SAN JACINTO - 21 April 1836

This is a reprint from a previous post.  We had a new set of commentaries about San Jacinto that suffered from an electrical problem during editing.   We are attempting to either resuscitate or re-write the lost submission.

San Jacinto Day - 21 April 1836. Remember the Alamo, Remember Goliad. May they all Rest in Peace.

General Vicente Filisola

The gentleman pictured above was many things.   He was a Spaniard with an Italian name.  He was a veteran of the Napoleanic Wars, and a distinguished Spanish soldier.   He came to New Spain late in the colonial period and served during the transition from Spanish to Mexican control of that area which now would include all of Mexico, Central America, western Canada, and most of what would become the western half of the United States of America.    For a brief period during the rule of Emperor Agustin de Iturbide I of the Mexican Empire 1821 - 1823, General Vicente Filisola served his Emperor as Governor of Central America.

      The good General served only briefly, however, due to the overthrow of the Empire and the establishment of the Republic of Mexico in 1824.   He did provide for an orderly transition from Mexican control to local governance and order, and withdrew his Imperial Army back into Mexico and joined the re-organised Army as a brigadier.

      It is said that Filisola was probably the one who inspired Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna to think of himself as...."The Napoleon of the West"....because of Lopez de Santa Anna's fascination with Napoleon Bonaparte and the legends associated with that Corsican.   Filisola was one of the few people in anyones army who had officer level dealings on a Napoleonic field of battle.

    Vicente Filisola is important to Texans because he was one of those Generals immediately under the command of the all important, self-consumed, pompous Generalissimo Presidente Lopez de Santa Anna. Along with Filisola, and Perfecto de Cos, the Presidente's brother-in-law, and old Castrillon, and Ramirez y Sesma....all Spaniards  by birth and world view, there was also Brigadier Jose' Urrea, the Indian Fighter, a Davy Crockett figure, at once both rough-cut, and aristocratic, and oddly one of only two Mexican general officers fighting in the Texas War of Independence who were born

Mexicans.

    The commander in chief Lopez de Santa Anna, and the lowest ranking general officer were Mexicans.   Lopez de Santa Anna had moved three large elements from all parts of the country from January up to mid-February to do battle against a crafty bunch of scrappers in a place called "nowhere" by some and Texas by others.   Urrea expertly moved a third of the Army along the Texas Coast, aiming to unify with the main body of the Army around a place called San Jacinto.   Urrea also moved quickly, like an early

form of blitzkrieg, although he had five major battles against Texian units numbering from 100 to 500 combatants in each case, and several significant skirmishes which tested his 2,400 effectives severely.

Gen. Jose' Urrea

   He is best remembered, however, as the Mexican general who left orders to deal fairly and well with the Texian Colonel Fannin and the 440 Texian prisoners, only to have his orders countermanded by the Generalissimo Presidente.   So while Urrea had moved up to Victoria del Rio Guadalupe a few miles from Goliad, his subordinate received orders underlining the existing orders from the High Command that all found holding arms against the government would be executed for treason.

     Here, El Gringo Viejo enters a well-documented but rather neglected fact about the the issues of personality, strategy, tactics, honour, and the business of war that the Mexicans were undergoing even as they were winning, fairly easily against the insurrectionists.  To wit:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Words of the hapless Colonel Nicolas de la Portilla      "I was unable, therefore, to carry out the good intentions dictated by my feelings, overcome by the difficult circumstances that surrounded me. I authorized the execution, of thirty adventurers taken prisoners, and setting free those who were colonists or Mexicans.      "These orders always seemed to me harsh, but they were the inevitable result of the barbarous and inhuman decree which declared outlaws those whom it wished to convert into citizens of the republic,  I wished to elude these orders as far as possible without compromising my personal responsibility.       "They doubtlessly surrendered confident that Mexican generosity would not make their surrender useless, for under any other circumstances they would have sold their lives dearly, fighting to the last. I had due regard for the motives that induced them to surrender, and for this reason I used my influence with the general-in-chief to save them, if possible, from being butchered." Diary of the Military Operations of the Division which under the Command of General José Urrea Campaigned in Texas February to March 1836 Translation from Carlos Casteñeda's The Mexican Side of the Texan Revolution (Some headings added by current editor, WLM) For Biographies, Search Handbook of Texas Online (Extract from the Diary of Col. Nicolás de la Portilla) In a Letter Portilla to Urrea....."I feel much distressed at what has occurred here; a scene enacted in cold blood having passed before my eyes which has filled me with horror. All I can say is, that my duty as a soldier, and what I owe to my country, must be my guaranty...." March 26. At seven in the evening I received orders from General SantaAnna by special messenger, instructing me to execute at once all prisoners taken by force of arms agreeable to the general orders on the subject. (I have the original order in my possession.) I kept the matter secret and no oneknew of it except Col. Garay, to whom I communicated the order. At eighto'clock, on the same night, I received a communication from Gen. Urrea byspecial messenger in which among other things he says, "Treat the prisonerswell, especially Fannin. Keep them busy rebuilding the town and erecting afort. Feed them with the cattle you will receive from Refugio." What a cruelcontrast in these opposite instructions! I spent a restless night. sdct March 27.   At daybreak, I decided to carry out the orders of the general-in-chiefbecause I considered them superior. I assembled the whole garrison andordered the prisoners, who were still sleeping, to be awaked. There were 445.(The eighty that had just been taken at Cópano and had, consequently, notborne arms against the government, were set aside.) The prisoners weredivided into three groups and each was placed in charge of an adequateguard, the first under Agustin Alcerrica, the second under Capt. Luis Balderas,and the third under Capt. Antonio Ramírez. I gave instructions to theseofficers to carry out the orders of the supreme government and thegeneral-in-chief. This was immediately done. There was a great contrastin the feelings of the officers and the men. Silence prevailed. Sad at heartI wrote to Gen. Urrea expressing my regret at having been concerned inso painful an affair. I also sent an official account of what I had done,to the general-in-chief.[Portilla to Urrea, Goliad, March 26 1836 and Portilla to Urrea, Goliad, March 27, 1836] ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~      El Gringo Viejo and many old timey Texans know these stories, but they are not well-known any longer.   Newly arriving people with Mexican backgrounds assume they know all and newly arriving people from the United States and elsewhere have seen Davy Crockett on Disney or some variation, and are certain in their knowledge of the issues involved with the period from 1829 through 1846 and the Texas situation.      This is not said with any particular arrogance.   It is known that what El Gringo Viejo knows from his own research is now useless information. Nothing matters in the course of human conduct that cannot be compressed into a six-word phrase to put on a bumper sticker.   What is past is no longer prologue, but rather simply useless white-noise on the left side of the time line.       But as an enemy the man pictured below is known among the old, last remaining Texans who know what Texas really was, as an honorable enemy....a good and patriotic man involved in a grisly profession.     Something like Rommel, perhaps.   Manuel Fernández Castrillón (1761–1836) Fought Texians both at the Battle of the Alamo and at the Battle of San Jacinto. 

