Texans...a peculiar breed, type, kind, and sub-species

    El Zorro sent some information to El Gringo Viejo a few hours ago.   Most of the matter referenced an ancient set of events wholly pertinent only to our own personal orbit.  But then, he included a couple of observations that tugged at, if not the heart-strings, at least at the gall-bladder-strings.   They are gut-feelings that a lot of Texans have.   A dumbo like Governor Perry has them, but he hath not the grey-matter to explain his gut-feelings, and gut-instincts.

     Perry's notion that folks should  feel something for a person who was brought to Texas as a child being treated as an "illegal alien" was badly explained.   It killed him in the Republican Presidential Primaries.    It was badly explained because he had failed to formulate a reasonable answer, a reasonable position, and a reasonable defense of his position.   He needed to put into  thirty-second sets of phrases something about the thousands of Texas high schoolers and collegiates, back in the 1930s through the 1960s,  who would trundle down to Saltillo and San Miguel de Allende/Guanajuato,  and Oaxaca and Puebla/Cholula and Guadalajara/Chapala/Zapopan/Tequila during the summer and pick up transferable credits, room and board with a Mexican family, and 9 to 12 hours of foreign language, history, and/or anthropology and archaeology.    These Texas students paid regular tuition, and several Mexican State University systems had reciprocal agreements with the Republic of Texas that permitted their residents to matriculate in Texas public colleges and universities if the Mexican student had the grades and standard pre-requisite studies.

     The Governor could have turned the entire illegal immigration issue into a strong suit simply by saying that Texans have a much deeper understanding of who is coming in to contribute and who is coming in to be a parasite and who is coming in to forward criminal intents.   He could have pointed out that when we really had border problems, especially during and shortly after the worst parts of the Mexican Revolution of 1910 - 1917, we really did have significant to huge deployments of National Guard and Regular Army mounted cavalry and mounted infantry along the Texas frontier with Mexico.    There were times that there were as many as 150,000 effectives serving in those counties adjacent to the Rio Grande.   These deployments stretched between Fort Leaton and Fort Hancock in the Texas Big Bend country, down through Del Rio, Eagle Pass, Brackettville, Laredo, Zapata, Rio Grande City, McAllen/Mission/Hidalgo, Relampago, Blue Town, Santa Maria, El Olmo, and Brownsville.

      These places were connected by telephone, telegraph, heliograph, Iron Horse, and another odd invention called an aero plane.    From a period right around the war with Spain through and including World War II, this part of the American Republic was defended by heavy, dusty, jingly-jangly patrols of cavalry, 50 cal. water cooled machine guns drawn, along with their ammunition by well-matched teams of mules.   The rifle of issue and of respect by line soldier and officer alike was the Craig and Jorgenson 30 -40, and the soldiers patrolled with their issue .45 Army Colt semi-automatic, of Philippine Huk War fame.

Craig (Krag) and Jorganson 30 - 40 carbine, made in Springfield, Massachussets during the 1890s

      As has been stated before, El Gringo Viejo's father served in this operation and was in the United States Army 1st Cavalry, 12th Regiment Headquarters Squadron, based in Fort Brown, Texas and in service throughout that above-described part of Texas.

     Then, as now, most of the populace...what little there was by to-day's measure....almost always wanted the Cavalry around.    In the areas described, the period from 1890 through about 1935 ranged from wild and wooly to "you need to keep your eyes peeled".   The danger was not always  disorganised units of "revolucionarios" that degenerated into bandits, because during the 1920s, for instance, and into the early part of the Great Depression there were plenty of bootleggers and other vermin.   Al Capone even came to the Lower Rio Grande Valley to arrange for deliveries from bootleggers of various types of liquors.    Anarchists from Italy and Spain and places in South America filtered through the border in significant numbers, along with Fifth Column communist moles, and later German NAZI infiltrators, spies, and saboteurs.   Counterfeiters of both coin and bank and bond notes passed false money of poor to excellent quality, especially through South Texas .

     But....Governor Good Hair did not "come through".   He mumbled because he had Yankee-fied, moderate mumble-coaches who speak straight from the focus groups whose combined IQs sometimes approach double digits.   "Duh, you know it's a thing about, you know,all that stuff and everything, you know.   And besides, you know, the rich just keep on gettin' richer and the poor just keep on gettin' poorer and everything, you know.  You know?"

     A politician formats his own speech and speaking to match the dribble of inarticulate people who actually believe what is coming at them from the television and newspaper Old Media.    A true Conservative statesman tells folks the truth, gives them a vision, and sets them free to set up the Magic Taco Stand that glows in the dark and generates 50,000 dollars a week in sales within the first year of operation.   Heck, it only took 5 people in the family working 80 hours/week each, while going to school full time.  (That, by the way, was the typical Mexican immigrant type during the 1930s through the 1960s.   And then the Vietnamese, Korean, Indian and such since that time.   Little wonder we are sliding backwards while waiting for Obama to "give" us "healthcare" and "security".)

