We are back again

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We have returned.  There is nothing much to report from our little hideaway South of the Border.  Hot days, and blessedly cool nights, with temperatures going down to as low as 59 degrees.  We did a few projects, and dealt with the care of our plants.   Things are a bit stressed by the Canicula....the normal dry run during the mid-summer.

 

      With what rain we did have, it was good to note that our repairs and adaptations during the past months were successful and the place looks quite noble again. 

 

     We have posted some of El Zorro's observations, and to-morrow there will be some broadsides concerning the state of things.  It will take El Gringo Viejo about 12 hours to recover and straighten some thoughts out.

 

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Notes from the Other End of the Republic of Texas

Gringo,

 

In the private blog I subscribe to, consisting of confirmed Vietnam veterans, a discussion of Lurch Kerry’s “initiative” in the Middle East ensued.  To that point there was a liberal scumbo who stirred up controversy by supporting compromise with radical Islam and support of Kerry.  I cannot post his comments but I can distribute my response:

 

“Hey troops... I think we have a Baby Ruth in our punch bowl here. That notwithstanding, the situation with Israel and Hamas is just the beginning of a world war. It can end two ways. One, Israel loses and the rest of the world becomes Muslim extremist or two, Israel obliterates Hamas and the rest of radical Islam backs off. If Israel loses the U.S. and the free world will be in a fight to the death. If Israel prevails, the U.S. and Israel (and other democratic countries) have to keep the lid on the terrorists. This asymmetrical war in which the world is engaged is one that will never completely be solved with the tactics we know and use today. The only chance we have is to wipe out the radicals as completely as possible with as little collateral damage as possible. They have to be eradicated where ever they are found. There is nothing simple, easy, or nice about war. This one is particularly messy because the righteous have to fight two wars at the same time. A virtual war with the politicians and their media accomplices and the physical war with weapons. We had that in Vietnam... remember? That has not changed but we have not yet developed the tactics for fighting a non-state terrorist guerilla war. We've all considered the conundrum of the unmovable object and the irresistible force. The radical Islamists are the irresistible force. What are we? Consider the power and influence they have amassed since the 7 Day War. Israel is the only consistent resistance they have encountered. We had Iraq but lost it. We beat the Taliban but let them come back. Our peace initiatives have only led to more insurgency. There is no compromise. Obama can say the war is over but our enemies don't agree. Saying it doesn't make it so. It only aids, abets and emboldens them. John Kerry and his boss are working against us either intentionally or unconsciously. It doesn't matter which. They (and the rest of the conga line of conspirators) have to go. Maybe this is too far from the topic; however, it is a very important conversation to be had, here and everywhere.”

 

 

                    El Zorro

Loose Ends, and Loose Cannons

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    As we prepare to leave to-morrow before the dawn's early light, it becomes an urgency that El Gringo Viejo cover and re-cover some important topics.

 

 

     The first, concerning this "immigration" thing, is that it has nothing to do with immigration.  The entire tragi-comedic nightmare is a clumsy and blunt effort on the part of the Obamatrons (and the least player among the actors, Obama himself) to identify people they know to be sub-human and who will do the most damage to America by having their presence made permanent in the middle of America.

      Mind you, it is not our opinion as conservatives that the people of Central America are sub-human, but to sophisticated progressives who are content in the knowledge of their own intellectual superiority....general superiority to everyone, to be sure...they know the Central Americans (a) all look alike, and (b) are hopelessly stupid, and (c) will assist in breaking the bank of the Gringos when they latch onto the "safety net" of perpetual, multigenerational welfare.

 

     All socialists and progressive know that the barnacles and parasites who glob onto the public assistance programmes provided by the central government of the United States and various of the 57 States that compose the federation produce 90% of the social and medical problems in the country.  The more there are, the better for the purposes of the socialists and progressives.  It allows for the continued making of proposals that are aimed to cure the problems created by the last programme that was meant to cure the problems.  The more absurd the proposal, and the more expensive, the better.   How about one billion dollars to have a National Midnight Basketball League?   That way, three years later, we can have a National Grief Counsellor and Violence Intervention Department exclusively dedicated to the out-break of shootings at late night and early morning basketball games.   After all, because of racism on the part of the Republicans this long-standing problem has never received the funding needed in order to be effective.