Castrillon was Santa Anna's ally through much of their working relationship, but Castrillón often took exception to Santa Anna's decisions during the Texas Revolution. He opposed the hurried assault on the Alamo. Yet when he received his orders to lead the battle's first column of troops, he did so with expert efficiency.

A humane and honorable soldier, Castrillón also pleaded clemency on behalf of the seven Texian fighters who survived the Alamo siege. Castrillón's arguments for mercy were ignored, and the men were executed. Castrillón again stated his protest when Santa Anna ordered the execution of the Goliad prisoners.

Castrillón's compassion was a sign of kindness, not weakness. When the Texians roused Mexican forces from their afternoon siesta on 21 April 1836 at the Battle of San Jacinto, he was one of the few Mexican officers to stand his ground.

His bravery was recorded in the memoirs of Texian second lieutentant Walter Paye Lane:

"As we charged into them the General commanding the Tampico Battalion (their best troops) tried to rally his men, but could not. He drew himself up, faced us, and said in Spanish: 'I have been in forty battles and never showed my back; I am too old to do it now.'

He continues: "Gen. Rusk hallooed to his men: 'don't shoot him,' and knocked up some to their guns; but others ran around and riddled him with balls. I was sorry for him. He was an old Castilian gentleman, Gen. Castrillo."

Honored on both sides of the Texas Revolution—except by Santa Anna, who blamed the loss at San Jacinto in part on Castrillón—he was even buried in the family graveyard of Lorenzo de Zavala, the vice-president of Texas.

     So, all these major footnotes are added into the blog in order to celebrate the victory tomorrow, the 21st day of April, 1836 of the Battle of San Jacinto.   Normally creditted to the efforts of Gen. Sam Houston, who truly was a bigger than life figure, the truth is that Houston was painfully wounded at the beginning of the battle, by a musket ball to the right foot.   It was Gen. (then Lt. Col.) Somervell, commander-in-charge, and the surprize rush of the limited cavalry of the Texian force of a bit fewer than 700 men.....attacking on a Sunday morning.   The head of cavalry squadron in the thickest of the fight  was Capt. Juan Seguin, an arch-enemy of Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna.   Major Mirabeau Bonaparte Lamar was the overall commander of the mounted part of the Texian force, and he would later become a President of Texas for a term.
     The resolve of the Texian force to gain Independence, avenge the atrocities of Goliad and the Alamo allowed the inferior force to pin into a peninsula surrounded by a snake infested bayou, and then essentially destroy the effective force of an Army of 2,500 with superior munitions, armament, artillery, cavalry, stores, and so forth.

     Going back to Gen. Vicente Filisola, it was he who took control of the Mexican Army as it withdrew from San Jacinto.   Lopez de Santa Anna remained under arrest and would later be tranferred to Washington D.C. as an oddity and war-trophy of sorts.   He had been the best general in the field, but also the one most prone to err through arrogance and hubris.   Some say his membership in the Scottish Rite Masonic order saved him from a rough and ready gallows at San Jacinto, since Houston and Somervell were both brother Masons.

