Fun Stuff - The Anglican Curmudgeon Vacations by Jousting with Other Windmills

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     One would think that the Anglican Curmudgeon would just as soon sit in his study and listen to chamber music and enjoy a generous (but moderate) helping of some fine wine, a Chateau Petrus perhaps....nodding off a bit as he luxuriates in well-deserved rest.  His legal wars against the secular humanist usurpers of the Anglican Church and its traditions take up 30 hours of each of his days.   He is, in many ways, the intellectual Sherlock Holmes, the analyst Perry Mason, and audacious and brave Cisco Kid....and it must be exhausting.

Mons. Admiral Baudin

   He finds time, however, to remind El Gringo Viejo that somebody has some thing that Texas and all Texians might want.  The disgusting wooden and cork stump of a prosthetic lower leg  that Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna had lost during a foolish, pointless military gesture/manoeuver against what must have been a very perplexed French Admiral Baudin.

     Two and one-half years after leading one of the most powerful armies on Planet Earth to multiple victories on multiple fronts against an enemy hopelessly mired in its own braggadocio, and then losing the  critical, and final,  battle in an incredibly (allow the writer to accentuate the meaning of incredible....ie - beyond the reach of believability) stupid, costly, cowardly, and disgusting breach of duty and trust, he was back.

     Having been allowed to return from Washington, D,C.  and New York to his very young wife, then 18 years old with a 3 year old infant son, part of the aristocratic structure of Xalapa, capital of Vera Cruz State, and her dowry-home, the Hacienda de Landeros....he leapt again at the opportunity to serve.   This time it was another batch of meddlesome Frogs who always seemed to want to be re-paid for something.  This time it was for failure of the Mexican authorities to keep the public peace and order after the disastrous exploits of the self-same Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna's repression of the liberal, Republican States who had cloven unto the Mexican Constitution of 1824.   Governmental and social structure broke down severely in 1836 throughout Mexico, and especially where there was wealth, meaning especially in a place like Mexico City.   A French pastry chef who ran an academy and served finesse de patisserie of great fame, demanded recompense for the fact that the unwashed classes had literally burned down the bakery.   He wanted 3,000 pesos in silver, and all final French public and private claims against the Government finally came to an amount in excess of 600,000 pesos....read to-day, perhaps  20 billion dollars, or more.

     Antonio's "service" to his country was unauthorised and un-anticipated.  The French forces went about a careful demobilisation of Mexican resistance and degraded some of the artillery assets in Vera Cruz city.  They had also blockaded the entire Mexican east coast.  The Brits had come up to blockade the port of Corpus Christi, where much of Mexico's import/export was taking place during the "inconvenience". The Brits were actually protecting the port against Texian intervention, passively siding with the Mexican position. 

     Antonio rode into the fray with a hastily, ill-prepared force that Lopez de Santa Anna thought could out-number-to-death the French.  He failed to take into consideration the two heavily armed frigates and the man-o-war with 56 six - pounders,  28 per side.   Such firepower made quick work of any "shore mounted" infantry.   With a dead  horse, and his own lower leg shredded, and his ankle no longer a pertinent assembly, surgeons removed his lower leg.
    In s0ucceeding days, Antonio drew himself up for what should have been written up long, long ago as some event in a roaringly humorous opera, "Honours to the General's Leg".    Amid prancing chargers, and gloriously uniformed soldiers, with pennants, flags, standards, and ribbons flapping and bands playing stirring tunes....The lower leg of     Antonio de Padua María Severino  López de Santa Anna y Pérez de Lebrón, General of the Provisional Army of Vera Cruz was buried with full military honours and with the Sign of the Cross and ample amounts of Holy Water.

     This was all wonderment to the French who were well down the road already to having the Brits negotiate a settlement on French terms that the Mexicans accepted and with which they complied.   It all makes sense, although it helps to be completely insane, as in these days with a lunatic marxist loose in the White House.

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     Now, we move on to the point.   During the next significant war, Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna is once again at the head (or tail) of an Army...a large Army waiting to receive a slightly smaller army commanded by General Winfield (Fuss and Feathers) Scott.   Everything fell apart when the left flank of the Mexican defence feel apart, and a route among untrained National Guard occurred.   Lopez de Santa Anna was a fool, a cad, an evil person, but he really was a good general.  He had gone to Vera Cruz after successfully blunting the American northern strategy, outside of Saltillo.   Some think he may have been drugged up, or drunk and drugged up, or just realistic.   Remember the comments of Rommel who is said to have said either "If they gain a toe-hold, to-morrow it will be a foot-hold, and a month from now they will be crossing the Rhine"....when he began receiving reports from Normandy;  or  "If they are still there to-morrow and the Panzers are not mobilised to-night, the War is over."   Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna was wise enough to know that interior lines of provision and communication help to win wars, but for Germany and the Confederacy...and Mexico....not so much.

     He dashed to the next "must" defence point...Puebla de los Angeles, guarding the best (and only realistic) pass over the Ixtaccihuatl and Popocatepetl mountain nexus....with their snow covered peaks above 17,000 fasl.   When this 100 mile dash (190 miles by road) started expendables were left behind.   Among those things were clothes, finery, and personal items that would not be needed.   Some of Antonio Lopez's stuff in trunks was entrusted to teamsters and a few younger officers.  They were told to take the things to the Hacienda de Landero and to deliver everything to Antonio's new mid-teen wife.   The old one was worn out and dead at the age of 22.