     We, the supposedly hard-nosed, rightwing, bigoted fag-bashing, hate-filled Klanners, are much more complicated than the leftwingers hope we are.    We think in concepts, while they think in tactics.  We point up to the good, into the land of hope, improvement, and fulfillment, and they point down into the grit and dispair of the inner city that they have produced and for which they blame, somehow, us.


BUT NOW IS THE TIME FOR THE POINT TO BE MADE:

     El Zorro contemplated on the article about "Instant Buyer's Remorse, Anyone?".

Remember, he is a grizzled old Veteran, an arch-conservative, arch-constitutionalist, totally skilled blue collar type who can change in less than a second into a buttoned down white-collar executive type without taking an extra breath and with a perfect Windsor knot, to boot. And what he sends us are these....contemplations....a piece of prosaic poetry... that puts the reader behind his eyes....and the eyes of many, many rightwing Texans.   We are much more complicated than the Hollywood people will ever understand.  And the mainstream media people will never understand.....ghastly "Willie Nelsonisms" that Dan Rather tried to employ so as to sound like a real live "native Texan"...gag

    .....Your insight to the “Hispanic race" is very accurate.

  When I happen to run into a Spanish speaking individual,

 “…little dark people with brown eyes and black hair”,

 and respond to a greeting in Spanish

 it changes a frown to a smile.

.....I think people of those origins, legal or not,

 appreciate it when an obvious “gringo” does not talk loudly in English

 to communicate and has taken the time to learn their language

.....especially in North Texas where they are, at times,

seen as no more than stoop labor.

.....GW did at least attempt to speak the language,

never mind he slaughtered it,

but then he slaughtered English as well.

.....It would seem that pandering to any distinctive group,

..... ethnic, religious, sex, etc. specifically is a losing strategy.

.....after all,  “We are everybody”.

.....Again, I dream of secession by Texas from this Union of states and the merger of some sort between Texas and Mexico.  Can you imagine the resources brought together?  We could be the most powerful, productive, and civil country in the world living under a constitution similar to the one of the Framers sans the degradation that has been perpetrated by the Supreme Court (Congress and Presidents not withstanding).

Z

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

     El Zorro's last paragraph has been left in its original format.   This is the stuff high-school seniors mull over during early morning stay-over conversations....and then later have in college, in the student union cafeteria, talking to buddies.   And then again during conventions of various Colleges within various Universities, while the professors are busy trying to impress each other with the numbers of published articles, and then in the bars and restaurants, in the barbecues with friends during those special summer afternoons and evenings....and while night fishing in the Laguna Madre.

     Terms such as "merger", in this writer's opinion, would raise howls of protests among some Texans, while others would be intrigued by the thought, at least on an academic level.     Texas could be free-standing as a Republic, and we would be better off for it.  We could commit to something like a Special Relation with Mexico, and an assembly of commonwealth inter-relationships with other States of the United States it would be a formidable arrangement.   Texas and Mexico as an alliance would equal Germany, in terms of economic production.   That would be 4th in the world.

      Consider that Mexico has the world's 10th or 11th largest economy at this writing, and then consider that Texas, alone, has an economy that is the equivalent of Mexico's.   Consider that New York and California are essentially in free-fall,  and all the economic road signs for them point to Greece,  and their populations are degenerating into parasitic societies.

     Negatives are obvious.   Mexico has a long haul, still, to parity with Texas.   Mexico does dumboe things like the United States in electing a dumboe for President.   But the good part of the nation is resolved to fight against their own decay, as we do in Texas.    As the United States moves towards organic law and Balkanization, Mexico stumbles towards common and natural law, and...perish the thought....old-style Americanization.   Most Americans, even the ones who go to Cancun and Playa del Carmen, etc. for vacations...cannot comprehend the progress Mexico has made in the last 10 years especially, and what a hub of commercial, industrial, and agricultural activity it has suddenly developed into.  

     At the HEBs in Mexico...in my little city of Cd. Victoria, when I go to pay out at my grocery store, I do not have to wait in line behind some slob buying things with food stamps or a Lone Star Card, things that I could never hope to afford since I am part of the "1%".

    So, yes...we think ...what if.   Texans do think like that.   And even when we say, ''...Aw..we're just a'joshin' you all a bit...." , we really are being serious.   It's better to go our own way, and  deepen our friendships with people whom we have fought, with whom we have been friends, done business, and generally developed a deep and wide relationship, than to cast ourselves further into the breach of collapse of a country whose Supreme Court cannot even determine the obvious un-constitutionality of a law so flawed, that we had to vote for it before we could read it. 

Thank you all for your kind attention and time.
El Gringo Viejo

     

Instant Buyer's Remorse, Anyone?

Exerpted from

6 July 2012

    "..... Some political opponents of Pena Nieto, whose party governed Mexico for more than 70 years until 2000, have warned that negotiating with drug cartels and gangs could be on his agenda -- an accusation that Peña Nieto has repeatedly denied.   But his denials haven't squelched speculation on both sides of the border that negotiating with cartels -- or at least easing the pressure on them -- could be on the table.

     In a congressional hearing last month, U.S. Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner said the war on drugs was nearing a "potential crossroad," referring to Peña Nieto's plan and his party's political history.   "While in power, the PRI minimized violence by turning a blind eye to the cartels," the Wisconsin Republican said, noting that Peña Nieto "does not emphasize stopping drug shipments or capturing kingpins."