     Filisola was met with his columns by Urrea, who forced control from Filisola, and took command of the withdrawal.   The two men would argue and write accusations against one another, and each would write interesting, if self-serving accounts of their experiences during the War.   It is the opinion of El Gringo Viejo that Urrea was the better soldier and was truthful concerning his wishes for the good treatment of the Goliad prisoners of war.

      Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna blamed both of them for everything;  Urrea for arriving too late to San Jacinto, Filisola for not mucking through the mud with cannons and stores any faster (he actually moved 2,000 men, animals, and stores faster than Santa Anna had moved his Army away from San Antonio in pursuit of Houston's Army.)   Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna was a lot like Obama in his ability to blame everything on everybody but himself.

Committed to the dull truth, which always seems to wind up being far more interesting than the false legends or any fiction.....El Gringo Viejo resigns the evening and promises to return to more tales that interest him, and he hopes, the OROGs everywhere.

El Gringo Viejo

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Eric Holder....Liar, Incompetent, Mean, and so what? I mean like, "What difference does it make?"

Thanks, Eric,  for bringing back to mind what a perfectly disgusting slug you are.   You demagogue the State of Arizona to Hell and back because of the 'anti-immigrant" legislation that it had passed and was trying to enforce in order to protect the citizenry and residents of the State from the never ending assault by criminal elements among the illegal alien cohort of the general population in the State.

 

      Mr. General, you are a mendacious poseur exactly like your demagogue boss-man.   If you were a real, live attorney general, you would know that Texas, for instance, has always during my lifetime required certain and verifiable identification of people who are detained, however briefly, by the police agencies in Texas.   Texas Rangers, Texas Department of Public Safety Officers, local Sheriffs' Department commissioned personnel, city police, Constables and their deputies are instructed to first identify the detained person and determine his legal status and present place of residence.

 

     So, checkmate.  I win. You lose.  You are a jackass and a liar.   You are a committed Marxist who is dedicated to filling up the Texas and the other 56 States in the federation with people you consider to be inferior to the point that they will contribute substantially to the demise of the federated union of sovereign States presently known as the United States of America.

     Why do you do that?   You and your Marxist buds?   Because you hate self-sufficiency, individual discretion, traditionalism, and that ephemeral undefinable thing known as Americanism.  You hate common law.  You hate natural law.  You long to apply the solutions created by man to solve problems that frequently do not even exist.   You do those things so that you can take money from people who have a few or many resources and after keeping a considerable amount for yourself, you and your draculene buds spend the rest on programs and efforts designed to enslave the greatest number of proles possible to dependency upon you and your Ghouls of Bondage.

      That is why you want more and more, not less and less of the people you yourself consider to be wholly inferior and therefore unqualified to be decent, self-supporting citizens.  You assume that you are doing something that nobody can understand.   But, El Gringo Viejo is a minor league sociologist, a somewhat experienced liver of life, and a somewhat successful practitioner of the art of living.    If he sees through your invisible fine raiment, then so do many....all better men...and women than you.

 

     Therefore, when you are trying to tell us about your bag-drop on the legal gun dealers in Arizona with your "fast and furious" program that winds up killing almost 500 innocent Mexicans and at least 3 innocent Americans, JUST SHUT UP.  WE KNOW YOU ARE LYING.  It should take about two weeks of investigation to "get to the bottom" of any such programme's  agent of culpability.  Either you are totally incompetent, or you are totally corrupt.  In your case you might well be a simultaneous switch-hitter.

 

     Therefore, we do appreciate that you revealed your innermost ignorance, stupidity, and craven corruption with your slimy pronouncement during recent days that .....granting citizenship to illegal aliens is a civil right...!

      This one thing should prove that you have no idea what citizenship is, and/or that you care neither to know nor to avail yourself of such knowledge. It proves only, once again, you are moved to hasten to the voting booth people who you feel and/or know to be inferior humans, incapable of performing the most basic functions of citizenship.  Your frenzy in pushing the people you consider to be slack jawed slugs through the turnstiles to the oath of allegiance are those you hope and assume will be making their second stop in the USA as citizens, at every welfare dispensary available to them.   The more slack jaw slugs, anchorbabymothers , repeat criminals, welfare chiselers, and 300 pound summer school-lunch fourth graders, and Russian Islamic Terrorists you can cattle-drive to the Detroit Academy of America Do0 - Dah you feel will be that much faster that America is ground into the dust.     You can then ridicule the wasted dump that you have gleefully destroyed.


     Not long ago, about 90% of the Mexicans and other Latin Americans who came up to the border and crossed illegally were decent folk, with catechism, and essentially hard-working persons.    After forty years of hard-core force-fed welfare...we are now attracting both legal and illegal types who are about 50% cognizant of the basic precepts of citizenship.  The other 50% is arriving to these shores and banks in order to harvest the bounty of others.  The Chechen brothers are an example.....an entire family of thugs, slugs, moochers, murderers, arrogant, self-absorbed sub-human scum. Just like Auntie Zietuni Obama and Uncle Omar Onyango Obama....welfare, illegal alien scum.
       This is the product of the welfare state that the socialist - progressives have created and to which American Capitalism has decided to prostitute itself.
       "You just gotta help people get started.  It's only fair."   And the National Socialist big business and big banking interests put the money in the bank...money that has been taken at the point of a gun by the IRS from the people who are actually working to make 20,000 dollars to 1,000,000 dollars per year.....while another smug slug of a Marxist talks about "paying your fair share".   Aunt Zietuni and Uncle Omar have had several helpings of fair shares....along with almost 1,000,000 anchorbabymothers.