Scott and Worth arrange for the formal surrender
 and Mass to celebrate the Peace.  Metropolitan
 Cathedral of Mexico is in the background.

     Somehow, the Illinois Fourth Regiment of Volunteers, apparently a mixed infantry and cavalry group chased down one of these trains and upon opening the trunks found what they determined to be "Santy Anny's wooden leg".   In fact, it was Santy Anny's prosthetic leg...part wood and part cork.  But!   It was not Santy Anny's only wooden leg.   He had several.   Supposedly, he had two of ebony, which considering the weight of ebony leaves the student of history scratching his head.   The area around where Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna lived was and is replete with master carpenters still dedicated to semi-custom and custom rustic and refined furniture.   There are literally hundreds of 'carpenteros" and "carpenterias".   It is known that many items were brought as gifts by both peon and aristocrat made of and by these skilled people among them the very coffin that was used for Antonio's first wife interment.  (We should point out that Antonio might have actually had feelings greater than what he reserved for himself in his emotional dealing with this beautiful and talented girl.   It is said that he had to have minders among the servants who feared that his silence and dark countenance foreshadowed an extreme emotional distress that might lead up to suicide.)

     It is probable that Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna had numerous prosthetic legs.  He had enough to preside over the disastrous retreat all the way into the Zocalo in downtown-most Mexico City....and he had a selection to take with him on his subsequent self-imposed exile, which he took before the American forces arrived in the greatest, most populous, and most advanced city in the Americas at that time.   So when people tell you that the Americans "picked on" the poor stupid, defenceless Mexicans...please stop listening.  Mexico had a greater GNP, a greater supposed and possible land area, more literate people, unlimited resources, a larger standing army, interior lines of communication /supply and an unconquerable geography.   They lost when they should easily have won a war, because it pleasured them to argue among themselves as the Gringos came into the Valley of Tenochtitlan, marching in good order to  the bands playing Yankee Doodle and Green Grow the Rushes,  O! .

    So, the folks in Indiana have something that Texians really neither want nor need.  Were it even to exist as a result of battle with Texians on Texas soil, that might be different.   And, it is not because of any disrespect or discrimination.   One of the true gentlemen and examples of valour under fire was Old General Castrillon whom the Texian officers tried to exempt from the effective fire of their soldiers.  It was to no avail and the old man was killed in action, facing the enemy.   He had been an advocate of military rules and considerations for the POWs and civilians, which Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna eschewed with scorn and laughter.   But Castrillon was buried on Texas soil, in the family cemetery of his friend in Mexico and enemy in Texas, Lorenzo de Zavala, the first Vice-President of Texas, financier of the Texian Revolt, Inscriptor of the Declaration of Independence and most of the provisional Constitution of the Republic of Texas.

    The article sent by my aforementioned favourite authority on matters pertaining to legal, historical, and social matters than involve Anglicanism as a Catholic and Orthodox and Evangelical force in Christianity was of considerable interest.  There was a throw-away attachment that showed a bit about the writers and editors of the article and that was the flag depicting a cannon, and written upon the flag was the challenge, "Come and Take It!"    Perhaps El Gringo Viejo is being overly sensitive, but the particular flag with the cannon pertained to an issue that preceded even The Alamo, and oddly enough was a contention between the Texians and an Anglo Mexican by the name of Colonel Juan Bradburn.   He is buried at or near the cemetery where El Gringo Viejo's father-in-law's village of birth is found on the banks of the Rio Grande...a place called Grangeno  (grah  HEIN oh) which means a type of riverine hackberry, very popular berries for songbirds southern Texas.

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May 12, 2014

Posted in Uncategorized

Illinois Museum Has Gen. Santa Anna’s Legs, Texas Wants It Back

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It is very hard for non-Texans to understand the value of Texas history in the Lone Star State. I write this as someone who grew up in the most non-Texas place in the country (New York City), and came to Texas for the first time for my job interview (layovers at DFW and IAH don’t count). But, Texas history is a big, big deal. And central to that history are the battles fought against Mexico for independence. Central to that war was General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, who led the attack on The Alamo, and who ultimately surrendered to the Texians following the Battle of San Jacinto. And, Texas is gearing up for another battle over Santa Anna. This time with Illinois.

Last month, the San Jacinto Battle Monument and Museum launched a petition on the White House website, hoping to get 100,000 signatures to lure an important artifact to Texas. It suggested that the wooden and cork leg used by Gen. Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna — the villain of the Alamo and Goliad and a figure deeply embedded in Texas lore — should join other historical items in a Texas museum.

The leg, curiously enough, is in the Illinois State Military Museum in Springfield. And officials there are in no mood to give it up.

“We know Santa Anna is a big deal in Texas history,” said museum curator Bill Lear. “But it’s here. It’s going to stay here. You don’t trade artifacts.”

Given that attitude, San Jacinto museum officials thought a petition might do something to kick it loose.

“We tried to get the White House to diplomatically tiptoe between the interests of the states,” said San Jacinto museum president Larry Spasic.

There is a certain irony that Texas, where the President’s federal authority is not exactly respected, is asking the President, a native son of Illinois, for federal help here.

“I cannot imagine a president from Illinois seriously trying to remove a piece of Illinois history and send it to Texas,” he said this week.

I couldn’t agree more.
How the heck did Illinois get the leg anyway?

While Texas has coveted the piece for years, the state has no real claim to it.

Santa Anna had both his original legs when he led Mexican forces against the rebellious Texians. He eventually lost the war and territory in the 1836 Battle of San Jacinto.

