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(1) To begin, we shall be heading down to the Quinta on Thursday, unless there is snow and /or sleet. The chance of such a thing is small, and rare for this latitude and elevation, but it is something that could happen. Remember all, that it was just five or six years ago that McAllen woke up to a White Christmas in spades, with six to thirteen inches all over everywhere. We drove half-way to Round Rock that Christmas Day over highways that were barely passable due to the heavy snow. There was almost no traffic and that made the trip more pleasant.
We needed to let everyone know that we would be out, and interestingly enough, dealing with different types of client issues. This is the first time that we have had multiple client matters at the same time for quite a while, and it speaks to the general understanding that our client-base may be re-adjusting to a more normal rhythm.
This will mean a bit of clunky communication, as you all know, should anyone want to have information. The best bet is to simply email us, and Diana will bring all necessary matters to my attention and we shall execute according to the necessity of the client. Thanks for your patience in these realities.
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(2) We were disappointed that the Police Commissioner felt it necessary to chastise, however lightly, the police officers in attendance at the funeral of Officer Ramos in New York City.
The offense committed by his charges? He felt that the officers breached acceptable standards of conduct by turning their backs to the large television repeater screen outside the Church where the funeral was taking place.
Their unacceptable conduct? Turning their backs to the screen during the time that Mayor De Blasio was in no way as severe a breach of protocol as what de Blasio had done to the officers. Various of the many commentators suggested that de Blasio, Sharpton, Obama, and Holder all had the blood of Officers Ramos and Lui on their hands.
They did. They want to demagogue and slander, incite and enrage people who are intellectually and morally inferior to the point of doing truly dastardly things, such as pointless killing. Then they want immunity from the lightest consequence. Ramos and Lui are dead. The mayor of New York City, and Sharpton, Obama, and Holder have always gone out of their way to conflagrate any and all opportunities to start or intensify a race war.
The silent testimony to their innermost feelings was totally warranted. The officers' conduct was not out of line; there was no shouting, there was no gesticulation or coarseness. There was no distraction from the sacred rites going on inside the Church and it was the best and most dignified way for the officers to express moral, social, and fraternal solidarity with the departed and his family.
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(3) The greater problem is the nihilists and anarchists. It is the same as the issue facing the people down in Iguala de Hidalgo, Guerrero in Mexico. It is the same as all the incessant demonstrations, low-grade riots, menacings, vandalism, and petulant demanding of impossible conclusions that we encounter among the irrational, leftist class of narcissistic sub-humans. There is no reasonability among them. They exist only to destroy and defile, to tear down and cause misery. We have bought and paid for it by permissiveness and by paying for un-churched from "families" who view an extra baby as a key to a bigger welfare check, a larger apartment in the project or Section 8 menu, a larger allocation for food stamps.
Of the rich ones, they have the impatience common to those with an emotional development of a spoiled, tantrum throwing, three year old. They also have the arrogance of the self-inflated ego found among people such as (Sir Edmund) Hillary and most of the leftist icons who believe that they are beyond the law and too good to be judged since they believe in the sanctity of their irrational motives.
It might come as a surprise to the race-baiters and the "students" in the universities who are being filled up with bilge and believing said bilge, by ardent marxist professors, but lots of different kinds of folks have had problems with the police. Your humble servant has had three issues with the police over the years, and he felt certain that he was stepped on. In each case, El Gringo Viejo's position was vindicated and the police agents had to retract, retreat, and essentially admit to their errors. But in no case did I or anyone associated with me threaten to march, knock out bank and MacDonald's windows, set fires, or call for "more dead cops". The thought of suing anyone was never considered.
We point this out in order to demonstrate that everyone either has had, or can have, a police issue. Usually it is better to be in the right when such an issue arises, and not be coming off a video recording of beating up a store owner after robbing him of an 75 dollar box of cigars. Or being a purveyor of un-taxed cigarettes in the most taxed city in the Republic. Or being out on a lark, shaking up poor-man's-meth while being suspended from school for being found in possession of a considerable amount of gold jewellery that had been stolen and stashed in ones school locker....then trying to beat the neighbourhood watchman's brains out on the concrete sidewalk. It's hard to argue back from the policeman's point of view when you are in the wrong to start with.
It is better to be in the right.
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(4) Lastly, there was a sudden article that broke out on the Obsolete Media and was found even on Drudge and Fox News, declaring that "the Mexican Cartel" had called in to the police saying that they had a Border Patrol agent and they were holding him for ransom. The story was carried with all the seriousness in the world and as if it had any validity.
The "call" was made to the La Joya, Texas police department. The wire services who ran with the story apparently did no information mining of any kind. The who, what, when, where, why, and how was apparently not an issue. This is the normalcy in about 80 per cent of the cases of any news about Mexico carried in the Obsolete Media and even Fox News. It is sad, and it is purposeful, because it leads to having a large body of the American population thinking that they know something, when in fact the something they know is nothing. Folks, please be suspicious when listening or seeing stories about State Department Warnings and anything dealing with Mexico. Accurate news stories about Mexico are rarely fully accurate, and are frequently purposefully inaccurate and inflammatory.
Case in point. Cartel kidnapping of Border Patrol agent? It was a drunk, making nine semi-coherent telephone calls to the same desk in the small town police department of La Joya, Texas. It was a non-event. The "cartel" in the area through which I will drive and have driven throughout this entire episode was once a fearsome entity. But it has become even less than a shadow of its former self. The degrading by the military and the continuing rooting out of ever-lower elements of the old structure has steadily returned this part of Mexico more and more like the Mexico of the 1990s...the times before the "unionisation" of the "trafficking class".
There was no "cartel kidnapping" of a Border Patrol agent. Perhaps we could ask, "Was it only the drunk who was calling in to the police station who was drunk, or was the original 'reporter' also impaired?" But at this point, what possible difference can it make?
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Thanks for your time and interest.
El Gringo Viejo
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