Thursday, 15 November 2012

Contradictions and Conundrums

     The Democrats and the campaign engineers for the Republicans all agree.   Of course, in the one case, the Democrats, they are hoping that a selective plague comes around and removes anyone who ever thought about being a Republican or a conservative be stricken down like all the first born Egyptians during the Mosaic period.
     The campaign engineers for the Republicans, somewhat predictably arriving at the same conclusion as the Democrats, come up with the same, post-wild-mushroom-eating visions of how to win elections.  And these people are paid real Yankee  greenback money!

      Both of these groupings point out that the Republican Party needs to "reach out to Hispanics".   Both of these groupings of dolts point out that the "hispanics" are a tailor-made voting block for the Republicans because the "Hispanics" are "all" right in line with the Republicans when it comes down to the meat and potatoes social issues.

      Both of these groupings of dolts also demand that the Republican Party, if it intends to grow and remain somewhat viable as a permanent, insignificant minority party on the American politcal scene, needs to absolutely stop being mean to people who need free abortions, have homosexual matrimonial prerogatives, free birth-control pills for 12 year olds, anything they want for free, plus free tuition for any schooling from Harvard to a full trades licensing at the community college...free.   Stop, stop, stop being mean!   And judgemental!  Now! Now! Now!

     Well, er, uh,  on the one hand we have a built in Republican voting block, "Hispanics" as they are called by the insipid political experts, who are all ''social issues" voters, and then on the other hand we have a horrid Republican Party who dwells too much on things like "social issues" and scares away the nice people who really don't like mean, judgemental anything because it's just not nice...it's like being a meany-poo.

     If my great uncles in Tennessee had tried to 'still up anything with ingredients like that, back into the high hollers in the low Smokies, their whiskey would have come out more like frog slime.
     But, my uncles were not stupid.   The sage political class thinks they were stupid because they were born in a rural area that pertained to the Confederacy at one time.  But they learned early on that fluid is put into the bottle.   The bottle is not put into the fluid.   The ladies learned, 'round the age of  5 that the thread went somewhere into the needle, and that the needle did not go into the thread.
     Later, after they go to school in a fancy university, then they can learn how to cut a saw into two parts with a log.   They learn that if you pay several generations of girls to have babies that, all of a sudden, we going to have a whole lot of babies and a lot of confused storks flying around without having filed a flight plan.   That is called "social progress" in some cases, and in other cases it is called "social democracy".   In either case, it does not make very good whiskey, fish bait, or gun oil.    That there twas what our 'learnin' was.   My great-uncles made good whiskey.   They didn't drink it...they just made it and aged it and spread it around, for medicinal puposes.
     ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Dr. Charles Krauthammer
     Some of my harshness is regretted because the esteemed Dr. Charles Krauthammer is one who frequently uses the "lumpthemalltogetherterm'hispanic"'.  Dr. Krauthammer is a truly great thinker, although no highly filtered conservative.   His trudge to the Right has been tectonic, a little slower than, say, the great Mexican poet, philosopher, and author Octavio Paz.    He is, in any regard, one of us and a great thinker.   But, he doth err.  The basic assumption  is false. That assumption is  the idea, once again (oft stated on this blog) that anyone can say "all hispanics" and then continue accurately with the rest of the sentence.   It is difficult unless one is going to say, "All hispanics are more or less human."    Or, "Most hispanics are probably male or female, or something else."   But, barring a too-long stay in the Olde Saloon, why would anyone want to say such things?    Or, perhaps one is being distracted by the producer shouting into the Doctor's ear-piece, saying things like, "Wrap it up, Doc.  Ten seconds to the hard break".
 
     Now, El Gringo Viejo's point is, once again, very simple.   Latinos are a lot like us "regular, real people".    They are all different.   Although one can take a broader brush and do some painting of a group portrait, one cannot take The Broad Brush and paint that same portrait.   It is a true statement that, under the term "hispanic" one can find people who are 100% Negro and 100% Caucasian and others who are 100% New World Indian.   Many "hispanics", if not most, might fall into some combination of of the latter two categories.   But, most Americans...and most Hispanics for that matter, could not differentiate, by sight only, a regular run of the mill "palestinian'' from a regular run of the mill "hispanic".   Is an Italian a "Latino"....how ridiculous right?   How come French, Spanish, Arabs, Romanians, Italians, Turks, Greeks, Portuguese, and the like, look like....Mexicans?  Or, that Mexicans look like them.    Why do Mexican Indian nations appear physically different from American and Canadian and Peruvian, etc. Indians?   Why do they look similar?
 