Two years later, back in Veracruz, Mexico, Santa Anna was fighting invading French forces when cannon fire shattered his ankle, forcing the amputation of his leg.

He took the lost leg and had it buried with full military honors. Later, during the U.S. war with Mexico, the Mexican general had to beat a hasty retreat on a donkey during the Battle of Cerro Gordo in 1847, Lear said. A contingent of Illinois infantrymen overtook his position, finding Santa Anna’s carriage with a sack of gold and the prosthesis.

They kept the leg. The veteran who owned it even sold peeks at the leg during the 1850s and 1860s for 10 cents a pop, before his family donated it to the state.

Note the word “Texian.” This is how the people in the Republic of Texas, before it joined the United States, are called.
This reminds me of an episode of the West Wing where North Carolina demanded that Connecticut return a copy of the state’s Bill of Rights, that was stolen by a Union soldier during the Civil War. This is actually the episode where Akhil Amar is mentioned as Josh Lyman’s law school classmates.

Akhil Amar was mentioned during last night’s “West Wing” episode. Josh Lyman said “One of my law school classmates published an article on the constitutionality of Lincoln’s general order” and another character (a lawyer from North Carolina complaining about the fact that North Carolina’s copy of the Bill of Rights was stolen by a Union soldier in the Civil War) said “Akhil Amar.”

It’s actually a thorny constitutional issue. If Lincoln’s view of the war is correct, and the south never really seceded, than all of the property in the rebel states could be seized under the Union’s executive authority to put down the insurrection. After all, this was the legal basis of the Emancipation Proclamation–the slaves were seized as property of the rebels, and immediately emancipated. Note that none of the slaves in the Union states were emancipated, as these states were not in rebellion.

The director of the Illinois Museum is not giving it up.

“The leg is a big draw for our museum,” Lear said. “It’s a centerpiece.”

He also mentioned that almost a decade ago there were some rumblings of Texas obtaining Santa Anna’s leg and trading it to Mexico in exchange for a flag that flew over the Alamo, now displayed in a Mexico City museum.

There was a wariness in his voice.

“It doesn’t go on loan to anyone because it’s a main exhibit for us,” Lear said.

He is almost daring them come and take it.

“No one had anything in mind for removing it by force,” he said. “And if the leg goes missing, we’ll just keep it between us.”

Not to worry, Illinois. He was just pulling your leg.

Molon Labe.

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     We Texians do not need Antonio's worthless leg.  Had he lost it upon the Sacred Soil of Texas then we would wish to have it to use in the next Texas University of Applied Arts and Mechanical Engineering (Texas A and M) pre-UT game bonfire.  As an alumnus of Southwest Texas State University (to-day formally known as Texas State University), it would probably be thrown into the nearest Dempster Dumpster, and sent to the Big BFI in the Sky. 

    Others might have been, allow me to say - certainly were,  worthy enemies in the fight he brought us.  He was not a worthy enemy.

     We ask all OROGs to seriously consider how a flick of the finger by the Anglican Curmudgeon can assign a person back to his previous studies.  Even in humour, serious questions, answers, and understanding are provoked.  He is not only a do-er, but also that finest form of teacher who calls on people to re-do their research, to also teach, and to also learn.  When El Gringo Viejo "orders" his OROGs to read a particular element of the Anglican Curmudgeon's blog, it truly...very sincerely....is more a gift than an order.

There, Illinois.  You have it.  You are the German Shepherd who caught the Volkswagen.  Now, you are stuck with it.  Not even the Mexicans want it.  Not even the Texians want it.  Perhaps with Obama's Socialised Medicine Initiative we can use it in the rehabilitation programmes of the future.

El Gringo Viejo

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Forgetful Nancy, Senile Obsolete marxist press, uncomprehending electorate, and double trouble

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     Our dilemma is how to explain things to people who can be convinced that requiring a photo identification at the polling site does not possibly preclude an earnest voter from casting a ballot.    We have gone to lengths to demonstrate that in Mexico, there is now en force a nationwide voter identification system that is far and beyond anything in Texas or in the rest of the United States.

     Not only does the Mexican voter have to have a photo identification, but his/her credencial electoral Federal has a photo, recently taken, and two other biometric identifiers.  On top of that, the precinct where the voter votes is there waiting for him/here with a huge compendium of voters registered to vote in that precinct.  The voter will encounter him/herself, there alphabetically listed and with his identical photograph that is found on his Credencial Electoral Federal.  The voter still has to sign in with a rubric or signature that is a very close facsimile to the one on his/her Credencial.

Here we have the signature and  rubric of a
famous sculptor of the Mexican Colonial
period.   Pedro Joseph de Rojas.   His religious
stone and oil/canvas artwork are the standard
for many students and analysts for excellence
in terms of religious art of the 17th Century for
both Mexico and the Orthodox world.

To the point, the signature is self-explanatory,
 and the Rubric is that mess of spaghetti below
the name 'Rojas'.   At times, one might sign
 with a signature, at other times with a Rubric,
 and at still other times, with both.

     (Please note, that in Mexico many people have a stylistic rubric that is used as their sign of formal endorsement or signature.   This is found among the educated classes especially, and should not be associated with "making his mark" or "signing with your X").

     That is what is done, thoughout the Republica Mexicana. during all general elections.  The political parties now even require the CEF for internal, formal votes, such as for nominations in convention or in primaries.  The CEF is now more commonly asked for as identification than any other document, including the Mexican Secreatry of Government's Pasaporte Mexicano.   When people lose a purse or a wallet, it is said by the unfortunate,"If you find my wallet/purse, you can keep the money, I would just need to have my CFE.'

