The President's Speech

It is well that the President spelled out his vision for America.    He wants to guarantee that Americans have a chance to be in the middle class.   He was to make certain that all people will have what is necessary.   He wants to be sure that all Americans have those four basic rights that come from a government that cares about its citizens....The right to a good home, to provide shelter against the cold and stormy blast and a dry place for the children when it rains.

      A certainty that the larder will never be empty and the table ample, especially for the children and the elderly.....but certainly for all Americans.   Any nation as wealthy as the United States is obliged to provide nutrition to all citizens, and others who might arrive at our table hungry.

     In this land, the government makes certain that from one ocean to another the land belongs to all.   That each person has a chance to his own corner, his own piece, and the government in Washington is obliged to make certain that right.

      All Americans are certainly entitled to a living wage, a job which provides a sense of worth and a manner by which a person can provide for his family, friends, and neighbours.....and where a person's family, friends, and neighbours can likewise provide for him.    And further, that when events so dictate, and decent labour is not available, that he can be sure of support from his government to provide for those vital, basic needs he might require.

      And all Americans should rest assured and content knowing that they can access thousands of hospitals, with hundreds of thousands of beds, scores of thousands of nurses and doctors and other medical workers, to attend to any medical necessity without charge.  It is a basic human right, and not one which tolerates profit derived from illness, injury, pain, and dispair.

     This is a basic, fair, and reasonable humane appoach to the organization of a civilized, caring society.   No winners, no losers, only people...all the same....no concerns....producing as they can, and deriving from the citizenry what they must.   A fair deal.   A square deal.  A New Deal for all people.   Nobody can deny that this is better than a system which allows some to make so much profit....money....from the efforts of those who gain so little.   How can such a thing be called Democracy.   In a Democracy, everyone is equal.   There are no winners and no losers....such thinking should not and cannot be allowed....We establish the fair deal, a square deal, and a new deal where everyone finishes in first place.    And the Government guarantees it.

And if you don't want it, that's okay.   We're all the same.   We just want to take care of you.

 http://www.therealcuba.com/MurderedbyChe.htm
play this to hear about the real "Che"

Greater and Lesser Importance

Nearing evening on the 7th of December, 1941
Pearl Harbor,
 known to Hawaiians as Puʻuloa, is a lagoon harbor on the island
 of Oʻahu, Hawaiʻi,

     It is said by some historians that the Americans broke their agreement with the Japanese concerning the New World Order agreement that was implied with the signing of the treaty after the the Japanese demolition of Russian naval and land forces during a brief war in the earliest part of the 1900s.   It was understood by the Japanese that in return for fairly lenient treatment of the losing side....Russia and Czar Nicholas....Japan would be allowed to become the dominant Imperial Power in the Orient.   They would be allowed to generally order the lives and arrangements and affairs of the lower elements, like the Chinese, Viet Namese, Koreans, Islander tribes.....essentially everything from and not including Australia and India and Hawai'i, but including even insignificant places like Burma, Corregidor, the Islas Filipinas, Corregidor, Guadalcanal, and Midway.    Colonial activity by the Portuguese, French, Dutch, English, and other round-eyes was to be phased out of the Orient.

     The   Americans were to be allowed to control the lesser peoples of the New World, both aboriginal and colonial, from Tierra del Fuego in Patagonia all the way to the previous Russian colony of Alaska.

     In the Japanese was of thinking, the Europeans could argue over the control and dominance of the inferior people in the Middle East and Africa.   India was problematic, but with its perpetual turmoil between Ishmaelite and Hindu, it would never be able to threaten Japan's control of its third of the Planet

