General Report

    Matters ranged from dull and boring to somewhat interesting during the most recent visit to our little mud hut and property on the Corona River.   We have had some relatively heavy, slightly out of season rains.    Amounts in and around our area ranged from 4 to 8 inches during a period from the last week in January through the second week of February.   Temperatures set no records, but very chilly overnights and warm afternoons provoked the expected "welcome to Spring" flowering of the Yucca, along with the flowering of the elegant, ochre-coloured blossoms of the Huizache trees.   The citrus also was provoked into bloom, especially due to the out-of-season rains.

    The fragrance of several thousand acres of Valencia oranges, along with Persian limes, and various types of red grapefruit can be a bit much....a little too sweet....something like Aunt Beatrice's Nuclear Gardenia Perfume.   But, it is generally a positive thing.   A bit of wind helps, and at least the dogs all stink, and that balances things out a bit.

     The rains have been generally and liberally delivered upon the southernmost part of Texas and throughout Mexico, with a very few exceptions.   The "long-range forecast"  for all such areas was for continued drought and abnormally hot.   Didn't happen.

     We had another "visit in force" from the Mexican Army, with essentially an entire battalion of infantry and their helicopters and their armoured fire-power machines and heavily armed soldiers pretty much  walking every street, trail, and path of our ejido and every ejido adjacent or near ours.    We were honoured by a visit from a company commander and his xo and another junior officer,  shortly after a platoon had come through and checked our area.    The three officers spent a bit of time in and on the Quinta, even sharing a bit of a meal.   It is difficult for a normal person with normal world view and life experience to appreciate the positive response the folks in the ejido (and elsewhere) have when these powerful, battle-tested units make their "visits in force".   The locals come out in droves, and sometimes a person can be seen passing a written note to a sergeant.....perhaps with a license plate number, an address of a suspicious house or person's location, or some other nugget of reconnaissance.   The biggest complaint is that the troops do not stay.

This is a Pencil Cactus that we planted a little
less than a year ago.   We took a foot-long stem
from the Gringo Viejo's Godmother's home,
shortly after her passing

     We have reminded the Mexican folks who makes such comments, that "....company and fish begin to stink after three days....".    It is also is pointed out that there are many square kilometres, many cockroaches, and very few soldiers and marines.    These things don't need to be said, but....they need to be said.    This time the troops stayed a couple of nights camped in open areas here and there in the line of Ejidos that form our extended rural community.

     Something of note is that El Gringo Viejo left Texas a couple of days after the urgent travel warning was re-issued by the American State Department, saying that all travel must be avoided throughout Mexico, especially the fourteen States of concern.....That advisory was modified with a kind of a map later which had the States coloured in a pukey green.    That advisory was modified later with the coloured area changed to colour the States that had been left white, and the remainder turned to green.   Then, finally the American Department of State said that the travel warning had not been necessary and that it had been released mistakenly by three former Mexican State governors.

The dog Bebe, now about three-fourths grown

     The above paragraph seems silly.   It would be, perhaps.   The problem is, it is true.   Your tax dollars at work.   Stick with the Gringo Viejo.   He will tell you for instance, that if you would like to go to the normally....almost always...enjoyable destination of Oaxaca, Oaxaca, you should save your time and money for at least the next several weeks.    Communist-led, "student" uprisings, fueled by union thugs demonstrating over some apparently major points of oppression by the 1% against the 99%.    Chilpancingo, Guerrero has quieted some, but can become interesting fairly quickly.    The area between Acapulco and Zihuatenejo seems to have attracted an infestation of people of low degree from various countries in Central America as well as certain criminal elements of local origin. 

Comments coming up about oil, gasoline, and money.
El Gringo Viejo 

Back in Texas

We returned around mid-day to-day.   Bushed, creaky, and cranky.   But no bridge lines.   Will write some observations about the stay down at the Quinta.   Tonight or tomorrow.

El Gringo Viejo   

So That You All Will Know....This Is Serious

As most of the OROGs know,

     The Gringo Viejo said that Josephina Vazquez Mota would win the PAN primary.  She did.  Now she goes up against a formidable opponent who is an intellectual lightweight, but backed by the old mossbacks of the old Official Government Party, the PRI.   She will also face the lunatic  AMLO (Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador) who will give us everything for free and punish the people who have too much.     The Old Government Party candidate is all but a dumboe, but he is a pretty boy who has married a soap opera, telenovela queen, and has sufficient private resources to support seven illegitimate children. He also has three mansions, in different places, and has spent most of his time in the United States in spite of having had to be bothered with the duties of being Governor of the State of Mexico, which lies adjacent to and to the west and north of the Federal District.    This time it is Pena Nieto/PRI with a significant lead, and Vazquez Mota of the PAN in the middle again, but with poor AMLO/PRD way behind and fading.   El Gringo Viejo has conjectured that the party faithful are going to vote the way the party faithful vote.   The wild card is the female vote among the lower-middle class.   My bet is that they will gradually move towards the conservative party standard bearer, because she is what that large body of industrious, busy-body type, educated and usually competent in two or three skills...look to for an example for their children.  Vazquez Mota is what they would like Mexico to look like...not Cuba or Venezuela (AMLO) or like a soap opera full of bored, indolent, rich people who are famous for being famous....who play the roles of people who play roles in telenovelas.   The women are famous also for being waited on hand and foot, shopping, and make-up, and of course, shopping.   Some are also famous for wearing out mirrors and cellular telephones....and for being waited on hand and foot  (Pena Nieto).