     Well, the Italians are the original Latinos....of course...the ones who based out the languages that most "hispanics' speak.   As far as the Indians are concerned, MesoAmerican Indians come from one place and American and Canadian Indians come from another.   Although there are schools of thought who suggest that  Polynesia was populated from what is now Mexico and Guatemala.    But, I digress....
 
     There is no way the Republican Party is ever going to dominate totally what the Democrat Socialists,  the media, and the Republican Campaign Engineers, call "the hispanics".   One main reason is that there are now a large number who are derived from a category of people of Mexican origin who have always been trained to believe that the government was the source of riches, favours, and money in general.   Some of these people are derived from a class of people who were involved in peonage during the Colonial and Republican periods in Mexico.   They have many, many generations of depending upon first the Hacendados to care for them followed by many generations of being told that the central government would care for them an defend them.    These same people gradually lost the ability to discern any notion of what liberty, chance, risk, or tomorrow meant.  Especially as they urbanised, they put their faith in the futile hope that somewhere....like in the city....they could find a better way to be taken care of.

As a starter, this is a map of the various languages, not
dialects, spoken in Mexico among the indigenous.  Especially
in the southern half, there are probably 10,000,000 native
speakers at this writing.
     The central government, according the the tenets of the Constitution of 1917, told them they had the right to a minimum wage, to a house, to food, to a free education, to free medical care, to fair labour treatment and to union membership, etc.  Of course, the only solid advances made during the past 100 years in Mexico have been among those classes of individuals who did not depend upon the government's promises.   Even as they might have been using or participating to some degree (it is/was unavoidable for any class of person not to use some government sponsored something in Mexico), the lower-middle class established and stabilised to large degree by mastering blue-collar skills and becoming indispensable to the needs of the upper-middle and upper castes.
 
     During the last thirty years we have seen steady and radical changes to the population that might be considered to be of Spanish/Mexican/Latin American background.  The main change is that many of the arrivals in that time period have been people who learnt from a small body of malingerers who were family members already in Texas or the United States how to effectively game the system.   So we had something like the planting of a weed in a fine garden.   The first amnesty, lamentably; was pushed  by Ronald Reagan, whose understanding of Mexican people was from contact with the well-established middle-class Latins with whom he dealt in California.   If not them, it was  the Mexicans across the Border who treated him with antique civilities and grace and sincere class and dignity in Mexico when he was hobnobbing in Ensenada.
TFH2541CATHEY     He thought it would be better to have those people among us, and he also thought that they would realise sooner, rather than later, that they were Republicans.   In that he was totally correct.    Therein lies the problem.    If you ask Ronald Reagan, he might say, "All Mexican Americans are......"    The ones he knew really were and are almost all conservatives, tending heavily Republican.    They are still with us.  They are the ones who have gone to war in disproportionate numbers and casualties and medals and Medals of Honour....up to and including Iraq and Afghanistan and Kuwait.
     These are still the skilled blue-collar, the small business people,  the doctors and dentists and pharmacists and nurses, the accountants, the teachers, the warriors, the farmers and ranchers....who happen to be the true immigrants, colonial people, the refugees from the Mexican Revolution of 1910 and the Depression, who really were here or came here and put up with the cheap trash, sought out and found friends of all stripes, and steadily folded in as the Americans they were born to be. 

     THOSE ARE THE ONLY PEOPLE WHO WE CAN RECRUIT OR MAINTAIN AS CONSERVATIVE AND/OR REPUBLICAN VOTERS.   WE SEE THAT AT THE TEA PARTIES, WE SEE THEM AT WORK, WE SEE THEM AT CHURCH, WE SEE THEM EVERYWHERE.   THEY ARE NOT CONCERNED WITH IMMIGRATION LAW.
    Then, apart from the above, there are people who come out of the darkness of the public assistance addiction, simply because of the American engine of prosperity.   They stumble out of their cells of "help"  from the government, their "shackles" of "public assistance" and start to rise....perhaps from a starter job at MacDonald's that turns into "assistant night manager" one day....and then into "assistant day manager" one day..etc.