     That was Emperor Mieji's understanding of the payment for gentle terms of surrender by the Russian Empire.   It was the broker's understanding as well.   The Great Peacemaker of the Treaty of Portsmouth, 1905?   The Hero of San Juan Hill, The Commander of the Rough Riders in Cuba, the Great Trust Buster and enemy of the Robber Baron Capitalists.  The Founder of the American Progressive Movement (one of about 250 solitary inventors of the deranged Progressive Movement), the Great White Hunter....Theodore Roosevelt.
      The Japanese admired the brilliance and audacity of the Americans.   The building of the Panama' Canal, when the French could not.   The elimination of the meddlesome, indolent Spaniards from the Islas Filipinas.   One could trust that the Americans could run their third of the the Planet.   Even if they were a mongrel race and there were too many Negroes and Mexicans within their borders, certainly the real Americans in America could make things work correctly in the Western Hemisphere.   That was the Japanese way of looking at things. One can almost see the Emperor's Ambassador confiding to his American counterpart in Portsmouth, "When you have any problems with the Orientals in your country....like the Chinese people...remember to trust the advice of your true friends among your Japanese American citizens."
      The American and British intransigence concerning Japanese heavy-handedness in its dealings with China and Korea, along with continuous bristling, huffing, and puffing against the Dutch and Brits about the rubber, tin, and other treasures found in the East Indies  finally brought the Japanese to the point that they knew the Round-eyes would not ever really understand what it takes to rule over one billion inferior peoples.   Japan needed a free hand.   It wished to be judged by its own ancestors, by the Holy Wind of the Breath of the Spirit of the Departed Emperors and Samurai....not a bunch of Anglo-American politicians....Good Grief.
     The Japanese decided to use the "Rule of Oslo" war technique that the Russians had used on the Swedes in the early 1800s.   That was the use of the massive surprize attack.   The Japanese pulled it off against that same Russia in the early 1900s.  No declaration of war, no passing go, no collecting 2oo dollars.
     Considering the size of the Japanese Navy in 1940 and the intransigence of the American negotiators in 1940 - 1941, and the Japanese sense of entitlement based upon the understandings of 1905 at the Treaty of Portsmouth....there really could not have been and Surprize Attack on Hawai'i in December of 1941.   At my age, after my studies of the issues being addressed in the mid-1930s up to the attack on Pearl Harbour, it does not seem possible to me that Washington D.C. could have been so totally unaware of the Japanese plans, or unaware of the existence of a fleet the size of the one under the command of Admiral

Admiral Yamamoto

Yamamoto.   There were so many foreigners in Japan, so many pro-American Japanese, so many sources of information about the Japanese Naval construction projects that it seems improbable that some kind of at the least roughly accurate information could have been derived out of Kyoto, Kobe, and Tokyo.
     My Father had a friend who had been working in Japan in the late 1930s.   He came back to South Texas and spoke to folks about what was going on there, about the Japanese people, the geography of Japan.  My father remembered him as saying that the Japanese people are very much admirers of Americans and America.  He declared that the family with whom he stayed in Hokkaido, who lived in a rural/seacoast area, had a very elegant Shinto shrine on their property built to venerate their ancestors.   There were pictures of various departed ones, beautiful pieces of artwork, poems, incense burning continuously, and one small censer with a baseball beside it.  Examination revealed that the baseball had been signed by a fellow named Henry Louis Gehrig in 1936.   The man of the Japanese household was very proud of the trophy, and although Gehrig was not enfermed at the time, the family put the ball there to venerate the ancestors of Lou Gehrig, an American Hero who had gone out of his way to sign a baseball for this Japanese admirer travelling on business in New York.
      This same friend of my father's also said that the Japanese were importing thousands and thousands of tonnes of scrap iron and steel from Europe and the United States.   He noted that he had seen on a trip in early 1940 to the other end of Japan, near Yokohama and Yokosuka, a huge flotilla of almost new to very new warships, at least 40 or 50 small, medium, and huge ships grouping outside the harbour as if preparing for a shakedown and training.
     My father said many times during his life that if this fellow was just another dummy like the rest of us, then how come he saw these things and the White House did not?