El Gringo Viejo

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Life on the Hacienda (and by the Quinta)

     This is a little aside.  The OROG will remember the other day that we posted a picture of Alvaro (our mayordomo) working on one of the posts that forms the half of the anchor of the main gate of the Hacienda de la Vega.   That composite stone post...in Spanish "muro" (Arabic) or "Castillo" (Latin).....pre-dates World War II.   It is kind of a "living" monument. 

Typical Cristero Battalion level bivouac scene

      When it was put in, the nearest paved road was 20 miles away.   It was the original Pan American Highway and even that had just been completed.  Mexico Firsters and America Firsters said that highway would be the end of national sovereignty and that before long the (Americans)(Mexicans) would eat the country and exploit the neighbour to ruin.



    There was  no electricity except for a couple of diesel generators within a two-hundred square mile area.   Smoke was just settling from the Cristero War (1926 - 1929), the disorders from the Agrarian Reform (1933 - 1934 in the area around the Hacienda de Santa Engracia), and even resentments from the not-so-distant Mexican Revolution of 1910 - 1917.  It was a daunting adventure....perhaps Quixotic...to try to establish a property with essentially no infrastructure save for a very, very bumpy and easily interrupted by heavy rains road from Cd. Victoria.  That drive, in those days would essentially take the entire day....to go 20 miles.

 

   There was another way in, but it was fraught with its own inconveniences.   But how in the name of Jumping Jehoshaphat all that was necessary was ever brought in to the newly formed property, ever made it to its intended destination, in 1934...El Gringo Viejo finds it all amazing.

    But, moving to the present, the grandson of the fellow who established the Hacienda de La Vega is a civil engineer.   He and my Man Friday, Alvaro got together and determined to  fix the list of the venerable stone column.  What El Gringo Viejo places here to the attention of the OROG is the detailed plan that was drawn up to show exactly how an 11 tonne column  was to be re-positioned.   While it brings a smile to most, it is serious, please also remember that this was done essentially by one person with a somewhat limited helper.   The excavation required went down four feet, and it had to be done by hand.  There were two back-hoes available but no one really wanted to have his back-hoe take on the 11 tonne  columnzilla.   To wit:







This is Alvaro digging out and adjusting the position of
the huge, round foundational rocks under the column.
Amazing.

 





This shows the procedure.  "Sacar piedras" means
"take out rocks".  Each step was dealt with thusly
and the whole job was done manually.  It should
be noted that, when done, the column plumbed perfect.





 

 

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Thanks for putting up with this little, unexpected vignette.

El Gringo Viejo

 

 

 

 

 



What is the surprise?

Folks talk past each other continuously.  Platitudes, trite sayings, overgeneralisations, dogmatic statements all abound.   As a person with an opinion, perhaps El Gringo Viejo is guilty at least as much as the worst among us.  And so, the solution for the body politic in dealing with me is to simply say, "He is too opinionated", or "He is too extreme".

 

     That solves the problem.  Relegate the Old Fool off to the attic, or to the shed out back that has a bed and a bit of a shower room, and tell him that supper will be brought to him in a little while.

 

     But, in the ephemeral swirl of ideas and notions, theories and theorem, thesis and antithesis and synthesis....what is known to be true because it is true, cannot be denied.   One who challenges what is demonstrably the truth cannot be accommodated solely for the purpose of being "reasonable" or "willing to compromise" or "finding common ground".

 

 

These truths are certainly self-evident:

     It might be inappropriate to say, but immigration is not necessarily a good thing.   If people arrive here to complain that things aren't to the liking here, because in Lower South Garbagia the government gave people two hundred quarts of borscht every three days, free, then there is a problem.
 
     Folks should not be surprised that the two Marathon bombers were on welfare.  Most people arriving to the United States at this time expect to have free everything.  Things have changed.   With the 1986 Amnesty, which directly reinforced the entitlement notions induced by the "War on Poverty", it was one of the main objectives, especially of the collaterals who were permitted to come in once the Amnestied relative was legalised, to obtain free goodies.
     We owned a very nice Laundromat for many years here on the border.   There were three girls who were collaterals to another, slightly older, girl who were talking.
      The older girl was giving the others a philosophical orientation about their new digs.  They were unaware that El Gringo Viejo could understand them.  She stated, and I shall remember this forever, "It's a lot better here.   Here the government takes care of you when you get tired.  If you learn how to apply, you can get almost  anything for free.  The only thing wrong is the damned gringos that live here."

     The time of the people sailing past the Statue of Liberty with nervous anticipation and joy for the smell of liberty and opportunity is dimming.    They still come, but in an ever decreasing percentage of the whole.   One must consider that one-third of all Muslim men in London are living with four wives, and all four wives are on the dole.   It is a typical form of benefit harvesting.   The Brits permit it and it might be their final blow as a place with even a residual of majesty.   Perhaps they might learn early enough that if Muslim move into a non-Sharia nation that they must abide by the laws of that nation, but that is not the view to-day, either of their immigrants nor substantial numbers of ours.