   These are the people who become Republicans and conservatives.   They recruit themselves.  They will find their way towards their similars, and we simply keep the door open.  Receive them heartily, then forget about it.  They only want to be Republicans when they are nailing signs and working the phone banks.   When they go home they can do whatever thing makes them what they are.   But they will come to the open door.   They do not need to be helped.   There are already large numbers within the ranks, and more are coming.

      Some might ask, "Well, if more are coming how come they only voted 29% for Romney, huh? huh?"
       And the answer is, first of all it will be nearly impossible to get the old amnesty people in by "attracting them" with some magic ad campaign.  At least 60% of those are not reachable. Most do not vote.   They eat.   There are others, youngsters who look around one day at the graffiti, the litter, and the gangs and violence and go down to MacDonald's one day where he saw a "help wanted"notice.   There are others who join the Army on a whim....and then, 97% of the time, that ''hispanic" has been transformed.   (of course, that is why we need to take back the military from the social engineers.   The military vote this time was 50/50).
      The complete answer is also, that there is no way anyone can determine what the "hispanic" vote percentage is because of the method of extracting that data.   It is assumed by the "campaign engineers" that "all hispanics" live in "hispanic" neighbourhoods.   Such in not the case...and in Texas, by this point, it would be most probable that about 50% of the Latin population is interspersed or intermarried.   In Texas, best estimates seem to indicate that the Latinos voted about 40% Republican (or for Romney), or perhaps a little higher.   That seems to be born out her on th border.   So, it's hard to put that in your pipe and smoke it, because no one knows where the pipe is.

We'll leave all this to ferment.  We do appreciate your time and attention.
El Gringo Viejo


Wednesday, 14 November 2012

You get what you ask for, even if you don't know what it is...


 


zorro.gif
This is an actual picture of El Zorro.  Ladies, have your fainting
salts ready.
 

  
We shan't preambulate this submission by the resident 10th Amerndment authority.   We do call attention however to the employment of the word 'ignorant' in its various presentations.   Also, El Zorro puts the title of this perfectly spun article in the article's last sentence.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 
 
    What occurs to most of us, something not necessarily in our consciousness, is that our President and his socialist contemporaries are ignorant of the Constitution. That is when we define ignorance as “to ignore” the Constitution. They believe that all law is what they interpret it to be ignoring the beauty, simplicity and truth of the Constitution. The body responsible for interpretation, the Supreme Court, has a tenuous hold on a majority of strict (we use the term loosely) constitutionalists. Chief Justice John Roberts ignored the Constitution in his ruling/deciding vote on Obamacare based on “judicial restraint”. That is he assumed the enacted law had to be preserved not considering the validity of the law itself. Unfortunately that is now law even though not sanctioned by the Constitution. However we have to go back not only to what the Founding Fathers and subsequently the Framers of the Constitution intended. Fortunately we have the Federalist papers and the predecessor to the Constitution, the Articles of Confederation and Declaration of Independence to get that information.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 
Very brief but powerful examples:
 
James Madison in Federalist Paper #39 (where he discusses the differences and value of a Federal Republic over a National one) states where the power of government was and is derived:
“…ratification is to be given by the people, not as individuals composing one entire nation, but as composing the distinct and independent States to which they respectively belong. It is to be the assent and ratification of the several States, derived from the supreme authority in each State, the authority of the people themselves. The act, therefore, establishing the Constitution, will not be a national, but a federal act.”

 
This makes the intention clear that the power held by the governors is granted by the people through the soveriegn states, not the governors themselves. Constitution 101. The precursor to the Constitution, the Articles of Confederation Article II expressed the relationship of the States to the government:
“Each state retains its sovereignty, freedom, and independence, and every power, jurisdiction, and right, which is not by this Confederation expressly delegated to the United States, in Congress assembled.”

 
The Declaration of Independence text:
“…to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,”
 
                            ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 
 
      The Founding Fathers drew heavily from the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the Federalist and Anti-Federalist papers to form the Constitution. The Framers composed and guided it through ratification “by the people”.
      What we have is a rogue administration propped up by a judiciary that does not only ignore the Constitution, they use fraud against it to secure power they cannot derive from it or worse they haven’t even read it. We the people have to read and understand this very short and simple document to pick our administrators. We the people have to understand they are only administrators hired to administer the law not abuse, distort, or ignore it. They deceive by promises they cannot deliver (legally) to buy votes and secure power. The Constitution has only 4,440 words compared to over 22,000 pages of Obamacare yet “we the people” voted for Obamacare. It is not likely that most of those who voted for Obamacare did not read it. It is even just as likely those same people have not read the Constitution. You get what you ask for even if you don’t know what it is.