     In any regard, in spite of the warnings and admonitions by the man pictured above, the victor of the Battle of Pearl Harbour, Admiral Yamamoto, the Japanese Empire moved to strike and cripple America's deep water fleets in Hawai'i, essentially by a sneak attack.  Yamamoto said that a great victory at Pearl Harbour would give him six months or a year at the most to secure supply sea-routes for oil and othr necessities of war.   Failing that, the vengeance of a Sleeping Giant would never be quieted.   He saw the end of his  Empire even during the battle.    The Japanese command was amazed at how well the Americans activated their response and fought un-yieldingly against the Japanese onslaught.
        Hence, when complaints are made about Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Americans remember the 2,300 dead who never stood any chance at Pearl Harbour, and I respond for the dead and the living, "No Pearl Harbour, no Nagasaki.   No Pearl Harbour, no Hiroshima."
    Sad, but true.
    As an aside, El Gringo Viejo points out to those who complain about our having not fought the War with Japan in a kinder and gentler way, that the atomic bombing of those two cities probably saved the lives of five to ten million Japanese and at least one million American combatants had we invaded the main island.    Every Japanese girl over the age of 9 had been armed with a bamboo punji stick, sharpened to a deadly point, and taught how to use it.  "Always wait in the corner behind the door, turn and thrust quickly with the force of your upper body, pushing with all the force of your legs," were the matter of fact instructions.

Thanks for your patience with these ramblings.   Being born in 1947 and raised by parents who had friends among the Nisei who farmed in the Lower Rio Grande Valley before, during, and after the War....and considering all the Toyotas we never could wear out....perhaps our vision is blurred.   It should be pointed out that one of the flag-raisers at Iwo Jima was a Rio Grande Valley Boy from Weslaco named Harlan Block.   He was killed about 2 weeks after the flag raising.   His cousin was the coach who recommended me to the University of Texas baseball program, mentioned in a previous blog post.

El Gringo Viejo....  

A Geezer Just Has to Learn, Sometimes

    So, during the Thanksgiving episode, we had a bit of a problem with the wife's ride.   The was a crack in the top of the radiator.   We took the vehicle to the shop and had it fixed.  It was cheap enough and very quick.   The leak in the radiator was fixed.   BUT!   There was the tiniest, teeniniest little drip that showed up the next day.   Nothing, less than a drip an hour, but it was there.   After three days there was a little light that came on saying "cooling fluid low". 

     El Gringo Viejo solved that by putting in a pint of distilled water.   The drip continued.    Then the battery went dead.   El Gringo Viejo buys another battery....and then takes the vehicle to the radiator/muffler shop.    He is very kind and gentle, there is no reason to have to defend oneself at this place.   It is almost like a club.   Whosoever goes there once will not go elsewhere.   It is cheap, not inexpensive, but dirt cheap and the work, parts, etc. are all guaranteed, no questions asked.

     Three mechanics come over....it's Saturday, mid/late afternoon.   They look under, over, around, and through.  The put the hand-pressure pump on and pump it up.   They put the truck on the lift.   Finally, it drips.   It drips again.   Everybody is happy....but everybody is sad.   "Es la bomba"....(It's the pump.).    The water pump has the tiniest leak....they do not go away, they only become worse.    We change it out.   It was still very cheap by realistic standards.   And they do not use Red Chinese replacement parts.   Only new American or Mexican, or rebuilt Mexican parts.  Legitimate parts in a box that say, Made in America....or Hecho en Mexico...or Reconstuida, garantizada, EUM.    All carry life-time warranties.    No Red Chinese 23 day water pumps.

     But Wait!   There's more.    The thing is, you see....and all OROGs know what the Gringo Viejo is talking about....that my son had pointed out the leak after the radiator repair and said that it was something different...almost insignificant....but it was there.    El Gringo Viejo told everyone to leave it alone...it would stop....it's cleaning solvent....it's nothing....think positively....etc. etc. etc.

Seen while the Gringo Viejo was waiting for his
auto to be repaired.



     As the OROG probably already knows, the young whippersnapper was right and the old geezer was wrong.   This moved the Gringo Viejo a couple of steps closer to the entrance to the Nancy Pelosi Memorial Soylent Green Factory (earmark 3302a385/dm220),   He did see the Grim Reaper at the repair shop, but he was just picking up his Chevy Volt....something about a fire in the battery compartment.