     Barak Obama's aunt Zietuni Obama and uncle Omar Onyango Obama have lived in that same area of Massachusetts....Boston and surroundings....for a combined 40 years...completely on the public dole.  And they feel offended that they have not had better treatment and consideration.  Uncle Omar has made fame as a repeat DWI.  And, he does not use a public defender.   He has upper-drawer Philadelphia lawyers.  He blatantly threatens that if anything happens to him, he has the President's private number....it might be the bottle talking....it might not.  But he does have 1,000 dollar/hour attorney intervention.   His only work is off the record at ..... a liquor store.    Auntie Zietuni and Uncle Omar were and are both illegal aliens and have been ordered deported on occasion...but they still here.
     Auntie Zietuni has complained loud and long, a la Maxine Waters  and Shirley Jackson Lee about the deplorable treatment she has had, while dressed up like a something or another and with her nails glittering and her hair extenders glistening.  It is too much to be believed.

     And now we learn, further, that although participation in public assistance, certainly, is a matter of public record,  the governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts has sealed the Boston Bombers' participation in the various and sundry public assistance programs that were advantaged by them.   Auntie Zeituni and Uncle Omar cost the taxpayers a combined 120,000 per year at this time with the housing, food, recreation, walking around money, Medicaid, etc.   You just gotta love it.....

There come times when being reasonable is like drinking poison.   If I continue to drink this hemlock juice it is going to kill me.  If I continue to answer the questions, "Do you think a child should go hungry?  Don't you think someone should feed him?"    The time has long past for mobile spaying and neutering clinics, and the outright abolition of public assistance.   The grocery chains and the Farm Bureau and the Banks be damned!

El Gringo Viejo

Revisions, extensions, and other ramblings

First, a glorb of bilge that would truly puke a buzzard off'n a gut wagon.

 

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An anthropologist proposed a game to the kids in an African tribe. He put a basket full of fruit near a tree and told the kids that who ever got there first won the sweet fruits. When he told them to run they all took each others hands and ran together, then sat together enjoying their treats. When he asked them why they had run like that as one could have had all the fruits for himself they said: ''UBUNTU, how can one of us be happy if all the other ones are sad?''

'UBUNTU' in the Xhosa culture means: "I am because we are"

More photos from Tom Hughes

 

 

This is the thinking that is being taught in universities, feeling groups, new improved relevant churches, and the Girl Scouts of America (new and modern, meaningful, tolerant, relevant, diverse Girl Scouts).   It speaks to a certain understanding that communism is the highest form of human achievement and development.  If we would only yield to an over-arching reality and controlling force, and give up any sense of self, then we would be materially happy.

    They draw the obvious parallels with Judeo-Christian instructions about charity, giving, thinking of others, caring for the poor, feeding the hungry, caring for the imprisoned, etc.  But the utopians always forget basic things.   They forget that Christianity is about redemption and salvation.  The progressives are about lining people up to eat, to go to the doctor, to go to the unisex restroom, and other forms of fairness and social democracy.   They are not about feeding the poor.   They are about telling everybody what to eat, when to eat it, and that they must like it.  The only exemption will be a certain elite who know better than the other 85% of the population that must follow orders.

 

     The story about Little Black Sambo is ridiculed by leftists in their hypocritical attempt to show their disdain for racism.  (For an illustration of what really good commies think about Negroes, we refer you to the writings of Ernesto Guevara ).  We are told that the use of the word "Sambo" is racist.  We are told to disregard Sambo's cunning, work, and effort that, in the end, proves to be victorious over the tiger.  The whole story is just an attempt to ridicule and diminish the value of Negroes and traditional life.    We are also instructed that Sambo is not a good representative of the collective.  Sambo must not exist.  Children sitting in a circle, who all love each other and who practice the sacrament of  .....from each according to his ability and to each according to his needs...then they will have Nirvana, Happiness, Contentment.

 

     Sambo?  Well, he is in another place....called a Gulag.

 

We are sure that Tom Hughes is a nice guy.  He went to State University of New York and he works for the Unity Employment Services.  He also really must believe that the Xhosas are practitioners of their perfected philosophy....and devoid of the frailties that affect white males who own guns and who never do anything good for anyone all the time....and who hate....and are not inclusive....or good....and everything.

     Tom is surely aware of how communists have elevated tribal civilisations .  Georgia in the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics comes to mind.  Pol Pot in Cambodia comes to mind.  Fidel and Raul and Che, in Cuba come to mind.   Mao Tse Tung comes to mind.  Adolf comes to mind.   We're talking about a veritable Hell of Fame of socialist bastards who have created Workers' Paradises in every corner of Planet Earth.

 

Sheesh!

 

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Now, a bit of an explanation about El Zorro's and Lee's submissions and my comments about them. 

 

    El Zorro's observations and lamentations about the notion that children are part of a circle of possession of a communal greater reality are spot on in the culture war.