     In a statement the next day, Peña Nieto's campaign said he was committed to combating organized crime.   "The law is applied; it is never negotiated," the statement said.    US Congressman Henry Cuellar - (D-Texas), said this week that such concerns from Sensenbrenner and other lawmakers were unfounded. Changing strategies in dealing with drug violence, Cuellar said, doesn't mean stopping the battle.     "I asked him about it. ... He told me, 'I'm gonna fight it. I want to use a different strategy,' " Cuellar said, noting that relations between the United States and Mexico would likely strengthen under Peña Nieto's leadership.

      Pledges to change tack in the drug war were common across party lines on the presidential campaign trail this year, Chabat said, "In the end, I don't think he will do many things differently than Calderon, because there isn't much that can be done differently," Chabat said. "There's not a lot of room to work. In speeches, it sounds really great to say that you're going to do things differently, but there won't be many changes."  (comment by El Gringo Viejo -  Chabat is the surname of a respected political analyst.)

What this actually means:

      For one, Henry Cuellar (D-Texas) did serve as Secretary of State appointed by George Bush during his first term as Governor of the Republic.   For two, Henry is a Democrat, and all Democrat office holders must practice mendacity, or they lose their birthright and legitimacy.    Henry always talks a good "conservative" game, and yet he is the first one to fight like a hungry dog to defend the Obama Socialised Medicine Initiative.   He is the first one to campaign on ethnicity, reminding the potential voters in his district that his opponent is not really one of "us".    He also follows the cardinal rule for Democrat National Socialists by employing the required, ".....and they are going to take away your Medicaid, Medicare, SSI, and Social Security!   It is the permanent aim of the Republicans to abandon our seniors and those most in need!!!".

     In other words he lies through his teeth.   He does not tell "us" that Social Security Disability, SSI, Head Start, Food Stamps (Lone Star Card in Texas) is actually the ruin of "us", and he struts around after the election to say, "I'll be there fighting for your benefits."  Henry is good at talking out of 52 sides of his mouth at the same time.   Most of the time it is simply Democrat-Socialist bilge.

     Henry is the kind of Democrat politician who understands the Partido Revolucionario Institucional instinctively.  People like Henry, Obama, the Clintons, etc. understand what the term "Institutional Revolutionary Party" really means.   It is summed up by the campaign speech of a PRI candidate in a rural area of Durango some years back, when the candidate had worked the crowd into a frenzy, aided by several thousand gallons of brandy and beer, ".....And, furthermore, I will put a University Preparatory School here in this area!"   Hurrah, Viva!!  ".....and furthermore I will build a dam here to avoid the time of dryness when water is needed for the crops!!!"    But the people did not cheer.    After a long silence, the candidate was fearing that his demagogery-momentum-factor was fading, so he asked," Boys!  My Children!!  Why do you fall silent?   Is the beer gone?   Is not the brandy flowing?"

    A braver ejido peasant stepped forward, respectfully, and with hat in hand, and addressed  the candidate," Only one thing, sen~or candidato."

     "What is it, my child?  Please tell me!" the candidate, suffering from a rapidly deflating ego, begged, the anxiety piercing from his dark eyes.

     "The problem, sen~or, is that we cannot have a dam, because we do not have a river," the peasant responded painfully.

      After another silence, this time briefer, the candidate tightened his grip on the microphone, grinned broadly and announced to the large crowd, "Pepe brings to my attention that we cannot have a dam here because there is no river.   But, remember, my children, that the Institutional Revolution thinks of these things way ahead of time for you.   The problem is already being addressed.   This year we are going to build the dam, and then next year, we are going to build you a river!!!!"

     Roars of approval begin again and the campaign workers resume passing out the beer and brandy to the "electors".

     Of course, by this time in the life of the Institutional Revolution, everyone knew....speaker, listener, people passing around the beer and brandy....that there was going to be no Prepartory, no dam, and no rio.   Some of the money would be allocated, a few survey teams would come out, and then gradually....sun up....sun down....sun up....sun down....the projects would be forgotten.  In a fancy saloon at one of the best hotels on the Paseo de la Reforma in Mexico City, the Federal Congressman was talking with his buddies in the regular afternoon clatch of buddies.   One of them asks, "Did you ever manage to get a little bit of those projects for those people in the Ejido El Muerto?   What was it?  A Preparatory, a dam, and a Rio, right?"

     "No, the party gave me 60,000 gringo dollars to forget about it, and some of the Quesos Grandes took the rest of the appropriation so their daughters would have money for the month of July in McAllen shopping at La Plaza Mall, and the stay at the condominium on South Padre Island (Texas).   You know.   And they told me that they needed to keep those things in reserve to promise in the upcoming elections anyway." the candidate of yore said wistfully.   Then he added, "You know how it is when you're limited by a bunch of corrupt politicans.   Don't say anything about it, but I needed an extra 40,000 gringo dollars to take my daughters to La Plaza Mall in McAllen and to rent a little apartment on South Padre Island (Texas),  and they just laughed at me.   And after all I did for them."

