that Nation of many faces, moods, personalities, traditions, and complexities.

    It would be my hope that I have had some of his ability to adapt, enjoy, lead, and follow as he has, at the highest technical and at times social / cultural levels that Mexico can throw at a person, second by minute, hour by day.   He and I have had so many similar experiences in Mexico that we sound like echoes of each other.   It is more than just probable that we crossed close paths frequently without having met until our children met.

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My consguegro saw scenes like this often

  All of the above leads this writer to the point of the story.  We, in Texas, are ridiculed as being intolerant, racist, brutal against homosexuals, past masters of misogyny, and people who fold our white satin robes and peaked, conical masks very carefully, so as not to wrinkle them for the next night-ride.
     It is a bit of a warning to those who know what we are thinking, especially those on the left    You do not know what we are thinking.  You do not know how we think, feel, deduce, or even what motivates us.   To those who come out of the Hollywood ethos, or from the instructive of the Obsolete Media, we are not predictable as a group.  You will fail yourself if you think you know what we are thinking or how we arrived at our conclusions.
     Our life philosophy is fairly uncomplicated except for certain basic precepts.  Generally speaking, Texans are:

(1)  Guided by the hope of fairness and the application of the common law....or that law that is applied to the prince equally as unto the pauper......

(2)  Employers of the triad of life codes supplied by Moses, Hammurabi, Buddha, the Prophets, and the Nazarene, those being the Golden Rule, the Beatitudes, and the Tablets of the Law.......

(3)    Almost always giving a person the benefit of the doubt, at least the first time......

(4)    Dedicated to friend, family, and at times of distress to near and distant neighbour......

(5)     Generally guided by traditional solutions and paths of experience of self and or elders.

     Furthermore, as those on the Left attempt to place people into their appropriate identities, with the shouting and sign waving about "Hispanics for Justice" or "Women for Choice"....in Texas you will fail and continue to fail.   That failure is produced by the Left's own hubris, conceit, and ignorance of natural law.
     In Texas, during the last general elections, that amorphous group the Left calls "hispanic" (a totally useless demographic or sociological term) wound up voting slightly over 50% Republican.  Nor did women vote 100% either way in Texas.   And perhaps troubling to those with New York Values, there are two people in the Texas Legislature who have Black African ancestry who represent substantially Caucasian districts, and they are Republicans.  There are seven more who are of Spanish / Mexican ancestry who represent "diverse" districts, heavily Anglo, and they are Republicans.  
     And yes, we have a Jew for Speaker of the House of Representatives. 

     So, shed off, all Lefties and sophisticates, your presumed tolerance and diversity and faux intellectual proweress.   Review again the words of my consuegro.   The man, his friend of many years who is going back to Mexico, was here legally, as a stone mason.  Such people are in very short supply in the Republic of Texas.  The area of western San Luis Potosi State,  the State Guanajuato, and the area of eastern Jalisco State has numerous master stone masons who work cantera  stone in wondrous ways.  The man was employed in such things and also spent time between projects doing other projects, just to keep busy.   He was, like a lot of people from Guanajuato, a workaholic.  We hate to lose him, but I shall....and my consuegro as well....probably be checking up on him during this fall.

Thanks for your time and patience, as always.
El Gringo Viejo

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