More later.   Thanks for the attention and time.
El Gringo Viejo

Perfect Definition of Madness

Fed may give loans to IMF to help euro zone: paper.

Duh?  Dat really feel rilly goud, right?



Well it be.   Certainly we are in better hands when we leave the affairs of national finance to people who are much smarter than we.   After all, if the Federal Reserve can print free money for the National Socialist Banking System, and free money to feed millions of people for free, and free money to subsidize production of food for free meals for millions of people in America and elsewhere to eat for free.....then they should print free money to feed the union members and slugs of Greece, Portugal, Spain, United Kingdom, France, Belgium, Germany, Poland, Italy, Iceland, Ireland, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Turkey, Luxembourg, and Monte Carlo, and Scabovia, and Upper Southern Vomitia and California.

    Perhaps we should feed the dogs and cats and all the little animals.   And the Polar Bears.

Pray for the state of Christ's Church.   The iceburg has been struck.   There is no hope for the ship of State.

El Gringo Viejo

Known by the Company They Keep

Ladies and Gentlemen, the Secretary of State of the United
States of America

Guess What? (It's Fairly Predictable)

The news about the boy who committed suicide because he was concerned about not being able to go to engineering school after leaving high school.   Turns out that his family says that there was nothing left in any notes that would indicate such a thing.   One brother said that in his good-bye note, one of several left to various family members, the only concern his now departed younger brother evidenced was about being drafted into the ever diminishing ranks of the cartels.   He feared and loathed the idea of being forced to be a mule.   Several of his classmates have been menaced by gang thugs in the area.   The gang thugs are always recruiting because their ranks are diminished by shootings, incarcerations, and flight from the area on a daily basis.    They recruit, at times, by telling the potential conscript that if they refuse service to the gang, their family will be shot....their house will be burned down....their FFA project animals will be shot....their sisters will be raped.....etc.

      That is the only reference made by anybody at the first level of relationship to the young man now departed.   The Hidalgo County Sheriff's Department has taken possession of all notes and related items and is not commenting, due to the fact that, in Texas, this is a homicide.   It is against the law to murder someone with clear intent and malice aforethought.  So, since that is the quintessential characteristic of a suicide, such matters are always investigated between closely and extremely closely.

     ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

      We commend this to the attention of interested OROGs.

     We  assert  that Congressman Ruben Hinojosa is the perfect example of a "feed the children for free".   Tax, Tax, Spend, Spend, Elect, Elect is his motto.   "I will put their money where my mouth is!" is another motto.   "We have been denied too long," is another of his mottoes, although he comes from one of the oldest, colonial families in South Texas, a family that until recent times was very wealthy.   He is a mendacious, hypocritical slug.   The idea of a person born of blue blood, and to the upper-class reducing himself to the level of  carnival-huckster demagogue in one short generation is stunning.   He began his political career as a puppet for big business, the United Farm Workers, and such confusing forms of political convenience and has steadily become worse.

     The idea of walking on the grave of this fine young man....is disgusting.   This tragedy should never have been taken into the public domain.   With the most minimal intervention of class, dignity, social training, and deference it should have been obvious to anyone that this was a very private family matter. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

       Finally,  El Gringo Viejo was having a bit of lunch a couple of days ago, talking with a friend...an old competitor from our touring business days....and we were comparing notes and topics of interest.    We have very similar backgrounds...Texas...university studies....Mexico,  very conservative political and cultural notions....Anglicanism, etc.    As we review this issue of the terrible suicide of this fine boy my friend brought up something that is known, but stored back into the recesses of the brain that pertain to school days back in the 1950s and 1960s. 

       Texas....which walks on the edge of having an independent foreign policy to that of the occupying authourity.... enacted various reciprocal agreements years ago, back in the 1930s and 1940s,  that permitted Mexican States to send citizens of their States to Texas public school and universities and pay in-State tuition.    In return, Texans were permitted to attend their schools under the same considerations.   This meant, for instance, that in the summertime, years back there would be a hoard of Texans staying in private homes in Saltillo, Coahuila and studying Spanish at the University of Coahuila during the summer-school period.   The credits were transferrable on a university transcript  and the experience for many was life-changing.  It was better than Spring Break, and much less degenerate and/or expensive.    The campus of the University of Coahuila in Saltillo looks like what Greece was trying to look like.