 

     AND......The War is on.

   Bestiality, polygamy, homosexuality, Sado-Masochist Marriage Labour Unions and Adoption Services and Baseball Churches, NAMBLA adoption liberty,  Temporary Adoption and Escort Service Clubs, Community Sexual Investigation and Experimentation Clubs all seem reasonable.....normal....regular....you know....like .... freedom....NO?

 

     After all, women should be allowed more liberty. No?  To-day's artificial Mormons are so....out of date.  The Bible says that everybody should have 500 concubines and 200 wives and then take Uriah's wife if you wish.  Right?   So...we are going to set up more and more and more clubs of thugs who gently force women into the Church of the Latter Day Aid to Families with Dependent Children and the Latter Night Saints....so that the Obamites can spread the wealth of the Millionaires and Billionaires.   Right?

 

     And if one thinks that these things are impossible....remember this.   They all....all...already exist in various places throughout the Planet Earth....throughout the First World...throughout the Third World....and in the United States of America.

 

     With each step towards being "reasonable"  and "fair" we step closer to turning the entire human race into something like a porno-movie / municipal zoo factory.    Could anybody believe how AFDC has produced Detroit in less than three generations?  Could anybody believe 20 years ago that Detroit would become something so gross, that if any normal person mentions the word "Detroit", he is immediately called a racist?    It is proof perfect that the anti-religionist and the progressive rationalists provide the certain path to perdition.

 

     And....it is all designed to destroy the one place where the greatest true liberty and greatest improvement of the human condition ever existed.     Remember to replace anything that is previously thought to be disgusting with words that sound pleasant and repeat those pleasant sounding words frequently.  Before long...evil become goodness....hideousness becomes beauty.....death becomes life.....darkness becomes light.....slavery becomes freedom and poverty becomes wealth.   And, en route, always aim for control of The Children.

 

Chalk up a BIG 10 - 4 for El Zorro. 

 

 

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THEN....the note from Lee.  One or two folks may have reasonably thought that Lee or El Gringo Viejo were saying that the professor from yesterday's posting was spot on.  Such is not the case.

 

     The Professor is spot-near.   His calculations are excellent, and his data is excellent, and his interpretations are very good.   He errs, however, when he says that trepidation on the part of anti-Keynesians and central government manipulation of the money supply of any given country about Zimbabwe-like inflation is "nonsense". 

 

     The fact is that to achieve hyper-inflation...using a baseball analogy...one must cross first base if he ever intends to reach home base.

 

     Plus, using the good professor's examples, he was a bit too dismissive of other realities that occur when governments  go on a pre-emptive "let them eat Pizza a la mode" strike to feed the masses free vacations to Danish massage parlours  and Mercedes Benzes.  Once again, gong to Mexico, it took Mexico 20 years to recover from the profligacy of Echeverria's and Lopez Portillo's contiguous 12 years of profligate madness.   And....that was never quite hyper-inflation, but, since Mexico was a relatively large country, with a relatively large and complex economy, wounds were very difficult from which to recover.

 

     The analogy would be like hitting a roach with a grain of sand thrown by mosquito.   That would be Cyprus.   Mexico from 1977 through nearly the turn of the century was more like a moderately large bull-elephant being shot by 3 rounds from 50 caliber elephant gun.   That patient goes in to the hospital with  an evaluation of "extremely grave".   The recovery finally happened, but there are still scars.  And there was no "real hyperinflation". 

 

     We understand that there is scale in things.  Mexico's GNP is the equivalent of all of Africa's.   It is twice the amount of Sub-Saharan Africa. 

 

      Texas's GNP is almost the exact same amount of  Mexico's.

 

      Right now, the United States of America, with fools like Bernanke, Geithner, Obama, and their cohorts and minions in charge...."You didn't build it!!   You didn't do that by yourself!!" are the ones in charge.   These are people who want revenge and control.   They want to give the oppressed  their just reparations.  They are madmen.  They are to economics what the "Reverend" Mr. Wright is to religion.   These are the commanders on the bridge of the Ship of Fools.   So, one of the main ingredients required for the Professor's perfect storm to arrive at a hyper-inflation is very much in place.   Just think of the ridiculous, demagogic manipulation and purposeful destruction of the housing market.

 

     So Dr. Steve Hanke is one of the Good Guys, but this time he only hit a triple with two men on base.   No Grand Slam....but a good hit.

 

 

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 THEN, about the Quinta Tesoro de la Sierra Madre.

     During my last stay, on the second day, El Gringo Viejo went to the nearby village and made his rounds.  At the little seafood "hole in the wall" place where El Gringo Viejo maintains an "office" we met with the dismaying news that a man, wife, and child had been gunned  down only a few blocks from the little seafood place.   They had been accused of calling authority and the military with information about the left-over remnants of the people who had been running amuck in the area for the last two years.   Their information had resulted in set of major arrests, detentions, deportations to American courts, long sentences into the really deep prisons meant for really bad people in central Mexico.
     The perpetrators had been arrested shortly afterwards, others of their small group were dealt with finality about forty miles away.  Other people, neighbours and friends of the three victims, had been quick to give information to the Army about the guilty parties.   For the next three weeks El Gringo Viejo and other "stand out"  people actually hung around, in order to demonstrate solidarity...simply by being out in the open....going about our business.