 

    Actual solution to the problem?   Have children who are disciplined by a father, and who are instilled with a catechism, be it Orthodox, Protestant, or Hebrew....and enforce the rules of that catechism by the hand of the father.  No father?  Treyvon.   Paint Treyvon as a victim in the "demagogue community" and produce more Treyvons.

 

     Purpose?  To cure problems and make things better?  No, the purpose is to always keep a wedge issue to resuscitate in order to drive the low-information and low-intelligence voters to the polls.   Reproductive Rights!!  Equal Pay for Equal Work!!  War on Women!!!   And of course propose remedies that will aggravate the problem so as to have something even worse to blame on the Republicans.

 

    We remember when George W. Bush declared in his fourth State of the Union address that he wanted to partially privatised the Social Security System.  He suggested that the Democrats had opposed the move in spite of the fact that it would enhance retirement options.  When he referred to that setback, the Democrat side of the audience went crazy with cheering and applause....and the only thing they could possibly have been cheering was the fact that they had kept the people in bondage to a Ponzi Scheme.   Were the Social Security System to be operated out of a barber shop on the edge of the Pasadena - Houston city limits, everybody working at the barber shop would  be making license plates before the end of the year, somewhere near the TDC complex in Huntsville, Texas.

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     Please review this, sent from the Arctic portions of the Republic of Texas by El Zorro:

Press Release:

Monday, July 28, 2014
For Immediate Release

LaVenia J. LaVelle, Press Officerpress.office@ssa.gov

News Release SOCIAL SECURITY

Social Security Board of Trustees: No Change in Projected Year of
Trust Fund Reserve Depletion

Print Version

The Social Security Board of Trustees today released its annual report on the long-term financial status of the Social Security Trust Funds. The combined asset reserves of the Old-Age and Survivors Insurance, and Disability Insurance (OASDI) Trust Funds are projected to become depleted in 2033, unchanged from last year, with 77 per cent of benefits still payable at that time. The DI Trust Fund will become depleted in 2016, also unchanged from last year's estimate, with 81 per cent of benefits still payable.
In the 2014 Annual Report to Congress, the Trustees announced:

• The combined trust fund reserves are still growing and will continue to do so through 2019. Beginning with 2020, the cost of the program is projected to exceed income.

• The projected point at which the combined trust fund reserves will become depleted, if Congress does not act before then, comes in 2033 – the same as projected last year. At that time, there will be sufficient income coming in to pay 77 per cent of scheduled benefits.

• The projected actuarial deficit over the 75-year long-range period is 2.88 per cent of taxable payroll -- 0.16 percentage point larger than in last year's report.

"The projected depletion dates of the Social Security Trust Funds have not changed, and three-fourths of benefits would still be payable after depletion.  But the fact remains that Congress can ensure the long-term solvency of this vital program by taking action," said Carolyn W. Colvin, Acting Commissioner of Social Security.  "The Disability Insurance Trust Fund's projected depletion year remains 2016, and legislative action is needed as soon as possible to address this financial imbalance."
Other highlights of the Trustees Report include:

• Income including interest to the combined OASDI Trust Funds amounted to $855 billion in 2013. ($726 billion in net contributions, $21 billion from taxation of benefits, $103 billion in interest, and $5 billion in reimbursements from the General Fund of the Treasury—almost exclusively resulting from the 2012 payroll tax legislation)

• Total expenditures from the combined OASDI Trust Funds amounted to $823 billion in 2013. 

• Non-interest income fell below program costs in 2010 for the first time since 1983. Program costs are projected to exceed non-interest income throughout the remainder of the 75-year period.

• The asset reserves of the combined OASDI Trust Funds increased by $32 billion in 2013 to a total of $2.76 trillion.