     Everyone at the table nodded, with serious expressions.

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

TO THE POINT:

     The point is that Henry says that Pen~a Nieto told him that the War in Mexico would continue.  So there.  That's it.

     The problem is that the PRI and its candidates are molecularly composed of mendacity, theft, and even murder.   They are identical to the Clintons.   One must be able to lie convincingly in order to gain respect among his peerage.  And one must be able to react with deep anger and resentment to the merest suggestion of impropriety concerning ones word, or handling of the fiduciary or fiscal public trust.   They are like Democrats in the United States.

    Imagine the damage done to the nation's economy by Dodd, Rangel, Frank, and the pantheon of parasitic slugs that the Democrats are...tax, tax....spend, spend...elect, elect.   And may the Saints intervene on behalf of the eunuchs that the Republicans have become.." "We have to go along just this one more time.....just raise the debt limit one more time...just raise the taxes on the wealthy one more time....if we don't the press will kill us....if we don't the Democrats will crucify us....if we don't there will be demonstrations....."
     Actually, Mr. Reasonable Elephantperson, one cannot be reasonable with a very young child, nor with people who are deranged to the point that they actually believe that they can spend two dollars and take in only one, without significant difficulties developing fairly quickly.   There is no reasonable position to take which includes the wishes, will, and/or intent of the deranged Democrat Socialist politician.

     If Pen~a Nieto does not continue the War, it will deflate the will of the majority.   The war is being won....please reference the worst of the worst place in Mexico....that being the State of Tamaulipas....and see that the people backed the PAN girl overwhelmingly....their Congressional delegation changed astoundingly to the Right in spite of the State being a bastion of the PRI for almost 90 years now.   They backed her because they saw first-hand how well the military has confronted and degraded the cartel element.    The people throughout Mexico are resigned, in the majority, to the idea of taking this fight to the end.   Continual degradation has worked in Tamaulipas to about a 90% level.   In other areas similar results have been obtained.   We are hoping that we will not have an Obama solution to the issue, whereby a date certain for cessation of hostilities is established.
     The military has a bit more sway and discretion inside the offices of Los Pinos.   Los Pinos is in fact set within a large military compound.   With the 3o% that is obviously for staying the course, along with a majority of the PRI - type voter who has somewhat reasonable powers of critical thinking....coupled with the new strength of the PAN in the Congress....perhaps we shall we a steady continuance of the inform-search-destroy-extradite-degrade process that has produced really significant results to this point.

SUSPENDED ANIMATION:
     We are going to defer further comment on this topic due to developing news concerning the elections results in Mexico.   The issue of the charge-cards distributed to the electorate has taken on a life of its own.   It will probably amount to naught, but it might sell some advertising for the television networks and newspapers.

El Gringo Viejo

Sick of Hearing About "Hispanic Vote"

El Gringo Viejo will pay anyone fifty six yankee dollars and 21 cents if somebody would tell the Republican poobahs that there is nothing that can be done about the Hispanic Vote.  There is no such Elephant, so to speak, as an Hispanic Vote.

     "Hispanic Vote" assumes that every funny looking little dark person with brown eyes and black hair is an "Hispanic Vote".    It also presumes that every little dark person with brown eyes and black hair is consumed with the issue of legalizing hundreds of millions....nay! billions..... of little dark people with brown eyes and black hair pouring over the border to receive amnesty.

     TO BEGIN, as we have stated several million times on these pages, the moment a person says, "All Mexicans are.....", all around should and must stop listening and run for a bomb bunker.    Also, believe it or not, all the little lines and national boundaries that a person sees separating the countries of Central and South America also actually separate people with different racial complexions, with different accents, with different languages, with different aboriginal populations.   The Latin Islands....the Lesser and Greater Antilles....are mingled with the African Islands, and even sometimes shared....as in the Isla de Hispaniola, to-day the home of a mainly African and Mulatto, French-speaking population on the west side (Haiti), shared with a Spanish-speaking,  Mulatto and Spanish jumble on the east side (Republica Dominicana).

      The huge bulk of "Hispanics" in the United States are of Spanish/Mexican origin.   Next come the Cubans who are of Spanish, African, some Indian, Filipino, and other European extraction.  Then come the large groups of people from the American Commonwealth known as Puerto Rico, which has a similar but not identical genealogy to Cuba.   Then there are the many 'others', from Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela, Bolivia, Peru, Chile, Ecuador, and the various countries of Central America.

     Oddly, the overwhelming majority of these folks from "south of the border" have arrived into the United States and Texas since the year 1900.    But, there are numerous descendants, particularly of the Spanish/ Mexican group who were intergenerational in North America before the landing of the Mayflower.   Cubans, to a lesser extent, and of the same extraction, fall into this category as well.

     Then, to further confound the issue, the ethnic lines are blurred in places like Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and other States by the process of intermarriage....especially between predominately Anglo whites and predominantly Spanish / Mexican whites  whose numbers in Texas certainly extend beyond 2,000,000 people living at this time in the Republic of Texas.