      The States were, if the Gringo Viejo remembers correctly, Sonora, Coahuila, Nuevo Leon, Tamaulpas, Jalisco, Guanajuato, San Luis Potosi', Yucatan, and perhaps Oaxaca.   There might be others.   The program may still be extant. 

       Of interest, of course, is that various of these public universities had famously fine programs in archeology, anthropology, Spanish language, Indian languages, and other liberal arts themes such as history and geography.    Also of extreme importance, of course, were the medical schools, especially Nuevo Leon (Monterrey) and Jalisco (Guadalajara) and Yucatan (Merida) that were always between triple-A minor league and major league.    With an MD degree from those schools (and some others in Mexico) and budding doctor, surgeon, dentist, or orthodontic surgeon would be ready for his qualifications on the International Doctors' Examination.....especially after one or two years of federal social field service in Mexico....especially in those years.   Texans paid no tuition, just like the Mexicans, but of course they paid the "laboratory fees" and "building use fees" etc. like the Mexicans.   It was very inexpensive, in relative terms....and one normally stayed with a family or a "respectable private rooming arrangement"  (usually two or three rooms w/ bath in some old mansion with a couple of ancient servants and a widow trying to preside over what had gone with the wind).

        El Gringo Viejo's wife worked for one of those doctors here in Texas....he graduated from the Universidad Autonoma de Nuevo Leon.    He would recount how "...the Mexicans were dumb enough to let me into medical school with my BA grades, and they were smart enough to make me the best doctor I could be.   I can't let them down by doing a crummy job, ever".  Then he would trundle off down the corridor to the next patient.   He would laugh in his famously inimitable way after telling details of his adventures in Mexico in the early 1950s.   He was a highly recognized and esteemed surgeon in matters of the throat and larynx.   He also did other general surgeries and caught babies.     He would always say that the time he spent in Mexico made him a much better person and the two years (he volunteered for one extra year) he spent in federal field service were the most rewarding time he had spent in his life to that point.    He worked in some small towns around Monterrey and in some really outback places.   His Spanish was excellent.

       El Gringo Viejo also remembers Perla, the girl from Reynosa across from McAllen, who would arrive at Mirabeau Bonapart Lamar Junior High School in near-north central McAllen every morning.   She had a big black auto, and a chauffeur who would get down and go around to open the door for her.....At the end of the day, he would return and pick her up.   She paid the same out-of-district tuition as if she was from a neighbouring town in Texas.....around 42 dollars per semester.    She caused quite a stir because she dressed in near semi-formal...wore a hat and gloves normally....had "real lady's make-up"....and usually wore heels.     At first she was something of an oddity...like a movie star or something...but gradually she was taken in by a cliq of girls and joined a couple of clubs and even served on the Student Council in the 9th grade.    She came to study and to learn a good variety of common American English spoken by people of her own class, according to her father.    Most of the guys remember her just as a knock-out with black eyes,  milk coloured skin, a Jackie bouffant, and a wardrobe like Audrey Hepburn's.    She was very down to earth, civilised, attractive, and...in a way...friendly.

So, yes that's the way it was.   Rick Perry could have mentioned that, but he is probably unaware of it.   He could have won the Republican nomination if he had only explained how cumbersome Texas government is....how little power the Governor has....how constrained the Congress of the Republic of Texas is due to our experiences with the Reconstruction and the unbridled tyranny that was brought by the Union Occupation.

So....now people might understand how and why Texans are a little conflicted in all directions about some of the looser ends of the immigration issue.    The Old Gringo is adamant, however about sealing the border, first and foremost.  It is one of the few areas where the central government should not just do something...it should do an Israeli quest for perfect, hermitic penetration by unauthourized visitors.   Liberal for those who comply with the rules..hard on those who do not.

Feeling a bit restored, and grateful for your time and attention.

El Gringo Viejo