• During 2013, an estimated 163 million people had earnings covered by Social Security and paid payroll taxes.

• Social Security paid benefits of $812 billion in calendar year 2013. There were about 58 million beneficiaries at the end of the calendar year. 

• The cost of $6.2 billion to administer the program in 2013 was a very low 0.7 per cent of total expenditures.

• The combined Trust Fund asset reserves earned interest at an effective annual rate of 3.8 per cent in 2013.

The Board of Trustees is comprised of six members. Four serve by virtue of their positions with the federal government: Jacob J. Lew, Secretary of the Treasury and Managing Trustee; Carolyn W. Colvin, Acting Commissioner of Social Security; Sylvia M. Burwell, Secretary of Health and Human Services; and Thomas E. Perez, Secretary of Labour. The two public trustees are Charles P. Blahous III and Robert D. Reischauer.
The 2014 Trustees Report will be posted at www.socialsecurity.gov/OACT/TR/2014/ on Monday.

# # #

-30-

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And then, we have more.  And it's FREE!

     We propose that the Social Security Administration be essentially turned into an operation similar or identical to the Texas State Teachers' Retirement System...and the Texas State Employees' Retirement System.  This system essentially has a process by which the employees actually own their accounts.  The member dies, the account remains in his/her estate, and is distributed according to standard probate, and according to certain relatively simple conditions, and according to previously arranged covenants between the  Texas Retirement Sytems and the participants.
    Yes.  We mean to turn the retirement set-asides that the employees pay into and own in their own name.....into a truly self-owned system like Texas has.  We would urge a programme by which people could choose a bit of an expanded investment system...a little more adventurous that what is presently used, by permitting ultra-conservative, moderately conservative, to standard conservative investment alternative for the money left in the system by the citizen.
     Should Texas wind up being able to re-establish itself as a free-standing Republic, it would be interesting to try to recover some of the money that was put into the supposedly sacrosanct Social Security Trust Fund, contributed by Texans.  That is one of the differences between the Texas System and the Central Government System in Washington, D.C.   The money in the Texas Retirement System cannot be mingled in any way with the general fund.  The entire amount is literally owned by each individual participant.

El Zorro opines thusly, concerning the Fifth Amendment and the need to make bold statements and proposals to truly and radically return the American Republic to the Old Regimen.  To think, that when the 19th Century changed into the 20th Century, the United States central government would borrow money from wealthy individuals for the purpose of short-term financing of the central government's activities during a pinch.
     Now, in these days, the extremely wealthy serve only to fund the Democrat Party and for those who do not fund the American National Socialist Democratic Workers' Party....the wealthy serve as whipping boys/girls to denigrate and ridicule as uncaring Scrooges.

Many of us are meaning what we say when we talk about taking the useless spending part of the central government to the Sanitary Landfill.  El Zorro suggests, something moderate by my standards, but certainly radical and necessary.
To Wit:

The Fifth Amendment is huge and the more information made simple (“Fifth Amendment for Dummies”) is one of the most important issues to keep fresh.

 

I am not sure what you are saying about the SSA.  What I picked out was a newsletter I get, a sub-topic of other VA issues I subscribe to.  It is what we know it to be… that it will be broke and fixing or replacing should be a high priority to a conservative administration.

 

The platform that will win includes:

 

1.) Rebuilding of US Armed forces to higher than previous highest levels

2.) Complete repeal of the ACA

3.) Abolishment of the IRS

4.) Privatization of the VA

5.) Abolishment of Dept. of HHS

6.) Abolishment of Dept. of Homeland Security

7.) Abolishment of EPA

8.) Abolishment of NLRB

9.) Close the Border

10.) Fifth Amendment

 

These are somewhat in order of priority in consideration of level of effort, time to complete, and hierarchy of process.

 

Other issues can be considered but the more issues the less attention each gets.

 

Que tengas buen viaje.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

JH

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Time to make supper, the boss just arrived!

One Picture - One million words....failure, dejection, rejection, harvest from the planting of lies and dysfunctional political and moral thought

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Secretary of State John Kerry Returns from Paris and the Holy Land

after scoring six straight failures in three days.  One picture really

might be worth all the words in the book.