A Queen, a Princess, and a Wall with an Egg sitting on it


Argentina protests
Photograph: EPA
The affairs of Cristina, La Reina de Argentina become more and more interesting, sad, and dangerous.   She is now proposing a suspension of interest paid to holders of Argentine paper, both foreign and domestic holders, for the foreseeable future. 

       So, Argentina protests: thousands marched through Buenos Aires as part of a nationwide "cacerolazo", a protest in which demonstrators beat pans and pots.    She just suffered a huge humiliation when her own tactics were turned back upon her.   Hundreds upon thousands, official and reasonable counts indicate that as many as 700,000 women banging pots and pans with their spoons....(can the poor OROG imagine the din?)....must have been quite a sight and sound.   The protesters say they had 1,000,000 people but the hard count was high, but not that high.   The AP, always sympathetic to leftists anywhere in the world, but especially in Latin America, states that the demonstration was huge, probably more than 400,000.
     All members of the Order of the Readers of the Old Gringo need to truly and totally understand that the assault upon the "2%" , to make them "pay their fair share" is actually an assault upon the entire class of the productive.   It is the effete, mindless marxists drive to produce an egalitarian society, essentially by force.   Cristina Fernandez has confiscated private pensions...and public employees pensions....and now is proposing a form of wealth tax that will hit everyone who has anything.   There is no exchange now for Euros or Dollars or Pounds or Yen....(except, of course, for Cristina and a few thousand of her closest friends).
 
     The Obsolete press is trying to point out that as many people in Argentina oppose the opposition as oppose Cristina....but such observations are essentially hopeful drivel.   Like Mexico, Brazil, and now the United States, approximately one-third of the populations found therein have no idea what planet they are on or what century they are in, and that third could care less, so long as someone gives them food and free cellular telephones.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 
THEN THERE IS THE CASE OF THE DAUGHTER OF SALVADOR ALLENDE:
     Recent elections in major cities resulted in few surprises.   But, in the case of  the city of Nun~ao, adjacent to Santiago, he daughter of Salvador Allende did receive quite a surprise.   She was running for a mayoralty in that suburb of Santiago.  Maya Allende de Fernandez was first declared the winner, but because of the closeness, the law required a recount.  There is some irony because the recount has to be public, so it was held in the same soccer stadium where the leftist press declared that Pinochet's soldiers executed "thousands" during the turbulent end to Allende's comic-opera presidency.   It is said that he committed suicide rather than be taken away from the Presidential Palace by CIA thugs.   The fact is that several factions were arguing about how to resist against the fascist counter-revolutionaries who were swarming throughout the city of Santiago de Chile at that moment.
     Best indications are that members of the "Maoist wing" of the Chilean Revolution finished the argument when one member of that faction strode up and put a bullet through the President's head.  This, supposedly, was because Allende was declaring a willingness to negotiate with the various factions arrayed against him.   The least of them was the often cited "CIA funded" private transporters association...of some 60,000 commercial truckers who had "parked it" until threats to nationalise their businesses were called off.
     The "Maoist faction" people were known to have been in the building at the time, and apparently had made their escape in those final couple of hours.   There is film of them on second floor parapets, heading for fire escapes....and there is some record of some of the same personalities being seen later involved with the FARC in Colombia.

      The legally required recount did in fact reverse the outcome of the election.  Instead of losing by 50 votes out of about 60,000 cast, it turned out that the dirty old "centre-right man" had a margin of 200 or so more than poor Maya Allende.   There was no dispute.  Recounting the recount came up the same.
       This is important in a way, because this district was one of those working-class communities that is primarily working class, but has always voted to the right.   This time massive money from Mitterrand-type foreign sources (for a mayoralty!) had been brought in and "students" had been busy registering people who actually did not live in the suburb of Santiago.   Oddly, almost no one came from the "0ppressed masses", but a large group of working-class long term residents of the neat, clean community did quietly watch the proceedings, and then applaud quietly before returning home, nearby.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