     Since the development of the CFE, Mexican elections have gradually changed from a mixture of a boring, tragicomedic joke....to a bit of an interesting battle....to now a situation whose outcome cannot be predicted even late in the campaign.   Thumbprint scanners can play hell with vote scamming.

    In the Magic Lower Rio Grande Valley, where we have far more people registered to vote than there are residents who are native-born or legally naturalised citizens aged eighteen or over.   On top of that, when the Democrats weep and moan about the Republicans making barefooted old people do the limbo dance on black ice and burning coals, tell the liar that in the Magic Valley, during the last cycle of elections, over 400 people paid fines and even went to prison for election fraud.   In one City election, over 400 people were given "voter assistance" by elected officials who were also candidates....and forbidden from entering the polling area except to vote.   That was one of the least offences. One can imagine the big cities in the North.

     So, we have a dumbed-down electorate in many ways, with fewer than 50 per cent capable of reading at a fourth grade level, and perhaps even more who cannot think critically enough to be able to determine if the First World War occurred before or after the Second World War.   We have an electorate that is in favour of direct vote for President and Vice-President who, frequently, have never heard of the Electoral College.   And that, finally, brings El Gringo Viejo to his point.

     The reasons that the Democrats have had such a hard time to determine whether or not they are going to participate in the proceedings of the House Select Committee on Benghazi are two-fold.  

     (1)    The Democrat leadership, Pelosi and Hoyer, are opposed to participating because they are arrogant, ignorant marxists.  They consider themselves, therefore all progressives and socialists in the ranks,  immune to any requirement to answer questions  from the hoi poloi, tea-bagger, astro-turf roots-movement bumpkins who don't shop at the right places.   The know that Hillary ripped her pants, and they know that Barry Soetoro is an empty chair, suit, and single A minor-league clown who is doing an imitation of the Hindenburg crash.  There first reaction to any and all of this is to tell the Republicans to go jump in a lake.  "What difference does it make. Who do you think you are?  Just a political witch-hunt.   We've been all over this 6 or 7 times already."   The irrational, mendacious talking points are there

     (2)   BUT!   The clutch is slipping after trying to put the car into high-gear. The focus groups composed of the dull, the union members, and other terminally self-inflated and intellectually limited people who feel entitled to someone else's money, do not appear to be as acerbic and roiling in the bile of bitter hatred as before.  Perhaps they have heard Sharpton's mispronunciations and his stupid statements and suddenly the "BOING" sound is heard, deep inside the almost never-used brain....and the dolt on the Democrat focus group bleacher thinks, "What in the hell does Sharpton mean when he says, 'Yes we much!!  Yes we much!!!  We are going to march and take back Amurkia from she to seeing sheep!!!!  Yes we much!!' ?" 

     And the focus group ACORN trained minders begin to note a little kickback coming from that ghostly orb floating around in the upper right corner of the focus group isolation room.  "Anti-Mohammed video?   Hillary had a brain concussion, broken jaw, dislocated shoulder, and stomach flu in 9 weeks, and  managed to fall on her .....fat ......uh....uh....face two times when boarding her State Department Private Jet to the White House in 2016?  Is something out of whack here?"

     The point?   The Democrats do not want to be present on the Select Committee on Benghazi, because the normally dependable and easy to deceive, are not as convinced as they used to be that all the explanations are shovel-ready or that they really are going to be able to keep their doctors and insurance.   Once a ball of snow-lies starts down the truth-mountain, it can come up to a cliff pretty quickly, and that may be what is happening now.

     BUT, they also do not want to be outside the room should something Hillary and Barry did prove to be so horrible that the Democrats on the Committee could still run in and vote "for" something after they had voted "against" it....a la John F. Kerry in 2008.

     The inclination for the present is to obstruct and denigrate and smear, with innocuous comments like, "What difference, at this point, does is possible make?" and "Why are we going over and over the same material when it is clearly evident that mistakes were made and have since been corrected."   But, please believe, Chuckie Schumer is practicing his,  "We must face this squarely, as we always have,  and recognise errors have been made.  None so great as Watergate and the lies that were told to justify our involvement in Iraq and the resulting windfall profits for Cheney and Halliburton.....blah, blah, blah..."

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      But, OROGs know.  They know and understand things much better than even the advanced Democrat and Progressive strategists.   The Great Fear is "The Video". with the forensic timer in the upper right corner that is going to show that Barry was not available during this issue and that he and Hillary both went out of their way from the beginning early hours to make certain that no one reported the matter of  fact:   An Al Qaeda-related attack had occurred and been totally co-ordinated in military terms, and totally  successful.

     The press had to be muzzled by their own will.  And the brass in the military had to be muzzled...arrested finally....and sent to a place where press and other access would be denied or very, very limited.   General Ham had to be either figuratively or literally lobotomised because his early efforts to send F - 16s and his calls to activate a couple of Spectres and/or Spooks into the battle zone.....he now says were pointless.  Scores of tactical level officers and combat pilots have let it be known that there was reasonable conviction, over the 50 - 50 probability, that Spectres could have at least shredded the area to a degree that might have even been advantageous to the Obama Administration. Why?   Because any offensive platform that has massive big-bullet, Gatling Gun capacity that can turn a football field into totally freshly turned soil in one 360 degree pass.  Every four square inches, turned to 12 inches.   Ready for tobacco, cotton, corn, dry-land rice, garbanzos....etc.   Obama could have told the truth....'' ....for the first time in my adult life, I have to report that we would like to tell you little people with IQs lower than a basement elevator that we wanted to show you some evidence from BenCasey, but those damned Spectres and Spookys destroyed all the evidence.