    It is happily reported that the predicted falling of Pena Nieto and the predicted steady rise by Vazquez Mota, has begun.

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FXWire Pro Headline | February 9 2012 3:58 EST

Gap between Mexican presidency rivals narrows slightly - opinion poll by Consulta Mitofsky

News

• Mexico's ruling National Action Party's Josefina Vazquez Mota narrows gap with his rival Enrique Pena Nieto from opposition Institutional Revolutionary Party - Opinion poll by Consulta Mitofsky
• But still opposition's Nieto holds a commanding lead with support of 40.4 pct
• However, the gap has narrowed to 16.4 percentage points, with backing for Vazquez Mota now standing at 24 percent, up 1.5 percentage points from a Jan. 24 poll
• AMLopez Obrador, of the Partido Revolucionario Democratico, has 17.2 pct, far different from his slightly more than 50 pct at this time during his last run for the presidency six years ago.   His percentage, like Pena Nieto's, shrank fractionally after the completion of the nomination of Vazquez Mota for her to lead the conservative National Action Party.

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More later.   Thanks for your time and patience.

El Gringo Viejo

Private Message to Santorum

As a favour to your campaign, El Gringo Viejo is going to tell you how to win nomination  as the Republican Party's postulant for the Presidency of the United States.

     (1)       Do not say anything ill of the other candidates.   When attacked only say, I have the greatest respect for my fellow candidates for the nomination.  When pressed, only say something about how you admire each of your opponents.   Point out one of their strong points.

     (2)     Attack Barak Hussein Obama's tragic, hypocritical, marxist record.   Point out that he had two years as a State Senator, two years as a United States Senator, nearly four years as a president, and he accomplished nothing short of the collapse of the currency, the collapse of the notion of self-sufficiency, and perhaps the collapse of the economy.    All community organisers are failed, hateful personalities who wish to destroy and not build. Their mission is to create dependency and not self-sufficiency.

     (3)    Please point out that he told Gov. Jindhl that the oil-workers and others displaced in the Gulf blowout could get by on food-stamps, and how he crippled the deep water operations in the Gulf of Mexico.   Point out how he insulted the Canadians by renigging on a done-deal to transport Canadian oil into the United States.    Point out how, by moving to remedy these two insane actions of self-injurious measures,  the United States could produce 50,000 excellent, full time positions, directly and indirectly, for small contractors, diners, air-freight, motor-freight, saloons, medium and high skilled blue collar people, and cadres of bookkeepers, accountants, supervisors and other white-collar positions.

      Point out that you will, without fail, have on your desk and signed the repeal of the O'bamaham Socialised Medicine Initiative....(do not call it 'Health Care'), Dodd-Frank, all czars, All Fast and Furious type actions,  and ...

     (4)     .....that you will submit a budget for consideration by the House of Representatives calling for a 25% cutback in every budget of the following departments of the central government:   Agriculture, Health and Human Debris Services, Energy, Education, Labour, Commerce, Education, Homeland Security, State, and numerous independent agencies.   These budget "adjustments" will be a prelude to the ultimate closing down of some or all the above entities.

    (5)    Request the passage of legislation reforming the Social Security System into a numbered, private account for all persons under the age of 45.    The contributions made will be 4%  of the employee's wage, taken from his established wage/salary and creditted to his personal account, to be administered by the Texas Teachers' Retirement System or the Texas State Workers Retirement System, since they know how to husband other peoples' retirement funds, and the United States Central Government has demonstrated profoundly that it has nary the least notion.     People 45 through 60 could choose to opt in or stay with the old system.   All Geezers presently receive pensions under the old rules would be stuck in the Ponzi Relief Act of 1933 program.

 Hope (l) and Change (r) with some
friends in the background

      Say these things.   Say them vigorously, and you will win the nomination and the election in November.    If you don't you will be known as "What's his name", the one that ran against Obama like the other what's his name in 2008. 

       If O'bamaham wins, this Shining City on the Mountainside, will become just another favela on some Brazilian hillside, sliding into the muck after a brief rain storm, with thousands of 666 zombie food stamp AFDC entitled people walking around trying to find a piece of food with not-to-much filth or fungus on it.   All the rich people will have been eaten.
     Rich?   Rich was anyone who provided for himself and/or his family.   They are almost all gone now.   Some lucky ones made it to Costa Rica.  There are a few in some small pockets in Mexico and Canada.   In Taiwan and Japan there are radio signals still, likewise in some parts of the British Isles and parts of the Old Commonwealth......not many...but a few, at least.