BUT ALL THIS PALES TO THE ABSENCE OF HER MENDACITY, (Sir Edmund)HILLARY:

     The Queen of the Universe remains in Australia.  This is her third absence, literally to the other side of the world, during important events.  Perhaps she is really practicing her ultimate exile.  Perhaps she just really likes wine tastings of wine that tastes like vinegar.  Perhaps she is awaiting the sudden fall of the present president which would give her the opportunity of ordering Air Force One to come and return her to the Throne Room.
     We can only imagine how slowly she will speak if she ever is brought before any forum that researches the activity of her office during the Benghazi episodes.  Will the killing of the Hamas Commander bring her back from swilling and swelling?  Does she serve any purpose?  Would putting her under oath have any effect to a woman who would lie about something as simple as landing an airplane in the Balkans?   Can anybody ask if she thought her hubby-wubby was...like maybe, kinda, you know....jeapordising national security by talking on open access lines to his chubby little intern?   Or allowing her to come and go without clearing the normal White House checkpoints.   Did she forget about the hissy-fit that Monica threw at at the east-entrance when the White House uniformed police would not let her in without the necessary clearances?   And perhaps it might have occurred to Madame Corkscrew that the girl might have been acting stupid because she was a Mata Hari spy?   Oh, well -  Nothing you people do rises to the level of crime or immorality, because none of you have souls.    (Sir Edmund)...can I call you that?  Do you people see yourselves in mirrors, or are you...you know, like...special?


Some gentle winds still blow.
El Gringo Viejo

Tuesday, 13 November 2012

Some Housecleaning


Scenes from Taxco, Mexico.  The proper name is "Taxco de Alarcon", Mexico's silver capital, and it is a charming colonial town nestled in the mountains of Guerrero state between Mexico City and Acapulco.  The baroque Santa Prisca Church that is the centerpiece of Taxco's zócalo. This view was taken from a restaurant rooftop cafe.
Santa Prisca Church - very centre of Taxco
    We have been working on a story from the past.  When we are wrong, it is necessary to advise the OROG of the fact of my error and the reason behind the error.   It is only meet and right.
    Some weeks back, a trio of military officers, two attaches from the American Embassy and one fairly high ranking member of the Mexican Navy, a captain were intercepted by a cluster of SUVs, ostensibly working with the Mexican federal judicial police, outside of Taxco, State of Morelos south of Mexico City.
     The entire episode turned out to be almost impossible to believe, even by Mexican standards.   There was a vehicle with three allied military officers from two countries going to as Mexican "special operations" training facility in the mountains between Taxco and Cuernavaca.   The setting is like Cecil B. Demille, John Ford, and Peter O'Toole coming together on something for a movie called "Life in Paradise''.   There were 16 or so people who purported to be federal civilian police officers who pursued the first car, shot it up, and detained the three occupants, who somehow had remained essentially unhurt.
     One of the reasons, in fact, that we had thought that the explanation that there was a mis-identification crisis was the fact that the three detained people were not brutally beaten up or killed and thrown on the side of the road, while the impersonators drove off in the SUV.   A group of military people came along, and other federal police....as it turns out not so happenstantially.    They got down and secured the peculiar site, and began to unravel  the situation.

     What turned out is that one little thing tricked up the first body of civilian officers.  It was continuity.   After two months or so of detention and interrogation conducted by the Naval Infantry's Judge Advocacy, things came into greater focus.   The first thing that helped was small overnight bags in a couple of the police vehicles with changes of clothes that had been worn.   There were enough clothes for 6 men.   They were clothes that matched the size of the men under detention,  and the clothes bore DNA from several of the men.  Then three of the total of six SUVs that were involved in the detention of the American and Mexican military people were official police vehicles, but none had been authorised for usage on that day....in fact they were scheduled for standard maintenance, and had been taken from the "taller" where they normally undergo oil changes, etc.    The other three were look-alike vehicles but they had no police markings or normal police-type interior fittings.    It became a waiting game, and a process of finding out who would sing longest, loudest, and best.   The issue has ended, about five days ago.