While the term "Anglo" is overused, in this case we mean people of English and/or British extraction, which in and of itself is a terribly irregular and extensive blanket to throw over those peoples.   Spanish is also a clumsy identifier for perhaps as many as 17 different ethnicities that compose the historical face of Spain.    Intermarriage between Texans with predominately German, Polish, Czech, Bohemian, Scandinavian, French, and other White racial backgrounds is not as common, but is still not something that draws much, if any, attention in the Republic of Texas. 

      Then we must include at least passing reference to something else, oft stated here, that many of the "Anglos", especially if their family's progress came through The South, have more than a few drops of Indian blood, as do many of the Spanish / Mexican whites.   So as to understand....one of my daughter's biggest number 1 chums from first grade to the present is a Spanish-surnamed girl, whose mother is a Iowa-type, Anglo person, who holds a doctorate, and whose father is a Spanish - Mexican colonial type....lower level aristocrat, a very intelligent fellow.   This chum of my daughter's is a doctor of medicine....specialising in premature baby issues....and her husband is a doctor....he is also a Jew.   Interestingly, part of the my daughter's chum's ancestry includes those Sephardics who had converted and accompanied Jose Luis Carvajal y de la Cueva in the settlements of what was then the moonscape of what is now northcentral and northeasternmost Mexico and Southern Texas, in the 1560s.   My daughter's mother is also descended from those Semetic ''Hispanics" from Spain as well  (mayhaps the daughter and her chum are 15th cousins of some sort).

     This is not put here to make the noble OROG believe that El Gringo Viejo is somehow more noble because he has this greater tolerance of this ethnic this or that racial that...such is not the case.    IT IS TO DIRECTLY AND POINTEDLY DEMONSTRATE THAT, as Republicans or Conservatives or Constitutionalists, we immediately fail when we try to design an appeal that will speak to all "Hispanics".   It is not possible.    It is not possible because there is no such thing as "all Hispanics".   "All Hispanics" are not even "all Hispanic".

     The press, the Democrats, even the Republican campaign advisors to Romney, et.al. do not understand any of this.   To them, all "Hispanics" are extras in a Cecil B. DeMille epic film about how Pharoah gave "Health Care" to  all the Egyptrons and other  funny little dark people with black hair and brown eyes.   To the politicians, all "Hispanics'' are a pitiable people who need to be "helped" with welfare and Head Start and provided with free abortions.    This is because they (the politicians) listen to "leaders" who are essentially the same type of charlatans as Sharpton, Jackson, Wright, and O'bama are for the black people.    One should note quickly, however, that while there is a lamentable amount of racism and ethnic hatred driving these charlatans, they have considerably more difficulty in ranting up a crowd than does the team Sharpton, Jackson, and Associates.

      It is certainly more than  a bit odd that Romney himself cannot figure a way through this "Hispanic vote" morass, since Romney himself has numerous 1st and 2nd cousins who are Mexicans, with the surname of Romney in either the maternal or paternal case.   His father was born in Mexico.   The number of Romney-type Mexicans in Chihuahua State is probably near 300 or so, and they are respected and productive citizens of their chosen and native homeland.    That part of the family has over 120 years of involvement as citizens of Mexico.

     El Gringo Viejo's solution is simple.   Campaign to "the Hispanic Vote" in the identical manner and in the same words, as we campaign to the "Vote".    The war records, general work habits and records, and communitarian activity of about 58 per cent of the Latinate population demonstrate that "they" have some understanding of the nature of what a democratic republic is.   They also know that self-sufficiency and generosity is the way of our Republic and our Faith.   That is about the same as for the general non-Latin, White population.    To our potential voters within that Latin group, there is no need to cow-tow or patronise them.   It would even run the risk of offending, which would be disastrous.   It would be something akin to Gerald Ford trying to eat the tamale with the corn-shuck wrapping still on it in San Antonio in his failed campaign of 1976. (it really happened.)
      To the rank and file Republican, Conservative, and Constitutionalist....it is necessary as well to accept the fact that a great mass of people of some form or another of Latin ancestry, are locked into the mainstream, centre-right way of living and thinking.   They is us'ns and we is they'ns.   Let us choose our words carefully, studiously, and clearly, never allowing anyone to drag us into the ethnic tar-pits that the Democrats, National Socialists, Occupiers, marxists,  and progressive elitists prefer to conduct their demagogic fight.

More later.
El Gringo Viejo

Peculiar and more Peculiarer

The final accounting of the just past Mexican elections is taking place at this time.   There will be no nationwide recount of the Presidential vote, as happened last time.   Then the difference, nationwide, between the conservative  PAN nominee Calderon Hinojosa and the leftist Lopez Obrador of the PRD hinged on a vote difference of less than 300,000.   The percentage difference was such that a recount was required by law.