This is a Powder Puff bush that has just gone into full
bloom.  It is an attractor of very docile bees and small
wasps that are critical in citrus pollination, and also
 attacking bugs that are actually dangerous to plants.

     All the big harvest trucks carrying the crews of young men out to the orchards early each morning....all the regular people....did a remarkable thing.   We all just stayed in place, doing the things normal people do.   Some of it was because the thudding and thumping of Apache attack helicopters and the companies of infantry moving around in force....and some of it was because we knew that the war had been won in our area and we were not going to retreat from victory.
 

     And  that is the way that was.  And for three weeks....nothing more happened.   And the harvest goes on.  And we kept moving around...day or night.

Then, we had a small victory with the finishing of our little carport.  It is, like the Quinta, a rustic addition to a rustic place.   But, we really needed finally to put in a place where the sun did not punish a vehicle during the day.  And now we have it.   It took about four months of planning and impromptu modifications and changes in direction.  We first had thought about putting on a thatched roof.   But then, since our place has no thatching anywhere, we decided to keep the same "look" with the carport.   It cost too much, took too long, and was worth it.

   Alvaro essentially designed and built it by himself.    He then went on to salvage the 

gatepost of the entrance of the Hacienda de La Vega (our neighbours) due to his architectural and engineering ability.  It was all, in truth, one of his finest hours.   This picture to the right shows Alvaro with BeBe, from our "famous" front entrance, standing in front of his carport construction project.

     Now, concerning these pictures, they have been a bit difficult for me to tame, so if you need to reduce them, feel free to.    Some people want to know sometimes what we mean about our little mud hut....they may have seem some of the older pictures on the web-site, and want to know if the place is holding up at all.  So this is just a bit of a refresher to remind people that much of what El Gringo Viejo says is true.

  
   And, finally, this is Alvaro's other project, about 50 yards away from the carport.   He is shown here with his assistant "Lirio", performing artificial life-extension on the "muro" or "Castillo" which anchors the gates of the entrance of the Hacienda de La Vega.
     The muros were put in back in 1936.  This one gradually has floated, until it became known at "La Torre de Piza".  It weighs about 11 tons.  It is anchored 9 feet below the surface, and its foundation stones are about the sizes of peck and bushel baskets.
     Alvaro excavated, flooded, and winched with block and tackle (improvised) the monster leaning tower back away from its four inch list during a four day war with an enemy that resisted removal from his comfortable bed.  It had moved to the point however that citrus harvesting trucks could no longer move through.   So, while many of the old trees have been removed and replanted, there is still about 13 acres of Valencia that can be harvested, so it was necessary for the light crop this season.  In about the second season from now, it will be shown to have been very necessary to have had made this maneuver.

     So we have begun the beguine.    Please accept my appreciation for your being here.   Please forgive the somewhat peculiar advertisements that have appeared due to Google's notion about the nature of our clientele.   Although we are not paranoid, it seems as though it was an intentional act to embarrass this blogsite due to the fact that we are ''un-preferred" political commentators.   We brought our opinion to their attention is somewhat definite and finite terms and things did, we have to admit, change back so a more normal set of presentations.
El Gringo Viejo

Take Our Choice: Zimbabwe or Weimar Republic? Argentina or Brazil?

El Gringo Viejo has not been on the run or in jail. We had a busy stay of it down at our place. A little bad news and a lot of good news. He returns to kind messages to both him and to the OROG community, thereby proving that Earth actually does require his humbly noble existence in order to remain in orbit around some distant sun.

   Folks who have a conservative and rational understanding of economics know that any kind of socialist, progressive, or Keynesian approach to financing the buying of cake or vodka for the masses, paid for with government free money results in the ruin of the country  under concern.   The inflation of the money supply....not rising prices....is the cause of the ruin.
     Simple cases of prices rising due to free market conditions ....(such as eggs for 5.00 dollars each in Anchorage in 1900 was due to an oversupply of miners and a shortage of chickens)...is different from Luis Echeverria Alvarez, as a socialist, deciding that the way to give Mexicans lots of money and make them rich was to force the Bank of Mexico to borrow shiploads of money and give it away, essentially in helicopter drops over populated areas.
      LEA's Obama-like spread-the-wealth notion, expressed on steroids worked fine....and please do not worry....Luis Echeverria Alvarez made sure to get his spread of the wealth.   And Mexicans were soon paying 20 pesos for a hamburger that had cost one peso the year before.

     So...we watch here and wait....but the shoes will fall, sooner rather than later.    The explanation forwarded by Lee is presented  by Professor Steve Hanke, a very solid thinker, and a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute.    The work is somewhat dry....but it reads well.  It is also pleasantly short enough to read twice.