     Several of the cops were, lamentably, actally cops.   Four or five, I do not remember now, had false credentials that were readily figured out....leading to the certainty that none of the perpetrators would be released any time soon, if ever.   So, the game is no longer afoot.   Some of the men have already been sent to the facility in the Islas  Tres Marias in the Pacific Ocean quite some distance off the Mexican west coast.   The others are now in the super-max Almaloya Prison northwest of Mexico City a couple of hundred kilometres.
     The sad part is that there was significant involvement of some Federal civil police, although it should be noted that their action seemed to be provoked by the fact that it was time for their drug, blood, and polygraph....that seemed to have been a common thread, and they thought they could kidnap some important personalities and make a good ransom.
     Thankfully, a detail had trailed two of the police SUVs that had been reported as under unauthorised use....and that passive trailing detail uncovered the  whole sordid mess.

     That is the best information we have now.   It was not what I hoped for, but it would make a good movie anyway.   We are greatful that the good guys won....finally.
El Gringo Viejo
 
    

Monday, 12 November 2012

El Zorro, shaking it off....

Once again, riding through despair and a crushed spirit, El Zorro has ridden through fog and mist, over his mountains and into mine.  We are both spiritually wilted.  This time he did not leave his message loudly, but simply placed it by the dogs' bowls, knowing that I would be there before dawn to deal with my canine obligations.

      We are equal in the sense of our devastation.  We are all but identical in our analysis of what went awry.  It is more my opinion that several million rightwing crazies just said,'Blah', after the Christi huggy moment, and the obvious set up that Christi fell for.   Who gets the credit? Obama.  Who gets the blame for anything that goes wrong?  Christi.  Why?  Because there are still millions and millions of people who watch the Obsolete Press.      There were, likewise, several million...perhaps the same several million...who thought, "If you're not going to bring up Benghazi, and if your going to endorse his "love the Muslim Brotherhood and hate Mubarak Obama Doctrine",  then to Hell with it all.  If Romney was going to say that Obama is a good man, after having been called a murderer, a tax scofflaw, a felon, and so on, by that same Obama, then....something is missing in the old complexion. 

     During the autopsies, there are still those who fail to recognise (or admit) that Obama was terribly unpopular among his own people.   His vote total fell off by 15%, which is ABSOLUTELY catastrophic for a politician running for re-election.   And pardon the grammar, but nobody who voted for Romney was going to vote for Obama, but a lot of Obama Un-voters should have taken the trouble to vote for Romney....but they did not.

     So, obviously the only solution for the GOP candidate is, was, and will be to stay hard centre-right, and pleasantly so.   That 15% fall off for Obama is nothing really to be celebrated, because those same people did not feel motivated to go vote for Romney.   No befuddled ex-Obama people, no rightwing crazies....it pretty much leaves the campaign engineers for Republican presidential candidates in a box that should be labelled, "free kittens to a good home", or "unemployable".

      Don't even get me started about the "ORCA Project" that sucked up millions of campaign dollars for nothing.   But do allow me to advise that should anyone wish to access El Zorro, he/she need only request the cyber address here.   He and his lady have an idyllic setting in a place frozen back in the 1950s, somewhere in the Republic of Texas and I, more than he, am leery of exposing that situation to the flying saucers and black helicopters and groupies that are always following us around all the time.   So, while he posts his return address and so forth, I have  editted it out....perhaps in ensuing transmissions and visits...it will be left in the messages.   This particular transmission is worth the reading because of that onion-skin's difference in our analysis and methods of resolution.   99.9% is pretty close though.   Besides, his writing is more to the point and has fewer detours.

 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hard to get over.