 

At least we abandoned the Embassy in Tripoli.   Perhaps that was

one of those moments of tranquillity the Administration can tout.

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Heading South on Tuesday

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    On Tuesday morning, we shall be heading down to the Quinta Tesoro de la Sierra Madre for an extended stay, probably three weeks or so.  We have numerous projects, all very small, and thankfully not needing material or extra "maestros" to assist.   Alvaro will take advantage of this to go down to Xicotencatl, Tamaulipas to tend to his properties and his "retirement home".  He will usually go down there, saying he is coming back when I leave to go back to Texas, but normally after 10 or 12 days, he will call and ask if everything is alright.

 

     El Gringo Viejo learned that instead of saying "Si, si, esta' bien todo.", it was better to say, "I have a problem with the toilet tank lever, and I cannot find the special tijeras jardineras  (garden scissors).  Of course, a bit of "Your dog, Bebe just lays there all day by the gate waiting to see if you are going to come back".  



 El Gringo Viejo consoles Bebe who is
 dejected because El Sargento Mayor
 (Alvaro) has not returned.



    Alvaro will immediately say, "Don't worry, I'll be there to-morrow, in the early afternoon."   And, actually it is better, because we seem to accomplish an immense amount of "proyectos" in terms of doctoring scratches in the walls, loose sockets, washing throw rugs, re-arranging closets, airing and sunning sheets and other bedding, waxing tile floors, dusting the cane ceiling (a real chore, but worth it), doctoring the animals for ear mites...the dogs for fleas and ticks.   For some reason, the three cats never have any trouble with the fleas.

 

    Alvaro is immensely patient with El Gringo Viejo.  He is only 5'5" and 130 pounds at the most, but, quite frankly, although we are the same age, he can pick up more weight and carry it further than I can....at 6' 2" and 180 pounds.  He also does not wear glasses, but can read all but the skinniest, tiny print.  In the beginning Diana took offense because he had this fixation about rubbing everything down with red oil, and mopping the floors with diesel oil.  We still use diesel oil, mixed with Fabuloso on the floor, but Alvaro no longer puts red oil on the toilet seat, or television, or on the light bulbs.

 

     The other strong suit about Alvaro Huerta Balboa is that he keeps very accurate accounts.  He also prohibits that I contribute to anything.  He says he will do the contributing because he knows if the contribution will wind up in the proper cause.   For quite a while now, the Ejido Water Commission has not come to ask for "financing" some major repair or reworking of a water line.  To have a pump rebuilt can run a couple of thousand pesos, and it injures our operations when the "Comisario" comes to ask if I can front the money so that the west people or the east people on the line can have water to-morrow.

    We have always dug up the cash, but it leave us in the place where we have to go to Victoria in order to buy anything, and buying means always having to use the credit card.   Everything in the Ejido Francisco I. Madero is cash, and the smaller the bills and coins the better.  There is very little change.

     We should point out as well that every advance of repair and/or replacement money we have "proffered" has always been paid back within a week to a month.   At times water people will even mark our water bill (40 pesos/month - about 3.2o USD) paid for a quarter, as a courtesy.  There was another person a Latin lady, an American,  whose mother was very elderly, around 100 years old, who built a house near the Hacienda de Santa Engracia, and she would help out with public utility repairs, being somewhat well-to-do.   But, with the disorders from about three years ago, she stopped coming down, and her mother passed on a while back.  The lady had moved her mother down to the Santa Engracia area and build quite a nice two-story house there because as she pointed out, it was cheaper than a nursing home, and the rustics in the area thought nothing about diving in and taking care of the old girl, as if she were a grandmother of their own.   Many of the women in the ejido have "basic-plus" nursing skills from having attended public health seminars during the vaccination times when the Health Department comes out to do the shot batteries.

     Anyway, Alvaro is a blessing...even if sometime I have to grind my teeth and bite my tongue....and we would have been much worse off without him.