That election, along with the election of the year 2000 went well, with clear processes and much cross-checking and re-validating.    The elections of 1994 and 1988 were both probably won by the PAN candidate, but poobahs and shamans sitting in dark rooms somewhere in Oz, decided that the nation was not "ready" for the election of a president by something like "voters".   The leftwing press and others of the international Mitterandista set howled to high heaven that, in 1988 Cuauhtemoc Cardenas had won the election and that Carlos Salinas de Gortari's PRI party had stolen the election through "faulty tabulating".   The actual fact is that Manuel Clouthier, the governor of Sinaloa had won the election with almost 55% of the vote.  When it became clear that San Luis Potosi, Coahuila, Nuevo Leon, Chihuahua, Sonora, and both States on the Baja Peninsula were voting strongly for Clouthier....the computerised tabulations suddenly went dark and could not be restarted.   Since the press in Mexico and most of the rest of the world is marxist, the howling immediately began that Cardenas had been robbed.

     A reporter for the "international press" was explaining this to me in the bar at the Hotel Majestic....right on the Zocalo (main plaza) across from the Presidential Palace and well placed for a magnificent view of the National Cathdral right next door to the left, looking out.

     "Yeah, the PRI stole the election just like they always do.   You get used to it after you've been here long enough"

      El Gringo Viejo...even then....had pretty much been mired in Mexico for most of his life, and responded,"I thought that Clouthier had been the one that was rumoured to have won."

      The reporter for the "international press" answered,"The names sound really similar if you don't speak Mexican, but it's pronounced 'car - DAY - naz'.    I've been living here for the past four months off and on, and can pick up on it pretty well.   The government party is afraid of Cardenas because his father expropriated the American oil companies and the common people are really with him."

     El Gringo Viejo did not divulge his level of understanding of "Mexican" or how long he and his family had been dealing with Mexico.    It is of interest, however, that the myth about Cardenas having won the 1988 election is now set in stone.    It is like the 8 years of "prosperity" the William Jefferson Blythe "gave" the American people, when in fact he drove one recovery into the ground with his 1993 tax hikes and cause another recession through over-regulation and hyper-taxation ....now known as the Tech Bubble Recession....that was then, in fact inherited and cured by the next administration by means of significant tax cutting.    So, in the socialist lexicon, four years of tax-induced recession becomes, "The Decade of Prosperity Brought on by Billy Jeff's Feeling Our Pain".   Likewise, a probable loss by a repressive, oligarchical leftist political party caused by a popular, Santa Clause-ish, rightwing candidate becomes a "....theft by the PRI of the Cardenas's electoral victory."

     The theft was accomplished again in 1994, after the assassination of the more-or-less conservative PRI replacement for Carlos Salinas, Luis Donaldo Colosio Murietta.    A quickly arranged replacement candidate for the old government party, a nice boy named Ernest Zedillo Ponce de Leon, was put at the head of the PRI ticket, and promptly lost two debates against the very formidable Diego Fernandez de Ceballos of the PAN Conservatives.   Once again the computers broke down in the early morning hours, and then the results were released after a couple of days showing that Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de Leon had won the election narrowly....but he had won.

     Really left-wing candidates for President in Mexico have had a hard time of it since the administrations of Luis Echevarria Alvarez and Jose Lopez Portillo....two ardent and very corrupt marxists who served in the presidency from 1970 through 1982.

     Oddly, the election processes that we are snickering about were actually improvements of a quantum measure.  Votes were actually being counted and tabulated with accuracy and sent up the food chain.    So the Istituto Federal Electoral, by the year 2000 had had a couple of dry-runs  which permitted them to execute the 2000 and 2006 elections with a very high degree of accuracy and "transparency".   No sane person doubted the outcomes of those two presidential election were anything other than what was published.   In 2000, it was pretty much a blowout...with a majority going to the PAN candidate, and the 2006 election was a photo-finish squeaker....with a plurality going to the PAN candidate.

 

     Now comes 2012.    As previously written, we have the unlikely phenomena of a PAN presidential candidate carrying the State of Tamaulipas, but losing the election, nationwide with a few exceptions.    At the same time, the winner of the election comes in with substantially fewer votes than what the opinion polling was showing towards the end.   Here, therefore, lie the IFs, ANDs, and BUTs.    In States where Lopez-Obrador won with a plurality or majority, few if any of his leftist cohorts gained seats over and above what they already had.   Gains were made by the conservative PAN congressional and senatorial candidates of the lady, Vasquez-Mota's party.

     And with the great victory of the PRI presidential candidate, Pen~a Nieto, somehow or another his party....the Old Grey Lady of Mexico's political pantheon...fell from having a strong plurality in the Lower House of Congress.....to now a weak second.   The PAN...Vasquez-Mota's party....now has a very heavy-duty plurality that will be a force in the coming six years.    State congresses also shifted to the right, with many more seats being held by the "blanquiazul"  (white and blue). 

     Early on in the counts these disparities were being noticed, but it was thought that it was mainly because, quite frankly, the rank and file voters of the PRI and PRD are not what we would call, say....intellectually well-equipped.    But now there are numerous, believable stories about Pen~a Nieto's forces passing out what may be millions of "charge-cards" with amounts of as little as 100 pesos to as much as 500 pesos pre-programmed into them.  They were good for use in various convenience and grocery stores.   The amounts are small, but at the high end, 35 dollars (500 pesos) would be enough, wisely spent, to larder a family of four for a week in much of Mexico, with basics and a few splurgie food items....(six thick cut pork chops...about 2 dollars, two rib-eye steaks 20 ounces total....about 6 dollars....whole roasting chicken around 3 dollars, and many fruits and vegetables are cheap by American standards as is the rice and bean and pepper selections available everywhere in Mexico). 