    

    Who ordered the stand-downs?   Not on the stand-down in Tripoli, but the Spectre stand-down, and the Carrier stand-down...was it (Sir Edmund) Hillary who is the probably source of the "video" defence.  Was it Leon Panetta, the only Democrat that still had a piece of warm charcoal left from the time when he had a soul? Or was it the Obsolete Media Magnate committee.....getting together to agree that this event, once understood by the dumbed-down electorate might provoke a Road-to-Damascus moment.  Or was it Michelle Robinson's mother?   Barry Soetoro was nowhere to be found. (Sir Edmund) Hillary was nowhere to be found.

   The damned Zero - three - hundred - zero - zero clock just kept dingllinginginglinging....but no one was there.   Wake up, little (Sir Edmund)Hillary, Wake up little Barry Soetoro ...the Man From A.C.O.R.N. is being called by....THE MEN FROM U.N.C.L.E. !!!!

     We are stunned!   Stunned mind you that the Democrats (Pelosi and Hoyer) will not join in the witchhunt.  They will stand by their principles until they find some.  This is cockroaches running for cover when someone walks into the nighttime kitchen and throws the light on.  And, there may soon come a moment when they might have to throw people under the bus.   These Congressional Democrats will sacrifice and and everything to satisfy their own hubris.

    But Nancy, Stevie, summer's coming up.  You might be able to pick up one of the 346.00/hour-living wage training jobs resurfacing mid-night basketball courts....depending upon whom you might know.

    We are going to look for some fishing gear, and head down to some canal to find perch.  We need to re-learn our "life-skills" sooner rather than later.  If (Sir Edmund) Hillary and her bundlers are writing the laws from 2017 through 2025....we will all be organ donors waiting in line to give Hillary our blood and organs, as she disassembles during her first two terms.   But, just think, they say it could be a Reich of a Thousand Years.

Trying to remain humorous and cheerful even as the Republic is destroyed.
El Gringo Viejo

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Texas! Our Texas! All Hail the Mighty Republic - El Zorro appears with lightning in the background!! Exciting Stuff!!

(sent by El Zorro to remind us what all this stuff is really about)

Have you ever looked at a map of the world?
Look at Texas  with me just for a second. That picture,
with the Panhandle and the Gulf Coast, and the Red River
and the Rio Grande is as much a part of you as
anything ever will be. As soon as anyone anywhere
in the world looks at it, they know what it is.
It's Texas.

 Pick any kid off the street in
Japan and draw him a picture of Texas in
the dirt, and he'll know what it is. What happens
if I show you a picture of any other state? You
might get it maybe after a second or two, but who
else would? And even if you do, does it ever stir
any feelings in you?

  In every man, woman and child on this planet, there
is a person who wishes just once he could be a
real live Texan and get up on a horse or ride off
in a pickup. There is a little bit of Texas in
everyone.

Texas is the Alamo. Texas is 183 men standing in a
church, facing thousands of Mexican nationals, fighting
for freedom, who had the chance to walk out and
save themselves, but stayed instead to fight and
die for the cause of freedom.

We send our kids to schools named William B. Travis and
James Bowie and Davy Crockett, and do you know why?
Because those men saw a line in the sand and they decided
to cross it and be heroes.

John Wayne paid to do the movie The Alamo himself.
That is the Spirit of Texas.

Texas is Sam Houston capturing Antonio Lopez

 de Santa Ana at San Jacinto.

  Texas has huge forests of Piney Woods like the Davy Crockett
and Sam Houston National Forests.Texas is breathtaking

 mountains in the Big Bend. Texas is the unparalleled beauty of

 bluebonnet fields in the Texas Hill Country.

  Texas is floating the rivers of the Hill Country on a hot summer day.
Texas is the beautiful, warm beaches of the Gulf Coast of South Texas .
Texas is beaches you can drive on and have many memorable

 bonfires with close friends.

  Texas is that warm feeling you get when someone asks where you're from.
Texas is the shiny skyscrapers in Houston and Dallas.

Texas is world record bass from places like Lake Fork .
Texas is Mexican foods like nowhere else, not even Mexico .

  Texas is chicken fried steak and world famous Bar-B-Q.  Texas is the

Fort Worth Stockyards, Bass Hall, the Mort Myerson in Dallas,
The Ballpark in Arlington, the Cowboys Stadium in Arlington,
the American Airlines Center in Dallas, and
the Astrodome (the Reliant Stadium now) in Houston.

Texas is larger-than-life legends like Michael DeBakey,
Ann Richards, Denton Cooley, Willie Nelson, Buddy
Holly, Gene Autry, Audie Murphy, Tommy Lee Jones,
Waylon Jennings, Farrah Fawcett, Janis Joplin,
Sandra Bullock, Kris Kristofferson, Tom Landry,
Eva Longoria, Darrell Royal, ZZ Top, Roger Staubach
Eric Dickerson, Earl Campbell, Nolan Ryan, Sam Rayburn,
Howard Hughes, George H. W. Bush, Lyndon B.Johnson,
George W . Bush, and let's not forget GEORGE STRAIT,
the Big Bopper, Tex Ritter, George Jones,
Clay Walker, Mark Chestnut, and Tracy Byrd to name
ONLY a few. (and no, we didn't forget Norma Rae [MM])

Texas is the world's capital of wild  flowers.  All year around,
but especially in the Spring and early Summer, the Flower
of the Republic, the Bluebonnet comes forth, joining and
being joined by scores of other species of wild flower in a
frenzy of happy, jumbled, explosive, and elegant colour.