     In a way, it points out that the reason that we have as little "inflation" as we do is because of our shirts being the cleanest of all the shirts in the dirty clothes basket.   European unemployment and social welfare obligations remain at grotesque levels, and their governmental budget deficits are ghastly.    Mexico and Canada have had several years of balanced (or some semblance of balanced) budgets and fairly steady rightward governance.  That is why the American dollar is losing against the other two nations' currencies.

 

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David,

    This may be an explanation why the dollar has not declined in value as fast as I had expected.

Lee

Nothing “Hyper” About US Inflation By Steve Hanke

While inflation seems to be on everyone’s mind these days, misconceptions abound. Indeed, few concepts in economics are as misunderstood as inflation. This month I take a look at some common questions about inflation, and a few that I wish more people were asking. Is hyperinflation coming to the U.S.? No. Hyperinflation arises only under the most extreme conditions, such as war, political mismanagement, or the transition from a command economy to a market-based economy. If you compare the U.S. to countries that have experienced hyperinflation — think Iran, North Korea, Zimbabwe, and the former Yugoslavia, for example — the U.S. doesn’t even come close. Hyperinflation begins when a country experiences an inflation rate of greater than 50% percent per month — which comes out to about 13,000% per year. Although it experienced elevated inflation around the time of the Revolution and the Civil War, the United States has never passed this magic mark. At present, the U.S. inflation rate, measured by the consumer price index (CPI), is less than 2% per year. So, to say that the U.S. is on its way to hyperinflation is just nonsense. But what about Quantitative Easing? Won’t that cause high inflation? No, at least not under the current QE program. What many people fail to understand is that the money created by the Fed, through programs like Quantitative Easing, is what’s known as “state money” (monetary base). In the U.S., this makes up only 15% of the money supply, broadly measured. The remainder is made up of “bank money” — the allimportant portion of the money supply produced by banks, through deposit creation. So, while the Fed has more than tripled the supply of state money since the collapse of Lehman Brothers, in September 2008, this component of the money supply is still paltry compared to the total money supply. In fact, when measured broadly, using a Divisia M4 metric, the U.S. money supply is actually 6% below trend (see the accompanying chart). There are a number of factors that affect the growth of money, but there are two main factors that have hampered broad money growth in the United States since the financial crisis. Not surprisingly, they are both government created. The first is the squeeze that has been put on the banks, as a result of Dodd-Frank and Basel III capital- asset ratio hikes. By requiring banks to hold more capital per dollar of assets (read: loans), the regulators have put a constraint on bank’s balance sheets, which limits their ability to lend. In consequence, money supply growth has been slower than it would have otherwise been. The other factor is the credit crunch created by the Fed’s zero- interest-rate policy. This has dried up the interbank lending market, because banks have little financial incentive to lend to each other. Without a well-functioning interbank lending market to ensure balance sheet liquidity, banks have been unwilling to scale up or even retain their forward loan commitments. The end result is a loose state money/tight bank money monetary mix. And since bank money makes up 85% of the total, the money supply in the U.S. is still, on balance, tight and below trend. That said, the broad Divisia M4 measure of the money supply has started to show signs of life in recent months. How Can The Fed Avoid Inflation Going Forward? The Fed should start paying attention to the dollar. While operating under a regime of inflation targeting and a floating U.S. dollar exchange rate, Chairman Bernanke has seen fit to ignore fluctuations in the value of the dollar. Indeed, changes in the dollar’s exchange value do not appear as one of the six metrics on “Bernanke’s Dashboard” — the one the chairman uses to gauge the appropriateness of monetary policy. Perhaps this explains why Bernanke has been dismissive of questions suggesting that changes in the dollar’s exchange value influence either commodity prices or more broad gauges of inflation. The relationship between the dollar’s value and inflation has been abundantly clear for the last decade. As Nobelist Robert Mundell has convincingly argued, changes in exchange rates transmit inflation (or deflation) into economies, and they can do so rapidly. This relationship was particularly pronounced during the financial crisis (see the accompanying chart). Indeed, from 2007-09, the monthly year-over-year percent changes in the consumer price index and in the USD/EUR exchange rate have a correlation of 0.75. As can be seen in the chart, there is a roughly two-month lag between changes in the USD/EUR exchange rate and in the CPI; when we factor in this lag, the correlation strengthens to 0.94. By ignoring this, Bernanke was “flying blind” in the initial months of the crisis. In consequence, the Fed failed to stabilize the USD/EUR exchange rate, which swung dramatically in the months surrounding the collapse of Lehman Brothers. Accordingly, the Fed acted too slowly in cutting the federal funds rate to stabilize inflation, which swung from an alarming rate of over 5% (year-over-year), to a negative (deflationary) rate in a matter of a few short months. If Bernanke had been monitoring the USD/EUR exchange rate, he would have realized that he was engaging in an ultra-tight monetary policy in the early months of the financial crisis. He would have known then to act much sooner than December 2008 — almost two months after the Lehman bankruptcy. Perhaps if he had tried to stabilize the value of the greenback, the bankruptcy may never have occurred in the first place. Regards, Steve Hanke for The Daily Reckoning Ed. Note: Steve H. Hanke is a Professor of Applied Economics at The Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute in Washington, D.C. You can follow Prof. Hanke on Twitter: @Steve_Hanke1