     We are not here to cry "election fraud"....but the incongruousness of the voting pattern looks a lot like that stupid parlour game (for perverts) called "Twister", perhaps some or all the OROGs can remember it from the ancient days.   And no, El Gringo Viejo never did , and never will play "Twister" in front of any audience greater than zero.     For those who did not know or cannot remember, check here:

   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3qM0xVAvRw

    There are things demanding the attention of your humble servant.   This afternoon we shall return to the firing line.

El Gringo Viejo

It just dawns on a person, suddenly

    We were going over various of the reports on the election in Mexico, and it dawned on El Gringo Viejo about why he might have miscalculated more than a bit.   Tamaulipas is the State wherein he resides.   Although it is a "border State", it is in many ways like what the rest of Mexico, outside of Mexico City, looks like.  It has many faces, many geographic backdrops, and even subtle but definite ethno-racial differences within its boundaries.

     One thing it has been since the Revolution of 1910 - 1917, is a "reasonable centre-left" State, and part of the approval group of the Partido Revolucionario Institutional (PRI).   During this last campaign, we were surprised to see the massive amounts of  Partido de Accion Nacional (PAN) propaganda on the streets, walls, and radio/television.   Rallies and other campaign events were heavily and heartily attended for the PAN.    To us, removed on the northeastern corner of Mexico, it seemed like the lower-middle sector of the female population, plus the predictable PAN voter was going to unite and maintain the PAN in charge of the compound of Los Pinos (the Mexican White House) in Mexico City.

     Oddly, that is what did actually happen in, around, and all over the State of Tamaulipas.

So, for the first time since the founding of the PAN in 1939 was that the PAN presidential candidate actually carried the State.   Only three States voted for the lady candidate...Nuevo Leon (a solidly PAN stronghold), Guanajuato (birth of the party, centre of the Cristero movement, and solidly PAN..primordially conservative State),  and Tamaulipas, one of the strongest strongholds of the PRI in Mexico.

     There were a number of States that were within one percent up and/or down between the three candidates.    Low turnout of PAN "militants" in Chihuahua, Coahuila, Sonora, San Luis Potosi, Jalisco, Campeche, and Yucatan sealed the deal for Josephina.   But....she carried Tamaulipas.   Very Strange.....but upon contemplation, it make sense.   The people were very appreciative of the Army's and the Naval Infantrys' contributions during the past five years throughout the State.  Supposedly, according to the word on the street, the new administration is committed to maintaining the same kind of pressure in Tamaulipas that the present administration has done.   We shall see.   As a rule of thumb,  in the old days, the PRI would commit to do something and achieve the objective about 40 - 50 percent of the time.  The PAN's record is more like 75 to 85 percent...and it would be higher but for Pelosi-like demagoguery and obstaculation in Congress.

     Anyway....that was it .   The error is mine.  The assumption that we could extrapolate the intensity of support in Tamaulipas into the resulting vote in the rest of the country was obviously a bad assumption.

El Gringo Viejo

The Wisdom of Solomon...and Mexico Falls Out of the Space Capsule

THE MEXICAN ELECTIONS:

     We are in a bit of a stupor for the next few hours.  We knew that Roberts would play Brutus at the steps of the Senate, and we knew that Josephina was involved in an uphill struggle in the Mexican presidential election.

      To begin, the Mexicans voted heavily and they decided to vote for an air-head with ties to very important soap operas.  The people we were hoping to have in Vasquez-Mota corner, wavered about 3 weeks ago, and opted for the soap opera glitz, the Carlos Slim and Buddies  multi-million dollar, two year television and radio ad campaign, and the continuing PRI promise to end all poverty and misery and traffic jams within two years.

     As is said in these time,"Carlos Slim and the TelaVisa are not nothing".    The cabal of PRI crony capitalists, along with their more than a  passive alliance with Vicente Fox Cavazos, sealed the deal against Vazquez Mota.  A small sliver of silver behind the clouds is the fact that Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador can probably safely be stored away in some recess of Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum.   There will be no need to do much more than just dip him once or twice in some warm paraffin.

     Also, most of the voters for Pena-Nieto from the "centrist" PRI and for A. M. Lopez Obrador from the left are either too self- absorbed or too intellectually challenged to vote down-ballot very well.    So, there were significant gains in the central government's lower House of Congress and in the Senate.    Other gains were made in governorships and mayor's positions in major cities across the nation.

     It was still a crushing sensation on the soul. 

     We have enjoyed several years of no panhandling by federal functionaries and employees.  No shakedowns....no "small considerations"  for doing the job that a person was hired to do anyway.   It had slowly improved during the terms of Miguel de la Madrid Hurtado, Carlos Salinas de Gortari, and Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de Leon, but once the National Action Party took over the reins of the central government, dealing with day to day issues with the central government and many State governments improved to near perfection.