Texas has great companies like Valero,
Dell Computer, Texas Instruments, EDS and Compaq,
Whataburger,  Southwest Airlines, Bell Helicopter, and

LOCKHEED MARTIN AEROSPACE, Dairy Queen,

and we invented the Toyota pick-up, (some say)
  Home of the F-16 Jet Fighter and the SF Fighter.
And Texas is NASA.

Texas is huge herds of cattle, beautiful horses and miles of crops.
Texas is home to the world famous King Ranch.

Texas is home to the most amazing sunsets of gold over an empty field.

Texas is skies blackened with doves and fields full of deer.
Texas is a place where towns and cities shut down to watch the
local high school football game on Friday nights
and for the Cowboys on Monday Night Football at
the new Cowboy Stadium, and for the Night
In Old San Antonio River Parade in
San Antonio.

To drive across Texas is to drive 1/3 the way across the
United States.  Texas has ocean beaches,
deserts, lakes and rivers, mountains and prairies,
and modern cities.

If it isn't already in Texas, we probably don't need it.
No one does anything bigger or better
than it's done in Texas.
By federal law, Texas is the only state in the U.S.
 that can fly its flag at the same
 height as the U.S. Flag.

Think about that for a second.
 You fly the Stars and Stripes at 20 feet
 in Maryland , California or Maine,
and your state flag, whatever it is,
goes at 17 feet. A body can fly the Stars and Stripes
 in front of Klein Oak High or any place else at 20
feet, the Lone Star flies at the same height - 20
feet. You know why? Because its the only state
that was a Republic before it became a state.

Also,
being a Texan is as high as being an American
down here. Our capitol is the only one in the
country that is taller than the capitol building in
Washington, DC. And we can divide our state into
five states at any time if we wanted to!
We can become a Republic again at any
 time the voters of Texas choose, and we
 included these things as part of
 the deal when we came on.  That's
 the best part, right there.

Texas even has its own power grid!!
And don't even lie to yourself.
Did I mention the LIVE music

 capitol of the world?

If you are a REAL TEXAN, you won't
even need to be told to pass this on..!

GOD BLESS TEXAS

Oddities among the Great Thinkers and Elites

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    (Sir Edmund) Hillary, perpetual Queen of all Universes, has done so much for everyone.   Just think of all she accomplished....especially for the oppressed.  No one can name any concrete or even abstract thing she has ever accomplished beyond slandering and bullying women with no power or leverage whom she believed to have an extra key to the door that leads to the inside track.

     "Why don't you just settle with Paula Jones?  Get it over with?"  Monica asks the fellow who appears to be fattest eunuch in the Garden of Girlies.

       "Well, if I settle with her, " he grins, "I'll have bunches that will come out of the woodwork who want me to settle with them."
        
      "What do you mean by 'bunches'?" asks the chubby girl with the blue dress more or less on.

       "Well, probably hundreds."

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    And after all the corruption, lies, distortions, abuse, shenanigans, ineffectiveness....including four rough years of recession  1993 - 1994 and 1999 - 2000), now called "boom times" by the Obsolete Press....we are led to believe by that same press that, Hillary, having accomplished nothing in almost 70 years of what she calls "life".....(Telling people that she has no idea where Vince Foster's briefcase came from to so suddenly appear in his office with a conveniently forged and torn in 29 easy-t0-assembled pieces 'suicide note' and imagine he'd already been dead almost three day.  Then she must have had "King's  X",  when she told the families on the tarmac at Dover that "We're gonna get that bad man who made that terrible video that incited all those rag-heads over there, by golly!"), she is now considering doing the Nation a favour by being appointed President.

   Sometimes a girl's gotta lie, when a girl's gotta lie.  Donchuneaux?   That particular lie in Dover AFB was the fault of the parents who did not really have any standing in the presidential campaign that (Sir Edmund) Hillary has been plotting since she was 4 years and 4 months old.  They were just some of those peripheral meddlers, who really aren't even that peripheral to these matters that are way, way, way out of their league.

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    Next comes the Bishop of Rome who tells us that the United Nations needs to establish a system and force it upon the nations of the world.  The purpose of that system?   To more correctly redistribute wealth so that the "poor" receive their fair share.

     (1)  To begin, the obvious.   A bigger gaggle of whores, pimps, crooks, thugs, racists, and syphilitic perverts cannot be assemble than what is found at the "United" Nations.  They specialise in the repression and active or passive enslavement of their peoples.  They do it by the imposition of socialist organic law that is made up on the run, and by the most incomprehensible despotic dictatorial brutality.   There are nations that have non-royal ascension where successive generations of despots brutalise their citizens.

    The most enlightened among them teach their children that Americans, especially troglodyte Americans with guns, cause earthquakes and tsunamis because they hate Coloured People.  And that, because George Bush did not sign the Kobe Agreement, we are all going to drown to-morrow. 

      Way to go, Il Papa, you chose a great saloon scene to open your movie-shoot.  