Not to beat a dead horse, or maybe better said a dead elephant, it is obvious that we conservatives are outnumbered. Call this what you want, sour grapes or whatever but it is the truth and we know what the truth is.
Obama had ten million fewer votes in 2012 than he did in 2008 and he still won the election over Romney who won two and a half million fewer votes than McCain did in 2008. What does that mean? It means that Obama is doing a terrible job and too many conservatives don’t care. Oh, there are a few who really do care but the number of us who do is diminishing. It means that something for nothing beats something for something. It is probable that Romney was not the first choice of many Republicans and so they shot themselves in the foot by sitting the election out. In his defense, Romney did effectively lay out the case for fixing the mess of the last four years. The last days of the campaign during super storm Sandy, Obama simply got a hug from Huggy Bear Christie then trotted off to something even less meaningful but that was more important to those who voted. He did nothing to help the situation but the photo-op impressed millions of the giveittomes.
I went to Walmart about 5:00PM on election day. At the checkout the checker said she hadn’t voted and would not get off work until 7:00PM so she wouldn’t vote. I told her, “At least your vote won’t cancel mine.” She said, “I really don’t think my vote would cancel yours.” She could tell I obviously would not be an Obama voter… This was a very disheartening event for me that day. Walmart would under no circumstances keep an employee from voting. How many Walmart employees are there and why did they not vote? How many businesses did not overtly or covertly not help themselves in 2012? We do not know the answer to that but it would occur to this writer there were thousands of votes, if not millions that could have been had.
Mathematically the turnout tells the story. The popular vote was close. Romney lost by 3 1/4 Million votes. The demographics gave the electoral vote advantage to Obama 332 to 206 (as of 11/12/2012). The House gained a few seats for the Reps to slightly extend its majority. The Senate lost a couple if seats to the Reps but the Dems still do not have a filibuster proof majority.
The balance of power remains essentially unchanged; however, the problem will be Obama has nothing to lose by opening the flood gates for his socialist/Marxist agenda. With the House in control of spending Obama will still have some problems with new legislation and what he doesn’t like he can veto. One thing we can count on, the confrontation will continue and most likely will be more extreme. It is hoped that the House will have the fortitude to manage Obamacare via the budget and funding.
The bottom line is not a bright one. We conservatives are outnumbered. Our army consists of apathy. Their army consists of the giveittomes. Obama has cut our army literally and figuratively. His army is growing and they are armed with free phones. Our society is becoming more decadent by the day. The voices that appeal for the sanctity of the Constitution and the ideals of the Framers are difficult to hear over the din of the ringtones.
There is nothing to do except to keep the faith. Those of us who care will continue to care. The hope might be that the drones will feel pain by 2016. At least by that time there will be no more Obama. There are some exceptional possibilities for the conservatives. The one most obvious is Marco Rubio. Let the campaigning begin!
 
 Z

Ghostly Echoes - Kumbaya, or else - It's good to remember

    The observation about Obama being stupid, deceptive, disingenuous, or outright mendacious by saying to the American public that we need to build bridges to the Muslim community takes on more and more relevance.   It is the opinion of El Gringo Viejo that Obama is not stupid.  Neither is he remotely either as intelligent or well studied as his Kool - Aid Chorale believes.

     There are several points to ponder by their publication of the article included below.   They have an interview with a fellow who admits to blowing up the Cliff Buddhas in Afghanistan.  He was harrassed by various Arab authorities and wounded in combat of some sort of against the Americans.  He is a veritable hero of the Sharia Law, World Caliphate crowd.
 
      Obama is interested in only one objective.   He wants America as it should be.  In many ways this means to be destroyed and refounded as essentially something akin to rural Red China.   A destitute place with a ruling elite, presiding over prisoners of war who, in his opinion, had previously enslaved a planet for the profit of a few while the many starved.   That is the mission of all marxists and acolytes of Alinsky.
     Obama, and his handlers, will make alliance with anyone who is moved by hatred for  Americans and America.   Whosoever dispises America and the Americans and is willing to kill them and work to destroy America is an ally for the moment.   With this deranged America hater pictured below, Obama picks up a two-for because this fellow is  totally committed to the idea of destroying all religions and philosophies that do not mesh with his own peculiar interpretation of one set of religious books.   Blow up the Cliff Buddhas, destroy the Pyramids of Giza and the Sphinx and a few hundred thousand artifacts of the Pharaonic Episode, and what a happier place the world will be.
     Next blow up America and then all the problems will be solved.  Finally the rich will have been made to pay their fair share.   Or something.   Let's go blow something else up.
The following article appears is Al Arabiya, this date.
 
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‘Destroy the idols,’ Egyptian jihadist calls for removal of Sphinx, Pyramids

Murgan Salem al-Gohary, an Islamist leader twice-sentenced under former President Hosni Mubarak for advocating violence, called on Muslims to remove such “idols.”  (Courtesy: Dream TV)
Murgan Salem al-Gohary, an Islamist leader twice-sentenced under former President Hosni Mubarak for advocating violence, called on Muslims to remove such “idols.” (Courtesy: Dream TV)
     An Egyptian jihad leader, with self-professed links to the Taliban, called for the “destruction of the Sphinx and the Giza Pyramids in Egypt,” drawing ties between the Egyptian relics and Buddha statues, local media reported this week.  Murgan Salem al-Gohary, an Islamist leader twice-sentenced under former President Hosni Mubarak for advocating violence, called on Muslims to remove such “idols.”