 

In any regard, Tuesday we shall leave.  I shall continue to try to find a chat room with a faster connection, and thereby maintain some reasonable contact with my people on OROGlandia. 

El Gringo Viejo

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Quick Reality Check

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Coolest Summer On Record In The US

Posted on July 26, 2014 by stevengoddard

The frequency of 90 degree days in the US has been plummeting for 80 years, and 2014 has had the lowest frequency of 90 degree days through July 23 on record. The only other year which came close was 1992, and that was due to dust in the atmosphere from Mt Pinatubo.

An Inconvenient Truth is the name of the door AlGore
runs into on those nights he tries to tiptoe past his
masseuse on his way to make his Dagwood  at
midnight.  Of course, AlGore's love-nest
 is right on the California Pacific Coast
 and supposed to have been
 under water for the past
 several years, based
 on AlGore's own
glacial melt
 forecasts!
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Just a brief note so that OROGs will know that the truth squeezes out, like the grass through concrete....as Pete Seeger said....and as it does, we shall duplicate and broadcast the news.

 

 

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When commies sing and think they are making fun of others,  I like to remind  them about John Donne, because they are actually singing about themselves.

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For whom the Bell Tolls

 John Donne

1576 - 1632

 

 

PERCHANCE he for whom this bell tolls may be so ill,
as that he knows not it tolls for him;

And perchance I may think myself so much better than I am,
as that they who are about me,

And see my state, may have caused it to toll for me,
and I know not that.
 
The church is Catholic, universal, so are all her actions;
all that she does belongs to all.

When she baptizes a child, that action concerns me;
for that child is thereby connected to that body which
is my head too, and ingrafted into that body whereof I am a member.

And when she buries a man, that action concerns me:
all mankind is of one author, and is one volume;

when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book,
but translated into a better language;

and every chapter must be so translated; God employs several
translators;

some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness,
some by war, some by justice;

but God's hand is in every translation, and his hand shall bind up all our scattered leaves again for that library where every book shall lie open to one
another.

As therefore the bell that rings to a sermon calls not upon the preacher only,
 but upon the congregation to come,

so this bell calls us all; but how much more me, who am brought so near the
door by this sickness.

There was a contention as far as a suit (in which both piety and dignity, religion and estimation, were mingled),

which of the religious orders should ring to prayers
first in the morning;

and it was determined, that they should ring
first that rose earliest.

If we understand aright the dignity of this bell that tolls for our evening prayer, we would be glad to make it ours by rising early, in that application, that it might be
ours as well as his, whose indeed it is.

The bell doth toll for him that thinks it doth; and though it intermit again, yet from that
minute that this occasion wrought upon him, he is united to God.

Who casts not up his eye to the sun when it rises? but who takes
off his eye from a comet when that breaks out?

Who bends not his ear to any bell which upon any occasion rings? but who can remove
it from that bell which is passing a piece of himself out of this
world?

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece
of the continent, a part of the main.

If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as
well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were: any man's
death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind,

and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for
thee.

Neither can we call this a begging of misery, or a borrowing
of misery, as though we were not miserable enough of ourselves, but
must fetch in more from the next house, in taking upon us the
misery of our neighbours.

Truly it were an excusable covetousness if we did, for affliction is a treasure, and scarce any man hath enough of it.

No man hath affliction enough that is not matured and
ripened by it, and made fit for God by that affliction.

If a man carry treasure in bullion, or in a wedge of gold, and have none
coined into current money, his treasure will not defray him as he
travels.

Tribulation is treasure in the nature of it, but it is not current money in the use of it, except we get nearer and nearer our home, heaven, by it.

Another man may be sick too, and sick to death, and this affliction may lie in his bowels, as gold in a mine, and be of no use to him;

but this bell, that tells me of his affliction, digs out and applies that gold to me: if by this consideration of another's danger I take mine own into contemplation, and so secure myself, by making my recourse to my
God, who is our only security.       

 

 

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Thanks for your time and for tolerating our ramblings.

El Gringo Viejo

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