    The question now is whether the central government will maintain these gains in quality of service and discipline in spending.  Another burning question is whether Mexico will stay on the road to being a common law country and a private enterprise country.   Then, we shall have to await the central government's posture concerning its willingness to continue the process of degradation of the cartels.   Will this policy be maintained or will the new administration return Mexico to the days when behind the scenes PRI operatives could explain to the unsophisticated that "a little bit of cartel activity is actually good for everyone....it's only the Gringos who are hurt by it because we don't use the drugs."

     Any accommodation of the cartels will be a step backwards into banana republicanism.

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

WITH REFERENCE TO THE SUPREME COURT:

     The decision rendered by the Supreme Court of the United States baffles those who have any remote understanding of the Constitution.   It confounds those who have any notion of the proper role of the justices of the Supreme Court and the role of the Chief Justice of that court.  In attempting to comprehend the lunatic contemplations of the Chief Justice, we are told by the august juror that we must accept the following notions as valid law, simply because it is enacted law:

To Wit -

      The people of the State of Walon Ka determine in their wisdom that all hunters must qualify as capable of killing a moose or caribou with one kill-shot at a minimum of 200 yards, by rifle fire with a rifle of .223 calibre or higher.   With the intent of this law being to minimise the suffering of the wild animal, we require that the hunter demonstrate this ability by killing two Eskimos under the same requirements before receiving approbation and issuance of his permits and licenses.

     A video and two ears are required to demonstrate one-shot-kill ability and Nimrodian competence, along with a certified obituary of each Eskimo who was successfully one-shot-dropped.
Be It Enacted, approved by the House of Representatives, the Senate, and signed by the Governor of Walon Ka, this the 39th day of the month of Oologah, in the year 3202 BCE.

    By the reasoning of the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, this law should stand because it was enacted.   His is not to reason why, his is but to determine that, ".....yes sir, that's one of them there laws alright...and I can't do nothing' about it.   If the people want to do somethin' about it then they ought to git off'n their duffs and pass a different law, cause otherwise, a lot of them there Eskimos are gonna wind up in a whole heap o' hurt!"
     Next month, the people of another State in the Union are having another law reviewed by Chief Justice Robert's court.   The new law is called the "Defense of Lynching Act".   It carried by a unanimous vote in the State Congress and the Governor signed it at the crossburning last Tuesday.   To date Mr. Roberts says that the new law "....Looks pretty good.   It was passed and signed by the Governor.   So, you know, if the people don't like it, they might need to change their voting habits".

     Perhaps we must be grateful that the Chief Justice's astounding decision in upholding a clearly un-constitutional law that will do much damage, was counterbalanced by an equally stupid ruling that says that a State cannot do even the simplist things in order to re-establish the public tranqulity, even if the measures are very similar or even identical to those practiced, somewhat haphazardly, by the United States government.    The Arizona ruling was as pretzelled and tortured as goat trail in the high mountains.  It was ridiculous.   In Texas, the police always require evidence of identity and residence of suspects, witnesses, and other people of pertinence to a police situation.   They have done it for generations.  They have done it and continue to do it to El Gringo Viejo.   In our case it is because of being witness to a felony....but the first thing the officer does is say, "Can I see your identification?"
     As an aside, we hold the Chief Justice's treachery and sophistry up as an example as to why we cannot be "reasonable" when dealing with progressives, marxists, RINOs, "social justice" people, and other forms of socialist elitist life.  They are the ones who have brought us the cause of every social ill, political catastrophe, and fiscal problem facing the nation at this time.    The "reasonable and moderate, able to work with the other side - type Republican" is a willing accomplice and participant in the AFDC, food stamp, 16,000,000,000,000,000 debt, Section 8, EPA, Keystone closure, ethanol subsidy, Fast and Furious debacle, Head Start, illegal alien invasion, 77% illegitimacy matter....that afflicts the nation in these days.    "A hungry child cannot do well in school" becomes a Medicaid Wave of millions of B-52s  carpet bombing corpulent 3rd graders upon us.....all afflicted with diabetes and accustomed to having someone else pay for their food...NOW!    That, Senator Hatch, Chief Justice Judas, and all RINOs ...is your legacy.   Your "reasonable" nature is actually what we have come to know in these days as being a "facilitator".
    Socialists know and revel in the fact that they are doing the work of Lucifer.  They are amazed and encouraged that there are still dolts so concerned with being liked and approved by the socialist elite and allowed entry to the best parties of the socialist elite, that they will stoop so low as to rule from the bench, capriciously, in favour of a hideous law whose intent is to destroy the Republic.
     There have been so many one-vote margins, razor thin margins, exemptions, deals done and bought with taxpayers' funds, and idiocy (....we have to vote for it to find out what's inside of it....) associated with this piece of satanic legislation that just its history of passage should serve to nullify it validity.

     With that said, El Gringo Viejo.....who is very, very grumpy right now....has to go to-day to qualify for his chupacabra hunting permit and license.   He has to round up two Mexican-American veterans of either Viet Nam or Korea before sundown.  It's a new law here 'bouts.

More later....
El Gringo Viejo