     (2)   Thank the great god, Yahweh that King Henry VIII did what he did.  That way I can remind people that the Roman Church ordered celebacy of its clergy, not so much to imitate the sacrifice of Jesus of Nazareth and his Apostles, but to assure that there would be no primogeniture to muddy up testaments, and that all the life's wealth of the clergy would go to the Vatican for "safe-keeping".   The English Church figured that boys would be boys, and they might produce well-guided citizens were the priests to marry.   The Roman clergy has demonstrated that sometimes  boys will be boys for other reasons over the years....but, of course, all Christian denominations have their dark stars.   Billy Jeff and Jesse Jackson loved to lug the Bible around with them when they were doing all that there atonement stuff.   And Jerry Lee Lewis did manage to run off and marry his 14 year old first cousin....and him a choir director in a real, live Primitive Baptist congregation.

    (3)    The trick is, Most Reverend Father, not to have thugs extort money from the productive for the final purpose of buying votes or paying women of convenience for their participation in parties for the high ranking ambassadors who are incessantly partying in New York City and various important capitals of the World;    it is to convince people to take their private money and "....let your light so shine before men that it might glorify your Father in Heaven." and the admonition, "....Remember what our Saviour Christ hath taught us, that it is truly better to give than to receive."   Whatsoever good was done by James Earl Carter was that he swung a hammer.

     In other words, it is not the correct game to play, to turn over to Caesar what has been left to the children of God to do.   The care of the oppressed, the prisoner, the hungry, the naked, the unsheltered, and those lost on the path of life are not the charges of Caesar.  They are the charges of each of us, privately, and under the roof of church....be it Protestant, Orthodox, Roman, Hebrew, or  Ishmaelite.  Might it be of the philosophical faiths, such as the Buddhists, or Hindus, or any number of other faiths and creeds, it is  up to us, not Ceasar in any and many of his manifestation.    All goverment programmes to help the poor become patterns of enslavement.   They are all corrupt.  They are all ineffective and passively designed to grow and grow, and provoke and provoke more people in need.

     (4)   Taking from one for no good reason and giving to another for an even worse reason is the worst form of extortion.  He who is divested (GM - Chrysler, the entire income tax system) resents the removal of his property and gain.   The receiver of the largess  hates the giver, because the taking of un-earned bounty is a form of thievery that only leads the receiver to hate the giver all the more.   The hatred intensifies over the generations because the people receiving the unearned bounty develop what El Gringo Viejo likes to call a well-deserved sense of inferiority.

     (5)   It behooves the various forms of socialist governors who pretend to democratic process, as well, to maintain an impoverished and craven underclass, so as to always have a mindless mass of wanters....of victims of captitalists and capitalism and free enterprise....when in fact they are victims of notions like the "living minimum wage" concept and "the right to free medical care".   Such things are patently impossible to establish, much less maintain in any workable sense.   It always forms and maintains an underclass forever in want.

     (6)    So, nope, nope, nope.  In the Pope we do not hope.  The only cure to income redistribution problems is to have a population that is an investing, risk-taking population, a population that is disposed to it self-provision, each and every person, and a population that has either a business or a high skill and work ethic so as to be among the builders and not the destroyers.   So, Father Frank, a bit of Calvinism never hurts even the most Orthodox.  What hurts the Church is the idea that man can perfect the condition of man.   The duty of the Church, first and foremost, is to tend to the souls of humanity.   A full stomach is worth nothing if the soul is corrupted.

    (7)     Lamentably, this priest who made his fame in Argentina fighting against the "collective salvation" people who puke up intellectual bile like "Liberation Theology"  has become one of them after only a few days of rare air in the halls of enlightenment.   Perhaps it would be best if he returned to some capitalist-caused slum in Buenos Aires and establish the mission-church of San Ernesto, or Santito Che', el salvador de los humildes y los explotados.

This is what 40% of the Roman Church
and about the same of the Anglican
Communion has become.   Churches
of Secular Humanism.   Global
Warming, Anyone?  

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Finally, something that the Holy Father should read and re-read twice a day, and perhaps even render as a homily once every week on Saint Peter's Square so that people can actually grasp the poetry of cultural decay, promoted by people in high office.   When the Roman Catholic Church stops "qualifying" to administer programmes through Catholic Charities that are funded by the agents of Caesar....thereby indebting the institutions of Jesus to do the work of Lucifer....then El Gringo Viejo will have some hope that the Roman Church will return to some usefulness.   Holy Father, read this from Rudyard Kipling: 

The Gods of the Copybook Headings

AS I PASS through my incarnations in every age and race, I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place. Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall, And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all. We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn: But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind, So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the      March of Mankind. We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace, Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market Place, But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome. With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch, They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch; They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings; So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things. When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace. They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease. But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe, And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "Stick to the Devil you know."  On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life (Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife) Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith, And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "The Wages of Sin is Death."  In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,  By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;  But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,  And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "If you don't work you die."  Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more. As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.  That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,  And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire; And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,  As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,  The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!

We depart to drink some more AirWick
And nibble on my NoDoze tablets. some more.
Then stand watch in my humble quarters
With my pistol pointed square at the door.

El Gringo Viejo

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Alleluia!! El Gringo Viejo fixed our problem

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   After considerable effort, and useless "on-line" support by, I am sure, well-meaning persons....El Gringo Viejo stumbled, but in good order, into a fix for our problem with blog-site maintenance, enhancement, modification, etc.  It was an adventure, perhaps rewarding, but not at all pleasant.