     “All Muslims are charged with applying the teachings of Islam to remove such idols, as we did in Afghanistan when we destroyed the Buddha statues,” he said on Saturday during a television interview on an Egyptian private channel, widely watched by Egyptian and Arab audiences. 
“God ordered Prophet Mohammed to destroy idols,” he added. “When I was with the Taliban we destroyed the statue of Buddha, something the government failed to do.”

      His comments came a day after thousands of ultraconservative Islamists gathered in Tahrir Square to call for the strict application of Sharia law in the new constitution.  But in retaliation to Gohary’s remarks, the vice president of Tunisia’s Ennahda party, Sheikh Abdel Fattah Moro, called the live program and told Gohary that famous historic military commander Amr ibn al-Aas did not destroy statues when he conquered Egypt.  “So who are you to do it?” he wondered. “The Prophet destroyed the idols because people worshiped them, but the Sphinx and the Pyramids are not worshiped.”

     Gohary, 50, is well-known in Egypt for his advocacy of violence, Egypt Independent reported.
“He was sentenced twice, one of the two sentences being life imprisonment. He subsequently fled Egypt to Afghanistan, where he was badly injured in the American invasion. In 2007, he traveled from Pakistan to Syria, which then handed him over to Egypt. After Mubarak's fall in early 2011, he was released from prison by a judicial ruling,” the newspaper added.

     In recent months, fears have surfaced that the ultra-conservative Salafi political powers may soon wish to debate new guidelines over Egyptian antiquities.   Islamists have swept the recent presidential and parliamentary elections in the country’s post-revolutionary stage, with the Muslim Brotherhood and the ultra-conservative Salafi Islamists rising to political power.

     “The fundamental Salafis have demanded to cover Pharaonic statues, because they regard them to be idols,” Egyptian author on ancient history Ahmed Osman told Al Arabiya English, explaining that Salafi Muslims follow conservative religious principles which view statues and sculptures as prohibited in Islam.

      “But so far the government has done nothing to indicate what is the future of Egyptian antiquities,” adds Osman.

     Many hope that Egypt’s new President Mohammed Mursi will help usher better preservation of Egypt’s proud cultural heritage. Egyptian officials have recently announced the country will reveal more of its ancient buried treasures.  The tomb of Queen Meresankh III, the granddaughter of Khufu, of Great Pyramid fame, is set to be opened to tourists later this year, with the last resting places of five high priests also slated to be put on show.  Officials are also believed to be reopening the underground Serapeum temple at Sakkara, to the south of Cairo.
 
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      There are various people still at Al Arabiya who know God and/or know the gamut of philosophies and religions that deal in the spiritual, super-natural, humano-cosmic and other real but unseen things.   It is probably best that this particular article did not have an author. We appreciate the "just the facts, Ma'am" approach that they have exercised.    We are not as optimistic that there is anything like an even chance that the great monuments of Egyptian antiquity will  be dealt with in any respectful manner.
     At least the English, American, German, French and other archeologists, both real and charlatan, the items pilfered or hauled to the museums, held a certain reverence for the articles, at least for academic value.   The Muslim Brotherhood is a corrupt mafia, so as they cement power, they will begin to fight among themselves over various bits and pieces of the grandeur of the Pharaohs.   There will be killings...to be blamed on Copts and Bedouins or Jews...and turf wars for a while, and then there will be a demolition of the iconic structures that were old when Moses was found in the bullrushes.
     The Muslim Brotherhood leaders, like Fidel, like Daniel, like Hugo, like Mao, like the entire panoply of the Saints of Satan will take and turn to cash and/or bullion gold and silver for their own possession during their few remaining days on this plane of existence.   And then, like the Bolsheviks, will gradually destroy whatever is left, still for their own personal gain.
 
     Good Obama....and Good (Sir Edmund) Hillary, and all those fine people, for approving the idea that somehow is it better to have the Muslim Brotherhood running the country next to Israel than to have Mubarek.   It's only fair that we begin to build bridges, because after all, doesn't everybody want peace?

     El Gringo Viejo kicks this back, not in fraternity but as an accusation.   Not even a challenge, because Salem al-Bohary is beneath a challenge.  He is a flea on a dog.
El Gringo Viejo