We are rapidly arriving at the point where the producers will not be able to satisfy the demands of the consumers.  Pray for America.

El Gringo Viejo   

Let Me Get This Straight

Father O'bamaham comes out and says..."We are going to compromise.   Instead of us violating the 1st Amendment in such a blatant manner, I am going to order the insurance companies and not the church denominations to provide contraception for free.   That's what I call a real compromise".

HRH Emperor Barak I

The hope is that there are still enough voting Americans to understand that the President of the United States does not have the authority to order insurance companies to provide anything for free.   Lamentably, we have arrived at a point there it may be possible that enough people actually think things can be ordered by an all-powerful provider to be provided for free.   The hour draweth nigh that we learn whether this is the Shining City on the Mountainside or if it is the sludge-filled hovel of Grovellania, full of victims, beggars, and slothful scum who see themselves as entitled to something.

To-day was the first time in the last 15 that my wife and I paid out at the HEB grocery store that we did not have to wait behind one, two, or three mondo-blobbos Lone Star Cards and gaggles of children and two carts full of every imaginable junk food, soda pop, and actual delicacies that "the upper-income" people can only afford to buy once or twice in a blue moon.    The reason we did not have to wait is because the girl opened up her lane just as we were coming up to pay.   Pure Co-incidence.

Thank you, as always, for your kind attention.
El Gringo Viejo

Can the Cosmos Give Me a Break?

So, let me get this straight.   Can we still use the word "straight'' any longer?

     O'bamaham tells the Roman Catholic Church, "You must provide abortion and contraception services through any employment by your church of employees of your church staff, hospitals and clinics under your control, and other employees directly employed by official Roman Catholic entities.

      There is an outcry.   The stupid and ignorant immediately counterattack declaring that women need, have a right to, and must have these services that are being denied.   The pro-abortion group takes a victory lap and high-fives each other.

      Those who have the remotest sense of critical thinking know that the issue is the interjection of government authority into the internal affairs of a religious entity.   The unclear thinkers love to drone through their drool expressions such as "....separation of church and state...".  Perhaps those of us who think clearly and critically could say, ".....separation of state and church....".   It is a much larger issue than any of that.   It involves certainly the fact that the central government can order a religious group how to administer is daily business operations.

It also, if permitted, establishes that a President, even a horrid communist President who wants to rule by "stroke of a pen, law of the land" can so do.

     It was predictable that the press and others would zero in on Roman Catholic reaction.   The fact is that the government must not be allowed to direct private businesses, public businesses, the Maranatha Alleluia Baptist Tabernacle, Jimmy"s Roller-Skates and Hamburgers-the best in Texas,  the Latter Day Saints, any religious or non-religious group, an auto dealership...or anybody about these matters.

      Now, O'bamaham comes forward to say...."Okay, okay I get it.   The Church is safe, we're see your point.  You're right.   So the Church is off the hook.   Now, instead I'm going to order that the insurance companies provide free contraception and abortion services to women.   I know how to compromise, and now we'll see if the dirty, stinking, tea-bagger, millionaires and billionaires will let all  you little people have your little piece of America...as least have a few tiny crumbs."

 It is hoped that everyone sees through this classic, predictable cynical standard communist method of addressing a dispute.  

      (1)     First find the target.   Label the target  "Thesis"

     (2)    Determine the objective and then announce the objective.   The objective should be

                something far beyond what is actually wanted or obtainable.  Call this"Antithesis"'.

     (3)    After much "soul searching and negotiation" come to a "reasonable' alternative. 

               Call this "compromise" .   But the good communist knows it as "synthesis" or               "victory". 

     The dumboes go off saying, "We were very reasonable.   We gave a little, they gave a little, isn't it wonderful to be a moderate, to be reasonable?   We are so good.  We are better than those unreasonable ideologues who worry about things like "principle".   And it really doesn't matter whether it's right or wrong or that it really can't work.   All that matters is that WE WORKED TOGETHER TO GET SOMETHING DONE."

     How in the name of Jumping Jehoshaphat can it be somehow better that Herod slaughter this baby and not the other one?   What he cannot do to the Church he should also be stopped from doing to anyone especially to a private business.   It's Rosemary's baby....from the rape of the auto companies.   O'bamaham can say, "I cancelled the stupid crackers' preferred stock and gave the company to the union thugs who give me campaign contributions.   Now, I'll tell the insurance companies that they have to pay for FREE ABORTIONS, FREE THIS, AND FREE THAT.   Take that you miserable cracker tea-baggers.   Where's my Che shirt, Michelle?" 

Aaaarrrhhhgggg!

El Gringo Viejo