     At this stage in what has been a guilt-laden transit through a largely misspent life, any variation from my anticipated day's path is followed by a sharp feeling of claustrophobia....oddly enough.   The same occurs, now if I were to found on a deluxe bus that will not make any stops for several hours, and on any airplane, and in the back seat of my son's fancy Ford Mustang.  So, my advice to everyone is "Do not become old."

Now for the News....

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WHAT MAKES THE DEMOCRATS AND LEFTIST SO ENTERTAINING?.

(1)   Democrats assume and know for certainty that they are more informed and more sensitive to "minority, women's, children's, homosexuals', lesbian Eskimoes'" issues than Republicans and other types of troglodytes.   It's Mothers' Daze coming up, so let us throw in Mother Earth and her sister Mother Nature who are also top-drawer concerns for The Democrats and their Marxist clones. 

    The problem?   Very, very, very few Democrats, Progessives, and others of the many forms of ghastly socialism actually know anything that is true.   Also Democrats and the leftist under-pinners excel in being  the Witch's Cauldron that calls the crystal punch bowl black.   Teddy Kennedy kills a girl either in a drunken stupor or with the intent to eliminate an inconvenience....one or the other or both....and he is awarded the title of "Lion of the Senate".   He is also considered to be a "....advocate for women's issues and rights".   As are all the tireless workers for such issues on the left...who have done so much to bring women to the condition that these Advocates now declare have left women in such a miserable condition.   They are so poorly attended and "given to" that they have to send Miss Flukie out to panhandle for pills, or to demand that the 1% (or the 2%, or the 20%, or the 50%) pay for her contraceptive devices.

     Women are underemployed, overworked, underpayed, beaten up, and generally treated roughly 349 billion times worse because of George Bush, than the lucky girl who gets to have her brains blown out at a semi-pro soccer game half-time show in Nowheristan because she was accused of thinking about being a harlot.   Would George Bush go so far as to deny this girl her 15 minutes of fame?   Discrimination is just inbred in the Bush Family.   Solution to this and any problem....blame the millionaires and billionaires and Republicans. Then go and have a fifteenth re-face-lift, just in case the Democrats win back the Lower House in November.    Seems likely from Nancy's point of view, considering she can no longer blink or close her eyes in any manner.

(2)  Differential Measuring Devices and Systems.   Had any Republican stumbled through any administration as poorly and as stupidly at the present incompetent incumbent he would have been dispatched by a scythe and pitchfork crowd, sprinkled heavily with semi-literate, Ivy-league graduates  who call themselves "reporters".

    Nixon took the blame for that which John Dean was largely responsible.  The "enemies list" is an example.   The escapades, lies, and corruption of the Rodham and Clinton show, had it occurred during the Nixon Administration, would have resulted in something like the post Mussolini capture scenes.

    The Scooter Libby silliness about him outing a "special CIA secret agent girl" who had a CIA parking permit on both her autos...and who had done a lengthy article in Vanity Fair.   In that article she spoke openly and frankly about how important she was and how great she had always been. Her unemployed husband even manage a gig in Nigeria and or Niger looking for yellow cake, semi-processed uranium.   He assured the world that although he established that Saddam Hussein was either buying or attempting to buy yellow-cake, it was his opinion that Saddam Hussein was not attempting to buy nor was he buying yellow-cake.   It all makes sense.  Once you vote for it, you can read the 25,000 pages of rules and regulations.  Keep repeating, Alice, It all makes sense, It all makes sense.

     So far we have several monstrous cases of imperial presidency syndrome.  We have a serial offender in the White House and a facilitator in the Secretariat of Justice.   Benghazi, Fast and Furious,  IRS - I, IRS - II and innumerable executive orders overturning "settled law" at them whim of a small little wimpy milquetoast "community organiser" who likes to play President and see how much china and crystal he can break in eight years. 

    The same press circles the wagons...as they had done for a brutalising misogynist with a pronounced communist-leaning background and a woman raping and beating history extending all the way into the soul of Jolly Old England.   The one with the sneering, snarling hag of a wife who, when asked about the effect of her socialised medicine takeover plans on the small business community, hissed,"I can't be held responsible for every little under-capitalised business in America."       Fairly typical response of a person who is either a National Socialist or a Bolshevik-Leninist Socialist, or sometimes both at the same time.

THE IMPORTANT PART OF THIS MISSIVE:

     El Gringo Viejo is sadly humoured...(?)....to think that there might still be people in our own ranks who think that Barry Soetoro was an incompetent president.   It is demonstrable to whomsoever wishes to think it through that Barry is not Americanian, Kenyanian, or Himalayanian.   He is a naturalised Manchuranian, without a doubt.  He was bought, brought, and trained up as a trained seal in the water park, happily applauding himself for being able to eat as directed by the mackerel-prompter, all the admiring mackerels thrown to him during his flipper-clapping, self-congratulatory performances.

    He is Mr. NoWhere Man.  He is the nephew of Auntie Zietuni (r.i.p.) and Uncle Omar Onyango Obama, and the spawn of Lucifer and Margaret Sanger.

We leave and celebrate a clunky but better situation than the posting procedure we had during the past few days.   Thank you all for your time and patience.   As an aside, we have noticed a sharp increase in activity concerning our advertisement placements.  We try to weed out some leftist and all coarse and deceptive announcements....seeking to look for products and services that might actually be a bargain and /or useful.   We would appreciate, that if you see something that is obtusely gross, offensive, or deceptive, you notify us.   AND, notify us if any product or service is not compliant with normal business ethical and moral codes of conduct.

El Gringo Viej0

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